Checkout 100 through 91 first here.

Checkout 90 through 81 here.

Top 100 Games 2022 Edition – 80-71

80 – Star Wars: Rebellion

Star Wars: Rebellion is a big Star Wars game with lots of fighting, dice chucking, but is really a game of cat and mouse. The empire is trying to find out where the rebel base is. The rebels are trying to complete missions and get the support of the people and undermine the empire. It really is a big game of cat and mouse which feels like the original trilogy.

The one downside to this game is how long it is. I do not mind that it’s two player only, you can play on teams but it’s two player only. But it’s a three hour game, now, that can be awesome a lot of the time. But you need to plan when you want to play Star Wars Rebellion.

Buy from Cool Stuff Inc

79 – Say Bye to the Villains

Say Bye to the Villains is an extremely tricky cooperative game. Players take on the roles of different Samurai who are preparing to takeout Yakuza. The plan is simple, but the game is tricky. It’s all about optimizing your character so that you can be the villain that you end up with. But you only have a limited amount of time and everything you do takes up time. Can you balance it building up your character, supporting the other players, and figuring out what the villains are up to. It almost comes down to the last villain and samurai being a coin flip as you just don’t know.

Buy from Amazon

78 – The Quacks of Quedlinburg

I like deck building and The Quacks of Quedlinburg gives some of that feel. But it is really a push your luck bag building game. You start out with your potion that you’re trying to make and it’s mainly lousy ingredients. You can’t push too far because you’ll bust. Of course, busting isn’t the end of the world, it gives you either money or points, you just can’t get both. As you get money you spend it to get even more ingredients to your bag which means that you can push even farther.

The strategy in this game is surprisingly good. And I really appreciate that about it because there is a lot of luck. But you can build up your bag so that it combos off each other. Where you can score more points if you don’t push your luck, just in case you bust.

Buy from Cool Stuff Inc

77 – Point Salad

Point Salad is another game that is pretty simple, you either take two veggies or a scoring card, but has good strategy. You need to pay attention to what everyone else is doing around you. Because as vegetables are taken, that flips cards off the decks. But on the back of those cards are scoring cards. It’s easy to play, but gives you that good decision of not knowing if you should risk leaving a scoring card, or will get get flipped. A nice filler length game at lower player counts. I think I prefer it at 2-4 and less often 4 because it makes the game longer and more random.

Buy from Miniature Market

76 – Metro X

I actually stayed at the table, after my stream last night, and played some Metro X. This is a roll and write game where you are filling in bus routes. But the bus routes cross each other, and that can be great. It means that you might fill in multiple spots on a route. Or it can be lousy, because you might want to put a big number onto a route, but you can’t as it’s been split.

Metro X is a good example of a puzzle roll and write. You need to figure out the optimal way to fill in everything. But also a roll and write that limits the complexity. You just fill in spots on the routes. Each bus can have a limited number of numbers used on that route. Because of the randomness it can be frustrating sometimes, but everyone is dealing with that.

Not Available

75 – Kohaku

Kohaku is a relaxing game of building out your Koi pond to score as many points as possible. You draft or select tiles form a pool of koi and scoring tiles taking adjacent ones. And then you add them anywhere to your koi pond. The only thing is koi can’t be by koi and scoring can’t be by scoring. I find this game to be relaxing. The tiles are beautiful dual layer that gives it that watery depth. And while I try and win, it isn’t a game that is so intense that it feels like everything is pressure filled each decision.

Buy on Miniature Market

74 – Calico

Another pretty game, Calico is not as calm as Kohaku. In fact, the puzzle of trying to play everything in is stressful. You need to think about scoring for buttons, cats, and your own objectives. And you really want whatever patch you’re adding to your calico quilt to help you in multiple ways. But as you play down and fill in your quilt, your options become less and less. And I like that tension of can you get the right tile to complete maybe two of your scoring objectives. Or will you need to settle or less?

The game is simple though. You play one of two tiles to your quilt. Then you replenish with one of three tiles, that is it. But each decision you make matters a ton in the scoring of the game.

Buy on Cool Stuff Inc

73 – My City

We’ll see how long My City sticks on this list, mainly because it’s a legacy game. And legacy games slowly drift down over time, I’ve found, the further I get away from playing them. But right now, I’m still in the midst of My City and it is great.

My City is a tile laying game where everyone is putting down the same shaped tile every turn. But there are new rules each time that come up. And you want to cover up open areas the best you can, but also build up groups of buildings that are the same type. And it adds more and more to the game without making it longer than a 15-20 minute game. Highly recommend this one as a light legacy experience.

Buy on GameNerdz

72 – Roll Player

Roll Player is another drafting game on the list. This one is dice drafting. And you are picking the dice to get them for your RPG character. The concept of the game takes one fun part of role playing games, building a character, and really focuses in on that.

Each attribute, standard ones for Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder, has a power that goes with it. It might make it cheaper to buy equipment. Or it might let you flip a die in order to push your stats higher. It’s a really fun game that I need to get around to building my insert for it. Because once you have everything, it is a bit difficult to get it to the table.

Buy on GameNerdz

71 – Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game

Wrapping up this section is technically two games. I went with my favorite/harder to find of the two in Battlestar Galactica, but this is also Unfathomable. Both of them are big hidden traitor, social deduction games of trying to get to some final location.

I do not like social deduction. In fact, I’d say with high confidence that there is only one other one on the list. But BSG and Unfathomable work because there is so much more game going on. You are fighting off monsters, whether it’s deep ones or Cylons. And there is just a lot going on with a lot of challenges that happen in the game. All the while trying to figure out who might be the one(s) who are traitors. And at the start of the game, it might be someone, but by the end, there will be for sure.

Buy Unfathomable on Miniature Market

Upcoming Streams

First off, reminder that there is no stream tomorrow. I am out of town so no stream happening. I think the following Wednesday will be the finale of my Stars of Akarios live streaming. With likely Chronicles of Drunagor hitting the table next.

And next Monday, the Top 100 games are going to continue. 70 through 61 in my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2022 Edition. You can find the link to that video below. Join me live, chat about the games hitting the list, which are your favorites, or which you want to try.

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Comments/Questions

Let me know your thoughts on Marvel Dice Throne, or if you have any questions about the game as I have played Dice Throne. And let me know if there’s a topic you want me to cover leading into The Eternals coming up in just over a week.

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Let’s talk about how fairly often a trilogy happens, and we can delve into some of the issues based off of that. The creator of the story has an idea for one story, maybe more, but one that they know they can get published or produced. So they go to the publisher or producer and sell them on this story and they get it made. Now, it’s a huge success and the publisher or producer comes back to them and asks for more and not just one more, two more of the story or film or whatever it might be. So the creator creates another story picking a spot in the middle for a cliffhanger between both stories and then those are published or produced. However, the second and third don’t do as well. What went wrong?

Now, it could be that there just wasn’t anymore story to tell surrounding certain characters or ideas or even worlds. That can happen, but probably isn’t going to be the biggest issue. Probably as often it happens that the creator didn’t have any more stories to put in that setting and to get something a little bit more out there published or produced, they agree to a multi-thing deal which includes what they are actually interested in creating as well as two things that will be more successful for the company that they signed the deal with. Both of those examples, there really shouldn’t have been a second thing created at all, because there really wasn’t anywhere to go.

But, I think there’s another issue that often befalls trilogies, and that’s their ability to tell a complete story. Pirates of the Caribbean is a great example of this. In the first movie, we get a complete story, we get Jack going from being a pirate down on his luck, getting what he thought he wanted, realizing it wasn’t what he wanted, and overcoming everything in the end. Same with Star Wars: A New Hope, we get a complete story including third act metal ceremony. Then comes along the second film, in particular in Pirates of the Caribbean, less so in the original trilogy (Star Wars). You get the creators knowing that there will be a third film, so they tell part of a story. You get some build, maybe even some change, but in the end, the biggest issue still hasn’t be resolved. Instead, you have to wait for the third film. And that’s fine, if you can watch both films back to back, but most of the time if it’s something you’re really excited about, you’re seeing the film or reading the book when it comes out, not when both are out. So you get the second part which is the start of a story and ends with a small resolution, and the third part which is the continuation of the second part and then the final resolution. So combined you are telling a single story, but both parts are going to leave you feeling a little wanting, unless they are masterfully crafted.

So, how can you get around this in a trilogy? Sometimes you just plan on it being a trilogy. Lord of the Rings is a prime example of this, Fellowship of the Ring doesn’t tell a complete story, Frodo is still going to Mordor, the same with The Two Towers, Frodo is still going to Mordor, and that’s the end of the story (kind of, there are a lot of third acts) when he throws the ring into Mount Doom in Return of the King. However, in each of those, we know there’s the through story line going on with Frodo getting the ring to Mount Doom in Mordor, but we also have other characters getting a story as well and there’s story, especially in Return of the King and The Two Towers that gets told apart from Frodo’s journey that has groundwork laid in earlier books, but finishes up and tells a story there. We have the massive battle between the forces of good and evil in Return of the King which sees Aragorn become King. We have in The Two Towers multiple stories that are told and wrap with Merry, Pippin, and the Ents and the battle of Helms Deep.

Lord of the Rings does two things that should be pointed out. It has a through line so it doesn’t feel like the parts of the trilogy are disconnected. This is the Frodo and Sam story line that they need to get the ring to Mordor and Mount Doom. It’s the key piece of the story and in fact, if they fail, the whole thing fails and that runs throughout all of the books. At the same time with have Gandalf, Aragorn, Merry, Pippin, Gimli, and Legolas doing there own things, making a difference in another part of the world. And even though they aren’t carrying the end game thing, the ring, they still have an important part to play. So we get complete story arcs, from beginning to end, for them in the books and not across all the books, but in each book there is a beginning and ending point.

This varies from my Pirates of the Caribbean example because it has a through line throughout the whole thing, Pirates has characters who repeat but the first movie stands separate from the last two of the original Pirates trilogy. And Lord of the Rings has a beginning, middle and end to each book, versus Pirates 2 & 3 where you have a beginning and middle and a middle and end split respectively.

What does this mean as a creator?

First, a trilogy isn’t the end all for writing, you don’t need it to be a trilogy. The Dresden Files, a series that I love, is on book 17. So you can clearly go longer if you have more story to tell, so don’t let a trilogy limit you. And don’t let the idea of it needing to be a trilogy or anything like that force over complexity and bloat into your stories.

However, if you are going to write a trilogy, or even if you are writing something that you have a bigger idea for, but you just need to get one written and published first, think about through line and think about a complete story. Now, it’s hard if you think that you are only going to get a single shot at creating your idea, but give yourself room. Don’t bloat your idea to fit everything in to a single thing, instead, tell a nice complete story and leave room in the world for there to be even more story. Star Wars, the original trilogy, does this well. You have them blow up the Death Star, that by itself could end the story in A New Hope, however, Vader isn’t killed, so the villain is still out there. If nothing ever came after A New Hope, it wouldn’t feel like it’s missing anything, but it’s natural that we pick back up again with Darth Vader and the Empire. So create a first story, even if you don’t know that you’ll get more like that. Give the main characters a big win but leave a villain out there defeated but not destroyed. That way, you can come back and pick up with the same characters and continue a story.

Also leave plenty of your world unexplored after your first story, especially if you don’t know if there will be more. Lord of the Rings, we get through some mountains, but we know that Mordor is still out there, but we’re not there yet, and there are other lands to explore as well that we haven’t seen or gone to. Star Wars: A New Hope, they really aren’t that many locations and then they have a ton of other planets that they can create and use in future films because they didn’t have them hop from planet to planet all the time. This gives you room to create more mystery and more adventures in which to tell your complete adventure. Pirates of the Caribbean really feels like it hits up so many locations in the first film, even though it’s somewhat limited, so you don’t feel like there are a lot of players left to join the story in this small world they’ve created, as compare to Lord of the Rings and Star Wars where who knows what new enemies or allies might be out there.

Now, I’m sure there are more things out there that you can do when creating a trilogy. I do want to wrap up with that I’m not trying to bash on trilogies. I think fairly often they can work. The original Star Wars trilogy and Lord of the Rings are great examples of this. Even The Hunger Games, which I didn’t talk about much, does a good job of making the 1st and the 3rd stand separate as their own stories. But don’t limit yourself to that if you want to create an epic, and tell a complete story each time, those are just my rules for writing a series or trilogy.

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This review is going to contain spoilers, though, Disney hasn’t tried that hard not to spoil things. So the big reveal, you probably already know about. The rest of the stuff will be discussing the plot for the show, so definitely going to be spoilers in that, but I think compared to some shows, Game of Thrones, spoilers don’t matter as much for the Mandalorian, and I’ll talk about why I think that as well.

So, what’s the plot of the Mandalorian?

We meet in the first episode a Mandalorian bounty hunter, simply referred to as Mando. He’s good at his job as a bounty hunter, but he gets an off the book job from a former empire man to bring in an asset, which happens to be a baby, a 50 year old baby. The same species as Yoda, but that species doesn’t have a name, so hence forth he’ll just be known as Baby Yoda. Mando gets some help retrieving the asset, and he brings him back to the empire man (this takes place after episode 6 of the Skywalker Saga) and into the hands of a cloner. However, he doesn’t feel good about it and ends up stealing him back. He then has to go on the run with Baby Yoda and comes across parts of his old life as well as a former Rebel shock trooper. When bounty hunters are still coming after him and Baby Yoda, he ends up having to go back at finish what he started, taking out the stormtroopers, but there are more now, and things go sideways. Getting help from the friends he’s made along the way, they manage to escape with Baby Yoda and the bounty has been taken care of, but things aren’t good as we see the new big bad guy has survived his TIE Fighter crash.

This show is actually pretty easy to summarize because the plot isn’t that complex. Where the show shines is how it can create great episodes that are a lot of filler but still turn them into something interesting. Now, I’m sure not everyone will think that, but when we meet Cara Dune, the former Rebel Shock Trooper, it’s a filler episode. So, there are a few things that are important during those episodes, but nothing that is extremely important. They are just very thematically nice and they have a very space western feel to them. In fact, the whole series relies heavily on the space western feel and it does it really well. It feels very Star Wars, and it manages to do that without invoking any of the recognizable characters. Sure, there is an IG unit and a few things we’ve seen before, but nobody major. There isn’t a CGI Luke in the background of some scene, so there is one episode where they end up in the Cantina on Tatooine.

Besides that very Star Wars feel to the show, they do a good job with the characters as well. Mando, Pedro Pascal, does a great job in the lead. He’s meant to be more a focused character and they do a good job of him having his code. The supporting characters, in particular IG-11, Greef Karga, and Cara Dune are all well done. I haven’t always been a huge fan of Gina Carano as an actress, I thought she was okay in Deadpool, but in this show, she does a good job as Cara Dune. Carl Weathers as Greef Karga, the head of the local bounty hunters, does a good job, and he just carries himself in a way that you can understand his history. But really the show is about two characters, Mando and Baby Yoda. And Baby Yoda, just as a puppet and CGI character is done really well. You can feel that Baby Yoda is a puppet at times in a good way, because the other characters interact with them better.

Now, I did say that I was going to talk briefly why I don’t think spoilers are a massive Mandalorian concern. Mainly it’s because the plot is pretty simple. There is a big reveal at the end of episode one when he finds out that his bounty that he’s bringing in is Baby Yoda, but beyond that, the show doesn’t take massive risks in the plot. That isn’t a bad thing though because they really focus on the quality of each episode, and it is very high. Also, because the episodes are so short, they can even more focus down on the quality. That was a complaint that I’ve heard from some, that the episodes were too short, but I like it for binging (which I didn’t do), but I also like it because it allowed them to really focus the story. Even the filler episodes didn’t try and do too much and just told a good focused story.

For me, was there anything wrong with the show? I don’t think that there was. Like I’ve been talking about, I think the plot is focused enough, the storytelling is tightly done. I can see why people would want longer episodes, because how well the aesthetic and storytelling are handled, but I feel like some of what makes the Mandalorian work could have been lost if it had been changed into a slightly longer format. Maybe they could have tied in the filler episodes better, but I really liked those episodes and a couple of them were up there for being my favorite episodes of the show.

So, I think the final thing to talk about is the future of the show. When the last episode was released, it was announced that there would be a 2nd Season coming this year. I’m definitely looking forward to that very much, so what sort of storylines might we be looking at? We definitely haven’t seen the last of the new big bad, Moff Gideon and his dark saber. I also think that Mando has been given the task of finding where Baby Yoda belongs, so which of those two things is going to be focus. I suspect it might be more Baby Yoda focused again with Moff Gideon harassing them, and then if/when there is a third season, that is more Moff Gideon focused. But that’s just 100% speculation on my behalf. I think that makes the more interesting story instead of stretching out a more direct confrontation with Moff Gideon who seems like a big bad who they want to keep around for a while, and just have hims survive multiple times.

Those are my thoughts on The Mandalorian. I really liked the show and I think that it’s up there with the original trilogy in terms of Star Wars material. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Did you like it? Did you have any major issues with it? What stood out to you about it?

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There is a grand-daddy of all area control games, and that’s Risk. Probably as I was describing area control, that’s what popped into a lot of peoples heads, trying to control the continent so that you can get the bonus troops. So while you might be getting the two bonus troops from Australia, how do you get out of Australia so you don’t have to try and take over Asia, because that will never work. However, if that’s what you’re thinking of for area control, you might not be a big fan of area control games. Risk has one major issue that cropped up in it and other older area control games. That being the one that I might have one troop and you might have twenty, but because I’m the defensive players and win ties, I might be able to deplete your troop if I get lucky rolling the dice.

Risk also has one more fairly large issue besides the dice, and that’s the length of game and the fact that a player can be eliminated and then might have to sit around another four hours if they want to see how the game ends. Thankfully, that’s a part of a lot of area control games that has since gone away. In every game I mention below, if you are knocked off the board, you are always able to come back, or in the case of Star Wars: Rebellion, if that was to happen, that would likely just end the game, especially if the Empire did that to the Rebels.

Modern area control games do several things to try and mitigate die rolling, though some of them still use that as the luck for the game so that doesn’t because a complete strategy game.

Star Wars: Rebellion is a game that has more going on in it than just area control, but there is that aspect where if you have more planets and certain planets you’ll be able to build more ships. The combat is based on a die pool that you build with the troops you have. There are a couple of things to make this not just a die roll to see who wins. First, you have the ability to negate hits by playing cards or add in additional hits by playing cards. You have a limited number of cards, but you can possibly get more as you go through combat. Also, the ships or troops you bring in do damage of certain types, depending on the color of dice, and same with how ships take damage. While there is some universal damage, it means you could easily out number someone, but if your troops can’t hit their troops as well, they can come in and wipe you out. This is one that is still primarily die rolling through, but it’s not longer just pure luck.

Smallworld is probably the most Risk like in terms of area control on the list, because the game is purely area control. You get points for controlling certain areas and any skills that you might have. But Smallworld removes basically all luck from the game. The luck comes from correctly using your race and special ability and being able to find one that is working well. However, when taking over an area, the rule is simple, you need one more piece of cardboard, the troops are cardboard, than is on the spot you are trying to take over. Where there is a tiny bit of luck is that you can push for a final take over at the end of your turn. So if you have one guy left and you want to take over a spot with one guy on it, you can roll a die that hope to get two or better. The downside is that this isn’t a normal six sided die so there are multiple blanks and multiple ones that are going to stop it from succeeding most of the time.

There are some games that just do away with die rolling for area control. Blood Rage and Cry Havoc are two examples of how this can work very differently. In Blood Rage you have an action point economy that is helping you put troops onto the board into areas. The areas have a certain number of spots for troops, so you can try and totally control and area, but if you out number your opponent in the area or you have good combat cards, you can try and take over an area to get the reward while it is contested. The luck in this combat comes from playing a variety of combat cards, though only one per combat. Some of the combat cards just add a large combat value, others may cancel other combat cards or steal some of their rage, which are your action points. So while winning a combat is generally the best, there are strategies where you can play without controlling too many areas.

Cry Havoc, a game about collecting gems on a crazy planet. In fact it reminds me a lot of Avatar. This is extremely unique area control. So you score based off of having the most gems at various times, but to have gems, you must control the areas with the gems. So you’re in conflict with the other players over the areas. Instead of doing a straight swap of troops or rolling to see if you kill, there is a combat board. There are three areas of the combat board, you can control the area, kill the other persons troops, or take prisoners. What’s interesting with this is that even if your troops in the control the area are killed later in combat, if you have the most there, you still control the area. So the combat has a bit of a puzzle feel because of the order of combat. Then there are cards you can play that allow you to adjust combat once you’ve seen what your enemy is doing as well. It is an extremely unique combat for area control and one that seems fairly polarizing.

Now, all of these are games where area control is a huge part of the game and you are looking to keep control of areas throughout the game. Area control does go into other games as well.

An interesting example of this is a combat game still, but is handled differently than most games like it. The game is Sword and Sorcery. It’s a pretty standard dungeon crawler, but it looks like a lot of fun. I haven’t played it yet, but it’s a game that I might track down for live streaming at some time. In the game there are a couple of different options for controlling spaces while fighting an enemy. If you have more characters than the enemy does in the area, you might get a special bonus, if you have twice as many characters, then you get an even better bonus. However, the same is true if the enemies out number the troops. This means that you have to go in with force yourself, and you may not want to divide and conquer in some situations, but you might also want to divide and conquer in others to keep the troops from all rushing to a single injured party member.

Area control is a mechanic that can show up in a number of games. Clearly I have it focused more on combat games. I think that there are some games with area control that might have more of an Euro aspect to them, but a lot of them are more the Ameri-thrash games. The reason for that is that a lot of area control does rely on luck, so it is less planned than a lot of euro games are. However, there are likely some games out there that are handling it in a Euro game, and even Cry Havoc has some Euro tendencies for a combat area control game.

What are some area control games that you like? For the most part I like all of the games I’ve talked about with the exception of Risk, and even Risk I’ve had plenty of fun times playing it. Area control games can be fun, but you have to be willing to be cut throat.

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