Last weekend, we strapped on our most comfortable walking shoes, checked our gaming wishlist twice, and jumped headlong into the self-proclaimed “best four days of gaming”—the annual Gen Con tabletop gaming convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. This year’s 50th-anniversary show was extra special: turnstile attendance for an estimated 60,000 con-goers reached a record-breaking 209,000, and for the first year ever, the con sold out well before the doors opened on Thursday.

With approximately 500 exhibitors, over 19,000 ticketed events, and entire convention halls and stadiums filled to capacity with board games, roleplaying games, miniatures games, and everything in between, Gen Con is a lot to take in. We couldn’t get to all of it, but we skipped sleep, meals, and general mental well-being to bring you what we see as the best of the show.

Below are the 20 board games we think you should be paying attention to going into the last few months of the year (cube-pushing Eurogame fans will want to tune in again in late October when we hit the giant Spieltage fair in Essen, Germany). Most of the games below will be coming out over the next several weeks and months, but because of the vagaries inherent in board game releases, exact dates are hard to pin down. Your best bet is to head to your local retailer, boardgameprices.com, or Amazon and put in a preorder for anything that catches your eye. And if you missed it, be sure to check out our massive photo gallery of the show.

Fallout

Andrew Fischer & Nathan Hajek, Fantasy Flight Games, 1-4 players, 120-180 min, age 14+

This year’s Gen Con seemed less flush with super-hyped games than in years past, but there was one demo area that was perpetually swamped with eager onlookers—Fantasy Flight’s Fallout tables. No one loves the Fallout series more than we do, but plenty of people love it just as much, and boy were we all excited to see how the new board game, based on Fallout 3 and 4, would work in action.

Although we still have questions about how the scenarios in the full game will play out, things are looking very good. A brief demo revealed a game that absolutely captures the spirit of its source material, with exploration, branching storylines, sidequests, VATS-inspired combat, and leveling up all represented. Players travel around a board made of hexes, triggering encounters, allying with (or rejecting) the Wasteland’s various factions, and fighting mutated fiends in order to complete quests, get loot, level up, and gain the most influence to win the game. Choose Your Own Adventure-style narrative beats and a "go ahead—wander off in any direction" attitude capture the series’ emphasis on player choice.

We can’t wait to dig in when the full game releases later this year.

Rising Sun

Eric Lang, CMON, 3-5 players, 90-120 minutes, age 13+

Arguably the best-looking game at Gen Con 2017, Rising Sun is the latest big-box strategy game from prolific designer Eric Lang. Superficially, the game bears a striking resemblance to Lang’s last CMON outing, 2015’s Blood Rage, not just in its board and awesome miniatures but in the broad strokes of its gameplay. Area control, tense combat, and asymmetric player powers all return.

But instead of controlling Vikings fighting for a spot in Valhalla, this time we’re in feudal Japan as clans vie for dominance over various regions on a central board. And instead of the card-drafting of Blood Rage, the emphasis here is on secret action selection and negotiation between players. The game’s heavy focus on politically driven player interaction is seen most obviously in the formalized alliances you can make with other players—and, of course, the formalized breaking of those alliances at the perfect moment. A cool secret-bidding battle system that reminds me in some ways of the excellent combat from Cry Havoc injects some neat mind games into the proceedings.

Beautiful, highly interactive, and potentially friendship-ruining in the best ways, Rising Sun is at the top of our most-wanted list.

NMBR 9

Peter Wichmann, Z-Man Games, 1-4 players, 20 min, age 8+

NMBR 9 jumps on the current trend in board gaming of Tetris-like spatial puzzles—but this time, we’re going up. In NMBR 9, players stack flat, number-shaped tiles on top of each other to score points. The higher the level you play a number, the more points you score. Laying a base—playing tiles directly to the table—scores you nothing, while each subsequent level acts as a multiplier (playing a 7 on the next level gets you 7 points (7x1); on the next, you’d get 14, etc.).

While it sounds easy on paper, some simple restrictions—you can’t overhang empty space and you must cover part of two previously placed numbers—ensure that you’ll be scratching your head with every placement. Awkward shapes get in the way and force difficult compromises. Do you build up your base to ensure better options for future tiles, or do you try to fit that nice big number on a high level?

It’s simple enough that you can teach it to your non-gaming friends in a couple minutes, and it’s fun enough that gamers of every level should be able to enjoy it. Its 20-minutes-max playtime makes it a perfect filler. Highly recommended.

Ex Libris

Adam McIver, Renegade Game Studios, 1-4 players, 45 min, age 12+

There’s always that one Gen Con release. It doesn’t have the backing of a huge license or a household-name designer. But everywhere you go, people can’t stop talking about it. This year, that game was Ex Libris. The hype for Ex Libris reached such a fever pitch before the con even started that getting a demo at the publisher’s perpetually swamped demo booth was a fool’s errand for much of the weekend. We managed to play a full game of it, though, and we can report that it’s indeed pretty great.

Despite its rather dry-sounding name, Ex Libris sports a charming, whimsical theme. Players are hobbyist book collectors in a gnomish village and are competing to amass the most impressive personal libraries in order to land the town’s newly created (and highly coveted) “Grand Librarian” position. To do this, they’ll send out assistants to an ever-shifting array of unique location tiles in order to collect shelf cards for their libraries. Each card houses several quirkily named books, and you have to make sure you are assembling your library in alphabetical order (actually much easier said than done.)

There are a bunch of endgame scoring conditions—you want a good variety of books, but you also want to focus on certain types, and please, keep the “banned books” to a minimum—so you always have to keep a handful of competing concerns in mind. Puzzly, fun, and surprisingly quick to play, Ex Libris is one you need to keep an eye on.