Today, though, I want to take a different tact. There is a lot about why you should get rid of games. But not all games fall into the category of play it, then get rid of it. Or why did you buy it in the first place, you already have 20 campaign games, you don’t need all of Kingdom Death Monster. I believe games can fall into three different categories in your collection. The games that you need to keep, the games you want to keep, and the games you should probably get rid of.

The Board Games You Need To Keep

Now, I use the word need here. There are no board games that you truly need. Board games are a hobby, and no hobby is a need. That said, there are some games that you will want to keep no matter what. These games fall into a few different categories or reasons why you keep them.

Firstly, you play the game often. So board games that you play a lot, you can most definitely keep those. You need them because you play them. That one is simple enough to grasp.

Next, you might keep a game because it’s a grail game. But even this is not a great reason to keep a game. If you aren’t playing a grail game, why do you need it on your shelf? Sometimes, though, a game is just so hard to come by that it won’t be worth the hassle of getting it back. Especially if it’s a game that you found before it was hard to get or just stumbled across. Also, if the grail game still brings you joy.

For example, I’ll remember stumbling across Tannhauser at a used book store, or getting the minis for Dice Throne Adventures off of Facebook Marketplace, as how I got the game. So there is joy of the hunt for those games. And having that on your shelf and reminding you might be enough.

That brings us to the final reason you might need a game, it brings you joy. This is a game that you look at, possibly a grain game, and you see it and it just makes you happy. You don’t feel regret that you aren’t playing it, you are just happy you own the game.

The Board Games You Want To Keep

Now, the final reason of need is also the main reason that you might want to keep a board game. The game brings you joy. But these are the games that bring you less joy than other games. An example for myself, owning Xenoshyft: Onslaught, and Dreadmire brings me joy. I don’t really need two things that are basically the same game. I should play both and pick my favorite.

So it is more of a want to keep both? They bring me joy. Another way to put it is that while you might have a lot of the type of game you love. I own a lot of deck builders and a lot of stuff for a lot of deck builders. Do I need Xenoshyft, Aeon’s End, Ascension, Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle and more in my collection? No, I don’t play all of them all the time. But deck building brings me joy.

This can also be the games that you maybe don’t love, but you play. Another example from my collection would be Splendor. I think it’s an okay game that I’d play but never seek out to play. I feel like I’ve played it and I don’t need to again. But, my wife likes the game, and she can pull that one off the shelf and teach and play it. That is a game I want to keep because other people like it and want to play it. This really works for games that people ask to play.

One important thing though is that games you want to keep shouldn’t be games that weigh you down. Some games when they are on the shelf, you look at them and you feel bad that you aren’t playing them. Those games fall into the third category.

The Board Games You Should Get Rid Of

This is the hardest category, there are reasons to think you shouldn’t get rid of any game. What if someone wants to play that one game that has been collecting dust for years. You got a good deal on a game, so it’d likely cost more to get it back. Or it’s out of print, so it’ll be more difficult to track down later.

Before we pick apart some reasons to keep, let’s talk about some reasons to get rid of a game. The most obvious one is that you don’t play it. If you don’t play it, why do you keep it? Does it bring you joy? Okay, but does it bring you enough joy to eat up a spot on your shelf? Is it in a genre that you just adore, well, maybe keep it. But sometimes it’s better to know your putting a game into the hands of someone who will play it.

Honestly, that is the reason that you get rid of a game, you don’t play it. But to add another twist on that, it weighs you down. That’s the idea that you look at the game and you feel bad that you aren’t playing it. And it feels like it’s too much work to learn the rules and play it, but you feel bad you aren’t. Get rid of games like that. They are a mini black hole on your shelf and soon they’ll start sucking the joy out of other games around them, because you always see that one game.

But now let’s tackle some of the excuses that you might be using to keep games around.

What If Someone Wants To Play The Game?

This one is simple, they can buy it. Or we can make it slightly less simple, they can let you know they want to play it and you can buy it. This is something I want to work on this year, the idea of getting a game just in time. Some games I want to keep on my shelf because they get played, but if a new game comes out, let’s say So Clover as a party game example, I can buy that right before a game night. I don’t need to buy it two months or two years before I’ll play it.

It Was Such A Good Deal Though

So, what does that matter if you don’t play the game. Buying a game because it “was a good deal” still uses money that you could be spending on other things. Even non-board game related things. And if you sell the game now, or trade it, you’ll get money to buy a board game or part of a board game that you’ll actually play. Or something else that you actually need. If or when you want to play the game again, you can buy it again, probably on sale again.

It’s Out Of Print, It’ll Be Hard To Find Later

It might be hard, but it won’t be impossible. And if you are savvy with selling it, you will break even when you want to get it back. And this is still a game that you’re not playing. It might even be a game that you don’t like that well. So why would you want it to eat up some space on your shelf. Like the game that was such a good deal, this is money that is just sitting there. But in this case, it is more money that could be going into a game that you will play.

This is one that i really do see so often, it’s the idea that people don’t love a game, but it’s hard to find. That is a bad reason for it to be in your collection. Just because it is rare isn’t going to make you like it more. Let someone else who is having trouble finding a game that they like and want to play, get the game. Sell your copy, and then get a game you will play.

It’s My Favorite Type Of Game

But does it bring you joy? Or does it weigh you down? If it isn’t bringing you joy, that doesn’t matter that it’s your favorite mechanic. I don’t own Dominion even though I love deck building games. Now, in all fairness, I don’t like Dominion as a deck building game, it is a game that kind of plays itself for me. I do not need it in my collection because I won’t play it. The other ones I do pull off the shelf from time to time all of them.

Let’s Run Through Some Examples In My Collection

So, like that whole long title says, I want to use some games in my collection as an examples of different things.

Gloomhaven

When was the last time I actually played Gloomhaven? Well not this year, and not in months. I have beat the campaign and I don’t intend to go back and play it again anytime soon.

But it isn’t going to be leaving my collection. This is a game that I absolutely love. Even if I never come back to it again. I like having it on my shelf to think about all the great fun I had playing it. This is a game that brings me so much joy. Plus it’s marked up and has stickers, so while I’m sure someone would like a cheaper used copy, the return isn’t worth losing that spot of joy on my shelf.

Xenoshyft: Onslaught

This is a simple one, I play the game often. Now, what determines often might be different for different people. I think I played it 3-4 times last year, and when I played 70+ different games and 100+ were Orchard, that is pretty often.

The Blood Inn

Now this one is trickier. I haven’t played the game yet. Technically it is part of my goal to get down to under 100 games in my collection that I haven’t played. And I do want to play it, the theme is fun and I think I’d enjoy the game. I just need to play it and see if it is a game that I like.

Marrying Mr Darcy

This is kind of my stand-in for Splendor. This is a game that my wife backed on Kickstarter and I do like playing it. It isn’t that far off of my top 100. But it is a game she can easily pull off the shelf and teach and play with people. And that happens fairly often. So that one won’t leave the collection for that reason.

Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate

Finally we have Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate, and this one I think is actually going to leave my collection. You know I love Betrayal at House on the Hill. And Betrayal at Baldur’s Date is the same thing, just the fantasy version of that, the D&D version. And I love D&D. But if I were to pick one of the two games, Betrayal at House on the Hill will get played every time before Baldur’s Gate. And I have Betrayal Legacy that I need to play as well. So there are two games ahead of Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate.

But does it give me joy? Meh, I don’t feel like it’s a weight, but it also doesn’t make me smile every time I see it. It is just more of a game and game system I know I love in a package I like slightly less than the original version. And it’s a game that if I want to get it back, I can.

Final Thoughts

So we actually found a game during this that can leave my collection. Some people say that as you start culling it can be addicting. It feels like a weight leaving your shoulders because you don’t need to worry about playing that game. I can see that to some extent, but that’s not why I cull. And I think, to start, it doesn’t feel like that. It feels bad that you are selling a game that you didn’t play as much as you wanted to.

I cull games and sell games for a few reasons. When I sell a game it means that someone else can enjoy that game. If I’m not playing it, now someone who really wants it can play it. I’m passing on the joy of board gaming to someone else. Plus I get money or store credit, and now I can get a game I want to play even more.

And I really mainly do it for that last reason. I want to find a game that works better for me. If a game doesn’t get played or is just fine for me, why keep it in the collection. Instead, let someone else play it and quest for that next game that is great for me.

Do you find it hard to get rid of games? And do you have games that you love but you know you won’t play, but they still stay anyways? Let me know what those games are in the comments below.

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Eagle Gryphon Games Order

This one happened today. I normally wouldn’t have done it, but I got an e-mail from Eagle Gryphon game that they have their Black Friday sale going on, and there’s even extra off when you hit $50, $100 and $200 I believe.

PitchCar Expansion 8

One of two expansions that I don’t have. This one is cool in that it allows you to split your road. You can create two paths. If you think about games like Mario Kart or often Need for Speed games, there are a lot of the time shortcuts that you can take. Or the board game Downforce has tracks that split as well.

Well, now I can do that in PitchCar. And I’m probably never going to say no to even more PitchCar. PitchCar is just so much fun, and it’s in some ways easier to get to the table than Icecool, which does something similar with flicking penguins instead of cars. Racing is just a theme that people understand better than penguins in high school. And this I want to create that shortcut, or maybe a long cut.

Fleet: The Dice Game

To hit the point where I could get a bit more off I added a roll and write game to the list. For a lot of YouTube people I watch, The Brother’s Murph and Dr GloryHogg on the GloryHoundd YouTube Channel, they really like this one. It is a roll and write with a number of combos, but it is also a roll and write that it heavier. It’s one that has been on my radar for quite a while, it’s just been hard to find. So already on sale for Black Friday and pushing me to get 10% off, I’ll add it to an order.

All Systems Go Purchase

This is from a couple of times of going to ASG. The last game on the list I actually got when I finalize selling my RPG stuff that I talked about last time, which I talk about why I sold a lot of RPG stuff here. Buying stuff this last time with store credit I had left and paying for what was leftover pushed me to the point where now I can get a free $100 game with their rewards program. I just need to figure out what.

The Crew: Deep Sea Adventures

This is one that I might have talked about before, but it was a pre-order that came in. I didn’t actually realize it, but they rang it up when I was in the store even though I’d already paid for it. They caught that not me, so now I have store credit to use on my next purchase, which I’m glad they noticed. It’s something that could have easily been missed.

But onto the game, this is a trick taking game. It’s a cooperative one and that’s different. There was already another version of it that I own as well and need to get played. You’re limited in how you can communicate, and you need certain players to win certain things. I might need to win the trick with the red four in it, for example. And to go with that, you might be allowed to only win one trick. So it’s an interesting puzzle that I want to dive into.

Marvel Champions: War Machine and The Mad Titan’s Shadow

This is just more Marvel Champions. I say that like it’s not a big thing. The Mad Titan’s Shadow was delayed for ages because of the shipping crisis, at least in getting to the US. Well, it’s here now, so if you want to play through a Thanos focused campaign, you can do that now. And War Machine is another character to add into the pool to play with. I’m excited to play with them, and really, I need to play more Marvel Champions, I’m so far behind on the content.

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write

If you’ve been watching my Top 100 Board Games (of all time) 2021 Edition, you know that there are a ton of roll and write games on the list. Well, here is another roll and write game. This is one from Pandasaurus who is known for a lot of different games but I love Sonora that they’ve done and they have games called Dinosaur Island and Dinosaur World. This one is a roll and write version of that first one.

And All Systems Go backed the Kickstarter. So this is the Kickstarter version of Dinosaur Island Rawr ‘n Write. I’m not sure what that adds in extra, but there are extra things in the box. That is just a fun bonus for me, because I’d have been fine with retail.

XenoShyft: Dreadmire

This one I picked up when I finalized my trade-in. Going back to my Top 100 Board Games (of all time) 2021 Edition, you’ll know from yesterday my #11 is XenoShyft Onslaught. It’s kind of tower defense deck building game with bugs. I call it Starship Troopers the board game because fighting bugs in space. I already know I like the system, this one adds in weather I believe to maybe make it even more difficult, and this game is already difficult. But I want to get it to the table, and it was used but NIS (new in shrink) at the same time which is fun.

Miniature Market Anniversary

Miniature Market does a good job of getting you to buy stuff. For my birthday month they gave me $10 credit to use. Anniversary month, I think for me making my first purchase but maybe theirs, $10 credit. Of course, I’m not going to let money to to waste, or since I already wanted these games, might as well make it cheaper on myself.

Land vs Sea

This is one that I blame Quackalope for telling me about, Quackalope is a board game YouTube channel, very good and highly recommend after Malts and Meeples. But they really loved this game, and to me it sounded interesting. Land vs Sea is kind of an area control game as you are building out areas of, well, land and sea. But depending on how you put stuff out, it can let you score even more points. And, this is key for me, you are building out a map, there is no set board. I have Carcassonne that does this, but I want another, well, I have one now.

The Dragon Prince: Battlecharged

I love The Dragon Prince. If you haven’t watched this show on Netflix, stop reading articles after this one on the internet, and go watch it. It’s from some of the same creators (or maybe all) as Avatar: The Last Airbender show. I personally like this one better.

The game takes the main characters from the show, both good and bad, and allows you to create teams. You draft them or pick them thematically and then fight. So it’s a skirmish style game. I don’t always love skirmish games, Super Fantasy Brawl being an exception, but the theme of this one I love. If nothing else I want to give this one a try and see if it is one that works for me. If not, it can move on from the collection, because I got it $10 off.

Crowdfunding Backing

Mythwind

I won’t talk about this one much because I’ve already talked about it a lot. If you’re just looking at this post, Mythwind is like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley but as a board game. That is, it is a game where there isn’t a win condition. You are just seeing how well you can do and how big a town you can build. It’s an interesting concept and one that I’m sure some people will love. I think that I might love it as well. But if not, I can always sell it for what I backed it for most likely.

Boy Band Builder

This is one that my wife backed a while ago and just showed up. Guess what the game is about, that’s right, building a boy band. I think it feels a little bit like Marrying Mr Darcy, where it’s almost a take that sort of game, but really you care more about building up your boy bad to complete gigs and get as many points as you can. I want to play this one because I think it’ll be good for a laugh.

Too Many Bones: Unbreakable

And this one is from Gamefound. I haven’t gotten any Too Many Bones before, even though I work within a mile of Chip Theory Games, might be a mile and a half now. Too Many Bones is kind of a tongue in cheek with weird characters little fighting game. There are no minis for the fighting, though, it’s all done with poker chips which is weird and cool.

So, why did I jump in now? This expansion wasn’t a bad price, and it’s a standalone expansion. To go with that the characters seem more interesting. One is kind of a weather manipulating character, and I forget what the other one does, but some of the earlier ones are closer to your more standard fighter, cleric, etc. that you expect to see in a fantasy game. If I really love it Chip Theory Games does a solid job of keeping stuff in stock.

Level 99 Pre-Order

Almost forgot about this one, but it’s a pre-order so will come in eventually.

Bullet [star] and Wood Pieces

From what I can tell, this feels like an app game. You are trying to blow up different patterns of stuff, and it’s just hard to explain. But it looks cool. It’s real time too, which isn’t something I always love, but if I can play it solo and real time, then I might be more interested in real time.

The idea is that you are playing down cards to destroy bullets that are coming towards you. And you are different anime style heroines, I think each with how their own powers. You are trying to do some pattern matching so that you can destroy those bullets but you only have a certain amount of time. And I got the wood pieces because they just look cooler.

Alright, that’s it. Which one of these games that’s coming in or that I already have would you want to play?

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Marrying Mr. Darcy – With Zombie Expansion

If you aren’t familiar with it, there is a book called Pride Prejudice and Zombies. This takes the story of Pride and Prejudice and turns it into a zombie book while keeping the snark intact. There is also a movie on the book that is highly entertaining as well. But Marrying Mr. Darcy gets you playing as one of the Bennett sisters or other main characters trying to get enough wit, beauty, charm, or whatever it might be to get your perfect suitor. There is a small expansion for the game that adds in zombies.

This game is a lot of fun to play and is quite silly to play. It also handles a pretty large group. The game play is very simple but there are some good laughs in it as you play and decide if you want to get turned into a zombie yourself. The zombie expansion doesn’t add in all that much, and really doesn’t add to complexity, which makes it a nice easy option for Halloween.

The Bloody Inn

The Bloody Inn is an interesting one to put on the list because I haven’t played it yet. It’s theme also isn’t spoopy. You run an inn and it turns out that it’s more profitable to kill off the people who who up and hide their bodies and steal their stuff. But if you aren’t careful the police will show up and now you have to deal with them. The theme is just too absurd to be really horrific. Thus it makes it onto the spoopy list. You’re going to be telling stories about how you stuffed a body under a rug as the police showed up.

Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger

You are a paranormal detective, as a group, going through this cooperative game. It is very much a choose your own adventure with a little game on top of it. You collect items, go into crazy rooms, probably die, and then continue on further into the story trying to figure out everything that is going on. This one barely qualifies as a game, but it’s a lot of fun.

The best way, I’ve found, to play this game is to just pass around the cards. So each person gets to read and gets to make decisions. You can make them as a group or discuss them, but the reader is the person who has the final say on what you do. It’s fun to just be surprised what happens when you’re not the reader.

Gloom

This one falls into the category with The Bloody Inn, if you actually think about it, it’s kind of horrific, but really it plays as spoopy fun. In this game you have a family and you are trying to get them to die as miserably as possible so you have the fewest points. You are playing cards on your own characters and narrating the miserable things that happen to them. And then you give your opponents good things, or at least maybe less miserable so they aren’t as negative in their points.

The game does require story telling. For some groups the game won’t work then because you do need to dive into the absurdity of the stories. Getting left at the alter and then stung by bees and chased by wild boars is all fun, but if you can narrate it well, it’s a grand old time with that horror them and also being very spoopy.

MonsDRAWsity

Another one that I haven’t played, but this is going to be party game and drawing game entry onto the list. You are all basically police sketch artists trying to get as close to what the actual monster looks like just from descriptions. IT’s a goofy premise, and one that is going to give you a lot of weird looking monsters and a lot of laughs.

If I were going to pick one game to pull out for a Halloween party, MonsDRAWsity is the one that I’d pull from my collection. some of the others would work as well, but this one is going to be maybe the lightest. Choose Your Own Adventure might be lighter, but this will keep people more engaged throughout.

Similo: Spookies

Okay, this one might also be one I bring along to a party. But for it to be really Halloween you need the Spookies which just came out. In this game one person is trying to get everyone else to eliminate the right monsters by giving clues based that the monster is either like or not like another monster. That can be trickier than you think. You might have great monsters to give a clue or a bad one, is a swamp monster similar or not to a vampire more so than a werewolf to get the right one eliminted.

I talked about this recently on my Top 100 games list as well. You can get multiple different sets of this, so you could mix in animals for the clues about the monster, or mythological figures with giving the monsters as clues. It makes the game really easy to expand and a whole lot of fun.

What Spoopy Halloween Games Do You Like?

Are there any on the list that you’d play of mine? I have a few others that just missed like Werewords which I don’t love but would work well. Or something like Silver: Amulet and it’s standalone expansions that have a werewolf theme on them without feeling like that. Definitely Silver: Amulet would be a good one as well.

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Theming a board game night can be a lot of fun. It gives people a good idea of what games might be played. It helps focus in a collection which games come off of the shelf. I know that I have enough board games where it is tricky sometimes to get them to the table, but if I theme the night, then I play games I might not get to otherwise. What I want to talk about is how to pick a theme, but before that, I think we should talk about how to pick games.

Picking the Games for Board Game Night

Now, you might just want to pick games that go with the theme ,and keeping things on brand for the theme is important. But it is easy to end up with a lot of the same types of games, if you pick something like fantasy, you could end up with four big games ready to go. A game night should provide some more diversity in what is played and that’s less because some people don’t like big games, but more because people will come in late. I am working on coming up with a methodology of what works well.

I think that starting out with a party or lighter/faster game is good to do. People will show up throughout that game, they can either sit down and chat with you while you play or hop into the game if it’s a party game as the points don’t matter. Then have some medium or heavier games to go after people have arrived. This can often have you splitting into a couple of groups, get a heavier game and a medium weight game going. Then as the games wrap up, you go back to lighter games again and pick ones that can end whenever or can be played multiple times pretty quickly as people will slowly drop out for the night. I’ve found that this strategy works well and the games played generally will give everyone something that they like, for those party game players or those heavier gamers.

Picking a Theme

Keep The Theme General

So, with that in mind, it makes a collection clearer for what themes might work. You’ll be able to see what games you have that fit a given theme. And when I say pick a theme, I mean give yourself a broad category. For examples, instead of 18XX go with games with trains. Instead of Lord of the Rings go with fantasy, instead of chickens go with animals. Give yourself enough to work with and a wider breath of games to pick from. It will also make the game night more inviting, because you might have three games about chickens, but if I hate chickens, I might not come, but add in animals of any sort, I would come for games about cats. That’s a silly example but helps make the point. A broader theme is more interesting because someone who doesn’t like fantasy except Lord of the Rings can still come to game night. I always try and say what games I’m looking at as well when inviting people.

Vary The Themes

And vary the theme as well. If you flip back and forth from sci-fi to fantasy and back with maybe a horror thrown in there, it’ll limit what games you can do. It’s fine to stretch a little bit to fit some of your favorite games into categories, but by theming you can also encourage other people to bring games as well.

Stretch The Themes

Now, I am a strong proponent of stretching the theme as well. You do want to play your favorite games, so make themes that they can get into, maybe just barely. It’s a food themed game night, what games have food in them even if they aren’t about food. If you love Agricola, you can make that work. Ice Cool is about flicking penguins who want fish. Or if you’re doing a theme about a school or learning, Ice Cool works for that, or about animals, Ice Cool again works. You can get games into a theme to give yourself more options to play, if you really try.

Theme To The Season

Finally, pick themes that go with the season. At the holidays, make it about party games, if you do it on a weekend evening like I do, that means around Christmas and New Years that people might have other parties as well. Make your game night something easy to drop into. Or in October go with horror games. In July, go with games about food or fireworks or about the United States of America. That’ll help you get variety in your themes as well.

Themed Game Set Examples

Food

• Sushi Go/Sushi Go party – This is a nice starting game, it plays fast and offers time to chat. It’s also enough that groups can continue playing if they want.
• Homebrewer, Foodies, and Heaven and Ale – This is the second wave of games that I’d use in my collection. They are bigger games with more going on, but Homebrewer and Foodies are pretty light weight and easy for someone who might not know the game quite as well to teach. The people who want to play a heavier game, Heaven and Ale covers that crowd.
• Point Salad and Ice Cool – Point Salad is a great wrap up the night game. It plays a decently large group, it plays fast. So a good one for the Homebrewers or Foodies players to play while Heaven and Ale players finish up their game. And Ice Cool plays a big number and is silly fun.

Horror/Halloween

• Zombie Dice – It’s a very simply push your luck dice game about zombies. Sure it’s not actually scary, but it has a horror related theme which is really what you’re going for more than something too scary.
• Dead of Winter, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Marrying Mr Darcy (with Zombie expansion) and Deranged – There are some lighter and some longer games in here, but it gives you a variety of options. And three of them handle a larger group of players.
• Deception: Murder in Hong Kong – Sure it’s not really a horror game but it’s about a murder which has a Halloween feel to it. And it’s a nice bigger group game where the games don’t last too long, people can leave between them and it can wrap down the game night.

Sci-Fi

• King of Tokyo – So this could fall into the next category of games, but the games of King of Tokyo are fast and the Cyber Bunny is definitely sci-fi. Plus since the game is simple, chatting with people who arrive while you’re playing is easy.
• Xenoshyft: Onslaught, Alien Artifacts, Clank! In! Space!, Cry Havoc – All of these are bigger games, though some of them are more complex and drier to play. They give a good variety from area control, a 4x-ish card game, two deck builders, but one cooperative and one not.
• Not Alone or Lazer Ryderz – Now, Not Alone is for if you still have a larger group. But you could do Lazer Ryderz in teams as well which is just becasically the bike game from Tron. A some good goofy fun with that game. Not Alone gives you more of a game but still plays a big play count.

Those are just three examples of what you could do. And that is how I’d build it from my collection. I also like it when people bring games that gives even more variety as to what to play.

Have you themed a game night? What’s your favorite theme?

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Often with this type of gamer, they are going to look at games that tell a story. I’m talking about two different types of stories here, first there is the campaign style story or games that inherently tell a story, but also board games that provide story through the game play.

Two Quick Examples

So, I hope that makes sense, but if it doesn’t, I do have a couple of quick examples to give in two games that are actually in the same family of games. That would be Pandemic and any of the Pandemic Legacy games.

Pandemic Legacy is a game that has story baked into it. You play through months and story unfolds as you go. You unlock things mid game that add to the story and as you progress month to month your goals change and story continues to progress.

Pandemic, it doesn’t have all the trappings that Pandemic Legacy does. But Pandemic still tells a story. It does that through the game play and the players as diseases pop up around the world, you name them. There are hot spots that develop where no matter how much you try and keep them down they always seem to come back up again. The medic gets tired of going back to Lagos over and over again to deal with it because you just can’t avoid it coming back up. Those stories come out of playing the game.

Story Campaign Games

So I’ve given one example of the two different types of games, but I wanted to talk about each of them in more depth. We’re starting with story driven campaign games. These are the big games that people are going to think of when it comes to story. The Gloomhaven, Sword & Sorcery and other similar games out there. These games often go through Kickstarter because they have a lot of minis and they are harder to sell in retail stores.

When done well, these games really develop and interesting narrative to them. Good storytelling should have you invested in what is going to happen next in a book and that is the same with a campaign game. If I can play a session and at the end I’m not ready to play again, that means that there are one or more of a couple of flaws with the game. This could be that the story isn’t that engaging, or it could be that the game play itself isn’t that amazing. I talk about Sword & Sorcery when it comes to this sort of thing. I think the story is fine, it certainly isn’t bad, but the mechanics are so dice chucking focused that the game feels like it removes some meaningful decisions from you just by a roll of the dice. Gloomhaven on the other hand has well balanced and interesting mechanics to the game to go with a solid story, so it kept on sucking me back in to play more and more.

Story based campaign games aren’t that hard to find, and if you want to find some, here are a list to checkout.

Campaign Games

• Gloomhaven
• Reichbusters: Projekt Vril
• Folklore: The Affliction
• Clank! Legacy
• Aeon’s End Legacy
• Pandemic Legacy (Seasons 0 through 2)
• Shadows of Brimstone
• Legacy of Dragonholt
• Forgotten Waters
• Roll Player Adventures

And there are a ton more as well, but those are just a few that I have sitting on my shelves or coming through Kickstarter.

Games That Bring Out Story

Now, this could be taken one of two ways, that’s why I wanted to give the example of Pandemic above and how that tells a story. There are games that you get stories from and then there are games that bring out story. Uno would be a bad example of this. In Uno you might tell the story of how a friend got Uno three times only to get draw four played on them each time. That’s a story about the game not the game telling a story.

What I’m talking about are those games where the theme is there, at least enough, so you really feel the story coming out of it. A game like Marvel Champions can tell a story of a super hero fighting a super villain as if it were in the comics, but without comic panels, it just gives you a very loose framework as to what the super villain is up to. Call to Adventure is another one, and this one is more intentional, but you get generic fantasy story elements for what your adventurer is doing and at the end it’s helped create this epic story for your heroes journey.

The game creates, through mechanics and minimal story telling elements, a story that is captivating each time you play. The theme doesn’t even have to be so strongly there, but the mechanics need to be smoothly integrated into the game so that you don’t see them standing out. Instead you just play the game and what you are doing in the game just makes sense. While writing a massive story for a huge campaign game can be daunting, I think creating a game that tells a story in a one off experience is probably even more challenging.

Games With Story

• Pandemic
• Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade
• Call to Adventure
• Blood Rage
• Aeon’s End: War Eternal
• Grimm Masquerade
• Marrying Mr. Darcy
• Marvel Champions
• Specter Ops
• Clank! In! Space!

These are the first games that popped into my head. I surprised to think of Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade, but it does a good job of telling the story of playing pinball. It’s a weird thing to think about, but it does a good job of it and creates a memorable time.

Is This Type of Board Game Better?

Personally, for me, I enjoy it more than a pure dice chucker or a pure cube pusher. And I think when getting people into the hobby, this is a strong selling point for a game. A euro game can be too dry, and an amerithrash game to be too lucky and sometimes just too big for new gamers. I think especially games from that second category, games that bring out story, are great to hook new players into the gaming hobby. But it won’t be the cup of tea for everyone. Some people will love the epic Amerithrash games with tons of swingy combat and randomness in them. For others, randomness needs to be highly minimized. So I don’t know that games that tell stories, campaign or otherwise, are better, but I do like them better.

How about you? What games tell the best story for you?

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Anime

Now, I could do probably a whole list that is just anime, there’s a whole genre of anime, slice of life, that tends to be less heavy and more light hearted. Granted, some of them deal with heavier things, but a lot will be happier. But let’s focus on two of them.

Dagashi Kashi

Now, maybe we shouldn’t be sitting on our couches just eating candy the whole time, but Dagashi Kashi is all about that Dagashi. Dagashi are basically cheap candies and snack foods in Japan. The main character works with his dad in a little Dagashi shop that a big company wants to buy and take over. His dad makes an agreement, but only if the company can convince his son to take over the shop instead of becoming a manga artist. The show takes you into the history of a lot of Dagashi and will make you want to get some, but it’s generally a really good and light hearted romp that is worth checking out.

Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun

A new one that we just started recently, this one is about two high schoolers. Chiyo who has a crush on Nozaki, who is in her high school. However, she can’t ever get the words out right to him. She finds out that he’s a manga creator and accidentally gets roped into helping him with his manga. It’s a very cute story and has lots of weird characters and light hearted moments in it. Definitely a bit all over the place, but that’s what so many slice of life anime are.

Movies

I could pick a lot of kids movies in this category because a lot of them do have good wholesome and up lifting messages, and I could pick a lot of animated movies in general because again, they tend to be made more for kids, but I wanted to give a couple of different options, so only one kids movie.

My Neighbor Totoro!

It’s an animated movie from Japan and it definitely has a slice of life feel to it. Two girls move with their father to a place in the country. Life is fine there, but they are really waiting for their mother to get better and join them. However, there are some unique spirits living around them, most notably Totoro. Totoro is a goofy seeming creature, but is often there to help them and to help them through the times ahead. It has some moments that do have some emotion, but mainly this movie floats through on it’s iconic moments and pacing of a story that really doesn’t go anywhere. It’s nice and short as well, which makes it easier to sit down to in an evening.

Stardust

Now this movie is a bit different, based off of a book by Neil Gaiman of the same name. It’s about a fanciful world and the real world where they meet up, and what seems like true love and real true love. The story has some epic fantasy moments, some final face offs of characters, but overall, it’s done very well and tells what is generally a very light hearted story. In the end it’ll definitely leave you feeling like you’ve sat through an enjoyable romp in a crazy fantasy world.

Television Shows

Now, I could just go back to more slice of life anime for feel good watching, but I don’t want to do that, and I split anime out for that reason. So many TV shows focus around some sort of drama, we have a ton of procedural cop shows out there, but what are some shows that leave you feeling like you had a good time after watching them.

Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency

Of course, I’m starting out with Douglas Adams, or at least something vaguely adapted off of a couple of books of his. This falls into that camp of completely absurd humor, but it does it in a great way. Add in Elijah Wood whom we know was Frodo from Lord of the Rings, and that’s a fun little addition as well. This show, both seasons, won’t make a ton of sense always, but it does all come together and it is all light hearted fun after a fashion, it just might be a little bit absurd as well. It has a mystery element to it, but that even keeps you wanting more.

The Great British Baking Show

Now, I didn’t mean to do two British shows, but if you are a fan of reality TV, but the drama is getting to you during the winter months, this, and the SyFy channel show Face Off will give you a couple of options to watch, The Great British Baking Show is just on Netflix so easier for me to tell you were to find it. This is a baking competition where they make all sorts of glorious things to eat, but that’s not all that is great. We have shows in the US like that, but generally there is some drama around it, in this show you can genuinely tell that they care about each other and they want to win, but they want everyone to do well as well.

Board Games

You know me, I love my board games, though, this is harder part of the board game section is that not all games are going to work well with a limited player count. While we’ve never been told during the pandemic to see no one in Minnesota, naturally in Minnesota during the winter, less people go visit people because it’s cold, dark early, and often the roads aren’t great. So what are some fun games that can be played with not a ton of players.

Marrying Mr Darcy

Now, being a Jane Austen fan might help for liking this game, but it works well as a light hearted and light little game that can play from two all the way up to six or possibly more. This game is all about playing one of the characters in Pride and Prejudice and getting paired up and marrying your perfect match. The game has very simple mechanics, draw a card and do what it says, and some set collection card play. That’s about it, but the cards keep Jane Austen’s dry and sarcastic humor on them. I think this works better with more players so everyone is laughing about it, but it can play at a lower count and be a lot of fun.

Second Chance

What, I put a roll (flip) and write on the list, who’d have guessed. This game is very peaceful to play. You flip two cards and fill in one of the shapes on your board, you repeat, repeat again, and so on until no one can fill in anything. What adds to the peaceful nature can be how you fill in the shapes. You don’t just box them in because eventually you’d lose track, so I doodle mine in, my wife makes patterns by filling them in in various directions. You can really do whatever you want, and even with the doodling the game plays so quickly, so there’s no need to feel like you’re rushed.

What is Your Nerdy Mood Lifter?

I could have gone into books and comics as well, but these are four things that I know pretty well, so I wanted to focus on them. What are some of your favorite light and fun things to watch, play, or read?

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The Collection

Numbers

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

M’s

Mage Knight Board Game

This is one of the most popular solo board games out there, which is why I picked it up when I could used. This is not the ultimate edition that has all the expansions, just the base game. From what I know of it, it’s a quite heavy game made even heavier by a fairly poorly written rule book and a tutorial that kind of tries to teach you the game but doesn’t do a great job at it, but it was a lot of things that I like, Deck building being one of them and it is said to have an RPG like feel as well. It’s one that I need to spend some time learning and get to the table.

Status: To Be Played

Magic: The Gathering

This was one of the games that kind of got me into modern board gaming again, or helped me diversify my gaming because the group that I joined in with. Magic is a good deck construction game that I don’t get to play all that often anymore. In fact, I sold off the majority of my cards, but I still had to keep a few decks around because I know that eventually I’ll play it again, especially Commander. I think I kept three or four commander decks around because that style of playing can be expensive, but you only need one of each card in the deck. And it allows you to deck build in more interesting ways.

Status: Played

Mansions of Madness: Second Edition

I like my Arkham games from Fantasy Flight, but Mansions of Madness: Second Edition is my favorite. The game play is really enjoyable as you are playing through an app guided scenario. Since it’s app guided, it means that the game will be different each time that you play it, or could be, which is a lot of fun as well. And the scenarios are really different, some have just trying to stop a summoning in a mansion while others have you running around trying to escape a town that’s been already taken over, and there’s a scenario with time travel as well. Fantasy Flight has done a lot of things with the game which gives it a lot of replayability.

Status: Played

Mariposas

Last years big hit of a game was Wingspan from Elizabeth Hargrave, and she followed it up this year with Mariposas. Mariposas is a game about butterflies and their migratory patterns, which doesn’t sound that interesting, but the game play itself looks very interesting. You push as far north as you can all while sill needing, in the last season, to get all the way down to warm weather again to score more points. So it’s a push and pull of which objectives you want to get and which ones might be worth passing on because of how you’re set-up. It seems like clever game play and is an interesting theme, though not the only butterfly themed game that I have.

Status: To Be Played

Marrying Mr. Darcy

Sometimes you just want to play a light filler game about finding your ideal suitor in Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice. And sometimes you mix in the undead expansion if you want to play Pride, Prejudice and Zombies. This game is one that my wife actually picked up on Kickstarter, and it’s been a hit at the table. The game, I will say overstays it’s welcome a little bit considering how simple it is, but it does always provide good laughs as you try and set-up your best match and hope not to end up an old maid. The humor in the game is solid as well, it is just a bit too long for what it is.

Status: Played

Marvel Battleworld

Marvel Battleworld is kind a game. In a lot of ways it is more collectible than anything else, but not really being collectible. You are rolling dice to defeat enough locations before Thanos gets them. But the game is mainly about these Thanos Stones, something made up for the game, which are basically just a blind bid pack. You crack them open when you beat a Thanos Stone location and you have a new hero that you can play with. The heroes do look great, and the game play is meant for kids, so it’s not a knock on it, it’s about getting you to buy more packs for the kids in hopes that they get their favorite character, like frog Thor or cat Captain America. And there are rarer packs to sucker in the adults. But it’s a fun five minute little game thing, which is what it looks like.

Status: Played

Marvel Champions

Continuing the run on Marvel games we have the game that if I split it up into expansions as well, it could have been it’s own post. Marvel Champions is a deck construction card game where you are taking a hero up against a villain in a scenario, or multiple heroes in multiplayer. This is another Fantasy Flight game and is a living card game, which means that they are releasing new things for it all the time. I have 11 expansions for it, but you don’t need them all, or really any, there is a lot to play with in the base box, and after that you can just pick and choose your favorite heroes to get. What I really like about this game is that you go back and forth between your hero and alter-ego side, so Spider-Man and Peter Parker, for example. If you are in the Peter Parker form, the bad guy won’t attack because they don’t know who you are, instead they’ll scheme a way. But on the flip side, they attack and scheme less, so you need to balance it out so that you can beat them.

Status: Played

Marvel United

The final Marvel game on my list, this one is a simple cooperative game (all the Marvel games are cooperative). But Marvel United has amazing Chibi figures. This game has a ton more expansions coming with it sometimes in 2021, but just the base game is enough to get started with. This is a very straight forward game of dealing with a bad guy who is scheming away. But it has a really cool twist. On your turn you play down a card and use it’s actions and the ones from the card played before you. So it is that super hero team-up feel that people think of from the Avengers films.

Status: To Be Played

The Mind

The Mind was everywhere last year. It was a simple game that showed up and was very polarizing. Some people consider it less a game and more of an activity while other people say it’s a great game. For me, it’s an okay little bit of filler. In the game you play down cards in ascending order, not that tricky. But you can’t speak, so you have to be in everyone else’s head trying to guess what they have and wait it out before you play. I’ve only played The Mind a little bit, and I don’t need to play it that often. It’s an okay sitting around and drinking game, but overall just an okay time and it will fall flat at times.

Status: Played

Munchkin: Zombies

If you asked a lot of people what some of their first games to get into board gaming were, I’d expect a lot of people to say some version of Munchkin. I played base Munchkin first, but the version I got was Zombies. In Munchkin, you are kicking down doors and fighting monsters while everyone one else is trying mess you up. The game is very much a take that game and for that reason isn’t going to be for everyone and really isn’t even for me anymore. I keep it on the shelf because it is a good introductory weight game, and nostalgia at this point.

Status: Played

Alright, that’s all of the games that I own which start with M. There are a number of them, though not as many as starting with L. What is your favorite game that starts with the Letter M? What game should I add to my collection starting with M?

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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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100 to 91

90 to 81

80 to 71

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

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

70. Marrying Mr Darcy

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

Last Year: 98

69. Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game

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

Last Year: 55

68. Carcassonne

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

Last Year: 90

67. Clank! A Deck-Building Adventure

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

Last Year: Not Ranked

66. Dice Forge

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

Last Year: 53

65. Cosmic Encounter

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

Last Year: 49

64. Parade

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

Last Year: 62

63. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

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

Last Year: 59

62. Galaxy Trucker

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

Last Year: 56

61. Fruit Picking

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

Last Year: Not Ranked

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

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10 – Marrying Mr. Darcy
As I was creating the list, I was surprised to see this game make the list. It’s down a ways in my top 100, no spoilers for this fall when I do my top 100 again, but it is really an interesting theme. First, there’s the Pride and Prejudice theme, I’m actually a little bit surprised that we don’t have more games based off of Jane Austen, I’m not sure how they’d work, but I’m surprised. Then it’s a game about marriage, now there are some party games about marriage, but this one isn’t about guessing trivia between married couples, it’s about marrying off your character from Pride and Prejudice to your most preferred suitor. It’s a light hearted game that is pretty simple but enjoyable and pretty good at not going too long.

9 – Hanabi
Hanabi has an interesting them of fireworks. That’s not one that you really see in board games, but beyond that it is a fun game because it has some really interesting mechanics. You are trying to create lines of fireworks by color going from one to five. But you can’t see your cards in your hand, they are facing away from you, using clues, you have to work together to discard the right cards, to get more clues, put down the correct number on the correct color, and give clues. The trick is giving good clues because your clues need to be either pointing out all the cards in someone’s hand of a color or of a number and hope that they infer the right order. It’s a fast game, but it’s very challenging.

8 – Photosynthesis
Now, some would argue that this isn’t a completely unique theme, there are other games out there that are about trees, but it’s still a pretty uncommon theme. And how it handles trees is really interesting and the pieces are cool and board is amazing. In Photosynthesis, you are trying to grow trees to harvest to get points. The theme is fairly abstract, but it works, because there is a sun that rotates around the board. So you get light points to spend to plan seeds, grow trees, and score points, and how you get points if based off of how many of your trees are getting sunlight and the size of those trees, because if you have a larger tree behind a smaller tree, both trees get sunlight, but smaller tree or same size tree, they can be blocked in the shadow and not get you any light points. It’s an interesting strategy game that offers a lot of tough choices and has a bit of a cutthroat element as you try and position your trees to get light and block off other people. Really fun, easy to teach, and has a lot of depth.

7 – Hats
The hat part of the game Hats is what gives it a more unique theme. There is also an Alice in Wonderland theme on it with the Madd Hatter’s tea party, but that’s a pretty common theme in games. But the idea of hats and which hats are on the table scoring points is unique. It’s also very clever. In most card games, you are using your hand of cards either to give yourself points if they are good or your opponent points if they are bad. Here there’s a middle step. When you play a card, you are putting it onto the table in one of six spots and taking the card that was already put there and placing it in front of you for scoring. So you’re giving your opponent a potential card for scoring, but it’ll only score if there is a card of that color out on the Madd Hatter’s table. So you have to think about how your opponent can use the cards that you have to set-up their scoring and hopefully play them in such a way that the table ends up favoring you at the end. A lot of strategy in this game, though some luck especially at higher player counts. It is really quite abstract, but it works for a theme because of the Madd Hatter and hats.

6 – Cartographers
So there are a lot of games out there where you’re building a world or a city. Something like Carcassone pops into my head or a game like Suburbia where you are building a city. In Cartographers, you are making a map, not to build out a land and score points by putting people on it like Carcassone, but because you are mapping the far off reaches of the land. How it works is interesting as well, this is a flip and write game where each player is filling out their own map, so at the end it looks different for everyone. But you are either given one type of land with one of two shapes to put it in, or two types of land with one shape to put one of those two land types in. Or, there are monsters. Filling in the land is pretty normal, it has a Second Chance vibe to it, but monsters are very different as one of your opponents will decide where the monster goes on your board. It’s very clever that way, and the scoring is good as well. You score two things each season and it rotates, so in Winter you’re scoring one thing that you scored at the beginning of the game in spring. Not the only game to do this, but does it well, and the map making theme is great.

5 – Century: Golem Edition
This one was interesting to put on the list, mainly because Century: Spice Road, exists, and that has the most generic theme of moving cubes around and trading spices, this literally 90% of Euro games right there. All Century: Golem Edition is, is a retheme of that game. So it goes from a very generic theme to a unique theme about golems just by a retheme. In this game you are going out and mining gems and then trading gems around various market places (all by playing cards from your hand), in order to get certain combinations of gems to be able to power up golems and get points. The game is really simple and slick to play. It’s like Splendor in some ways but a step up in complexity. You are doing one of a few things on your turn, you can play a card to get or swap gems, you can get more cards for your hand, you can take all your played cards back into your hand, or you can get a golem. The game ends when someone has 5 golems, and everyone adds up their points, and most points wins. The art and the gems just make this pop on hte table though.

4 – Homebrewers
There are a few games out there about brewing, but it’s a very small number, so I picked the one that I have had a lot of fun with. Homebrewers is all about brewing your best beer so when it comes to Summerfest and Oktoberfest, you are ready to wow the judges and take home the gold, and get the most points. To do this, you’re rolling dice to take actions. What really makes this game so much fun to play, though is brewing the beer. You could brew a generic beer and it wouldn’t do that much for you, but you can add in flavors to make your beer better and that might give you more points, more money, or even help help improve the quality of another beer with the techniques that you’ve learned. But, as a player, would you really want to drink a nutmeg and cherry IPA? So it’s always fun to see what weird beer you can make. This game is also a lot of fun because it’s a good engine building game, but it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.

3 – Sagrada
Stained glass windows, seems like there wouldn’t be many games out there on this, and there aren’t, but there is another. Sagrada is my preferred one, though as it just pops on the table and offers a good puzzle as you try and draft the right dice in order to be able complete your stained glass window. Each round someone draws two times the number of players, plus one, dice and rolls them, then going around, you draft dice and put them into your window. However, there are rules as to how they can be placed, you can’t have the same number orthogonally adjacent to the same number (up down, left right) nor can you do that with color. Beyond that, there are certain spots where you have to put a color or a number, so you have to think about that as well. Sagrada looks amazing on the table and is actually really easy to teach and play. I’ve had great success with this game with all sorts of groups of people.

2 – Hanamikoji
Hanamikoji was one of the first games I thought of when doing this list. Mainly, there aren’t many games that would dare handle a theme such as Geisha. But Hanamikoji does, and even though this a very abstract game, it handles it well. Hanamikoji is all about the winning the favor of various Geisha by giving them gifts. To do that, you and your opponent each have a had of cards and have four actions per round you can take. You can either save a hidden card for winning favor at the end, you can discard two cards that won’t be used to win favor, you give your opponent the choice of three cards, and they pick one to place on their side for winning favor and you play the other two, or you create two sets of two cards and your opponent picks one of those for their side to win favor and you get the other. This game really is all about making your opponent make tough decisions for you so that you are able to manipulate the cards you can see to win the favor of the Geisha. You either want to win the favor of 11 points worth of Geisha or of four Geisha. The game is really fast, very thinking, and it forces a lot of tough decisions. I’d highly recommend this game as a two player game.

1 – Icecool
Penguin High School, I dare anyone to find a game that has that theme on it, besides Icecool 2. In this game you are flicking around student penguins who are skipping class in order to get fish to eat. Each round, someone is also the hall monitor. If the hall monitor catches, runs into, a student who is skipping class, that student has to give the hall monitor their hall pass, which gives the hall monitor points. But for each fish that the student gets they get a point as well. A round ends when either the hall monitor has caught all the students or a student has gotten their three fish. Then after every person has been the hall monitor once you count up your points, most points wins. It’s fun though because of the silly theme, but also because you’re flicking around little penguins, and not only that, you can jump them over walls if you flick them right, or spin them and ricochet through multiple doors, if you line it up right, there are just lots of fun things you can do.

So, this list dug further into my top 100 than most. I like a lot of games that have a fantasy or sci-fi theme, but even games like Lost Expedition which is about exploring or Point Salad which is about food, those are themes that are done pretty often. I think with that I did a solid job of finding games that have out there themes. If you’re not a big sci-fi or fantasy fan, these games might tick that theme box for you. What are some interesting, unique, themes that you’ve found? Are there any from the list that you want to try?

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