Ranking My Sci-Fi Games

16. Star Wars: Destiny

I don’t dislike Star Wars: Destiny, I just find that I have room for one collectible game in my life. And right now that is Magic: The Gathering. Destiny is fun, though, because it is cheaper to play. And I know someone who has a bunch of cards (they bought all of mine) so I can play it if I want that way. But it’s a good head to head game.

15: Firefly: The Game

This is a game that I really need to give another chance. Again, I don’t dislike this game, it’s just that I kind of played it once. Everyone was learning and nothing was going that well for us in it. And it just got longer and longer without making progress. But I see how the game works and I think there are some cool elements there. And I know there are people who really like the game. So I want to try it again and set aside the time and group to really play it.

14: Legendary Encounters: Firefly

Much like Firefly: The Game, Legendary Encounters Firefly is one that I’ve had fun with, but I want to play more. I really like the show, and I think that the Encounters version of Legendary works better than the Marvel version. And it also falls into the category of I know someone who owns the game, so I could pretty easily play it again if I wanted.

13: Cosmic Encounter

Cosmic Encounter is one that I had in my collection, I really enjoyed, and I traded away. Mainly because I don’t think I can get it to the table all that often. Cosmic Encounter is a really silly negotiation game that works when people lean into that negotiation. There is strategy to the game, but you need to lean into that negotiation to make it work. So it just limits who I can play it with, but I’d never turn down a chance to play Cosmic Encounter.

12: Cry Havoc

Cry Havoc was high on my Top 100 a few years ago, and it dropped down and I sold it. Again, a game that I really enjoy and I would play any chance I could. But it’s an asymmetric game so it is a bit harder to teach and play. With that, I prefer Root to it which is in the same family of asymmetric games. But this is a fun area control game with a cool combat mechanic that is simple but different.

11: Star Wars: Imperial Assault

More Star Wars on the list. Imperial Assault also left the collection only because it is a campaign game. Campaign games are harder to get to the table for sure and Imperial Assault is not exception. I want to get it back sometime and play it. I liked the app that you can use with it to play fully cooperatively. And I like that it feels like a Star Wars adventure.

10: Shadowrun Crossfire

I almost didn’t add this to the list, I don’t know where I want to put Cyber-Punk. But Cyber-Punk is Sci-fi. Shadowrun Crossfire is a game of deck building and defeating challenges, getting XP, and leveling up your characters slowly. That’s the big knock on the game that you don’t level up fast enough, but people house rule around that. It is one I need to dive more into the game, I think you can play it solo, even if it is multi-handed solo gaming.

9: Gravwell

Gravwell is an abstract game with a space theme put on top of it. In particular Gravwell has you getting passed through a wormhole that is closing and now you use different elements to try and escape back. But the different element either pull you towards the nearest object, push you from it, or pull them towards you. It’s a fun little puzzle that keeps it close until someone can get the right cards to make it to the end.

8: Star Wars: Rebellion

Star Wars in a box, as people like to call it. Star Wars: Rebellion has the Rebels trying to undermine the Empire and complete missions. The Empire is trying to figure out where the Rebels secret base is. All while building up troops and skirmishing as you go. It’s a massive two player game, but an amazing one. If you have the time it is worth sitting down with an getting that original trilogy Star Wars feel.

7: Under Falling Skies

Under Falling Skies is Space Invaders meets Independence Day. This is a solo game about fighting off waves of alien ships and researching the mother ship in order to beat the game. I have yet to beat the game, but it is a lot of fun. But I always feel like I’m getting close. I also really like that high numbers make some ships descend faster but are more useful to research or blow up ships. It’s a clever system and a pretty big little game.

6: Galaxy Trucker

I normally don’t like real time games but Galaxy Trucker is an exception. In Galaxy Trucker you build out your cargo ship as fast as you can. Then you sit back an watch it get blown up. Well, ideally not blown up, and ideally you pick up cargo along the way. You deal with asteroids, space pirates, and come across planets full of goods along the way. It might be too chaotic for some, but I really like it.

5: Battlestar Galactica

BSG (Battlestar Galactica) is a massive game of survival when you might have hidden traitors among you. The Cylons are aboard the ship and you might not even know you are one. This is a massive three hours deduction, survival, even a bit of social deduction game. You try and figure out who is a Cylon and if you can get them off the ship in time before they mess everything up. But that’s way easier said than done.

4: T.I.M.E Stories

TIME Stories is almost any setting. There is Ancient Egypt, a land of dragons, pirates, zombies taking over a town, an asylum, you name it. But the core conceit of the game is that you are launching out, sending your mind back in time from the future, to deal with these problems, where time is changing. The concept is amazing, and I have liked each adventure I’ve gone on. I wish it had more of a story running throughout, but the different missions all feel unique.

3: Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Suns

Rogue Angels isn’t even out yet, I have only played it on TableTop Simulator (TTS) but it is amazing. You can watch my play through of it here with the designer, Emil Larson. The game just works, it is a dungeon crawl style game in space. But it isn’t a dungeon crawl game where you just go in fight the monsters and leave. You make important decisions. And you upgrade your character as you go. There is so much I like about this game. When I get a physical copy, I suspect it’ll move up higher.

2: Clank! In! Space!

Clank! In! Space! is a deck building adventure game where you are breaking into a spaceship, trying to be as quiet as possible so you don’t Clank about. But to move faster, defeat more bad guys, and generally win the game, you will need to Clank. Plus there is a push your luck element where you want to get as far in as you can to get the best treasure. But the longer you are in the ship, the more clank and damage you can accrue.

1: XenoShyft: Onslaught

XenoShyft is a tower defense deck building game with some amazing cooperative elements to it. Mainly, I can buy a card and then give you that card if you need help. You only have two troops to defend your side of the base in your hand, I can help you get more. I can even drop in a paratrooper in the middle of fighting a wave of bugs. Add in that you always get money, that’s even better. I rarely defeat the waves of bugs, but it’s so much fun to try.

Final Thoughts

I own a fair number more Sci-Fi themed games that I need to try. Middara blends Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Nemesis is basically Aliens the board game. And I just realized that I missed Not Alone on the list, probably top 6-7. But I still think there are more fantasy games out there that look interesting.

Some that I don’t own that I really should try are the different Dune games. I own the one based on the Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game system which I need to carve out a weekend chunk of time to play.

What are your favorite board games with a Sci-Fi theme?

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Point of Sale – Out With the Old Board Games

Cosmic Encounter

This one might shock some people. It is a dearly loved game and Tom Vasel of the Dice Tower talks about it all the time as it’s one of his favorite games, or he did. And I have played this one and I liked it quite well. I think that with the right group, Cosmic Encounter is an amazing game. And that is why am I got rid of it. I am not sure that I have the right group to play it with. The game is very loose rules wise and while some of my main group is fine with that, others prefer more structure.

So, with Cosmic Encounter, I had to ask, is this a game that I’m going to be getting to the table? I don’t know when I’ll play it again, I suspect if I do play it, it’ll be at a convention or a board game store that has it. It is, unfortunately, a game that just wasn’t going to make it off of my shelf. So as much as I want to keep it and play it more, it just wasn’t going to happen.

Rising 5: Runes of Asteros

Rising 5: Runes of Asteros is a different case. A cooperative game that leverages Mastermind like mechanics to create a card game with a tile puzzle. It is kind of my type of game. I love having something to figure out. But, I had to ask myself, did it add something to my collection.

Lately, the puzzle games I’ve been playing are much bigger or one off things like the Unlock games. And while, I think a replayable puzzle game is a great idea, I don’t know that Rising 5 was going to get to the table. Most of the time I am going to want something bigger to stretch my brain like Mastermind and Rising 5 do.

Point of Order -In With the New

Clank

Now, this one might be a little bit more confusing. I already own Clank! In! Space!, and in my Top 10 To Be Played games, I had Clank! Legacy. So why do I need more Clank. The answer is, I really don’t but each Clank does something different. And regular old Clank has a lot of expansions that make it a very unique game compared to the other two. So I think that all of the three of are pretty unique. So I’ll probably grab some expansions after I’ve busted out the base game a few times.

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

Final one is another sibling of a game that I have. I picked up Terraforming Mars not too long ago. But then the Ares Expedition came out. This keeps some of the same stuff from Terraforming Mars, but drops the big boards. So now it’s about building up a card engine from a massive stack of cards. And because the stack of cards is so massive, it makes the game more tactical in nature as well.

This game just seems to ramp up faster than base Terraforming Mars does and while it is just cards, it still offers a lot of meaty decision making. While I know that both of them have solo, I am more likely to play this one solo as well because it’s easier to get to the table in terms of set-up. Though, I’ve heard that there are a few issues with the pieces and knocking them, but I can always do an Etsy upgrade since I missed/didn’t back on the Kickstarter.

Which of those two games do you want to play?

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Numbers

A’s – B’s

C’s

Calico

This is a game that I kickstarted last year after seeing it, not really demoing it though, at GenCon. The creator had a very little table set-up that was piggybacking off of another booth, and this game was there and it just looked so cute. In this game you are drafting tiles and playing tiles onto your quilt. If you get certain color or patterns you score points, there are some that are shared objectives, like different cats will want different patterns by each other, and if you can do that, you’ll attract that cat, or there are ways to get buttons which give points as well. The game should be a really good puzzle but not a game that you have a ton of rules to teach.

Status: To Be Played

Camel Up

I’ve wanted a racing game for a while, and while I do have another one that will show up in a little bit, that one is a longer and bigger game, I wanted one that could handle a number of players and play fast and silly, and Camel Up does that. You are betting on what camel is going to be in the lead on various legs of the race. What makes it even sillier is that the camels stack. So you don’t have a particular camel that is yours but you are petting on the camel you want to win. If you for example, roll the red die and the red camel has the blue camel on top of it, so you roll a two, that red camel will move with the blue camel on it two spaces forward. And the camel on top is in the lead. Once in a while I’ve seen this game fall flat, but more often than not it is that silly stand-up moment of what die will come out, what camel will move forward, because the more you win on your bets, the more points that you’ll have.

Status: To Be Played

Captain Sonar

This is another big group game, but it pits two teams against each other in submarine warfare in real time. You have tow teams with a captain a sonar operator, first mate, and engineer. Each of them is doing something different. The sonar operator is listening to the other teams captain to try and map out their path and figure out where they are on the board, the engineer is keeping the ship running the best that they can, and the first mate is prepping systems to be ready for use. If you figure out where a ship is and are close enough you can fire off a torpedo to try and hit them. The game is interesting, it has more strategy and the fact you can play it with eight and it’s not just a party game is so much fun.

Status: Played

Carcassonne

This is one of those classic gateway games up there with the likes of Ticket to Ride and Catan that people might have heard of. It’s on the shelves in Target with them. This is a tile placement game as you build out a board collectively building farm area, roads, and towns. You score points for placing out meeples into roads, but you only have a limited supply of them, and most of the time you can get them back, but you might not be able to, so you have hold some meeples back. When a meeple comes off the board for a completed town or a completed road, you get points, at the end of the game you get points for them if things aren’t completed as well, so you are trying to have enough meeples to put them down to score if you need, but not too many so you don’t end up with leftover meeples at the end of the game. It’s easy to teach and play.

Status: Played

Cartographers

Another game in that roll or flip and write category. In this one you are making a map set in the fantasy world of Roll Player games. You’ve been sent out to be a royal cartographer, and are mapping the villages, farm lands, rivers, and forest while also mapping out where the monsters are. The big thing that this game does, which I really like, is that you score things by season. So if I were scoring in the first season I’d score cards A and B, next season B and C, and then in the fourth season D and A again. So you have to balance your scoring and think about what will help you now and help in the future, or what doesn’t matter, because after the second season you won’t score B again. The game is fast and fun, and I’m excited for more stuff that I have coming from their latest Kickstarter.

Status: Played

Castle Panic

This one I’m a little bit surprised it’s still on my shelf and that I haven’t sold it, but it is such a good and simple cooperative game. I like that everything is played open, you have very simple zones for everything and where damage can be done. I don’t play this one often anymore, but I’m keeping it around because when the toddler is older it’ll be a nice simple game to play with them and something that we can play as a whole family, but I’ve had fun with it before, and there is a nice little bit of tension too it though you win more often than you lose.

Status: Played

Cat Cafe

This one is a true roll and write game, with a little bit of dice drafting. In this you are trying to make your best cat cafe. And you are scoring points off of certain things that the cats like, such as food dishes or toy mice. You also score points by filling up cat trees, the first person to get one filled in scores more points than the next person. There is some strategy in the dice drafting and the game works well. The game has a cute theme which was the big selling point, and some of the worst dice I’ve seen, but I replaced them with dice with cats on it, so it’s all better. Definitely a fun one that I need to play again.

Status: Played

Century Golem Edition

If I were to have a go to engine building game, Century: Golem Edition would probably be it. This is a fast and fun game where you are getting gems to collect golems. You do that by either taking a card to add to your hand on your turn, playing a card to get gems or upgrade gems, spending gems to get a golem, or picking back up all your cards. The game is simple and fast, but you can create some really powerful engines that will turn out a lot of gems fast if you can, and the game has great components, a great carrier for the gems, the gems themselves are cool, overall, such a fun and fast engine builder with a table presence that really sells the game.

Status: Played

Champions of Hara

I picked this one up after watching a playthrough on the Gloryhoundd YouTube channel. This seems like a fun game with a lot of depth of story to it without really being a story game. And the game components just look amazing. The modular board is cool, the areas of the world are very interesting, and the fact that you upgrade your character as you go throughout the game also helps sell it for me. Finally, the aesthetic of this game is just amazing, really a huge selling point when a game looks good and looks good.

Status: To Be Played

Charterstone

I still need to finish this one, there were several children that were born which derailed the game, and I think we have one or two games left of it, we’ll see if we get back to it, or I might buy a refresh pack and play it with another group. This is a simple worker placement legacy game that builds over time. It pretends like it has some story, but really it’s just a fun worker placement game, and I’m not always the biggest fan of worker placement. The rules do grow into more, but there are a lot of nice things about the game, and you won’t really be able to have a runaway leader through the game since it is competitive with how it’s balanced. Overall, this game is slipping for me a little bit, just because I can’t play it until we’ve finished it or I spend money to refresh it, and I need to group to play with then.

Status: Played

Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger

If you liked the goofy Choose Your Own Adventure books growing up, this game fits that perfectly. It’s a light silly and fun game, which doesn’t have you start over when you die thankfully. If you want something that feels like nostalgia, this is a good one, and I think that it goes over well with most groups. Definitely more of an experience than a game, but that’s what I waned from a game with Choose Your Own Adventure in the title.

Status: Played

Chronicles of Crime

Another one that I got to demo a little bit at GenCon in 2019, this one is an interesting tech assisted crime game. You use that feels like VR on your phone to look around a crime scene, you scan QR codes to investigate things, question people, take stuff to the lab and more all as you try and solve the case. I love the idea of this game as I really do love deduction games (keep in mind I said deduction not social deduction). This one is a bit lighter and simpler than some deduction games that might show up in different letters, but still such a good concept and excution from what I saw.

Status: To Be Played

Clank! In! Space! and Clank Legacy

I like deck building games, that’s why I have multiple versions of Clank. I don’t have the original version though where it is dungeon delving in a fantasy setting. Instead I went with the space version which has a lot of fun and silly sci-fi references sprinkles across the cards. And I knew when Clank! Legacy was announced with an Acquisitions Inc theme on it I was going to get that as well. The space game does enough more than just deck building to make it an interesting challenge and I like the push your luck in the game, even if I don’t always do the best at it.

Clank! In! Space! Status: Played
Clank! Legacy Status: To Be Played

Clue

A classic, but a good one. This is another simple deduction game that I mainly keep on my shelf because it is such a classic. I think that my copy of the game has been played maybe twice in about a decade. It does have roll and move which generally I don’t like in a game and only kind of works in this game because you basically always want to make an guess on something to see what information you can get. But if you already know everything you want from one room and roll poorly, you might just be stuck out in the middle. Still for a simple deduction game, it isn’t bad at all.

Status: Played

Codinca

This is an abstract game that I picked up a while ago. It’s all about manipulating/flipping tiles in order to try and complete patterns on cards. The first person to complete a certain number wins. I like the simple concept of the game, though the round cards are a bit weird. It falls into that category of a game that is simple to teach but could have some turns where you really have to think about what you’re going to do.

Status: To Be Played

Conan

This was a game that I bought because it was 50% off, I wasn’t sure when I’d get to play it I know that the rule book is very bad. But I liked the idea of this game. In it you are taking Conan and some other characters up against another person who is running the bad guys for the scenario. What is so interesting is the gaining and spending of energy and activating certain troops might be what you want to do, but when you do, you push them further down the river so it’ll cost more to do so again as the person playing the bad guys. Definitely a really interesting concept with a lot of cool looking minis and a Conan theme that is pretty fun.

Status: To Be Played

Cosmic Encounter

This is an old board game that plays a lot like a new board game. In Cosmic you are a wheeling and dealing alien race who is trying to colonize a certain number of planets. Now, you do that by on you turn picking what planet you’re going after, how many ship you’re sending, and then the fun starts. You can recruit other people to help you and you also spend cards to improve your total. You can negotiate with the person you’re going against to maybe go for a draw and getting something else in return besides knocking them off the planet, it’s a really fun idea. This game does depend on the group some, but when I have played it, I like it. Oh, and the alien powers can mess everything up.

Status: Played

Cowboy Bebop: Boardgame Boogie

This game caught my eye as Cowboy Bebop is one of my favorite anime, so I thought I’d give the game a whirl. Another one that I saw and purchased at GenCon. This is a cooperative game where you play as crew members and work your way through their story arcs, dealing with obstacles, having to bring in bounties and things like that. I like the theme and the game play while it doesn’t seem complex definitely seems like it should be thematic fun.

Status: To Be Played

The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

This game has been on fire, figuratively, this year. It’s a trick taking game oddly enough, but it is a cooperative trick taking game where you are trying to get certain players to take certain tricks to get a card of a certain color or number, or someone might not want to win a trick, otherwise you’ll lose that level. It limits communication like most trick taking games do, but just seems like such a fun game and one that you can sit down, set-up a mission, play, and do another mission if you want or two even and be done within an hour at most.

Status: To Be Played

Cribbage

A classic game for a reason, I like Cribbage quite well, especially as a bar game. It’s so small you can pull it out at a brewery, throw it onto the table and play a few games while having some beers, it works really well. I like the card play and the scoring for it that you’re always thinking about. It’s a classic, don’t need to say much more than that.

Status: Played

Criss Cross

Another roll and write on the list, the smallest roll and write that I have. I really like this one because of how fast and tricky it is. Now this one has more luck than some because guessing right on what die face might randomly show up, is helpful, but how you place in the dice faces on your sheet is even more important. And how you place the dice is interesting. You need to use them almost as a domino so that they are touching, you can orient them however you want, but they need to be touching like the two halves of a domino. Then you score both vertical and horizontal by how many adjacent symbols you have in the row or column. Good, little, and fast.

Status: Played (a lot)

Cross Clues

I picked this one up for playing on digital board game nights. Cross Clues is a fun game where you have a grid. You might have in row A the word stick, and in column 4 the word witch. So if you have the A4 card in your hand, you have to give a clue to get people to guess it, it might be something like broom. Broom handles are sticks and witches ride on brooms. But if the word in row B was clean, now that clue isn’t as good. So you’re trying to find that clue that works for that one right spot for the card you have. You can play it with a timer, which I think would work well in person, but digitally we play without.

Status: Played

Cry Havoc

This is a game that I really do want to play more. It’s an interesting area control and fighting game all at the same time. Like Blood Rage, but also really not like Blood Rage in a lot of other ways. You are coming to an alien planet to get a resource, it’s a very classic movie trope, and there are natives there. What is really interesting is how the different factions play. There are mechs, humans, pilgrims, and the natives, and the natives start out with the best board presence and will score more gems, the pilgrims are trying to just collect gems and create their own pool of scoring that no one can take away, humans and mechs need to spread out and win more battles. The combat is interesting as well with how you allocate your troops to different areas of majority control, killing, and capturing.

Status: Played

Cthulhu Fluxx

If you want to find a version of Fluxx on any topic, IP, anything, you basically can. Fluxx is what you hope will be a fast little filler card game where you are trying to get the right set-up of cards in front of you to win the game. And the rules are always changing. The game can be a bit of a mess to keep track of the rules, but that’s part of the silly fun of it. Definitely doesn’t get played all that often, because while it should be a short filler it can sometimes run long.

Status: Played

Cyclades

Final one that starts with the letter C, Cyclades is another area control, influence game where you are fighting to build and control a number of a cities. All of this while bidding for your power and turn order as to what god will shine their face on you that round and what actions you can take. It’s an interesting idea and I think one that I’d really enjoy, however, it hasn’t hit the table after quite some time. I’m not ready to get rid of it though because it does seem like a really good game.

Status: To Be Played

That was a lot of C’s, what is your favorite game that starts with the Letter C? Is there one based off of my list thus far of what I own that you think I should get for hte letter C?

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***Disclaimer***
These rankings are the opinion of yours truly, and if you don’t like them, that’s okay. We all have different tastes in games and that is great. There are some games that I’ve only played as a demo, and I felt like I got enough of a feel to put them on the list, thanks GenCon for all the demos. These are living rankings so next year I’m sure that things will change, so I’ll probably be doing another one next year. Thanks to Board Game Geek for letting me enter/rate my collection and games I’ve played. Thanks to Pub Meeple for creating a tool that pulls in those games that I’ve rated and creating a ranking tool. Again, the numbers and names will be linked to Cool Stuff Inc and Amazon if you’re interested in the games.

50 – Pandemic
This game is just a good game, and one that’s been around for a little while, but still is a lot of fun. The cooperative nature of the game and the unique roles for each player in what they can do best works really well. In this game you are trying to cure four diseases from the board before you run out of cards, have too many outbreaks, or run out of one of the four diseases cubes. You do this by curing the diseases and trying to collect sets of cards of various colors that match up with the diseases. All the while the diseases are spreading and if you aren’t on top of it, they can get out of control in one part of the world. There’s just something nice about the standard version of Pandemic that makes it easy to get out to the table with people. Really enjoyable game, and you can play on hard mode where you try and eradicate all the diseases, which is what several people I’ve met thing the actual rules are.

49 – Cosmic Encounter
This game is a weird one on the list. You are one of various alien races, but what race you are can change, you are trying to get onto enough different planets before other people do, but you can share a victory. I think the best way to put it is that Cosmic Encounter is a silly negotiating game where you are vying to spread across planets, with the weirdest aliens out there. What is cool about this game is that everyone can be engaged in what is going on every turn. When someone else is going for a planet, they can ask for help, and you can piggy back along with them, and the same for defense. So it’s easily possible to be involved in every turn. In the end, the strongest force wins, but you can play cards to modify that, and some of those cards allow you to negotiate. But if both sides don’t negotiate, the one side will lose, but they get something from the other person. There’s give and take as you try and guess what the other person is going to play and talk through what sort of deals you can work out. Cosmic Encounter is a space game that doesn’t feel huge and doesn’t take itself seriously, but is a lot of fun. I can see this as a game that would fall flat for some groups, though, if they aren’t into the negotiating.

48 – Titan Race
In a land where there are fantastical monsters, known as titans, what do you do, you race them. Each player is a team of a lava and a rider who are trying to race across the same board three times faster than everyone else, dropping traps, pushing the other titans into lava, going over jumps, sliding on ice or whatever else the board might have on it. Last game was silly, this one is silly and light and just fun to play. You can get special powers that you can use, in fact your titan and rider will have their own special power to start the game, and you are drafting dice to determine how far and in what direction you go. This is meant as a light game, this is actually a pretty little game, I wish it was larger, because it would make a good kids game if it weren’t for all the small pieces. The fun thing is that while you can just do laps on the one board, you can also do the “grand prix” where you put three of the boards together and race through all of them. That makes the game even a bit more variable. Simple game but a ton of fun.

47 – Five Tribes
This game is a point salad game where everyone gets a point for everything that they do. But with that, there is some strategy as well. You can’t just take any move, because while it might give you points, which are coins in the game, there might be better scoring options out there. In Five Tribes, you bid for turn order, and then, using a mancala like mechanism of moving pieces around the board, you pick up meeples off of a square, and placing one at a time, drop them off on other squares and whatever one you are left with, you take it and all matching, which there have to be, meeples from the square and do that action. But then, each square has other actions you can take as well on it, and are they worth it to get more points, maybe shopping in the market, or will that cost be higher than the return. And then there are Djinn which can change up how you score and give you more points, if you buy them. Plus, there are other meeples that just give you points at the end of the game, some give you money during the game, and some can be used to kill other meeples. So picking the right move becomes important, and if there is one great move out there, do you bid higher when picking your potential starting spot, or do you hope other players haven’t seen the move. For a bunch of randomness in the set-up, once you get into the game, there is a ton of strategy as you try and find those best scoring moves.

46 – Ascension: Deckbuilding Game
Ascension is my generic deck builder on the list. A lot of people would pick Dominion, but I like Ascension a ton better. In this game, you are still just building your deck, but the mechanics of how many cards you can buy and how many cards you can play are much simpler, because you can spend all your money to buy as much as you want and you can play all of your cards if you want. Plus, there are monsters to attack as this is a fantasy theme, versus a “trading in the Mediterranean” theme. But the theme doesn’t really matter. There are four factions in the game that you can buy from, plus generic other cards like a mystic that gives you more buying power, or heavy infantry that gives you more attack power. You also have cards that you can get which are constructs that stay in play and give you a bonus each turn, but a monster might destroy them. Overall, this feels like it plays as fast as Dominion, there isn’t just a single puzzle to solve, because you don’t know how cards will come up, Ascension is just more enjoyable for me, and the expansions seem to add more interesting things into the game. Some people will like the static market of Dominion, but Ascension, I think, offers more interesting choices than Dominion.

45 – Homebrewers
This is one of the games that I demoed at GenCon, but don’t worry, I own it as well. Homebrewers is a game about a homebrewing club and brewing beer. In the game, you are working on brewing the best beer possible in four different styles of beer. You can get ingredients to improve your beer, but you can’t just brew all the time, like in real homebrewing, you have to clean stuff up, you have to get the grains before you can add in the weird stuff. The big reason you’re doing this is to have the best beers in the different types to win the summer beer dabbler and Oktoberfest. At it’s heart, Homebrewers is an engine building game where you are trying to get beers to brew that will help you be able to brew more beer, get more money, and get more points throughout the game. Each character is quite hipster, but they also have their hipster powers which give them something unique that they can do on their turn. I played a character that could get an extra die, which meant an extra thing I could do, each turn if I paid in $1. This is a fun game, and it’s a very fast engine building game. And you can make some extremely weird beers.

44 – Hanabi
I feel like Hanabi is a polarizing game, because it’s not an easy game to master, in my opinion. In Hanabi, you are making fireworks, but there is a twist, you have a hand of cards, or tiles in the deluxe version of the game, but they are facing away from you. You, and your fellow players are trying to create stacks from 1 to 5 of each color of firework before a fuse runs low because of mistakes that you’ve made. But how do you know what to play if you can’t see your cards, just guess? Nope, there are tokens that people can use on their turn to give clues about what you have in your hand. The trick is, they can only point at the cards, not tell you what they are completely. So you can give a clue like, these two cards are red, because one of them is a red 1 and you need to play that, but you can’t just point to that red card, you need to point to both. The same with numbers, something might be the 4 that you need to play, but if there are two 4’s in the person’s hand, you have to point at both of them. So giving good clues can be tricky, but you also don’t want to guess at what card to play. The game has a good puzzle feel to it, and there are some clues that are better than others that you can give. A really fun game and very challenging, but not for people who want to know completely what they need to do.

43 – Say Bye to the Villains
This is the hardest game to win on the list. By that, I mean I’ve never won this game. It’s a cooperative game, so that’s fine, because that means that everyone who has played with me has never won as well (at least in games I’ve played with them). In this game you are Samurai who are going to defeat villains, and you have 10 days to prepare, which means 10 points that you can spend. Each character needs to prepare in a different way, but the villains are also prepared with things that can hurt you and henchmen that can beef them up, but you don’t know what those cards are. So, do you spend time making yourself stronger, do you spend time looking to see how strong the villains are? There are more things to do in this game than you’ll ever be able to do. And that’s fine, that’s the fun of the challenge, hoping that you’ve looked at all the right things in order to defeat the villains as each Samurai matches up against one villain. As I said, I have yet to win this game. But that’s cool because I love the challenge and getting close and falling just short pushes me to want to try again and do better. One of these days I’ll beat the game.

42 – Stipulations
This is the party game for this section of the list. Stipulations for me kills off games like Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity where you are matching up something to what the person who is it picked. This time you are writing it yourself. The advantage of that is it can be as clean or as dirty as you want, and you can tailor it to your group. The person who is it picks from one of four categories on the card, super power, lifetime supply, dream job, and a fourth category that I’m completely blanking on right now, but 50% of the time it’ll be super power anyways. Then everyone else writes a stipulation for it. Maybe you have the super power of flying, but…

You can only fly two feet off the ground.

You can only fly when farting.

You can only fly up, when you want to come down you just free fall.

You can only fly when naked.

This game is just goofy fun and while there is a weird scoring set-up for the game, we generally play with Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity rules where the person who wrote the best answer gets it and then at the end of two or maybe three times around the table, the person with the most wins. This game is more creative and just works so much better than those other two.

41 – Not Alone
Not Alone is an interesting big group game of one versus all. The all are the crew of a spaceship that has crashed onto an alien planet and are now exploring and trying to find their way off of the planet. There is one problem, the player who is by themselves, they are a monster on the planet who doesn’t like the fact that there are people around. And they are trying to track down and eat the crew members or have the planet do that for them. It’s a game of cat and mouse as the crew tries to go to places where the monster won’t go and to do this they play cards. They can even discuss strategy, but they have to do it so that the monster can here them, because, just maybe, the monster is part of the planet itself. This game, the monster races to take out the crew enough times to eat them all and stop them from being able to escape before the rescue ship gets there. There’s a real puzzle to playing the crew, and the monster has some interesting choices to make guessing where the crew will go next and hoping to get as many of them as possible as they split up. It’s a challenging game, but a lot of fun to play both sides of it.

That’s the next ten done. I think this is the longest and most detailed post I’ve done on my top 100 games thus far. I expect that trend to continue as I get into games that I really know and love and I want to play all the time.

Is there a game on the list that stands out to you as one that you really want to play? Or is there a game on the list that you really love, or really hate?

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