Games games games. I still find it kind of amazing that I can list off 100 games that I love, and it’s less than 20% of the games I’ve played. There’s still so many games that I want to play, and new games coming out every year. I love this hobby!!
40 – Five Tribes
My favourite thing about Five Tribes:
The auction for player order is so great. As the game goes on, the most valuable possible moves become more and more rare, and therefore, more sought after. Being able to control going first, making your opponents pay dearly for the privilege, or deny them access to the action they need as a punishment for their cheapness makes every turn in Five Tribes feel exciting
39 – Hardback
My favourite thing about Hardback:;
Many word games can end up suffering from a similar problem. You get a selection of letters, and you spend 15 minutes staring at them, trying to figure out a word, any word that you can make out of that mess. Hardback allows you to flip any card in your hand over, voiding any abilities or benefits it may offer, but turning it into a wild card. I love this mechanic as it keeps the game rolling and saves players from a truly awful draw.
38 – Suburbia
My favourite thing about Suburbia:
I love the population track in Suburbia. The goal of the game is to earn population, as ultimately, the player with the most population is the winner. But on that population track are a bunch of red lines, and every line you cross, your reputation and incomes are knocked down a peg. I’ve seen players stumble into the perfect tile, slot it into their city, earning themselves insane amounts of population on a single turn, only to kneecap their own game, throwing their income into a deficit and making the next few turns a desperate struggle to buy an income generating tile.
That may sound needlessly harsh, but it’s a mechanic I adore in a game that I love.
37 – Castles of Mad King Ludwig
Previous Rank: 33 | Full Review
My favourite thing about Castles of Mad King Ludwig
I’m torn between building wild looking castles, and the player controlled auction as my favourite aspect of Castles of Mad King Ludwig. Both aspects are awesome, and make the game feel fresh every time I play it.
36 – Akropolis
My favourite thing about Akropolis:
The decision to make the vertical act as a score multiplier is so satisfying. I’ve had games where I manage to get several tiles of the same colour to the 4th level, which gets multiplied by all the stars of that colour makes for a really satisfying puzzle!
35 – Pandemic
Previous Rank: 23 | Full Review
My Favourite thing about Pandemic:
To this day, Pandemic is a go-to option for introducing anyone to the world of cooperative games. Pandemic has all kinds of tension, short term problems that need to be solved that are at odds with the long term goal of the game, plenty of opportunities for players to communicate and figure out an optimal plan. It’s a classic, and even though I’ve picked up a few of the spin-offs, the original remains in my collection.
It’s a shame about the actual pandemic creating all kinds of negative connotations, though.
34 – Patchwork
My Favourite thing about Patchwork:
The double resource cost of all the tiles needing money (buttons) and time makes for some fascinating decisions. At the beginning of the game, you don’t have many buttons to spend, so you’ll pick the high time cost pieces. Come the end of the game, you’ll be throwing fistfuls of cash at the board, but your new limiter is time. A pretty good allegory for life, if you think about it.
33 – Chess
My Favourite thing about Chess:
There isn’t much I can say about Chess that hasn’t been said already, by people who have devoted significantly more time than I have into playing and studying this game. With an endlessly high skill ceiling and dozens of books breaking down even just the opening moves of Chess, I love this game as it’s a pure strategy game. Any mistake is your own fault, and while it sucks to get crushed by someone more skilled than you are, I like that any victory or loss is earned by your actions and choices alone.
32 – My City
My Favourite thing about My City:
What I left unsaid about Patchwork applies here. Polyomino tile laying games are just simple fun. And I love My City for constantly evolving, even if I find the over-arching victory condition of the legacy campaign to be less than satisfying, I still enjoyed seeing the game change over time.
31 – Now Boarding
Previous Rank: 20 | Full Review
My Favourite thing about Now Boarding
I love real time games, I love Tim Fowers games, and I love cooperative games, Now Boarding was an easy hit for us. What I love most about Now Boarding is that the game only gives you half the information you really need for the round, and obscures the rest of it. You can your teammates can plan out what you want to do, but when the real time phase starts, more information is thrown into the mix and it might drastically change your plans!
