100 to 91

90 to 81

80 to 71

Plus a few notes on how I’ve put together the list:

• These are my favorite, you want what people consider best, see the Board Game Geek Top 100
• If a game you love isn’t on the list, it might be be coming, I might not have played it, and if I have, it’s 101
• If a game looks cool, I have links to buy it from CoolStuffInc or Amazon, or you can grab most at your FLGS
• There are a few games, Destiny 2 Player versus regular Destiny where if they are basically the same thing, I only do one of them

70. Marrying Mr Darcy

This is a smaller and less known game than a lot on the list, but I like it because it is pretty simple and quirky fun. At the heart it’s a set collection game as you collect different skills so that when the first part of the game is done, you can get your ideal suitor and marry them. But because it has a Price and Prejudice theme to it, and because the theme itself is just a little bit goofy, the game is a lot of fun and the set collection almost becomes a background to the randomness of everything else. This is not a highly strategic game, but it is fun. I do think that while the game needs a lot of cards just so you can build up your wit and cunning and other skills, it does overstay a little bit for a game where most of the fun comes from the silly randomness. If there was more variety in the parties and how those worked, it might be higher on my list as well.

Last Year: 98

69. Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game

Battlestar Galactica is a massive hidden traitor, hidden role game. The theme works amazing in this game as you are trying to escape the Cylons and get to Earth, but you’re not sure that you can trust everyone and who might be a Cylon and who might not be. So you’re pushing forward, you’re seeing who might be doing something suspicious and there are times when you just can’t help either, so that makes you look suspicious. This is a long game and a big game, but it feels tense the whole time you’re playing, and eve if you can figure out who the Cylon’s on board are, will that help you enough? Does knowing the show help for this game, most certainly, but it’s still an extremely well built game so it’ll still be fun even if you don’t.

Last Year: 55

68. Carcassonne

Another one of those modern classic games and gateway games to make the list. Carcasone probably introduced a lot of people into modern board gaming as you placed tiles down, used your meeples smartly to score, and built out a nice looking map on the table. This game plays fast, and it is still fun to play even though it’s a little bit older at this point. The only negative I have with the game is the farm scoring just because that can be a bit odd, so it’s a bit harder to teach that. Even with that, I like the building of the landscape and I think that the scoring is interesting as you can lock up a meeple to score points in a bigger thing, but that might mean you don’t have enough meeples to score something else. So there’s a balancing act with that and then with making sure you have all your meeples out at the end for scoring then as well.

Last Year: 90

67. Clank! A Deck-Building Adventure

Won’t be the only Clank! on my list, but one that’s a good time. This is the fantasy themed game where you are going down into a dungeon, trying not to disturb the dragon and make too much noise as you go around in your armor, fighting goblins, and then eventually grabbing a treasure and racing out of there. All of this while you are making noise which might attracts the dragon to you and if you take too much damage you’re done. So there’s a push your luck element to the game as you push further into the depth of the dungeon to grab a better treasure. And you do this with deck building, which is fun as you can be risky and get better cards but it might cause you to clank more. I love deck building and I like this game a lot, the only issue I have is that the end game message is a bit abrupt and can punish players for trying to push too deep if someone barely goes into the dungeon and gets out with the cheapest treasure they might be able to screw everyone else over. But if people don’t try and play that way but play more in the spirit of the game, I think that the game works well.

Last Year: Not Ranked

66. Dice Forge

Dice Forge is an interesting dice construction game where you are rolling dice and getting resources to buy cards and buy more dice faces to put on your dice. I think that the game is really interesting that way because you are literally changing up the dice. The different combinations of cards and how you build your dice can really change the strategy of the game as you play. You can go for buying tons of cards, you can go for getting the best dice possible in terms of coins or resources, and you can just go and get victory points from the the cards and dice. There’s one thing that really makes this game work. On your turn you roll your dice, get resources and can buy cards and dice face, but not on your turn, you still roll your dice and get resources.

Last Year: 53

65. Cosmic Encounter

This game is hard to explain but it’s a lot of fun. People could take this game seriously, but the game is best when it’s played in a silly way. Cosmic Encounter is all about getting your bases onto various planets, but to do this, on your turn, you pick a planet to attack and you and the person you attack can play cards to augment how much your attack/defense are. But, there’s more, you can get people to help you and add their ships into their attack, so they can get onto the planet with you as well. But the numbers the players can play can change up the attack greatly, so you can negotiate with the person you’re fighting, maybe if they play a low card for you, you’ll give them a good card, or something like that, so you can really work together for the best of everyone, but of course, you can also lie. But that might not work out, because you might owe someone something, or they might have a special alien power where they win with a lower number than a higher. The game should be played really goofy and with lots of negotiation, so won’t be for every table, but for me, it’s a lot of fun.

Last Year: 49

64. Parade

This game has an Alice in Wonderland theme, but really it’s a abstract game. In this you are trying to get the fewest points and you do that by playing down cards into a line, you look at the number of cards equal to what you put down and you get the cards that match the color or are a lower number, so you can potentially get none, but you might get a lot and they might be high points. If anyone ever gets all the colors, that ends the game and you score, or if you run out of cards in the deck to draw from. The scoring is simple, it’s the total of the numbers of your cards, unless, of course, you have the most of a color. If you have 4 green cards and that’s the most in everyone, you get 1 point per card, so you can push for a lot of a single color or you can try and only get low number cards not really caring about the color. I like how the different in strategies work and it makes for an interesting game.

Last Year: 62

63. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

As I’ve said many a time, I really like deck building games, and this one is a pretty straight forward game, but has a theme that I like with Harry Potter. I think this game does a good job with some nods to the books and movies and I like how this game builds over time and becomes harder but offers more specialization and diversity in what the characters can do. Between the theme and difficulty of the game and this is actually a decent gateway deck building game especially if you have more complex ones you want people to learn. Overall, just a fun game and a good straight forward and cooperative deck building game.

Last Year: 59

62. Galaxy Trucker

I’ve talked about a few goofier games in this section, and I think this qualifies as one as well. In this game you are trying to build a space “truck” and get enough crew and enough cargo spots so you can go fly around the galaxy, get the most money at the end of the flight. But the goofy parts are, first, that you build your ship in real time, so you’re going nice and fast as you’re trying to get everything built and you have to think about the weapons, shields, and engines on your ship. Because if you’re the fastest you can get to planets first and get the stuff you want, but if you add in too many engines or too much energy to fire your engines, you might not have enough to deal with asteroids and pirates. And the asteroids can just blow up part of your ship if you can’t shoot it down or you don’t have a shield that can stop it. After a few different builds and runs to get and deliver cargo, the person with the most money wins. It’s a game that is quite random, but it plays pretty fast and is just good fun.

Last Year: 56

61. Fruit Picking

This one for sure is new to the list because I just got it recently and I played it for GenCon online, but I really like this game already. The game has some very fun things in it. I like how you move the seeds around and how you store the seeds so that you can purchase fruit cards. And you just use those cards to complete sets, like a full house, three pairs, four of a kind, or one of each and once someone has one of those, the game is over and that person won. But to get the seeds, you move them around in a circle, Mancala style, banking seeds but where you end, that’s what you can buy and it gets you more seeds. Just a lot of fun and very much a gateway game. The game is also interesting because it’s from Korea as well, and I don’t know much about the Korean board game scene, but this one was a lot of fun. If you’re in search of a new gateway game, this one works well, though it’s only available via BGG in the US.

Last Year: Not Ranked

What’s your favorite from this section? Any that stand out, any based off of my taste that you think I should try or you think will be higher on the list?

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Fruit Picking

So, this is a game that I mentioned on my game list yesterday (found here) of things that I’d have wanted to see. It looks like a pretty simple game with a mechanic I really like, Mancala style movement of pieces. The aesthetic is cute and it looks like a good game to play digitally and one that if it’s fun would fit into the collection that I have and would get played. I like that you can play it solo as well. Definitely one that I was curious about and wanted to see, so when it was available to play, I thought it would be easy to checkout.

The Librarians Adventure Card Game

Now, I love this show, so when I saw it as something I could demo, I was really excited. I think that you could have all sorts of crazy and wacky adventures in a game with this theme. I don’t know much about it, but there’s deck construction and it’s an adventure scenario driven game, so I think it could be right up my alley. I like that it is show focused as well, more so than movie focused, because while I like the movies, you get more characters to really play around with as the show, and I want to play as basically all the main characters. I’m hoping that this game has a good balance of fun mechanics and that you really get a lot of the story so the mechanics don’t get in the way. Really excited to try this one though.

The Night Cage

I’m backing this one on Kickstarter, and with that I’ll get access to a Tabletop Simulator version, but I still want to learn how to play it and play it in that con setting. I think that this is going to be a blast, I really like the idea of the game and the horror and push your luck element to it. Out of all the games, I’m the most confident that I’m going to like this one. I like board games that provide tension, I like spooky themes. And I like cooperative games. So I think that this one, while a bit abstracted, will still have some of the theme just based off of the tension that is in the game. Really excited to try this one and excited to be taught the rules so that I can teach it easily to people via Tabletop Simulator when I get access to that while waiting on the physical game to come in.

Those are the three that I’m doing, I definitely considered more. Roy Cannaday from the Dice Tower just announced and has games for his new 4X space game which I thought about trying out. There were also demos of Hel, the Viking Saga game that I backed on Kickstarter. So, if you are signed up for GenCon online, what events are you planning to checkout?

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Silver Coin

Now, this is one that I’ve already talked about because I have it pre-ordered through CoolStuffInc. So I talked about it on a Point of Order. What interests me in this is that it’s a fun little game expansion but a standalone expansion for a game that I already like. It’s going to take Silver Amulet and combed with Silver Bullet give me a ton of replay value for the game. And unlike a lot of expansions that make the game more complex, this might make it slightly more complex, but the rules and details you need to know are basically just written on the cards. Super fun light game.

Marvel Love Letter

Now, we’ve had a lot of versions of love letter come out over the years, and nothing seems more loving than a team of avengers fighting against Thanos. Not really that loving, but it looks like a fun variation on it. There was a playthrough as part of the Dice Tower Summer Spectacular and it seemed to keep some of the core mechanics while adding to the game. Definitely a cheap little one I’m keeping my eye.

Sagrada: The Great Facades – Life

Now, I’m a big Sagrada fan, and I have the first of the Facades expansions that adds in some new scoring and new cards and clear dice. Now, I don’t really know that all the expansions are needed for this game, but I’ve started going down that path, and as a small expansion, I like that it gives you some small tweaks but mainly just more of what you already have. I’m curious to see what this one will add and to add it to my collection.

Hard City

Now, compared to the others which I had heard about other ways, Hard City is one that just sounded pretty fun to me. You are part of a team taking down an evil villain who has unleashed evil mutants upon the world. Variable player powers, action selection, these are all things that I dig. And while the game has some minis, they look small and it looks like the focus isn’t on the minis but on the game play itself, which is great. I also like that it does something that Tiny Epic Tactics does, which uses some of the box to make raised areas, but it looks nicer than that.

Fruit Picking

This is just a silly looking little game, I like fruit or food as a theme in games. And this is a set collection game, which I enjoy as well. But what really made me curious about this, and it’d be one that if they were at GenCon I’d be checking out to see how it works, because it has a mancala mechanism. This is something in the game Mancala but also something like Five Tribes where you are picking up a group from a location, then putting them down one by one in other baskets of things and with the last one you put down, you get all of that color. I like it as a set collection idea and this game seems like it has some fun stuff going on with it.

Black Rose War

Now, this is a game that originally caught my attention on Kickstarter and then was played through by the Dice Tower crew. I think that it looks fun as you duke it out for control of the “lodge” by casting spells and deck building. I’m a sucker for deck building games that have a good theme or that do a little more (though I do like Ascension a lot), and this one seems to meet that criteria. Price is a little bit high for a deck building game, but it does appear to have nice components and definitely more than just deck building.

Sonora

Another type of game that I like is roll and write games (or flip and write games). Sonora is a ??? and write game and the ??? are flick and write, which seems really fun to me. In this game, you are flicking around 5 disks in a number of rounds, I believe six, that then, depending on where they are sitting at the end of a round will allow you to fill in things on your board. This one I’ve known about for a while, but after watching the Dice Tower playthrough of this, it seems like my type of game. The flicking is fun and not that strategic, but the filling in, the scoring looks fun and it looks like you can create a lot of combos, so more depth than you’d think for a game that part of it if flicking.

Detective Signature: Dig Deeper

So many reasons that I’m interested in this game. The first being that I love deduction style games, and this is built upon a system that I’ve really enjoyed, Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game. Add in that this is from a designer that I really like. Normally designers aren’t extremely important to me, but this small box version of Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game and the story in it were done by Rob Daviou who has worked on things like Pandemic a game that I really love, so I’m curious to see what he can do in this system and what story he can tell.

Succulent

This one is on the list because it just looks pretty. I knew that this was coming out around GenCon because it was going to be at some of the GenCon popup events or maybe it was at an event that replaced International Table Top Day, I forget which. It’s already out, but in it you are collecting tiles that are succulent cuttings and putting them in such a way that you get points and other benefits. Overall, seems like a fairly abstract game, but I think it could be a lot of fun, and I really like the way that it looks.

Ascension: Curse of the Gold Isles

Really fast on this one, I like deck building, and I like Ascension, and I like what Ascension does for being a fast game but also adding in a bunch of fun things that you can do and building upon itself with it’s expansions. Do I need more Ascension, probably not, will I end up getting more than the base game and two expansions I already have, probably sometime.

Deranged

Still waiting on this one to come out, but I’m extremely excited for this game. I love the feeling of the game, I love the horror element, but also a bit of a goofy element to the game. It does a good job of giving you some tension throughout the game, and while you can kind of work together, it is every man for themselves. Got to demo this at last GenCon and I am still really really excited for this game.

So that’s 11 game that I probably would have been checking out again or for the first time at GenCon. Theya re definitely still on my list to try and demo and I hope that I’ll get a chance to play some of them, and that some of them, such as Deranged and Silver Coin come in soon. Looking at the list, are there any that look interesting to you and that you’d like to try?

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