TTG’s Top Board Games of 2016: Scythe creator Jamey Stegmaier

It’s been a heck of a year for Viticulture, Euphoria and Tuscany designer and Stonemaier Games co-founder Jamey Stegmaier.

After raising close to $2 million on Kickstarter for his mechs-meets-rural-Europe strategy title Scythe in October of last year, this was the year that he brought the ambitious strategy game to tabletops around the world.

The game was a massive success, quickly selling out globally and rocketing up the BoardGameGeek rankings – where it now sits as the fifth best strategy title and seventh overall best game on the website.

Players and critics (who could actually find a copy) acclaimed the worker placement economy systems of the game for their lack of downtime and the variety of actions available to each faction, as well as the game’s beautiful alternate-history art by Polish illustrator Jakub Rozalski.

Yet, we’re not here to talk about Scythe – there’s no doubt that the game will find itself at the top of many other Game of the Year lists, but we wanted to hear from the brains behind the title about the games that had caught his fancy during 2016.

In his own words: "For this list, I’ve focused on games that were released in the US for the first time in 2016 (though I might be off by a few months on some of them)."

Here are the Top 10 Games of 2016, according to Scythe designer Jamey Stegmaier:

10. Star Wars: Rebellion
9. Millenium Blades
8. SeaFall
7. Imhotep
6. Potion Exploion
5. Celestia
4. A Feast for Odin
3. Clank!
2. TIME Stories
1. Isle of Skye