Best Board Games and Card Games of 2011

We’re often asked what our favorite new board games and card games are. And when the year rolls around to a new year, the question gets asked more frequently. Many people are anxious to hear what the best board games of the past year were.

While we’d love to give the definitive list of best board games to the world, it brings up a few issues.

1. With about 1,000 new board games releasing every year, there’s no way for one person to judge them all. How can one person or one family get through all those games to compare them?
2. With so many different types of games, how should we compare one against another (party game vs. a deeply themed strategy game) ?
3. When’s the best time to judge the games? Can we judge it like a movie with a singular experience or should it first stand the test of time?

So with those issues in mind, we’re happy to point you in a solid direction.

This month The Dice Tower podcast released 2 episodes focused on the Best Board Games of 2011. The great thing about this source for a “best of” listing is that contributors from around the world weigh in on what they believe the best games of 2011 were. They also break them down into various categories so it’s easier to compare one against another.

In regards to how soon a game can be declared “the best”, the final Dice Tower list will come out in the summer of 2012 – after many plays and rounds of nominations and voting from game reviewers across the globe. That’s when we’ll have a better feel for how the test of time will treat these new games.

With that in mind, here are the games that made The Dice Tower preliminary list of Best Board Games of 2011. (Of course, at the end we’ll also tell you which board games our family liked best from 2011.)

Best Board Games and Card Games of 2011 – The Dice Tower

• Super Dungeon Explore
• Star Trek Fleet Captains
• Discworld: Ankh-Morpork
• Mage Knight Board Game
• Eminent Domain
• Yomi
• Kingdom Builder
• BattleCON: War of Indines
• Quarriors
• King of Tokyo
• Castles of Burgundy
• Eclipse
• Paperclip Railways
• Risk Legacy
• Battleship Galaxies
• Core Worlds
• Node
• Sentinels of the Multiverse
• Airlines Europe

And their Runners Up are:

• Letters from Whitechapel
• Dungeon Run
• Fealty
• Dungeons & Dragons: Conquest of Nerath Board Game
• The Ares Project
• Conquest of Planet Earth
• Few Acres of Snow
• Panic Station

Best Board Games and Card Games of 2011 – The Board Game Family
Here are the 2011 games that our family liked the most:

• Knock Your Blocks Off
• City Square Off
• Say Anything Family Edition
• Dixit Odyssey
• Reverse Charades Junior Edition
• Martian Dice
• Dominion: Cornucopia
• Ninja: Legend of the Scorpion Clan
• Castle Panic: The Wizard’s Tower

(As you can tell, we’ve got a few of these game reviews still coming.)

It’s an understatement to say that there’s a ton of 2011 board games that we haven’t had a chance to play yet. Here are the 2011 board and card games that we’re most anxious to try:

• Kingdom Builder
• King of Tokyo
• Dominion: Hinterlands
• 7 Wonders Leaders
• Power Grid: The Robots
• Ticket to Ride: Alvin and Dexter
• Small World: Underground
• A Fistful of Penguins
• Secret of Monte Cristo
• Lost Temple
• Pastiche
• Rumble in the House
• The Road to Canterbury
• Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon
• Dungeons & Dragons: Conquest of Nerath Board Game

It’s a long list and who knows if we’ll have a chance to try these board games or not, but it should be fun trying. After all, we’re thinking there may be another cool game or two come out in 2012 that we’ll want to play along the way.

Have a great 2012 with your family!

Do you have a Best Board Games of 2011? Tell us about it in the comments below.