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
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.

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

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.

Send an Email
Message me on X at @TheScando
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Support us on Patreon here

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.

Send an Email
Message me on X at @TheScando
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Support us on Patreon here

Legendary Kingdoms – Part 1

Legendary Kingdoms – Part 2

More Parts to Come

What Is Legendary Kingdoms

Legendary Kingdoms is a solo, though you could do it cooperatively, RPG system. In this system you are using a choose your own adventure type of game play with skill checks. And there are multiple books in the Legendary Kingdoms. The choices you make progress the story in different ways. And while sometimes you are limited, you also hit very open world points. But that’s the basics of the system.

How To Play

Legendary Kingdoms is a game where there isn’t really a “winner” so to speak. It is an open world story driven solo or multiplayer choose your own adventure RPG, in case you skipped the section above.

Characters

To start off you start with a group of four characters in your party. I am not sure if it is possible to add more characters as you go. But it is possible to have your characters die if you are reckless in battles.

Characters use several different stats. There is fighting, stealth, lore, survival and charisma as well as hit points. These stats generally range from 1 to 5 when you start the game. It is possible during the game that they might increase. But it is not a common thing and it is driven by story. It is not an RPG system where you gain experience and level up.

Checks

The main crux of the game play is split into two parts. Story, which I’ll talk about next, and checks. When you do anything in the game you complete checks. This is even the case when you are in combat, though combat checks do behave slightly differently at times.

The basics of a check are fairly simple. They are either group checks, so a check for everyone, or an individual check. A group check you will use the stats of two of the four characters versus just one for the individual. The game often doesn’t tell you what a check might be before you make it, so you need to pick your character(s) somewhat blindly based on context.

Then you roll dice. You roll dice equal to the stat being checked against. In combat you check to see how many succeed and you get that many hits and damage dealt to an enemy which is determined by the enemy’s defense. In a skill check there is a set target number you want to match or beat like in combat. But in a skill check you want to get a certain number of success to pass.

There is a bit more for combat, but I won’t go into it here.

Story

The other large element is the story in the game. Like I said, this is a choose your own adventure style of game. By that I mean, you start with a passage, read that, make a decision and go to another passage to read from. It is interrupted by combats or skill checks, but generally it is reading one part of the story or another.

What I Don’t Like

So what is it about the game that might not work for me? I think the biggest thing I note in the game is the luck factor. Yes, the better a skill is the more dice you roll. That is a nice thing int he game, it is less swinging than maybe rolling a D20 and adding a modifier. Especially because it is the value on every individual die that matters. But it is still a luck game. In Legendary Kingdoms there is not much if any die mitigation so it is just a roll.

What I Like

Firstly, I like how simple the system is to play. When I want to get the game out, I grab some dice and start playing. Yes, you need a game sheet to use, but it is not overly complex to track that. And the checks are simple to follow as well.

Speaking of checks, I like how combat is just a bit more complex, but not too complex. If combat were as simple as it is for a skill check, it might feel way to lucky. But I like how you have armor and that armor might block attacks. And I like that as characters you get to go first and then the enemies go. There is no initiative system it is just nice and simple that way.

Another thing that stands out to me is that the writing is solid or slightly better than that. With a choose your own adventure it is very possible that it could be too generic because you don’t know how someone is getting to a situation. This one is just enough on rails that they can create a bigger story. Now it is at the point where I am in an open world point, so I want to know how the story is going to go. But I like the story a lot thus far, and I think there is some good interesting writing and plot happening.

Who Is Legendary Kingdoms For?

This is tough one to say. I think people who like a good RPG might enjoy this game. In particular maybe a video game RPG player who is looking for a way to spend less screen time. It is going to give you that RPG itch but not be too much. And it is something for an RPG fan who maybe wants to play more but can’t work it into their schedule. This is a game that is easily playable in an evening for thirty minutes and then putting it down and picking it up again.

Thoughts and Grades on Legendary Kingdoms

This game is a blast to play. Is it perfect, no, I wish there was maybe a way to add a bonus to a roll from time to time, just for those really important ones. And maybe it is the case where there might be a spell that’ll do that eventually. So there is a bunch of luck when it comes to rolling. And combat, like most RPG’s, is always a bit more time than the story. But those both are minor negatives to me.

The positives far outweigh both of those parts to me. I think that the game play is fast and fun. And I love the story elements to it. The decision of do you go further into the water or out, it is interesting. Do you spend more time pushing for treasures but potentially risking something? That is what you want from a good choose your own adventure style of game. And unlike the choose your own adventure books you might have read growing up, this one is logical. You can guess what might come next.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: C
Casual Grade: A
Strategy (out of 10): 5
Luck (out of 10): 7

Oh, and if you made it down here, leave a comment as to what direction I should go in the story.

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Follow the Chronofiends!! Campaign.

Chronofiends!! Highlights

My plan is not to go into game play in depth here. This is not like my normal reviews where I’m going to give my grade an opinion at the end. The company sent me a prototype of the game to cover. So it is unfair for me to give a review on it. Instead, I want to highlight elements of Chronofiends!! that will help you make your decision on knowing if this is the right game for you to back.

Ease of System

This one is a mixed bag. Mainly, it is a mixed bag because it is not the fastest set-up in the world. It is not like the system or scenarios are that complex, but there are a number of pieces to get out of the box. But when you get to the game play itself the system is slick and easy to play.

In particular, I like the turn order. This is not unique to Chronofiends!! where the player highest on the turn order goes next, but it is easy to keep track of. And the turn itself is easy to keep track of, you move and then you complete some task in a room. The trickiest bit of the system is when the chronofiends go and you need to pay attention to which way they move.

Leveling/Powering Up

The leveling up skills system is really fun as well. The more time you spend doing something the more knowledgeable you become at it. That is easy to keep track of as you play as well. And then to have something that you are good at improve over and over so as the loops get shorter and shorter you can still have a chance, it’s a smart system.

It is a system that I didn’t utilize to the best of my ability in my streamed playthrough. But I want to talk about that more in the next section.

Keeping on this, I mentioned how the system is smart. It is smart for two reasons. Firstly, the shorter time period keeps the pressure on you. But you also feel more powerful as you go. So it is this race condition as you play, can your power out pace the reduction in time that is happening?

Strategy/Looping

So now let’s dive into this looping and strategy that it forces (and that I didn’t use that well). What do I mean by that? In Chronofiends!!, kind of like in TIME Stories, you loop back. And as a player and character you keep the knowledge that you have of the space ship. So it is easier to go through because you know what you are coming up against.

There is also, then, gaining experience. So not only do you know that you are coming up against, you also know how to deal with it better. But there are elements that are different. While the work that you’ve done does reset, the chronofiends do not. Each time you play or each time you loop that is going to make the game different.

Now, in my play I think I took a less than ideal strategy. I think the first loop or two can be avoiding, finding, and leveling up. I went after the big objective the second time. It does help with leveling up, but not so much avoiding and finding. When you play, that is going to help you out, I think. But it means that there is strategy and planning you need to do as a player.

The Be Aware

I only want to call out one thing in the be aware section. So no sub headers for it. But this is not a small game. I think the box size, and this is not the final box size, kind of hides how large this game can be. I definitely had to adjust my normal streaming set-up because of the size. This is not a negative or positive for the game. But know what you play on. This is not going to be a coffee table game, nor does it need to be that.

Final Thoughts

So, I won’t give a grade or anything like that. I think that Chronofiends!! has a lot of positives to it and gives you an interesting time travel game. And I like that compared to TIME Stories where a loop can be ruined by bad luck of a die roll, you are in control here. Sure the chronofiends might get you, but there is strategy around where you go and how they go with that.

And as I mentioned, depending on your strategy that is going to affect how you want to play solo. I think I played more as I laid out in my section on strategy, I might have won. That said, it is easy to play two handed solo. There is not a ton to keep track of per character, so that is going to make it dealers choice for that. And information is not hidden, so no advantage playing two handed that way.

What do you think of Chronofiends!!? Is it a game that you are going to be checking out when it comes to crowdfunding? Again, follow the campaign here.

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Top 10 Games to Buy at Gen Con

Honorable Mention: Pirates of Maracaibo: Commanders

Is this 11 games, no it is not. Why, because Pirates of Maracaibo: Commanders is an expansion. So it doesn’t count as a game. No, more so you know if you are interested in this based off of if you like Pirates of Maracaibo or not. There are some new things like commanders that give you an asymmetric starting point. Plus there is rum as a new resource because it should have always been there. There are mix and match explore tracks. And there are now cannons and things you can fight with cannons. It adds a little bit, but not too much in my opinion.

10. Buffet Boss

So the list officially starts with Buffet Boss. This is a stacking game. I believe you draft things from a buffet and then you stack them on edge on your plate and you see how high you can stack them. The higher you get, the more satisfied you are with the buffet. Of course, if you get too much that isn’t good because they won’t balance or they will topple over. This sounds like a silly fun game.

9. Cat Tower

The next game on the list is another dexterity game and the last dexterity game. Cat Tower is a game where you work cooperatively to get a cat as high in the tower as you can. But the edges of things that you use to balance aren’t always even, some might even say that the tower is a bit cattywampus. The story of the game is sweet though and the game play looks fun.

So, if you want to know the story, and this is just the theme of the game not how it is plays, the cats mom has died. And the cat wants to build a tower up to heaven to find their mom. It’s a sad but sweet theme.

8. Trinket Trove

Trinket Trove is a set collection bidding game. This one has cute artwork, but let’s talk about how the game works Because that is what draws me into this one. In Trinket Trove a number of cards are flipped over that you bid on. And you bid with the cards in your hand to get them. So you are giving up something that you might need. The more cards you bid, the sooner you pick. But, and here is the twist, when you bid, the cards you bid are now a new pile of cards for people to take. So it is a great puzzly sounding time with a simple game but fun strategy.

7. Koi

Koi is on my Gen Con list just because it is pretty. If you can’t guess, Koi is about Koi and building a Koi pond. And this game looks great. I assume that each element of the Koi pond score in different ways. But there are elements like arches that you add to your pond, fish that you add and more. And it is a 3D presence to the game which I’m not sure is in every version of the game but I hope so. This is one just from an aesthetic point of view that I want to track down.

6. 12 Rivers

I feel bad about 12 Rivers being outside of my Top 5 on this Gen Con list because I think it looks really intriguing. Some of that, though, is that I mainly know the board. The board is this 12 marble track where there are spots for players to put their blockers. And then you release all the marbles. As the marbles travel down the rivers they hit a blocker. If you block early you might get a specific marble, you could get blocked too if you aren’t high enough. Or further down more will make it to you, but it might not be the ones you want.

That physical element of the game is what gets me. I love Potion Explosion for that. And this one gives me that same toy feel for the game. I hope that the rest of the game is good to go with it and that the game isn’t just all that.

5. First-Class Letters

First-Class Letters is a roll and write word game, and I like roll and write games. In this game you roll four dice. All the players need to find words that use three of those four dice and that don’t use the other one. The more of the letters you use, the more points you get. And you need to put them in alphabetical order. So that is going to be pretty easy the first few times, but, there is more. You also seed the first letter of three of the spots, in alphabetical order, so that is going to limit you more. I think this sounds simple but like a ton of fun.

4. Tricky Kids

Tricky Kids is a trick taking game that looks like it’s for kids. But I’m not 100% sure that it is. In this game you play three hands of seven cards each. And each time you need to assign the values to your cards. Yes, this game there are suits on the cards but no numbers. So you divvy up 21 points between them as you start playing. And yes, you want to win tricks, but when you win tricks you get tokens. And you know what the tokens are and when they are showing up. It sounds like a simple but very fun big twist in trick taking.

3. Slam Throne

Slam Throne could be my #1 on this list. But I think you’ll see why the other two beat it out. This is Dice Throne but pogs. Dice Throne teased and joked about this for years on April Fool’s Day. But it is finally a reality now. You play pogs with powers and abilities and try and take out your opponents stack before they take out yours. This sounds dumb and goofy and 100% a good time. I wish I was going to be at Gen Con because I expect this one to sell out. I asked for a friend to grab it for me, I hope they don’t stand in line early, I can always get it later.

2. Tag Team

Tag Team is a weird game because it gives me Dice Throne vibes, but it’s also auto-battler. So let’s talk about how this works. An auto-battler is a game that when it comes to fighting the fight just happens.

You start with two characters and one card for each character. You both flip over the cards and check what they do. Then after you play out those two cards, you draw three more and pick one to add to your cards. You add it without changing the order of the others. But you add it to the top, bottom, or middle and then you go again. So you start to figure out where to put a block for a big attack. But maybe your opponent thought you would so they changed that with how they added their card.

I love how it works and I love the head games for it. But it isn’t just all head games. As you pick between those three cards, you create strategies and synergies as you play. And the game comes with a ton of characters. I can not way to get this in my hands, I have it pre-ordered.

1. Ace of Spades

The final one on the list is Ace of Spades. This one is getting great reviews 8’s and 8.5 from the Dice Tower and they all really liked it. It is a solo or two player boss battling game. Now, I like a good boss battler, but this one is different with a weird west theme, but let’s talk about how it works.

You face off against monsters and bad guys and you want to take them down. How do you take them down? Not by rolling dice but by playing out poker hands. And each type of hand is going to do some damage. Better hands will do more damage. As you progress the enemies you face start to have powers and abilities that they use against you. But when you beat them, you get one time or ongoing powers as well.

The theme of this game is a ton like Balatro. But it is going to be simpler than that because Balatro changes cards and I’m glad it’s not a Balatro legacy game, though that could be cool. This is one that I’d wait in line for at Gen Con. But it is available to pre-order from Devir, so I just did that today.

Final Thoughts

Oh how I wish I was going to Gen Con. If you are, let me know about some of these games. And let me know which of these games are the most interesting to you. I also remind myself that all of these games will be available at retail at some point in time. So even if I don’t get them, like I said, I expect Slam Throne to sell fast, I will get it eventually. And I am really excited to try all of these games and give you reviews in the future.

What game tops your list that you are anticipating?

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Highlights of Kingdom Legacy

Let’s talk about what stands out about Kingdom Legacy. This game by Fryxgames and Jonathan Fryxelius is not a big game. In fact, it is a quite small game that is just about 140 total cards. And in that, you don’t see all of the cards in the game. Because some of them you are going to unlock.

Ease to the Table

So that is the first element that works so well in this game. It is extremely simple to pick-up and play and to put down and put away. You just put the cards you’ve unlocked in one part of the box and use something as a divider, there is a first card that I use, to keep the deck separate from what you are already using. It’s just really easy to get to the table. So easy that I actually grabbed a second copy. I know what I’ll want to play it again.

Simple Game Play

The mechanisms work really nicely as well. When you play you are upgrading cards. So you draw four cards, and you can push to draw more, but the more you draw, the less you do in the game. Because, when you upgrade a card you get rid of the rest of the cards. So the more you push the faster you get through your deck and faster that you unlock more cards. So it’s this great push and pull of asking the question, can I do anything, if yes, is it worth it to do that and not push the game along further.

Legacy Elements

And I like the legacy elements of the game a ton as well. The first element is simply unlocking the cards. That is simple, you unlock two more each time through your play deck of cards. Sometimes it is more, and sometimes it gives you choices. And these will shape how you play the game. In particular with the end scoring of the game, when you pick those, it’ll shape what you want to upgrade.

But beyond that, you upgrade cards and keep track of extra goods to improve towers or sell trade goods. As well as then some stickers to add to different cards. That can increase your production of goods, or your attack and push you forward in the game that way. I think that each element is just enough to add a bit of flavor to what you are doing.

Upcoming Streams

So let’s just run through a reminder of the streaming schedule every week.

• Monday – Board Game Streaming around 8 PM Central
• Wednesday – Board Game Streaming around 9 PM Central
• Friday – Baldur’s Gate 3 Streaming around 9 PM Central

The best way to know when new videos are live is to subscribe and click that notification bell. You can do that here.

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How To Play The Royal Limited

In The Royal Limited you play four turns and you need to get all of your cards, or all but one into your train either as passengers or as train cars to win at the highest level of the game. If you score four or more points, you lose the game. And two or three points, you’re just starting out as a conductor, so you’ll get better.

Trains and Passengers

How do you get cards out as train cars or passengers? Both are fairly simple to do, but you need train cars before you need passengers so we’ll talk about that one first. To play out a train you pick the card you want to play. The first one can be any card. Then you discard cards totally the number on the train car, so if it’s a three, three cards. Each additional card follows that same rule plus the additional one that it can’t match the color or number of the previous train car.

For playing passengers, most of them are very simple. You either need to match the color or the number to play a passenger onto that train car. There are two VIP passengers as well per game and they have additional special rules. So before they can be placed, you need to meet their conditions. They might have a specific color or be wild when it comes to placement. Each train car only can have a single passenger.

Activating Train Cars

When you play out a passenger you then activate the ability on the train that you play the passenger to. You must do the ability on the card if you are able. There are even some that are more specific than that. They give an ability and then a “next” ability. You must do that ability next and complete. If you are not able to complete that ability, then your turn ends and you draw back up to five cards in your hand.

When you turn does end, either because you can’t play more cards or because you don’t have any or don’t want to, you draw back up to five cards. When you tick down your timer. Then you end a turn and would begin your next turn and the “Train Departed” is at the top of the card, the position marking the turn, the game is over. You then count up the number of train cars/passengers that you didn’t use and the number of VIP passengers you didn’t get played and that determines your score.

What Doesn’t Work

Honestly, I don’t really have complaints about this one. The train maybe gets a little bit wide but with the cards overlapping I think I could fit it onto a TV tray. And that’s about it that I can find that might be an issue, and that’s only a very specific issue of it might not work on an airplane tray, but it also might as I haven’t tested it out.

What Works

Firstly the speed of this game is amazing. I talk while I play and I do intros, grab a drink, and then did some mini thoughts at the end of the video, and it’s a 38 minute video for five games. So the game just flies by, I know it says twenty minutes, I think it’s a ten minute max game.

I really like how the VIP passengers are double sided. I thought that maybe it would start to feel the same with the passengers, but with eight total passengers there are a ton of combinations that you can play. And the more challenging those VIP passengers are, I think it makes the game itself more interesting because I want to or need to to win the game, figure out how to get at least one VIP into play.

And I like the abilities on the cards. Sometimes they are good, and that’s great for you. But sometimes you look at it, especially final round, and it’s discard a card or put a card on top of the deck. Well, you do both of those, you are at a minimum of two cards that you won’t be able to play, and then you’ll just be a beginner conductor.

Final Thoughts on The Royal Limited

I’m skipping the who this is for. If you like solo games, you probably know from the description if you’ll like this game. If you know someone who likes solo games, it’s cheap, get them it and see if they like it.

But I did very much enjoy this game. I think one of the elements that I really liked is the simplicity of play. The powers are the main thing you need to remember, and that’s just part of playing a passenger is using the cars power. It’s not like some of the Button Shy solo games where it’s a bit challenging to keep it straight in the tiny rule books.

This game is fast and easy to learn. That is always going to work for a solo game for me. And I didn’t feel like the challenge was too light. I need to think about what I’m doing, you saw me rewind a move once or twice. But it is not a game where you need to think and agonize over everything. So I see it as that kind of palette cleanser solo game. When you want that brain reset or refresh to happen, I would grab The Royal Limited.

My Grade: B+
Strategy: B+
Luck: C-

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How To Play Unsurmountable

Like all games from Button Shy, Unsurmountable is an 18 card game. Though, there are expansions. In this game you are trying to use all 17 mountain cards and the helicopter to complete an assent of the mountain. You need to make it from one of the bottom edges of the mountain to the top as you build it out in a four wide triangle.

Each turn you do one of two things. You either take the left most card from the “base camp” row of cards and add it to your mountain. You want to connect the paths so that you can make it to the top as you are placing out cards.

The other option is that you can spend one of the other cards, four at the start of a base game, to use it’s special ability. These abilities allow you to manipulate the order of the cards in the base camp, remove cards or add cards in other ways to the mountain and more.

Once you complete one of those two actions you refill your base camp, shifting all the cards to the left and continue. At the end of the game, when your mountain is built, you check to see if you can create a path to the top. If you can, you win.

What Doesn’t Work

This is a solo game with a fair amount of luck to it. If you get the right cards to come out in the right order, you just build the mountain. The powers, they don’t matter so much. But, if you don’t get the right cards, it’s more of a puzzle. So there is a variability in the game as to how you win. Sometimes you win it is pure luck, other times, no matter what you do, or nearly that, there is nothing you could do to win.

What Works

That negative said, this game does give you a good puzzle. The powers on the cards are interesting. Though, as I talk about at the end of the video, maybe not balanced. For example, adding an extra card to the row just gives you more options. But, removing one makes it harder, and the likelihood you want to play either card on the mountain is fairly low. But the rest of the cards offer a lot of fun choices and decisions about which to use.

The game is also again a pretty small footprint and fast to play. I play four games in my video and that is not a long video. In fact, I even spend time talking at the end about some thoughts on the game, so it’s less than that run time for four games. Granted, one game I didn’t play out completely. I knew based off of the cards that I had, I wasn’t going to be able to complete it. But that’s not a bad thing, it means that the game plays fast, and you know when it’s over, no questioning if you can complete it.

Who Is Unsurmountable For?

I think people who like a solo puzzle will find this one fun. As compared to some Button Shy Games, I think that this one might benefit more from expansions. The base game, as you play it, you know what cards do fast. That isn’t a bad thing, but it does limit a potential shelf life of a game. But for someone who wants a lot of small solo games, maybe travels often or finds themselves waiting often, a game like this is very good.

My Final Thoughts on Unsurmountable

This is an interesting game, and I mean that in a good way. I like the game, but also I think that I need the expansions to keep it around. So I am buying the expansions for it. The nice thing about a lot of Button Shy Games is that you get them for $15 and can sell them for $10, so if I don’t find that’s enough for the game, that’s okay. But I think what the game does is interesting.

The reason that it’s kind of riding that edge for me is because I own a lot of little solo games. So which is going to be the one that I play? And Unsurmountable is on the higher end of luck. I won a game without having to use a power for a long time. Why, because that is the order the cards were shuffled into. Am I likely to get that order again, no. But it is possible to just shuffle into a win, which I’m not going to say is bad design.

But it is a testament to the level of luck in the game. And I want to do more than just play out cards in the order I drew them. And most of the time I know with Unsurmountable that I will. If the expansions add some more into the mix, though, that’d be great.

My Grade: C+
Strategy: B
Luck: B

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