How To Play Yaxha

Yaxha is a pyramid building game. You are going to make a selection of cubes that you want to add to your pyramid. Then you stack those cubes onto your game board. A lot of the game is going to be about how you choose the cubes and how the cubes score for you.

Getting Cubes

In BGA you select the card that has the cubes you want on it. Every player does that at the same time. In person you use a card to indicate which of the groups of cubes you want. Again, everyone does that at the same time. If you match with no one, you get those cubes to add. If you and someone else match, you then see who has the lowest tie breaker card. That person gets that one and the other person gets the leftover one. Finally you swap your tie breaker card so you won’t win a tie with that person the next time.

Placing Cubes

Then the other big part of the game is placing out your cubes. You need to place them on the lowest level or a a spot on a higher level that is completely filled in. You place starting at a 4 by 4 grid, then 3 by 3 and up to a single cube on top.

On the first level you place cubes however you want. That is going to change based off of how you score in the game. But we’ll talk about scoring next. After the first level, you must place a cube adjacent to a cube of the same color. That might be adjacent below, but if you can’t, you discard a cube.’

Scoring

Once your pyramids are built, you score them. There are two different scoring areas. The first way to score is special bonus scoring cards. These give you objectives as to how to place out your cubes. It might be something like all five colors visible on the bottom layer and you get five points. But they vary in what they are.

The other, bigger, scoring way is that you look at your different colors visible on your pyramid. You find your biggest group of visible cubes for each color and you score them. The larger the group, the more points you are going to score. But keep in mind, cubes in the middle of your pyramid on levels one and two, the 4 by 4 and 3 by 3, don’t count for scoring. The player with the most points is crowned the winner.

What Doesn’t Work

This is a really simple game. I think for a lot of people it is going to feel a bit to simple. Even the gamer-y type elements like the bonus scoring, that is pretty simple in what it is doing. Though, I might play with a kid without them, everyone else is going to understand them really quickly, even if they aren’t gamers. This is going to mean that it won’t work for a lot of people who want a bit more meat on a game. But I plan on talking about it as a positive as well for the game.

What Works

The game is simple to play and get to the table. In fact, it’s simple to teach as well, and that is going to make a good game for a lot of situations. I like a game that has fun elements to it, like stacking up your pyramid while still giving you a few fun choices to make. And Yaxha does that by knowing what it wants to be as a game without adding in too much to it.

I think Yaxha also makes a smart choice with how you get your cubes. That element of deciding do I go for a group I really want but someone else might really want or try for my second best option is good. It’s a simple decision but one that adds a little bit to the game. You might wonder how. I sometimes decide to go for one my opponent will get just so I can get a lower number. Yes, I might miss out on my second best option, but I control my choice for the future.

The game is also good with the scoring and the placement rules. They are simple, and I want that in a game like this. If it were to be much more, it would feel overly complicated for how simple the game is. But I still need to make a choice every now and again about how I place things. And knowing when to start the second layer and how to hopefully not lose out on playing cubes is good in the game. It isn’t a standout element, but one that works.

Who Is Yaxha For?

Yaxha is a great game for the holidays. I talk about holiday games fairly often where on Nerdologists.com. But what is a holiday game? It’s one that is easy to teach and play with basically anyone. It is great for those times when you don’t want to play a party game. So you play something like Yaxha because everyone is able to learn it. Now it is limited to four players, but for that smaller holiday gathering, it is one that works well.

It isn’t going to be for the people who want to play a really heavy or involved game. But those are for when you want to game. Yaxha is for when you want something to do but also want some time to chat around the table.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Yaxha

I think that Yaxha is a fun game. Is it a game that I want to own, maybe. Is it a game that I’ll play all the time, that is unlikely. But it really does have a nice niche for a game. And it is a game with a small footprint. I talk about it as a game where you play it at the holidays with that smaller group and chat. IT is also one you could take to a brewery or coffee shop and play as well as you have a chat. And that is the type of game I like to own a few of so I don’t get board with the ones that I own.

That said, it is simple. And I know that it is not going to be a game for a bunch of people because of that simplicity. But I think without the scoring objective cards it is one that I’d enjoy and my kid could play. So know what you are getting into with Yaxha. And I say try it on BGA if you can because it’s that good sort of game that is just fun to play around with. But it might just be that, try it a couple of times and move on.

Grades

My Grade: B-
Gamer Grade: D+
Casual Grade: B+
Strategy (out of 10): 4
Luck (out of 10): 4
Plan or Adapt: Adapt

I’ve added in something else to maybe help clarify my thoughts a bit more. This is the plan or adapt. I’ll put this disclaimer down to clarify. But is the game, Yaxha, one that you plan from the start and come up with a whole strategy, no. This is a game that you adapt to what is happening and the cubes you get.

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Catch Up on the Top 100 Games

100 through 91
90 through 81
80 through 71
70 through 61

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition – 60 through 51

60. Trinket Trove

Publisher: GameHead
Designer: Rocco Privetera

Buy Trinket Trove

I love how Trinket Trove has pretty simple rules. But it is a game that offers more than just simple game play. You collect cards in your hand that will be your score at the end of the game. There is a twist, though, as those cards you also use to bid on other cards. So you need to bid to get more cards or get cards that you want, but that means you mess up your hand. I think that little twist is clever as well as being able to take the cards others have bid to make for a really fun game.

59. Vampire: The Masquerade – CHAPTERS

Publisher: FLYOS
Designers: Thomas Flippi, Gary Paitre

Buy Vampire: The Masquerade – CHAPTERS

Now to another one of those big adventure games that I love, we have Vampire: The Masquerade – CHAPTERS. This is set in the World of Darkness/Vampire: The Masquerade RPG setting. And it is a scenario driven adventure game. Now all the scenarios chain together, so it is meant more as a GM-less RPG sort of setting. I like the simplicity in which it plays. And I think balancing things like hunger and abilities is interesting in the game. The story is the element that really gets me though, as the combat itself is pretty simple.

58. Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala

Publisher: Days of Wonder
Designer: Bruno Cathala

Buy Five Tribes is Not Available Currently

This mancala style game is going to give you a ton of ways to score points. And I like that tension of trying to figure out a good move on your turn. Now, I know for some that might introduce some analysis paralysis and there are people I won’t play it with. But I like that puzzle of figuring out what I think is a good move for me and dropping off workers until I get to that last spot. I also like that everything gives you points in the game as that makes even a less than perfect turn still give you something.

57. Too Many Bones

Publisher: Chip Theory Games
Designers: Josh J Carlson, Adam Carlson

Buy Too Many Bones

Another adventure game on the list, I own so much stuff for Too Many Bones. This one is about the Gearlocs that you have and leveling them up. Each one is going to play differently. Some of them might let you level up archery as you unlock new dice, others might start to build bombs that you can use in combat. But this game is one with a great flow. You do an adventure piece, you fight some bad guys, you level up and then you repeat. You do that until you feel that you are ready to face off against the boss, and if you are lucky, you are ready and can win.

56. First-Class Letters

Publisher: GameHead
Designer: Peter C Hayward

Buy First-Class Letters

I love roll and write games, and I like word games. This one is a bit of both. You roll letters and you need to come up with words that use them. But there is a twist to that because there is a letter that you can’t use as well. And of course that is going to be a common letter to make it tricky. To add to that, there are some spots where they set the letter the word must start with. And all the words at the end need to be in alphabetical order. There is a bunch going on, but not too much to ruin the fun.

55. Super Fantasy Brawl

Publisher: Mythic Games
Designer: Jochen Elsenhuth

Super Fantasy Brawl is Currently Unavailable

I don’t love all fighting games. There are a few that I find great, and Super Fantasy Brawl is one of them. This is a game of fighting against an opponent to knock out their characters and complete objectives. But what I love about the game is the simplicity of the play. I play three cards a turn and do their actions, one for each color. Or, if I use a color for a reaction on my opponents turn, then it’s two cards on my turn. I also like that you score objectives at the start of your turn. So you need to hold that spot through your opponents turn.

54. Century: Golem Edition

Publisher: Plan B Games
Designer: Emerson Matsuuchi

Buy Century: Golem Edition

Century: Golem Edition is a great hand management engine building game. Each turn is simple, but the better you are at figuring out how to create a combo with the cards in your hand, the better you’ll do. It’s all about getting games and leveling up those games to get Golems, who are points, in the game. You can get the regular version of this as well, it’s the same game, but I love the Golem artwork and the gems in this are just more fun.

53. Pandemic Legacy Season 1

Publisher: Z-Man Games
Designers: Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock

Buy Pandemic Legacy Season 1

This one is for all the Pandemic Games. I love the Pandemic System, though I haven’t played base Pandemic in quite a while. Mainly because I think that Pandemic Legacy Season 1 and Season 2 are so good. The system just works and the story that you get within the legacy games is great. I even played Pandemic Legacy Season 1 solo on Malts and Meeples early on. So you can see that there, if you want to see how it went for me. I almost feel ready to play it again. If legacy isn’t your thing, than maybe Star Wars, Warhammer, or Lovecraftian horrors will work.

52. Mesozooic

Publisher: Z-Man Games
Designers: Florian Fay, Alexander Ortloff-Tang

Mesozooic is Currently Unavailable

Back to back Z-Man Games on the list, but Mesozooic is very different from Pandemic Legacy. This one is a small little drafting game where you draft eleven cards to make your zoo. But those cards, you don’t get to decide where they fit in your zoo. Instead, you shuffle them up and then then a sliding puzzle, you race to get them in place in 45 seconds. You do that draft and slide puzzle three times and whomever has the best zoos at the end of that is the winner of the game. It’s silly fun and I like it as something really different.

51. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

Publisher: Grey Fox Games
Designer: Tobey Ho

Buy Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

Finally wrapping up with #51 we have Deception: Murder in Hong Kong. This is the one social deduction game that I like, and that is because there is deduction as well. You start to piece together the clues from the Forensic Scientist to figure out the murder weapon and clue. Of course the murder and accomplice are trying to keep you away from that, and the witness is trying to subtly point you in the right direction. It’s just a great time and there is always a story in this game.

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 the Top 100 Games

100 through 91
90 through 81
80 through 71

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition 70 through 61

70. Meadow

Published By: Rebel Studio
Designer: Klemens Kalicki

Buy Meadow Here

This game is a beautiful nature game. It’s all about creating a meadow and stacking cards on top of each other really. Each card you select is going to have requirements as to how to place it. To go along with that, the selection process is great. I like how you place a token on a row or column and that token determines which thing you take. So you need to plan that out and sometimes make due with the limited placement access you have.

69. Mountain Goats

Published By: Allplay
Designer: Stefan Risthaus

Buy Mountain Goats Here

Mountain Goats is a little, simple, climbing game. All you do is roll your dice and decide how to split them up. Then you move your mountain goat up the tracks that are those numbers. If you reach the top or are at the top, you gain those points. If someone else is at the top when you get there, you knock them down to the bottom again. The game is so simple, but it works really well

68. burncycle

Published By: Chip Theory Games
Designers: Josh J Carlson, Shannon Wedge

Buy burncycle Here

Now we move to burncycle which is a much bigger game. In this game you complete one off missions as robots. I like the theme of the game, robots took over and now big corporations and people have taken it back and are out after the robots. You need to sneak around to complete missions both in buildings and on the network. And the burndown of the cycle is a great tool for the game as well. Just a lot of really fun elements into a big game.

67. The Lost Expedition

Published By: Osprey Games
Designer: Peer Sylvester

Buy The Lost Expedition Here.

The Lost Expedition is back on the list. This game is a great cooperative game. And I always like to mention, it is a good one for not having too much alpha gaming. The players all make their card choices with no input. And it changes up from morning trek to evening trek, I like that about the game as well. The former is playing cards in numerical order, or they slot in that order, while the other you just play out cards. So it changes up the strategy and sometimes you just end up stuck.

66. ISS Vanguard

Published By: Awaken Realms
Designers: Andrzej Betkiewicz, Krysztof Piskorski, Marcin Swierkot

Buy ISS Vanguard Here.

Now to another big campaign game. This one is all about exploring space and figuring out the mystery of why a message brought humanity out here in the stars. The game is also interesting because it’s split into two parts, the planetary exploration part and then the ship management aspect. I like both parts and it makes for a fun campaign, one that I need to get back to, ideally in a group.

65. Mansions of Madness

Published By: Fantasy Flight Games
Designer: Nikki Valens

Buy Mansions of Madness Here.

Now another scenario based game, Mansions of Madness is a classic at this point. Do you want to go on some big Lovecraftian adventure, but as a one off? This game is going to give you that. I like how grand it is, I like how the app lets the scenarios be different each time (albeit just slightly), and I like how the scenarios you play are so different. This is a good beer and pretzels type of game when you want a big game for an evening.

64. Sonora

Published By: Pandasaurus Games
Designer: Rob Newton

Not Available Currently

I like my roll and write games. And Sonora is a great one for that and it has a fun twist with it. Yes, you get all the combos that you get from a lot of roll and write games. But you also get to flick discs. So instead of rolling dice you are flicking discs with numbers to see what areas you activate. It’s fun to knock someone off a spot that they really wanted. And then, like I said, you go heads down and get to combo as many things as you can.

63. Lands of Galzyr

Published By: Snowdale Design
Designers: Seppo Kuukasjarvi, Sami Laakso

Buy Lands of Galzyr

Lands of Galzyr is an interesting game because it’s really different than most games that I’ve played. This one is all about going on adventures and completing quests. But the stakes, while often cool and interesting, are never that high because what quest you go on, that’s determined by whatever shows up. I like as well how you can rotate your skills, so you might start out sneaking and then end up with great lore, it’s up to you and the quests you take.

62. Kohaku

Published By: 25th Century Games
Designer: Danny Devine

Not Available Currently

I like games where you can draft. And Kohaku gives you that as well as being a beautiful game to play. The copy as own has the acrylic tiles which give it a depth from the surface of the water to the bottom which looks amazing. But the game play is good as well. You pick out a koi and a scoring tile and they need to be adjacent to each other. Then when you play them out, you can never put a koi orthogonally adjacent to another koi and same with scoring tiles. So it’s a bit scoring tableau that you create.

61. Nidavellir

Published By: GRRRE Games
Deisgner: Serge Laget

Buy Nidavellir Here

Finally is Nidavellir. This is a game that I actually got rid of at one point. But then I decided to hop into a three player game on BGA. And I realized what I had not liked about the game before. Nidavellir is a great bidding and dwarf set collection game, but for me, only as a three or more player game. It’s fun to try and get your bids just right and still upgrade your coins. Plus you need to diversify what you collect so you can get the bonus powerful dwarves.

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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Though, I think a lot of gamers like to collect types of games that they like. I might say sometimes for the intellectual property or theme. But other times because they just love that type of game. So they play that type of game a lot and they want to own them. That is a valid reason to own them. But it’s not going to be one I talk about coming up here.

What Do I Mean Same Type of Board Game?

First off, let’s define what I mean by that. I mean two different things, and possibly both can be true about a game. The most common is a game with a similar mechanism to it. So that might be that it is a drafting game, deck building game or trick taking game to name a few examples. The other might be that it fits an overall theme of game in some way. By that I mean an adventure game or a filler game. These give you a feel of doing something in particular or a niche in particular of gaming.

Reasons To Own the Same Type of Board Game

Variation

Variation is the first thing that I want to talk about. This means that while a central mechanism might be similar or the theme or feel of the game might be similar they do something differently. So when you decide to pull a game off the shelf you are making a choice between the differences in those games.

Example 1: Stars of Akarios and ISS Vanguard

Both of the above are big space adventure games. But Stars of Akarios is going to give you some exploration but a lot of it is going to be tactical space combat. On the flip side, ISS Vanguard is going to be a lot of planetary exploration and ship management. So while you might get that big grand adventure feel, they vary how you do that.

Example 2: Fox in the Forest and Fox in the Forest Duet

Now we are narrowing down here. Both of these games are two player trick taking games. The difference is one is competitive and one is cooperative. And that is variation on what you are playing.

Variety

The next thing is similar but do you want variety in what you are playing. Meaning if you place a certain style of game a lot do you want variety in what you are playing and when you play it. I find if I play a certain game a lot to fill a particular niche in my gaming, it’ll often get left be the wayside and sold. But if I rotate the games, a game is more apt to stick in my collection.

Example 1: Filler Games

I think that filler games are a great example for this. I own probably 20-30 filler games that are just small box fillers. Why, because they travel very easily with me. And because they travel so easily that means that I can take different games to play with my family. And the same with game night, it makes it easy to pull out of a different one. But, for example, we played Tsuro a ton. And because we played it a ton my wife and I got board of that as a filler game. Tsuro didn’t become a bad game, we just got burned out and tired of it.

Example 2: Trick Taking Games

Much like filler games, I think it would be easy to play a trick taking game over and over again until you burn out on it. Because these games are shorter to play, generally, you might play a couple of games in a sitting. But if you play the same game over and over and over again it starts to become stale. The example of this for me would be Hearts or Euchre on the computer. They are fun, but I played them so much that I am somewhat burned out on them, or at least I was.

Player Count

This one I think is more obvious than some other ones. But I do want to clarify a few things about it. A lot of games I might say player count matters on. But it is possible for a board game to say that the player count is 1-5 and another one of the same style of game and mechanisms to say 1-5 as well and to still be worthwhile having in your collection. What I mean is, what is a game best at for player count. Sometimes a game might say that it plays great at 5 but that takes a 45-60 minute three player game to two hours.

Example: Nidavellir

Now, this is just a single game but it serves my example well. I dislike Nidavellir as a two player. Or it is probably more honest to say I find that it is more fragile as a two player game. But as a three or four player game I love it. So while it has bidding, open drafting, and set collection, I will not play it at two. So I want other games two fill in that player count.

Complexity

Another question is how complex a game is. Because sometimes a game might give you a similar feeling or use a similar mechanism but might be complex at different levels. And for that reason it might create a lot more difficulty to get a game to the table and for that reason you might play it with a certain group or situation versus another game.

Example: Aeon’s End versus Astro Knights

Both of these are cooperative deck building boss battler games. There are some differences to them, but I think that one is easier to table than another. In particular, Astro Knights is a simpler game to teach and play, in my opinion. Some of that is because there is less work to get it to the table. The deck that you set-up to buy from in the game is much faster and simpler to do. I also think that it is a bit more streamlined with understanding the heroes.

Game Length

The final one I have for the list is game length. Now I mention game length with player count. And that can be a factor with that as well. But sometimes it matters less with player count and more with how long you want to mess around with that mechanism or how much time you have to play a game. If I want to play a trick taking game and I have ten minutes versus forty minutes that is going to change the game that I play.

Example: Hero Realms vs Clank! In! Space!

Which do I pick when I want a short deck building game? Clank! In! Space! even at two players can take a while. Especially if the players are playing safe and trying to get the best treasure and not rush the end of the game. On the flip side, Hero Realms is a fast two player head to head battler of a game. And it escalates quickly in the deck building. So while a game can draw out a little bit because of healing, it is shorter and faster to play.

What Deck Building Games Do I Need?

So let’s run down my game collection here. In particular, I want to talk about deck building games because that is a style of game that I love. But do I need all of them that I own? First off, let’s create a little list of the deck building games I own. I likely will miss some, but here is that list.

• Clank! Adventure Deck Building Game + Expansions
• Clank! In! Space! + Expansions
• Clank! Catacombs + Expansions
• Clank! Legacy 1 & 2
• Ascension + Expansions
• Xenoshyft: Onslaught
• Xenoshyft: Dreadmire
• Hero Realms
• Aeons End + Expansions
• Aeons End Legacy 1 & 2
• Lost Ruins of Arnak
• Mistborn
• Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle
• Anng’s Destiny
• Nightfall
• Thunderstone Quest
• Tanto Cuoro
• Star Wars: The Deck Building Game
• Astro Knights

So let’s start out, a few that are safe on the list because I just need to play them. So when I run through everything games like Clank! Legacy, Aeon’s End Legacy 2, Anng’s Destiny, Nightfall, Thunderstone Quest, Tanto Cuoro and Star Wars: The Deck Building Game are all safe.

Variation

Variation is going to make a few more safe on the list. Firstly, Lost Ruins of Arnak is a great example of game that is safe. While there is a deck building element to the game it is more of a worker placement and resource management game, or at least as much of that as it is deck building.

Likewise, Mistborn does unique things with it’s powering up mechanisms and that is going to make it a bit more unique than some. And it has a solid solo and cooperative mode to it as well which makes it versatile. But it’s mainly the the metal burning system and leveling up that make it varied from other deck building games.

A question should be asked about Astro Knights and Aeon’s End. While there are some differences, mainly how the market works, the game mechanisms are pretty similar. But each of them has their own niche. I am apt to pull out Astro Knights when I want to introduce someone to deck building but Aeon’s End is less likely. And I think I’d play Astro Knights at a higher player count as well, though it does have the same issue as Aeon’s End.

Game Length and Player Count

I am lumping them together here because they often times are the same thing. So Hero Realms and the Star Wars: Deck Building Game are interesting because they are both two player. Do I need to two two player only deck building games. I say that, but I own to make Hero Realms a solo deck building game as well.

Then I also look at games like Clank! (all versions, Xenoshyft, and Aeon’s End, all games that are bigger deck building games that are going to take longer to play. So do I need them all. In particular I am looking at Clank! because I own so many different versions. Aeon’s End I do as well, but since I own them they can mix and match. Clank! Adventure Deck Building Game, Clank! In! Space! and Clank! Catacombs do not mix and match, so it is a question if I need them all.

Complexity

Now complexity is a spot where I look at it and I think, Ascension is likely safe, but not maybe all the expansions for it. Ascension is a good straightforward deck building game. If I want to just introduce the concept of deck building the base game works wonderfully. But some of the expansions add a bunch more to the game. And while they are stand alone so I don’t need to mix them in, or I can use just them, it does make it harder to get to the table sometimes.

Am I getting Rid of Any?

Honestly, I think I am. Just in this moment, I think I talked myself into getting rid of Clank! The Adventure Deck Building Game and Clank! In! Space!. Why, because while I really like both of them, I think I am just going to play Clank! Catacombs. And if that is the case, why am I going to keep all of them around?

As well as Hero Realms. That one or the Star Wars: Deck Building game is on the chopping block. Now, I know that I said I haven’t played the Star Wars game. This upcoming Tuesday I am likely to have a friend over for gaming. And since it is going to be two of us, that is going to be a chance to get the Star Wars: Deck Building Game played. If I like it, I think that Hero Realms is going.

Upcoming Series

I need to get rid of more games from my board game collection. So that means I need to prep more games for selling. So why not use this framework, clump games together, and see which ones maybe should leave the collection. It’ll kind of be like the culling videos that I did a few years ago, and I might actually turn it into that as well for the Malts and Meeples YouTube channel. So join me on this journey.

Is there any way that I should consider whether or not game overlap is needed or not?

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How To Play Trinket Trove

Like I said, Trinket Trove is a game of drafting and set collection. You score points for the sets that you collect throughout the game. But, that is not where most of the game is. In Trinket Trove, it is all about how you draft.

At the start of the game players are dealt hands of four cards. Then a number of cards equal to the number of players is dealt out. A second card is added to the first card, so there is one stack of two, at lower player counts or two at higher player counts. Then in turn order players bid with cards from their hand to see who picks first.

Bidding

When you bid, you select a number of cards from your hand. This could be 0 or it could be all of them. The number of cards you select is your bid. So if you put out two cards, your bid is two. Now, other players can still bid two, since bidding is for turn order. When you bid you the same number as someone else you look at the numbers on the cards. In the case of a tie, the player who bid first is higher in turn order.

Now, I said you can bid zero. When you bid zero you flip the top card of the deck. That is going to be your bid. But you flip your token over to zero so that everyone knows your bid is zero. So even if you flip a seven and it looks like you have one card, you will not go ahead of players who bid one card.

Drafting

Players in turn order then select two groups of cards. The rules for selecting those groups of cards is pretty simple. You can select any pile, from those flipped or those bid. However, you cannot select the cards that you bid with. If you are the last player in the round and the card you bid with has not been taken, then you can select it.

Rounds

The new turn order is then set for the next round of bidding with the player who bid the most last time going first this time. This is a disadvantage to selecting first the previous round. The game continues until you play either six rounds or five rounds, depending on player count.

The game is clever in that it has you deal out six cards, in a six round game, into a separate pile. The extra card on the first card flipped out comes from that pile. So you use it as a mechanism to count down the rounds.

What Doesn’t Work

I think that the game is going to feel different between player counts. And I suspect that I am going to like it best at higher player counts. Why? Because there is a massive stack of trinkets in the game. Now, it is possible that you could remove some at lower player counts, but that would be a lot of work sorting cards. So instead when you play with two or three, the cards you see is going to be limited. That makes some sets hard to collect, or riskier anyways.

What Works

I love the bidding in this game. I think it is really clever. The idea that your cards, which you are collecting for your set collection are also what you bid with works so well. It reminds me in some ways how Biblios often times has you make tough decisions like that, how do you want to use your cards, for points or not? And it’s a slick system that is easy to keep track of.

Draftable Bids

The fact that you bid is also one of the piles that can be taken is interesting. I always hope to remember what people are taking and then toss out a low bid with something they want. If they take it, that is hopefully going to mean that something I want is available. And then when you bid big because there is something you really want, say two cards or maybe even three, then you know someone else is going to grab that. So do you want to do that.

But, at the same time, a big bid early is interesting. And yes, I know I’m talking a lot about the same thing. It is interesting because if I bid big early, then you might bid two cards so you can get my three. That means, though that I might get two piles or two cards that I like better than what I bid. So there is good strategy in the game.

Game Speed/Set-up

This is a fast game. The slowest element is the bidding and even that is not that slow. I think that someone could spend their time trying to figure out an optimal combination and bid to start. But most of the time, you want to bid as little as possible and not bid anything that would hurt your sets. So I think it is good game in terms of speed of play.

And the set-up is really simple as well. You shuffle up the cards, set 6 or 10 aside, deal out four, and shuffle up player tiles to determine order for the first round. That is it. Now, it is mainly a card game, so I expect the set-up to be fast. But it delivers on that expectation.

Artwork

I want to call out the artwork as well for this game. I think it is great and Sandara Tang, whom I knew first from Flame Craft, is back with some great cute artwork. And I like that the artwork on the cards is always slightly different. But they were smart from a usability standpoint with that art. If a shell is green on one card it might be blue on another, but the shape of the shell never changes. I like that as it allows me to recognize cards very quickly.

Easy Enough to Learn

Finally, I want to talk about how the game is easy enough to learn. I say it is easy enough to learn because I think there is a learning curve when it comes to the bidding. And there is a learning curve when understanding the likelihood of cards coming out of the deck. So while there is a thinky element to the game, overall it is not a complex game to teach others how to play.

Who Is Trinket Trove For?

I think people who like drafting and set collection are going to like the twist of bidding on this game. Mainly because it’s not that blind bidding and it’s not increasing bidding. Plus, it is a good filler style of game. And now, I play a lot of filler style of games, but this one is a good filler game for gamers. There is strategy to the game, but when two groups are playing longer games and one wraps up, this is a good game to keep the brain working, but won’t take too long.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Trinket Trove

Trinket Trove is a great game for me. I like it at lower player counts. And that is where I have played it mainly. I think there is a benefit to playing it with the maximum of six players. Now, it does come with eight character markers, so I wonder if there is a way to play it with eight, or if they plan a mini pack of cards that can bring it up to eight as an expansion.

I want to talk more about the bidding and how great that is. But in this section, I want to talk about how I think that is the biggest hook to the game. That bidding element is where you can really push for what you need, or potentially mess it up. If I were to pick an element of the game that I like best, it is the bidding. The drafting is good, but it is open drafting. And the set collection is interesting because not everything gains you points at the same speed. But that is still set collection. So the bidding is what makes the game.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: B+
Strategy (out of 10): 6
Luck (out of 10): 6

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Top 10 “It’s Been Too Long” Board Games

10. Xenoshyft

This one might be surprisingly low for some people. You know that I like this game a lot. But it’s low because I have played it a bunch. So while I haven’t played this deck building tower defense game recently, it’s one that I have played.

In this game you are cooperating with others to defend your base against alien bug attacks. You do this by creating a line of troops with armor and weapons to defend your sector of the base. Each player is going to defend their sector of the base, but you can help your teammates by giving them troops if you have too many and they don’t have enough. Or using items like grenades to blow up alien monsters or medpacs to heal them. I love how cooperative this game is, and challenging. Which makes me come back to it again and again.

9. Paper Dungeon

This is another game that I really love. But it’s lower on the list against because I’ve played it a bunch. But this is a dungeon crawler game that is a roll and write. You are exploring a dungeon, fighting monsters, finding bosses and trying to deal with those, all while leveling up your heroes and crafting items and health potions.

This is a roll and write game so the theme only comes through so much. But it’s really fun because there is a lot to do in the game. And this is one that I actually played through the whole “campaign” for it on Malts and Meeples YouTube. So you can checkout that video below. But the combinations just work so great that I really love this game, and I have an expansion for it that I need to get played.

8. Ship Shape

This is a funny little game but it’s been too long since I played it. It’s all about being the best pirate and not having too much contraband, but also getting that treasure as well. The main thing that sets this apart from other games, and puts it onto the list, is that you are bidding for what you want, but you can’t see everything you might need to know.

The game has you stacking tiles onto your cargo hold. Each tile is going to cover up certain parts of the hold. Now, all the tiles are stacked on top of each other as you bid, as well. So if you want the top tile you need to bid the highest number. But you can see some down the stack to know what might be on some of the lower tiles and if they might fit your hold better. But it’s unlikely that you can see everything, so do you risk it and bid lower. Of course, it all depends on what the other players bid as well to see if you get what you want or not.

7. Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition

This one falls into that category of I’ve played it a number of times. So do I need to play it again as much as some, probably not. But when it comes to engine building games, Ares Expedition is a great game. And I know that I have new content for cooperative and solo play to add to the game. As well as objectives to add to the game as well, if I want, so there is new stuff.

But I really love how Ares Expedition works. In this game every player is going to choose an action to do that round, and you choose it in secret. Then you reveal and you do the actions a particular order so it is building first and drawing cards, I believe at the end. Everyone plays every action that someone picked. But on the action that you picked, you get a bonus. And it’s possible that multiple people, or everyone, might pick the same action. So one round it might only be one action, which is interesting.

The game is then about building out an engine to gain points. You do this by terraforming Mars as well as getting points from cards as you build out that engine. The game is not super short, though, I’ve heard, shorter than Terraforming Mars. And it’s so much fun to play that I don’t mind it being a longer play.

6. Trailblazers

There are a few games on the list that I’m not sure why I haven’t played them recently Trailblazers is one of them. The big reason right now is that I don’t know where it is in my game collection. I know I own it. I know that I like it. But where is it, I’m not sure.

In this game you complete three different types of routes as you are out hiking, biking, or kayaking. Each of them creates a loop from the trailhead back to the start. You do this by drafting cards and playing them out. You draft over four rounds. And on the first round you only have one of the three trailheads out in play. Then the next round you add another and so on until the final round all of them are out. This helps you focus your building efforts a bit more.

But it’s fun because you gain points for all the sections of a trail. And sometimes a trail can cross itself and that gives you more points, or be crossed by another trail for more points. The game is simple and easy to play. And it’s not one that I find too stressful to play which is nice as well.

5. Calico

I’m not sure why Calico hasn’t been played in about two years. I really like Calico, though, I need to play Cascadia. The theme for Calico, for me, works better than Cascadia. We might have three cats in our house.

But this is a great tile placement game and I love the pattern matching element to the game. I think that the game is so much fun as you try and get matching colors together, matching patterns together, as well as the objectives that you set for yourself. And getting points for matching patterns to get cats, or colors to get buttons is fun.

The objectives are where the real puzzle and tension of the game comes into play. It might be something like AAA BBB and another one might be A BB CCC. You read those, first one as the example, as three of one color or pattern and three of another color or pattern surrounding that scoring objective. But if you can manage to get three of two colors and three of two patterns between those two colors, you score more points. So there are lots of ways to score points but it’s a really good tight puzzle of a game.

4. Chronicles of Drunagor

This is the only big campaign game on the list. I certainly could add more games like Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon, but I have completed that game. With Chronicles of Drunagor, I played one session and that is it. So I want to play more of the game because I really enjoyed that one play. The issue, I found, is that it wasn’t great for streaming. I want to stream big campaign games maybe for a couple of hours. But because of how Drunagor works, with setting stuff up often mid game, it made it harder. But I think I can play it in shorter bursts, especially if I leave it set-up.

I really like the core mechanism(s) to the game. Firstly there is darkness. Darkness is a negative for the players. So you need to keep ahead of it. I like that it is an element that you use as a timer for the game. It means you can’t sit back too long and heal up or anything like that.

The other thing is the activation cubes. Each character starts out with some cubes of various colors. You use that color to activate that color of action. Then you cover it up. You aren’t able to use that action again until you remove all the cubes. And when you remove all the cubes, you block off one of them “for good” with a black cube. Yes, you can get it back, but that is an action and turn in and of itself.

3. Tesseract

Tesseract is a game that I played twice completely at Gen Con in 2023 and once I got to sit in on the last few turns and take over for a person. The theme of the game is fun, though it only comes through so much. In the game a cube has come to Earth, and it is shrinking. If you and your team are unable to crack the code and understand what the Tesseract is before it disappears a singularity will envelop the Earth, or something like that.

The game is all about managing this cube of dice. It’s going to shrink each turn, of Pandemic like in you do your good stuff then something bad happens. And you need to create collections of dice and numbers to research all the different colors/symbols on the dice and their numbers. But to play out those dice to get it closer to the finish, you create sets or runs of dice that you can use. So it’s all about getting the right dice and manipulating the dice well.

2. The Great Split

Who is the best collector of arts and other things? Well, that could be you in The Great Split. This games main mechanism is simply, I split, you choose. And you use that for set collection to score different types of artwork and literature.

But let’s talk about that main mechanism. What does it mean when I say “I split, you choose”. It means that we all have a collection of cards. I split that collection of cards into two groups. You pick one of the groups to take for yourself and I get the other one back. So when I create that split of cards, I want to create a division that you’ll want, but is just okay for you, and one that I want, but isn’t too good for me that you take it so I can’t have it. It’s a great mechanism, and The Great Split makes it the focus of it’s game.

1. Ready, Set, Bet

I love the chaos of this game. It’s amazingly fun doing the real time bidding on a horse race. And it’s also a blast being the person who is calling the race as well. The whole thing is just chaos and good in a great way. However, I do think you need the right group for it and a large enough group. That is what I’ve been missing for it recently and why it hasn’t been played.

So let’s talk about how this game works. All players have bidding chips. And one player is the caller of the race. That player is going to be rolling two dice and moving the horses down the track. While they are doing that in real time, the players are throwing out chips onto different bidding spots. These spots are for winning, showing, and placing. But also for extra bets like the 7 horse finishing ahead of all blue horses or things like that. You get money at the end of each round, and the player with the most money wins.

Final Thoughts

There are so many more board games that I could put on this list. If it’s not obvious, I love board games. And it’s fun to see what new games come out and play them. But sometimes I really want to get back to some classic ones that I’ve enjoyed a lot. It’s something that I need to make space for in my gaming. So while I’m getting very close to 50 new games for the year, I also need to play through some of these games on the list and enjoy them again.

What are some games that you want to get back to the table?

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How to Play Furnace

Furnace is an engine building game, like I mentioned, that is played over four rounds. And each round has two parts because you aren’t just building an engine, you need to get the cards for the engine. To do that, you are doing an open auction or bidding process. There are some unique rules to the auction that we’ll talk about in the next section.

At the end of the auction you get cards and resources for your engine. You put the cards into an order that when it fires off makes the most sense. You collect your resources and then spend those in the engine to turn out money. The money you get is purely your points, the more profitable that you are, the more points you get and you win the game.

That’s the simple version of it. But there is more going on in Furnace to talk about. So let’s dive deeper into three areas.

The Auction

The first spot is the auction in Furnace. Honestly, probably the most unique part of the game. And the part of the game that I think with two players, which I played at, is just okay. I’ll talk about the mechanism they use to balance it in a bit with two players.

But the system is simple. Players have chips to bid with, or tokens I guess a better way of putting it. The tokens are one through four. You play one at a time on the cards that you’d want to add to your engine. There are specific rules on where you can play, though, you only are allowed to play on one where you haven’t played. And one where that number isn’t yet, aka. no ties. So it offers some strategy, do you keep back your four to steal something late? Or do you go early to lock in something you want or need?

The other element is that you still get something if you lose the bid. Each card has symbols on the bottom that you use for your engine. On the top, however, is something that people who lost the bid get to use. It might be gaining resources. Or it might be the ability to change resources into rarer resources. And you get to do that top action the number of times equal to the chip you put down. So if it’s gain two coal and you played a three, you get six coal. The person who won the bid just gets the card, no resource bonus.

Two player Cavet

Now quick about two player. In two player there is a dummy player who randomly places out their numbers. The downside to this is that it’s random. So they might steal a spot you really want with a four. They always bid last, but it can mess things up. And because it’s random it makes the auction less strategic.

The Engine Building

Now let’s talk about how Furnace does it’s engine building. I think that, again it’s simple. You run through the cards that you got in whatever order you want to. Basically you spend some time after each auction phase to get your engine in the right order. When you feel like it’s good, you kick it off and you start gaining and spending resources.

I like this element of the game, and the complexity of the engine is not too high. It’s basically trade resources for another resource, rarer one. Gain resources, or sell the resources. That is it, and I like that about the game. Because, if there is too much more that you could do with your engine, it’d bog down the game.

Even with that said, I would be somewhat careful who I play this with. Someone who is very analysis paralysis prone is going to find themselves shuffling little things and calculating little points just to make sure it is perfectly optimized. A timer would be an option to help with that, but it’s not part of the game, naturally. It shouldn’t affect most people, the game isn’t that complex, but it will some, and might make the game feel too slow to some people who just sit there.

Owner and Starting Card

Finally two things to talk about the owner and the starting card. These are two things that make you a bit unique. The starting card is pretty similar for everyone. What the card has is basically the same for everyone. You gain and upgrade token, you can convert a resource to points, and you can use your upgrade token. The upgrade token is simply that you can flip cards in your engine to make them better. Adding a second ability to trigger.

The owners, which might not be the right term, are more interesting in terms of giving unique game play. They provide you with a special power that means you can do something unique to your character. In my game play, I could spend two coal to repeat a card. My opponent could upgrade without the upgrade token. They aren’t game breaking, but they let you break the rules in interesting ways, if you can utilize them well.

Final Thoughts on Furnace

I like Furnace. After an initial play, I believe that I gave it an 8 on Board Game Geek. So I like the game a lot. But it isn’t without a concern to me. But let’s talk about what I like about it first. And I think the most interesting part is the auction. I love the strategy that I could see, even with the randomness of the dummy player in two player mode. I ideally win a card with my four and three for my engine. But if I don’t, well, then I gain a lot of resources, hopefully.

And I think the strategy around which chip to bid when is interesting. Because it is possible to get blocked out of a spot you want because someone plays down the same number. So you need to weigh that out as to when you guarantee you get something. Or when you hope to sneak a three onto a card and be able to keep it. Or I want to try, in a three player game, holding back a two and seeing about stealing a bid.

But let’s talk about my concern. It’s not a negative, and they already have helped with it some. There is an expansion for the game, I own it, but I haven’t played with it yet. But my concern is that that the variety in cards is low. That said, too much variety and it would cause analysis paralysis to run rampant. So they need to balance the variety so I feel like I’m building a unique engine each time. But so much that it locks up the game. And the expansion adds a few more cards for that variety.

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100 through 91 here.

90 through 81 here.

80 through 71 here.

70 through 61 here.

60 through 51 here.

Top 100 Games 2022 Edition – 50-41

50. No Thanks!

No Thanks is a small box game with a lot of fun to it. I think that it is almost a small box classic at this point in time. In this game you try and get as few points as possible by saying “No thanks” to cards by putting tokens on them. But run out of tokens you can’t pass and you need to take whatever number comes your way. So it’s a balance of how many tokens, which are -1 point each, are worth it to take a higher number to avoid taking a really high number?

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49. Sagrada

Sagrada has been higher on my list before. I think it’s just dropped a little bit because I hadn’t played it in a while, but I’d also just played it a lot at the start. I still really like Sagrada and the dice drafting. It is also one of those games that I was talking about. It is a relaxing game for me to play. I like the puzzle of drafting and dice placement.

I really like the game as a teaching game as well. I can tailor the difficulty to of the game to different groups. There are expansions you can add in to ramp things up. Or you can up the difficulty with the scoring things you can add in or the tools that you can use. It means I use it often as more of a basic game to teach people and get to the table. I want to mix in more of the things soon.

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48. Ready Set Bet

Ready Set Bet is a game that I got to play and learn at Gen Con this year. Ready Set Bet! is a real time horse racing and betting game. And it just has infectious excitement around it as you play it. One person is calling out the the races while everyone else is trying to get their bets. There is a hectic nature to it, but because there is the excitement of how the horses are doing, I feel like compared to a lot of real time games, it is much less tense. And it’s just a game about how well you can do with getting your bets in.

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47. Arboretum

Another one of the really pretty games, Arboretum is not one of the nice games though. It’s a mean game of trying to get your trees in a row. What makes it so challenging is that you need to play out cards of tree types. But to score those trees you need to have the most, value wise, of those trees left.

So, you can hold trees, high value trees, in your hand to keep your opponents from scoring. That can block them from scoring, which is very much part of the game. You also then need to consider keeping enough in your hand of trees so you can score yourself. It is a very interesting and mean balancing act.

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46. Ohanami

Back to a more relaxing game, Ohanami is a game all about collecting different things like stones or plants to give you points. All of the artwork is beautiful in the game. Though, sometimes I don’t look at it that much, at least not until I play out my cards.

Ohanami is a card drafting game. You pick two cards to add to three columns. Those columns always need to be in numerical order. So you are picking cards that you can add while trying to make sure you can always add to them as you’ll draft 30 cards. What makes this one so strong is that you score different colors different rounds. So when you draft cards matters for scoring as well. It’s easy to learn and play but has fun strategy.

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45. Floriferous

Floriferous continues that beautiful game trend. And also the drafting trend that is in this section of games. Floriferous is open drafting where you can see all the cards you’ll be picking from. And all you’ll be picking from for several rounds of drafting.

Floriferous does two things that I think are fun. First you draft your scoring cards. It is like Point Salad in that way where you have a choice. You can draft cards to score with, or cards to help facilitate that scoring. But the bigger thing is that you draft cards from a column. And the higher on the column you take, the sooner you go in the next round. So there is strategy if sometimes taking a less ideal card one time to draft the perfect card the next time.

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44. Res Arcana

Res Arcana is another pretty game, but not in the same way, it is more cool fantasy artwork in the game. But Res Arcana is a very different type of game, it is a tight engine building game where you are racing to 10 points. Why is it so tight, because you have a limited number of cards, 8 that you start with, to build your engine. And while you can add a few, sometimes, you mainly are working with that limited number of cards. So who can get their engine of gathering resources and turning them into points going the fastest?

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43. Paint the Roses

Paint the Roses is another new one on the list that I first played at Gen Con. It is a cooperative deduction game. Players give clues by placing down flower tiles into the Queen of Hearts garden. The clues are to give direction so players can guess a color combination on a card, or color or shape, or color and shape combination. All the while the Queen of Hearts is coming to lop off our heads.

This game is very clever in what it does, and while I have yet to win, I really like the pressure it puts on. Each turn when you play down a tile, everyone has to come up with a guess for someone’s card. If you get it right, the queen advances slowly, if you get it wrong, she advances faster. And the further you get around the track, the faster she goes, no matter what. So can you fill it up, which will make her happy, or lose your head, which will make her happier?

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42. T.I.M.E Stories

T.I.M.E Stories has been on the list since the beginning. It is an escape room style game, but one that has more story. Now, I’ve heard that the overall story doesn’t pay off. But I really like every scenario that we’ve played through. And I think that’s one of things that’s so interesting about the game. Each scenario of TIME Stories can be really different.

In this game your consciousness is transported into the past, future, or some other dimension. And you are trying to keep the timeline in order. I would say this is a bit like that TVA in Loki. The goal is to get the timeline back to where it should be, but that isn’t always easy. The downside is, you don’t make it the first time, you go back through and do it again which can get tiresome.

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41. Twilight Inscription

Rounding out this section, we have another new game to the list. I got to learn and play Twilight Inscription at Gen Con as well. This is the roll and write version, kind of, of Twilight Imperium. It might not quite live up to that, but it is still a long and epic roll and write game.

I can’t really go through everything on it to explain how to play. More, know that there are four different boards. And on your turn, you pick one you want to activate. If you want to be good at war, well, you can activate that board. If you want to gather resources, or explore planets, there are boards for that. Do you need to do a bit of everything, probably, but you can pick what you want to focus on.

Buy on Miniature Market

Upcoming Streams

On Wednesday, I’m going to be unboxing Chronicles of Drunagor, and probably ISS Vanguard. So two big games, and with the unboxing of Chronicles of Drunagor, I am going to be picking out the two characters that I’m going to start my solo campaign with. Join me for that and help me pick out what characters I should start with.

Then next Monday I’ll not be continuing the Top 100 Games (of all time) 2022 Edition. Mainly because it’s Halloween. I foresee not having the time with taking a kid out for that and needing to do the podcast. Even without the podcast, it’ll be a busy evening, and I might want to watch a scary movie or show as well. But I’ll start up again the following week.

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The next 10 are going to be on Wednesday at 8 PM Central Time. You can join me over on Malts and Meeples YouTube Channel. You can flick the notification bell, here, to know when I’m going live. I hope that you can join as we get higher into the Top 100 list.

100 Through 91

90 Through 81

80 through 71

70 through 61

60 through 51

50 through 41

Top 100 Board Games – 40 through 31

40. Not Alone

This is a one versus all game, and normally I don’t gravitate towards that type of game. The one is either playing a different game orrunning the game. But in Not Alone, while the game they are playing is a little bit different, it is a lot of fun. The one is the planet trying to kill off the crew of a crashed spaceship before they can be rescued. Everyone else is trying to survive and signal the ship to get there faster. The group can discuss but it must always be done so that the one can hear. The card play works well, the game play fast, and overall a fun time as crew or planet.

Not Available

39. Downforce

I think this is the highest racing game that I have on the list, or at least racing themed game. Downforce has you bidding to get cars and race them around the board, as well as bet on who you think is going to win. The game actually is more about. how well you can tell early in the game who is going to win? because the betting is where you make the most money.

The card play in the game is very clever as well. You play down your cards and you have to move every car on the card in order from fastest to slowest. This can create bottlenecks and strategic card play. The game feels like a racing game, but it doesn’t take too long. Some racing games can feel more drawn out but Downforce doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. And keeps you engaged as other people are moving all the cars as well.

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38. Sushi Go Party!

Another good big group game, in fact all of these games work best, thus far, towards their higher player counts. Sushi Go Party is a drafting and set collection game as you build out your ideal meal to score points. All the cards score in different ways, and Sushi Go Party allows you to swap around the cards that you use every game. It means that you can create some very unique combinations that either give a ton of points or can cause people to go negative in points. And you can really tailor it to your group.

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37. Roll Player

A dice drafting game, in Roll Player you create a Dungeons and Dragons, or RPG character. The whole game is about how well you can build your stats for the character. I really like how the game works and I really like building up D&D characters. My one knock on the game is that you don’t do anything with the character, you just build it. Monsters and Minions expansion is supposed to help with that. Plus then Dice Throne Adventures is coming which I know helps with my issue.

When it comes to this or Sagrada, I do think that there is enough difference between to the two to keep both. Sagrada is more family friendly in how it plays in that it is easier to play. Plus the theme is much less nerdy, not that a nerdy theme is bad. Roll Player with creating a character for an RPG, that is a theme that specific groups will enjoy better but also one that some people won’t be interested in at all.

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36. Homebrewers

Homebrewers is a nice and fast engine building game. In it you compete to be the best brewer of beer at Summerfest and Oktoberfest. Mechanically this is a pretty simple engine building game. You roll dice and can trade them around to determine what actions you get to take in a round. You can brew, sanitize, add ingredients to your pantry or beers or use them to get an advantage.

For me the theme of brewing makes this game very appealing. I homebrew my own beer and it’s fun to come up with crazy ingredient combinations. Would I want to drink a full point of a smoked oyster porter, most certainly not, but I’d try it. And at the end of the game I like to look and see what is the best one that I’ve created, even though that doesn’t determine the winner.

Buy on Miniature Market

35. Clever Cubed

The only roll and write on this section of the Top 100 games, Clever Cubed, or Clever Hoch Drei, is part of the Clever trilogy of games. This one follows the same standard as the others with rolling dice, taking one and discarding all the ones lower. But this one gives you the most points as you play. It’s fun because the pink section really lets you lean into combos, filling in lots of other spots on the board. Yes, the game is themeless, but I really enjoy the puzzles that the Clever games bring.

Buy on Miniature Market

34. The Night Cage

If you want a game for Halloween, The Night Cage might be an ideal one for you. You are trapped, as a group, in an ever changing labyrinth that you can only crawl through. You only illuminate the spaces directly around you and if you go backwards to where you were before, the labyrinth will have changed. Plus there are monsters in there, and you need to avoid them if you can. You all are searching for keys and then a portal to be able to escape, but all of you need to find a key and get to the same portal to activate it. All this as your candles burn down.

This is really kind of an abstract game, but it is still thematic as you deal with the monsters and search for keys. The game also has a really nice tile holder which looks like a candle that is burning down, so as you put more tiles onto the board, the more that the candle will have burned down. It’s a very easy game to play, but it has an amazing tension as you get further into the game.

Buy on CoolStuffInc

33. Orchard: A 9 card solitaire game

I talk about Orchard fairly often, and I backed it’s successor Grove on Kickstarter recently. It’s still up for backing if you want to check it out. But Orchard is a great solo game. It’s a game that has you stacking cards and matching up fruit tree symbols to grow as much fruit as you can. The more you overlap cards, the more points you’ll get from the fruit you grow.

Orchard is an extremely fast play and generally I’ll play it several times in a single sitting. It also has a little footprint and easy set-up and pick-up. The game isn’t too mindless, but I call it a good mental reset game. I always feel like can refresh my brain and distract myself for a little bit while I play to then have fresh eyes to look at some work problem again.

Buy On Miniature Market

32. Ohanami

Ohanami is a very simple game. You draft two cards and then you put them into three columns split up however you like. But you always need to put down higher or lower numbers. The game is a lot of fun at it’s high player count of four or low of two and changes a lot as you play between those two. At two players it is much more strategic. At four players you only see two cards from that original hand come back to you. So drafting changes up greatly at higher player counts.

But there is also the scoring that keeps the game interesting. You draft over three rounds and score at the end of each. The first round you score for blue cards, the second blue and green, and the final, blue, green, grey and pink. Blue cards are worth less overall, but if you get them early, they can be the most lucrative to have drafted. So while the game is very accessible to any type of gamer, it isn’t too simple for heavy gamers.

Buy On Amazon

31. T.I.M.E Stories

The biggest game on the list T.I.M.E Stories is a campaign style game but also an escape room. You work together to try and figure out how to stop timing from being changed off of the proper flow that it’s supposed to be going. Your consciousness is sent back in time or across timelines so that you can investigate. If you can’t get it done in time, you can always restart armed with the knowledge that you now know.

I know that some people don’t love every scenario, and the scenarios aren’t always consistent. The game also promises are story throughout it linking each different scenario, and that doesn’t really exist. But the game is a lot of fun for me. I don’t mind going back and taking another run at things. The stories have all been enjoyable, some more so, but I’m always ready to see what the next puzzle or scenario is going to be when I finish playing.

Buy on Miniature Market

The Next 10

If you want to catch any of the remaining Top 10’s live, you can check them out and my normal streams on Wednesday at 8 PM Central time. If you subscribe and click the notification bell you’ll know whenever I go live or upload a new video to Malts and Meeples YouTube channel. When I’m not doing my Top 100, you can find me on Wednesday playing board games solo on the YouTube channel.

Now, I did say I wanted to talk about my streaming times. Through the Top 100 list, I am going to keep my 8 PM Central time on Wednesdays for streaming. However, this might be changing. A channel that I like to watch and be part of their live chat, the GloryHoundd channel is adjusting their schedule. And I know I have crossover viewers from their channel. If they take that 8 PM Central Wednesday spot, I might look at making my main streaming day on Monday. Be aware that change may come.

But what game do you like best out of this part of the Top 100? Are there any that you want to get to the table that you haven’t played in this bunch?

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Downforce

Downforce is a racing and bidding game where players are bidding for ownership of cars, and then betting on those cars, or any of the cars to win the race. The game has three different points as the cars move along the track where players bet.

Cars move around the track as players play down cards in turn order. Each card will have the cars moving some amount, and it might not just be your car that moves. A card might move the blue, green, and red cars, 4, 2, and 1 spaces respectively in that order. The trick is that the track can bottle neck in some places, and cars can’t go through other cars, so the order cars moves matters, either to block some cars or to get them through.

The winner is the player who has the most money at the end of the race. You lose money for how much you paid for your cars. You get money if they place and for your bets. We had people in the negatives in the first game and in the second game someone had $28 million. So massive range in scores.

What Doesn’t Work?

I like this game, let’s start with that, but I think out of the base box there is one thing that doesn’t work too well. And that is the car powers. The car powers are cool and something to keep track of. So players forgot them. But the issue I have with them is less remembering them more so the fact that there are six of them and six cars. That means that every power is going to get used. I want more powers, I want there to be eight to ten in the base box. If you use all, you can wait to bid on your favorite power. With ten, there would be question to which would show up.

What Works

This is a very light and fast game. I know there are bigger ones out there, but I like that this is a racing game that wants to feel like a race. A lot of racing games give you moments of adrenaline rush but this one, everything that happens matters and is fun to play around with. So I could see pulling this out, auctioning off the cars and then doing a few races, almost NASCAR style, see who wins the most money but also who does best overall in the races in an evening.

I also really like the card play in this game. The fact that you do every movement on the cards is great. And they have to go in a certain order makes it a puzzle. There are cards that only move one car 5, or the special card that allows for a movement of 8. But then there are cards that move all six cars from six spots down to one spot. So you can create traffic jams if the order is right.

I also really like the powers in the game. I just said that they didn’t work for me, but really, it is just the number of them that doesn’t work. What I want is more of them. So I will probably get the expansions, if they add them, but also for the added in tracks. But something that makes you feel unique is great.

Who Is Downforce For?

Honestly, this is a game for everyone. The game play is simple and fast. People who don’t get gaming will likely get this. The trickiest thing to understand is that you don’t only think about your own cars. In fact, I rarely bid on my own cars. But even when you are done racing, you still care about all the cars on the board. So this is just a great game in my opinion for families, or as a filler for gamers.

In fact, I think the idea of turning it into a cup, or series, is great for gamers. Add some more to the game, play on all the tracks and just enjoy it. It falls into that category of with Formula D and Pitchcar where since they are racing games, might as well do them a bunch. But Downforce is the most accessible of all of them because Formula D adds in more to keep track of Pitchcar is dexterity.

Final Thoughts

This is such a fun game and I had such a fun time playing it. I am going to be getting the expansions, I just want more maps and more fun for this game. I don’t think you need more maps, but I want to do a 6 race series just because that’s going to be fun. And really, my negative item for this game is barely a negative. It’s just, like I said, I want more. I wouldn’t even mind if the different color cars had a special ability, so a car ability and a driver ability or something like that, though, that might make the game more complex than it should be.

Last thing I’ll say is that Downforce isn’t so much a racing game as a betting game. Or maybe more it’s equal racing and bidding. And the bidding, especially early on is just luck. But maybe there is more than luck to what you are doing.

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

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