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These are the games that we feel are the best options in this category, and that we have in our own collections to fill this niche.

Summary: Strategically build out a well-balanced farm by gathering resources, playing occupation and improvement cards, and growing your family; all while keeping enough food on the table.

You Might Like If… you enjoy tight games of resources management where you are constantly adapting to execute your strategy more efficiently, and want a game that has a ton of depth and replay value due to the randomized hands of card abilities that are dealt at the beginning of each game.

Summary: Plan and build a modern zoo through card effects and a spatial puzzle, managing your appeal while also supporting conservation initiatives.

You Might Like If… you enjoy games that require you to carefully optimize interconnected actions and adapt to various card effects, and like the idea of a game that gives you a feeling of building something up while also racing to be the first to reach the target amounts of conservation and appeal.

Summary: Build a futuristic network of cities of the seafloor by tactically selecting actions that will allow you to play matching cards from your hand.

You Might Like If… you enjoy strategy games that keep feeding you new opportunities that you can tactically work into your strategy and want a game that has a feeling of progression as you build out your infrastructure to produce more resources and achieve your long-term goals.

Summary: Avoid excommunication and lead your family to power during the Italian Renaissance by building up a powerful engine of production and commerce.

You Might Like If… you enjoy engine-building and worker placement games and want one that feels very tight while still giving you a strong sense of progression and power, especially with the Houses of Renaissance expansion that is now included in the Second Edition of the game (shown above).

Summary: Expand your develop your space empire through strategic card play, tactical hand management, and efficiently piggybacking on the actions of your opponents.

You Might Like If… you want a lot of meaningful strategy packed into a short playing time, enjoy building up a tableau of abilities that result in escalating efficiency, and you want a game that is going to remain compelling even after hundreds of plays.

Summary: Construct decks to guide your fellowship as it embarks on unique adventures in Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

You Might Like If… you enjoy the deck construction of collectible card games, enjoy the Lord of the Rings theme, and want a strategic cooperative or solo experience with plenty of opportunity for expansion with new heroes, quests, campaigns, and deck-building options.

While these games missed the cut for our top recommendations in this category, we still think they would be great options for a lot of people.

Summary: Construct Marvel hero decks to battle villains across a variety of unique scenarios and campaigns.

You Might Like If… you enjoy the deck construction of collectible card games, enjoy the Marvel theme, and want a strategic cooperative or solo experience with plenty of opportunity for expansion with new heroes, scenarios, campaigns, and deck-building options.

Summary: Construct decks to investigate the horrors of Arkham and broader cosmic doom across various scenario-based campaigns.

You Might Like If… you enjoy the deck construction of collectible card games, enjoy the Lovecraftian theme, and want a strategic cooperative or solo experience with an emphasis on scenarios linked together into a narrative campaign.

Summary: Strategically take actions with your agents to optimize your card effects, build your own custom deck, and position yourself in battles in the Dune universe.

You Might Like If… you enjoy worker placement and deck-building and want a game that combines them in a novel way that leads to constant interesting decisions and player interaction within a thematic sandbox with tons of flavor from the Dune books/movies.

These are games that we have not had the chance to try ourselves, but that we believe could be a good fit based on our research.

Summary: Strategically fill out your sheets and seek combos as you compete as Roman generals in charge of a milecastle along Hadrian’s Wall.

You Might Like If… you enjoy roll/flip-and-write games where you work on your own puzzle and want one that amps up the complexity to have more strategic options and satisfying combos as you decide how to apply your resources to take actions across your sheet each turn.