100 Through 91

90 Through 81

80 through 71

70 through 61

60 through 51

50 through 41

40 through 31

Top 100 Board Games – 30 through 21

30. A Gentle Rain

A Gentle Rain is what I call a pallet cleansing solo game. All you are doing is flipping tiles and placing them, trying to get four corners to meet so you can put down a disc. If you get all the discs out you win the game. It is pretty lucky, I have won, I’ve also gotten only 4 of the 8 discs out. But it is nice and relaxing to play. The whole point of the game is to have a nice relaxing time.

It’s also nice because while it might take up a bit more space than small solo games ideally do, it is a small box and it plays very fast. So it’s a good little puzzle to play through and have something to think on, but without spending a lot of time or brain power on it. Plus it’s pretty cheap and really good quality.

Out of Stock

29. Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

I will start by saying, I have yet to play Terraforming Mars. It’s on my shelf and I want to get it played. But Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition drew me in because it looked better. The artwork was really good on it, and when I saw it played, I really liked the mechanics. In particular, I like the action selection, how fast that goes. Each player selects an action and everyone gets to take it but as the person who picked it, you get an extra bonus. Any action that isn’t used is skipped that round. Gives good strategy.

Now, I wish I had backed this on Kickstarter. I did end up buying board overlays because the cubes will slide on the board. That said, the quality of the game is nice and the more you play it the faster you go. I think my first few two player games took around two hours, but by the third, we had the game down to basically an hour. And adding in more people won’t really slow down the game. Really fun engine building board game.

Buy On Miniature Market

28. Aeon’s End Legacy

I really enjoy Legacy games, and Aeon’s End was no exception. I knew I’d likely like it a lot, but you can see how much over on Malts and Meeples. What I wasn’t expecting is how good Aeon’s End Legacy is at teaching you how to play Aeon’s End. The game play is just slick and really enjoyable. And they start you off easy and teach you the game.

In fact, that’s one thing I do and don’t love about the game. I already knew how to play Aeon’s End. So when Aeon’s End Legacy dumbed it down a little bit, there were things that I wanted to do that I couldn’t at the start of the game. But this is an amazing way to learn Aeon’s End. The story is solid and the game play is a ton of fun, plus it’s cooperative which is always a bonus.

Out of Stock

27. Potion Explosion

Now we move onto a game with a ton of toy factor. The main mechanic of the game is pulling marbles from a tray that they roll down. You pick one marble and then like colored marbles that hit you also get, and it can cascade into a lot of marbles. You use those marbles to brew potions that give you points and give you one time abilities.

This game when it’s on the table people notice because of the marble tray and just how different it looks. The game play is solid with more depth than it first looks. Optimizing how and when you use the potions means that you get can give you really powerful turns. So while it is light and fun there is strategy.

Buy on Amazon

26. Sagrada

Sagrada is another game with a great table presence. This one has you making stained glass windows. You draft dice which you then have to place into your stained glass window based off of number or color rules. The game play on this one is pretty simple but getting the numbers and colors you need can be tricky.

I like this game a lot because it works well with family. My parents play board games, but they don’t play a ton of them. A lot of modern board games are going to be too complex, but something like Sagrada they were able to get quite easily. So with it’s great look and ease but interesting game play, Sagrada is a great game.

Buy on Amazon

25. Metro X

New game to the list, Metro X is a roll and write I’ve played on the Malts and Meeples channel before as well. This is about completing bus routes the best that you can. The game play, for me, is a lot of fun because of two things. Some routes use the the same stops. So if I fill that stop in I’m working on completing two or more of the routes. But you always are starting from the earliest spot on a route when you fill in, and you can’t skip. It makes it a really good puzzle.

I also like that the game plays fast. This is a game that might trip some people up to start out with because it is doing some interesting things that might not be intuitive, but when you get into it, it’s quite simple to play. And it comes dry erase already which is a bonus. I wish that the expansion bus routes/maps would come to the US.

Buy on Amazon

24. Roll Player Adventures

This game is actually coming in the mail today. Normally I don’t like to put prototypes on the list, but I had such a great experience with this one at GenCon in 2019, that it has been on the list before. I think I dropped it last year because it was a prototype.

This is a more family friendly, from what I can tell, adventure game. It reminds me of Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, not in game play, but in the idea that you are exploring at a higher level and then you drop out of that into combat, but it’s not a tactical combat. Plus you can bring your Roll Player characters into this game which I really like as a concept too.

Buy on Miniature Market

23. Letter Jam

Most word based games aren’t cooperative, but Letter Jam is. That is some of what makes it on the list. The game play is also really clever as you can’t see the letters that make up your word. They are facing away from you, so through clues you have to deduce what your letters are.

If I were to give the clue, and you can see the letter FR*M where the * is your letter, you can probably guess that it’s FROM so you letter much be O. But had I done F*RM now it could be FARM, FIRM, or FORM. So you need to be clever as you give clues because you want to limit how many letters it could be. And if you give a clue that means you aren’t getting helped so everyone needs to give clues.

Buy on Miniature Market

22. Betrayal At House on the Hill

Buy on Amazon

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

Final one on this part of my Top 100 Games of all time is Ganz Schon Clever. This is the last of the Clever trilogy on the list, through the first one of them to come out. I really like Ganz Schon Clever because like Doppelt so Clever and Clever Hoch Drei, this game is all about combos. You fill in one thing, that unlocks something which allows you to fill in, in another spot.

This game also has an app that is really good. I do prefer playing the physical version, but sitting down and playing a quick game is a lot of fun on the app and it works really well. And while the game I think does take longer with more people, it’s still a really good multi-player experience and solo game.

Buy on CoolStuffInc

The Next 10

If you want to catch any of the remaining Top 10’s live, you can check them out and my normal streams on Wednesday at 8 PM Central time. If you subscribe and click the notification bell you’ll know whenever I go live or upload a new video to Malts and Meeples YouTube channel. When I’m not doing my Top 100, you can find me on Wednesday playing board games solo on the YouTube channel. I’ll be streaming next week but then a week off for Thanksgiving and Top 10 will be on December 1st.

Now, I did say I wanted to talk about my streaming times. Through the Top 100 list, I am going to keep my 8 PM Central time on Wednesdays for streaming. However, this might be changing. A channel that I like to watch and be part of their live chat, the GloryHoundd channel is adjusting their schedule. And I know I have crossover viewers from their channel. If they take that 8 PM Central Wednesday spot, I might look at making my main streaming day on Monday. Be aware that change may come.

But what game do you like best out of this part of the Top 100? Are there any that you want to get to the table that you haven’t played in this bunch?

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The Games

You can find a more detailed description of all the games in yesterday’s Point of Order article.

Potion Explosion

Potion Explosion, and expansion, are a potion brewing game with some great toy factor to them. You pull out marbles which causes other marbles to drop and you’re strategizing to get matching marbles to hit because then you get to take those as well to brew your potions. May the best brewer of potions win.

The Quacks of Quedlinburg

More brewing of potions in The Quacks of Quedlinburg. This time you’re trying not to have your potion blow up in your face. Quacks is a bag building game where you push your luck over several rounds trying to draw out the most ingredients and get them into your potion without busting. Will you go for that one more ingredient to push you ahead?

Heroes of Land, Air, & Sea

This is a big 4X game (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) where you take the roles of different fantasy races vying to be the best heroes in land, air, and sea. Full of minis and epic adventure, this game will take a while, but the experience will be a memorable one.

The Beer

Last nights brew was King Sue by Toppling Goliath Brewing Co. out of Decorah, Iowa. This is a double IPA, and I’m hit or miss on a lot of double IPA’s. As I talk about in the video, it can end up being too sweet for me, but this one keeps a nice bitter punch to it, in the lines of a grapefruit flavor, which I really like.

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Potion Explosion and The Fifth Ingredient Expansion

Potion Explosion is a game that I have played before. And it is a game with some of the best toy factor out there. In Potion Explosion you take marbles out of a tray. Every turn you get to take one, if removing a marble causes two like colored marbles to hit, you get to take those, and if that causes two to hit, you take those. It’s kind of like a matching app game. You use the ingredients, the marbles, that you take to complete potions, because of science. These potions give you powers, so it might be to steal someone else’s stored ingredients, it might be to take a marble of your choice, or you can make all your stored ingredients into whatever ingredient you want for the turn, and there are more as well. That is a great part of the game and offers a lot of things to think about, and you are doing all of this the pursuit of points. But, what really sells this game is just the fun toy factor. Picking out marbles, them hitting together, picking those out, and it happens again, that is just so much fun to chain everything together.

The Quacks of Quedlinburg

This game is one of the hotter and bigger games in the past few years. I thought about getting it before now, but generally have passed because I wasn’t sure I wanted a push your luck game. Kind of like Potion Explosion, you are quack doctors creating your potions. You put as much as you can into your pot without the potion going poof. To do that, you draw tokens out of your bag, adding them to a track, trying, with the white colored ingredients to not cause everything to blow up. You can stop whenever you want, but the further you progress in your potion, the more points you will get. This game plays over several rounds, and you buy more ingredients for your bag to draw out and to hopefully get you to the point where you are scoring a lot of points. This one generally is just right on that edge of, I know I’d like it, but do I want it. I decided, to help get to my free game, that it was time to make the jump and pick up The Quacks of Quedlinburg.

Heroes of Land, Air, & Sea

Now we are to the free game. Heroes of Land, Air, & Sea. Another game that has been on that list of games I really want to get, but it’s expensive. It’s a $100 game, so why not pick it up for free. This is a fantasy 4X game. The biggest 4X game is probably Twilight Imperium by Fantasy Flight, but this one, in a fantasy setting, really just caught my eye. And I want to try a game where you are all against each other in an epic battle as you eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate. Plus the game comes with awesome minis, and will look great on the table. I won’t lie, I’m a bit intimidated by how big the game is, but I am very confident that I will love it. Just the amount of tactics that will go into this game and the different paths that can lead to victory, this game looks awesome. Granted, I won’t be able to play it for a bit, it’s a bit much to just play with my wife, but I can’t wait until I get it to the table.

Which of these games seems the most fun? Do you have any experience with them? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

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