We’ve arrived at my favourite 10 games of all time (as of March 2020). I did not anticipate how long this series would go when I started it over a year ago.
It’s been nice reflecting on my favorite games, verbalizing why I like each one so much. A few of the games descriptions were enough to peak my wife’s interest, which always makes me happy.
I’ve played a lot if games over the last two years, and while this list will have changed quite a bit, I know that these top 10 are firm in their spots. It would take something pretty special to come a dislodge any one of these from the pantheon of my top 10 games of all time.
10 – Glen More II: Chronicles
Glen More by Matthias Cramer was one of the few games that I lamented ‘missing’ out on when I first got into the board game hobby. Our local board game cafe had a copy and I loved it. I really enjoy how the scoring is all based on how well you’re doing in certain aspects compared to the other players, and I love the push and pull of selecting tiles to add to your tableau. Leaping ahead to grab the best tiles is tempting, but then players who take their time have a much better chance of growing a strong whiskey engine. Alas, by the time I became a Board Gamer™ Glen More was out of print
Glen More II: Chronicles takes everything that I enjoyed about the original game, adds some gorgeous art, and throws in a boat load of discovery. While the new clan board is not my favourite addition, I love that there are 8 expansion modules in the box that can be mix and matched for a unique game every time we play.
Glen More II is the game we play on Robbie Burns night after feasting on Haggis and drinking scotch. It plays well at 2 and 4, and is a very satisfying experience every time it hits my table. Because Glen More II is the game we play during a special event, it ends up holding a very special place in my heart.
9 – Scythe
If you’ve been paying attention to my list, you’ll notice that there aren’t very many games that offer direct player combat. Scythe by Jamey Stegmaier is one of the few board games where conflict is the main focus that I really enjoy.
I’ve often said that Scythe is a ‘cold war game’, meaning that the threat of combat is often more important than the combat itself. Military posturing and threats go a long way in this game about farmers and mechs.
While my friends enthuasim for Scythe is infectious, what really cemented Scythe for me was playing through the Rise of Fenris campaign. Playing Scythe over and over again each week and finding new statagies and discovering the emergent storytelling from the gameplay brought me so much joy. I look forward to every game I play of Scythe, and I’ll never forget one game where I managed to win the whole game, while losing every single combat levied against me!
8 – Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization
It feels very odd to have a game that I adore so much and have so high on top games of all time list that I’ve never played in person.
That’s right, I’ve never actually played a physical copy of Vlaada Chvátil’s civilization building card game Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization. What I have done is played dozens of games on Board Game Arena, and even more on the excellently designed Android app.
While my win rate is absolutely abysmal (3 victories in 25 games), I enjoy every play. Each game has a feeling of progression and momentum that other games can only hope to emulate. Oddly enough there isn’t a whole lot of discovery in Through the Ages as you’ll see every single card in each game, but there is so much depth to mine. Given enough thought and smarts you absolutely can master this system and prove your superiority over all who dare oppose you.
7 – Race for the Galaxy
Race for the Galaxy by Thomas Lehmann is another Board Game Arena obsession that I’ve almost never played on the table (2 physical plays!). The BGA implementation is slick, fast, and with a very healthy player base it takes no time to find an opponent and games almost never last longer than 10 minutes.
Race for the Galaxy is a tableau building card game, laden with iconography not for the faint of heart. Of course, once you crack the code and understand the logic of the icons, you can ascertain what each card does at a glace, but this can Race for the Galaxy can be intimating for new players.
I find RtfG best at 2 players as it’s quick, exciting, and strategic. If you have a gaming partner who is near the same skill level and enthusaiam as you are, I’d highly recommend picking up Race for the Galaxy and playing a half dozen times in quick succession.
6 – Concordia
Concordia by Mac Gerdts is probably best known for it’s somewhat controversial (read, bad) cover art. While later editions updated the art (although some people still detest it), the game inside has always been a wonder to behold. Concordia was one of the first games to introduce positive player interactions to me. Whenever a player activates a province to produce resources, they activate every building within that province, which could land your opponents with a sudden windfall of goods.
I also really enjoy the action selection mechanic, where you have hand of cards, each one offering you a different action, and as you play the cards to take their action they just sit beside your player board, waiting for their chance to strike again. One of the cards in your hand will be to retreive all your cards, which is almost skipping a turn just to get access to all of your actions again!
We most often play Concordia with the Salsa expansion which includes player powers, one time benefit tiles, and the special wild ‘salt’ resource. There are many maps available as well for those who crave a little variety in their Mediterranean resource trading games.
5 – Istanbul
Istanbul by Rüdiger Dorn is my favourite game that I don’t own. And it’s a bit of a tragedy too because it’s a fast, light, excellent game where players are racing to collect 5 gems from various merchants around the turkish bazaar. Each player begins with their merchant disc and a stack of assistants. As you move around the board you deposit assistants and take actions. Should you return to that location again you can collect your assistant and take the action again. The catch is if you don’t have an assistant to drop off or pick up at a location, you don’t get to take the action!
It always feels odd when the goal of the game is to stop playing as soon as possible, but in the case of Istanbul, the potential for an incredibly short game exists. Filling your cart with 5 rubies first can be done in as little as 18 actions (depending on the tile layout and how much your opponents are getting in your way). I find Istanbul charming and incredibly replayable. I love shuffling the location cards, dealing them out at random, then try to find the most efficient route to claiming those precious rubies.
Two expansions exist for Istanbul, but I don’t find them necessary. Expanding the number of action spaces can make this game tedious to play. The only reason I haven’t priortised getting a copy of Istanbul into my collection is because two of my close friends already own it, and the last thing I want is for our collections to start overlapping. If I ever moved away from this game group however, this is would be one of my first purchases!
4 – Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King
The eagle eyed observer may have noticed some glaring omissions. I don’t know why, but I seem to love when Alexander Pfister and Andreas Pelikan work together. I really enjoyed Broom Service and I love Isle of Skye. There’s not many bidding games on my list, because I keep coming back to this one! I adore the variety in scoring objectives (especially after I got the expansions that included even more), I love how simple the base gameplay is, and I even enjoy cursing my friends when they pitch the perfect tile back into the bag.
7 Wonders Duel by Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala is the game that my wife and I played together the most. we bought it early in our board game career, when we were coming off the high of discovering that board games could actually be fun and exciting! We had played the 2 player version of 7 Wonders and found it fell flat as we really didn’t enjoy managing a dummy player.
7 Wonders Duel was one of the first games I chose to review, mostly because I love it so much. It’s small enough that it can fit on a coffee table and deep enough that it can withstand dozens of repeated plays. There’s an android app available, and a wealth of players on BoardGameArena if you’re seeking a variety of opponents.
2 – Galaxy Trucker
Galaxy Trucker by Vlaada Chvatil is the game that divides my group. Myself and Bigfoot absolutely adore the chaos and insanity that Galaxy Trucker revels in. Otter is somewhat luke-warm on it and Bear detests this game. He’s proclaimed that he’d rather take up knitting than play Galaxy Trucker.
In Galaxy Trucker players are racing to build the best ship they can, full of guns, storage containers, engines, batteries, and crew cabins. Once constructed, ships are run through a gauntlet of asteroids, space pirates, epidemics, and wide open space. The players to manage to survive and deliver their goods earn credits and at the end of the game anyone with at least one credit is a winner! Of course, some players will win more than others!
The chaos and randomness will either draw players in, or chase them away. Personally, I find myself laughing uproariously when a single stray asteroid cleaves your ship in half, but for some, that pain is too much to bear. There is also a run-away leader problem where often the players who are struggling get punished for struggling. Even with those criticism in mind, Galaxy Trucker lands in the number 2 slot of my top 100 games of all time.
1 – Food Chain Magnate
Food Chain Magnate is the game that excites me the most. Almost the anthesis of Galaxy Trucker in that there is nearly no randomness. I’ve talked in depth about Food Chain Magnate recently, but it’s one that generates the most excitement when sitting down to play.
Every game of Food Chain Magnate feels unique. I can pursue the same strategy over and over and have wildly different results every time. Because Food Chain Magnate is highly interactive and so much of doing well in this game relies on anticipating what your opponents are planning and capitalizing on their actions, simply following the same pattern in every game will quickly lead your opponents to knowing exactly where your weaknesses lie.
I could literally talk about Food Chain Magnate for hours, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll just thank you for reading to the end of my top 100 games of all time as of March 2020! It’s been quite a journey actually sitting down and writing my impressions of each of these games. Some I haven’t actually played for a couple years but writing about them renewed my desire to get them back to the table! I hope you had as much fun as I did!
Soon I’ll make a post about some of the more radical changes that have happened in my top 100 list, like how Bullet<3 debuted at number 7!
It’s an interesting experience writing about these games as my favourite games of all time. I created this list in March 2021, and now almost a year later, I can see certain games that have fallen and where new games would be added into the list. As I approach the top of my list, the selection of games is fairly rock solid; I don’t foresee any of these games dropping out of my top games as any new games will have quite a challenge bumping these games from their top slots!
Also, 6 of the 10 games on this list have longer reviews available to read, so I won’t spend a ton of time rehashing my points. Click the links to read my full thoughts on these excellent games!
20 – Now Boarding
Now Boarding was the first time that I took my wife to a board game store and she had to talk me into buying a board game (admitly she didn’t have to try very hard).
Now Boarding is a real time cooperative game from designer Tim Fowers, and puts players into the role of airline pilots ferrying passengers across the United States. Players are limited by how far they can travel, how many passenger they can hold, and only knowing half the information during the planning phase.
If you enjoy real time and/or cooperative games, Now Boarding is a hit, but I don’t think it will do much to convert skeptics.
19 – Orléans
Orléans is a clever bag building game by Reiner Stockhausen. In Orléans players are pulling discs from their sac and placing them on their player boards, fulfilling recipes to acquire more discs and gain special benefits depending on the kind of disc they’ve acquired.
Orléans often feels like a race, you’ll nervously eye your opponents player boards trying to ascertain if they’ll be able to snag the bonus tile that you’re gunning for, or waiting for just the right moment to place discs into the central shared board, where they won’t ever come back to your sac, but a well timed placement could net you one of the coveted population tokens that will multiply your final score.
It’s hard to compare Orléans to anything else I’ve played, Becuase it feels so unique. I’ve played other bag builders (Quacks of Quedlingburg and Automobiles), but neither of those games comes close to offering the same feelings as Orléans.
18 – Vikings
Vikings by Michael Keisling is one of those examples of why publishers should have an implementation of their game online to try, because I don’t think I ever would have looked at Vikings twice if I hadn’t played it on yucata.de a dozen times.
In Vikings players take turn buying collections of tiles and Vikings to place in their personal tableus. Each viking has a colour, which indicates which row in can sit and what benefit it will bring to your clan. Associated with each viking is an island tile.
With large and small scorings, a spinning wheel, and raiding boats, Vikings is my favorite game by Michael Keisling, far eclipsing his most popular game, Azul. Vikings is a satisfying economic game that plays in 45 minutes, and seemes endlessly replayable. At the very least I’ve played my copy 16 times, and have logged 30+ more games online.
17 – Lost Cities
Lost Cities by Reiner Knizia is the oldest game on today’s list by nearly a decade. A two player card game with a masterful blend of skill and luck that makes it fun to play with nearly anyone.
My favourite story of Lost Cities is the time I introduced it to my wife. We played a single game, and she lost. Bitter from defeat we put the game back on the shelf, and I assumed it would just be a game I play with others, and not her. But a few days later she brought it up again, that the push your luck and hedging your bets elements had burrowed their way into her mind and she was raring to give Lost Cities another play. Now, it’s one of her favourite games.
Lost Cities is a game that I love playing asynchronously on Board Game Arena. I’ve played 34 games online (mostly against one specific person). If you have a gaming partner in your life, and two player games are something that you’re frequently in search of, don’t pass over Lost Cities!
16 – Super Motherload
I’ve always called Super Motherload a hidden gem, if only because I’ve yet to meet someone other than myself (and my cousin who introduced it to me) who has heard of it, much less played it. Which is a crying shame because Super Motherload is a phenomenal game.
Super Motherload was the first time I encountered a deck building game with a board element. The cards in your hand facilitate the players digging tunnels and acquiring ore, which allows you to buy more cards for your deck.
Super motherload is a charming game with an excellent production by roxley games. Its been in my collection nearly from my beginning in the hobby board game space, and I can’t imagine it leaving any time soon.
15 – The Castles of Burgundy
The Castles of Burgundy is easily Stephen Feld’s most popular game, and is my favourite product from the prolific designer. The Castles of Burgundy has players rolling dice influence which actions they can take per round. While luck is always a factor when dice are involved, there’s an impressive amount of luck mitigation employed.
I want to play The Castles of Burgundy much more than I actually get to play it. It’s much more taxing and I’m always surprised at just how long it can take to play. But I can’t understate how satisfying it is to play. I recently reviewed The Castles of Tuscany, which takes a lot of the ideas from The Castles of Burgundy and streamlines it down. I found that it lacked the opportunity for big combos that brings me so much joy when I play The Castles of Burgundy.
14 – Arboretum
Arboretum is the Sudowoodo of board games. At first glace, “oh, just some trees. No big deal” then WHAM, a rock throw has just ko’ed your pidgy.
What I’m trying to say is that Arboretum looks beautiful and plesent and the kind of game you’d play with your mother during afternoon tea, but the reality is that it’s hard and brings out a sharp side in your mother than you didn’t even know existed.
Players be warned, Arboretum is great, strategic, and deep, but may leave you with the feeling that someone needs to get cut.
13 – Sagrada
I’ve reviewed Sagrada twice! The solo mode and the multiplayer game. Long story made short, the solo mode is kinda boring, but the multiplayer game is a great time. I prefer playing the full compliment of 4 players best, so every single die comes out and you aren’t sitting there absolutely wrecked by the chance of none of the colours you needed coming out of the bag.
Sagrada is a quick and easy game, perfect for finishing off a game night or something to play while you wait for the rest of your guests to arrive. And the translucent die are beautiful to boot!
12 – Paperback
Paperback is the wonderful deck building take on Scrabble. Gone are the long turns, agonizing over where you can fit your perfect word, and instead you can stress over the decision of buying letter cards (that allow you to make bigger and better words), and buying wild cards (which don’t contribute to your ability to buy more letters, but offer end game points).
The point in which you pivot from buying letters to snagging the wild cards is all important
11 – Burgle Bros.
The third Tim Fowers game in todays post is brought to you by Burgle Bros, and one of the few that I haven’t already taken the time to post my full thoughts and opinions on. Honestly, the reason I haven’t is just because I didn’t want my blog to turn into a Tim Fowers love fest so early on.
Burgle Bros is the game my family asks to play the most. ‘did you bring that heist game?’ they ask. We make a special effort to play it at least once when I return to my homeland. Burgle Bros pairs well with friends who can embrace the heist movie tropes, a sense of humor at the absurdity of a chiuawawa locked away in a safe, and a thematic sound track to keep everyone in the mood.
Burgle Bros feels familiar to fans of the cooperative games that came before Burgle Bros, which can make it easy to teach. The complaint I often hear is that the guards are hard to manage, but I disagree. They follow some specific rules and as long as someone at the table knows how they work, they can guide the rest of the players through the experience.
Welcome to my top 30 games. We’ve slogged through the games that are ‘pretty good’ or ones that stand out from the crowd due to a particularly genius mechanic; from here on out the games listed are ones that I would play at any time or any place.
30 – Suburbia
Suburbia by Ted Alspach is an economic engine tile laying game. Each player is trying to build their own self-sufficient suburb to increase their income (to buy more stuff) and increase their population. Suburbia has a lot going for it with different types of tiles that play off each other in various ways (like giving benefits for building parks near residential areas).
While the city building aspect is a lot more abstract than in some of the other games in this genre, the economic engine building in Suburbia is unparalleled. The more buildings get added to your city, the more money and population each of your other buildings can generate.
If you’re a fan of the SimCity video game series, Suburbia is one of the best analog alternatives that I’ve found. You’ll find yourself trying to decide if you really want to place an apartment complex next to an airport, or if you should just build a lake to generate income. As mayor, you should listen to your residents who are willing to pay more just for the privilege to live next to fish.
29 – Hardback
I’ve reviewedafew of Tim Fowers games here already, and if you’ve read any of those you’ll know that I’m a fan of his output. Hardback is the pre-quill to Paperback, and while my preference lies in Paperback (spoilers for a future list), I recognize that Hardback is an excellent game on its own.
There are two major differences that separate Hardback from it’s predecessor. Instead of 8 different decks of cards that you can buy from, now there is a single giant deck of cards that make up the store, and each card now belongs to one of four suits. Choosing to specialize in a suit will offer powerful synergies, as each suit has their own specialties. The other difference is that any card can be a wild, it just gets flipped backwards and doesn’t score for being in your word.
Hardback has the same bones as it’s older brother, but wow does it ever feel like a wholly different game. This is one of the few times where I can say that a modestly sized collection can hold both games (it helps that the boxes are quite small).
The biggest downside to Hardback is that my wife is terrifyingly good at it and absolutely crushes me. Of the 10 games we’ve played together I’ve won… none. Luckily winning isn’t everything! Right? Right??
28 – Brass: Birmingham
The Original Brass (now renamed Brass: Lancashire) by Martian Wallace was regarded as an absolute triumph of game design. I’ve read reports of people playing Brass hundreds of times, exploring the depths of the system. Brass: Birminghamis the sequel published in 2018 with a complete visual overhaul and some subtle, but impactful tweaks in gameplay
In Brass: Birmingham players are tasked with building industries across the Birmingham countryside, using canal boats to ferry the necessary goods across their networks. What makes Brass so interesting is that players rely on each other to build network links and produce the coal and iron necessary for the rest of the industry tiles. Another clever wrinkle is that halfway through the game there’s a mass reset. All the canal links are removed, all the level 1 industries are torn away, and their spots are now available for an eager capitalist to come and build back better. This generates a lot of points for people, and gives players a chance to jump into locations they were previously squeezed out of.
I‘ve played both Brass: Lancashire and Brass: Birmingham and it’s the latter game that I enjoyed more. Both obviously are excellent games and quite similar in many ways, but I have a clear favourite. It’s dry, economic, and tense, but also makes you feel clever when you manage to pull off a big move and flip four tokens in a single action.
27 – Agricola
“Misery Farm” by Uwe Rosenberg is a right bastard of a game. Players begin with nothing but a wooden shack just big enough for their two workers. Through your sweat, blood, and tears you’ll fight and scrounge to eke out a living from the land.
Actually though, Agricola is an excellent game. By starting players with nothing and forcing you to make tough decisions such as choosing to collect the necessary resources to build a new room for your house, or ensuring you have enough food to feed all your workers by the end of the round. As you make these decisions and your empty green pastures get populated with various animals and the land gets tilled you you develop a sense of ownership over your slice of earth.
Agricola can feel brutally hard in the beginning, but before long players have figured out how to use their tools and occupations to their full advantage, providing ample food for each of the feeding rounds and accruing goods to create a fully functioning farm. Every game of Agroicla has a nice arc from poverty to wealth and there are few games that I find as satisfying as this one.
26 – Patchwork
On the other end of the Uwe Rosenberg spectrum, we have Patchwork; a 2 player only polyomino tile laying game about gathering buttons and sewing a quilt. The trick to Patchwork is that every tile has 2 costs that must be paid. Buttons, and time. Buttons are easy, they’re just a currency, but the time cost moves your piece further along the track, hurdling you towards the end of the game. After every turn, players assess who is further behind in the time track, and whomever that is, gets to take the next turn. Taking a tile with a large time cost can give your opponent several turns in a row!
Patchwork is my perfect two player game. It’s open information, it’s non-confrontational, it’s small enough that it can be played at a coffee shop, and light in rules so I feel confident that I can introduce it to nearly anyone in my life.
25 – Jaipur
Have you ever been sitting at your breakfast table, sipping your tea and thought to yourself “I wish I was selling goods in India? Well Sébastien Pauchon has got you covered with Jaipur, a 2 player-only game about trading spices and being screwed over by pogs.
Just looking at the components of Jaipur may lull you into a false sense of security. A deck of cards and a collection of cardboard pogs that represent the goods that you’re acquiring and selling. Playing Jaipur, the ebb and flow of the market becomes apparent and very quickly you’ll start to dread what opportunities you’re leaving for your rival. After all, you get big bonuses for selling multiple cards of a type of good, but the value of each good sold goes down. If you have four leather cards in your hand and you’re hoping for a fifth, but then your opponent sells three, suddenly a lot of their value has just been lost.
It’s this dynamic tempo that makes Jaipur so interesting and replayable. If your primary gaming sessions consist of 2 players, then Jaipur is a game that needs to be in your collection.
24 – Tokyo Highway
Tokyo Highway was one of the first games I reviewed on this site. It’s a clever dexterity game from designers Naotaka Shimamoto and Yoshiaki Tomioka. I won’t belabour the point here, but Tokyo Highway is an excellent dexterity game that creates an excellent sprawling mass of popsicle sticks and tense moments as you try to thread your road in impossibly narrow conditions.
While I still firmly believe that the best player count for Tokyo Highway is 2 players, I’d recommend to everyone play it at least once, regardless of player count. It elicits a different kind of joy when your play has a physical aspect, and Tokyo Highway is a master of physical play.
23 – Pandemic
Woof. It’s hard to talk about Pandemic while in the midst of an actual pandemic, but this game is gold and deserves to be praised. Released in 2008, Pandemic by Matt Leacock is to this day the gold standard for cooperative games. In Pandemic, players are trying to cure 4 diseases ravaging the world. Players do this by collecting 5 cards of a colour and then discovering a cure at a research centre. While trying to discover a cure, players will need to move around the map treating the various diseases. If ever one location becomes overwhelmed by disease it can rapidly spread to the neighbouring cities, causing chaos and outbreaks. If too many outbreaks happen, if you take too long to find the cures, or if too much of one disease type is on the board, the players lose.
Since it’s original inception, the Pandemic series has had several re-imaginings, including 3 legacy games, a dice game, and even a World of Warcraft version.
It’s difficult for me to imagine anyone reading this list who hasn’t played Pandemic. If you haven’t, I highly recommend gathering a friend or two and seeking out the original game!
22 – Bärenpark
If you were to imagine building the best theme park possible, just how many bears would be involved? The correct answer is ALL the bears, and designer Phil Walker-Harding is here to back me up.
Bärenpark is a polyomino tile laying game in which players are populating their parks with various habitats holding bears of differing values. Tiles get placed from your supply onto players individual boards, and as icons get covered, you take more tiles into your supply.
I enjoy polyomino tile laying games, and Bärenpark is no different. Cramming weird shapes into restrictive templates is my definition of a good time. Bärenpark also benefits from being quick and easy to play, and the bright, charming art via Klemens Franz does a lot to endear new players to this lovely bear park.
21 – Flamme Rouge
While I’m not the type of person to watch organized sports, I generally like games that attempt to emulate the sporting experience. Flamme Rogue puts you in the pedals of a pair of cyclists – a Rouleur and a Sprinteur – as you race around the modular track, either slipstreaming behind your rivals, or attempting to break away from the pack.
What sets Flamme Rogue apart from other racing games is that you’re not building an engine, going faster and faster as the game goes on. Instead you’re challenged to manage your exhaustion, coasting behind players, trying to keep up with the pack while also conserving just enough energy to sprint to the finish line. Being in the front of a pack can be advantageous because… ya know… it’s a race. But cyclists at the front of the pack also pick up exhaustion cards which can clog their deck. It’s not uncommon for a player who was leading the entire race to have a turn where they have nothing but exhaustion cards (which the professionals call ‘hitting a wall’).
More of a deck deconstruction game, Flamme Rogue is rich in both short term tactical decisions and long term strategic payoffs, if you can play your cards right! It’s those strengths (and the funny moustaches on the cards) that lands this game in my #21 slot of favourite games.
I feel compelled to complete this series before 2021 ends. I had no idea how much effort it was to write about 100 games when I started this series! Luckily this is the point where I move from games that I list as ‘like’ to games that I ‘like like’. These are the games I would ask on a date to see if they want to go steady with me.
40 – Santorini
Santorini by Gord! (or Gordon Hamilton) is one of the few abstract strategy games that actually tries to have a theme. Players are builders constructing the city of Santorini by taking turns to move one of their workers, then building once. The theme falls apart pretty quickly as the winner is simply the person who gets one of their builders onto the third level of any building. What takes Santorini from a fine game to a great game is the 30+ Greek gods that imbue players with a special ability. I absolutely love the way the gods interact with each other. Giving each player a specific way to wrinkle the strategies delights my brain and leaves me wanting to create a spreadsheet to track the wins and losses of every god matchup. I’m not going to, but I’m tempted.
Santorini‘s production should not be glossed over. Not only does this game contain a delightful strategy game, but the components feel excellent and the table presence is outstanding as the ivory white buildings grow and brilliant blue caps dot the skyline. Santorini has an excellent toy factory that makes people eager to get their hands on it!
Unlike the previous game where it at least attempted to create a coherent theme, Splendor leaves it’s flavour more ambiguous. Thankfully, the game mechanics shine on their own. Splendor, designed by Marc Andre was one of the first engine building I ever played, and it set the bar fairly high. In Splendor players are taking gems or spending gems to buy cards. The cards you obtain also provide a perpetual gem, meaning that as the game goes on fewer of your turns will be spent taking gems from the supply as you’ll have enough perpetual gems to buy whole cards.
Splendor is an engine building race; the first to hit 15 points ends the game. It’s the kind of game that burrows its way into your head, creating a growing urge to play it again and again.
38 – 7 Wonders
7 Wonders by Antoine Bauza is a modern classic at this point. I’ve seen it played in groups large and small, experienced and inexperienced, and by players of all ages. 7 Wonders achieves several feats of game design: Plays well with any number of players between 3 – 7, check. Takes around 30 minutes no matter how many players are at the table, check. Easy enough to play with my mom, but deep enough to make me want to play it? Check!
7 Wonders has become one of the most common games at our family gatherings. The short games lets people drop in and out with ease, the rules are straight forward, the iconography is clear, and it is downright fun! If you have played 7 Wonders and are left wanting more, there are numerous expansions available, but for me and my family, we love the base game as it is, no expansions necessary.
37 – Kingdomino
Dominos was not a popular product where I grew up. I have vague recollections of playing Mexican Train with my grandmother, but my memory says I did not enjoy the core gameplay. Drawing tiles and just hoping that you have a match isn’t something that I found interesting.
Colour me amazed when Bruno Cathala took the core concept of Dominos and made an interesting game out of it. Kingdomino is a bright, colourful, and quick game to play that can be enjoyed by gamers of all proclivities. I reviewed it during the summer when I was visiting my mom’s place and we were playing it almost every night. Kingdomino is so easy to get a game started with nearly no setup needed, a fast play time, and a decent number of interesting decisions compelling you to play several games back to back. For someone like me who rarely plays the same game more than once in a night, that is high praise!
36 – Russian Railroads
Do you like tracks? Do you like engines? Do you like games with exponential growth? Russian Railroads by Helmut Ohley and Leonhard Orgler is sure to tickle your fancy. Played over 6 rounds the general rule of thumb is that you need to be earning as many points per round as your total sum of points so far. Round one will close with the top earners accruing anywhere from 5 to 10 points. Round 2 lets players earn 20 more points. In the final round of the game it’s not uncommon for points to vastly exceed 150 points.
It’s rare that a game offers exponential point scoring opportunities, but Russian Railroads manages to pull it off well, which is why it sits at slot 36 of my favourite games. Russian Railroads is available to play online over at Board Game Arena.
The original Viticulture by Jamey Stegmaier and Alan Stone is the project that began Stonemaier Games. Viticulture itself has had an expansion (Viticulture Tuscany), then a re-release with some of the expansion content included called Viticulture: Essential Edition, then another expansion called Viticulture: Tuscany Essential Edition, which has become my favourite way to play.
In Viticulture you are tasked with growing your winery by building structures, planting and harvesting grapes, crushing them into wine, and delivering orders all in the effort to earn the most victory points. Originally I thought Viticulture to be an engine building game, but lately I’ve started viewing it as more of a race. I was always so hesitate to use any cards or spaces that took away resources for a measly couple of points. Those are resources I could be using to build a more powerful economy, I need to be working towards the wine delivery cards at all times!
By framing Viticulture as a race (as the first person to hit 25 points triggers the end of the game), I became far more willing to scrape points from all possible locations. Viticulture is an excellent worker placement game, and the Tuscany Essential Edition expansion adds even more things to explore while fragmenting the worker placement spots into 4 seasons, forcing you to bump elbows with the competing winemakers.
34 – Five Tribes
Five Tribes (which only accommodates 4 players, a fact that constantly causes all kinds of cognitive dissonance within me) by Bruno Cathala twists the common worker placement mechanic by inverting the formula. Most worker placement games begin with players having a certain number of workers and a plethora of action spaces available to them. Five Tribes begins with 90 meeples spread over the 30 tiles, and on your turn you take all the meeples from a single tile and place them on adjacent tiles, with colour of the last meeple you place dictating which action you’ll take that turn, and the action being better if there were more meeples of the same colour on that final tile. In addition to your meeple action the final tile may also give you an action, or other benefit.
If you manage to clear a tile, you ‘own’ that tile, placing a camel of your colour on that spot. Come the end of the game a large portion of your points will generated by the tiles that you own. Another key twist is knowing when to bid victory points to go first in a round, and when to save them, letting other spend their money to take the first actions.
One of the largest critisims my friends have levied against Five Tribes is that there is an overwhelming number of decisions available to you on the very first turn, and the gameplay quickly diminishes the decisions available to you. Personally, I don’t find that to be a terrible downside, and the clever puzzle of moving groups of meeples around the board tickles my brain in a delightful way that leaves me wanting more.
33 – Castles of Mad King Ludwig
In Castles of Mad King Ludwig players each begin with a simple foyer. Through a series of rounds you’re tasked with building a sprawling and grand palace for King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
Theme aside, designer Ted Alspach has released a wonderful product here. One player each round is designated the master builder, and gets to dictate the price for all the new rooms with the catch being that the master builder will be the last to buy a room. Rooms can be added to any doorway and often give or take away points based on what other rooms are adjacent to them (after all you wouldn’t want a bedroom right next to a bowling alley). If a player ever manages to ‘complete’ a room by having all of the rooms entrances lead to other places, they get a special benefit.
The ‘I split you choose’ mechanism is devious, letting players price certain rooms incredibly highly (if desired by opponents), but making the one who sets the price pick last offers great tension and quality decision making. Castles of Mad King Ludwig had a lavish reprint on Kickstarter recently that had me very tempted to throw the old edition to the curb and buy the all-in edition. Maybe that will be my next purchase after I finally buy myself a castle…
32 – Clans of Caledonia
One of the big contentious points within my game group is that I refuse to play Gaia Project or Terra Mystica (Both by Jens Drögemüller and Helge Ostertag). Whenever someone suggested them my veto is swift and decisive. I don’t know what it is about those two games, but I just cannot wrap my mind around creating an efficient economy that allows me to take more than 2 turns per round, while also juggling the mana that cycles through the 3 bowls.
Clans of Caledonia by Juma Al-JouJou is our compromise. I don’t know what it is about Clans of Caledonia that I find more enjoyable than Gaia Project and Terra Mystica (it’s very apparent that Clans of Caledonia draws a lot of inspiration from Gaia Project and Terra Mystica). Perhaps it’s the Scottish theme that makes me feel kinship with the clan power; perhaps its because Juma Al-JouJou has distilled the resources needed to buy things down to just coins; or perhaps it’s the dynamic buy/sell track that was added, allowing players to sell their excess goods to get more of the aforementioned coins that allows them to keep playing the game!
Whatever the reason is, I really enjoy Clans of Caledonia and suggest playing it whenever we’re in the mood for a longer, complicated Euro game.
31 – Navegador
It’s almost fitting that Navegador by Mac Gerdts sits one spot above Clans of Caledonia, as it had to be another major influence for Juma Al-JouJou. Navegador features a dynamic market that has players buying and selling goods to get money. The more goods you buy, the more they sell for, encouraging other players to take advantage of the other side of the market (you can only buy or sell a good per trade action). The symbiosis between players is fascinating. As you sell more and more of goods you directly make it more profitable and better for your opponents to buy that same good. In return, the more goods they buy, the more profitable it is to sell!
Beyond the dynamic market Navegador has players building ships, sailing down and around Africa, claiming colonies (that produce goods), build factories (that sell goods), as well as building churches and shipyards. The action selection is managed via a a rondel, limiting your next action to the next three segments (unless you pay dearly), which makes certain actions more expensive, depending on where you are on that circle. You’ll need to make some agonizing decisions on skipping over actions (as you won’t be able to access that action until you come all the way back around the rondel) while racing your opponents to achieve goals first.
I really adore Navegador. It’s fun, fairly fast and uncomplicated, and has positive player interactions, which I always enjoy. Games like Navegador and Concodia (spoilers: this will be featured on a later list) inspire me to seek out more games from Mac Gerdts.
We’re past the halfway point on my top 100 games! I would quantify this as the turning point where I move from games that I enjoy to games that I’m enthuastic about. I worry that over the next couple posts I’ll get progressively more verbose
50 – The Isle of Cats
The Isle of Cats by Frank West is a poly-omino tile laying game where players are trying to lure cats off an island and arrange them on your ship to earn the most points.
Each round begins with cat tiles being placed onto the table from a bag. During the round you draft cards, then choose which you’ll be playing, taking care to not exceed your fish limit. Once cards have been drafted and played, players take turns collecting cats from the centre one by one until either no cats remain, or all players pass. The number of cats you can collect is limited by both your fish and the number of baskets out have.
Isle of Cats is a charming drafting game. It’s light enough to be accessible to a wide audience, assisted by the feline theme that everyone seems to enjoy. The art of the cats lounging in the sun is also charming and makes your ship board look great as it gets filled with content fuzzballs. Isle of Cats is a game I’ve only played once, but I enjoyed it so much. It’s been hard to get a hold of in my neck of the woods, but once I do get more plays in I’m sure this will be moving up the list.
49 – Quadropolis
Quadropolis by Francois Gandon is another tile laying game, this time themed around tasking players with building the best metropolis.
In Quadropolis all the available tiles for the round are placed on a central 5 x 5 board. Each player has four architects in their employ, numbered from 1 to 4. On your turn you place your architect along the outside of the edge pointing inwards. You count the number of tiles in from the edge matching the number on the architect, and take that tile from the central board. You now need to place this tile on your personal 4 x 4 board, but the tile must be placed in one of the districts that matches the played architect’s number.
It sounds like a lot to keep track of, but Quadropolis is a fairly intuitive game, and the player board does a very good job of reminding you of all of these restrictions. Your goal is to build a apartments, shopping centres, factories, docks, parks, and monuments in a way that maximizes the number of points you earn, crowning you as champion metropolis-ier
Publisher Days of Wonder has built a reputation on producing quality games and Quadropolis is no exception. The tiles are thick, the colours are bright and the included insert is useable, which is more than I can say for some other games!
48 – The Great Heartland Hauling Co.
The Great Heartland Hauling Co. by Jason Kotarski is a pick up and deliver game that I absolutely love. I’ve already talked about The Great Heartland Hauling Co. here so I won’t belabour the point again. I love how small the box is, but still manages to deliver a big experience. Also, any games featuring pigs is a big win in my books. Sheep are so grossly over-represented in board games that I’m taking a stand here and now. More pigs in board games!
47 – Container
I did not expect to enjoy Container by Franz-Benno Delonge and Thomas Ewert as much as I did. The box cover looks fairly bland and the theme of producing and delivering shipping containers to a non-descript island and the potential to bankrupt the in-game economy just didn’t inspire wonder within me.
Luckily I put aside my preconceived notions and give Container a whirl. It turned out to be a fascinating puzzle of producing the right amount of goods and choosing when to take money in and out of the economy. Choosing to deliver containers to the island when your opponents are flush with cash, and buying containers at a barging when they’re cash strapped. I really loved my plays of Container, and look forward to playing it some more.
46 – 10 Days in Europe
10 Days in Europe by Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum is one of my most played games of all time. It’s a fairly small box so it travels when I visit friends and family. It’s easy to teach and play so it gets introduced to dozens of people, and my wife loves it, and will play it enthuastically, which inspires me to play it often.
I’ve reviewed 10 Days in Europe previously, and a new edition was recently released, making it a little more colourful and easier to acquire. This entry could stand in for any of the games in the 10 days series, but 10 Days in Europe is my favourite and I highly recommend breaking it out at every opportunity.
45 – Wok Star
Wok Star by Tim Fowers is a cooperative real time game about running a restaurant. Each player is put in charge of specific dishes and players need to work together to manage their ingredients, do the dishes, and earn enough money to keep the lights on for another day.
Personally, I love real time games. I enjoy the stress and challenge that comes with real time games, and I love the discussion and comradery that comes with co-operative games. Wok Star was a hit for me, but if you’re not a fan of either of these genres Wok Star isn’t going to change your mind. There’s also a significant luck factor, as each player is rolling dice at the start of the round and players need to work together to use them efficiently.
Also, any game with a food/restaurant theme will immediately grab my attention. The timer forces players to rush, and inflicts stress in their lives, which really makes me feel like I’m back working in kitchens again.
44 – Cartographers
I called Cartographers by Jordy Adan the “Best game I’ve never played” due to it being an excellent game, and having never played the physical game. I’ve played the Android app a lot, and my group played Cartographers half a dozen times on Tabletop Simulator and enjoyed every game. It’s fast, full of good decisions, and unlike a lot of flip and write games, offers some level of interaction between the players.
My only complained about Cartographers is that I just want more. I want more monsters, more cards, and more boards. Hopefully my prayers will be answered by Cartographers Heroes releasing later this year.
43 – Thurn and Taxis
I often forget how much I love Thurn and Taxis by Andreas and Karen Seyfarth, and part of that I attribute to it’s super bland beige board with German city names that I (as an ignorant Canadian) have never heard of. Don’t judge me! I grew up in northern Manitoba. If I made a game that featured “Opaskwayak, Cranberry Portage, Waboden, Lynn Lake, and Brochet” I doubt some German board gamers would notice or care.
Thurn and Taxis is a hand management route building game that won the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award in 2006, and for good reason. Thurn and Taxis is a fun game to play! You take and play cards each turn building routes around the board, and choosing to end the route to place your houses on some of the cities that were a part of your route. The wrinkle comes in choosing if you want to draw a second card, play a second card, or complete a route a route and take one benefit more than you’re entitled to. You’ll feel pulled in multiple directions and the tension watching other players complete their routes is very satisfying.
Thurn and Taxis is available to play on Board Game Arena and I highly recommend that you do.
42 – Root
Root by Cole Wehrle is the cutest war game I have ever played. In Root each player takes control of a wildly different faction. The Marquise de Cat start the game with a soldier in almost every field, firmly controlling the woodland. The Eyrie are amassing a force to take back their forest. The Woodland Alliance is amassing underground support and the Vagabond is making back room deals with each faction, sowing discord and working toward their own secret objective.
Every faction is almost playing their own game, and have vastly different strengths and weaknesses. As the Game Teacher of my group I’ll be the first to admin that teaching Root is HARD. You’re essentially tasked with teaching for small games to each player, and hopefully the people at the table have good attention spans as you need to know each factions limitations in order to effectively hamper their advancement.
I talked about Cole Wehrle’s previous game Vast earlier in this series and a lot of the same praises and criticisms can be applied to Root. It offers great discovery at the expense of a high level of rules overhead. In order to really know each faction, you’ll need to play multiple games as each one, as some of their nuances don’t reveal themselves until you play against other, similarly experienced players.
41 – Hive
Hive is the worst. And by the worst, I mean the best. But it’s also the worst. I’m conflicted.
Hive is a masterpiece of game design. It’s an abstract strategy game that is endlessly replayable; one that will have you biting your knuckles when your opponent makes a clever play that you didn’t see coming. Much like Tak, this is an elegant design, highly addictive and brimming with strategies. Hive begins with the first player putting a piece down on the table. There is no board and the thick bakalite pieces means that Hive can be played anywhere. The goal is to surround your opponents queen with tiles, while ensuring your own queen has room to breathe. Each insect has their own rules for movement, and making the restrictions work for you will separate the winners from the losers. Players will take turns either placing more of their tiles into the play area, or moving the ones they control.
Much like Chess, Hive can be enjoyed by people of all ages. Once you grasp how each piece moves you’re off to the races. Hive also comes in a black and white Carbon Edition, and in a much smaller Pocket Edition. All Hives are good Hives and make for excellent gifts to those who love games, bugs, or both!
It’s been a while since I posted a set of my favourite games. At the speed I’m going it’ll be 2023 by the time this list is finished!
60 – Millennium Blades
Millennium Blades designed by Brad Talton is almost a fever dream of a game. Millennium Blades is a game about collecting cards and competing in tournaments of a fictional CCG called Millennium Blades. Each round of the game has two parts; a real-time deck building phase, and a tournament phase. In the deck building phase you have three 7 minute rounds where you’ll drop literal stacks of cash to buy new ‘packs’ from the store and buy and sell singles in the aftermarket. As cards and cash flow in and out of your player area, you’re trying to achieve two things: create a competitive deck and build a collection (a set of cards that share an attribute with increasing rarity). Cards in your collection cannot be used in the tournament
Once the real time phase is over, you flip over your playerboard and play a fairly simple game with your competitive decks. Each player takes a turn playing a card to the table in front of them, resolving the effects, and earning points, cards, and money for how well your deck performed.
Millennium Blades is a special game for a certain niche of people. The art by Fabio Fontes has a strong 90’s anime aesthetic, and makes dozens of references to the video games and anime from my childhood. Millennium Blades also comes with dozens of sets of cards that you can mix and match to create a unique store deck every time you play.
Because Millennium Blades is a throwback to competitive CCGs and 90’s era anime and video games, it feels like it was MADE for me. My gaming group however has never dabbled in these specific quagmires so all of the theming is lost on them. I’m sure Millennium Blades could be so much higher on this list if I had equally enthusiastic players to join me at my table. For now, it will languish at #60.
59 – Alhambra
Alhambra by Dirk Henn is a classic. In Alhambra you take turns taking money cards from the offer row and using that cash to buy tiles to place into your personal Alhambra. At two points during play a ‘scoring’ card will be drawn, instantly triggering a scoring phase. The player who has the majority for each of the colours earns the points, splitting the points if tied. The first scoring round only offers a prize to the person who has the most, but the next two scoring rounds have points for the person who has the most and for the person who has the second most tiles in each of the colours. In addition to earning points via the majorities in the tiles, you also get points for the wall going around the Alhambra. Most tiles will have a number of black boarders, representing a wall. Walls prevent you from building further in that direction from that tile. Often you will find yourself at odds with buying a tile from the shop because you just need one more green tile, but struggling to place the tile in your tableau in a way that doesn’t completely prevent you from building out even more.
Alhambra is a great game to begin or end a night. It’s fairly quick to play, not terribly complex, and offers a satisfying puzzle for you to solve.
58 – Targi
Targi by Andreas Steiger is a two player only game about placing workers on action spaces in such a way so that you get exactly what you want, while your opponent curses your name under their breath. Targi‘s theme is that you’re the leader of a Tuareg tribe trading goods and trying to expand your wealth, but the theme is pretty paper thin. Where Targi fails in theme it makes up for in gameplay. Targi has a 5 x 5 grid of cards. Along the outside edges are the action spaces, while the centre 9 cards are either resource cards, or a tribe card. During a round you and your opponent take turns placing your workers on available action spaces. You may not occupy an action spot that your opponent occupies, or a spot directly across the board from an opponents worker. Once all six workers have been placed, you place two more tokens on the centre cards that are in same row and columns as your workers. Then you perform all the actions available to you; getting various resources and spending them to gain tribe cards that give you various benefits when placed in your tableau.
Targi is a delightful game to play with a rival. Every action you take denies your opponent opportunities, but spend too much time trying to thwart their plans and you’ll find yourself falling far behind. Targi puts players in a dangerous dance as they try to achieve their objectives while getting in each other’s way. I’ve played Targi only a handful of times in person (every time I do a slew of profanities slowly slip from my mouth as the turns go on), but I’ve played dozens of games on Board Game Arena. I find that because there is very little hidden information, Targi played very well asynchronously. I highly recommend Targi if you and your gaming partner delight in stepping on each others toes.
57 – Azul
Azul by Michael Kiesling is one of the best games of 2017. It’s simple to play, difficult to master, and the Bakelite tiles are satisfying to play with. In Azul you and your friends are working to embellish the mosaic walls of a Portuguese palace. Each player has their own board, and there are a number of factory spaces in the middle. On your turn you take all matching tiles from any of the factory spaces. Once you take tiles from a factory, the left over tiles from that factory are deposited into the centre of the table. On and on the game goes, with people taking tiles from the factory or the centre of the table and queueing them up on their player board in hopes of filling a row. At the end of the round when all the tiles have been claimed, any full rows will move one of the pieces over to the scoring area, and the rest will be returned to the box.
Azul is a very abstract game and you will quickly lose the idea of creating a beautiful mosaic as you fall into the rhythm of the game. Azul is a great game to play with anyone, whether they have a deep and abiding love of games or show only a cursory interest. The game of Azul is satisfying and is one that often gets requested, even if that request is “can we play that game with the Starburst pieces again?”
56 – Tak
Tak has an intresting genesis. It began in a book, The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. The main character Kvothe described it as “The best sort of game: simple in its rules, complex in its strategy.” Never did Patrick Rothfuss try to describe how the game was played, as he envisioned Tak to be like the Chess of his world; classic, perfect, and timeless. And how could anyone invent chess today?
I saw an interview with Patrick Rothfuss where he said he was flabbergasted when James Earnest approached him and said:
“I want to make Tak.”
“You can’t just make Tak any more than you can invent the next chess!”
James Earnest said he’d come up with something and if Patrick Rothfuss veto’d it, that would be the end of it. The fact that this game is sitting on my favourite games list may spoil the ending of this story. James Earnest pitched a version of Tak to Patrick Rothfuss and won him over, successfully creating a game that was simple to play, but had deep complex strategies.
I’ll admit my bias; I’ve loved Rothfuss’ books long before I got into board games. But when I saw that Rothfuss had endorsed this version of Tak, I knew I had to get my hands on it. An abstract strategy game that’s elegant and fun to play, and no luck with the potential for misdirection and big moves, I was an instant fan.
55 – Photosynthesis
Photosynthesis is the second meanest game about trees that I’ve played, but I’m ready to argue that this game by Hjalmar Hach has a much more impressive table presence. In Photosynthesis you struggle against the other players to grow your trees from little seedlings. Each round you’ll spend your energy growing trees taller so they catch the sun while simultaneously casting a shadow upon the trees behind them, denying those players valuable sunlight tokens. As your trees get taller you earn more points and the player with the most points win.
Each player has three different sizes of trees to place on the board, and after just a few turns this board game has a wonderful 3D effect. Trees are standing tall amongst smaller saplings and the sun is rotating around the table, changing who is receiving the benefit of the sunlight and the punishment of being in the shade.
Photosynthesis is a game I’ve only played a handful of times but it’s one that I remember fondly. I aspire to play it again soon!
54 – Le Havre
Le Havre is a huge game by Uwe Rosenburg. In Le Havre you need to manage 16 different resources to build the best buildings and ships to earn the most points to win the day. Each round has a total of 7 actions, meaning some rounds players will get more or less actions than the other players. This is particularly difficult in the 4 player game where you’ll get 2 actions at most every round and in some rounds get a single action. Coupled with trying to amass enough food to feed your workers and earn enough goods to build ships and buildings, it can feel like Le Havre is asking a lot of you.
I really enjoy the resource management, and the mechanism for using other players’ buildings. By the time you get to the end of the game you feel successful and powerful, as if you just overcame a large foe. Le Havre is one of Uwe Rosenburg’s best games, which is high praise considering just how many excellent games he has designed.
53 – Inis
Inis by Christian Martinez is a area majority game in which players are tasked with deciding who they’re going to crown as their king. Inis is probably one of the most satisfying area majority, troops-on-a-map games I’ve ever played. The artistic direction is unique and eye catching and I love the mechanic where players need to declare that they can satisfy one of the three victory conditions at the start of the round and hold onto it until the end of the round.
Inis can leave a sour taste in your mouth when two of your opponents can win and you only have the ability to stop one of them. Each round begins with a card draft in which you more or less have to decide what actions will be available to you this round. As you play more games of Inis you’ll learn what cards are available and how to utilize them properly. Eventually you’ll figure out how to predict what someone is going to do based on the cards that you didn’t see, giving you the important information needed to counter their moves.
I found in my plays of Inis that someone ended up being a ‘kingmaker’. By choosing to attack player A instead of Player B, Player B was able to amass their armies and lead their clan to victory. Personally I don’t like being in the situation where my one choice to stop someone from willing will directly hand the victory to another player, but if that feature doesn’t bother you I highly recommend giving Inis a try!
52 – Karuba
Karuba is not the first Rudiger Dorn design on my list and it certainly isn’t the last. Karuba gives all players the exact same challenge, with the winner being the player who completes the challenge in the most efficient way possible. All the adventurers and temples start on the same space for each player. Every turn all players get the same road piece and have to place it somewhere on their board, or discard it to move their adventurers across the jungle, stopping to pick up gems across the way.
Karuba ends once one player has managed to get all four of their adventurers to all four temples, or when the deck of road tiles runs out. Karuba has a particularly excellent Tabletop Simulator mod available that allows it to be played start to finish in under 10 minutes. During the COVID season where my group was playing games exclusively online, Karuba was a standout hit. Unlike a lot of other games, Karuba is easier to play online than it is in person. Because it was so easy for us to play and played so quickly, it ended up being the game of choice to end the evening or for a quick game while waiting for the rest of the group to show up.
51 – The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth
The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth by Nathan Hajek and Grace Holdinghaus is almost the opposite of Karuba. It is a large sprawling adventure across Middle Earth managed via an app. I have small qualms with The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth due to the character choices and their accuracy in reference to the Lord of the Rings novels (Aragorn and Bilbo do not adventure together!), but overall I really enjoyed the game system. All of the equipment, combat, skills, and damage are managed by cards, and the enemies are plastic miniatures that are entirely controlled by the app. I enjoyed the app integration for The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth as it removed most of the tedium of managing the opponents and the environment, and got us back to playing our turns quickly.
The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth is on of the few campaign games that I’ve played all the way through to the end. I’m incredibly tempted to play through the main campaign again just to see where the story branches. I also really want to play the DLC stories, and get the Shadowed Paths expansion that adds in 6 more heroes (Gandalf and Balin) and a ton of new monsters and minis and another scenario to play. I saw recently that ANOTHER expansion was announced Spreading War that adds even more map tiles, roles, terrain types, heroes, and a 15 scenario story. If you have a proclivity to play the same game over and over, The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth has a ton of content to explore and more keeps coming out every year! Long may it continue!!
