Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition – 100 through 91
It’s that time of year again. Time to go through my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition. Before we get to the video and the list, let’s talk a bit about what I do to get my Top 100 Games (of all time) put together. Because it’d be a lot of work except for one site.
Creating My Top 100 Games List
And that site is Pub Meeple. It’s a great site because it pulls in your Board Game Geek list and can use that to do a ranking. In the ranking you compare two games against each other. So let’s say Monopoly and Clue. You decide which one you like better, so Clue then Monopoly. Then you might compare Risk and Scrabble and decide on Scrabble. It’d then give you the comparison of Clue and Scrabble and let’s say I pick Scrabble, it’ll then have me compare Clue to Risk to determine which one I like better. If I pick Clue then Risk and Monopoly get compared. But if I pick Risk, then Clue and Monopoly just get slotted after.
Also, it’s worth noting a few other things I mention at the start. That’s how I eliminate some of the games. Each box of Dice Throne doesn’t count as it’s own entry. Every version of Clank, Aeon’s End, and Pandemic aren’t their own entries. Even Frosthaven, Gloomhaven, and Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion get lumped together. Why, because otherwise the list would be dominated by a few games.
Finally, last thing is that I do not put games that I’ve only played digitally. There are a couple of games, Rogue Angels being the big one, that will likely end up in my Top 100 Games (of all time) when I can play it physically, but I want to experience it that way as well to verify my feelings.
Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition 100 through 91
100. Ship Shape
A new one to the list, this is an interesting little game that is kind of a party style filler. But not a party game in terms of a “haha” game. But it’s a light game of filling out your cargo hold the best that you can. You have three goods, cannons, gold, and contraband. You get points for gold, cannons compared to the person with the fewest, and your contraband, if you don’t have the most.
Plus you are bidding on what tile you get to place into your hold. It might work out well, you win the bid, you get the top one, or you could get the second one. Of course, if you tie, then you don’t get any in order and have to rebid for your one once more a gone. So it’s kind of random, but a lot of fun with simple mechanisms.
99. Welcome To…
Welcome To has dropped on the list. I think that Welcome To is down on the list because I don’t play it as often because it isn’t my favorite solo roll and write game. But the game is still great as you try and build your favorite Stepford neighborhood. Can you build the best white picket fences, pools, parks, and get those house numbers in the right order?
Plus there is good variety with the different maps. So I likely need to play those more often so that I can get that variety. And one of the better things is that Welcome To is a great game for a larger group. There really is no upper limit, just sheets, as to how many you can play with. So that makes it a fun game to pull out when I want a bigger group game but not a party game.
98. SCOUT
SCOUT is another new one to the list and this was a big hit from last year in the US. I believe it was out in Japan prior to that, but I started hearing about it a ton last year and a ton at Gen Con in 2022. SCOUT is a card shedding game. That means that you have a handful of cards and you’re trying to get rid of yours the fastest.
To do that you are trying to play out card(s) in sets, runs, or a single card, that beats what the other person played. The trick of the game is that the cards have numbers on the top and bottom. And when you get your hand of cards you can’t rearrange it. So you’re stuck with what you had, that might mean that you can’t beat what someone else played down. Instead you take one of the cards they played and add it to your hand wherever you want.
97. My City (My City: Roll and Build)
Next up is one of those combo of games. My City and My City Roll and Build. This is a game about building out a city in either a campaign or legacy game version. And one is a roll and write the other is a polyomino game.
I like each version. My City, the legacy version, is a good game that’s fast to play and works well with a group of people. My City Roll and Build is able to be played solo. It is still a very fast game, and fewer things carry over, but I like it a lot as a solo game. It is still extremely fast, probably 10 minutes for the roll and write game. The legacy version is probably 20-30 minutes.
96. The Reckoners
Now we’re onto a cooperative game on the list, The Reckoners. This is based off of a series from Brandon Sanderson that I really like. And this is a good cooperative game in that there is little to no downtime in the game.
How do they make that work? The game is in two parts, the first part is rolling dice to determine what actions you will do. And everyone does that at once, it’s kind of Yahtzee style in that you roll multiple times. But not completely because you always are keeping dice. Then everyone is talking as they roll to make sure it gets set-up right, and you go and do all your actions. Again it is done all at once. The only downtime is when you do the epics (super villains) actions to see what goes wrong.
95. Clever Cubed
Clever Cubed, another roll and write game and part of the Clever series of games with Ganz Schon Clever (That’s Pretty Clever), Doppelt So Clever (Twice as Clever) and a new game, Clever 4Ever. This one I really like how heavily it leans into combos. There are so many combos in the game that it’s just crazy with how things can connect together and how they just chain off of each other. Plus you get really high scores which is fun.
94. Project L
A game that almost wasn’t around any more, as the company – Boardcubator almost went out of business. But Project L is a polyomino game where you are using Tetris like pieces to fill in shapes. As you get more pieces to use, you can start to grab in bigger ones and bigger pieces to fill in the shapes faster.
One of the cool elements of the game, besides the insanely high quality, is that there is a master action. It is an action that you can do one time per turn, but it lets you add to each of your shapes. So you can spend turns collecting more cards and then doing master actions to fill them up faster or all at once, so it’s very fun when you get that working well.
93. Super-Skill Pinball 4-Cade
Another roll and write game, Super-Skill Pinball 4-Cade is not shockingly about Pinball. I like that you get a lot of tables to play so you change up what you want to play. And it isn’t hard to learn, though there are pretty simple rules for all the ball moves. The ball moves down and rotates clockwise, I believe, or counter clockwise, either way it’s always the same way.
And each table offers something new. I like the cyber hacking one where you can get into a special area of the board and score a ton of points. All of them have something unique and there are four tables in the main box. Plus there is an expansion box, a Star Trek box, and a holiday movie box, so a lot of options.
It is also a roll and write game that I like solo. Multiplayer it’s possible that one person will end much sooner than someone else. That can lead to downtime, and as you saw with The Reckoners, I like it when there is as little downtime as possible.
Buy Super-Skill Pinball 4-Cade
92. Atlantis Rising (Second Edition)
Atlantis Rising is a cooperative race against the clock (figuratively) as the island of Atlantis is sinking. And this is another game where there is little downtime. Everyone is working together and putting out your meeples to the board for collecting items. The further you are out on peninsulas it’s better, but because it’s sinking, you might lose a meeple, for that round.
With what you collect then you’re building up machines. The machines will open a portal that will allow you to escape. And they give you powers as well which might make it smoother to get what you need. Of course, by the time you’re doing that, the island is sinking fast, so it’s a race against time.
Buy Atlantis Rising (Second Edition)
91. Vegetable Stock
Next one is Vegetable Stock. A game that I wouldn’t have known about but for Chris Yi from the Dice Tower who likes this game. This is a small set collection game. And it is also a drafting game. As you draft cards that builds up your collection of card to give you points. And you draft from a pool of one more than there are people.
The card that is leftover affects the stock market. So what you take won’t push it higher, but what is left is going to be push it higher. If it gets too high it’ll bust and drop it down again, so you need to redo that work. Vegetable Stock is a light filler game and really fast. So one that will work well for a lot of groups just as that smaller group game that you can knock out.
Upcoming Streams (Top 100 and Game Plays)
Next Wednesday at 8 PM Central time I’ll be going through 90 through 81 of my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition. So join me then and let me know which are your favorites on that part of the list.
And on Monday I stream around 9 PM central time. Generally it is a solo game, though sometimes a topic or a list or Slay the Spire. But it’ll likely be solo games for a while with the Top 100 List going on. And normally on Wednesdays I stream solo campaign board games. So after I finish up my Top 100 Games I’ll be getting back to that, possibly more of The Isofarian Guard.
But the best way, if you want to know when I go live or a new video goes up (it’s basically always live), please consider subscribing. You can do that here. And click that notification bell on the channel and you’ll always know when I go live.
Send an Email
Message me on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here
6 Comments