1. El Grande

Re-released in a shiny new version in 2023, El Grande is the seminal work that defined the region control genre. It’s a brutally popular custom game. Players are vying for the succession to the crumbling king of medieval Spain. You draft caballeros (knights) through clever card play, sprinkle your influence on the board and gain a majority in the region.

2. Frosthaven

People love playing tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons, but dungeon masters are hard to find. That’s just one reason why Gloomhaven became a rising star in the board game world when it was released in 2017. Another reason? Its easy-to-learn but hard-to-master deckbuilding mechanics. Its sequel, Frosthaven, improves on the formula while adding a ton of extra new content.

Gameplay

Frosthaven casts players in the role of hardy adventurers trying to bring a little civilization to a cold and dangerous frontier town. As players level up, they can retire from the game. Opening up new options for character creation that expand the storyline as well as the mechanical options in the game. You’ll explore many different branching quest lines and over 100 wonderful encounters in the game’s story-driven narrative campaign. This is a box of fun that weighs over 34 pounds. Packed by a real submarine engineer to save you shelf space. Absolutely full of spoilers and surprises.

3.Heat: Pedal to the Metal

Everything flows through your cards. Each player drives a sleek car from the golden age of Formula 1. You play a certain number of cards per turn, depending on your current gear setup. You then glide along a track a number of spaces equal to the sum of the values ​​played. If you push too hard or too fast, your vehicle builds up a nominal amount of heat. This clogs up your deck and slows you down. A strategic puzzle results as you analyze the risks and rewards of burning up corners at high speed. Managing your deck is an enjoyable little puzzle. It’s streamlined and easy to understand. Combine this great system with excellent components and a ton of content. Including four race tracks and multiple expansion modules. We have one of the most popular custom games ever.

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1.Cthulhu: Death May Die

Imagine the climax of the Cthulhu mythos: a group of cultists chanting in unison, their vicious rituals summoning a massive Old One. Cthulhu: Death May Die is exactly that. Although here players can kick doors and disrupt rituals wielding Tommy guns and casting forbidden spells. This game is too much. It embodies the extremes of the pulp Lovecraft that has become popular on the tabletop in recent years. This theater of the absurd is where Death May Die lives, urging players to push their investigators to the brink of madness to thwart evil plots and punch Cthulhu in the face. It’s like a grand finale that never lets up or slows down.

2.Decrypto

Nothing gets the party started like a little espionage, and that’s where Decrypto comes in. Your mission? Deliver a message to your team. You’ll have four cards with words on them in a random order. These create codes. Put them together in a phrase to help your team guess the code. The opposing team listens in to crack your codes and intercept intel. Think fast and don’t reveal too much, because two interceptions mean game over.

3. Dune: Imperium – Uprising

Like several other games on this list, including Frosthaven and Undaunted: Stalingrad, the game centers around managing a small deck of cards that you’ll cycle through multiple times during play. Buying the best cards to go into that deck has everything to do with your own personal strategy, which may differ depending on which side of the galaxy you sit. Its battles are massive and brutal, with multiple parties vying for control of the eponymous desert planet on the battlefield. But these squabbles are sometimes just for distraction.
This is the rare conflict-heavy strategy most popular custom game that can be won without much conflict at all.

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