The winners of the 2024 Golden Geek Awards were announced on May 7, and one board game took home more accolades than any other. Arcs, a strategic space exploration game from Root designer Cole Wehrle, won 'most innovative', 'best wargame', and 'best expansion'.
If you've read our Arcs board game review, you'll know that we're pretty pleased to see this board game perform so well. It uses novel trick-taking mechanics to create swingy tension, as everyone plays cards to seize control of the board and take the most optimal actions.
All the while, Arcs is also a wargame, where players shift ships around their space territories and engage in combat with opponents. Juggle your area control with completing objectives, and you're on your way to victory. Arcs also offers a campaign mode for extra depth, and there's already an excellent expansion available to modify the board game.
The Golden Geek Awards are an annual award hosted by BoardGameGeek, where users of the global forum nominate and vote for their favorite games of the year. Behind Spiel des Jahres, it's one of the more well-recognized accolades for a tabletop game to pick up.
Arcs was actually nominated in two additional categories, but another of the year's best board games beat it to those trophies. SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence took home the award for 'heavy game of the year' not long after announcing its own debut expansion. Arcs also lost out on 'artwork presentation' to Unconscious Mind, a strategy board game inspired by Sigmund Freud's practice of psychoanalysis.
Other winners at this year's Golden Geeks include:
- The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth - best two-player
- The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game - best cooperative
- Castle Combo - Light game of the year
- Harmonies - Medium game of the year
- Flip 7 - Best party game
- 52 Realms: Adventures - best print-and-play
- Slay the Spire: The Board Game - best solo board game
- SETI - best thematic game
We're personally pretty cut up that The Gang didn't get that best party game award. Are there any unsung heroes you wanted to see win? Tell us all about them in the Wargamer Discord. Or, if you're looking for recommendations, here are our favorite couples' board games.