The Bucket List

Haul freight across Europe by lorry, bidding for the contracts nobody else wants.

Everyone moves everyone's spy and nobody admits which one is theirs.

Draw your own track on the map with a crayon, then race the trains you built.

Five detectives hunt Mister X across a London map; he surfaces every five turns.

Find the fairy-tale treasures under the trees and remember where they were.

Stack your pieces on top of your opponent's in an abstract Sid Sackson designed in 1963.

Spend carrots to move; the first Spiel des Jahres, and still a clean race game.

Magnetic air hockey for two, played with a handle under the board.

A Canadian dexterity board where you flick discs at a centre hole.

A South Asian tabletop strike-and-pocket game, all wrist and chalk.

A mill game carved into cathedral cloisters and Roman roof tiles.

A river, cannons that jump to capture, and generals who may never meet.

Japanese chess, where captured pieces change sides and come back.

Chess with a shuffled back rank, so the opening book is useless.

The Ring goes south while armies burn Middle-earth; the best Tolkien game.

The whole galactic civil war, with the Empire hunting a hidden rebel base.

Great Old Ones fight over the ruins of Earth in an asymmetric area-control brawl.

A colony survives a zombie winter while one player quietly works against it.

Semi-co-operative survival horror aboard a ship with a secret objective each.

Vikings fight for glory in a doomed world, with drafted powers each age.

Fifty alien powers, each of which breaks a different rule.

Fantasy races overrun the map and then go into decline on purpose.

The area-majority classic: caballeros, a castillo and one hidden placement.

Squad-level Second World War combat with hidden movement.

Command cards and blocks over the Normandy hedgerows, in under an hour.

The gateway wargame: the whole of the Second World War on one board.

No dice, no cards; just seven players lying to each other about 1901 Europe.

The Cold War duel in cards, one card able to lose you the game.

A partnership climbing game from Taiwan with bombs and a bet on going out first.

Trick-taking where you must predict exactly how many tricks you will win.