The Opinionated Gamers rang in the new year with — you guessed it — board games! The beginning of a new year is a great time to gather with friends and family to play new games. Today we’re here to share what games we played to kick off 2026 and to invite you to share in the comments below your first game of 2026. Larry Levy will kick things off, followed by 10 other Opinionated Gamers sharing their first games of the year.
Larry Levy: Happy 2026, everyone! Three friends and I rang in the new year with a game: Tomas Holek’s Aquaria. We really liked it. It’s not too rules heavy and is fairly easy to teach, but there’s a good deal to think about, particularly towards the end. The central mechanism works well–you can take any action other than the one you previously did, possibly enhanced by spending your “pearl” resources, but if the new action is adjacent to your previous one, you also earn a bonus. The theme of building an aquarium comes through pretty well. There’s lots of ways of earning points and they seem pretty well balanced. Our 4-player game lasted a little over 3 hours and everyone enjoyed it.
On the negative side, there’s very little player interaction and most of that tends to be accidentally getting in the way of someone else’s plans. Consequently, I think this would be better with 3, as the fourth player does nothing but add time to the game. It could be a very good 2-player game, where you might well be able to take your opponent’s preferences into account when taking your move. But it did play well with 4 and that’s becoming harder for us to find with the newer games, so that was a welcome change. I think the game will usually last about 40 minutes per player and with experience, you might even be able to get it down to close to 30 minutes.
Component-wise, the information is laid out in a clear fashion, or at least it was for us. However, this doesn’t appear to be a color-blind friendly game at all. In addition, there aren’t enough food tokens to support 4 players–not a huge issue, but still a pretty shocking shortcoming from an experienced publisher like Delicious Games.
So a very nice way to start the new year. Holek is now 3 for 3 with me (I love SETI and Galileo Galilei is also very good). The man is really off to a remarkable start to his game designing career, particularly since his other 2024 game, Tea Garden, is getting very good reviews (I should probably check it out, despite what I consider a very boring theme). Aquaria’s ratings on the Geek are just so-so, but I’m not sure why–I really like it!
Mark Jackson: Our first games of 2026 were (in order):
- Race for the Galaxy: Alien Artifacts – We didn’t play with the Orb, just the card set. As usual, I lost – something about the Alien cards and my RftG tactics do not mix. (It’s still an amazing game.)
- Sea Salt & Paper – We played with Extra Salt, which is the way I was taught originally.
- In the Footsteps of Darwin – We played with the ESSENTIAL Correspondence expansion. The base game is fine but the expansion fixes the useless of the “Charles Darwin as Hot Potato” mechanic and adds some more interesting scoring opportunities.
Followed that up on Jan. 2 with a couple of games before my older son headed out:
- Lost Ruins of Arnak: Twisted Paths (the Owl Temple) – I played the Explorer for the Expedition Leaders expansion for the first time – she is a LOT of fun to play.
- Endeavor: Deep Sea – Mission 6… I’m finally finding my groove with this game. Totally understand why it won Kennerspiel in 2025.
Ben Bruckart: FlipToons – This has been a hit with my sons 13 year old group. I do like the casual nature of the game, but the randomness is a lot for me. Regardless, I expect it to get lots of play this year just like Flip7 and previous casual hits did.
Forestry – I really like this game. Meaty, good rulebook, very Italian design with not enough actions to do all the good scoring things. It’s just really good. But I don’t think it’s any good better with 3 or 4. I think its a 2-player game. This might be my favorite deep Euro of the year but I need more time with it and the advanced version of the game.
Echoes of Time – Probably good not great game. Time is really the key in this game but it also feels like an engine builder so just when your engine gets going, the game ends. I felt like maybe it was too short but that was just after a single, 3-player play.
Matt Carlson: I think Thunder Road is my official first game of 2026. Holiday gaming also included several plays of Dragons of Etchinstone, my first play was actually in the passenger side of the van on the way south. Got my eldest to play my new copy of Thunder Road Vendetta and we finally hit into the Star Realms Legacy game, Rise of Empires. We have made it 6 games into the 12 game campaign. There are a few somewhat interesting ways to give the “behind” player a little boost if they fall too far behind in wins… It doesn’t kick in right away but I’m hoping it will help me against the Star Realms juggernaut that is my son…
Fraser McHarg: Well it is the Christmas/New Year period, so in our house it is the Marsathon.
Thus the first game of 2026 was Terraforming Mars (including Prelude(s), Colonies and whichever of the 7 maps is on rotation that day). Of course, it was the last game of 2025 as well.
Talia Rosen: My first plays of 2026 were at a New Year’s game day where I got to play six different games, including four new-to-me games (one of which I then quickly ordered) and an old favorite – a great way to start the year!
First up was an obscure game from Japan called Planepita, which was like a little Crokinole with magnets and an interesting mechanism to lock pieces into place that made them worth less but avoided getting destroyed by the “black hole” piece. The second game was teaching Cascadia to some friends who had never played it, followed by learning the upcoming Flock rummy-style card game from the designer, which had a clever feather mechanism (that let you change the suit of your cards) to compensate for any stolen cards that migrated away from you.
The fourth game of the day was Leaf, which was lovely to look at, but the gameplay was rather frustrating personally (definitely a “not for me” game), given how difficult it was to evaluate how your hand of cards and how the various leaves available would fit all around the board to earn (what were ultimately relatively simple) action points.
I closed out the day with the absolutely wonderful Captain Sonar at the full 8-player count and ended the night by learning the delightful Phantom Ink (which I ordered shortly thereafter). We played Captain Sonar twice back-to-back, which were my tenth and eleventh plays of this absolute gem. I had a total blast despite having my submarine explode both times. We played three games of Phantom Ink, which was even more fun than I expected, and I’m really looking forward to playing it more in 2026 and hopefully introducing it to a bunch of friends, family, and neighbors.
Steph Hodge: In my house, we have the tradition of playing the Alphabet Challenge on January 1, including one number game for a total of 27 games. We have done this each year since 2020 at this point. Our friends come over around 10:30 am, and we play until we are done, usually by midnight.
This year we played in order: 7 Wonders Dice, Alibis, Botswana, Canvas Critters (new to me!), Don’t Mess With Cthulhu, Express Cross, Foxy, Green Team Wins, Hamsterrolle, Ito, Jungo, Kabuki Tricks (new to me!), Liar’s Dice, Mega Jackpot, No Thanks!, On Tour: Paris & New York (new to me!), Pickomino, QuizWiz, Regicide, Second Chance, Trinket Trove, Ultimatch, Viking See-Saw, Wordsy, X Nimmt!, YRO, Zombie Dice.
I always look forward to January 1, as it’s an exciting day of games! It is so much fun to pick out the games to play, and I have a great time playing!
Jonathan Franklin: Our first game of 2026 was The Gang, double-handed 3p. We had a great time with dealer’s choice (Pineapple, Omaha, etc.). Deckers was the second game played and stands up to repeated plays.
The true highlight was the last game of 2025, 4-player Arkham Horror LCG, starting The Path of Carcosa campaign. We had built decks and run through The Night of the Zealot and all agreed to start Carcosa and continue it through 2026.
Dale Yu: Depending on how you want to count, we played either 18 games or 14.
Anything that doesn’t sound familiar or isn’t in BGG is a Japanese game with a title I might have made up from google lens translation:
- Level 10
- A life of much shame
- Pinched
- 2nd day of the month
- Beastro
- Tricky landing
- Miams
- New record continue
- Arigato
- Viaduct
- Dess bassd!
- Map masters coop x 4 scenations
- Welcome to Noppori
- Cozy Stickerville x 2 years
6 co-op scenarios in a day may be a record for my group. Like Larry, we did find some games that maybe would be better with a lower player count – namely one player. I loved the idea of Arigato, but we were mostly playing the game on our own. (Yes, yes, I know that you do pass cards to the next player each round – but that is truly minimal interaction).
Still finding unplayed games from my Essen luggage to play at game night, though the total number of those is probably under 20 at this point. Pretty good pace for that so far – we’re doing much better than most years.
Lorna: Our first game was Gachapon Trick a fun little combo of trick taking and set collecting. We also played Recall which I am liking more the more I play.
Alison Brennan: New Years Day gaming has been a tradition in our group for 25 years now. Our year started with Luthier (8), Forestry (8), Spectacular (9), So Clover (8), Seas Of Strife aka Texas Showdown (9) and Rebel Princess (7). Not a bad selection to kick off the year; gaming lust was sated.
My first game of the year turns 20 years old this year: Thurn und Taxis.