So, you’ve bought all the expansions for your favourite game. You’ve got Folded Space inserts, premium sleeves, custom 3D printed tokens—but it’s not enough. You need something special, something designed with the collector like you in mind. A board game you can show off to your friends with its premium components and variety of expansions.

If that’s you, then today’s your lucky day! Here are our top 5 picks for special edition board games to add to your trophy wall!

1) Ticket to Ride Europe 15th Anniversary Edition (PREORDER)

You probably already own (and love!) the classic Ticket to Ride Europe. If you’re a fan of the train-laying, route-building family game night staple, you might want to check out the absolutely stunning 15th Anniversary edition looking to hit Gameology shelves this June!

This 15th Anniversary edition not only includes all the destination cards from both the original Ticket to Ride Europe—it also includes the cards from the Europa 1912 expansion!

But most importantly—and this is the reason that will make you want to buy this edition—the trains are finely detailed, unique to each player colour, and come with their own storage tins!

This item is still on preorder, but we are expecting to receive it by the end of June 2021 and couldn’t be more excited! If you haven’t picked up Ticket to Ride Europe yet, here’s your chance to get a stunning definitive edition!

2) Catan 25th Anniversary

Catan is the board game that gets many people into the hobby. It’s the ultimate gateway game, the beginning of many of our board game obsessions. If your copy of Catan is starting to get worn out from many years of play, why not upgrade to the brand new 25th Anniversary edition? 

In this edition, you get the base game of Catan, supporting 3-4 players, as well as the extension that allows for up to 6 players! Additionally, you get the Helpers of Catan Scenario, exclusive iridescent dice and wooden pieces, as well as a helpful little tray to sort and store the resource cards! Also, for those of you who like to sleeve your games, this edition comes with 180 clear sleeves!

If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to pick up Catan, this might be a sign from the universe!

3) Suburbia Collector’s Edition

Considered one of the best Sim-City style city-building board games, Suburbia is a classic tile-placement game with a fresh urban theme. In this game, players will expand their boroughs with new tiles—from humble Community Parks to grand Casinos—attempting to be the borough with the highest population come game end.

This Collector’s Edition comes in an extremely chonky box with so many tiles and luxurious plastic GameTrayz that the punchboards don’t even fit inside until you punch out all the tiles! Like many other special editions on this list, this comes with all released Suburbia expansions--plus an expansion called Nightlife that is exclusive to the Collector’s Edition! The GameTrayz included help keep all the expansions neatly organised and even provide nice trays to hold components during gameplay! It even has a cardboard skyscraper to dispense tiles!

Some big games take up a lot of shelf space but don’t hit the table often (looking at you, Gloomhaven/Rising Sun/Eclipse/etc). Suburbia, despite its huge box, is light in complexity while still offering a satisfying strategic experience in under 90 minutes! A light game with all the production value and grandeur of a big box title, Suburbia Collector’s Edition is definitely one to pick up if you like tile placement games!

4) Smiths of Winterforge Collector’s Edition

In this underrated light worker placement game, players take on the role of dwarven guild tasked with constructing armor, weapons and jewelry!

People love this game for its unique and innovative crafting system. Players must buy required components for a specific blueprint, take those components to the forge, and then roll dice until the crafting is complete!

In this Collector’s Edition, you get the ever-luxurious metal coins (an instant win for special edition games in my books!), as well as components for up to 6 players! If you enjoy solo board gaming, there’s also a solo mode included. If that wasn’t enough, the Collector’s Edition includes 4 modular Alleyway expansions!

If you want to give this underrated title a try, you better get in quick—we’ve only got 4 left at the time of writing this!

5) Brass Birmingham Deluxe

Beloved by several of our Gameology staff, Brass Birmingham is a deeply strategic economic game set in the Industrial Revolution. The game takes place over two eras—the canal era and the rail era. 

What’s wonderful about this game is the level of interactivity. You are able to use other people’s resources and mooch off their networks! Sure, your opponent gets benefits for “selling” their product to you but it can also be devastating if that was a resource that was critical for their plans. It’s a game in which you must constantly weigh your pros and cons and outwit the other entrepreneurs at the table!

In this deluxe edition, the player mats are a hefty 2mm thick compared to 1mm in the retail version and the chit board used for the punch-out tokens is black on the inside, giving the whole game a luxurious feel. The game also comes with a vac tray insert to keep everything organised. But perhaps the best thing in the box are the iron clays—basically weighted poker chips that replace the cardboard coins!

These small but mighty changes come at such a negligible increase in price over the retail version that there’s no reason not to pick up the deluxe version if you’ve been eyeing up this critically acclaimed game!

And there we have it! Our top 5 special edition board games! What do you think? What are the prized collector’s editions in your collection? Let us know in the comments below!