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Best Theming

2023
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Best Theming Winner 2023
Thunder Road: Vendetta is a revved-up restoration of the classic 1986 game of mayhem on the asphalt. Grab your crew, roll your dice, race your cars, shoot your guns, and try not to get wrecked.

This new version features exciting new additions, including random hazard tokens, such as wrecks, oil slicks, and more. Damage isn't merely one and done. Now, you'll draw damage tokens with exciting effects that can send your car careening across the board. You'll also have more choices on your turn, assigning one of your dice to your command board to repair damage, nitro boost, or send out your attack copter to fire away.

—description from the publisher

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Year Published: 2023
Designers: Dave Chalker
Publishers: Restoration Games
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Best Theming Nominee 2023
Year Published: 2023
Designers: Giacomo Cimini
Publishers: Lirius Games
Year Published: 2023
Designers: Dave Beck
Publishers: Paverson Games
Year Published: 2023
Designers: Luc Rémond
Publishers: Le Scorpion Masqué
Year Published: 2023
Designers: Elizabeth Hargrave
Publishers: Pandasaurus Games
2022
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Dice Tower Awards 2023 General Logo
The walls were lined with iron shelves, each metal slat overfilled with glass jars containing formaldehyde and grotesque curiosities within. Pristine brass tools and refined metals of a quality I had never before laid eyes upon were strewn across sturdy slabs of rock and wood, their edges sharp with use. However, my eyes were soon drawn to a sturdy writing desk, its mahogany eaves inlaid with thin strips of copper, the center of which contained a well-worn leather-bound book. My father's journal — passed down to me and representing years of knowledge and countless experiments. And inside that weathered tome, atop the pearly parchment oxidized yellow at its frayed edges, were the deliberate quill marks of a crazed genius outlining the ambitious project he could never complete in one lifetime — his masterwork.

Without realizing it, my hands were shaking as I clutched the book to my chest. At once, I felt an ownership and anxiety for the scientific sketches scrawled so eloquently on those frayed sheets. It was at that moment that I began my obsession: I would restore this laboratory to its former brilliance and dedicate my life to completing my father's work!

In My Father's Work, players are competing mad scientists entrusted with a page from their father's journal and a large estate in which to perform their devious experiments. Players earn points by completing experiments, aiding the town in its endeavors, upgrading their macabre estates, and hopefully completing their father's masterwork.

But they have to balance study and active experimentation because at the end of each generation, all of their experiments and resources are lost to time until their child begins again with only the "Journaled Knowledge and Estate" they have willed to them — and since the game is played over the course of three generations, it is inevitable that the players will rouse the townsfolk to form angry mobs or spiral into insanity from the ethically dubious works they have created. The player with the most points at the end of three generations wins and becomes the most revered, feared, ingenious scientist the world has ever known!

—description from the publisher

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Year Published: 2022
Designers: T. C. Petty III
Publishers: Renegade Game Studios
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Best Theming Nominee 2022
Year Published: 2022
Designers: Asger Harding Granerud
Publishers: Days of Wonder
Year Published: 2021
Designers: Adam Kwapiński
Publishers: Awaken Realms
Year Published: 2022
Designers: Isaac Childres
Publishers: Restoration Games
Year Published: 2022
Designers: Tim Eisner
Publishers: Druid City Games
2021
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Best Theming 2021
Playing on a famous horror movie trope, Final Girl is a solitaire-only game that puts the player in the shoes of a female protagonist who must kill the slasher if she wants to survive.

The Core Box, when combined with one of our Feature Film Boxes, has everything you need to play the game. Each Feature Film Box features a unique Killer and and iconic Location, and the more Feature Films you have, the more killer/location combinations you can experience!

In game terms, Final Girl shares similarities with Hostage Negotiator, but with some key differences that change it up, including a game board to track locations and character movement. You can choose from multiple characters when picking someone to play and multiple killers when picking someone to play against. Killers and locations each have their own specific terror cards that will be shuffled together to create a unique experience with various combinations of scenarios for you to play!

—description from the publisher

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Year Published: 2021
Designers: Evan Derrick
Publishers: Van Ryder Games
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Best Theming Nominees 2021
Year Published: 2021
Designers: Mathias Wigge
Publishers: Feuerland Spiele
Year Published: 2021
Designers: Michael Mulvihill
Publishers: Ravensburger
Year Published: 2021
Designers: Malachi Ray Rempen
Publishers: Keen Bean Studio
Year Published: 2021
Designers: Ryan Laukat
Publishers: Red Raven Games
2020
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Best Theming 2014
Forgotten Waters is a Crossroads Game set in a world of fantastical pirate adventure. In it, players take on the role of pirates sailing together on a ship, attempting to further their own personal stories as well as a common goal.

The world of Forgotten Waters is silly and magical, with stories designed to encourage players to explore and laugh in delight as they interact with the world around them. It's a game in which every choice can leave a lasting impact on the story, and players will want turn over every rock just to see what they find.

Forgotten Waters features five scenarios and a massive location book that provides players with tons of choices wherever they go.

—description from the publisher

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Year Published: 2020
Designers: Mr. Bistro
Publishers: Plaid Hat Games
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Year Published: 2020
Designers: Elizabeth Hargrave
Publishers: Alderac Entertainment Group
Year Published: 2020
Designers: Prospero Hall
Publishers: Funko Games
Year Published: 2020
Designers: Geoff Engelstein
Publishers: WizKids
Year Published: 2020
Designers: Paul Dennen
Publishers: Dire Wolf
2019
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The stakes have been raised. Imagine living in a place so wretched that it's not plagued by one, two, or even three monsters — but seven of the most horrifying fiends!

In this game, you'll come face to face with them all as you work together to rid the town of the maniacal or misunderstood creatures…before it's too late.

Horrified includes high-quality sculpted miniatures (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon). Its innovative, easy-to-learn, cooperative gameplay has players working together against the monsters with varying levels of difficulty. Just as each monster is unique, they require different strategies and tactics to be defeated.

—description from the publisher

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Year Published: 2019
Designers: Prospero Hall
Publishers: Ravensburger
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Year Published: 2019
Designers: Elizabeth Hargrave
Publishers: Stonemaier Games
Year Published: 2019
Designers: Nathan I. Hajek
Publishers: Fantasy Flight Games
Year Published: 2019
Designers: Corey Konieczka
Publishers: Fantasy Flight Games
Year Published: 2019
Designers: Prospero Hall
Publishers: Ravensburger
Year Published: 2019
Designers: Matthias Cramer
Publishers: Frosted Games
2018
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In Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game you are going to solve FIVE different cases and find out what connects them, you are going to BREAK THE 4th WALL by using every resource you can, you are going to browse the game's DEDICATED DATABASE simulating your agency's resources, you will enter a city maze of old mysteries and fresh CRIME, and you will be able to COOPERATE with other agents or solve the mystery on your own.

Take the job of a real detective in a modern setting! In Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, 1-5 players take on the role of investigators, solving mysterious crimes while working as an Antares National Investigation Agency team members. This board game tell rich stories - stories you will participate in. Let's hope that you will be able to deduce the end, before there is another crime... The game will challenge you with five different cases, that have to be played in order. Seemingly unconnected at first, they will unveil an immersive meta-plot based on facts and fiction alike.

Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game brings classic, card-based, puzzle-solving gameplay into the 21st century with the introduction of online elements. You will gain access to the online Antares database that contains data about suspects, witnesses, and documentation from arrests and trials related to your case. Use every tool at your disposal to solve these crimes - consult the Internet, check the facts and constantly discover new clues. You are not playing a detective; you ARE a detective!

In 2020 Game of the Year special edition of Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game was published. Thanks to the overwhelmingly great response for the game and a worldwide success Portal Games was able to improve the basic game and add an additional component to the box. The new edition includes a set of 30 photos of character portraits, which the players can use during their investigation to make a mind map. The pictures show the suspects met throughout the game, and bring an amazing immersion to the gameplay. The set was previously available for purchase only as an additional promo item at the Portal Games store and during conventions. With the Game of the Year edition of Detective, now all players will be able to enjoy this great tool.

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Year Published: 2018
Designers: Przemysław Rymer
Publishers: Portal Games
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Year Published: 2018
Designers: Jerry Hawthorne
Publishers: Plaid Hat Games
Year Published: 2018
Designers: Cole Wehrle
Publishers: Leder Games
Year Published: 2018
Designers: Hervé Lemaître
Publishers: Kolossal Games
Year Published: 2018
Designers: David Cicurel
Publishers: Lucky Duck Games
2017
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This War Of Mine: The Board Game is the tabletop adaptation of the award-winning video game that pictures the drama of civilians trapped in a war-torn city.

You will enter this experience as a group of civilians trapped in a besieged and conflict-ridden city, enduring many hardships that often test the essence of humanity.

During day time you will take shelter in a ruined tenement house, which you will care about and manage by: removing rubble, searching through various rooms (often behind barricaded doors), you will build beds, improvised workshops, stoves, tools, water filters, small animal traps, you will cultivate an improvised vegetable garden, fix the tenements’ shelled facilities, reinforce the security of your shelter and should winter come, you’ll try to keep it warm.

Upon nightfall your main duties will consist of guarding your shelter and what little possessions you can accumulate against bandits and raiders. Those in your group fit for such a task will use the cover of the night to carefully explore dozens of the ever-changing locations scattered throughout the dangerous city in search of all the things that a person needs to survive (materials, food, meds, equipment, etc.). On your way you will meet tens of characters, each with a unique story (residents of the locations you visit, thieves, bandits, soldiers, war victims, refugees, neighbors, traders and members of local communities), each encounter is a potential, unique adventure. To guide you through all these events you will have the special SCRIPTS mechanism, responsible for implementing the deep and complex story and a coherent plot (each game will be unique and different than the previous).

Your goal is to SURVIVE until the cessation of war hostilities. During your struggle as the survivors, you will experience dramas connected with making extremely difficult decisions and choices (you will have to face the consequences of your actions sooner or later in the playthrough). Survival itself will often prove not to be enough. The price each of you will decide to pay, might be too high in the final outcome. So the goal is really to survive in a way that will let you live on with the decisions you made. The EPILOGUES mechanism will kick in here.

TWOM: The Board Game features a multiplayer experience for up to 6 players, as well as a solo variant. You will be able to personify one of the well-known characters from the electronic version of the game and face hundreds of new challenges and difficult choices.

The boardgame significantly broadens the original game’s universe and emphasises the depth of plot, yet its main focus will be on human interactions driven by survival instinct and group decision-making.

The project aims to omit the usual boardgame threshold - TWOM: The Board Game is an INSTANT PLAY game, with no need for reading the manual before starting the adventure.

Experience the simulation of a struggle for survival as a group of civilians facing a blind and merciless war.

In war, not everyone is a soldier.

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Year Published: 2017
Designers: Michał Oracz
Publishers: Awaken Realms
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Year Published: 2017
Designers: R. Eric Reuss
Publishers: Greater Than Games, LLC
Year Published: 2017
Designers: Ryan Laukat
Publishers: Red Raven Games
Year Published: 2017
Designers: Michał Oracz
Publishers: Awaken Realms
Year Published: 2017
Designers: Adam P. McIver
Publishers: Renegade Game Studios
Year Published: 2017
Designers: Hjalmar Hach
Publishers: Blue Orange (EU)
2016
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At the bottom of the ocean, no one will hear you scream!

In Captain Sonar, you and your teammates control a state-of-the-art submarine and are trying to locate an enemy submarine in order to blow it out of the water before they can do the same to you. Every role is important, and the confrontation is merciless. Be organized and communicate because a captain is nothing without his crew: the Chief Mate, the Radio Operator, and the Engineer.

All the members of a team sit on one side of the table, and they each take a particular role on the submarine, with the division of labor for these roles being dependent on the number of players in the game: One player might be the captain, who is responsible for moving the submarine and announcing some details of this movement; another player is manning the sonar in order to listen to the opposing captain's orders and try to decipher where that sub might be in the water; a third player might be working in the munitions room to prepare torpedoes, mines and other devices that will allow for combat.

Captain Sonar can be played in two modes: turn-by-turn or simultaneous. In the latter set-up, all the members of a team take their actions simultaneously while trying to track what the opponents are doing, too. When a captain is ready to launch an attack, the action pauses for a moment to see whether a hit has been recorded — then play resumes with the target having snuck away while the attacker paused or with bits of metal now scattered across the ocean floor.

Multiple maps are included with varying levels of difficulty.

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Year Published: 2016
Designers: Roberto Fraga
Publishers: Matagot
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Year Published: 2016
Designers: Philip duBarry
Publishers: Game Salute
Year Published: 2016
Designers: Keith Matejka
Publishers: Thunderworks Games
Year Published: 2016
Designers: Rob Daviau
Publishers: IronWall Games
Year Published: 2016
Designers: Jacob Fryxelius
Publishers: FryxGames
2015
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Description from the publisher:

The T.I.M.E Agency protects humanity by preventing temporal faults and paradoxes from threatening the fabric of our universe. As temporal agents, you and your team will be sent into the bodies of beings from different worlds or realities to successfully complete the missions given to you. Failure is impossible, as you will be able to go back in time as many times as required.

T.I.M.E Stories is a narrative game, a game of "decksploration". Each player is free to give their character as deep a "role" as they want, in order to live through a story, as much in the game as around the table. But it's also a board game with rules which allow for reflection and optimization.

At the beginning of the game, the players are at their home base and receive their mission briefing. The object is then to complete it in as few attempts as possible. The actions and movements of the players will use Temporal Units (TU), the quantity of which depend on the scenario and the number of players. Each attempt is called a "run"; one run equals the use of all of the Temporal Units at the players' disposal. When the TU reach zero, the agents are recalled to the agency, and restart the scenario from the beginning, armed with their experience. The object of the game is to make the perfect run, while solving all of the puzzles and overcoming all of a scenario’s obstacles.

The base box contains the entirety of the T.I.M.E Stories system and allows players to play all of the scenarios, the first of which — Asylum — is included. During a scenario, which consists of a deck of 120+ cards, each player explores cards, presented most often in the form of a panorama. Access to some cards require the possession of the proper item or items, while others present surprises, enemies, riddles, clues, and other dangers.

You usually take possession of local hosts to navigate in a given environment, but who knows what you'll have to do to succeed? Roam a med-fan city, looking for the dungeon where the Syaan king is hiding? Survive in the Antarctic while enormous creatures lurk beneath the surface of the ice? Solve a puzzle in an early 20th century asylum? That is all possible, and you might even have to jump from one host to another, or play against your fellow agents from time to time...

In the box, an insert allows players to "save" the game at any point, to play over multiple sessions, just like in a video game. This way, it's possible to pause your ongoing game by preserving the state of the receptacles, the remaining TU, the discovered clues, etc.

T.I.M.E Stories is a decksploring game in which each deck makes anything possible!



Official FAQ



Expansions were published in this order:

Asylum (base game) (2015)
T.I.M.E Stories: The Marcy Case (2015)
T.I.M.E Stories: A Prophecy of Dragons (2016)
T.I.M.E Stories: Under the Mask (2016)
T.I.M.E Stories: Expedition – Endurance (2017)
T.I.M.E Stories: Lumen Fidei (2017)
T.I.M.E Stories: Estrella Drive (2017)
T.I.M.E Stories: Brotherhood of the Coast (2018)
T.I.M.E Stories: Madame (2019)

The Expansions link below also includes many fan-made expansions.

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Year Published: 2015
Designers: Peggy Chassenet
Publishers: Space Cowboys
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Year Published: 2015
Designers: Mike Fitzgerald
Publishers: Eagle-Gryphon Games
Year Published: 2015
Designers: Rob Daviau
Publishers: Z-Man Games
Year Published: 2015
Designers: Eric M. Lang
Publishers: Cool Mini Or Not
Year Published: 2015
Designers: Jeroen Doumen
Publishers: Splotter Spellen
2014
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"Crossroads" is a game series from Plaid Hat Games that tests a group of survivors' ability to work together and stay alive while facing crises and challenges from both outside and inside. Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game, the first title in this series, puts 2-5 players in a small, weakened colony of survivors in a world in which most of humanity is either dead or diseased, flesh-craving monsters. Each player leads a faction of survivors, with dozens of different characters in the game.

Dead of Winter is a meta-cooperative psychological survival game. This means players are working together toward one common victory condition, but for each individual player to achieve victory, they must also complete their personal secret objective, which could relate to a psychological tick that's fairly harmless to most others in the colony, a dangerous obsession that could put the main objective at risk, a desire for sabotage of the main mission, or (worst of all) vengeance against the colony! Games could end with all players winning, some winning and some losing, or all players losing. Work toward the group's goal, but don't get walked all over by a loudmouth who's looking out only for their own interests!

Dead of Winter is an experience that can be accomplished only through the medium of tabletop games, a story-centric game about surviving through a harsh winter in an apocalyptic world. The survivors are all dealing with their own psychological imperatives, but must still find a way to work together to fight off outside threats, resolve crises, find food and supplies, and keep the colony's morale up.

Dead of Winter has players making frequent, difficult, heavily-thematic, wildly-varying decisions that often have them deciding between what's best for the colony and what's best for themselves. The rulebook also includes a fully co-operative variant in which all players work toward the group objective with no personal goals.

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Year Published: 2014
Designers: Jonathan Gilmour
Publishers: Plaid Hat Games
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Year Published: 2014
Designers: Jonathan Gilmour
Publishers: Plaid Hat Games
Year Published: 2014
Designers: Ben Cichoski
Publishers: Upper Deck Entertainment
Year Published: 2014
Designers: Ted Alspach
Publishers: Bézier Games
Year Published: 2014
Designers: Justin Kemppainen
Publishers: Fantasy Flight Games
Year Published: 2014
Designers: Matúš Kotry
Publishers: Czech Games Edition
2011
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Best Game Theme of 2011
The call comes in... "911, what is your emergency?" On the other end is a panicked response of "FIRE!" Moments later you don the protective suits that will keep you alive, gather your equipment and rush to the scene of a blazing inferno. The team has only seconds to assess the situation and devise a plan of attack – then you spring into action like the trained professionals that you are. You must face your fears, never give up, and above all else work as a team because the fire is raging, the building is threatening to collapse, and lives are in danger.

You must succeed. You are the brave men and women of fire rescue; people are depending on you. This is what you do every day.

Flash Point: Fire Rescue is a cooperative game of fire rescue.

There are two versions of game play in Flash Point, a basic game and expert game.
In both variants, players are attempting to rescue 7 of 10 victims from a raging building fire.
As the players attempt to rescue the victims, the fire spreads to other parts of the building, causing structural damage and possibly blocking off pathways through the building. Each turn a player may spend action points to try to extinguish fires, move through the building, move victims out of the building or perform various special actions such as moving emergency vehicles. If 4 victims perish in the blaze or the building collapses from taking too much structural damage, the players lose. Otherwise, the players win instantly when they rescue a 7th victim.

The expert variant included in the game adds thematic elements such as flash over, combustible materials, random setup, and variations on game difficulty from novice to heroic. The game includes a double sided board with two different building plans and several expansion maps are available.

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Year Published: 2011
Designers: Kevin Lanzing
Publishers: Indie Boards & Cards
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Best Game Theme Nominee of 2011
Year Published: 2011
Designers: Vladimír Suchý
Publishers: Czech Games Edition
Year Published: 2011
Designers: Antoine Bauza
Publishers: Bombyx
Year Published: 2011
Designers: Cédric Lefebvre
Publishers: Ludonaute
Year Published: 2011
Designers: Vlaada Chvátil
Publishers: Czech Games Edition
Year Published: 2011
Designers: Vladimír Suchý
Publishers: Czech Games Edition
2012
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In Mice and Mystics, players take on the roles of those still loyal to the king – but to escape the clutches of Vanestra, they have been turned into mice! Play as cunning field mice who must race through a castle now twenty times larger than before. The castle would be a dangerous place with Vanestra's minions in control, but now countless other terrors also await heroes who are but the size of figs. Play as nimble Prince Collin and fence your way past your foes, or try Nez Bellows, the burly smith. Confound your foes as the wizened old mouse Maginos, or protect your companions as Tilda, the castle's former healer. Every player will have a vital role in the quest to warn the king, and it will take careful planning to find Vanestra's weakness and defeat her.

Mice and Mystics is a cooperative adventure game in which the players work together to save an imperiled kingdom. They will face countless adversaries such as rats, cockroaches, and spiders, and of course the greatest of all horrors: the castle's housecat, Brodie. Mice and Mystics is a boldly innovative game that thrusts players into an ever-changing, interactive environment, and features a rich storyline that the players help create as they play the game. The Cheese System allows players to hoard the crumbs of precious cheese they find on their journey, and use it to bolster their mice with grandiose new abilities and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

Mice and Mystics will provide any group of friends with an unforgettable adventure they will be talking about for years to come – assuming they can all squeak by...



Expansion advice:

For those who have expansions for this game the recommended order by the game designer for playing them is as follows (see original post HERE):

Sorrow and Remembrance (Base game)
Cat's Cradle (Lost Chapter 1)
Heart of Glorm
The Ghost of Castle Andon (Lost Chapter 2)
Downwood Tales
Portents of Importance (Lost Chapter 3), connected to the story in Tail Feathers



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Year Published: 2012
Designers: Jerry Hawthorne
Publishers: Plaid Hat Games
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Year Published: 2012
Designers: Vital Lacerda
Publishers: Giochix.it
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Joanna Kijanka
Publishers: Portal Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Geoff Engelstein
Publishers: Stronghold Games
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Aaron Dill
Publishers: Gale Force Nine, LLC
Year Published: 2012
Designers: Vital Lacerda
Publishers: Giochix.it
2013
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Best Game Theme of 2013
Early in the history of the United States, slavery was an institution that seemed unmovable but with efforts of men and women across the country, it was toppled. In Freedom: The Underground Railroad, players are working to build up the strength of the Abolitionist movement through the use of notable figures and pivotal events. By raising support for the cause and moving slaves to freedom in Canada, the minds of Americans can be changed and the institution of slavery can be brought down.

Freedom is a card-driven, cooperative game for one to four players in which the group is working for the abolitionist movement to help bring an end to slavery in the United States. The players use a combination of cards, which feature figures and events spanning from Early Independence until the Civil War, along with action tokens and the benefits of their role to impact the game.

Players need to strike the right balance between freeing slaves from plantations in the south and raising funds which are desperately needed to allow the group to continue their abolitionist activities as well as strengthen the cause.

The goal is not easy and in addition to people and events that can have a negative impact on the group's progress, there are also slave catchers roaming the board, reacting to the movements of the slaves on the board and hoping to catch the runaway slaves and send them back to the plantations.

Through careful planning and working together, the group might see an end to slavery in their time.

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Year Published: 2012
Designers: Brian Mayer
Publishers: Academy Games, Inc.
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Year Published: 2013
Designers: Antoine Bauza
Publishers: Repos Production
Year Published: 2013
Designers: Ole Steiness
Publishers: Common Man Games
Year Published: 2013
Designers: Cédrick Chaboussit
Publishers: Ludonaute
Year Published: 2013
Designers: Corey Konieczka
Publishers: Fantasy Flight Games