Catch Up on the Top 100 Games

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

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition – 50 through 41

50. Welcome To…

Published By: Blue Cocker Games
Designer: Benoit Turpin

Buy Welcome To

This one is a classic roll and write style game. I really like the decision space for Welcome To… of deciding what goals to go after and what combination of cards to write down on your board. The three choices of number and bonus works really well and has been fun in other games in the system, but the classic Welcome To is the best still.

49. The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth

Published By: Repos Productions
Designers: Antoine Bauze and Bruno Cathala

Buy The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth

Now, I like this and 7 Wonders Duel very similarly, but only one is staying in my collection and that is going to be the Lord of the Rings one. But both do similar things and are great games. This one, I find, cleans up some things like no end game scoring. And while I find the end game without the win in one of the three game ends if you get them situations isn’t 100% satisfying, going for those other goals is great. And they most of the time do pull of the win with them whether that’s getting the ring to Mordor or getting support from the various groups.

48. Heat: Pedal to the Metal

Published By: Days of Wonder
Designers: Asger Harding Granerud and Daniel Skjold Pederson

Buy Heat: Pedal to the Metal

Not my favorite racing game, but Heat: Pedal to the Metal is up there. I really like how the game works pretty quickly, so it has that racing feel, but you still make a lot of meaningful decisions in it. Heat is all about managing the heat on your engine so that you can push the corners at the right time. But the more heat you get, the more it clogs up your hand and then you need to back off and let the engine cool down. It’s just a clever and enjoyable system that’s easy enough to teach and gives you a great racing feel.

47. Ohanami

Published By: Pandasaurus Games
Designer: Steffan Benndorf

Buy Ohanami

Ohanami and the next game on the list are the two smallest ones. Ohanami is a great game for pulling out and playing a round or two of when you want a simple game to play. But it offers some fun with the twist that it provides on scoring and how you need to set-up the cards into the columns as you draft them. The drafting and adding always needing to be higher or lower than the top or bottom card in a column, at least if you want to play them, is fun as well. It’s not that common for someone to be stuck without something to play, but if you make that happen it’s fun.

46. Mind Up!

Published By: Pandasaurus Games
Designer: Maxime Rambourg

Buy Mind Up!

Mind Up! is another one of those games that just really works for me. There is so much luck in the game as you try and get the cards that you want, it kind of feels like it shouldn’t work. But at the same time, you always have a decision to make that matters and just enough knowledge. The fact that the order of the cards and how you want to fill in to get points changes each round while the cards in your hand don’t as much is a really fun system. Because, yes, I am guessing what is going to work to get the card I wanted, but I might remember a little what you have.

45. Schadenfreude

Published By: Studio Turbine
Designer: ctr

Buy Schadenfreude

I guess Schadenfreude is the third small game on the list. But it’s a pretty different game because it’s a trick taking game and it’s a trick taking game that does some really interesting things. Mainly it’s about not flying too close to the sun and getting burned as you try and get points. You get points and lose points based off of what is played into the trick that doesn’t match your suit. The other piece is you want to get as close as you can to 40 points. If you go over and everyone who goes over, that causes you to lose. But someone has to because that determines the end of the game.

44. The Great Split

Published By: Horrible Guild
Designers: Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva

Buy The Great Split

I like the mechanisms of “I split, you choose” in games, one of my favorite two player games has that in it. And The Great Split is primarily that in a game. Each round you are splitting up your hand of cards and then your opponent on the left picks one of them. You are doing that at the same time with the cards passed to you. Everyone is trying to optimize the contracts that they are getting the points from the various arts they are getting. But at it’s heart, the game is “I split, you choose” and it just works.

43. ICECOOL

Published By: Brain Games
Designer: Brian Gomez

Buy ICECOOL

Two dexterity games in a row and my two favorite dexterity games. First is ICECOOL, this is a game that was around my Top 10 for a long time because it’s just a simple but fun game. It’s been passed as my favorite by the other because that one has more customization.

ICECOOL is all about either being a penguin sneaking out of class to get fish or the hall monitor who is trying to catch them. The flicking works well and the ability to jump the penguin over walls is fun, assuming you don’t jump too far. Plus the box set-up and how it comes together is really fast and fun.

42. PitchCar

Published By: Ferti
Designer: Jean du Poel

Pre-Order PitchCar

PitchCar is the other dexterity game of the two and the one that I like just little bit better. PitchCar is another racing game as well,. This one is about flicking race cars, discs, around a track and being the first to cross the finish. It’s another game that is very simple to play but so fun. And this one gets the nod because of the track and how you make as hard or easy a track as you want. Do you want a loop or an overpass, you can do that, or you can just play with straightaways and some turns if you want the game to be faster.

41. Metal Gear Solid

Published By: CMON Global Lmtd
Designer: Emerson Matsuuchi

Buy Metal Gear Solid

Finally we have Metal Gear Solid a game that took a while to come out, but that is so worth it. Metal Gear Solid is a cooperative game where you want to sneak around as much as go in guns blazing. And that element is a blast for the game because it makes it feel different than a lot of games with minis. I like that the game also has a campaign, which I need to play, and one off scenarios that you can try and complete. And to add to that, while the enemy movement takes a moment to understand, the player turns are streamlined really well.

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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Catch up on previous videos here

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

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition – 40 through 31

40. Cthulhu: Death May Die

• Published by CMON in 2019
• Defeat a scenario and an Elder God before you are driven insane

Cthulhu: Death May Die is one of those great beer and pretzels games. Meaning that it’s pretty straightforward but mainly just a fun time. Who doesn’t like sitting around chucking a handful of dice, hoping you don’t go insane, and probably dying to whatever great old one shows up. The game gives you some story as well, but the biggest story elements are when you get that amazing roll right before you go insane, or when you can’t quite make it.

Buy Cthulhu: Death May Die

39. burncycle

• Published by Chip Theory Games in 2022
• The robots are on the run, can you sneak around and infiltrate the evil human corporations?

I love the theme on burncycle. There are games out there were the robots or something is taking over and the humans have to stop them. Here it’s the robots who are sneaking around and having to infiltrate. And I really enjoy how the system works. I like how you program out your actions and that chain of actions you can take degrades over time. So you need to balance changing it up to just wiping it. But if you wipe it, that pushes it closer to the corporation winning.

Buy burncyle

38. Sonora

• Published by Pandasaurus Games in 2020
• Flick your disk and score in combo-tastic ways

This is a roll and write game where instead of rolling you are flicking disks around. That is a fun little twist on a standard roll and write. And then your sheet where you are filling things in, it’s combo city. You work in one area and you almost always are getting a bonus for another area. And as you get further into the game the more you can stack those bonuses and chain into more bonuses. Yes, this game has luck with the flicking and you might be knocked out of where you want to be, but it’s good chaos and combo fun.

Out Of Stock

37. Comic Hunters

• Published by Spin Master ltd, Arcane Wonders, and Bucaneiros Jogos in 2020 and 2024
• Can you build out the most interesting and influential comic collection

Comic Hunters is a unique game in that it gives you a number of things to do, but it manages to use so many different ways of drafting. That is one of the coolest parts of the game, along with the fact that it’s all Marvel comic covers and characters. But you score for collecting different characters, a lot of a character, first appearances, first issues, epic fights or even more. And it’s a good game to teach as well because you teach how you get comics into your collection and then when each draft comes up you teach it then and only then.

Buy Comic Hunters

36. Sushi Go Party!

• Published by Gamewright in 2016
• Draft the tastiest collection of sushi and other yummy foods to score points

Another drafting game, but Sushi Go Party just does standard drafting. And I like how it works in this one. The variety in the game isn’t from the drafting but how everything scores. Some things like dumplings want you to get as many as you can, or then there is tofu where you want two, no more. And in Sushi Go Party you can really change up the different combinations of foods so that the drafting experience is different each round.

Buy Sushi Go Party!

35. Trek 12: Himalaya

• Published by Pandasaurus in 2020
• Climb mountains as you create sets and runs of numbers in different ways

This game might feel like a pretty standard roll and write game. The idea of creating a set or a run based off of what is rolled, that isn’t that odd. But how you get to your numbers is where the fun puzzle of the game comes in. You might add the numbers together on both dice, you might pick the lower number, etc. But you only pick each of those ways to get the number a limited number of times. So you need to be smart how you manipulate the dice and build out your mountain.

Buy Trek 12.

34. Marvel Zombies: A Zombicide Game

• Published by CMON in 2023
• Fight as zombies and take a bite of Marvels biggest heroes.

Based on a comic run, Marvel Zombies has you play as the zombie heroes who have been turned. You try and complete objectives before SHIELD and the other heroes can take you out. Or you can flip the table and play as heroes against zombies, the choice is yours. This is another great beer and pretzels game. You ride that edge of trying to push your hunger up so you can roll more dice, but not get too hungry so that you become a mindless zombie for a little bit just caring about getting brains.

Buy Marvel Zombies.

33. The Isle of Cats: Explore and Draw

• Published by City of Games in 2022
• Can you rescue the most cats and score the most points in this roll and write style game?

This is the better version of Isle of Cats. I enjoy Isle of Cats and I know there is a duel version coming out which might make it better again. But the Explore and draw version is just so much fun. I especially enjoy the method in which you fill out your boat. There are columns of cards, some with more cats and some with more scoring objectives. You decide which column to use, but if you take too many cats, sure you get some points, but you miss on the scoring bonuses. If you just grab scoring, well, not enough cats and you won’t score enough points. It’s an easy roll and write to learn with fun complexity.

Buy The Isle of Cats Explore and Draw

32. Sleeping Gods

• Published by Red Raven Games in 2021
• Explore a mysterious new lands, find totems and try and wake the gods.

This is an amazing sandbox game of exploring a huge world, finding out the mysteries of the world, all while trying to find totems and get back to your own world. I love how this game gives you a whole crew to play with, but each crew member is part of the ship moving around. So there are unique things people can do, but you decide and build out so much of that. And the artwork and story are just great for this game. I want to play the sequel and the small version soon as well.

Sleeping Gods is sold out, but you can get Sleeping Gods: Distant Skies here.

31. The Great Split

• Published by Horrible Guild in 2022
• Divide up riches and try and end the game with the best collection

I Split – You Choose is a mechanism I didn’t know that I’d love so much as I do. And The Great Split is just an I Split – You Choose game. You get a hand of cards that have different things like books, artwork, money, and you need to decide how to split them up. You split them into two and then you pass it to the person on your left. They pick one of the two sides and you get the other. You do the same thing with the cards you just got passed. Then you just collect, try and get contracts, and push up the tracks the best that you can. It’s a simple but very fun.

Buy The Great Split.

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.

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Catch up on my Top 100 Games (of all Time) 2023 Edition:

100 through 91
90 through 81
80 through 71
70 through 61
60 through 51
50 through 41
40 through 31
30 through 21
20 through 11

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition – 10 through 1

10. Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game

Let’s start off with Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game at #10 this year. Detective is deduction game where you and your teammates are trying to solve cases. The base box comes with five cases that take about 2-3 hours each. And you’re up against the clock, in the game, to solve everything and figure out what answers you need as you get quizzed on what happened and the who, what, and why of the case at the end. Plus little details that you might have missed or you can piece together.

This is like a crime television drama. I don’t love watching those, but playing in one is amazing. You actually get to put together deduction skills and piece together what happened. Sometimes it’s easy, and other times it is hard, but it’s always worth it.

And this game does a good job using technology as you play. Part of how you get information is interacting with a computer and a database to pull up details that might already exist on the case. Or it might be details that already exist on people in the case. It really helps make Detective into a great immersive experience.

Buy Detective

9. The Great Split

Next up we have The Great Split, a new game to the list and one that does a single thing well. In The Great Split, it is primarily an “I split, you choose” game. What does that mean? It means that I have a group of cards and I put them into two groups. You pick one of those groups and I get the other one back. Then we both use them for scoring, which is what everyone is doing at the same time. So, I love the simplicity and simultaneous nature of the game play.

Plus the scoring is nice in the game as well as it isn’t too difficult or too easy. What it mainly is, is pushing up on on tracks for artwork, literature, gems, and money. And each of them is going to score in a different way. Some of them score with how well you are doing against a market or against a scoring track. Others score, the gems, with your lowest of the two gem tracks. So it’s figuring out what you want to go for, because that’s not all the scoring.

There is also contracts in the game. Those are on the tracks as well, but you have other tracks that you want to push up on. Because they make the contracts you have, loaning your art pieces out to museums and stuff like that, worth more. But if you’re pushing up on those tracks, you aren’t on the main scoring tracks, so it’s a really good balance. And all of that with very simple rules teach and very simple game play.

Buy The Great Split

8. Floriferous

Now we have Floriferous, a game that has made it’s way higher up on the list from last year. And some of that is what I redid how I thought about the list, some. I now put more stock into the games that I want to play all the time and do play often, as well as the ones that give me a great experience when I play them. Which is why there are fewer campaign games in the Top 10, though, don’t worry, their are still several.

But Floriferous is a drafting game of building up your best bouquet of flowers. But how you draft and how you know what you are scoring is what I love about the game. You lay out the cards to be drafted from at the start of the round. And then players take turns drafting from the first column of cards. Where you draft in that column then determines your drafting order for the next column. It makes for great decisions as decide to take a less ideal card to make sure you get the perfect card next column.

And then there is the scoring. A little of the scoring just exists at the start of the game. Most of what you score you need to draft. So I need to draft a card that says “2 points for all purple flowers”, for example. And I can do that, but the scoring cards are always at the bottom of the column. That means when I take a scoring card I’m going to be going last next round which is a choice, as I said above, that I really love.

Buy Floriferous

7. Planet Unknown

Next up we have Planet Unknown a terraforming, polyomino laying game. And it’s one that is not that hard to teach, if you have the game in front of you. But it does some very cool things, which I’ll get to in a second here. But the game is about filling up your planet with tiles, clearing out meteors that have hit your planet, and building up on various tracks of nature, water, technology, rover mobility, and civilization.

The game is able to be played in two ways. The first way is a simple generic way where everyone has the exact same thing. I think it is a solid system if everyone is learning the game, and you have new to gaming people in there. But once people know the system at all, flip over the boards and the groups going to the planets. That is when the fun begins as everyone is working a little bit differently and has their own ways and timings as they go up the tracks while still playing the same game.

And the one thing I haven’t touched on yet is how you pick your tiles. There is a lazy susan in the middle with all of the tiles on it. And on your turn, you turn the lazy susan to the side you want facing you so you get the tile that you want. It’s a tough decision, and then everyone else takes from the side facing them. Or at least kind of facing them, because they’ll have a marker, placed at the start of the game, that determines where they take from. I love that mechanism as I can get what I want, or I might choose to mess with you.

Late Pledge Planet Unknown

6. Lost Ruins of Arnak

Then we have Lost Ruins of Arnak. And this one I do want to specify that it is a top 10 game for me with the first expansion. The second expansion definitely keeps it up this high as well, but the first one is needed, in my opinion. It takes Lost Ruins of Arnak from a fun game to one of my top games of all time.

So how does it play, and why do I like the expansion so much. Well, at it’s heart, The Lost Ruins of Arnak is a resource management game of going out, collecting resources and turning them in to move up a research track. But there are a number of twists with it as well. Because I also am building up a deck of cards that let me do more actions or power up the actions that I do take. And I love that aspect to it.

So let’s talk about what the expansion adds and why I think Expedition Leaders is very important to the game. In Lost Ruins of Arnak, base game, everyone has the same camp, same workers, and same starting deck of cards. And there are two tracks which you can go up on. It’s fun. But Expedition Leaders says your camp, your cards, how many workers you have, all of that can be unique now. Because you have a leader that makes you unique and I really love that.

Buy The Lost Ruins of Arnak

5. Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition is the next game on the list coming in at #5. And it is one that I haven’t played in probably eight months. I really need to get it back to the the table. But I love this engine building game and another game about terraforming a planet, but this time, I’d say, it’s way more about building up that engine to generate more resources and points.

The game, like I said, is about building up that engine and determining when to activate everything, and when to pick an action to do based off of what you think your opponent is going to do. How does that work? Well, the game has five actions and the actions that are played out by the players that round are the ones that are going to happen.

The actions also fire off in a particular order. So if I pick research it’s action #5, so it’ll go last. Someone else might pick activating actions, and that’s #3, so it goes in that order. Which ever one you pick, you get a special bonus for it, while your opponents get whatever the basic action is (which you do as well). So it’s about trying to not match with your opponents to get more actions done and to figure out what benefits you the most. Of course, if everyone is doing that, well, then no one might pick that one action everyone wants.

Buy Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

4. Stars of Akarios

Now we’re onto one of the big campaign games. And you can see game play for this one on Malts and Meeples. Stars of Akarios is a game that I absolutely enjoyed all that I did. Some parts are better than others, but as a whole, I think the game is a ton of fun. It’s a big space adventure that gives me vibes from Enders Game and Space Dandy, two really different things, but it works for this game.

The game is split into three parts, but we’re going to talk about two of them. First part is planetary exploration. This has a 7th Continent type feel to it with flipping over locations and interacting with places. Plus there is a lot of story that you can find as well for the different planets. There are skill checks and things like that, but a lot of it is story and the choices you make in that story unlocks new things that you can do.

The main part of the game is tactical space combat. It’s about using your dice to flank and out maneuver the enemies so that you are in the right spot for a big hit and they can’t hit you back. I adore the puzzle that this game provides in this space combat. It is good enough to just be a game by itself, but the story and the world/universe that is being built in the game is just amazing. I can’t wait to get back to it, and maybe it’ll be a campaign game that I come back to and try and play through solo sometime.

Buy Stars of Akarios

Note the 1.5 version of Stars of Akarios is coming out. There should be a late pledge available soon.

3. Dice Throne

Next up is Dice Throne. I believe that my #2 and #3 flipped spots from last year. Dice Throne is a battling game of taking characters up against each other and rolling dice, Yahtzee style, to deal damage. You get a better roll, like a large straight or all sixes and you get to do more damage.

The game really shines in two areas. The first is how they manage to make all of the characters feel different. I have Marvel Dice Throne pictured here, but in the video I have Dice Throne Season 1 and I figured out coming soon there will be 35 different characters. And all of the characters do feel different. They come with different tokens that change up how they interact with the enemies or how they ramp up to deal more damage themselves.

And then there is the card play in this game. What doesn’t make it just pure dice chucking are these cards. Some of them are upgrades to your attacks that offer better results and more damage when you roll them. Other times, and I’d say most often this, it’s about getting better results on your dice. You don’t want to end up being stuck doing nothing if you try and shoot the moon and go for all sixes. So you keep cards to manipulate the dice. It’s a great system that offers more depth than you’d think from the initial description.

Buy Dice Throne

2. Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon

Now we have Tainted Grail at #2. This one moved up, I think, because I made it through all three campaigns, wrapping up the third one this year. And all of them offer something unique and fun that is really enjoyable to play. I love how you start in the middle with the first campaign and then the second takes place 500 years later and the first 500 years before it. It offers a lot of interesting storytelling, which the writer really takes advantage of.

The game play is also pretty slick once you get into it. The combat and diplomacy checks are done through card play. And while that is an important part of the game, it’s not too hard to build up something that is powerful enough. Or players with specialize in different areas. One element about the combat that I really like is that you need to pay attention is to the enemies attack. How much damage you deal determines the enemies attack. If you aren’t careful, you’re going to take a lot of damage.

But the game really shines around the exploration and survival aspects of the game. I think it’s best on story mode because the story is so good. But you always need to be keeping track of the menhir that you have lit. Because if they go out, then you start to lose parts of the map as the wyrdness takes over. And that limits where you can explore. And as I said, exploration is the best part of the game. It is a chance to dive into that story. So it’s a balance of story, resource gathering, and then just surviving that makes Tainted Grail work so well.

Buy Tainted Grail

1. Gloomhaven

My #1 hasn’t changed, it’s still Gloomhaven. Though, you can say that it is Gloomhaven, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, and Frosthaven all rolled into one. Jaws of the Lion might be a game that I show off here on Malts and Meeples. And I’m now playing through a campaign of Frosthaven.

This is a classic dungeon crawling game where you go into a scenario and need to tactically move around and kill all the bad guys. Or at least that’s the objective in a lot of base Gloomhaven’s scenarios. The other ones offer more variety. But it’s also a game of leveling up your characters, unlocking more abilities, and then eventually retiring and getting a whole new character to play with.

And getting those abilities and playing them out is where the game is amazing. You play out two cards from your hand each turn. They have abilities on the top and bottom. And you’ll activate one of the top abilities and one of the bottom ones. Plus you need to figure out where in initiative that you want to go as well.

And the variety in them and how different the characters are is impressive. It’s like a lot of the games in my Top 10, I like the variable player powers and variability in what you are doing. Gloomhaven and all the following games offer a ton of that. And it’s sad to lose a character to retirement that you’ve spent time with, but exciting to unlock something new. This is just an amazing game that deserves the love it gets.

Buy Gloomhaven

Thanks for Joining Me

Thank you for joining me as I went through all of the games on this list. I really have fun doing this every year. And I hope that you have fun watching along. I appreciate everyone who has been in the chats and watched the videos. It means a lot to me to see that people are enjoying it. Let me know what some of your favorite games are.

Upcoming Streaming

And join me for future upcoming streams. I made a comment that my Monday streams might be changing. We’ll have to see on that, it might just be less often, or it might move to a different night, it depends on some variables as I look at the new year. Right now, though, that it’s changing. I plan on streaming Monday nights at 9 PM Central. I won’t have some on the 25th of December, I will be around next week.

Then on Wednesday, I generally stream a campaign game. I won’t be doing that this upcoming week. And I’ll be missing the following week. But as I start 2024, I plan to stream Rogue Angels. A game that I think will be in my Top 100 starting next year. One of my rules was that I needed to have played a physical copy. And thus far I only have played it digitally. Now I’ll be able to play it in person, which I’m really excited for. So join me for that starting in 2024. And Wednesday streams start at 8 PM Central time.

But the best way, if you want to know when I go live or a new video goes up (it’s basically always live), please consider subscribing. You can do that here. And click that notification bell on the channel and you’ll always know when I go live.

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How To Play The Great Split

The Great Split is an art collection game, but really, it is a game with tracks that you are going up on to optimize your score and have the most points at the end of the game. That’s the generic version of a lot of games. But The Great Split does it in a couple of interesting ways.

The main mechanism of The Great Split is “I split, you choose.” If you aren’t familiar, I create two groups of something, in this case, cards in my hand. You get to see those two groups and then pick the one that you want. I get what is left.

What you pick determines what tracks you go up on. You can go up on books, which have certain scoring thresholds when you score books. You go up on art where you score based off of how much art you own compared to the market. Or finally you push up the track on gems, either green or blue but ideally both, and you score twice your lowest gem total.

To go along with that, there are also tracks for contracts and coins. Contracts are end game scoring that triggers based off of how many contracts you’ve gotten in a particular area times how much those contracts are worth. So if I have 5 green gem contracts and I got my green gem contracts to be worth 3 points, I get 15 points. And with coins, they have contracts as well, but you can “spend” money to move up on other tracks as well.

The game plays over a number of rounds. And like I said at the beginning, the player with the most points wins.

The Details

So, as I’ve started doing, let’s look at what the box says.

For players it says 2-7 and the Board Game Geek community says best at 4-6. I think it would be fine at 4-7 players. And I know from playing it at 3, it’s still fun. But there is a difference. With more players more cards get into the rotation so you see more options. That is a big benefit with more. I don’t know that I really want to play it with two players.

It also says it plays in 45 minutes, and that is close. I think it is a bit longer than that. But the core mechanics are of the game are simultaneous. I only have played when I taught new players. I think with players who know the game, it might hit that time range. The game is only 7 rounds, plus three spots to score.

And finally, they say it is for 8+. Now as always a caveat with this. It is more about safety, but, The Great Split is language independent and has it’s one core mechanic. An adult might need to help with scoring, but I can see a younger kid playing it, say eight. They might not get all of the rules and nuisance of the game, which is to be expected.

What Doesn’t Work?

This is a very thinky game. And as a player you make a decision at times that might not be perfect for you. And because The Great Split is so thinky, someone who tends towards analysis paralysis and taking long turns will slow the game down. It is noticeable when it is there turn. But in a game with simultaneous play, it is going to be more noticeable. So be aware of that with The Great Split.

What Works?

The main mechanism in the game is amazing. I love I split you choose. And this game is that distilled. Yes, there are the tracks and they do create combos. But the main part of the game is I split my cards and you pick from those two splits. And that decision space is so good and so simple in this game. But when you split the cards, you worry that you either made the split too good to get back what you want. Or you didn’t make it good enough.

I also think that the tracks work well. They are not complex and basically you teach the game quickly. There is some to go over, but once you teach the player board, you teach the rest of the game in round one. So it is not a complex game but one that is fun to teach and play that way. Plus the combos in the game are simple in a good way. I hit this point on the coins, I advance two in another area.

The scoring is also well done. The Great Split is scored three times. Though what you score the first two times can vary. You score each of books, art, and gems. But when you set up the game you don’t know if you score books and gems at the first scoring and then art at the second or maybe gems at the first and book and art at the second. It gives you shifting goals. And then you score everything at the end.

Who Is It For?

This is a tough part that I almost skipped. Mainly because the core decisions can be tricky in the game. It might feel like too much to a casual game. I think this is a good filler for heavier gamers but also a fun game who play games. But for them, it is going to be the game of the night versus a filler game. But it is an accessible game with no reading on cards and different symbols to help with color blindness. That is really nice.

Final Thoughts – The Great Split

I love this game. I think that it is clever in in what it does in the best way possible. When I said that I like a game that does one thing and makes it thinky, I’m not lying. The Great Split makes every choice matter. What I pass to you is important and how I pass them to you. But that is seven times I make that choice in the game. And seven times I pick from the cards someone passes me. It is smart in how it does that and then making the tracks simple, but still meaningful. If they were a hard puzzle as well, it’d be less fun.

My one concern hasn’t been played out yet. I worry about how well it will hold up long term. Not components wise they are great. But will The Great Split feel consistent through every play and eventually start to feel like there isn’t enough change? I don’t know. I suspect it might, eventually, but that is a long ways out. Why, because the core mechanism is so strong with I split you choose that it makes for an interesting decision every time.

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

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But for me the combination of the cover and the designers Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva and it being a Horrible Guild game put it over the top. In particular, I’ve found that I enjoy most Hjalmar Hach designs. So pair that with an amazing looking cover and a company that I like, I needed to check it out.

How To Play – The Great Split

The Great Split is not that difficult a game to play, though learning it on the fly there are a number of things to think about. It has a particular cadence to the game that you need to teach. But the main premise of the game is that you have a number of tracks that you want to go up on. Depending on the track(s) they score in different ways or give you different bonuses.

So, how do you go up on the tracks, it’s a simple I split, you choose mechanic. By that I mean that I have a had of cards, between five to seven in the game, and I am creating two groups of cards. Then I pass my wallet to you and you pick one of those groups. I get the other one back. At the same time everyone around the table is doing this, so I get a wallet of cards to pick from and pick one of the two groups.

You do that several turns and then at the end of the game you tally up your points. Whomever has the most points is the winner. And I can go into scoring more, but there is some to learn with that, but not too much.

What Am I Worried About?

So a bit of twist on how I normally do it, closer to the review. But I don’t want to fully dive into it, this is more of a first impressions. There are two things that stand out to me that I am curious about with the Great Split though.

Firstly, I wonder about the viability of this game at lower player counts. I enjoyed what the game does a lot, but I played it at 3. I wonder if 4-7 would be better. The game doesn’t really add much time to it the more people you play with. But at 2-3, you won’t see many cards. It adds a different element of strategy to it with how you can play your opponent, but you are going to get more unbalanced scoring.

I also want to know what it’s like to teach the game. I played at the time we were learning the game as well. And looking back on it, I think that I could make it faster and simpler for teaching. But there are a number of things to teach. There are six different sections you need to teach scoring on. At the same time, I think most of the things are pretty simple once you know them. And I don’t think I need to teach some elements of the game as the game suggests that you have someone “run” the game and turns.

What Have I Enjoyed?

I really enjoy the “I split, you choose” mechanic of the game. The game is really just that mechanic which doesn’t worry me too much because you’ll get variety each time you play in the cards you take. But it’s interesting to look at the board of the player you are passing to, the direction doesn’t change, see what they are picking, and try and create a combination where they pick something that gives you what you want plus just a little bit more.

Or it could be that you create a split where either one will work for you, but you’ve split up what they want in order to slow them down. The game seems simple, but you can really give someone what they don’t want to keep some scoring tracks in check if you split stuff up well.

I also enjoy how the scoring works. Now, I won’t go into everything, but some of them are just how far you are up on the track, another has a sliding market, and another is the lowest of two tracks. But I’m more talking about how the game scores each section twice, minus contracts. So the three main tracks twice, once each mid game and once at the end of the game. But mid game you might score books and gems first and then art and nothing, or it might be books and nothing first and then art and gems. So when you score the first time might determine what you push for.

Final Thoughts – The Great Split

This is a very fun experience and I really enjoyed playing it once so far. I wonder how often I will get it played, though, because it is a game that seems to work better with more. And while I do have game nights, I feel like it isn’t one we’ll play all the time. But it fits into the same category, in my opinion as a game like Sushi Go Party or Seven Wonders.

With that, I mean that I can see playing it at higher player counts. And with more players, it is not a game that takes longer to play. I play it with three players, it goes as fast as the slowest player. I play it with 7 players and it still plays as fast as the slowest player. Now, the slowest player might be slower, but that is the restriction. So I really like that about the game. And I like it when I find a big group game that isn’t a party game.

Do you like The Great Split? Is it a game that you want to try? Let me know in the comments below.

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