And if the cost is a bit much, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion offers a smaller campaign at a much smaller price tag. Truly all things to all gamers - even fans of the best solo board games - Gloomhaven deserves its staggering level of acclaim. But if you want heavyweight strategy then deck-building and resource gathering over the campaign plus the in-scenario exhaustion mechanic gives you plenty of meat. If you’re a sucker for tactical combat then its cunning, card-driven face-offs against a staggering variety of foes will thrill you. If you like old-fashioned dungeon crawls with a strong narrative, well, the 95-scenario campaign of fantasy adventure has you covered. The current king of the board gaming pile got that way through an ingenious bit of genre-blending. Crammed with variety, tactical decisions and more dramatic reversals than a prime-time soap opera, Cosmic Encounter may be the only negotiation game you need. Back in 1977, the designers of Cosmic Encounter had a brainwave: why not get rid of the territory and cut to the chase? The result is this hilarious game of shifting alliances where every player has a game-breaking alien power to leverage in the race to win colonies on five of your opponent’s planets. Lots of games that revolve around grabbing territory tend to involve the kind of tentative alliances and festering enmities that mimic real-world diplomacy.

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