Catch Up on the Top 100 Games

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

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition – 40 through 31

40. Sushi Go Party!

Published By: Gamewright
Designer: Phil Walker-Harding

Buy Sushi Go Party!

Sushi Go and Sushi Go Party! are classic drafting games at this point. And I think with the fun theme and artwork more welcoming than other bigger group drafting games like 7 Wonders. In this game you draft a meal over three hands of cards. You score points for the sets of cards you get, depending on how those cards score. So an example is for each pair of tempura shrimp you score five points. Some might not score you points, though, if you get too many or too few of them. So it’s a fun changing strategy with lots of cards drafting game.

39. Ninjan

Published By: Helvetiq
Designer: 6jizo

Buy Ninjan

This little game I thought wasn’t going to be that interesting, but I really enjoy it. It’s rock paper scissors. But you don’t play against the other players, you play against a central set of cards. And if you beat a card you take that one and those are the points you get. The trick is that some points are negative. So if all the cards are negative in that middle display, you don’t want to beat them and take a card. It makes some some interesting choices and a lot of fun moments of trying not to get points.

38. First Rat

Published By: Pegasus Spiele
Designers: Gabriele Ausiello and Virginio Gigli

Buy First Rat

The moon is made a cheese, you’re rats so of course you know that to be true. And you want to get there. You do that by collecting resources to build up rocket parts and get your ratstronauts ready to go to space. This game is all about figuring out how you want to score and then optimizing that as you move your rats up tracks gaining resources and other things. I like how there is a variety of ways you can go about it in the game, and the theme is just great.

37. Let’s Go! To Japan

Published By: Alderac Entertainment Group
Designer: Josh Wood

Buy Let’s Go! To Japan

Second new game on the list Let’s Go! To Japan is one that I backed on Kickstarter but played first on BGA. This is another drafting game, I really enjoying drafting. In this game you want to create your best trip to Japan. And each day you have a certain goal you go for. So it might be food one day or cultural events. As you draft cards and plan your days you try and line that up. As well as you try and get the best scoring for each day that you can. There are a lot of fun things with how this drafting work. And it’s just fun to see your trip when you are done.

36. Guild of Merchant Explorers

Published By: Alderac Entertainment Group
Designers: Matthew Dunstan and Brett J Gilbert

Buy Guild of Merchant Explorers

The last new game on the list is Guild of Merchant Explorers. This is a game with a roll and write feel but uses cubes for that. You are creating routes across your map and filling in areas to get points and create trading posts. I love how simple this game is, everyone has the same map and you flip a card and you place a cube or cubes on that type of terrain. But then you get special cards that make you different in each era and games start to go in very different ways. Plus the treasures which always feel like they should be better than they are, but I always want them.

35. The Isle of Cats: Explore and Draw

Published By: The City of Games
Designer: Frank West

Buy Isle of Cats: Explore and Draw

This is one of the highest roll and write games on the list. The Isle of Cats: Explore and Draw is a really fun game where you are rescuing cats from an island before the bad guy gets there. And to do that you pick a column of cards to activate. Some of those columns are just cats and you add them to your ship trying to create groups of cats. Others might have scoring objectives, so it’s this fun balance of determining how you want to score or maybe you need more cats to make your scoring work. All this while having a polyomino puzzle on your board.

34. The Isofarian Guard

Published By: Sky Kingdom Games
Designers: Eric Bittermann, Sean Craten, David Yanchick

Buy The Isofarian Guard

The Isofarian Guard is one of two bigger story games on the list. And I think you’ll find that a lot of the bigger story games are towards the top half of my list. I love this type of game. And The Isofarian Guard has a lot of fun bag building as you level up characters. Then you explore and enjoy a big story while hopping into combats and using that bag building to battle the bad guys. It’s interesting how there are multiple campaigns with different guard members that all happen during the same time period. That is unique to the game.

33. Forest Shuffle

Published By: Lookout Games
Designer: Kosch

Buy Forest Shuffle

Some games give you a ton of points and Forest Shuffle is for sure one of those. In this game you build out a tableau that is your forest and surround the trees with flora and fauna. Every tree, every animal and every plant give you some benefit in some way. And your goal is to optimize is the best you can. Maybe you go all in on butterflies, or you get a bird card that scores more for other birds. You need to figure out your best scoring.

I need another paragraph to talk about the game because the card play and end game are so good. In the card play you spend cards from your hand to play cards, and that is always a tough decision as to which cards you might not get to play. And the end game is great with three winter cards in the bottom third of the deck. When you hit one or the second one, you know the end game is coming soon and you need to get cards played.

32. The 7th Citadel

Published By: Serious Poulp
Designer: Ludovic Roudy and Bruno Sautter

Buy The 7th Citadel

Another story and campaign game, The 7th Citadel creates a really unique world of necrodruids and monsters that you avoid, fight, and challenges to complete. With a map that you build out each time you play, you explore new areas and directions to get through the scenarios of the story.

And how you do your combat or challenges is really enjoyable. Each character has a deck of cards. And you draw from that deck trying to get the right stars to line-up. You can draw a lot of cards, but if you do, you’ll run out of cards sooner. So maybe you draw fewer, or maybe you really need to pass, so you draw a lot but then spend health to get more back. But of course, when you spend health that is putting you closer to death that way.

31. Star Wars: Unlimited

Published By: Fantasy Flight Games
Designers: Jim Cartwright, Tyler Parrott, Daniel Schaefer, Jeremy Zwirn

Buy Star Wars: Unlimited

The only TCG on the list is Star Wars: Unlimited. Though I’ve been loving Magic the Gathering again as well. But Star Wars: Unlimited is just an easier game to play. The actions being so simple and a back and forth one action and then one from your opponent is great. I also like the two theaters that you fight over, ground and space. Granted you can also just direct that damage at the base as well to try and take that down because that is how you win. And there are a lot of good synergies for building if you want to be a force user, a Mandalorian, or a Rebel, etc.

Join Next Week

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

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

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Catch Up on the Top 100 Games

100 through 91
90 through 81
80 through 71

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

70. Meadow

Published By: Rebel Studio
Designer: Klemens Kalicki

Buy Meadow Here

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

69. Mountain Goats

Published By: Allplay
Designer: Stefan Risthaus

Buy Mountain Goats Here

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

68. burncycle

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

Buy burncycle Here

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

67. The Lost Expedition

Published By: Osprey Games
Designer: Peer Sylvester

Buy The Lost Expedition Here.

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

66. ISS Vanguard

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

Buy ISS Vanguard Here.

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

65. Mansions of Madness

Published By: Fantasy Flight Games
Designer: Nikki Valens

Buy Mansions of Madness Here.

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

64. Sonora

Published By: Pandasaurus Games
Designer: Rob Newton

Not Available Currently

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

63. Lands of Galzyr

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

Buy Lands of Galzyr

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

62. Kohaku

Published By: 25th Century Games
Designer: Danny Devine

Not Available Currently

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

61. Nidavellir

Published By: GRRRE Games
Deisgner: Serge Laget

Buy Nidavellir Here

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

Join Next Week

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

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

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Message me on X at @TheScando
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How To Play Moonshine

Moonshine is an engine building game where you are racing to 12 points. To do this, you need to score patrons to your speakeasy by meeting their requirements. On the turn where one player gets 12 points, the game ends and whomever has the most points, as you can go over 12, is the winner of the game.

A Turn

Turns are pretty simple. You roll three dice, possibly more, and then per the rerolls that you have, you start with one on your speakeasy, and you try and get combinations to complete the patrons you have at your speakeasy. To do this you need to match symbols. The symbols are money, music, drink, and moons.

If after your roll or your opponents roll you cannot complete a patron’s requirements, you choose from two other options. First is you can choose to get a moon. If you do, you cover up a moon spot on your speakeasy or one of the patrons. I plan to talk about that more in the engine building section. The other option is that you draw patron cards and may replace one of your patrons.

Engine Building

The engine building is done in two ways. The first is with the moon tokens. When you get moon tokens from rolls or for your turn option, you place them on a moon location. These offer some benefits. On the speakeasy it is either unlocking a blue die to use or a wild symbol for money, music, or drink.

The patrons also might have one as well that you can spend into. When you spend into those, you gain that benefit for as long as the patron is waiting at your speakeasy. Once a patron is complete, they go to your speakeasy. They offer two things potentially there. The first is points, some patrons have a fixed number of points, some have no points, and others offer a variable number of points based on card color.

The other thing that patrons add is symbols. These can be symbols like money, music, drink or moons. These symbols are permanent and let you more easily complete other patrons’ requirements. Or it might be access to the blue or orange dice. It is also possible to get access to looking at more cards when you gain a new patron or three patrons waiting at your speakeasy versus just two, or additional rerolls.

What Doesn’t Work

This is one where i don’t find a ton that doesn’t work. As normal, in that case, I want to talk a little bit about luck. There is luck in this game with what you draw. Now you always draw a few cards to look at and choose one to add to your waiting patrons, but that is not always going to give you what you want. So it is possible that you just need to draw patrons again after a role.

And the other minor thing is there are a few patrons who when you gain them, they give you a moon and remove a moon from your opponents. There are not many and it doesn’t set your opponents back too far. But that is a negative player interaction that might feel tough for a player.

What Works

I like how simple this game is. The dice are easy to understand what symbols they give you. And it is easy to see what you want to roll for. I like it when a game can get to the table very quickly and is very easy to teach. There are a few symbols but those are really easy to understand after a turn or two in the game.

I also like the interactions in the game. I mention the few cards have that negative interaction. The game is also going to offer a chance to mess with your opponents on your turn when you roll the dice. But this is not too negative, they still get to take a positive action, get a moon or replace a patron, if they can’t fulfill a patron’s requirements. I like that the game isn’t purely solitaire though because you can set up your roll or pick your patrons in such a way to maybe fulfill them on an opponent role.

The engine building is Moonshine is good as well. It is simple, I liken it to Splendor. But that goes back to how simple the game is. I know how to leverage my engine pretty quickly once it gets going. And that moment of when do I stop building my engine and go for bigger points is nice. And because it is a simple engine, it keeps the game moving. Moonshine doesn’t stall out.

Who is Moonshine For?

I think this is a good game for people who like Splendor. And I think that this is a more enjoyable game than Splendor. So maybe for the people who think that Splendor is a bit slow in getting going, Moonshine offers a lot of the same engine building style, but is faster to get to it. And there is a bit more in terms of strategy, I think, than with Splendor but just a tiny bit more. So if you want to introduce someone to engine building concepts, this is a good game for that.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Moonshine

I very much enjoy Moonshine. It is a game that I already have played at least five times and have a few more games of it going on BGA. I also think it is very possible that it is a game that will start to feel similar. Your engine is not going to massively change from game to game. So it is never going to feel wildly different as you play it.

This is a bit of a negative, but it is also something to be aware of what type of game it is. Mainly, Moonshine is a great game for BGA because there isn’t too much going on. At the same time, if you want heavy engine building it is going to feel a little bit lacking and won’t stick around as long because of that. But it is meant to be an easy to get into and play engine builder, and it is great for that and for that reason I like it.

My Grade: B
Gamer Grade: C+
Casual Grade: A-
Strategy (out of 10): 4
Luck (out of 10): 5

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How to Play Arigato

Arigato is all about getting the most points that you can. You do this in a few ways, by sending workers to deliver their offering. You get points for artisans in your village, potentially, and you get points for completing the main objectives. At the end of 12 rounds, the person with the most points is the winner.

10 of the 12 rounds are going have those main objectives to complete. The objectives might be about having a number of artisans in your village with offering tokens, different or same resources, or total of number of artisans who have given an offering and more. The more of them you complete, the more points you get from them.

Morning Phase

You play the game over a few phases. The first one is the morning phase. In the morning phase you get five artisans and you split them into three groups. One artisan goes into your village. Each artisan is limited, and the card shows, as to where you can place them in your village. If you want to place an artisan and a spot is blocked you can discard an artisan from that spot to place them.

The other divide the other four two and two. Two artisans will get discarded for resources based off of their color. And the other two artisans get passed to your opponent at the start of the next day or round. Those will be used to create their new hand of five artisans.

Day Phase

During the day phase you flip over your cards, all are played face down, and you gain resources for them. You check and see if any of the artisans in town have an ability to trigger. Generally these abilities either give you more points or they give you more resources. Some abilities also trigger in the dusk phase, but we won’t cover that phase right now.

Then you spend your resources to place offering tokens onto your artisans. Just because an artisan has an offering token on it does not mean you need to move it to deliver that offering immediately. You might find that you don’t have the right combination of resources to complete offerings. If you want, you can trade two items in for one of another type. Once an artisan has an offering token on it, you can send them to deliver that offering whenever you want.

Dusk Phase

At the Dusk Phase a few things can happen, but the biggest is you check and see if you completed the objective for the day. If you did, you mark that with taking a token. And you also check and see if any of your artisans have things that would be triggered at dusk. The final thing that happens at dusk, though I might be off on order, is you discard your resources to get down to seven total. This is fairly rare that you will find yourself with more.

The game, like I said, ends after twelve days. You check to see your score for all the main objectives you completed. Then you add up the points you have taken during the game, and the points on the artisans who have delivered offerings. The player with the most points is the winner.

What Doesn’t Work?

The one negative I can think of is that there are a good number of symbols. On the artisans in particular you need to know what each section does and when the village ability is going to activate and what one it is. This is an issue only at the beginning playing on BGA because the more you play, the more you know just from looking at the symbols.

My hope, though, is for the physical version of the game, there are player aids. You don’t need anything much for it, just let the players know what the symbols are for because there are enough of them that it’ll be annoying to reference the rule book or pass around the rule books.

What Works?

Phases

I think that the different phases work quite well. Mainly because everyone is doing them at the same time. So it is generally a solitaire game. That means, though, that no player is going to have that much downtime. It’ll mainly just be waiting for the other players to complete their phase. And the phases are simple enough that it shouldn’t take too long.

With that comment about solitaire, I do want to comment about how it’s not purely solitaire. It is best to select cards in the dawn phase that is best for yourself. But if you find that you are not getting what you need, you also are able to pass on cards so that your opponent next turn is less likely to get what they need. It is a minor interaction, but can be a useful one at times.

Scoring

I really like the scoring in the game as well. All three elements work well in Arigato. I like that I can plan for those main objectives to get them, though, it’s improbable that you’ll get them all. But if you just go for those objectives, someone can score a lot of points from the artisans in their village and make up ground. And also getting a lot of artisans to deliver offerings is worth a lot of points.

Engine Building

Finally, the engine building in the village is fun. It adds to what you are thinking about when you pick which card to add or what cards to pass or keep for resources. You can go for a village that kicks out a ton of resources and rotate that and really focus on getting offerings delivered. Or you might go for one that doesn’t produce as many but is going to give you a lot of points from villagers. It’s up to you, and I like that variety.

Who Is Arigato For?

I think that people who like engine building are going to like like Arigato. But it is nice that it is not a massive engine that you build. It is only ever four artisans and often fewer. So this one is going to work well for that engine building but also for people who want to learn engine building. The drawback is, of course, the symbols, but that is common with engine building games.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Arigato

I really like Arigato. Even though my first play is not great, because of all the symbols, every play after I feel like I learn more and more about the game. And it is fun to explore the engine building that is done. Especially since it is possible for it to go different ways and how you can use them to your advantage in those different ways. If the village were larger it might feel like a lot of upkeep, but four artisans in your village is the perfect amount for the game.

It is also nice that all the turns are at the same time. Again, that often lends itself to being a bit more solitaire in nature. But in Arigato that isn’t a bad thing. Like I said, it is possible to toss some cards to your opponent that they might not want. But that is not the focus of the game. I like a game where it feels like what I do is awesome, and I can mess with you a little bit. Arigato is a game like that.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: C+
Luck (out of 10): 4
Strategy (out of 10): 5

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Catch Up on the Top 100 Games

100 through 91

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition – 90 through 81

90. Wandering Towers

Published By: Capstone Games
Designers: Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer

Buy Wandering Towers.

This is just a fun simple game of trying to remember where you wizards are hiding and get them to the main tower. I like how easy it is to make it work. You play out two cards and if you have potion bottles filled you can cast a spell. The spells are simple, the cards are simple, you choose to either move a wizard or a tower as far as it says on the card. But it’s still a lot of fun because of that memory aspect and burying your opponents wizards under a stack of towers.

89. Grove: 9 care solitaire game

Published By: Side Room Games
Designer: Mark Tuck

Buy Grove.

This one is two games in one really with Grove and Orchard. I put them together because the games are very similar, though I do slightly prefer Grove. In this game you stack cards to get matching tree types to overlap. As they overlap you tick up dice that are going to give you more points. The more points you have at the end of nine cards, the better you do at the game. Grove adds in scoring cards, and that addition is what pushes it over because it’s bonus scoring, but also how many points you need to beat to win the game.

88. Via Magica

Published By: Hurrican
Designer: Paolo Mori

Buy Via Magica.

It is weird to think that drawing chips out of bag and everyone getting a cube to add to their spells, basically bingo, can make a fun game. But it is great in Via Magica. This is a simple game with powers that you get from completing spells. It’s one of two games that actually has abilities or powers from completing spells on this section of the top 10. But it’s all about drawing those chips and hoping to get the right ones. Or then being smart about the spells you take so you can always use the chips.

87. No Thanks!

Published By: AMIGO
Designer: Thorsten Gimmier

Buy No Thanks!

This section of the list has a few push your luck games on it. No Thanks! isn’t a tradition push your luck game, but it does have those elements. In particular, you need to decide when it is worth taking a card. Cards are bad, cards give you points, so you want to say no thanks to them. But you need chips to do that, so No Thanks! is a game about determining when there are enough chips on a card to make it worth taking. Because, not only a chips needed for saying no thanks, they are also negative one point per chip at the end of the round.

86. Strike

Published By: Ravensburger
Designer: Dieter Nuble

Buy Strike.

Imagine a gladiatorial battle in the Coliseum. Actually don’t, this game is all about rolling dice to get pairs and knowing when to stop if you don’t get pairs. You just want to be the last one in the game and that’s it. It’s a simple game and simple system but it is always fun when it hits the table. I think everyone just likes to make a decision to roll a fist full of dice. And if you don’t get any matches, you can always roll more dice that you held back, but beware the one because when a die lands on that side, that die is gone forever.

85. Marvel United

Published By: CMON and Spin Master
Designers: Andrea Chiarvesio and Eric M. Lang

Buy Marvel United Multiverse Core Box.

Do you want to team-up as Marvel heroes to defeat villains in a fast and easy game? Marvel United is great for that. You pick your hero, the villain to go up against, and a few locations and you are ready to play. This game is all about managing what the villain is doing, and they do some fun stuff, and then chaining off of what your superhero teammates did, because you use the last card played, to have a great turn. This is a great game to teach people cooperative game play because you can really cooperate. And there is so much for it.

84. Homebrewers

Published By: Greater Than Games
Designers: Matthew O’Malley and Ben Rosset

Buy Homebrewers.

I like brewing beer, I did it for a long time. I’m not sure it’s hobby I’m going to return to. But I can still get my beer brewing fix with Homebrewers. This is about brewing the best beers you can. You brew a beer and you go up on a track, then you need to deal with the spent grains, sanitize, get more grains and brew again. All of that is like homebrewining.

But then the game offers different ingredients you add to your brewing. And these cards stick around between brews. So if you brew a porter with almonds, you now always will. And those ingredients give you brew something special that might be more money, or it might be that you move up on another beer. At the end, you just want to be the best homebrewer out there.

83. Chronicles of Drunagor: Age of Darkness

Published By: Creative Games Studio
Designer: Eurico Cunha Neta

Buy Chronicles of Drunagor.

I love my big campaign games. And Chronicles of Drunagor is no expection. It is just lower on the list because one of them has to be and it is one that I haven’t played a ton of. There is so much in the game, but I highlight three things in the video. I want to highlight one here, the activation system. You use different colored cubes to activate abilities of those colors. But when you run out of cubes or need a specific ability, you need to pull back those cubes. Then you cover up a spot so you can’t use it. It’s a unique system that I find a lot of fun.

82. PUSH

Published By: Ravensburger
Designers: Prospero Hall and Brian Kirk

Buy Push Here.

I like simple push your luck games, and PUSH is my favorite of them. This one is just push your luck, but as compared to other simple push your luck games, this one offers just a few choices. Mainly you create three stacks of cards on your turn. But those stacks can’t have the same color or number in a single stack, aka you can’t have two blue cards in a stack. Well, that is easy enough, you could stop early. If you do that, then other players could push their luck for more points. And then there is the die, if you have the roll the die, you might lose cards. It’s all about balancing that risk for points.

81. Potion Explosion

Published By: Horrible Guild
Designers: Stefano Castelli, Andrea Crespi, and Lorezno Silva

Buy Potion Explosion Here.

If you want a game that feels like app game, Potion Explosion definitely meets that need. It is one of those games where if like colors are touching they explode, or in this case, you get them. And it’s all about chaining together colors of marbles the best you can, and then you use them to complete spells. And those spells give you points that you need to win the game, but they also give you one time abilities that you can use to chain together more marbles and complete more spells. This game is just tactile and fun.

Join Next Week

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

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

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

10. Xenoshyft

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

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

9. Paper Dungeon

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

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

8. Ship Shape

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

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

7. Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition

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

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

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

6. Trailblazers

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

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

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

5. Calico

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

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

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

4. Chronicles of Drunagor

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

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

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

3. Tesseract

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

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

2. The Great Split

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

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

1. Ready, Set, Bet

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

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100 through 91
90 through 81
80 through 71
70 through 61
60 through 51

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition – 50 through 41

50. Via Magica

• Published by Hurrican in 2020
• Beat your fellow magic students in a bingo-esque game and utilize your powers best

This is a great filler level game. It’s a ton of fun to collect materials and use them to open gates. And then try and figure out what games and what elements you want to focus on opening first to get benefits from either immediately or throughout the game. As as well you need to grab points, so it’s a fun balancing act in what you’re doing. This is not going to be for everyone as it’s a light game, but I really like Via Magica for a nice relaxing and fun time.

Buy Via Magica

49. Too Many Bones

• Published by Chip Theory Games in 2017
• Chuck dice and battle enemies as you level up your Gearlocks to faceoff against the final boss

This is a fun short campaign style game. It’s not a big story game, but you get that mechanical feeling of leveling up in Too Many Bones that makes it such a fun time. And each Gearlock is unique and plays differently. I think that is part of what makes the same so special. Each characters want to level up in their own ways. And sometimes you just want better stats. But other times, getting and using your unique dice is going to create for some really fun game moments. The game isn’t a story game, but it can provide it’s own story.

Buy Too Many Bones

48. Ganz Schon Clever (That’s Pretty Clever)

• Published by Schmidt Spiele in 2018
• Place dice, fill in spots, and gain combos to get your highest score

I’ve already talked about this system two other times. But this is the original one to use the system and it’s my favorite of them. I really like how clean the puzzle is for trying to solve this game and do best at it. And there are enough combos that you can end up with some awesome turns. But the combos don’t slow down the game too much which is one element that I can really appreciate about this design compared to others. Though the flexibility in how you play is a little bit more limited.

Buy That’s Pretty Clever

47. Dungeon Kart

• Published by Brotherwise Games in 2024
• Rev your engine, take off, and mess with your opponents in this fast racing game

Dungeon Kart is obviously trying to be a Mario Kart style game. And I think it does a good job of it. I’ve played other games that offer some of that, but Dungeon Kart I really enjoy. It does a great job balancing catching up, slinging spells at your opponents and just a fun time. You get behind, no biggie, you get more and better spells. You’re in the lead, well, it’s your own fault you are there and you’re going to get blasted, but don’t worry, you can still catch-up again.

Preorder Dungeon Kart

46. Super Mega Lucky Box

• Published by Gamewright in 2021
• Combo your way into a bingo victory

This is the second bingo like game on the list where something is drawn and all players use it. But this one is a flip and write game that is more bingo like than Via Magica and has you filling in a three by three grid. Of course as you fill in rows and columns you get bonuses that can give you more. And the game provides great offsetting of the luck of the slip with powers from lightning bolts. It’s just a really fun, easy to play and fast game.

Buy Super Mega Lucky Box

45. Cartographers

• Published by Thunderworks Games in 2019
• Draw your best map as you explore the lands in this flip and write game

The theme is only kind of there, but this is a great roll and write style of game. You flip over terrain and figure out how you want to place it out on your sheet. But beware monsters because your opponents get to decide where that’s going to go and it’s going to be the worst spot for you. Plus the game has fun scoring that rotates throughout the seasons so that one of the scoring elements in spring is going to be scored for winter as well.

Buy Cartographers

44. Res Arcana

• Published by Sand Castle Games in 2019
• Can you get your magical engine up and running faster than your opponents in this race to 10 points

I like how simple Res Arcana is, but how thinky it is as well. You need to really figure out how you want to leverage the cards that you have, or draft, in this game. And drafting really adds some strategy to it as you can try and figure out what your best cards are going to be how you can get them to turn out points. The game has this great build to it until suddenly you can get points and then the game just flies to the finish.

Buy Res Arcana

43. Railroad Ink Challenge

• Published by Horrible Guild in 2021
• Can you connect your routes better than your opponents can?

Another roll and write game, last one in this section. Railroad Ink Challenge is a great game of building out routes of both trains and roads and trying connect as many of them as you can together. Challenge adds in challenges that you can push for to score more points. But beware of leaving too many unconnected pieces, those can lead to your doom as they are negative points.

Buy Railroad Ink Challenge

42. Rebel Princess

• Published by Bezier Games in 2024
• It’s Hearts with Shenanigans, in the best way as you avoid proposals you really don’t want.

That’s really what Rebel Princess is, Hearts with shenanigans. But the shenanigans really do make this game. The princess powers are all game breaking in some way, and you want the ones everyone else have. And then the card that determines the special rule for the hand is great as it messes with everything. So you need to be quick to adjust how you are playing every time, and I think that’s great.

Buy Rebel Princess

41. Rock Hard: 1977

• Published by Devir Games in 2024
• Live your best rockstar life as you go from garage band to playing stadiums in this worker placement game

This game is really about living that 1970’s classic rocker life as you build up your band, gain reputation, write more songs all in hopes of playing on the biggest stage. I love how the worker placement is split up over three different times, day, evening, and after hours. And it’s fun that you need to worry about your job, at least for a little bit, and pay your producer as you become more famous because of course, while they help you, they also hurt you. It’s just very thematic for a worker placement game and a theme that I like a lot.

Buy Rock Hard: 1977

Upcoming Streams

Just a reminder on my streaming schedule. It’s not just all my Top 100 Games (of all time).

• Monday night, time varies, I play different small solo games, though I might be looking to start up a campaign again. And generally the streams do start between 8 and 8:30 PM central time.
• Wednesday at 9 PM central is going to continue my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition for another six weeks. After that expect this to be when I play my small games. Only 5 more weeks left of my Top 100 Games, then likely this will switch to smaller solo games and video games.
• Friday at 9 PM central my wife and I are streaming a playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3. Join us for the adventure of Nina and Kaerok and see what choices we make.

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

Send an Email
Message me on Twitter at @TheScando
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Catch up on previous videos here

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

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition – 60 through 51

60. Medium

• Published by Greater Than Games in 2019
• How well can you and a partner connect two seemingly separate words?

This is a really fun party game. You are just trying to match up with your partner (for the round) on two words. But can you both land of the same word? If not, now you need to use those two new words. But, of course, those two new words might have gotten you further apart. This game is one of those party games that has a lot of great highs to it as people land on the same word. And also a lot of moments of just fun as you think it’s impossible to connect the words.

Buy Medium

59. Under Falling Skies

• Published by Czech Games Edition in 2020
• Battle aliens and defeat the mothership before it lands.

I love this as a solo game. I really enjoy the complexity and thought process of needing to manage how to alien ships are descending. Yet you also need to push to research. So it’s a balancing act of trying to get what you need done, but also not stretching yourself too thin that the smaller vessels are making it into the city scape and pushing the end of the game along faster. So the whole thing is a giant puzzle and a very fun one at that.

Buy Under Falling Skies

58. Final Girl

• Published by Van Ryder Games in 2021
• Be the final one standing in a horror film as you take on the roll of the Final Girl.

This is one that is perfect for the Halloween season so great for me to talk about it this week. It’s a solo only game where you are taking on a killer, a ghost, or whatever the story is as the final girl. The one who is standing at the end of the movie. And who knows if you will survive or not, but that is the fun challenge of the game. Plus the action system in the game is really good as you spend resources to succeed on checks, but also need those to replenish the cards and actions you can take.

Buy Final Girl

57. Stonespine Architects

• Published by Thunderworks Games in 2024
• Build out your best labyrinthian dungeon and show the you’re the best architect.

This is a really fun drafting and set collection game. And I think one of the elements that really stands out to me is how become unique in your scoring. You are able to stop buying stuff to grab a scoring card. And that scoring card is going to shape how you play the game, but you also don’t want to stop too early because you need to collect those tokens to bolster up how dangerous your dungeon really is. It’s a great balancing act and adds just a bit more choice to the game. Also this is a new one to my Top 100 Games list.

Buy Stonespine Architects

56. World Wonders

• Published by MeepleBR and Arcane Wonders in 2023
• Build out y our civilization and compete to complete wonders to make your lands the best.

I appreciate the ease of play. I say that knowing that World Wonders is not the simplest game to learn, but it is a game that as you get into it, to goes really fast. And I like the push your timing element of the game as well. I won’t call it push your luck, but you might be ready to build a wonder but have a lot of money to buy tiles left. Well, if you don’t build it now, someone else might snag it, but if you do, it might put you behind for the next round and the new wonders that come out. And I believe this is new, though maybe 2023, to my Top 100 Games.

Buy World Wonders

55. Homebrewers

• Published by Greater than Games in 2019
• Become the best home brewer and win awards at Summerfest and Oktoberfest.

This is a great little engine building game that I really like. I like it for the theme, but also for the game play as I always have fun with it. In the game you brew beer to get better at brewing beer. And some of how you do that is you get new ingredients to work with and add to your recipes for IPAs, Porters and more. Those ingredients are going to help build out your engine and might get you more money, move your up on tracks, etc. At the end, though, most of it just comes down to who is the best at brewing beer.

Buy Homebrewers

54. Potion Explosion

• Published by Horrible Guild in 2015
• Combo marbles together to create the most and the greatest potions.

This is almost an app game as a board game. And I mean that in the best way possible. There are a number of app games where you remove a “thing” and try to get matching “things” to touch because of it. Here you remove a marble and you want to get like colored marbles to touch. Because that cascades together and then you get to take those marbles. If you play it right you can create a bit change to get the marbles you need to complete a lot of potions in one turn. And that puzzle is the fun of the game to leverage your potions to complete more.

Buy Potion Explosion

53. Mansions of Madness

• Published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2016
• Investigate mysteries of the elder gods in this app guided game in FFG’s Arkham line.

This game is one of the first really big games on the list. And there is a lot that I like about it. But it did use to be higher on my list. I think it’s dropped because I haven’t played it as recently, and because I’ve played more story driven games. This one, though dynamically adjusts the story and the world as you play through multiple times and that is a fun element. But the different scenarios and missions are all fun, and I enjoy that variety in the game.

Buy Mansions of Madness

52. Ohanami

• Published by Pandasaurus Games in 2019
• Create your best Zen garden to score you the most points.

The last two games on the list are small. This one is great though for me because it’s a chill game, for the most part, and easy to learn and play. You collect cards, drafting them two at a time. And then you add those cards to three columns. But you either need to add to the top, higher, or bottom, lower on the column. And things can never drop out of numerical order. Plus how the different color score, as you draft over three hands, makes the game even more of a puzzle. And there is a fourth color as well that can be huge, but you are giving up points elsewhere. Overall a really fun little filler game.

Buy Ohanami

51. Vegetable Stock

• Published by Good Game Studio and Arcane Wonders in 2019 (and 2024 for Arcane Wonders)
• Collect vegetables and be able to sell them for the most at the end of the game.

This is a stock market vegetable drafting game, and I love the absurdity and double meaning of Vegetable Stock. This is another small game that is more of a filler than anything. But it’s a really fun filler as you draft over six rounds. Each round you draft from N+1 cards where N is the number of players. That last card is then used to adjust the stock market. So you need to be smart in what you draft. Draft too much of one veggie it’ll never move up, but if it moves up too much the market might just crash and make them worthless.

Preorder Vegetable Stock

Upcoming Streams

Just a reminder on my streaming schedule. It’s not just all my Top 100 Games (of all time).

• Monday night, time varies, I play different small solo games, though I might be looking to start up a campaign again. Expect Final Girl next week for Halloween. And generally the streams do start between 8 and 8:30 PM central time.
• Wednesday at 9 PM central is going to continue my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition for another six weeks. After that expect this to be when I play my small games. Only 5 more weeks left of my Top 100 Games, then likely this will switch to smaller solo games and video games.
• Friday at 9 PM central my wife and I are streaming a playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3. Join us for the adventure of Nina and Kaerok and see what choices we make.

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

Send an Email
Message me on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here

Catch up on previous videos here

100 through 91
90 through 81

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition – 80 through 71

80. Flamecraft

• Published by Cardboard Alchemy in 2022
• Deliver on the most goals and score points as you play out adorable little dragons who help around the town

This game immediately grabs you with the artwork. The dragons are amazing, and Sandara Tang gives each of them such great personality. Beyond that the game is simple but fun, you go to a location and are either activating the cards and dragons there, or adding some, or spending resources to complete goals. As the locations get more and more dragons the more powerful they become. It’s a great ramping mechanism for a simple game. Though the game is not fast one, which might be my only knock on it.

Buy Flamecraft

79. Just One

• Published by Repos Productions in 2018
• Work together to get the guesser to the right answer with just one word

A party game on this section. I’m not sure, I expect that there are two more party games on the list, but we’ll see. I honestly have forgotten. But Just One is a great cooperative party game. One person is the guesser and everyone else needs to write down a one word clue to get the guesser to guess their one word. Sounds simple, right, but if you double up with anyone, now both those words are gone. That means that an easy clue can become very hard very fast. So you want to be obscure with your clue, but not so obscure that it won’t lead the person to the right answer.

Buy Just One

78. On Tour

• Published by BoardGameTables.com (AllPlay) in 2019
• Create the best route for your band to tour the map going from low to high numbers

This one is a fun roll and write. While I love a ton of roll and write games where they have a lot of combos, this one is a different type of puzzle. In On Tour two dice are rolled and players each place the numerical combinations on two spots on their board. But there are rules as to where they can go. And you may want to watch the city to gain bonus points, but if it won’t connect well to your route, is it worth it to push your luck?

Buy On Tour

77. Mythwind

• Published by Open Owl Studios in 2023
• Build up your settlement and play your mini game in this cozy gaming experience

Open Owl Studios went into making Mythwind with the plan of making a cozy game. So something that works well like a Stardew Valley or an Animal Crossing. They do that by creating a peaceful story world to play in, there are interesting elements to it though. And then each person plays their own little minigame. I demonstrate what the minigame for the farmer looks like. And One Stop Co-op Shop and Meet Me At The Table play some of the other ones. It’s just a unique feeling game that is fun, and relaxing to play.

Preorder Mythwind

76. Betrayal at House on the Hill

• Published by Avalon Hill in 2004
• Explore a haunted house but beware, someone is going to be come the traitor

This is a game that I still love though I haven’t played it in a few years. I fully recognize that the game has issues. When you sit down to play you know that the haunt may not work as planned because either the traitor is going to be overpowered or the other survivors will be. And the haunts themselves have janky rules. But I still love the game anyways because it’s thematic, silly, and just a fun time.

Buy Betrayal at House on the Hill 3rd Edition

75. Clever 4Ever

• Published by Schmidt Spiele in 2022
• Another combotastic game in the Clever line of roll and writes

I don’t know what else to say about this one. Clever 4Ever offers a ton of fun combos and a few different feeling sections of your sheet. How Wolfgang Warsch keeps on coming up with different and interesting ways to handle rolling five dice, using one, getting rid of lower ones and then rolling them again, I don’t know. But he does and this one is great, I especially like the sections where you can fill in different shapes depending on the number rolled. That element really feels different.

Clever 4Ever is either new to my Top 100 Games (of all time) this year or it just made the cut last year. I know I hadn’t had the game for long.

Buy Clever 4Ever

74. SpellBook

• Published by Space Cowboys in 2023
• Learn spells and feed your familiar to get the most points

This is a really simple game. All it is when you boil it down is set collection. You collect materia, you get enough of a color, you learn that spell. Then you use that spell you learned to collect more materia or learn new spells easier. Each spell you learn gives you points, or you can just feed the materia to your familiar for more points as well. The is fast, and there is a fun puzzle as to how you can optimize your spell usage as you get into the game.

Buy SpellBook

73. Century: Golem Edition

• Published by Plan B Games in 2017
• Get crystals, upgrade crystals and get golems to give you points

Another engine building game. Century: Golem Edition again, like SpellBook, has quick snappy turns. In this game it’s all about hand management and using those cards in hand to get more and upgrade crystals. Then you use those crystals to grab Golems that are going to score you points. But you literally just play a card, trade crystals for a golem, pick-up all your cards, or buy a new card. One of those things on a turn and the game just flies.

Buy Century: Golem Edition

72. New Frontiers

• Published by Rio Grande Games in 2018
• Build out the grandest space empire by doing the best action for you

New Frontiers is another engine building game. In New Frontiers you are doing it at a space level though, colonizing new planets, getting new technologies, fighting and conquering planets. All of that done through action selection where what action you pick gives you a bonus. But, everyone else is going to follow along with that action as well. So what is the best action for you and maybe not a great one for other players? I believe that New Frontiers is new to my Top 100 Games (of all time) as well though it isn’t a new game.

Buy New Frontiers

71. Meadow

• Published by Rebel Studio in 2021
• Create a beautiful tableau of nature through tricky card drafting

Meadow is another gorgeous game. I start out and end this section with beautiful games. In Meadow you want to score points by playing out creatures, taking pictures, and gaining trinkets. But to do that you need to build up your meadow from the land type up through bugs and maybe eventually all the way into deer, foxes, or other creatures. How you pick the cards you get is great. You use a fence post that tells you how far into a row or column you are picking. So you need to determine the best spots to play to get all the cards that you want and hope no one blocks you.

Buy Meadow

Final Thoughts

Firstly, let me know what your favorite of these games are. I obviously enjoy all of the tones in my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition, so Meadow needs to be my favorite. But in terms of easily getting it to the table, I’m kind of feeling a big old stream and playthrough of all the clever games on Malts and Meeples. And let me know if there is one that you would want to get played as well that you haven’t tried in my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition.

Join me next week for the next batch of games in my Top 100 Games. It’ll be starting around 9 PM Central on Wednesday if everything goes as planned. You can subscribe and click the notification bell to get notified when the video goes live. Thanks so much for watching.

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Catch up on previous videos here

100 through 91

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition – 90 through 81

90. Project: ELITE

• Published by CMON in 2020
• Real Time Scenario Based Tower Defense

Normally this wouldn’t be my type of game. I love parts of it, like chucking dice, scenario driven play, and cooperative game play. But I don’t like real time. This balances that out by giving you real time in bursts and then a moment to strategize before the next wave of enemies comes out. That is real time game play that works for me.

Not Currently Available

89. Lands of Galzyr

• Published by Snowdale Design in 2022
• Relaxing story driven cooperative or competitive game

Lands of Galzyr is a game that feels like that kind of random D&D session. You stumble across missions but each mission is it’s own thing. And the whole thing is done in a package that puts story first and keeps the game play simple. And it’s a relaxing game to play. Not that some stories aren’t exciting or risky, but it never truly feels high stakes.

Pre-order Lands of Galzyr

88. Kohaku

• Published by 25th Century Games in 2020
• Build the best and highest scoring Koi pond

I really enjoy Kohaku for the simplicity and thoughtfulness of the game play. It’s a game where you need to plan out where you place tiles to optimize your scoring. But it’s not overwhelming. And the elements like drafting both a koi and a scoring tile each turn and how that works is really enjoyable.

Buy Kohaku

87. My City

• Published by Kosmos in 2020
• A fast, ever building legacy game

My City is one of those legacy games that is just simple and fun to play. Sometimes they get bogged down in trying to be too big, but not My City. The game is focused on adding a little bit each time and giving you a fun fast session as everyone builds out their city in hopes that it’s the best one at the end of each scenario.

Buy My City

86. The Isofarian Guard

• Published by Skykingdom Games in 2023
• A massive solo and two player story driven adventure

This is one that you can checkout a game play of on Malts and Meeples. I really enjoy this game, though it is a massive table hog. The game is an interesting story telling game that has some tropes, but quickly branches off into magic powers and interesting story. It’s one that I think works well solo but I’d prefer to play two player to keep the combat simpler and share that great story experience.

Buy The Isofarian Guard

85. Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade

• Published by WizKids in 2020
• It’s Roll and Write Pinball, can you get the new high score?

Super-Skill Pinball is truly a pinball roll and write game. I love how it simulates the game with the ball movement and how it launches up, can ping around in the bumpers or drop back down. It’s a great game for solo play and it’s fun with others, though it’s possible that one player will finish before the others. That’s the only downside to the game, but with all of the tables i never feel like I’m lacking in something to keep it being played solo.

Buy Super-Skill Pinball

84. Crokinole

• Created in 1876
• A competitive flicking classic

There’s no publisher for Crokinole, the game is public domain, but there are a lot of great spots to get boards and get spendy or fancy boards. I really like the simplicity of the flicking game. It works really well and smoothly and it’s one that you can definitely get really good at. I wish I had more time to get this one to the table, though, I could say that about all of them.

Pre-order Crokinole

83. Clever Cubed

• Published by Schmidt Spiele in 2020
• Another combotastic roll and write game from the Clever line

I really enjoy Clever Cubed because while some of the others have combos, Clever Cubed is the one that has even more combos. And while sometimes I really like a good straightforward roll and write game, I also love the ones that give me a ton of combos. No doubt that this the latter, and the core game loop of how you pick and eliminate dice on your turn is always good.

Buy Clever Cubed

82. Furnace

• Published by Hobby World in 2020
• Bid on cards and build up the best industrial engine you can

This is a great and simple engine building game. Everything works smoothly with gathering resources and turning them into points. But there is also a really fun auction as well. I love how it’s a single bid per person per card but if you lose the big, you get a benefit for bidding there. And how the benefits scale based off of the number you bid with is amazing.

Buy Furnace

81. Yggdrasil Chronicles

• Published by Ludonaute in 2019
• Defend the world tree from all the threats that abound

This is a really tough cooperative game and one that I really enjoy. I think it’s a fun push your luck as you try to power up while hoping that you can keep the enemies in check. Of course, there are so many enemies and they ramp quickly that it can be very challenging. Plus how the enemies activate or how it’s determined which ones do is really clever and fun.

Buy Yggdrasil Chronicles

Final Thoughts on Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition 90 through 81

What do you think of the list, is there a game that you want to try or that you love on it? I feel like I got a really big variety on the list this time. There are some lighter games, but then you have a game with a ton of minis like Project: ELITE and a big campaign game in The Isofarian Guard. The only thing I think is missing is a true party game from this section.

Just a reminder, join me next week on Malts and Meeples for the next 10 on the list. The plan is to go live around 9 PM Central time and it’ll be 80 through 71. The best way to know when I go live is subscribe and click that notification bell. That’ll let you know for sure when it’ll be happening.

What is your favorite game from the list and what is one that you want to try?

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