And if you want to know the criteria that I’m using, or the conversation starting point, you can read that article here.

My Tableau Building Games

As normal, we split it into games that I’ve played first and then games that I haven’t played yet in my collection.

Tableau Building Games I’ve Played

• 7 Wonders Duel
• Lord of the Rings Duel for Middle Earth
• 7 Wonders
• Splendor: Pokemon
• The Castles of Burgundy
• Arkham Horror The Card Game
• Marvel Champions
• Dwellings of Eldervale
• Forest Shuffle
• Res Arcana
• Meadow
• Space Base
• Faraway
• Castle Combo
• Furnace
• Aquatica
• New Frontiers
• Jump Drive
• Ancient Knowledge
• Starship Captains
• Village Rails
• Call to Adventure: Stormlight Archives
• Cafe Baras
• Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition
• Pixies

Tableau Building Games I’ve Yet To Play

• Everdell
• 3 Ring Circus
• Ark Nova
• A Feast for Odin
• Revive
• Beyond the Sun
• Targi
• Endless Winter: Paleoamericans
• Vale of Eternity
• Expeditions
• Fantastic Factories
• The Bloody Inn
• Raising Robots
• The Witcher: Path of Destiny
• Andromeda’s Edge
• Earth

What Stays and What Leaves?

This is a tough list to really do because they are so unique. A lot of the time there is a pretty big difference between a scoring tableau game and an engine building tableau game. So as I’m looking at the list, it’s hard to say that I should keep this one or another one. Plus sometimes they didn’t really do a great job of putting like games on the BGG list. For example, Terraforming Mars, on the list, Ares Expedition, not on the list. New Frontiers is a tableau building game, but Jump Drive wasn’t part of that list. So I hope that I caught everything, but I’m sure some where missed.

What Is And Easy Leave?

So when we look at the list the ones that I have yet to play, those are generally going to stay. That means that we’re looking at what I’ve played for easy games to leave the collection. It’s not an easy list to pick from. I only have one that is an easy leave from the list. And that is I’m going to be getting rid of 7 Wonders Duel. Mainly because I own Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle Earth. Yes, they are different, but I’m most apt to pick the Lord of the Rings themed one to play.

The other one that is going to leave is 7 Wonders. Now that might be surprising, but I bought I copy and I just don’t play it. If I want a big group drafting game, I go with Sushi Go Party! For that reason while 7 Wonders offers something quite different, it just isn’t going to stick in my collection.

What Is An Easy Stay?

Now for easy stays, I definitely am keeping Lord of the Rings Duel for Middle Earth and then both of the LCG’s on the list from Fantasy Flight Games. I know that I want to keep one of Dwellings of Eldervale and Andromeda’s Edge, but having not played the latter, I don’t know which I want to keep. I’ve heard the latter is the better game, but I like the theme for the former more so.

Space Base, Forest Shuffle, Castle Combo, Castles of Burgundy and Ancient Knowledge easily make the list as well. As does Call to Adventure: Stormlight Archives.

Everything Else

Now let’s touch on everything else and this is where I need to find a few to cut. Do I need Jump Drive in my collection if I play it on BGA so much? I had actually put it in the too sell pile but then I brought it back. And I want to keep it and New Frontiers because I really like both of them. So they stay, though with Jump Drive, it’s tempting because of BGA.

One that it tough for me is Meadow. I like Meadow a lot, but it’s also one that I play less often. I think that this means I just need to play it more to keep it in the collection. The same can be said for Res Arcana. I need to play it more because I really do love that game.

Furnace is going to leave the collection, I’ve decided. Mainly because it’s okay at two players. And I think that I am most apt to play it at two players. Because of that it should leave the collection I think. Another one that I love the theme of but thought the game play was okay so it’s going to leave is Cafe Baras. Mainly it’s super cute, but a bit too simple for my tastes. Even as a game to play with my kid, it’s not quite interesting enough.

So The Tableau Games That Are Leaving

Just to recap we have Furnace, which I really enjoy but less so at two. Cafe Baras is a bit too simple and 7 Wonders Duel is a game that has been replaced by Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle Earth. And 7 Wonders is getting kicked out because it’s the secondary drafting game for big groups for me.

I think that there will be others to leave once I play more. But it’s tricky getting all the tableau building games to the table. Some I maybe shouldn’t keep, like Res Arcana just because when will I play it again.

What is your favorite tableau building game?

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When Should You Rank Your Top 100 Board Games?

This is the first question I want to get out of the way. I know it crops up when other places do their Top 100 Board Games Of All Time, like Man vs Meeple and The Dice Tower. It’s the question, when do I have enough games played to make a good Top 100 Board Games list? The answer is, when you have 100. Unless one of them is horrible. Just kidding. I want to know the board games that you don’t like and I want to know the ones that you do.

Just because something is ranked at 100 doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s kind of the opposite problem that Tom Vasel from the Dice Tower has. He plays so many games that his 100 is a game that he truly loves and he could probably go out to 2000 and it’d still be games that he likes. So just remember that 100 games is enough to do you Top 100 Board Games list.

And one last thing when you make your list. A list is just a moment in time. So you might look back at it and go, how did I like that game? You did in that moment. So don’t stress about it too much and also why 100 games is totally the right number.

The Tools

Board Game Geek

Firstly, let’s start off with Board Game Geek or BGG. If you are not familiar with this site, BGG is like IMDb for board games. It allows you to rate games, it allows you to track plays, and keep track of your collection. The big thing for BGG in the process of creating a Top 100 Board Games is rating your games. If you don’t, it’s hard to know and remember which one’s you’ve played. So create a free account, and we’ll go over in the next section why it matters.

Pub Meeple

So, then you need to rank your games. Now you might think that rating them is all you need to do. But there is a twist on that of course, when you do a Top 100 Board Games list, what differentiates one nine from another nine? That is where you need to get everything figured out and where Pub Meeple comes in.

The Set-Up

Pub Meeple has a ranking engine where you can enter lists of whatever you want. But more importantly, it has a board game ranking section. And that section allows you to enter in your BGG user name and it’ll collect all of your games for you. It might take a bit to do that if you have a massive collection of games, and the BGG system is not the fastest system to get data from.

Once you do that you need to filter it. There are a few ways that you can filter it. The big thing is to deselect “Own” and “Played” because if you are like me, you didn’t start tracking your plays from your dawn of gaming, and select rated games. Now, if you want, you can then use another feature as well. You can use the slider for personal ratings until you drop off a number of them. For example, I might drop off 5 and below. Because I know they won’t make the list.

Once everything is added, you click the rank button and that’ll tell you how many different comparisons it might take to do. Let’s go on and talk about how you rank.

The Ranking

So now we’re to the biggest part of ranking. The actual ranking of the board games, and I want to talk about how Pub Meeple makes it work and why it’s great but also why it might show you a ton of different comparisons.

Pub Meeple works on a binary comparison system. By that I mean it takes two things and says is A better than B. And then it is going to ask you if C is better than D and so on. And now, that seems like a lot of comparisons, and for me, with 652 games ranked (and I need to verify that I haven’t missed any), that is 3381 comparisons.

If you are strong at math, I only know it because I can ballpark it, you know that number isn’t the total number of comparisons if you compare A to B and then A to C and so on. That’s because of how this sort of sorting can work.

Example

Let’s look at an example. You rank Game A over Game B and then you rank Game D or Game C. Now it is going to give you the comparison of Game A and Game D. If you say that Game D is better than Game A it is now going to ask you the question if Game A is better than Game C. Let’s say that you say that it is, then your ranking will be Game D, Game C, Game A, and Game B.

Now, you might be thinking, why isn’t Game B compared against any of the other games? Game A gets compared to D and C but not Game B. That’s because Pub Meeple is saying something is true, or more so, you are telling it something is true. You are telling it that Game B is worse than Game A. So if that statement is true and Games C and D are better than Game A, Game B cannot be better than Game C or Game D because it isn’t better than Game A.

What To Do With the List?

After you rank everything, then you can export your list or copy it over to somewhere and share you Top 100 Board Games. How you want to do that is up to you, but let’s look at some ways I’ve seen people share them.

The first one would be to do a video. I do that, The Dice Tower and Man vs Meeple do that as well. But not everyone is going to have the set-up for it. Another option is going to be to create an article. If you create an article you can share it assuming you have a blog. That I kind of do when I share the videos here on the website. There are other spots as well to share it like board game groups on Facebook.

Or, one that I want to start doing each year, is create a Geek List on Board Game Geek of my Top 100 Board Games. That is one that I’d recommend if you don’t have your own website or channel. It is public and it is a spot where board game lovers all come together and enjoy the hobby. So it’s a great spot to share your list.

My Top 100 Board Games

So let’s talk about my schedule. Normally I run into Thanksgiving and that throws off when that last one comes out. Because of that I am starting my list earlier this year. Every Wednesday at 9 PM Central starting September 10th and going through November 12th I will do my next 10 on the list. My hope is to get those video links posted ahead of time so that I can share them about and you can join me.

Which, that leads me to one last spot to share your Top 100. When I do my Top 100 and talk about a number, drop yours in the chat or in the comments. If you are live, drop them as I go along and match up with my number with your game at that number. Or drop in the chat the games of yours that fall into that section of the Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition.

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Top 10 Overlooked Games

The criteria for this list is pretty simple. I went through the games that I have rated on Board Game Geek. I sorted them by how I rated them, and then also looked at how many rating total they had. And with that I then created the list. It is not purely the highest rated for me, or the fewest ratings. Because some games I don’t think are super overlooked, they just won’t work for some people instead. And some games are so new the number of ratings is lower so they don’t count as they are going to go higher in terms of total ratings.

10. The Night Cage

There are so many games that I could put on the list, but I want to go with one that is dark and feels different to kick the list off. In The Night Cage players work together to escape this every changing labyrinth before the time runs out and there are no more tiles. But it’s dark, you can only crawl around and there are monsters.

On a turn players move looking for exit points and keys. Each player needs a key and then all the players need to be at the exit at the same time. As you move you illuminate the spots adjacent to you. This might cause a monster to appear. And monsters will blow out your light, or kill you if you have no light. And if your light goes out, well, then you can’t see the spaces around you so you move blind.

Plus, there is a timer in the game, the timer being the number of tiles. So while you want to stay separated to not potentially cause monster problems, if you stay separated, you are more apt to burn through tiles too fast. It’s a great game with a great theme that I think more people should play. It’s really a press your luck game, but if you play it Halloween with some spooky music on, candles, and dimmed lights, it’s great.

9. First Rat

In 2022 this game flew off the shelves at Gen Con. And content creators consistently had it as a high game on their anticipated list. But now, it’s still sitting under 5,000 ratings on Board Game Geek three years later. And I think that more people should play this game because it’s a ton of fun with the theme and with the game play.

In the game you are rats who want to build a spaceship because they believe the moon is made of cheese. First off, how can you not like that theme. Then the game play is really interesting. You collect goods by moving up a track. These goods you use to build your rocket. And you get points for completing parts of them. But there are other elements on the track such as lighting up your way. When you do that, you get more goods.

The game while keeping turns pretty simple offers a lot of fun choices. And while it looks like there is a bunch going on, it isn’t too bad at all. Maybe it’s because they didn’t have enough copies at Gen Con in 2022 that it kind of fell off when people couldn’t buy it. But more people need to checkout First Rat.

8. Medium

This one surprises me that people haven’t rated it more. Yes, I’ll talk about it more but Board Game Geek often times has more ratings for bigger games and non-party games. But Medium is a pretty simple party game was relatively available for a little bit. It even had an expansion. And it is a game that I think more people should try, because it’s silly and fun.

Now maybe the reason it’s less rated is that if you learn the rules you don’t really need the game to play it. The game is very simple in two people go at a time. Each plays out a word and then they come up with a word that connects to two words. If they get it right, they get some points. If not, they try again with the two new words. And if they get that right, it’s fewer points but they get points. And finally you get one more go for the lowest point total, always off of the new words.

I think if more people played it, they would enjoy it as a fun time. And it’s a great icebreaker sort of party game. Because who cares if you get it wrong, it’s always going to lead to conversation around “why did you say that word” or excitement if you get it on the first try.

7. The Reckoners

Why is this game not more rated and more popular? I really like that The Reckoners is a great cooperative game. Plus the theme is fun. Though that is probably some of the reason that it is less popular or rated as well as it being a crowdfunding game mainly.

In this game you play as The Reckoners. A team of humans who are going up against the epics. These are superpowered individuals. But there is a trick, every superpowered individual, when they get their powers, turns bad. So you need to take them down. You complete this in two ways, by damage and by research to find their weakness.

This game is also great because everyone does stuff at the same time. You all roll dice at the same time to set your actions. Then you discuss what you want to do as you roll the dice. And you keep some and reroll, Yahtzee style, to see what other actions you get. Then when you take actions you all do it at the same time as well. It creates a game with almost no downtime, which I know a lot of people like.

6. Paper Dungeons

I don’t want to only put smaller games on the list or roll and write games on the list, but I think that it is pretty common. Why, because a small box game, it’s easier for people to overlook them. Though Paper Dungeons isn’t the smallest box game on the list and it has a pretty epic cover. But it’s probably overlooked because it is a roll and write game.

This game offers a campaign as well, but it’s really a one off game where you are delving into a dungeon and trying to build up your adventuring party through leveling them up, fighting monsters, crafting gear and more. You roll a bunch of dice, and you try and use them the best you can by filling in spots.

But this game is more interactive than some roll and writes. You can all fight the same monsters, but gems are limited to who gets them first. And who does the most damage to a monster, or if you even make it through the dungeon to fight the monster. And that’s a nice added element to it. Plus with Paper Dungeons the complexity is higher than some roll and writes. So that offers more of challenge as you play.

5. Ohanami

Some games are just probably too simple looking to get a ton of ratings. If you play games and rate them on Board Game Geek you probably play a lot of bigger hobby games. Ohanami is one of those small games that I think more people should play because it’s great for playing with people who play fewer games.

The game is pretty simple, you draft cards to add to up to three columns. There is a trick though as you draft the cards, you need to play them to the top or bottom of a column. Now it doesn’t need to be the same column for each card you draft, you draft two at a time, but they need to be higher or lower than the card at the top or bottom of the column.

Along with that, I think the scoring helps make the game more enjoyable for people who play a lot of games. You score different colors of cards different numbers of rounds. You draft over three rounds, but only blue is scored each round. Then green is scored two and grey is scored one. But the points get higher, so it creates a strategic drafting strategy as well as drafting for the numbers.

4. Sonora

This is one that I am very surprised didn’t catch on more. Sonora is a roll and write game, but instead of rolling dice, you are flicking discs. After everyone flicks their discs you use them and the number on the disc from the quadrant where the disc landed.

I kind of understand why some people might not love this game. But it is such a fun time as you play and I love how combotastic the game is. But that is the reason why people might not love the game. It is so combotastic that you might feel overwhelmed as you fill in that part. Or you might not like the randomness of the flicking. But the game, to me, is just a lot of fun. And with how popular roll and write games were, I think this game should have gotten more love.

3. Xenoshyft

This one I’m a champion of, but I think more people should play it. This is a cooperative deck building tower defense game. You play as marines, or something like that, defending a base against bugs. Is this game basically Starship Troopers, yes, and that is great.

The biggest thing I think more people should play this game for three elements that I like a lot. First, it is a very cooperative and collaborative in nature. You help people when they defend their part of the base. And this really leads into the second element of how you do that. You might give them a troop that you bought. They add it to their defensive line. And when it dies, it goes to their deck which is a fun twist. The final one is that you always can buy. This game gives you money and let’s you thin money out of your deck in a way that is great and helpful.

2. For Northwood!

This one is my #2 game that I think more people need to play. Now, I know why the game is on this list. For Northwood is a solo game, and solo games tend to have lower ratings. I skipped over a number of campaign games for that reason to make the list. But Forth Northwood is just so good that I think a lot of people would enjoy it and more people should check it out.

Like I said, For Northwood is a solo trick taking game. You play it over a number of rounds trying to win different numbers of tricks. You go to different forest locations and depending on where it is that sets the number of tricks you need to win, that number exactly, no more or less. Fortunately there are woodland creatures who help you. But that is limited and you need to figure out how to use them best to hit that number.

For Northwood is just such a great puzzle of a game. And each time can be different as you play. If you feel like the base mode of the game is too easy too, it offers you challenges to play. Plus, I think this is a great game for people who want to game but maybe travel a bunch for work as it’s tiny and easy to take with you anywhere.

1. Homebrewers

Homebrewers is easily my #1 game on this list. And it makes me sad that more people haven’t played it and loved this game. Now, I know that I’m also an outlier on rating the game and I’m not sure why. This is a very fun game about brewing beer and seeing who can be the best homebrewer. Now the theme is probably some of why it is less rated, but still, I think it’s a fun theme.

In this game you roll dice for actions and then you can trade dice with your opponents. You do this because you want to brew the best beers so you can score the highest ratings during Summer Fest and Oktoberfest. And you need to do all the steps to brew beer that you’d do in real life, or at least the board game version of them. Plus you add in flavorings to your beers as you brew, and these cards stick around. It allows you to create a brewing engine which is a lot of fun and you can create some crazy beers to drink.

This game, like I said, didn’t do well, and now it’s been six years, so I don’t think it’s going to come back. The upside is because it wasn’t super popular, people don’t sell it for a lot. So if it sounds fun and you can find it, it won’t be too expensive.

Final Thoughts

Now, I know not all games are for all people. But these are some games that I just wish more people would try or could have tried. Because some of them, like Homebrewers, it’s just not going to happen until someone new gets the rights to make the game. Others, I think they have a chance to have more people find them. But I do think that more people would enjoy all of these games.

And I also no the reason that some are passed is just because there are so many. Paper Dungeons and Sonora both came out in the height of roll and write fever. So it is easy to have either been burned out on roll and writes or just skipped them in favor of others that were more popular. But now it might be the chance to try and find them and play them.

What is one game that you’re a champion for that is less than 5,000 ratings on Board Game Geek and has been out for a bit?

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How To Play Push

Push is a simple game where you get two actions that you can do. The first is the most common that you’re going to do in the game. It’s going to be flipping cards, and pushing your luck, where the name comes from, to build out three columns of cards. It might be less, but generally you’ll build three. When you stop you pick one of the columns to take and add to your points. The other thing you can do is bank points you have, because there are ways that you can lose points.

Let’s talk about what happens to the other two columns. Depending on if a reverse was flipped or not, the next two players, either direction get to pick a column. So why not put everything in one column? Because there are rules for how you have to place cards. You can’t have the same number, or color in a column. If you ever do that, you bust, and you get no cards. Plus there is an additional penalty.

What’s this penalty, well, you get it for busting, or if a die card is in a column that you take. You need to roll the die. The die has the five colors on it and a blank side that is safe. But if you roll a color, you get rid of all the cards of that color you have. But you don’t get rid of cards of that color if they have been banked.

When the deck has been gone through, the player with the most points in their banked, and collected areas is the winner of the game.

What Doesn’t Work

This is a lucky game. You draw cards blindly and just have to guess when you want to stop. You might roll the die a turn before you would have banked a lot of points and you lose them all. So for some people that is going to be something that doesn’t work at all. Why, because it’s going to be that random nature that some people don’t like in the game.

What Works

But let’s talk about that luck in terms of what works as well. Because it is lucky and a die roll and go against you at the wrong time, or you might just draw three red cards in a row and bust drawing a fourth, but it’s fast. And everyone is down for the same lucky time that you are. You know if you’re a push your luck fan, this game is going to work for you.

I also like how you can bust. Because, I tend to notice most combinations of what might bust you. But there are times because you might be safe from a red, you only have two, and a four, you only have two. But the right combination comes out, a red four, and now you can’t place that into the columns and you bust. And I don’t notice those all the time.

Plus, with this being a fast game it plays like a party game. And when it’s going well, everyone at the table is encouraging others to push their luck one more time. Yes, you might bust, but imagine how good the points will be if you go further. And that is how a good push your luck game should work. And sometimes, as the person who is creating the columns, you stop because you know the last person is just going to get that die to mess with them.

Who Is Push For

Push is for people who want to play a light, silly game that is almost a party game in a lot of ways. If you are risk adverse, this game won’t work for you. If you don’t like randomness, this game won’t work for you. But is the premise sounds silly and fun, then you’ll probably like it quite well.

My Final Thoughts on Push

I do like Push quite well. I like the randomness of the game. And I think that is really a party game. I find it to be more of a party game than a game like Codenames is, the difference is, you can’t play with as many people, though still a good number. Push is just loud fun, something that I don’t really say about Codenames and some other party adjacent games that are really big group games.

And I like the mechanisms in the game. They are just simple enough to be a fast teach, but it’s a fun decision space to see when you want to keep pushing your luck. You get a four in all the columns you’ll probably stop. But can you spot those sneaky situations that can bust you. Or, can you flip a few more cards and get that one column super juicy for you to take.

Have you played Push, and do you like it?

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

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And watch part 1 of Gen Con 2024 For Sale here.

Upcoming Gen Con Coverage

So what to expect in the next week around Gen Con. Mainly because it’s a week until Gen Con starts and I’ll be headed out very early on Wednesday for Indy from the Twin Cities. I plan or at least hope that I’ll have articles coming out during Gen Con, but it’ll be ones that are pre-written. So let’s talk about what they are going to be.

Tomorrow and Monday it’s going to be Top 10 Games I Want to Demo at Gen Con and Top 10 Games I Want to Buy at Gen Con. That is some of the reason for doing these videos with games available or to demo. I get a chance to work on the lists.

Then next week, Tuesday is going to be normal podcast episode. We’ll see if I do any last pre-Gen Con stream on Monday night as well. If I do I’ll cover that. But during Gen Con, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. My hope is to have some articles around what I think the hot games are going to be, and other topics. But i need to figure those out still.

And finally, if you see me at Gen Con, don’t hesitate to say hi. I’d love to meet people who watch the videos and chat. If I’m heads down in a game, wait until my turn is done, but definitely say hi.

Upcoming Streams

On Monday I play small solo game plays. The schedule is, right now, going to look like gaming every other Monday. A chance to see people in person came up for Monday and as much as I like streaming, it’s good to socialize as well. And I might do more deck construction with Star Wars Unlimited on Mondays as well or pack openings. Right now it’ll be more Slay the Spire.

On Wednesdays, I play solo campaign games. I plan on playing a campaign game coming up. Right now I’m torn between two games. Well, more than that if you watched through the end of the video. And that is more of The 7th Citadel. I plan to keep playing through The Drums of Desolation for a while so join me for that.

And if you want to know when I go live, the best way is to subscribe. When you subscribe, click that notification bell and you’ll get an alert whenever I’m going to go live. Follow the link – here – to subscribe.

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Catch up on the games to demo here.

What This Gen Con List Is

Let me make sure that it’s clear as to what this Board Game Geek list is. I think it can be a bit confusing if you just jump into it. Because if you find yourself plugged into the board game hobby like I do, you know a lot of these games already. Now, I know that most people aren’t, but if you happen to be one who is.

But this list isn’t purely a new games list. This is for board games that haven’t been at Gen Con before. So that means from August 7th last year up until August 1st when Gen Con starts, any game that came out then can make the list. So some of the games have been out for a little while. But a lot of them are not that easy to find, if they are popular. So Gen Con is going to be a chance to track them down.

That said, there are plenty of games coming out for the first time as well. These games will hit the list and look for games with that August 1st release date. Or even games that don’t have a release date.

Now some of them might not make it in time. That is one thing to be aware. Some of these games, I know 25th Century Games is doing this, fly over right before the con. Others might be on the boat and the companies hope it arrives in time. Just be aware that some things won’t be there to play or demo that are on the list. This is more than anything just a logistics situation.

Upcoming Streams

On Monday I play small solo game plays. The schedule is, right now, going to look like gaming every other Monday. A chance to see people in person came up for Monday and as much as I like streaming, it’s good to socialize as well. And I might do more deck construction with Star Wars Unlimited on Mondays as well or pack openings. Right now it’ll be more Slay the Spire.

On Wednesdays, I play solo campaign games. I plan on playing a campaign game coming up. Right now I’m torn between two games. Well, more than that if you watched through the end of the video. And that is more of The 7th Citadel. I plan to keep playing through The Drums of Desolation for a while so join me for that.

And if you want to know when I go live, the best way is to subscribe. When you subscribe, click that notification bell and you’ll get an alert whenever I’m going to go live. Follow the link – here – to subscribe.

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Thoughts on the Gen Con Demos

Let’s face it, there are always going to be a ton of games to demo. Whether it’s new ones to demo at Gen Con for the first time or ones that maybe were the busiest the year before. I want to demo a ton of games. Thankfully that’s generally what I go to Gen Con for. I think last year I demoed around 40 different games. So if I only demoed new games, I’d still only make it through a third of them.

That is the wonderful thing about going to Gen Con or a convention like this. There is always a game for everyone to demo. It won’t matter if you like heavy euro games or you want to find the latest party games. All of those options are going to be out there and all are going to have new games announced for demo. That is an experience that I really appreciate about Gen Con, and one that can feel a bit overwhelming.

The reason I put out a video like this one is because I like to get my thoughts onto a game. But also because a list like this can be overwhelming. Even if you know what you’re getting into with Gen Con knowing the size, the BGG list is long. So I take the chance to chat about it, give my uninformed opinion, and maybe, if your tastes align with mine, you can find some games that might interest you.

Upcoming Streams

On Monday I play small solo game plays. The schedule is, right now, going to look like gaming every other Monday. A chance to see people in person came up for Monday and as much as I like streaming, it’s good to socialize as well. And I might do more deck construction with Star Wars Unlimited on Mondays as well or pack openings. Right now it’ll be more Slay the Spire.

On Wednesdays, I play solo campaign games. I plan on playing a campaign game coming up. Right now I’m torn between two games. Well, more than that if you watched through the end of the video. And that is more of The 7th Citadel. I plan to keep playing through The Drums of Desolation for a while so join me for that.

And if you want to know when I go live, the best way is to subscribe. When you subscribe, click that notification bell and you’ll get an alert whenever I’m going to go live. Follow the link – here – to subscribe.

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Keep Looking at Events

When Gen Con events catalog went live, I think there were just shy of 20,000 events on the catalog. That is now over 21,000 events, so around 1,500 events have been added. A lot of them won’t interest you and a lot of them will be hard to track down when they are added. But if you missed out on events, about now is when I’d start looking to see what new events there are in time slots that you maybe want an event. I’ll get into why you want to do that now.

Review the Gen Con Game List

Another thing that you can start doing is reviewing the games that’ll be at Gen Con. Every year Eric Martin and others work and create a list on Board Game Geek. You can find that here. That is going to be hundreds of games that you can demo or buy at Gen Con that will be there for the first time in whatever state they’re ready for.

This is a list that grows a lot from now until Gen Con and just went up about a week ago. More publishers will be adding things to the list. And, especially, as they know stuff can or can’t make it to Gen Con because of shipping timing, companies will keep the list updated. Every Gen Con I go through the list over on Malts and Meeples but that is closer to when I leave for Gen Con.

Tickets

Yes, you should already have your tickets and your housing and your transportation figured out by now. And some elements, like getting into the Gate Ten parking, those are done, you can’t get into them anymore. But what I mean by this is know how you’re going to get your tickets for the events you signed up for. I always have them shipped two me but you can also do will call and pick them up at Gen Con.

The benefit of doing will call is that if you add events late you might need to pick them up there anyways. But the downside is, you go to get your tickets at the wrong time, it’s going to be line. The upside of shipping, you avoid that line and you avoid the line for getting your badge, it comes to your door. Downside, it costs extra to get it shipped. Know what works best for you, I prefer shipping, but that is just me.

Double Check Your Housing

If you are in a hotel, this is not an issue. But for people who are AirBnB or VRBO like I do, double check it. Odds are no issues, but there are some sketchy people out there. And there are some people who get out of the AirBnB or VRBO and might just drop it. So keep an eye on that, the odds are extremely thin and you’d know if that was the case. But double check your housing, if you are flying, make sure you get your travel confirmed, but these are big and obvious things that you should be doing so I won’t harp on them.

Final Thoughts on Early Gen Con Prep

This is about when I think you can start ramping up for Gen Con again. Especially with the Board Game Geek preview and verifying your events. Events in particular, I didn’t mention it but with the tickets and badge shipping, your time to get event tickets shipped to you is limited. So if you want to get all your events shipped, you need to add them now. Otherwise some will ship and some will be at will call.

And then with the preview, use it to plan what you want to see and track down. I like it for knowing some things that I want to demo, I’ll have a list of 10, and some things that I might want to buy. Both of those lists will come out closer to Gen Con, but when it comes to the dealer hall, that’s going to be one way to plan your attack browsing knowing what some things are that you want to find.

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How to Play – Paint the Roses

Paint the Roses is a cooperative game where as a group you are trying to figure out secret objective cards. Basically painting the roses so that you stay ahead of the Queen of Hearts. On each players turn they put down a tile and then the group must guess as to what one of the objective cards are for the players.

How can you do that? Well, when you place down a tile, all players can put down cubes on that tile. The cubes tell how many matches they have for their objective card. So if I put a pink rose next two two other pink roses, and my secret objective is two pink roses, I’d put down two cubes. With the tile I put down and the other two tiles, I have two combinations of two pink roses. Even if the others were also a combination, on that turn I wouldn’t put a cube on them.

Then everyone else, whose turn it isn’t, is trying to figure out what my clue is telling them. Now, if I have an easy objective, they know it’s colors so they only have to look at the tile I played down and find combinations of two colors where there are two of them. Pink and pink in this case. But if I have a medium or hard, it could be shape and shape as well or shape and color.

No matter what you guess the Queen of Hearts moves forward. If you get it wrong, you stay still and she moves forward faster. If you get it right, she moves forward slowly and you jump ahead. The game ends when you’ve either completed the garden, filling in everything. Or when the Queen of Hearts catches you and off with your heads.

What Doesn’t Work?

This is a game that I really enjoy with every play that I’ve had of it. My win rate is a solid 0%, but I’m loving every play of it. If I were to come up with negatives for it, I think for a pretty simple game the teach is less simple. Mainly explaining how the cubes work and that even though I put down a tile, everyone should be checking their objective and putting cubes on it. It feels like the rule that people are apt to forget.

What Works?

I think that the deduction in this game works really well, because it seems simple and can be simple. In my example, I probably set it up so that only one thing had two options on it. But there are times where it might be multiple things. And this is where putting cubes on other people’s tiles comes in. If it could be two pink or a pink and a purple. If you had that card matched something previously, so the previous tile made a pink and purple combination. Players can remember that information to deduce and eliminate the pink and purple to know you have pink and pink.

And just to continue with the deduction. I really like that sometimes giving no clue is a clue itself. I might give a clue and not put a cube on it. So looking at the options I had for tiles, looking at maybe where I have or haven’t placed cubes, information is out there to know what I have.

But to go with that, I also like that the Queen of Hearts is always moving and you always need to make a guess. It wouldn’t make sense to not make a guess, but even if when you get it right, she’s moving forward. And she picks up speed the further you get around the board. That really makes it a fun experience because you feel the pressure as you play the game.

I’ll also say that I like the standard version of the game. There is a deluxe version and if I can find it and upgrade to that at some point in time I might. I’ve played with both, and both are nice. The artwork is nice, but the tiles, the main upgrade on the deluxe version, are amazing. Either way the game is good and looks nice, but the deluxe is a deluxe that is worth it, I think.

Who Is It For?

This looks like it maybe should be for casual gamers. And I do think that some will get it well, but the deduction level in this game is high. This is for the person who really likes the puzzle through problems, figure out what options are available and find those right choices. It can slow down a little bit for players who are prone to analysis paralysis. But your action is simple enough that it shouldn’t spend too much time with that.

For me, I think this if for gamers who like deduction. They don’t mind that it is an abstract game, they care more about puzzling through everything.

Final Thoughts on Paint the Roses

Needless to say, I really like this game. Paint the Roses just offers that good blend of crunchy thinking about a game with simple actions. You pick one of four tiles and place it. But where and how you place it matters so much.

I’m confident that with the right group, Paint the Roses might not be that hard. If everyone just takes easy or medium, no one goes hard. And certain ways that people think will make it easier. But because of those hard cards, you easily can adjust your own difficulty of the game. I like it when a group can regulate for itself that way.

And I do think that no matter which version of the game you get it is a pretty game. The box and the artwork on it is probably one that you could leave out just because it looks pretty. And while I think this game will excel with gamers who like deduction, it isn’t that hard to play for a lot of different types of players.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: A
Casual Grade: C

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Why Lie About Player Counts?

The simple answer for this is money. If a game is really best at 2 to 3 players, that’s a specific group and size that you need. But if you can make it 2-5 players or even 1-5 players, you’re not getting bigger groups. And you are getting the solo players. So your market just got a whole lot larger.

For myself, if a game has a solo mode, I am interested in it. But sometimes, those counts are a lie. A Euro game might be a nice thinky 90 minute game with three players with not too much downtime. And then balloon to 3 hours with 4 players and so much more time between your turns. Or a game might work solo, but you need to play as four characters no matter the player count. That means you need to keep up with a ton of things. Or there are automa players that you flip a card and do their actions making the game go longer than just playing with someone.

Now, it is nice to have that flexibility. And I talk about it like this is common or everyone believes that it is a lie. Some people have no problem with a complex automa that you’re playing against. Some people have no issue with the downtime between the turns. Three hours is a fun night to hang out and play a big thinky game. But for a lot of gamers, neither of those will sound fun.

How Can You Spot A Lie?

This is going to be fast, go to Board Game Geek, look up the game, and they will show you the player count. Plus the community player count. That’s the communities, people who have played the game, recommended number. You can even click on that and see the percentages of how people vote on that to really help you make an informed decision.

What Makes A Game Tell The Truth?

This is a bit of an odd question, but what are things, if you can’t get to BGG (Board Game Geek), that might help a game. Because there are a number of things that can help a game, even if it does fluctuate with player count, still be good.

Turns at the Same Time

This one is pretty simple, everyone is doing stuff at the same time. Drafting games do this often. Everyone has a hand of cards, you pick a card and then pass the rest of the hand. Or some roll and writes, the die are rolled and you fill in on your sheet.

But even bigger games sometimes do this. And it’s more that you do this part of the time. Gloomhaven, for example, has everyone pick their cards at the same time. Playing out the actions on your cards is done separately. But the big decision is done at the same time. And because it’s cooperative, I think players stay more invested in the turn. But during that turn, or round, you do something all at once.

I Get Something On Your Turn

Another big one is that everyone gets something on the turn. So you play down a card, maybe I can do that action, or you get two actions on a card and I get the lesser one. So I always need to pay attention. Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition is kind of this. It’s more the first, but as the person who picked a phase to activate, I get a special bonus.

More of an example for this would be Ganz Schon Clever or any of the roll and write games in that series. The person’s whose turn it is rolls the dice, but at the end of that players turn there are three dice that the other players can pick one of to use. So I need to pay attention to those dice at the end of your turn.

Cooperative Play

Cooperative games deal with this another way than a lot of the other reasons. A lot of them try and keep you engaged through something you are doing. Cooperative games are because you’re invested as a group. I want to know how your turn goes because it’s going to help tell the story or beat the game. I am invested in you doing well.

This can lead to alpha player problems. If I’m too invested, or don’t think you’re doing the optimal thing, then I might step on your decision in the game. That is a problem of the players, not of the style of game.

But when I care about the story that you are finding out, or how you optimize to get rid of the disease cubes. That is fun, I care about your turn. And cooperative games can be collaborative where everyone discusses what happens. And more cooperative games are starting to have a group decision space. We all have our own character, but the main, or big, decisions are made as a group.

Limited Spaces/Choices

Finally, at least on the list right now, is that you limit what is going on. If there are too many possible options at a lower player count, say if nothing is blocked off in Lost Ruins of Arnak, there might be too many choices. Or with Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, you can’t play with all the special roles at a lower count, and you add them in very intentionally.

This is really important because it keeps the game from bogging down as much. Lost Ruins of Arnak, for example, you cover up 5 worker placement spots. In a four player game, none of them are covered. But because there are more people putting their workers onto the board, it becomes equally as tight with more players. Limiting how much someone can over think as you play is important.

Final Thoughts on Player Counts

We’ll never get perfect player counts. Like I said the main reason that game companies put different counts on to get people to buy it. So be smart, use resources, like Board Game Geek, that are out there. And generally the information on BGG is good.

But also, it is fine that some games are good 2 and 3 player games but suck at 1 or 5. Not every game needs to hit every player count in your collection. I don’t think anyone, really, is complaining, or would complain that the latest big Euro doesn’t play up to 12 like their favorite party game does. It hits a different spot in your collection for playing with different groups.

What player count do you play at most? What game maybe was disappointing because it didn’t work at that player count?

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