Most Anticipated Non-Kickstarter Games of 2020

The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth - Hunt for the Ember Crown - Ok, seriously people, is there anyway that we can abbreviate this a little bit? The base game has nine words in the title already and this bumps us up to fourteen. Isn't that like a marketing no-no? Whatever, it still won't stop me from picking this up. Journeys in Middle-earth (check out my review here) was almost the game I've always been waiting for. There were a few things about it that I would have liked to see differently, but I'm still excited to get more content for this one. The miniatures look amazing and, come on, who doesn't want to play as Gandalf?!? Also hat new dwarf looks pretty cool (and you know I'm going to run a purely dwarf team, obviously). Mirkwood is a really interesting and iconic location in Middle-earth so I'm excited to see what kind of trouble we can get up to in there. This one is a must-buy for me.

Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion - I actually think that this is such a cool idea to release Gloomhaven (the number one game on BGG) to a more casual audience. I'm not a casual gamer and I still find the regular game quite intimidating. Opening this game up to a whole new audience of gamers is wonderful for the hobby. There aren't a lot of details so I'm not exactly sure how Isaac Childre is going to handle this, but I think he's a design genius so I'm not too worried about that. I think there are ways that you can still keep the theme and depth of the world along with the decision-making of the in-game card play, but scale back upkeep and components. Using a coiled book for the map is really intriguing to me as well. I believe that Sleeping Gods is doing a similar thing and I think it could work really well for games like these. In fact, it's the kind of thing I'm already thinking of building into my next game and if I do or not will likely depend on the success of it being used here.

Sleeping Gods - I know this might be cheating a little bit because this was a Kickstarter game last year that hasn't even delivered yet, but since I didn't back this one, it's only an option for me at retail. I've played Ryan Laukat's Above and Below and really enjoyed it. It wasn't my favourite game, but I really enjoyed the storytelling elements and the artwork. Near and Far I haven't tackled yet, but I've been eyeballing it for a while. I need to get myself to a board game cafe and give it a go sometime soon. This spiritual sequel to those two games,  however, seems like the cream of the crop. The theme and story really appeal to me - it's sort of like a steamboat version of The Odyssey. The cooperative nature of the game, packaged in a legacy/campaign format, combined with Laukat's amazing art, storytelling, and choices, make this game a really exciting one for me.

There you have. Three posts, three categories, my most anticipated games for 2020. Money is always a stretch these days (who knew feeding and clothing two children would cost so much?), plus a lot of my time and money is going into my own game right now, but I do hope to pick up a few of these (or at least make Logan do it so I can try them out...). What are you most excited for in 2020? There's always a zillion new games coming out and I'm interested to see what's interesting to you!