Fleur de Ludo Awards 2023

Hey board gamers, it’s that time of the year again! Time to celebrate the best in cardboard creations for year 2023, the coveted Fleur de Ludo awards. Each year, I give my favorite game of the year, plus recommend four or five others that you should check out if you have similar gaming tastes as me.

Fleur de Ludo – Game of the Year

TICKET TO RIDE: LEGACY LEGENDS OF THE WEST

My favorite game of the year last year was none other than Ticket To Ride: Legacy Legends of the West! This is a campaign game from Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock, and Alan Moon and was the highlight of my gaming in the first half of 2024. I did not get my copy until Christmas (it was a gift from the family) and we started playing one or two sessions every other week for a few months until we finished. I won’t spoil anything that happened, but suffice it to say, each session was tense, and I loved the new twists on the old format.

Recommended Games

LAST LIGHT

Roy Cannady promised everyone that he had discovered the secret to making a 4X game that took only about an hour. He delivered! LAST LIGHT is the first of our recommended games. You can watch an interview we did with Roy at Southern Board Game Fest right here:

UNMATCHED ADVENTURES: TALES TO AMAZE

The Unmatched series is my all time favorite skirmish game, and the team at Restoration Games cracked the puzzle of making this fantastic competitive miniatures game become a rollicking cooperative game. Not only does it keep just about everything from the original, but it adds two cool maps with two tough-to-beat baddies and their all powerful minions. It’s a blast!

WORLD WONDERS

This may be one of my most played games from last year. When I heard about it, I knew that World Wonders would be a must-play for me, and within a minute of playing, I knew I had to own it. The expansion for World Wonders makes it even better. I not only love the economy of the game, but the tile placement and sheer joy of seeing the monuments arise from your player board is top notch.

AMALFI: RENAISSANCE

I talked about this one at the end of last year, worried that the fact that I was terrible at this game would sour my experience. It did not! I’ve played it close to a dozen times now, and yes, I have won a couple here and there, but for the most part, I just enjoy the puzzle of taking the starting hand and spying the cards and tiles that come out and trying to figure out cool combos to keep my turns going.

There’s so much to grok in your first couple of games that this is one of those experiences that you REALLY have to play two or three times to get the beauty. Yes, I know, that is supposed to be anathema to most gamers — good games are supposed to reveal themselves in the first play, but this game shines the more you play it.

RATS OF WISTAR

Simone Luciani does it again, this time with Danilo Sabia. I love this game, and Rats of Wistar was easily one of my top games at BGG Fall 2023. I still cannot believe I have not purchased it yet, but that’s only because we have a couple of copies floating around in the Gumbo. I adore the theme, which is basically a pastel colored version of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh come to life. But I especially like the mechanics, as each thing you do in the game is simple but makes sense in terms of the thematic elements in the game.

2023 turned out to be a heck of a year for board gaming. Did any of these games make your top list for 2023? Did I miss anything? Let me know!

Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!

— BJ from Board Game Gumbo