Top 10 Christmas Board Games for 2011

In no particular order, here's 2011's Top 10 Board Games:

1. Blood Bowl Team Manager Blood Bowl Team Manager is Fantasy Flight's latest release and takes an entire season of the Blood Bowl miniature game and compresses it into a 90 minute card game. With 6 different teams and a solid gameplay system, players compete for fan points during Highlight Games and Tournaments. Blood Bowl is a fun; fast competitive card game for Blood Bowl fans.

2. Dread Fleet Dread Fleet is the latest board game reprint release from Games Workshop. Dreadfleet has you commanding your naval fleet in battle against another player's fleet, attempting to sink one another in a dueal to the death. It's the most expensive board game on our list by far but you'll get a lot from this game including highly detailed sculpts and a layered rule system that adds complexity in each scenario.

3. Elder Sign Elder Sign's the dice-game version of Arkham Horror which compresses the game to an hour to two hours. With the ability to play solo or up to 8 players at a time and multiple Ancient One's to adjust the difficulty level; it's a fun; light game that brings some of the great artwork and Cthulhu theme to life. You can see our video review on the product page.

4. The Legend of Drizzt The Legend of Drizzt is the third Dungeons & Dragons board game and introduces the highly popular fantasy character as a playable character. You'll get a chance to play Drizzt and his allies in many of his adventures; dungeon crawling and smashing monsters with abandon. The new game introduces team and competitive play scenarios as well as stances and allies and a lot of villains to do battle with. It's a great introduction to new players of 4th Ed D&D or just as a stand-alone dungeon crawler.

5. Gears of War One of the most popular third-person shooters to come out in recent years; one to four players take on the Locus hordes in one of the seven scenarios in the game. A modular board, an ingenious combat system and enemy AI make this a game with a lot of replay value and real tension. If you don't have a third-person shooter game already, you should really consider this one.

6. Innovation Innovation starts out simple and quickly gains in complexity as you buy technologies, ideas, and cultural advancements, all represented by cards. All of the cards have a unique power that will allow you to purchase new advancements, score points or attack other civilizations; but other players might be able to use these cards too. Innovation's a fast playing, filler game that just gets better as you play and get to know the cards and combinations available.

7. Quarriors Quarriors is the first dice-building game on the market and plays quite differently from most other deck-builders. This is a light, filler game; adding a lot of randomness but a ton of fun as well to the entire genre. If you're into deck builders, rolling dice and are relatively laid-back about winning or losing, there's quite a bit to be said in favour of Quarriors. You can see it in action as well on our video review on the product page. It's already released its first mini-expansion with 19 new set of dice; just in-time for Christmas.

8. Mansions of Madness FFG's second big game foray into the Cthulhu environs; Mansions of Madness reminds a lot of players of Betrayal at the House on the Hill. Set in a mansion, the Keeper's player is pitted against the other players in a pre-designed scenario. Each scenario has multiple plot threads; so the ending, monsters and clues will differ from game to game. An extremely solid game; Mansions of Madness sits between Arkham Horror & Elder Sign in both complexity and play-time.

9. A Few Acres of Snow A deck-building wargame might sound strange, but the release of A Few Acres of Snow by Martin Wallace shows it can be done and done well. Representing the war between French and British armies in North America; the game takes place over 50 years with cards taking the place of manpower and locations. You'll need to approach each game differently, and whether you focus on manpower, the Native American tribes or the economy will depend on your opponent and your strategy that game.

10. Eminent Domain Eminent Domain has just been released but is already making waves. Launched via Kickstarter; the game is a combination of role-cards and deck-building. Each Role that you choose on your turn makes it easier to perform that Role again in future turns as you add that 'Roles' card to your deck. That makes specialising important; yet the ability to 'follow' other players actions is important; forcing you to balance your own deck to some extent. An innovative game mechanic and rave reviews has seen brisk sales of this game.