Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part 23 (52-51)

#52 Wild Space

In Wild Space players draft cards to create the best spaceship crews. The crews are anthropomorphic animal aliens and robots. Points are scored for grouping species of crew members or other various kinds of sets based on scoring cards that you collect.

Players move space ship pawns to different planets. Each planet provides an action that the player can take. Each planet card is divided into two halves. The top half is "orbit" and you have to move your ships there first. Then you can "land" on the planet in a subsequent turn. 

The orbit and landing areas of the cards have different actions. Cards also can trigger actions when played, creating a cascading effect. This is desirable as getting the most actions out of each of your turns will help you to win.

Planet cards vary in power and the stronger cards require a larger crew compliment to reach. So, you work to build a strong enough crew to reach the furthest planets and take all of your actions. Once all ships have landed the game ends and scores are tallied.

Wild Space is a combo-rific card game. Its design is clean and the game play is streamlined but engaging as you try to get the most out of every turn. Also the cartoon animal aliens are super cute.

#51 Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

In Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu players work together to defeat cultists before they are able to summon the great old ones. This has all the usual Pandemic trappings, but the board represents gothic districtics described in the works of H. P. Lovecraft.

Enemies that pop-up aren't diseases but cultists. There are also monsters that can appear if too many cultists gather in an area, and instead of outbreaks - powerful old-ones will enter play changing the rules of the game for the worse! If the final old-one: Cthulhu is summoned, before the heroes are able to close all four summoning gates, the players lose.

This is my favorite version of Pandemic. I find its mechanics to be cleaner and easier to manage than any other version of the game that I have played. It's also dripping with atmosphere, the board, the cards, everything is just so gothic-pulpy good. 

Reign of Cthulhu even has proper miniatures to represent the cultists, the monsters, and the characters. Every character has a special power that matches the theme. Reign of Cthulhu feels more like an adventure game than a Pandemic game. I love that!

It's also the perfect game for Spooky Season!