Other than the choice of reissues, this might be my 2016 list, too, of what I've encountered. When I said "what a dire list," I probably meant "what a dire year."
The problem with year's best lists for board games is that you won't close in on what's best from 2016 until 2019 or 2020. Board games don't easily fit in with the typical revolving year of fashion; they're mathematical/economic constructs with lots of emergent characteristics, and their true values are only discovered over time, unevenly. All you generally get from a "best of the year" list is a "bestsellers of the year" list, which within the long development/marketing/shipping/marketing cycle of game production, boils down to a "preorders of the year" list.
I think boardgaming is falling into a cycle where (issued too soon) lists like these are falling into a harmonic cycle with game productions (because of their need to synchronize around yearly major gaming conferences) and informing the qualities to be looked for in next games to go into production. Luck is pushing the industry in a direction that optimizes for marketing and not quality or fun. Boardgaming has always been prone to this. Before hobby boardgaming, it was Christmas and the toy cycle.
To get a real best of list, you have to play a large selection of games from this year, and with the vast amount of games issued, you'll have to have that number filtered by lots of people whose opinions you respect before you can have a reasonable expectation that you've touched most of the best games from this year. The only people who do this are the Spiel des Jahres jury. They're going to issue the best quick recommendations, and when their picks are not that fun, it probably means the entire industry was not that fun.