The Best Board Games of 2026! So far...

0:00 What's your favorite game this year? Was it treats? That's your favorite game? Yeah, Bo's favorite game is treats. But so far, these are the 10 games that I have loved playing this year. I excluded anything that I have already mentioned in previous Year of videos. So my tops and bottoms of last year, games that you can't actually get yet. There are so many games that I've played and I eliminated so many. So let's just get into it and talk about them. (upbeat music) At number 10 is Got Five. This is a really cool, simple deduction game. I have played it multiple times so far, even though I only just got it in June. This one is beautiful, adorable art, dry erase markers. And you're trying to deduce which five numbers that you have. And you're going to know which order the colors are in so that you can help know when you get a number that is greater than or less than your current placement or however many dots it's got.

0:52 And you'll be able to deduce from there. Number nine is Druids of Adora, designed by the good old Stephen Feld. And this is a dice placement game. One of Stephen Feld's, you know, classics mechanics. And this one just works out really well. It's nice and smooth. Although the artwork is very difficult to read on the board because of the different types of greens. It could have used with a little bit more color, but overall I've given this a 7.4 out of 10. I love the mechanics in this. And they all differently flow together. The game has a lot of replayability with the variable setup that you can do. So I'm really excited to get that one to the table a little bit more this year. And at number eight with 7.5 out of town, town 10 is dnup. This is a new card game that is from the designer of Scout. And so it has that same flipping, flipping mechanic of the cards, although you're allowed to rearrange your cards and you're going to be playing out sets because it's a card shedding game.

1:43 And so the first person to get out their hand gets two points via the letters of D-N. And then the next person gets one point. And then you keep going until someone gets enough points that they've spelt out dnup. So this game plays super fast. Not the greatest at two players though. I prefer it at three to five players. Coming in at number seven is Omens, designed by Maxine Rambourg. This is from Hachette. It's a really cool card shedding game. But with some trick taker influence to it, you're going to play out your card, but your card has special abilities on it. So it's going to determine whether or not your card will be allowed to be discarded. Because instead of the winner of the trick discarding all the cards or taking all the cards this point, the winner of the trick simply gets to discard their card. And then everyone else is trying to also get their card to be discarded.

2:30 Now you play this in teams though. So it is for only four to six players, because you have to play either two on two, or at five, you can do two on three. And at six, you can go do two, two, and two. And so the first team that scores two points, which is done by one of the team members going out, they will win the game. The artwork on it is amazing. The cards are nice and shiny and foil too. Coming in at number six, also with a 7.6 out of 10 is Kingdom Crossing. This is a really cute looking game, but it's actually a medium weight Euro. And so this one has you planning out your movement. So there's a little bit of a route planning without the actual route placement mechanics of like train games. And so you're going to be planning out your route to try and pick up the resources that you want in order to contribute to the Queen's next eighth bridge.

3:19 This uses the seven bridges Königsberg puzzle, which means that you can't cross all of those bridges in one movement, unless of course, you have a hot air balloon. I love that it is cozy, as well as actually a really good thinking game. Coming in at number five at 7.9 out of 10 is Sweet Lands. Now I don't have a copy of this. I have pre-ordered copy on their latest Kickstarter for Rosalie. Rosalie is not going to be my cup of tea, but Sweet Lands totally is. This is great at three players. Do not try it at four players. I've not tried it yet at two players, but it's very multiplayer solitaire anyway. So two and three is probably a good spot because you don't have too much downtime between other people's turns. It's tracks on tracks on tracks. So you are doing everything that you can through various different mechanics of building out your personal board, building out your engine, in order to go up on the various tracks.

4:06 Those tracks themselves will then be multipliers for all of the other engine building aspects that you've kind of done throughout the game. It's very heavy, but very cute as well because of the artwork. And it's simply stunning. Coming in at number four, a heck of a lot lighter now. This is a small card game called Bloom Kingdom. It is coming out at Spiel this year from Pegasus Spiel and Deep Print. This game has you playing out your cards simultaneously. So it's nice and quick. And the card that you play out is going to go into a shared tableau. That shared tableau is going to last over three rounds. And at the end of each round, you're going to have two cards left in your hand. And those two cards are going to determine how you're going to score based on the shared tableau. So the way you score is constantly in flux with your other players manipulating the tableau, either adding cards to it, removing them with some of the cards, or shifting cards around with some of the cards as well.

4:57 You might not always get what you need. So you kind of have to do this a little bit dynamically. So it's very quick, very fun. And the artwork is also really beautiful. It's got these like hand-drawn aesthetic to it. Although it's also very creepy at the same time because these are these flowers that have been turned into humans. Coming in at number three at 8.2 out of 10 is Nippon Zaibatsu. This is a re-implementation of Nippon from Paulo and Nuno. Some of the, my favorite kind of Eurogamer designers there. They make these nice thinky thing games with like easy to follow rules. But like this cool, just little like, oh wow, that's interesting aspect. And then with this one, it's in the worker placement aspect. So the worker color that you choose has an importance for the end of your round refresh action, that color is going to dictate the bonuses that you get, which is really cool and neat.

5:46 But then throughout the game, you're just trying to grab the resources, fulfill contracts to get points, as well as expand your kind of your little bit of your empire with how you're doing your industrialization. I've want to play this more and more because it's one of those ones where it's just like, oh, I could have done this just slightly differently and would have been a world of difference kind of thing. I have the base version, because I like that cover better, but I would love the Emperor's version to take my base version cover and put it on that one. Coming in at number two, this is just starting to fulfill now for people that pre-ordered it. It is Eternal Sevens at an 8.6 out of 10. Hiroken did Eternal Decks, it was very popular last year. Now they're back with Eternal Sevens, which is a new take on the popular game of Sevens. But in Japan, it's Sevens, you have elimination.

6:32 So this does have player elimination, which might not be everyone's cup of tea, not necessarily my cup of tea, but the game also plays relatively quickly that that elimination doesn't hurt too much. And so you're just gonna be playing out cards to the field and you're trying to survive for the most part when it gets into higher player counts. You can play with a beginner casual mode or a standard mode or an expert mode or a pro mode, each one of them adding a little bit more mechanics and difficulty to the situation. And so I've played this a few times and I've played it a bunch solo as well on their little internet application they're currently developing, which is really, really neat. And so I have pre-ordered a copy of this because we played my friend's copy. I'm excited to get that later on this year and play it some even more. And coming in at number one, at nine out of 10, I don't rate things that high very often, but this game is just like literally chef's kiss.

7:22 And I cheated because this one is coming to Kickstarter on September 22nd. This is Personal Demons from Judson Cowan of Tetrix. They brought us, yeah, they brought us a Bo. They didn't bring us a Bo. They brought us deep regrets and even deeper regrets and his first game abominations. There beautiful, the artwork in this game is simply stunning. The mechanics are so simple. You're going to play out a card into this tableau with some pattern matching because if you pattern match the seals, you get to put a seal down. Yes, Bo, you get to put a seal down. And then if that seal itself lets you score the actual points that are on the demon cards, which is really, really neat. And then there's just this awesome aspect because these cards are all different sizes. So they take up a varying different amount of space.

8:08 So it's a really cool spatial puzzle for how you place your demons and then a pattern matching puzzle for getting the seals for scoring, which is really neat. And it plays super smooth, plays super fast. And that is my game so far of the year. Yeah, Bo Bo Otherwise that's the 10 games that I have been really excited about this year. Bo, you're making me blurry. Can you sit down please? And so let me know what you have played this year that is your favorite. And please like, subscribe, interact with the video. It helps me grow and then gives Bo more treats. Yeah, more treats. Here you go. We'll see you next time.