Continuing in our ongoing series, here’s a look at some of the best games of 2024 Q3. We’re covering broad base this time, so settle in and see what new awesomeness is ready for your collection.
As ever, stock changes fast, so if something’s not available now, add it to your want list and chances are you’ll get your hands on the game soon. It’s hard to keep the best games of Q3, 2024 in stock.
The Newest Undaunted Goes Sci-Fi
Oh, c’mon. It can’t be that surprising to find the latest Undaunted title on this list, because this is the 1v1 series that keeps on giving. Up till now, investing in Undaunted meant transporting yourself back to World War Two, a conflict with thorns aplenty, some of which still resonate today. Even if you thought the gameplay excellent (it is), not everyone wants to play as Nazis or Soviets.
Undaunted 2200: Callisto seeks to remedy that sticking point while retaining what makes Undaunted so gosh-darned fun: you’re continuing to draw four cards and burn one for initiative, an always-excruciating decision. Then, on your turn, you’ll dish out one card after another, each one representing a soldier, mech, or special weapon on the board and directing them to move, fire, or indulge in an ability. Should an enemy wander into your sights, you’ll attack with dice-chucking grandeur, scoring hits on high rolls.
The twist with Undaunted: every hit removes one of the damaged unit’s cards from your deck, decreasing their utility until, if no cards are left, the unit gets kicked off the battlefield. That your forces aren’t nameless units only adds to the verisimilitude: these future soldiers have names, and you’ll lionize them as they achieve great things (or fail in hilarious fashion).
Callisto doesn’t deviate much from Undaunted’s successful formula, though it throws in a few wrinkles. Terrain, once relegated to blocking line of sight, now adds height and accompanying bonuses. This encourages movement around the map, tussling to hold points and reducing Undaunted’s main weakness: a tendency for some rounds to devolve into plinky shootouts, with the victory going to whomever had a bit more luck.
The sci-fi setting also gave designers Trevor Benjamin and Davin Thompson an excuse to ditch the mix-and-match tiles for full boards, ensuring faster setup. Asymmetric factions arrive as well, making battles more distinct than the near mirror-matches in earlier Undaunted titles. Mechs stomp onto the scene too, letting you indulge your Battletech desires. Lastly, the inclusion of a full 2v2 mode bumps the game into group play as a rare team-based title. Callisto isn’t a campaign, either, and its hour-long playtime make it great to break out with that one buddy you love butting strategic heads with.
All in all, Undaunted 2200: Callisto is a great pick-up for anyone intrigued by the Undaunted system but not enthused with World War Two, or for folks who’ve exhausted the earlier titles (how many Stalingrad campaigns have you played??) and want an excuse to delve back into one of the best gameplay loops of the last few years.
The Next War Series Continues Its Great Run
GMT remains a titan in wargame publishing for many reasons, but one has to be their support. The Next War series, focusing on modern-day scenarios and reaching its sixth entry with Next War: Iran (Gene Billingsley, Mitchell Land), showcases GMT’s care by including updated charts and references for the entire series. Yes, that’s right: dive into the Next War system with Iran, and as you move down the line, you’ll experience each subsequent title with cleaner, easier rules.
It’s like patching software, boardgame style, and it’s rad. Thats why it’s one of the best games of Q3, 2024.
Anyway, Next War. The title refers to conflicts that may happen—and let’s all hope they never do—and offers players a chance to game out these hypothetical disasters. Next War: Iran posits Iran taking the Straits of Hormuz and resisting all comers, with one player being the attacking United States and the other holding fast under Iran’s colors.
Gameplay rumbles in with classic hex-and-counter composition. You’re not pulling chits or drawing cards, but doing a grognard’s job and plotting strikes, reinforcements, and advances with dice and a handy CRT by your side. Weather plays a factor, with whipping wind playing havoc with your naval operations or grinding that assault to a halt. Separate phases reflect modern elements like special forces and cruise missiles. You’ll have counter trays stuffed with units and options.
Because Next War: Iran, like the rest of the series, isn’t a light wargame. It’s a compelling simulation, a strategic test for two dueling minds interested in playing out a fascinating hypothetical. It’s also a tweak to wargaming formula, as the Iran player is on the defensive the whole way. It’s almost a siege, in that the Iran player is angling to hold out for victory, while the US player must scramble forward as fast as opportunities allow.
Included scenarios let you build up to the full campaign, offering different situations to get both players used to the rules. You’ll develop tactics in these smaller skirmishes to bring with you into the complete campaign, which might take a solid seven or eight hours (which, in wargaming worlds, isn’t all that long) to play out.
It’s worth noting, too, that Next War: Iran is a standalone title. While the updated rules apply down the whole series, you don’t need to own the other games to jump into this one, and Iran makes as good a starting point as any. This is a compelling series that clearly has legs, so if you and your wargaming partner are looking for something deep to dig into, Next War: Iran deserves a look.
Wizard Foxes Hold an Auction in Nocturne
Auction games have been a staple genre for a long time, with Ra topping my personal list of pure bidding chaos. Nocturne, a new title from AEG and Flatout Games, doesn’t try to challenge Knizia’s masterpiece, but instead zags into a new, compelling combination: spatial puzzles and auctions. Starting with the vanilla premise of magical foxes casting spells to lure magical items in an enchanted forest, Nocturne explodes into an interactive back-and-forth bidding war.
What gives Nocturne’s auctions their bite is the spatial grid on which your coveted items rest. Casting your spells on those items coaxes them your way, until another wily fox ups the ante to redirect the treasure towards them. Because the grid is square and the forest itself offers different conditions depending on the area — the forest is the grid, and every tile has its own character — these aren’t just straight up high-number-wins situations, but opportunities for savvy spell-casting to snag multiple items or yank a would-be win from another player’s grasp.
This is, really, what a rules-light but tactically heavy game should strive for. You’re always interacting with each other, trying to outwit one another and make clever plays without questioning whether this or that is allowed. Nocturne’s chunky, colorful components couple with pleasing artwork to offset the back-and-forth auction bit, softening the ambient edges to create a fun sub-60 minute game perfect for week nights, an opener for longer sessions, or as the feature title for back-to-back plays. Thats what makes it one of the best games of Q3, 2024.
Commander Shepard Strikes the Tabletop
I’d generally recommend approaching any game based on a big IP with a modicum of caution, and Mass Effect: Priority Hagalaz brought the same hesitation until we saw Eric Lang credited, with Calvin Wong Tze Loon, on the design. Lang, who’s accumulated legends like Blood Rage, Ankh, and Cthulhu: Death May Die, on his resume can generally be trusted to deliver a good time. Mass Effect, a cooperative narrative game, does indeed bring a love for the source material into a tight, easy-to-teach blast.
Blast, you say? A strange word for cooperative narrative games, which, like Frosthaven, conjure up dreams of giant boxes, thick rule books, and enough cards to build a hundred flimsy houses. Mass Effect is not Frosthaven and it is very much not trying to be. It’s closer to Death May Die in its speedy, action-focused missions, with levels laid out in a nifty book rather than a tile forest. You’ll play between three and five of these in each run of the replayable, branching campaign, and your characters will grow during each mission before a climactic finale. Resetting after the right-sized campaign is as simple as wiping away the dry erase markers.
The beating heart of Mass Effect’s gameplay, and what makes this a charm to drop on the table, even with a bunch of tabletop newbies, is the turn-by-turn action selection. You’ll always play with four heroes (though this isn’t the solo challenge that might seem) and the first player will begin each round by rolling a whopping 12 dice. You’ll pick three, do the actions shown or use them to trigger abilities, and then pass the remaining nine to the next player. They’ll repeat, dwindling options until the last has only a set three to work with. They’ll get to roll all 12 in a moment, so the pain is fleeting, but the strategy, discussion, and bickering over who’s going to get what dice brings interactivity to the cooperative table. This isn’t a heads-down, everyone plots their course separately, silently, situation.
You’re a team, gosh darn it, and you’d better work together if you want to win.
That said, most missions are going to end by the hour mark, making Mass Effect an easy undertaking even if you can only stand cooperative games for a few minutes at a time. The swift campaign lengths mean you’ll actually finish them, perhaps multiple times, before the easy reset gives you a chance to pass the game along to a pal or resell for someone else to enjoy. And you’ll get it all for less than $50, which is, in this era, pretty darn incredible. Which makes it one of the best games of Q3, 2024.
Another Great Quarter for Boardgames
2024 continues to be a banner year (but then, aren’t they all in this golden gaming age?). You’ve got your choice of excellent titles across virtually all genres, from tactical duels like Undaunted 2200: Callisto to heavier wargaming in the Next War series. Nocturne offers a classic auction experience buttressed by spatial puzzles and a beautiful theme, while Mass Effect: Priority Hagalaz gives you a cooperative campaign you’ll actually complete. Whichever one you pick, you’ll be playing one of the best games of Q3, 2024.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to crack open some apple cider and blast some aliens with Garrus…