The Criteria

When making this list a few things need to be considered, though. Mainly how long a lunch you get, if it’s an hour, that opens up more games. But lots of times, I think people get 30 minutes. So that’s where I want to keep my game lengths. Even if you get an hour, you need to prep food generally.

I also want to keep the player count lower. Generally you don’t end up with a ton of people who want to play a game. Or at least you don’t start that way. At the one office, I would sometimes start a game of Dominion or Power Grid one lunch and it’d carry over to the next one. But there are other smaller and faster games that work well. And games where you don’t need the whole office to play.

Plus, a game needs to be portable. Even if you could get through a session of Gloomhaven in one sitting, it is too big. So something that fits into a backpack, laptop bag, or whatever you use, that is going to be important.

10 Lunch Break Board Games

In no particular order.

10. Floriferous

Floriferous is a drafting set collection game that could be playable at lower player counts in 30 minutes or less. In this game you draft flowers to get combinations which then give you points. The flowers might have bugs on them, or be certain types or colors, all which can score points. Assuming you draft enough scoring cards as well.

So that is the first fun thing of balancing drafting scoring with drafting flowers. The other interesting thing is how turn order works. The higher you draft a card from a column, the sooner the next round you go. It means that sometimes you might want to take a less ideal card just to go sooner now.

9. Matcha

Matcha is my trick taking game. I could have put a few on here, Fox in the Forest would work here as well. But Matcha is my pick, just because it’s a solid two player option as well, and I think that it probably plays in a shorter time frame. It is interesting too because of what takes precedence of number or color that you are trying to get to.

It also adds in a bit of set collection as well. You are trying to get either different items or all the same or completely don’t match every time. I think that it’s interesting to shoot the moon that way. I like it when a game gives you options for scoring and winning. And Matcha does that so that as you play you don’t fight over the exact same thing.

8. Love Letter

If we’re talking about a really small game, Love Letter is going to be a great option. Technically it does have a certain point that you need to get to. I think it’s one person wins a round four times. In a larger player count game that could take a while. But it’s super small and easy to learn.

This is one that I haven’t brought in or played in ages. But it is pretty welcoming for what a lot of players know as a game. It is smaller than most likely what they’ve played before. The whole element of guessing what someone else has, the few cards, it just feels familiar.

7. Cribbage

But speaking of familiar, we have Cribbage. Cribbage is going to be familiar to some people as it’s been around and available for ages. I need to actually play with my nice Cribbage board. But the game play is fast, and while I do think the rules, or at least scoring, can be a bit tricky for some people to wrap their head around, it is not that complex as to what you are doing.

Now, this might not be as modern a game as you’d be thinking for the list. But in terms of classic card games, I feel like it’s a good one for lunch. The ability to just sit around, chat, and play is very high with the game.

6. On Tour

But now into a more modern game, On Tour, which I played on Wednesday is a solid roll and write game. In it you are playing as a manager for a bad trying to create a path for the band to take a tour on, or something like that. Basically, you want to get numbers in sequential order to make a path around the United States or Europe.

This is limited by cards that are flipped each round and the dice as they are rolled. The cards determine where you can play the two number combinations on the dice. However, if you use East once and have no way to use East again, unless there are two East cards. It’s a clever system that offers fun choices that are tense but never too hard.

5. Hanamikoji or Jixia Academy

This one I put down both versions of the game because some people might not want a game with Geisha at work. But really this is a nice two player tug of war game where you are vying for favor or Geisha by trying to give them gifts. But to do that, you take four different actions.

The actions are what is so cool about the game. Each player, and it’s a two player game, has the same four actions. So you each will take them each once, but when to do that is always a question. And the actions make you have tough decisions. You might be showing your opponent 3 cards and they pick one to take. So how do you create a combination so that you get what you want?

4. Qwixx

Qwixx is going to be up there with the simplest games on the list. It is a roll and write where you are just trying to get numbers in order on different colors. The more numbers you get, the more points you get. But when you skip a number, you can never go back. So if I go from 3 to 7 in red, that means that a red 4, 5, or 6 will never a useful for me.

And the game has an interesting end. It ends when either someone can’t place a number or cross out a number for the fourth time. Or when two dice come locked. The dice become locked, so that no one can add to that row, when you have five numbers crossed off in a color. Then you need to roll a 2 or 12, depending on the color, to clock that row. It’s a cool little element that makes you think about how you push your luck.

3. Ohanami

Ohanami is a card drafting game where you get more points the more cards you have a certain colors. But you also need to be putting the cards into three columns. And the cards you draft need to be higher than the highest card or lower than the lowest, on a given column to be able to be placed.

This game is really nice as casual at 4 players. The randomness of what you draft is interesting. At two players it is fairly cutthroat. In either case, it plays fast. That means that you can get it in during lunch, and it is just a deck of cards and a score sheet.8 Either way or player count is fun, but some people will prefer the more casual.

2. Super Fantasy Brawl

This one is pushing it game length wise. That said, it is doable as long as you can get it set-up fast. Super Fantasy Brawl is a head to head skirmish game with a big table presence. The minis are big, the board is big, but the game play is simple. It is one of those games that has depth and simple game play.

You are just playing down cards of three colors each round. And then you activate the hero on that card with the action on that card. You do that to try and knock out your opponents characters, who can respawn and position yourself to complete objectives. You can play it with mainly just punching, but objectives will hep you get the win.

1. Village Green

Finally, Village Green, another smaller card game. Here you are competing to have the best village green by laying out cards in a 4×4 grid. The top and left edges are scoring cards that you draft and play. The middle and lower and right are your village green.

What I like about this one, and it’s one that I’ve played on stream, is that you need to think about columns and rows for scoring. As you add cards to the top row and the left column, you need to think about how they intersect so you play the best green cards you can. But you can’t just play green cards anywhere. They need to match flower or color to get onto the board of something adjacent to it. Probably 2 player only for work lunch, but a nice thinky game.

Final Thoughts

One game that I thought about for the list but didn’t put on is Magic: The Gathering. I’ve really enjoyed Magic over work lunches. But it isn’t a 30 minute game. It is an hour, especially with more than two. But it is an option as well. I also think that Magic is much more intimidating to try and get someone to play. There is a lot going on if you aren’t that familiar with board games.

And, like I talked about before, you can play bigger games. At that one job we’d have Power Grid or Dominion set-up for two days. But that depends on the business and break room. When you play a game like that you need something that won’t be disturbed. And a lot of offices, especially with bigger companies, will need that space to be used by a number of people.

But let me know if you’ve introduced co-workers to board games. Which ones do you find work well for a lunch break game?

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Why To Not Sleeve

Cost, sleeves aren’t cheap for your cards. Especially for a massive game like Marvel Champions that is always coming out with more content, or a deck builder like Dominion which has a ton of expansions and is all cards. For Dominion, the cheapest that I found on SleeveYourGames.com is about $100. And those are cheap sleeves that a lot of people wouldn’t consider using.

It also makes it trickier to shuffle. I am a big person, 6’4″ so I can shuffle a large deck of cards. Sleeves add so much size to the cards. So not only is it trickier to shuffle, but it’s trickier to store. A sleeve doubles the size, maybe more of the cards. Boxes with inserts might no longer fit the cards. That leads to more cost as you need a new box to store everything which can be a fairly cheap cardboard card box or an expensive wooden box.

Why To Sleeve

It keeps the cards nicer. And it allows you to smash shuffle if you want versus other shuffles. But think about all the fingers that get on the cards. Especially for a collectible card game (or trading card game as they go by now), you can have cards that are worth large amounts of money. So getting a sleeve for a $100 card, that can help protect your investment.

But what about regular games, why would you sleeve. Some it could still be money wise, the game is out of print. But games like Dominion, Marvel Champions, Sushi Go Party, or others where you are handling the cards often can last longer sleeved.

When Do I Sleeve

Honestly, I don’t sleeve much, but when I do sleeve I look for a few things. First, with collectible card games, I tend to sleeve those. Not because I am so worried about the resale value of my cards, but because when I’ve gotten good cards, expensive cards for Magic decks, I don’t get them in mint condition. Without them being sleeved I could then tell, or anyone could, when those cards were showing up.

Next is the quality of the cards or how much the cards are handled. Right now I am sleeving Marvel United. The card stock on those cards is thinner and while I have 85 or something different characters to use, I want to make sure that the cards stay in good shape. They won’t get shuffled much, but the characters who are played will get handled a fair amount, so the thinner card stock will benefit from a cheap sleeve.

I also consider how much the cards are handled. There are two games that I need to sleeve because of how much they are handled. The first is Love Letter. The card quality isn’t super high, there are very few cards, and they are handled all of the time. The same goes for Sushi Go Party, some cards, the nigiri, are handled all the time in every game. That means that those cards will show more wear and tear faster. I could also see that happening in Point Salad as well.

Should You or Shouldn’t You?

Personally, I don’t get sleeving every game. That is a lot of money to keep a board game nicer. In the case of something like Dominion, there are a ton of cards total with all the expansions. And if you want expensive sleeves for the base game and all the expansions, it would cost a lot. Plus any new expansions you need to match-up the sleeve type. So there is a tipping point, when would it be easier to replace the game versus sleeve it. Sushi Go Party is on that edge as well. I maybe can get a new copy cheaper than I can sleeve it all.

So I do not believe you need to sleeve all of your games. If that makes you feel better about it, go for it, but some games, definitely don’t need them. Even something like Gloomhaven that has a ton of cards, I played the full game and the few cards that are shuffled often were still fine at the end of the game. So consider how often you use and shuffle each card in the game, the more often you do, the more likely sleeving it is something you could consider.

Let me know if you sleeve your games? Do you do it for board games or just TCG’s (trading card games)? What are your preferred sleeves?

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Numbers

A’s – B’s – C’s – D’s – E and F’s – G and H’s – I, J and K’s

L’s

Lazer Ryderz

We’re starting off with a light and silly one, this one is basically light bikes from Tron the board game, with all of the 80’s gloriousness. In fact, the box even looks like a VHS tape collection (though slightly too large for one). This game has you basically creating light trails, trying to knock other people out, but more so trying to get to objectives before everyone else does to claim them as points. It’s a bunch of silly madness but works well, and it’s one of those board games that gets you up and has you moving around the table as you try and strategize. Now, not all games need to do that, but I like simple games that do for a nice bit of filler.

Status: Played

Legacy of Dragonholt

This is an RPG as much as it is a board game, but Fantasy Flight created what is basically a simple RPG in a box. Oddly enough, not the only one that will be on this part of the list, that kind of has that choose your own adventure feel. This one caught my eye because of how simple it is to play, you aren’t rolling dice, you’re basically just making decisions, and if you have skills, you can use them to open up other paths that might have been closed off if you didn’t have them. The game tells an entertaining story from what I’ve gotten through, and I think there is plenty to explore, I really need to just sit down and knock this one out.

Status: Played

Legends of Andor (Journey to the North Expansion)

Legends of Andor caught my attention a while back as a simple fantasy adventure game. Now, it isn’t extremely simple, the game has good challenge to it, but it is a lot of fun to play. Legends of Andor is very much a puzzle game as compared to a normal fantasy dungeon crawl-esque game, you want to kill off all of the monsters, but here if you do that, it progresses the story too fast and you’ll end up losing. So it’s a balancing mechanic of keeping monsters out of areas that they can do damage, while also completing objectives but not rushing the story along too fast. I like it for a game that feels like it has a lot of traditional board game mechanics, but gives it a bit of a different feel with the puzzle like twist.

Status: Played

Letter Jam

Another GenCon game that I got to try there, I couldn’t pick it up because it was sold out. Let me say that the first experience I had with the game was questionable, this is a cooperative word game, and I don’t think that all the players knew it was cooperative because the gal giving a demo did a very bad job demoing the game. But I’ve gotten to play it since then, including a second demo of it at GenCon and that one was much better, and I have enjoyed the game every time that I’ve played this. This game borrows from Hanabi where your cards are facing away from you, but in this one, it’s a word game, you are trying to figure out what word you might have, but everything is all mixed up in front of you and only one letter of yours is up at a time. People are giving clues that use letters that they can see (so not their own), plus any additional letters that there might be or a wild letter so that people can narrow down what their letters are and figure them out before the end of the game so they can unscramble their word. Overall, a really fun and clever game, it also plays up to six which is awesome.

Status: Played

Lift Off! Get me of this Planet!

This was the first game that I ever backed on Kickstarter. Lift Off! is a cute little game with a million little meeples whom you are trying to get your color of meeple off the planet before it explodes and before your opponent does. To do this you have to prepare you launch sites by getting fuel, gear, etc. to them, and get meeples there ready to launch and wait for the right time of the day (or night) to launch. It makes a really interesting timing puzzle as you look to maximize how quickly you can get off the planet by what you can actually launch, and sometimes a spaceship, for example, might need a lot to launch so you’ll have to leave room on the ship for your opponent so that they can help you get it launched, while others, like a slingshot, might need basically nothing. It’s a fun family weight game or just a bit heavier that looks really cute and plays well.

Status: Played

The Lord of the Rings (Sauron Expansion)

This is an older Fantasy Flight game that they just reprinted with a fancy anniversary edition, and I think the older edition looks better. This game has you playing through the Lord of the Rings trilogy and it’s kind of a puzzle and push your luck game as you try and advance down the boards, playing through the major moments of Lord of the Rings, but you need to do the right combination of cards, and you need to keep your characters away from Sauron as well. This game is a bit like The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game, not in game play, but in how it handles the theme, where if you know the source material, that knowledge brings the theme more than the game play does. The Sauron expansion allows someone to play as Sauron against the group as well, which is a fun edition.

Status: Played

Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth

Another Lord of the Rings game, this one, while it has Lord of the Rings characters like Gimli and Aragorn, isn’t about the trilogy. Instead, you are playing through a campaign that comes before the trilogy as Bilbo is also a character you can play. The game is app assisted which allows it to do a lot of the house keeping for the monsters in the game. This feels like it’s based off of Mansions of Madness, and I know it uses the same base programming for the app as Mansions of Madness, but it gives you more exploration as well as then tactical combat. The game really plays in two types of scenarios, that exploration and then combat, which is fun, as you get something for all types of players. It also moves away from dice chucking like Mansions of Madness to a card system which works well.

Status: Played

Lords of Hellas (Dark Ages Expansion)

Another big and epic game, this one from Awaken Realms, it is an interesting game in that it does so many things in it. There is a drafting piece to the game, happens when you build temples, there is area control, there is fighting monsters, or fighting other players for control of the areas, you can build temples and statues, unlock new powers and go on quests. This game has a lot going on but really plays in a pretty straight forward way. I like all of what you can do because it feels like what you’re doing and what you can focus on is different than everyone else. I also like that it has four win conditions, controlling two regions and all of their sub regions on the map, controlling a number of temples, killing three monsters, or controlling a statue after it’s been built. This game is also really well balanced, we had a five player game and all of us were in a couple of turns of winning when the game ended and all of us had switched what our goal was for winning by the end as well. Really love the game.

Status: Played

The Lost Expedition (The Fountain of Youth & Other Adventures Expansion)

The Lost Expedition is one of my go to filler plus games. It feels like it’s just a bit more because it takes just a bit longer than some games, but definitely is straight forward enough to be considered a filler and it’s cooperative. You are creating paths in this game for your adventuring group to go down, during the day everyone plays down two cards (generally) and they go in numerical order, and you work together to traverse that path. In the evening, you go for another hike, this time it’s playing down the rest of the cards in your hand, but they don’t go in numerical order, but the order that you play them in. This creates some interesting game play, and for people who feel like there is an alpha gamer problem in cooperative game, The Lost Expedition counters that by not allowing that much sharing of information or really any during the card playing phase, and that’s the part that really sets up what you’re going to do.

Status: Played

Loup Garou

This is another choose your own adventure style game, more so than Legacy of Dragonholt. It has you playing through a graphic novel basically. Van Ryder games has put out a lot of them which have been quite popular. I grabbed this one at GenCon and I still need to get it played, but I like the concept and I’m very curious to try it to see if this is maybe something that I’d want to get more of. They really have about one play through per book per person, but it should be something you can then pass off to another person to play as well.

Status: To Be Played

Love Letter

Another early to my collection game because of seeing it Wil Wheaton’s Table Top, though, I think this was played on the first International Table Top Day if I remember correctly. This game is a little micro game where you are trying to get a Love Letter to the princess and you are doing that by trying to have the highest value card left in your hand when all is said and done, as long as it’s not the princess. But you can also knock other players out of the round, and if you do that, that can also cause you to win the round. It’s played over a series of rounds, but even playing up to 4 wins in a two player game, that goes extremely fast. It’s a nice tiny little game that has had a lot of versions of it put out.

Status: Played

I impressed myself there, out of all the games that start with the letter L that I own, I’ve only not played one of them. Granted, with another one I haven’t played my copy, Lazer Ryderz, but I want to once I can have more people over again. There is really such a wide variety of games in here, and I am going to go through at the end and do my favorite game for each letter, though for some that might be obvious.

What’s your favorite game that starts with the letter L? What game starting with L should I add to my collection?

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Fox in the Forest/Fox in the Forest Duet

Two different versions of a trick taking game. But both are two player only only games. In Fox in the Forest, you are trying to take tricks, but scoring is more challenging than just taking all of the tricks. Certain cards have certain powers on them. In Fox in the Forest Duet you are working together, trying to keep the fox moving along the board and picking up tokens, more tokens you get the better you do, but it’s still trick taking. There are paw prints on the cards, or fox symbols I forget which, and that is how much the fox moves, but which direction depends on who wins the trick. Both of these are clever little games and good for 2020 if you have a limited number of players you can play with.

Zombie Dice

While the previous ones were for casual gamers, I think that this one is one you can pull out with anyone. It’s a simple push your luck game where you are grabbing three dice from a cup, rolling them, keeping brains, seeing if you’ve been shot, and then deciding if you want to draw more dice and roll those. There is a bit more going on than that, but that’s basically it. Once someone hits the point total to win, everyone else get’s one shot to push their luck. It’s like a simpler version of the game Farkle, and it has a theme. I think that the theme and the simplicity of the game is going to draw people in, even though the theme is just goofy fun versus involved in the tactics. It also is really small and needs about no table space, just enough to roll the dice, so it’s good for at a bar, or a picnic.

Onirim

I’ve done two player, any number of player, and now a solo board game. Onirim is one of the best known solo games. It’s all about playing out cards, matching colors and changing symbols so that you can get doors out and escape the nightmares. It’s really an abstract game, but it’s a lot of fun. Plus, the new printing has all the expansions in the base box, which I need to learn all of them. The game is clever in what it does, because there are very powerful key cards, key cards can be played like any other card to find a door, but if you flip a door from the top of the deck and you have a matching key color, you can just spend the key and immediately get that door, or you can use it to look at the top five cards of your deck, discard one, can’t be a door, and order the rest how you want, or finally you can use it to stop some other affect from a nightmare being drawn. And the nightmares have as many things they can force you to do as the keys. It’s a really interesting puzzle to see if you make the right decisions with those really important cards.

Hanabi

Maybe you like the idea of a cooperative game, Hanabi is a very small box cooperative game where you are trying to put on the best firework short. You want to display all five colors of fireworks from 1 to 5, playing down their cards in order. However, you can’t see all the cards, in fact, you can’t see your cards, but you can see everyone else’s cards. On your turn, you can do one of three things. You can spend a clue token to give another player a clue as to what they have in their hand. The clues would be something like “This and this card are blue” or “That’s a two and that’s a two”. You have to give the person all of the information for a given color or number. You can also play down a card to one of the rows of fireworks, but if you get it wrong, the fuse gets shorter. Or you can discard a card to get another clue token to use. The game is somewhat lucky as you try and give specific enough clues to be helpful, but are stuck some on the draw. But the more you play, the more you know how to give good clues that mean something, even if it might not be as obviously straight forward.

Ganz Schon Clever

There are so many roll and write or flip and write games that I could say. Silver & Gold, Railroad Ink, Patchwork Doodle, Floor Plan, Second Chance, Cross Cross, Cat Cafe, and Cartographers are all ones that would pretty easily fit into a stocking. But I’m picking Ganz Schon Clever because that’s the one that I’ve been playing a lot of recently. It’s an interesting little puzzle of a roll and write, where you have five different areas where you are placing die values. Each of them scores in their own different way, and each of them has their own way you want to place the dice. It’s an interesting challenge and it’s based so much off of combos and how you can fill in a spot in one row to then be able to fill in a spot in another. It’s very satisfying that way.

Now, there are a lot more small games out there that’d work well, obviously I tossed out a bunch of roll and writes. But if none of those work for you, you can also find games like Stipulations, Parade, The Lost Expedition, Not Alone, Love Letter, Hanamikoji, Marrying Mr Darcy, Point Salad, Gloom, Arboretum, and so many more. There are a lot of good small games out there that are a lot more than just just a take that sort of game, or the classics like Uno, Skip-bo, and Pit.

What small game would you like to find in your stocking at the holidays?

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Silver Coin

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

Marvel Love Letter

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

Sagrada: The Great Facades – Life

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

Hard City

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

Fruit Picking

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

Black Rose War

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

Sonora

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

Detective Signature: Dig Deeper

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

Succulent

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

Ascension: Curse of the Gold Isles

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

Deranged

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

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

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When I created this list, I determined that about 116 is where on my list of games (192) that I wouldn’t be always up for playing them. At 180, I hit the point where I probably wouldn’t play them again. So there are some games I enjoy that didn’t make the list, Castle Panic, Love Letter, and Forbidden Desert are probably some of the biggest names. If you’re wondering what the bottom of the list is, I’m not telling. Let’s just say it was a bad experience playing it because of some of the people and tactics to get me to try it, and the game wasn’t exciting. Also, be aware that there are some GenCon demos on the list, I feel like I got a good feeling for them, so I can rank them where they fit for me, this is also a living list so things are likely to change when I do this next year or even a few weeks from now. Finally, if there is an Amazon link for it or CoolStuffInc, I’ll share it.

100 – Lazer Ryders
Lazer Ryders is a silly game with an amazing look. The best way to describe this is that you are on light bikes and trying to get through certain spots before other people. But the game is highly reflective and silly. In this game, like I said, you are trying to get through spots, and you are creating a track as you go. But you can’t plan out your moves, once you have a piece in your hand and it’s over the table, you’re playing it. And if you crash, you start from the edge, and when you start at the edge of the table, you do so with your eyes closed. The look for this game is the best part, there are four players and the player pieces look like they are in a VHS case. It’s very 80’s-tastic, and just a fast and fun game that’s good for a laugh.

99 – Skull
I enjoyed this game as a bluffing game where you are trying to push your luck. In this game everyone is playing down coasters, face down, that have either a skull or a rose on them. Then eventually someone is going to bid as to how many of these coasters they can flip over and people take turns bidding higher until only one person is left. Then they have to flip that many coasters. But the trick is you have to flip all of yours, so are you bluffing in hopes that someone thinks that yours are safe to flip so they bust. It’s a small game, it’s a simple game, but it’s interesting and it’s very portable.

98 – Marrying Mr. Darcy
This is a game that my wife kickstarted, not me for once, huzzah! But it’s a very fun little game, especially if you enjoy Pride and Prejudice, and I like it’s snarky feel. The game keeps some snark as you build up your Bennett sister or other characters so that they are able to get their ideal suitor. It’s a very simple game and you really just flip a card and play that card. But that’s not a bad thing, my only downside to the game is that there are a few too many cards that you flip, if that was reduced by 25%, it would be great. Still, it’s not too long, so it’s a fun time and everyone always enjoys the sarcastic and goofy nature of the game.

97 – Takenoko
Sometimes you just want to eat bamboo. In Takenoko, you control bamboo growing, panda eating bamboo, and gardener growing bamboo in order to please the emperor. This game for being very cute is actually somewhat complex as you take different actions to complete objectives that you’ve drawn. It’s really a game that’s about completing sets of bamboo or growing bamboo in a certain way. The game has a nice chibi panda in it, and the bamboo pieces are cool because you set them up. It’s also a game that Kristen has enjoyed so that makes it fun to play as well, even though we don’t own the game. I don’t know that I would say it’s an introductory game, which I feel like it should be though, as there is a bunch going on.

96 – Qwirkle
Some games are good because you can play with with basically anyone. Qwirkle is one of those games, I can play it with my parents, and I can play it with siblings, and I can play it with my wife, so all different levels of gamers. It’s a good puzzle sort of game that is all about pattern recognition, but because of the luck of the draw of tiles, those who are good at pattern recognition won’t always win. In this game you are playing down tiles that have various colors and shapes on them. You score points for adding to rows of colors as long as the shape is unique or shapes as long as the color is unique. It has a bit of a scrabble feel without being a word game.

95 – Telestrations
This is a game similar in appeal to the one above, while that is more of a strategy game to be played with anyone, Telestrations is a party game for anyone. It also goes by the name Telephone-Pictionary if you are playing it without the actual game. In this game, each player has a pad, everyone rights down a phrase, word, whatever, then they pass it, the next person draws, pass it again, next person writes, and so on. Then you flip through it and laugh at how it’s changed over time. And fairly often it’s completely different. This is really more of an activity, like The Mind, because no one keeps score, but it’s a fun activity that anyone can join in.

94 – The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth
When I was saying that there were some games that I expected to move on the list, Journeys in Middle-earth is one of them. I think as I play more and get more into the story this will go up on my list. What I like about it is that it has an app that helps and you get a story because of the app. What I don’t love about it is that you have an app and the app does almost too much so you almost feel like you could play it as a computer game with just a slight tweak tot he game. It looks cool on the table, and if you wanted to take characters from the Lord of the Rings, plus a few new characters on an adventure, you can do that, though, I wish it was only new characters.

93 – Dragonfire
Every time I’ve played this game I’ve lost. But I still like it, this is based off of the Shadowrun: Crossfire system but instead of being cyberpunk, this is D&D. You get your character and class and start fighting off waves and waves of monsters, buying new cards and building up your deck. I actually grabbed this used not too long ago, so I’m excited to stream it solo, because, though it doesn’t have a true solo mode, it’s cooperative, that means I’ll be able to play through the stories that it has. I like deck building as a mechanic, and I like the scenario based game and the adventuring feel of it, and I really like D&D, so it’s a good fit for me.

92 – Charterstone
The first legacy game on the list, and no, Seafall won’t be making the list. Charterstone is really a worker placement game where you get to build the board as you go, and then in the end, you can play a worker placement game. For me, this is a good and simple game that you can play quickly, thankfully, because I don’t feel like there are massive things going on in the game, and there isn’t story. Now, I know there is technically story, but there really isn’t story that matters, so instead I just enjoy it as a straightforward worker placement game with some fun combo building. I still need to finish it, but three of us had babies in the past year who were playing it, so who knows when it will happen. If it doesn’t, I might just make the board and add in the last few buildings, we’ll see.

91 – Shadowrun: Crossfire
I could just say, see 93, so I will, see 93. That’ll give you an idea of what this game is, but what I like about this game better is that it is cyberpunk. Yes, I love D&D, but sometimes you want to play something different, and you can do that in Shadowrun: Crossfire. In fact, that’s why I kickstarted and got another Shadowrun game, because I like the cyberpunk setting. I don’t always love sci-fi, but cyberpunk style of sci-fi is great. I don’t own this one, and I don’t think that I’ve won this one either when I’ve played, but that’s fine because I never felt like I was just getting crushed by it.

Alright, that’s the first 10 games. Only 90 more to go. I’m guessing that people can probably get my top game, but there are a lot of fun games on this list still to come and probably some surprised with how high or low some games will be in my top 100.

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The criteria that I’m looking at is the size of the game, the complexity of the game (though that matters less), and the components of the game. To a less extent I’m going to consider the length of the game. Sometimes you just want to play a quick game.

Cribbage – Might not be the game that you expect, but it’s a fun game and one that a number of people are familiar with. I think that helps get it to the table because people will at least recognize it. It also has the small footprint because you have the board, but beyond that, you are just using a deck of playing cards, so those are easy to replace if you spill a drink on them.

Skull – Now, with this game just don’t confuse them with your coaster, but in this game you have five cardboard discs and you are playing them face down, eventually someone is going to say how many they can flip over without hitting a skull. It’s a simple push your luck game and bluffing game, but it works well and while the discs are coaster size, that is it for the game, so each person just needs a little room in front of them.

Love Letter – I’d be tempted to sleeve this game as there are only a few cards in the game, and that will keep it in better shape longer, but this simple deduction game works well as the rules for the cards are on the card. Plus there are player aids. With this game you are just playing down cards trying to knock out your opponents so that your love letter gets to the princess. There are other variations on the game as well, such as Batman Love Letter if that’s more up your alley. This game has almost no footprint.

Welcome To… – This could probably be a number of roll and write or flip and write games. I just happen to have this one. Yes, you are writing on fairly thin pieces of paper, if you wanted to make it more hearty, you could laminate them, but because it’s just a sheet you use for a single game, if it gets damp, it isn’t that big a deal as long as it doesn’t get soaked. Welcome To… does have a few cards in it as well, but you could use the box lid to protect them by setting the cards in there. It’s also a relaxed game so that you can take your time playing it, and like Skull can do a high player count, in fact, this is the going to be the highest player count game.

Zombie Dice – All you’re doing is rolling dice, keeping track of brains you’ve gotten, and hoping to roll a few more brains. But if you roll enough shotgun blasts, you can’t bank your brains, so you have to decide when to push your luck. It just has dice, and those are going to be fine around liquid. I could have put something like Farkle here as well, but in Zombie Dice you’re just keeping track of the brains that you’ve collected, so you don’t need a score sheet.

Just One – This party style game does have cards, but you just use 13 of them (I believe), and you end up with them standing in a holder most of the time. Besides that, people are just writing clues on little white boards. It’s a fast game, it’s a simple game to teach, and it’s one that basically everyone will enjoy. It’s also good because you have time for conversation while playing it. I’m tempted to recommend Stipulations, but that one you need to be able to hear each other.

The Resistance – Final one is a social deduction game, The Resistance has you going on missions to bring down the corporations. This game doesn’t need a moderator, and you have a tiny little board in the middle plus a few cards. You just decide who goes on a mission and then if the mission succeeds. You’re seeing if enough missions will be failed before enough successes happen. It’s not complex, but that makes it easy to teach on the fly.

What other board games would work well at a brewery? Kristen and I have played some big games there, but that depends on you getting a large enough table. There are games like Dice Throne that would work well, because they don’t need too much room, but they are bigger than I was trying to list, but if you try, you can play something like Dead of Winter or KrosMaster there.

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Christmas is almost upon us, so we’re starting with games that would make great stocking stuffers. A lot of games come in big boxes, but what are some games that can fit in smaller boxes that are popular or that I enjoy.

Love Letter

There are a ton of flavors of this game as they have slapped all sort of different things onto it from the original medieval setting to Batman. Pick the one that is best for the person you are giving it to. In the game you are trying to get your love letter to the princess, in the base game, by playing cards to try and stop the other suitors from getting their letter to the princess. This is a very fast game for two to four players and would easily fit into a stocking.

Zombie Dice

Zombie Dice is another game that I’ve talked about a fair amount, it’s a simple die rolling game where you are a zombie trying to catch humans and eat their brains, but they might be trying to shoot you back, so you push your luck while rolling the dice to see how many brains you want to bank in a race to 13 brains. It’s basically Farkle, but simpler. The zombie theme might not work for some people, but it’s a good stocking stuffer as it’s an easy game to teach.

Parade

A tricky little game with an Alice in Wonderland theme on top of it. It’s really an abstract game, but the artwork makes it better to look at. You are trying to have the fewest points when someone has collected cards of all the colors. The cards have different point totals on them, so you can kind of judge the score. But if you have the most of a color, all of those cards are worth one point. There are different ways you collect cards based on the number and color of the cards. It’s a bit more of a thinky game and one that offers some interesting decisions in a small package.

Onirim

This one is for someone who likes games and wants to play them all of the time. it’s a small card game for up to two players, but really is a game for one player. It’s a tricky little card game where you are trying to play cards in order by color but not repeating symbols. With that, you are stuck in a dream trying to find dream doors before you run out of cards because the nightmares have gotten you. The game is a bit spendier than some of them, but it comes with several expansions that gives the game nice variety.

We Didn’t Playtest This Legacy

Yes, this is a legacy game, but it’s a tiny legacy game. Give this game as a stocking stuffer to the person who runs board game night. We Didn’t Playtest This is a silly game where you are playing cards that can either protect you, or people select one of a couple of options, and people are eliminated. You can play lots of rounds of this game fast. It’s a good filler game to start a board game night or between longer board games. The regular game is a bit boring, but Legacy version has some fun bits where when someone wins with some of the cards, they can put their name on the card that might give them in the instant win. Or the card might ask them to add a word that people can’t say or a letter they can’t use. It allows a group to really set-up in jokes for their own play groups.

Sushi Go!

Not Sushi Go! Party, which is too big to fit in a stocking, unless it’s a Hobbit stocking (woo big feet joke). Sushi Go! is still a fun game, there is just less variety in the game. But because of it being less variety, it means that it might be easier to get repeat plays out of it with a group that isn’t as game playing heavy. They don’t have to relearn the scoring ever. Sushi Go! is a drafting game where you selecting cards from a hand and building sets that give you points. There are three rounds of drafting cards, and the person with the most points at the end of three rounds wins the game. It’s a very cute game as well which makes it easier to sell.

Unlock Games

Finally, if you have an escape room enthusiast, these are the games for them. They are escape rooms in a box. You are looking for clues, trying to combine cards to get more clues to escape the scenario that they are in. It’s a one time play through of the game, but these games are about experiences. It could even be, if you don’t want to give a one time use game as a stocking stuffer, a game you could play with family and friends over the holidays that everyone will be able to understand. These games also have nice pressure as you are racing against the clock. Definitely the most challenging of the games on the list.

What are some other small games that would make a good stocking stuffer? I know there are games like the Tiny Epic Galaxies and the rest of the Tiny Epic series or Mintworks which are popular now.

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These are all games that are light weight games, generally fast, that fall into the filler category.

Let’s talk quickly about what is a filler game.

A filler game is any game you’re going to use if multiple groups are playing games and you’ve wrapped up one game, but the other group is still going and you need something to pad out the time, or for the start or end of a game night when you want to wind things up or down. It can also be for when you have a little bit of time otherwise and you want to fit in a board game. These games generally have a higher player count, short time frame, and are easy to teach.

Let’s meet the contenders.

Tsuro: The Game of the Path

Tsuro is a faced playing tile laying game where you are trying to keep your stone traveling it’s path longer than anyone else. It plays up to eight people, and even with eight people plays in fifteen to twenty minutes. You pick a starting location on the edge of the board, then playing tiles on your stone, you move it along the path you laid in front of it. It get’s tricky when there are a lot of tiles on the board and you have to figure out where a different path might lead you because you continue until you find the end of the path or run into someone else. If you go off the edge of the board, you are out, if you run into someone, you are both out.

Zombie Dice

Basically a simple version of Farkle, in Zombie Dice you are a zombie who is trying to eat brains, as zombies are want to do. But the humans are fighting back for some reason. Blindly, you grab three dice out of cup and roll them. If you get a brain, you get a point, if you get a shotgun blast, you might get knocked out for the round, and if you get a runner, you have to draw back up to three, keeping that die, for your next roll. Zombie Dice is a classic push your luck game as you’re seeing how far you want to push it and how many brains you can get, banking them before you roll three shot gun blasts, and the winner is the person with the highest total after someone has gotten to 13 or more brains. With Zombie Dice you can play with as many people as you want and is a nice casual game, though, the more people you have the longer it’ll take, and if the dice rolls don’t go well it can take a bit.

Love Letter

Love Letter is a simple and fast playing deduction game. It has a lower player count at 4 players, but each round of the game takes only a couple of minutes. In it, you have cards with different members of the royal court, and you’re trying to get a love letter to the princess. You want to end the round, without being eliminated and having the highest rank card, the one closest to the princess to hand her the letter. You score a point for a win, and technically you play up to four points, but you can go as high as you want or as low as you want for when people are showing up.

Ice Cool

This game has a bit more set-up, but even that is fast as you put together the board so you can start flicking penguins. While with Zombie Dice and Love Letter you barely need a table, with Ice Cool you definitely need one. Players take turns as penguins who are skipping class trying to avoid the hall monitor. The student penguins are trying to get fish and the hall monitor is trying to catch them. For each fish a penguin gets they get a point card, and for each penguin the hall monitor catches, they get a point card. While technically every player should get a turn as hall monitor, you don’t need to do that. Currently it only plays four, but the expansion is coming out to make the board bigger and allow it to play eight.

Now this one is harder to do similarities and differences on, so we’re just going to get to a judgement faster.

These are all fun filler games. Generally I use the first two for board game nights because of the higher player count. There are other games I considered as options for the filler battle, but thought that these four worked the best.

Personally, my favorite out of all of these is Ice Cool. The game is just silly fun, but I don’t think it is the best filler. It requires a little bit of set-up and it only plays four. To play the whole game also take s a little bit longer. Love Letter is also getting the cut because of the lower player count. Between Zombie Dice and Tsuro, Zombie Dice is the easier game to teach, but Tsuro is more fun, and you can get in more game potentially as a filler game. So the winner of the Cruiser Weight Title is Tsuro.

Tsuro really hits that spot where there is a little stress to the game as sometimes your piece is in someone else’s hands just with how the tiles are on the board and you have to hope that they keep you alive. I think that makes the game stronger, also the fact that people want to play it again is something that I don’t get with Zombie Dice. It isn’t that people don’t like Zombie Dice, it’s just that it’s a bit more straight forward whereas with Tsuro, people always think, if I did this, I might have been able to win, and there’s less random luck in Tsuro.

What are some of your favorite filler games?

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Now, I am going to toss one out here fast, Dead of Winter, however in a lot of ways, that’s basically The Walking Dead. So I’m not going to say anything about that one beyond it.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is the first other one that has popped into my head. And that’s because a lot of the haunts have such a classic feel. You could also most a series for it as well as a movie where a group goes into the same house over and over again to see what horrible thing would happen to them and who would betray the party. This has a bit of a Cabin in the Woods feel to it, because in that one there were a lot of “omens” lying around that they could have picked up. But having a betrayer as part of the group I think would add an interesting dynamic to it. Add in the Betrayal Legacy that is coming out, and you could get yourself a nice franchise.

Then from the same game designer as Mice and Mystics, you could do Stuffed Fables. In some ways, I think that would make a cuter story, stuffed animals going on a grand adventure to get back their girls lost blanket while they travel through a crazy world that has developed under her bed. Any game that has that strong a story element to it would obviously work better as a movie as compared to say, Catan. And this one has a very cute aspect to it that would make a very good family film.

So what about a game with less story focus as the driving storyline for a movie?

Love Letter, now why would that make a good movie? I think you could do a romantic comedy with it and have a lot of good humor surrounding trying to get the letter to the princess. Of course things would go wrong, the guards would throw someone in jail to stop one persons letter from getting through, and somehow at some point in time one of the suitors would end up getting their letter to the princess so that she can deliver the letter to herself and that person would just immediately lose, obviously. Almost would have a bit of the goofy feel of the Clue movie to it.

Root would be another cool game to see be made into a movie. Another one that definitely would have to lean towards a kid focused movie, but probably more intense than something like Stuffed Fables would be. Root would show the struggle in the forest for control. I would think that the Woodland Alliance would likely be the sympathetic main characters with the vagabond playing a large role as well. The Marquise de Cats would definitely be the evil group, and the Eyrie, while probably not being evil wouldn’t be well liked because they have too many rules. Personally, form having played the Eyrie, they are definitely the good guys, but maybe slightly misunderstood, but that can’t be helped.

Arkham Horror LCG, to get back to more story focused games (though this game is fairly abstract with nice chunks of flavor text throughout), would be an obvious choice as well. You’d focus in on the investigators and what they are doing and the madness surrounding them. In some ways I’m a bit surprised that there hasn’t been something so Lovecraft focused done already. I might be forgetting something though. But a good movie set in that time frame of the 1920’s-30’s with the monsters possibly being released, that would be nice, and the potential for sequels is high with this one as there would always be another threat that the investigators would have to deal with.

Now, I’m sure that I could come up with a ton more games that would make interesting movies, if done well. What are some that would make great movies, in your opinion, that you want to see done? What are some board games that would make the worst movies?

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