Catch Up on the Top 100 Games

100 through 91
90 through 81
80 through 71
70 through 61
60 through 51
50 through 41
40 through 31

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition – 30 through 21

30. Space Base

Published By: Alderac Entertainment Group
Designer: John D. Clair

Buy Space Base

This is a game that I should have played a long time ago. But it is one that left my collection and then I played it on BGA. Once I played it on BGA, I knew that I needed it back in my collection. Much like other games like Valeria and Mochi Koro this one is about activating spots based off of dice rolls. And then building up those spots so that you can activate more things. Space Base just ramps up in a much better way than those and offers some interesting choices and an interesting moment of when you change from money to points.

29. Symbiose

Published By: Subverti
Designers: Jeremy Partinico and Christelle Partinico

Not Available Yet

Symbiose is one of the new games on the list, in fact, I’m not sure you can get it in the US yet. But this is one I’ll be getting for sure. It’s a simple game where you try and get a two tall by four wide grid full of cards. And those cards are going to score you points based off of the other cards in the grid. But there is a simple twist that makes this work. You score your grid with the central four cards. But the ones to the left and right score your opponents to the left and right. And that is enough to make this a very fun game.

28. XenoShyft: Onslaught

Published By: CMON Limited
Designers: Keren Philosophales and Michael Shinall

Out of Print

I love cooperative and deck building games. XenoShyft does both of those things really as well as you build up your deck to fight off monsters. On the deck building side I like how you always get money to add to your hand. That means that you are always able to buy something which is good and rewarding. The other part is I can just give you a card, you need more troops, I can give you one. It is now part of your deck, and it’s not to the discard, it is straight to your hand. A very tough and rewarding game.

27. One-Hit Heroes

Published By: Wiggles 3D
Designers: AC Atienza and Connor Reid

Buy One-Hit Heroes

This one is a theme that I like a lot with super heroes, but it is doing something different. You are heroes who are glass cannons, kind of. By that I mean if you take a hit you are out, but the game gives you tons of ways to avoid them. So you need to manage your hand and what the enemy is doing. And each enemy is different and each hero is different, so there is a ton of replayability in the box. Plus you level up, so to speak, as you play and get to add in new cards to your deck.

26. Planet Unknown

Published By: Adam’s Apple Games, LLC
Designers: Ryan Lambert and Adam Rehberg

Buy Planet Unknown

Planet Unknown is one of my favorite planet terraforming games. In this one I love how you are covering up the planet and activating locations to move up on tech, and other tracks. The tracks are such a fun part of the game. And as you play the game more you play not with the starting abilities but with special ones. They make you unique, and of course there is the lazy susan. Being able to spin that and then pick where you want to pick from is great. You can set yourself up well, or you can try and mess over your opponents plans or ideally both.

25. Paper Dungeons

Published By: MeepleBR
Designer: Leandro Pires

Out of Stock

I think that this is the highest roll and write game on the list and one of the most complex that I play. Paper Dungeons is a “Dungeon Scrawler”, as they call it, where you level up heroes and explore the dungeon fighting monsters. But there is more than that, you need to manage your heroes health, make adventuring gear and find treasure. Of course, if you make it to the boss monsters that is another way to get even more points, but hopefully not at the expense of too much health.

24. Kingdom Legacy: Feudal Kingdom

Published By: FryxGames
Designer: Jonathan Fryxelius

Buy Kingdom Legacy – note, there might be an additional tariff related shipping charge in the US.

I was not sure about Kingdom Legacy the first time I watched a video on it, but the more I watched the more I liked it. This is a legacy game of managing your deck of cards by destroying cards, leveling up cards, or even adding new cards. And as you go through, you need to decide which cards are best used for upgrading and points and when to use cards for resources to level up others. It’s a nice balance of multiuse cards, and a challenge to optimize your score.

23. Ready Set Bet

Published By: Alderac Entertainment Group
Designer: John D. Clair

Buy Ready Set Bet

I like betting and I like racing when it comes to games. Ready Set Bet somehow combines the two of them into real time fun and stand-up moments. Personally I like both parts of this game betting and being the person calling the race. As you call the race, it’s just to get into it and keep the race moving and watch everyone else stand-up. As a better it’s all about trying to make the right bets the fastest. If you wait too long the best spots are gone, and if you bet too quickly you’re more apt to make bad bets. It sounds chaotic, which it is, but it’s also so much fun.

22. Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

Published By: Stronghold Games
Designers: Sydney Engelstein, Jacob Fryxelius, and Nick Little

Buy Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

Another game about terraforming a planet, Ares Expedition is a big engine building game of, well, doing a better job terraforming Mars. In this game it’s all about the action selection and how that works. I pick an action, everyone gets to do it, but I get a bonus for it. It might be a bonus of drawing more cards or a discount on building something. But then again, if my opponent(s) pick the same action, we all only do that action, and the other possible actions are skipped. So it’s always trying to guess what your opponent(s) will do to optimize your actions.

21. Hanamikoji

Published By: EmperorS4
Designer: Kota Nakayama

Buy Hanamikji

Finally is one of my favorite two player games. Hanamikoji is a game of trying to win the favor of Geisha by giving them gifts. Each one wants a certain gift and there is a limited number of them. You want to win the favor of four or eleven points worth.

But the biggest draw of this two player game is the action system. You only have four actions and you do one per turn and only once per round. They are simple actions like discarding two cards that won’t be used facedown, or putting one facedown that you’ll score. The other two offer a bit more with the “I Split, You Choose” mechanism in play, and makes you think about what cards you show your opponent for that.

Join Next Week

Just as a reminder, I am streaming my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition every Wednesday night at 9 PM Central Time. The next few videos have their links up, so you can click notify on them to know when I go live. Or you can subscribe to the channel and click notify to know whenever a new video comes out. Currently I am playing through Legendary Kingdoms on Monday and then my wife and I are playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on Fridays. So join us for those videos.

And thank you for checking out the video and articles. Let me know what your favorite game from this chunk of 10 is and which one you would love to get played.

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Catch up on previous videos here

100 through 91
90 through 81
80 through 71

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition – 70 through 61

70. Sagrada

• Published by Floodgate Games in 2017
• Build the most beautiful stained glass window

This game is just a great drafting game experience. The ease of play is wonderful as well because you draft a die and place it while other people are going on drafting their own dice. Especially with the 5-6 player expansion, which can be worked into the lower player counts, it makes it so you don’t need to spend time with what others are doing. But both ways to draft the dice and place the dice are mainly the same and really good. Plus the way you need to play the dice to not have colors or numbers adjacent makes a great puzzle.

Buy Sagrada

69. Mesozooic

• Published by Z-Man Games in 2018
• Slide your dino-themed park together in this light filler game

Mesozooic has a couple of great elements to the game. Firstly it’s drafting, and I really love drafting. But the game is more than that. You also need to complete a slide puzzle. You see you draft 11 cards and shuffle them up to create a 3 tall and 4 wide grid with an open spot. Then you slide them around frantically for 45 seconds like a slide puzzle to get the best dino-park that you can. It’s silly, light, and a very fun time.

Buy Mesozooic

68. 7 Wonders Duel

• Published by Repos Production in 2015
• Draft cards and build wonders in this head to head game

I like this game better than 7 Wonders. Mainly because I played 7 Wonders a few times at two and it isn’t a good game. 7 Wonders Duel is great that way, as expected. But the game is more than just a better version, I think that the drafting is very clever. I love the trying to avoid revealing a card that is good for your opponent. And some of the cards being face down so unknown until they are revealed. And the two side ways to win with science and military add in tension to the game as well. You can’t just draft your best engine, even though you want to.

Buy 7 Wonders Duel

67. Icecool

• Published by Brain Games in 2016
• Help your penguins sneak out of class and get fish in this dexterity game

Yes, the theme of Icecool is that simple and I love it for me. I love the flicking element of the game, it’s just fun. And I really enjoy the silliness of the game. This is one of my favorites for a late night of gaming. Just sit around and flick penguins and have a laugh. It is possible to get very good at the game, but it’s also a game where players can just have a great shot by pure luck. To me that is what makes it a fun game for all ages.

Buy Icecool

66. Super Fantasy Brawl

• Published by Mythic Games in 2022
• Choose your team and face off against an opponent in an arena

This game is coming back, kind of. I say kind of, I expect that most of the game is going to be the same, but CMON bought it from the now defunct Mythic Games. So I want to see what CMON is going to do with it. Because I love the simplicity of the game. Super Fantasy Brawl has you activate three different colors of cards each round. And you can do some on defense as well, but that means you won’t do as much on your turn. Then you either try to knock out your opponents for trophies or complete goals, or most likely, do both. The game is strategic but also fast and easy to play.

Follow Super Fantasy Brawl: Reborn

65. Trailblazers

• Published by Bitewing Games in 2023
• Create the best hiking, biking, and kayaking routes

Another drafting game on the list. This is the last one for this time, but there are four and possible five if you count drafting your team in Super Fantasy Brawl. In this one you draft cards to create trails. I love the trail creation aspect of the game because you really need to strategize as to how you’re going to do that. And I like how the game becomes more complex in your trail creation throughout as you add in other hubs that you need to start and leave from for each of the three routes.

Buy Trailblazers

64. Mind Up!

• Published by Pandasaurus Games in 2023
• Play the right number to collect and create sets of colors

This game is so easy to learn and play. I actually wrote about it yesterday in that exact context, so you can checkout the article after this. But it’s simply play out a card simultaneously with the other players. Then you look to see who played the lowest number, they get the lowest number from the middle. And after that it’s about trying to get the colors you want into the highest scoring column you have. The whole thing is just a really easy to play and simple time. I explain it better in the video, by the way.

Buy Mind Up!

63. So Clover!

• Published by Repost Productions in 2021
• Can you find the right pair of words based off of one word clues?

This game is always tricky for me to explain. Basically you have cards with four words, one on each side. And you have four of them making this little four by four grid. Each side is going to have two words, if that all makes sense and you’re picturing it. You need to create a one word clue so people can guess and put it back into that same order. Not that hard, well, it is when the words don’t connect at all. And there is going to be a mystery fifth card added in. But if you give the right clues you can lead people down the right path to recreate it.

Buy So Clover!

62. The Castles of Burgundy

• Published by alea in 2019
• Take a new kingdom and turn it into a bustling land

A game that I wouldn’t have expected that I like. But I really enjoy The Castles of Burgundy, a game of using dice to purchase and place new things into your land. As well as using them to sell goods, and get workers that let you manipulate your dice. There is a bunch going on and I feel like I need to nail down my strategy for it. But I really enjoy what this offers and it’s a new type of puzzle for me to spend time diving into as a game. I even have the fancy version coming that alea did with Awaken Realms.

Buy The Castles of Burgundy

61. Letter Jam

• Published by Czech Games Edition in 2019
• Work together to figure out what everyone’s letters are because you can’t see your own

If you know what Hanabi is that will help with it. But Letter Jam is a game where you can’t see the letters that form your word. Other players can see one of them at a time but they can’t see theirs. So you give clues to help people narrow down what their letters might be for their jumbled word. Of course everyone needs to get theirs figured out by the end of the game, but it’s cooperative so the challenge is great but fun to tackle.

Buy Letter Jam

Upcoming Streams

Just a reminder on my streaming schedule.

• Monday night, time varies, I play different small solo games, though I might be looking to start up a campaign again.
• Wednesday at 9 PM central is going to continue my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition for another six weeks. After that expect this to be when I play my small games.
• Friday at 9 PM central my wife and I are streaming a playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3

The best way to know when we go live, though is to subscribe and click that notification bell. I can’t promise, and in fact it’s pretty unlikely, that I’ll have events to click on ahead of time. Though I do want to get better at it. I hope that you can join a stream and hop into the chat.

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Pros

• Aesthetic
• Player Count
• Price Point
• Deck Building
• Push Your Luck
• Solo

Cons

• Push Your Luck

The Page

The page is a sharp looking page. Artana is doing a good job of showing off their game. Though, with showing off the art first, I wish it was the rules. I probably will always come back to this, but in this case, they can show off the art and the rules at the same time. Especially since First in Flight isn’t about having a ton of minis.

I will say that the collectors edition, more about the page than the game, looks solid. Do I need metal coins, foiled cards, and to go from wooden meeples to plastic sculpts? I don’t know what I would. But they are nice luxury add-ons without it being more game play. As someone who generally isn’t interested in the collectors edition, I dislike it when I feel I’m missing out game content. Here, I miss out on some fancier pieces.

The historical nature of the game, as well is cool. It allows what looks like a fun game to also be a teaching game. Too many games that are educational or look that way, are just boring. This looks both educational and like a modern board game that will be fun to play. Genius Games also does this, and I’m glad to see more companies leaning into that.

The Game

The game itself looks interesting to me. As it appears to have a fair amount going on. With a rondel for action selection, or so it seems, pushing your forward. Plus then deck building as you try and improve your pilot, plane and hit certain goals.

Push Your Luck is not normally a mechanic that I love. But I think that it seems interesting in this case. But for some, it’ll be a bit more than they are looking for in a game. I like the fact that you mitigate those flaws in your deck through skills.

Back or Brick

Oddly enough, even though I have only good things to say about First in Flight, this is a Brick for me. Not because I don’t want it. I do want the game, but because I don’t feel the need to get it on Kickstarter. They seem to have retail plans and this is one that I’d love to try or get my hands on more before I would back it.

I suspect with the type of game it is. The deck building, the gorgeous look, and even the push your luck, it’ll be a game that I like But I don’t want to assume that is the case. Plus, looking at the number, I likely can get it for the same cost at retail, especially since I am not that interested in the collectors edition.

How about for you, is this a Back or Brick?

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Introduction To Previews

Before I dive in, let’s talk about a few things, what is a Crowdfunding Preview? I think that for a lot of gamers, they want to learn about games that are coming to Crowdfunding, but I haven’t had many chances to preview anything before. So, I wrote up some of what my plans for doing previews are, and what you can expect from them, here.

The big thing is that I want to let you know about a game, I am not going to tell you to buy it or not. I am not going to do a review on the game, if I do review a game I have previewed, that is separate from the preview. And I will let you know if a game is a paid preview or not, in the case of Rogue Angels this is not a paid preview, but the designer reached out to me asking me if I’d do a preview on the game.

Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Suns

Adventure in a sci-fi world where your decisions really matter. Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Suns (Rogue Angels from here on) is a legacy game where you, either solo or cooperatively, take characters through a journey of exploration, battle, and story. The choices you make will affect your relationships with different groups. They branch out, cutting off some choices and opening up others. Will you survive or will you perish and a new crew member join your ship?

Player Counter: 1-4
Game Length: 60-120 Minutes (per scenario)
Audience Age: 16+
Theme: Sci-Fi Adventure
Game Type: Campaign (Legacy)
Game Mechanics: Action Management, Story, Dice Combat, Combat/Tactical

Crowdfunding: Kickstarter
Launch Date: February 2022 (currently)
Price Point: $100 + shipping

Game Play Highlights

Story

Each scenario, I believe, is going to kick off with story to get you into the scenario. The whole game has narrative throughout each scenario that will give you decisions and progress what your missions on. This is one of the main mechanics of the game, in that the story unfolds as you go along. Compared to other games that contain a grid or hex based movement and scenarios, this limits how much you know about objectives, and those objectives change over time.

Actions

While there are a lot of games out there with stories in them, Rogue Angels also has interesting card play. Each character has a deck of cards. These cards have a “cost” level. When you play down a card, it goes onto a track at it’s cost, or higher. And at the end of your turns, the cards cool down. Some cards have 0 cost, so they come back immediately. While others might cost three, and not be available.

These cards help you do the basic actions in the game. There are attacks that you can, movement to get around the board, but then other much more specialized things. Beyond that, you can also rest to get back cards faster. And while there are basic cards that are similar, each character will have their own special actions or weapons as well.

Dice

The dice are used in a fun way. Cards will allow you to roll dice, and a set number of dice. You can reroll, but some of the cards, rolling the dice will modify the attack or movement so you can move further or deal more damage. What I like is that the dice are never bad, but maybe not what you want. They might give you extra movement, but that might not be useful. It might just modify a number on your card. Or it could give you more defense, which isn’t useful if you don’t need more. So it’s always useful, but it’s not always useful.

You can also push to reroll dice, but that is a limited resource as well. So you can reroll when you are in a high leverage situation, but if you run out of them, it takes actions to get them back, or possibly card play. Either way it is using up what you can do on a turn.

Scaling

Another thing to talk about with Rogue Angels is scaling of the game. The more players you have, the amount of time you have changes in the game. And I believe the number of combatants might change as well. The game is set-up to scale to all the player counts. This isn’t something new, but some of these story driven games expect a certain number of players.

It is a good time to talk about solo game play. This is not a true solo game. By true solo, I mean controlling one character. You need to play with at least two characters when playing solo. I don’t have experience with the solo game, but from my play, I think controlling two characters would not be too difficult. The card play mechanics are simple enough that while it’s an interesting puzzle, you won’t lose what you are doing between turns per character.

Legacy

I think the final thing to talk about with game play is the legacy element of the game. I know for a lot of people, Legacy can be concerning. And for myself, with the game having, I believe, twenty characters, what were the legacy elements? On the cards and character sheets there are spots where you can add in cards. The legacy elements are for the characters only, that means that while you can play with four, you can play it multiple times.

The abilities that you can unlock continue to make your characters more unique as you play. As well as items you find, though those are not legacy in that nothing is done to modify those cards as you get them. The cards all have secondary abilities that can be activated, and that is an area that you can upgrade cards as well.

Who Is This Game For?

I think this game is for people who like games like Mass Effect. Emil Larson uses that as can example of his own as well, and I can definitely get that feel for the game. It progresses through a story, but that story is mature at times. I didn’t run into anything too mature, but there is violence and it is a big in depth story. So if you enjoy that sort of adventure game like Mass Effect, this game might be for you.

Additional Notes

Emil Larson is planning for shipping and production to place in Europe, Germany, if possible. With the current shipping situation, the feeling is that it might alleviate some of that.

Rogue Angels is also not going to have minis. This was done so that using clips and bases health and everything for the combatants would be visible on the standees. It reduces the amount plastic but also the size of the box.

Rogue Angels Initial Impressions

This is an interesting game to me because I like campaign games and I like legacy games. I was very impressed with how the mechanics of the game work, while I’ve seen games do a cool down track to get stuff or to get things back, Star Wars: Rebellion or Oathsworn: Into the Deep Woods. The additional complexity of when you use actions and how you manage that cooldown, though, is an interesting interaction.

I also think that the story was solidly written. I’ve mainly just seen the introductory scenario(s) writing and it is compelling. The story seems to be building and while the start is just getting you into the world, I think that it will develop into something bigger. To me, writing is a question mark, though, most of the time because it depends on taste and style. If you get the chance to try the game on TableTop Simulator, I would recommend at least glancing at the starting story.

The dice, I think, will also give people some hesitation. I do want to reiterate here, and that I liked, that the dice are never bad. They might not give you what you want, but it isn’t a situation where a bad roll can completely stop an attack or movement. Instead, it can just limit how effective it will be. And you have resources to reroll, but they are limited and need to be managed as well.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think that the play was simple enough to make this game accessible to a lot of people. However, it isn’t so simple that it doesn’t feel like your choices don’t matter. You definitely get to make important decisions and that’s just in using your cards, let alone in the narrative. And the game doesn’t feel lucky, yes, the dice can be lucky, but the dice aren’t the focus. And, the legacy element, for those concerned, doesn’t mean you can only play the game once.

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Pros

• Dungeon Crawl
• Solo
• Character leveling
• Character classes

Cons

• Price
• A lot of stuff on the table

The Page

We’re back on Gamefound, for a campaign that launches in a few hours. That is why it’s a link to Gamefound itself, I will come back in later and add it, but I am prepping this article for the future publishing. So I will be talking about what the draft page looks like, but this is unlike Kickstarter in that you can see a real draft. The only thing that I can’t fully comment on is shipping because they don’t have a shipping table, I hope that is coming.

Otherwise the page lays out things well. I like that they have a reprint, and hopefully slight rules tweaks of the original game. I didn’t back it when it was first on Kickstarter, but now with some reviews out, and an expansion coming, I am interested in it again. But because I didn’t back it, that means I need to look at the content for the base game, because this is an expansion.

The Game

This game seems like it’s my sort of game. It’s about character leveling, fighting through dungeons and going through a story. The knock on the base game that I’ve heard is that the story is pretty linear. Now, I didn’t love that in Sword & Sorcery, because the story seemed basic, but a fairly linear story in Gloomhaven was fine because it felt different. So I hope that this one feels different.

I like how the mechanics in the game works as well. Mainly it has a very interesting mechanic with how you can activate abilities. And those abilities you can upgrade, but you block off those abilities. So when you have to pull off cubes you are putting down a black cube which blocks off an ability.

Finally, this game is a “messy” game. By that I mean that there is a lot. You have a ton on the table. The knock the BoardGameCo had with it was that it’s harder to get to the table because of all the bits. Hopefully with some nicer trays as a stretch goal to help it get to the table faster. But I wonder if, like Gloomhaven, even a cross stitch/craft box would help with that for sorting out tokens.

Back or Brick

This seems like the type of game I’d like a lot. And the price on the Kickstarter is really good. To buy the base game and stretch goal box from the original Kickstarter is at minimum $250 now. So for $115 plus $40 shipping (my guess) that is a much better deal. Granted, I won’t get it as soon, but there will be some updates. So yes, this is probably going to be a Back for me.

How about for you, is this a back or a brick? Have you played the original game and are going for the expansion?

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The Game

This game has you racing to raise the temperature, oxygen levels, and flip over ocean tiles to score the most points. To do this you are playing down cards, in two different ways. The first is to select the action you are going to take. You can develop, construct, activate actions, produce income or draw cards. And they activate in that particular order. But only the ones which had cards played down activate. But on develop and construct, you are playing cards from your hand that do different things. Development cards will improve your production. The other cards can give you a one time benefit or help you build up an engine to get more cards, resources, or points.

As players you build out that engine to raise those two tracks and flip tiles. In the end, you want to play out the most points possible. But if you only focus on driving those three end game conditions, all which need to be completed, early in the game, you can end up without an engine built later. So it is a balancing act of getting points consistently versus a lot at the end.

What Doesn’t Work

Some of the pieces don’t work well in this game. Let’s run through all of them. The ocean tiles are dumb, it’s kind of a carry over from Terraforming Mars. Now, don’t get me wrong, the rewards on the tiles are nice, but the fact they are tiles is dumb. This is a card game, those tiles are just fiddly and annoying. To get to the middle ones you need to push the rest out of the way. Just give me a small deck of cards to put on the scoring board and let me flip one from the top each time to determine the rewards.

Then there are the cubes in this game. Cubes are used to track the oxygen, temperature, scores, production levels and supplies. This isn’t bad, but I have the Target version, so in the Kickstarter version on the player board for production and supplies they have a dual layer board. The Target version is flimsy cardboard. Now, that is me not spending on the Kickstarter, but I will need to upgrade my version later. And the score track and oxygen and temperature tracks, the cubes just don’t fit on them, and that I’d call bad design.

I also already want more cards in the game. I haven’t played it a ton of times, but we ran through all the cards in the first game and had to reshuffle. Now, not a major issue, but I wouldn’t mind a few more cards already. There are some cards dependent upon temperature or oxygen levels, so those aren’t played as often.

What Works

Engine Building

For me the engine building works really well. Being able to produce so much and really target different types of production to either play more cards, or make points somehow is a lot of fun. And it is a tactical engine building game. There is enough randomness in the cards that you get that you need to be able to pivot. Maybe you are getting a lot of planets to start but then draw cards that need heat, you’ll need to pivot. I like that style of engine building because I can’t go in with a single set strategy, like say Dominion.

Corporations

I also like the corporations. Any game where you start out different from everyone else, that’s fun. And I like the different types of corporations. I have played with one where I got a ton of credits but not that great a secondary power. I also have gone with one that gave me starting production in plants but way fewer credits and a solid power. So you can really decide between a wide variety of corporations when you start to tailor your game play.

Simultaneous Play

So, one thing I didn’t talk about was t hat each phase, the ones that are activated anyways, everyone does. So if I do development and you do research, we both get to do both of them. But when you play down a phase you get an extra benefit. So if I am the one who played down development, we can all play a development card, at the same time, but I get to play mine for three less cost wise. This simultaneous play really keeps the game moving. Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition isn’t the fastest game, but there is never downtime.

Is This Game Good?

I really like this game. I covered some issues but they are generally production issues. And the thing with cards, I don’t know all the cards, and I haven’t played all of them myself in my plays. I just can see myself picking a strategy and fishing for my favorite cards eventually. But the game itself is a ton of fun. I like engine building a lot, and this gives me that. I like games with little to no downtime, and I get that. And I like games that make me think about what my opponent is doing.

Going back to the picking of actions. I can decide to trigger another phase if I think you will trigger the one I want. If you need money and I need money, maybe I do research to get more cards because I’ll get money when you trigger production. So there isn’t player interaction of a negative variety, but if I’m smart I can leverage what you are doing or likely to do, to my advantage.

My Grade: A-
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: C

I think some gamers will want this game to be more like Terraforming Mars was. It’s not bad that it isn’t, but that’ll be the complaint. And for casual gamers, there is still a lot going on. It’s really fun though, and I’d recommend it for someone who is looking to take a step into some more complex games.

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Pro

• The setting looks amazing
• Mythic is known company
• Aesthetic is amazing
• Hidden action selection

Cons

• Game play didn’t look that exciting

Campaign Thoughts

It’s a little bit lighter on this section than it is sometimes. I do think that there’s more than I could pull out of it, but honestly, I look at a lot of Kickstarters and there aren’t a ton of massive things that stand out to me. I want to like this game more than I do by just looking at it, but when it comes down to it, I have other games with a post-apocalyptic setting. I have other survival sorts of games, and while it has minis that look cool, I feel like the game play doesn’t match that.

Now, I will say, I’ve only seen a game play, not more, so maybe I am missing something from that one that Man vs Meeple did on a live stream, but generally I’ve been able to get the game and I’ve enjoyed how the present games, even if the games aren’t for me. And I felt like I understood the game, but it was just lacking in excitement that the game looks like it should have. I don’t feel like they had any “aha” moments or stand-up moments, and with the theme, it feels like there should be those in the game.

Back or Brick?

For me, this is a brick. I realize that I’m probably missing something and that there is likely a good and interesting game there, I just don’t think it’s for me. The game play doesn’t match what I see on the table, and the aesthetic and theme aren’t enough to push it over to where I’d want to try it for myself for sure, especially at that price point, which is a fair price point, but not one that you take a risk on.

How about for you, is this a back or a brick? Is there something that you think I’m missing in game play?

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First, let me set up the scenario, last night we started learning this game at 7 PM and finished at 11 PM, the game itself says 60-90 minutes (on the box, on the website 25 minutes per player), so clearly we were well over that. However, it was a learning game and we were also playing with five players. That’s why I’ve added in the Warlord Box to the title. The game out of the base box only plays four, but there is the ability to add a fifth player in the Warlord Box and another way to add a sixth in another Kickstarter thing, but we didn’t play with that. So when I look at the time, the game probably didn’t really start until closer to 8 and with the 90 minute length, I think with five players it would always be over 90 minutes and maybe at best 25 minutes per player at five, but probably a bit longer.

When breaking this down, I do think I need to point out that the fifth player expansion does change the game, and I’m not sure it’s for the better unless you’re are very familiar with the game. It adds in ports, which is interesting as they allow you to move around the board faster, they add a section to the board, a monster you can control, and more. The ports are fairly hard to see on the board, and it adds in more to teach because you have to explain how the monster can be controlled, the special temple that goes there, and how the extra board connects to the main board, how Poseidon works, and a few more things. This doesn’t massive increase the complexity of the game but it adds to what you need to teach and while there are cards for everything in the core box for player aids, they didn’t provide them for the fifth player and they didn’t provide five aids for Poseidon as compared to four for the gods in the base box. It just makes the game take longer and adds a bit more confusion, which lengthens an already longer learning game anyways.

With that, we also used more expansions out of the Warlord box, but most of them are just monsters and while some of them have specific rules for using them, they tend to be pretty similar to the other monsters that you’re already using. For me that addition didn’t really affect the game. The other piece used was the extra character choices, which you need to use if you’re playing with five players, but again, not that hard to use them and it just fit in nicely to the game versus adding all that much complexity like Poseidon and the 5th Player Expansion did for teaching rules.

But let’s talk about the base game and the game experience. Besides myself being tired now because the game went late, I really did enjoy the game. After one play through that was not optimum as we were all learning and we played with five, this game is resting around a B+/A- range for me. What works well in the game is the win conditions. You can win one of four ways, controlling a monument once it’s been completed at the end of three turns. Controlling two regions. Controlling five temples. Or, finally, having defeated 3 monsters. With that, it gives you a lot of things to shoot for. I was playing a character who got a priest to start the game, my plan with her was to go for temples first, but then that changed to building a monument and controlling two regions at various points in the game. And I was one turn away from winning at one point in time in the game. Other players, including the player who won, also switched their goals in the middle of the game as it just happened to work that way for them as well.

Mechanically, the game is fun. You’re moving your hero, hoplites, praying at the monuments and using other things like artifacts or special abilities, once each per turn, if you want. However, where the game works best is special ability board. You’re covering up abilities as you go, so you can’t use the fight monster ability, for example, twice before you have at least done one other action. And building monuments, that’s the way to get everything back, but it can also push the end of the game faster. I think that was one of the weaknesses in our game, we knew that monuments could end the game faster, so no one built on the monuments, we had one that was completed and the legs of another one, so there were, at the end, five monument actions done, but we could have done way more throughout the game, refreshing certain abilities faster, such as hunting to allow us to get closer to the end of the game, as you can do a total of nine monument actions and have not completed a single monument if you want.

This game definitely has a good amount of tactics to it. I’m going to say that more than strategy, when picking your hero at the beginning, there is strategy in that and you can try and strategize it all together so that you have better synergy with your hero, but even that can change, and I think that for basically any hero, any of the win conditions would be possible. I mainly think that some of my decisions would have changed earlier in the game had I been thinking about it. When I won, I almost was able to take over two full regions, and I thought that was working well, but I probably should have been going for monument victory, because I had been taking cards that helped me defend areas, which works well for taking over regions, but would have given me a strong force that would have been hard to unseat for giving up the monument. And I think that the other options I had available, I could have picked them as well if I had wanted to go for different victory conditions.

While the hero cards can inform some to start the game, the biggest piece of strategy, for me, came with the blessing cards, this happens when you do a bless draft after certain temples are built. These cards are all powerful, so I picked one that killed a hoplite before they even had a chance to attack when a battle started in an area that I was the defender and allowed me to fortify more troops in from an adjacent area when I was the defender. Other people picked cards that would help them with fighting or other things, it’s definitely a cool aspect of the game and gives you another very variable thing. And this game offers nice variability with event cards which change up set-up and how the game plays out, different gods to use, character powers, artifacts that come up, and blessings. I think that will make the game truly replayable.

Overall, I really did enjoy the game. I don’t think that the rule book is the best, and with a teaching video out there, before doing the teach for new players, I’d probably have them watch the video in the future. I also don’t think that I’d do a five player game again. No really issues with the expansion that adds it in, but the ports are just a bit clunky and it just adds enough length to the game, I think even with experienced players, that it probably wouldn’t be worth it. I think right now the issue is finding people to play it with again, because it can take a little bit of time, and I’d prefer to play it sometime soon so that I don’t forget all of the rules again.

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But we finish off with action points. What are action points, they are points or tokens that tell you how much you can do on a single turn. Maybe you can take five actions, and then you allocate those points to specific actions you can take, like moving or attacking.

5. Dead Men Tell  No Tales
A cooperative game, in this one you are spending actions to try and find treasure on a pirate ship that is haunted and currently on fire. You have to contain the fire, try and find the treasures, deal with skeletal deck hands, and you have a certain number of actions you can take to do all of that. This game is like a lot of cooperative games in that you feel like you can never do enough. The interesting thing this game adds in with action points is that you can pass on your unused action points to the next player. So it might be that you are limited in what you can do, but the next person has a lot of useful things that they can do. You can move closer into position to set-up what for your next turn and then pass any unused action points to the next player so that they can do more. In a lot of cooperative games the action points are static but you can act upon other characters, in this one, you can’t do that, but you can pass out action points.

4. Dead of Winter
Dead of Winter is an interesting game on this list as it uses dice as your action points in the round. The dice don’t encompass every action you can take in the game, but the strongest actions, the ones that help you complete objectives are going to spend a die. Not only that, but the number you roll on the dice makes a difference as well. Some characters aren’t able to search or kill zombies with a low die roll. So in that case your die, which is supposed to be your strongest action is now made weaker and it looks like you are hurting the colony and people are starting to suspect you are the traitor more, but at the same time, they can see the roll, so they know it wasn’t great. And then you get more dice and actions when you have more survivors, but you are also responsible for more zombies showing up and more mouths to feed and making the game harder that way.

3. Arkham Horror LCG
This game doesn’t use the points as a physical token, but a lot of the games with action points don’t. Action allowance might be a good way of describing it as well, because you have a certain total number of actions you can take on a turn. Arkham Horror does this well, limiting you to two actions, and while you can do the same actions multiple times, you always feel the crush of not being able to do enough. Arkham Horror LCG is a placeholder on this list for all of Fantasy Flights Lovecraftian games as you feel the crunch Arkham Horror, Elder Signs, and Mansions of Madness as well. It’s a system that works well for them as it keep the tension high when you don’t have enough actions to do everything that you’d want.

2. Blood Rage
Action points are huge in Blood Rage as you try and get into territories, move troops around, and be able to hang in the round long enough to stop your opponent from doing what they are trying to do. What I like about the action point system in Blood Rage is that certain actions cost a certain number of action points. And the monsters, who are possibly more powerful or useful in some other way, also have action point costs. So you’re trying to balance using your action points so that you don’t run out much before anyone else, because once you are out of action points, you are out of the round at least in being able to take the large actions that are going to be most useful long term.

1. Pandemic Legacy
This game does great with action points, basically each turn the active player spends up to four action points, moving around, curing diseases, trading cards, and finding cures. Then as the game continues, you gain more and more actions that you can take. At the end of the game, you’re trying to balance out these actions in hopes that you’ll be able to survive. Pandemic does a really good job with these actions, because it evolves over time. A lot of games have more of a static action pool with maybe unique characters have special player power actions that they can take, but Pandemic Legacy, both seasons one and two, give more options as you play and unlock more of the game.

There are a ton of games that use this action point/action selection mechanic. It’s a strong mechanic for adding tension to decisions, because you’re almost always short of the action points you want to use in a round. This mechanic, however, isn’t always an ideal for players who might have AP, because it makes your choice really matter. But let’s talk about some honorable mentions:

Forbidden Desert/Forbidden Island – Cooperative exploration games that feel like Pandemic light.
Flash Point: Fire Rescue – Another Pandemic like game that also has a bit of a Dead Men Tell No Tales feel to it as well, this time you’re being fire fighters though.
KrosMaster Arena – Plan your movement and attacks in this Chibi MOBA style game. A little bit simple at times, and almost ways a best way to use your action points.
The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game – This game is all about the Fate Points, as the action points are called. It’s a pool of action points which is a very different feel from a lot of the games as you as a team have to replenish and manage that pool of points.

What are some of your favorite games with action points? Is action points/action selection a mechanic that you enjoy?

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