If it’s not obvious, I clearly love campaign games. I have a lot more on my shelf from Pandemic Legacy Season 0 to Midarra: Unintentional Mallum Act 1, to Destinies, all that need to get played. Plus there are more on the way including a massive game, Frosthaven, the follow-up to Gloomhaven. Yet, compared to a lot of gamers, I’ve played a lot of campaign games. So how do I get a consistent group together?

Talk About Campaign Games

Talk with people about playing a campaign game. It sounds obvious, but I think a lot of gamers forget to do this. I forget to do this with people who might be interested in a campaign game. I own many other games that aren’t campaign games, so I sit down and play those with a lot of people. People who might want to play a legacy game or a campaign game, but I don’t mention it.

Now, it does come with a balance. I have one friend who I could play a campaign game with, but I don’t. Why, because while we had fun playing Sword & Sorcery, I realized I wasn’t playing my other games as much. So now I game with him every other week, and it’s just pulling games that maybe don’t get play that much off the shelf. Heavier games that are a one off, or teaching him new games that I’ve gotten. So it is a balance, but if you don’t mention campaign games, people won’t know it’s an option.

Define a Schedule

This one is tricky, especially as you get older. When I was in college I probably could have gotten stuff together easier. Or played campaign games more often. If I’d played Dungeons and Dragons then, I probably would have played for an eight hour session every week, or maybe every two. Now my schedule doesn’t permit that. The same is true for the people I game with. We have work, other activities, and kids in some cases. All of those things eat into gaming time.

On the flip side, we now need to get it scheduled more than before which means that we play more consistently. When younger, it is easy to go months if you aren’t thinking about it. You play for hours, but when you stop, you might not play for a long time again. Because I need it on the calendar to know I can play, that means we have a consistent schedule.

For both campaign board games and Dungeons and Dragons, I play every other week. The Gloomhaven/Tainted Grail group meets every other Tuesday. Dungeons and Dragons is every other Thursday. I keep, or try to, them on opposite weeks. That means that the one player who overlaps doesn’t have two evenings in one week are taken up and the same for me.

It is important to define it also so people know the commitment level. A full Saturday once a month might be what you need, or even weekly. Figure out what works for you and your players.

Be Flexible

This goes against what I said, or might seem like it, but I don’t think it does. Flexibility is scheduling is important. There are different reasons that people cancel and flexibility is important for that. I’ve had my Dungeons and Dragons game shift by a week multiple times, and that is fine. We know the schedule, every other Thursday, and try and make that work, but adjust when need be.

Now, there are more valid reasons for being flexible sometimes. If someone keeps on missing because they just don’t feel like it that day and that causes you to cancel, that isn’t being flexible. That’s them not being interested and they can be dropped from the group. Likely, campaign games weren’t for them. But lie things, working overtime, a kid who is under the weather, car troubles, those sorts of things need to allow flexibility.

Know Your Campaign Players

Finally, know who your campaign players are. I talked about before how I have one person I game with regularly not with campaign games. He’s played them with me before, but doesn’t always love a long campaign. He dropped out of Dungeons and Dragons recently because it’s too long for his focus and style, which is fair. Dungeons and Dragons is a massive commitment. I’d play a shorter campaign board game with him, and have with Sword & Sorcery, but I know he isn’t my big campaign game player.

On the flip side, I’ve played Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon and Gloomhaven with the same two people. And that’s taken us years to get through, I think coming up in February will be four years of us playing games. Gloomhaven took up most of that time, but Tainted Grail will as we wait for Frosthaven. I know I can campaign game with them.

I also had a group I played Pandemic Legacy games with, but I don’t think I’d campaign game with them anymore. They were always hard to pin down in terms of scheduling. And lately, they’ve been even harder. One of them was part of the Charterstone group and even with just one, they were still hard to nail down for that. So I moved away from playing campaign games with them. Knowing who will be consistent enough is important.

Are They Worth the Effort?

Clearly for me they are worth the effort. Campaign games give great experiences at the gaming table. They are completely different than playing a one off game because the story emerges around you most of the time. There are twists and turns that simple cannot exist in a regular game.

That isn’t to dismiss other games. Normal single session games still give very good and I still play them a lot. There is just something about a campaign game and a shared experience that is different. This can be a legacy style campaign game or just a campaign game, either are very good. And you get to know that feel of the group you are playing with. You know all your styles and really develop how you play a campaign game.

Have you gotten through a campaign game or are they on your radar? Have you found a good group to play with?

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This, however leads to a problem. There are a ton of games on Kickstarter, in fact they make Kickstarter millions of dollars. And now Gamefound is in the mix and that is where all the Awaken Realms games are and they are getting a lot of other really big games. So how do you decide what to back.

Only So Much Budget

I did a series of articles on Kickstarter 101. You can find the first one there and then I went into more details about what I look for. I generally follow my guide when it comes to backing games or talking about them in my Back of Brick Series. But one thing I don’t talk about is budget, or at least I don’t talk about it much.

Right now that is my biggest issue in getting board games, which is a good thing in a lot of ways. If I didn’t have a budget I would just have my game room stacked up with even more board games and no where to actually play them. Plus, there is only so much time to play board games in my life right now. I’d love to play more, but I’m generally playing once a week with people and once a week while streaming.

But That Means Hard Choices

As the header says, that means that I have to make hard choices as to what I back. Early in the year I tend to be a bit more free. By that I mean, if it looks really cool, I’ll back it and not think about it. But now, in the middle of the year, my budget is drying up, and we are getting a lot of cool games on the different crowdfunding platforms.

Just what I know is coming up, there is Lords of Ragnarok from Awaken Realms, Divinus from Lucky Duck Games, Slay the Spire from Contention Games, and those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Plus there is Middara acts 2 & 3. There is a Dune game based off of the Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game system, not Kickstarter from what I know. Plus I could still late back Deliverance or Witcher: Old World, and I’m actively backing Valor & Villainy, the cooperative legacy version that is out there now.

So how do I go about picking? Do I keep backing Valor and Villainy because it’s a known game? Do I save for other things that are coming in later? How much do I care about the CMON Masters of the Universe Game?

So How Do I Pick?

Compare to the Collection

Firstly, I think it’s important to look at the games in a vacuum. Well, kind of a vacuum. I don’t want to look at everything I know is coming to Kickstarter or Gamefound. It’s hard to compare games that are active to games that are coming. If a game is active and it looks amazing except for one little thing, I won’t be able to accurately compare it to the ones that have almost no information on Kickstarter or little on Gamefound.

Instead, I should look at it compared to what I have in my collection. So with Valor and Villainy, it’s a campaign and a legacy game. I have two unplayed Legacy games, well, 3 actually with Pandemic Legacy Season 0 that I just remembered. And I probably have 6-10 unplayed campaign games counting what is currently backed on Kickstarter. So do I need more games of that type? But also, does this one look better than the games of that type I own?

Who Would I Play It With

Is this a game for a small group? My campaign group? The board game club group? The game night group? Me? Or is it a game for a group that doesn’t exist yet?

If it’s the latter, do I want to put the effort into finding a group or a person to play it with. Let’s look at some things I’ve backed, Project L and Tiny Tubro Cars are for the small group and game night group. Primal is for small group, board game club group, and campaign group. Aeon’s End Legacy might just be for me. But does a game fit into any of the groups. If not, I have to put in the effort to get it played, and will I do that?

Retails vs Crowdfunding

Another thing I consider is, can I get it later. A crowdfunded game is a little bit of a risk. I’ve gotten a few when they came in they weren’t as good as I had hoped. Lost Woods was a simple game that wasn’t what I was hoping. Bring Your Own Book is a cool idea but doesn’t work as well as it sounds. Now the only way to get Lost Woods was via Kickstarter, but Bring Your Own Book went to retail. So I could have waited, gotten an uglier copy that was the same thing, or waited for reviews.

But there’s more to that, I could have gotten Marvel United at retail, but I’m glad I didn’t. So it’s the flip of Bring Your Own Book. With Marvel United I got way more characters because I backed it on Kickstarter. And basically none of the expansions are going to retail, so I’d have missed out on all of that content. So, is the value there to take the risk on the game on the crowdfunding platform?

So What’s Coming Up?

Out of everything I talked about coming up, I am confident that I’ll back Lords of Ragnarok. I like Lords of Hellas a lot and Norse mythology. Slay the Spire is also likely because I love that video game. CMON’s Master’s of the Universe game, probably not, it’s not a theme that I love as much, though the minis look amazing. Divinus, probably, though Lucky Duck Games also do come to retail.

How do you balance what you back or don’t? Do you just ignore Kickstarter or Gamefound? Or do you do less retail because you get most of your games are coming in via Kickstarter?

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Ticket to Ride

Ticket to Ride is probably the most popular Modern Classic board game right now. I think that Catan, or Settlers of Catan, has fallen out of favor where as Ticket to Ride is generally better liked. Ticket to Ride is a route building game and a set collection game. Now, the game that I’m picking isn’t so much of a route building game, but it does have those goals that the players are looking to complete. And you are collecting things, but not cards, marbles. This game isn’t much more complex than Ticket to Ride, but Potion Explosion adds in a level of toy factor to the game. You are pulling marbles out of the tray trying to get like colors to hit so you can get those marbles as well so that you can complete potions. That level is basically the same level as Ticket to Ride, it adds in complexity by giving each potion a power you can use as well, so you decide when you need to get that triggered.

Potion Explosion

Catan

Catan is a game that is known for rolling dice, getting resources, spending resources building more things and repeating the process. You can block people from going places, you can trade things, and while the trading is important to how I play the game, it isn’t for everyone. So when I looked to pick a game, I picked a legacy game, actually, that can still be played after it’s done, and I went with Charterstone. Charterstone is a worker placement game where you get resources which you spend to build more spots to go. It has a similar feel to me as you build out through the legacy campaign. The fact it adds more slowly as well, seems like it’d be a good way to build from a pretty simple game to a game with a lot more going on in it.

Charterstone

Carcassone

Carcassone is one of those games that surprises people when they see it. If they just know classic board games, the idea of building the board as you go is so cool. And that’s the area that I really focused on. I could focus on the meeples and how you play them to get points and get them back. If you love that part but want more, see Charterstone above. But I went with Galaxy Trucker. This game has a real time element to it where you grab tiles and fit them together to make your ship. Then it flies along and you hope to get the most and best cargo and not have your ship be blown apart. It’s a very different theme, but if people love the tile placement, this game has it, just faster. Though, I should be clear, there isn’t a hard time limit for parts of the real time aspect, and the tile placement part is the main part of the game.

Galaxy Trucker

King of Tokyo

This one will probably be obvious to most people who read my articles what game I am going to pick. In King of Tokyo you roll dice to try and get points and energy to get cards, but mainly, you roll dice to hit everyone else trying to knock them out. A game that takes that combat and that dice rolling is Dice Throne. This removes that middle board and makes it so anyone can hit anyone whenever they want. I’d say it’s primarily a two player game, but it does work well with King of the Hill play for three players and keeps people from ganging up on one player. The dice chucking is great, and the unique characters are amazing. I always want the monsters in King of Tokyo to be more unique.

Dice Throne

Small World

A lot of the board games have been a small step up, for Small World, I am going with a bigger step up. Small World is an area control game that I say makes a great replacement for Risk. It’s Risk, but it’s fun and way faster. The game that I’d use as a next step up from it is my second favorite game of all time, Blood Rage. Blood Rage has more than just fighting and area control, there are missions you can do, you draft cards, and you upgrade your clan. I really like the game, and while there are a lot of moving pieces with it, the game just works really well. And if someone wants, they can really lean into combat for getting their points and win, just don’t let someone get all the Loki cards.

Blood Rage

Dominion

Dominion, this is a game that I can get why people like it, but I really don’t. Most of the time, if you have a good player who knows the combos, they will win. That’s no fun to know that you’ll lose before the game starts. You could just explain the combos and whoever has the best one wins without playing the game. Instead, I prefer my deck building games to have a variable market. And the game that I picked to be the next step has that. Clank! In! Space! is a deck building game with more. There is a push your luck element as you try and get as far into the ship as you can to grab the best treasure you can. But the deck building is the big part of the game. The market works great, and the game doesn’t have amazing artwork, just like Dominion, but it has a much more fun theme.

Clank! In! Space!

Pandemic

This is my copout one, what do you play if you like Pandemic but are done with the base game. Pandemic Legacy Season 1, then Season 2, then Season 0. You have three versions of Pandemic to continue with. Season 1 is similar to the base game but then adds more and more. Season 2 is a major twist on how everything works but still feels like Pandemic somehow. And Season 0, I have yet to play that one, but I’ve heard amazing things about it. Pandemic is a good game and a good system, so dive into the more complex version with Pandemic Legacy.

Pandemic Legacy

Five Tribes

Five Tribe is what is known as a point salad style game. You do something, you get points for it. It might be now, it might be at the end of the game, but it’ll give you points somehow. There are plenty of Euro games that do that, but I don’t want to dump someone into a big Euro after they have played Five Tribes. Five Tribes doesn’t feel that euro to me, it’s more puzzly. So I went with Dice Forge for the next game to play. In Dice Forge you are upgrading your dice by changing out sides. It has that cool toy element to it, you are buying cards to get powers and get points. And the big thing is, you are always getting something. You roll the dice for your resources, you roll your dice on your turn and your opponents. And you are always getting resources to spend on your turn, so no turn ever feels wasted, just like in Five Tribes.

Dice Forge

Splendor

Splendor is an interesting one, it really is an abstract game as it’s heart of collecting gems to get more gems to spend those gems to get more gems. And as you go, it gets easier to get more gems as you build out your tableau. The game I went with doesn’t have a tableau, but it does have you getting gems. In Century Golem Edition you are getting cards in your hand to convert your gems into more gems and better gems, but also the right combo of gems to get golems. On your turn you either play a card from your hand, get a card to add to your hand, spend gems to get a golem, or pick up the card you’ve played. It’s a very simple and fast game, but there is more of a puzzle to figure out than Splendor has to get your engine going.

Century Golem Edition

Cards Against Humanity/Apples to Apples

No shocker to the game that I’ll pick here. There are a ton of games that I could say fit into that Cards Against Humanity and Apples to Apples category. The game where you play down cards and someone picks the best. Well, the issue is that once you’ve seen the jokes, you’ve seen them. So how do you get around that? Cards Against Humanity tries to add in a million expansions. My pick, Stipulations, makes your write down your answer. I also like Stipulations because it is flexible for your group. If you want to make it dirty you can. If you want it to be clean, it can be. Plus the categories such as super power are a lot of fun. It’s trickier because it requires creativity of the players. But because it requires that, it makes it much more replayable.

Stipulations

Which of these board games if your favorite modern classic? Are there any that you want to try, or that you want to try the next step up from? What games do you recommend to people who want that next game after Ticket to Ride or Catan?

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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

N, O, and P’s

Not Alone

I am always looking for big group games that aren’t just light party games. And Not Alone definitely hits that where it has a one versus all. And I really like the one versus all aspect to it. I have a lot of fun playing both on the monster side and the crew member side. I think that I prefer to play as the monster as I keeping track of what everyone is playing down is a lot of fun and offers an interesting challenge. I also like that as the crew, though, you can talk amongst yourself, but the monster player always has to be able to hear it. So you can plan, and planning isn’t bad, but it lets the monsters know some of what is going on.

Status: Played

Onirim

Onirim is my go to solo game for one simple reason. It’s really small and doesn’t take up much table space. It was also the first game that I played solo, if I remember correctly. I’m not counting when I was a kid and I’d take stuffed animals through a game (can you tell I like board games). This game’s puzzle is really interesting, and I like the odd artwork that it has. If someone is looking for a solo game to try, this would be what I recommend first.

Status: Played

Pandemic

This is just base Pandemic, not the Legacy versions, which will be coming up next. Pandemic is a great game. It’s a gateway game that tells a story each time you play it, and while there is certainly a fair amount of mechanics too it, it is still an experience. I like in a cooperative game how you don’t have enough time to do everything. That’s really important because it keeps the tension for the game high and the replayability high because there is always more to do.

Status: Played

Pandemic Legacy (Seasons 1, 2, and 0)

I love Pandemic Legacy in each version that I’ve played. In fact I’ve played Season 1 twice and had a blast with it the second time that I played it as much as the first, and that was playing it solo. Pandemic Legacy games, while you can’t play them again once they are done, are just such amazing gaming experiences. They add in story to the game of Pandemic, and definitely have an evolving ruleset that you need to remember. If I could go back and play it again for the first time, I would because the twists and turns, while not that shocking always, are really good. And I’m excited to go and play Pandemic Legacy Season 0 sometime soon.

Pandemic Legacy Season 1 and 2: Played
Pandemic Legacy Season 0: To Be Played

Papillon

The second butterfly game on the list, this one also has you building a garden and amazing looking 3D flowers. This is an area control/area influence game, a drafting game, and just has a great table presence. I had a lot of fun punching out everything and putting it together. I picked this one up because when I can get it played, it’ll sell itself with the 3D flowers and with the butterflies that are on clothespins.

Status: To Be Played

Parade

A small game, this one is a great filler that has some strategy to it. In it, with it’s pasted on Alice in Wonderland theme, you are trying to get the fewest points possible. But you are taking cards that are lower number or the same color as the one that you play down, but only so far along the path. It’s an interesting puzzle that has a mechanic that I really like. If you end with the most of a color, those cards are worth 1 point each, instead of face value. So you can shoot the moon a bit in a color, as long as you don’t get too many and end up with a low score. So it adds in good strategy to what is a small game.

Status: Played

Patchwork Doodle

I love roll and write games (or flip and write) and this one is an interesting game about making a quilt. What is really interesting is that you score points based off of the largest solid square you’ve made in your quilt. So compared to some polyomino style flip and writes, this one has you really wanting to keep things tightly packed together. And you are moving around placing the different shapes to build your quilt in less of a flip and write way and more of a rondel, which is unique as well.

Status: To Be Played

Phase 10

A mass market game hits the list again. Phase 10 is a game that kind of has that got me into the hobby and one that I grew up playing. I know this game has issues, mainly that someone could get stuck on Phase 1 for 10 rounds, and lose the game just like that. Now, that’s almost impossible, but it could happen, and that’s no fun. The game that I don’t own, Five Crowns, does something similar to Phase 10 but fixes that problem. I still have it in my collection though because it’s a classic and it’s easy to pull out and teach.

Status: Played

Photosynthesis

This is an abstract tree growing game that I need to play more of. I love the way it looks on the table, you have 3D trees, and I like the that the sun rotates around the board. What drew me to the game, besides the look, is that rotating sun and the fact your trees cast shadows. So you get less points to use if your tree is being blocked from the sun by another tree that’s taller or the same height possibly. This means sometimes you end up with great turns, but if things go poorly, or I place a tree just right, you might get no points to spend on actions. It’s a mean game if you want it to be, but that’s a lot of the fun.

Status: Played

Point Salad

A point salad game is any game where you have a million different ways to score points. If you put a piece down in spot X, you get 10 points. This takes the concept and makes it into a little filler card game. On your turn you draft either a scoring card or two vegetable cards. The point card might say that you get five points per pair of tomatoes that you have. So you’ll draft a lot of tomatoes. But if another tomato scoring card comes up, I can take that, or I can draft a vegetable from that row, causing it to flip over. The game is clever, it scales well, and you do score a ton of points, especially possible at higher player counts.

Status: Played

So three letter there, but not a ton for each of them. You might be surprised that I didn’t add Q in as well. But that’ll wait for another day. What’s your favorite game starting with the letters N, O, or P? What game do I need in my collection starting with those letters?

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I got a few good ideas that I hadn’t thought of, and I came up with a few of my own, so for those who maybe have missed the bigger gaming via Zoom or are tired of just playing games like Scattergories, Codenames, or other more party style games via Zoom, here are some ideas that I was given and were given to me.

Charterstone

Now, this is a game that I was recommended and there is only one way to make this work and that’s playing it through the app. Everyone can connect to the same game and you just sit down and play it all together remotely on your device while chatting via Zoom. This is actually a really good one for a lot of people because all it requires is that you have a camera pointed at a board on a table or anything like that, this is done purely with digital gaming. Now, I have played through all but 1 game of this in the physical form, and one of the other people who I play with has played through it all, so it wasn’t the game for us, but for a lot of people, this is going to be a really good option.

Gloomhaven

Now, Gloomhaven can work two ways, if you are playing it with people near you, you can drop off their character and show the game on the board so that people can play with their own physical thing, one person will just have the duty of moving everything and doing all of that house keeping, which could be a lot. Though, with the Gloomhaven Helper App, someone else could be in charge of monster initiative and what the monsters are doing, so not the worst option and personally, I like playing with the physical components better than option two which is play it through the mod on Tabletop Simulator. Now, the base game is scripted, which means it helps with set-up, but there is still a lot of book keeping and if it seemed like a lot on the physical version, it is slower on the Tabletop Simulator version. This, obviously, also wasn’t an option for my group because that’s the game we’re literally finishing.

Pandemic Legacy Season 0, 1, and 2

Now, this one shows up and from here on out, you’re going to need a camera on the table. But Pandemic is a great game because there is no hidden information in the game. You play with the location cards out in front of you, so you can plan and worth together, your character is also open information as to what they can do. The only thing someone might need is a sheet of what the actions are that they can take, and that’s something that the person who owns the game can write up and add to as more actions are unlocked. Like Gloomhaven and basically anything that requires a camera pointed a the table, one person is going to have to do all the book keeping, but with Pandemic, that isn’t too hard, fairly often when playing Pandemic Legacy Season 1 & 2 with four players one person would be moving more of the pawns anyways just because of how it was positioned on the table. This again, though, for my group, falls into the category of games that won’t work as well because two of us have played them before, and I’ve played Season 1 twice now. And while none of us have played Season 0, that is one that I want to play with the people we played Seasons 1 & 2 with.

Folklore: The Affliction

This is one that I had recommend and I hadn’t thought of, but it’s actually one that wouldn’t be too difficult to do. Folklore is an RPG type of game in a box. You roll dice for your attacks, have a character sheet, and go through stories and scenarios. What I hadn’t thought about was the fact that beyond needing your own set of dice, which everyone in my gaming group has because they are all RPGer’s and of course they have at least one set of dice, I think one only one who doesn’t have at least five sets of dice is playing in my D&D campaign, and he probably has two sets of dice. But this one all you need is a camera pointed at a board, and sure, there are items and stats and things to track, but that’s like a regular RPG, so that can be done between sessions via e-mail or text messages without much trouble as players level up their characters. And, again, technically there is no or very little hidden information so that isn’t an issue with the game. Definitely one for people who want more of a pen and paper RPG feel. Might be one for my group.

Yggdrasil Chronicles

Now, I own this game, and I am excited to play it, I just don’t know a ton about it. But according to one person in our group who has the game as well, this is one where there is no hidden information in it, the god cards and their powers are out there. This is game that I hope would work well, my concern about this one is that because it has a 3D tree element you would need to know fairly well what is on all sides of the tree as things rotate and it changes. That for me would be the biggest challenge, granted, it wouldn’t be an issue for me because I have the tree in front of me, so I could see all sides at once, but for other people it might be a bigger deal if they get distracted or lose track of what is on what side and what is rotating which way. This one definitely interests me, but I’d want to play it in person a couple of times first so that everyone knew what was going on, it seems less intuitive than some others.

Tainted Grail

Now, I’m sure there are more but this is the last one that I’m going to talk about. In Tainted Grail you are exploring a large, about 50 hour, campaign as you explore through the lands of Avalon, journey to Kamelot, and keep Menhir lit to fight back the wyrdness that threatens to overtake the land. This is one that I’m definitely interested in trying, it’s already in my Top 10 games, and I’ve made it part of the way through, but to restart with more players seems like a lot of fun, though challenging in some other ways. This game would work if you could get the players their characters. They’d need both their character, the basic cards for their character and class and the upgrade cards as well. Items could be sent via text or e-mail between sessions. This is really such an exploration game, I think it would work well, the person who owns the game would just be reading the passages, which I actually like not the person who is doing the action reading the passages because it feels like there is more mystery in the choices. This is one that is definitely in consideration for our group as well, it’s one that I am enjoying already and I’m confident that our group would enjoy as well.

Now, I’m sure there are many a campaign game that I missed. Some of them, like Arkham Horror: The Card Game, could work as well, but people would probably need their own set of the base game to make it work. Forgotten Waters is another one that can work well, which I failed to mention, but see on my shelf, and because of when it got released, around May this year, I know they have focused on supporting it in a way that it can be played with more people. I’m hesitant to use that for my group, because I know my wife is interested in it, so I want to leave that free to play with her as well. Which would you try? Have you considered doing a bigger campaign game via Zoom, besides something like D&D?

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Now, this is my top 100 games, not the 100 objectively best games, these are my 100 favorite games. To get this list, I go through all the games that I’ve ranked on BGG, minus a few, which I’ll get to in a second, and then using PubMeeple.com’s ranking engine, I go through and do the one versus one comparisons on the games until they are all sorted. This gives you a one to one comparison between the games and in my case was something around 1000 different comparisons. I could have done only my top ranked games, but this gives a chance for a game that I maybe haven’t rerated recently to show up on the list, even if I’ve rated it lower. So, I said this was minus a few games, and I don’t mean ones like Monopoly or Cards Against Humanity that I don’t like, those I actually rated, I’m talking about actually things like ICECOOL 2, Dice Throne Season 2, or Star Wars Destiny Two Player, because I have ICECOOL, Dice Throne Season One, and Destiny that I counted for those.

Next, when I do these lists, if the game sounds interesting to you, I want to give you a chance to pick it up. I always, and especially this year, recommend you order from your FLGS, but some of you might not have a local game store, some of them might be closed due to Covid, some local game stores aren’t friendly, and I fully recognize that sometimes you need a game, funds are tight, and online is cheaper, so don’t feel like you can use your local store, I hope you do pick them up online, more games to play, more fun options to introduce people to, no matter where they come from is great. I’m going to be linking to either CoolStuffInc or Amazon for where you can pick up the games immediately if you want.

Finally, this is obviously just my opinion. There are some games that you’ll hate that I love, almost guaranteed for some of you in my Top 10 even, and there will be some games that you love that won’t make my list, they were obviously my number 101 (all of them). And if it was on the list last year, I’m going to try and put down the number it was at before, just to see which ones move up and which ones move down and what new games have hit the list.

But, without further ado, here’s my list starting with 100 through 91.

100. Lazer Ryderz

Lazer Ryderz is a game of goofy fun as it’s basically light bikes like you see in Tron and you are racing them around, leaving your path behind you hoping someone else will run into it, and trying to get goals. You basically have to go off of feel because you decide where you start at the edge of the table with your eyes closes, when laying down your track route, once you pick up a piece and put it over the top of the table, you’re committing to it. And it’s all in 80’s neon glory looking like a big four pack of VHS. So it has that goofy feel to go with what’s a very goofy game. Good one for when you want something pretty fast and very casual to play.

Last Year: 100

99. Ra

This game is interesting as it’s bidding, it’s set collection and it’s push your luck. I like the bidding mechanic in it a lot as you bid you put that number into the middle if you win the bid and take the number that was there, so it’s possible late in a round to hold onto a low number in order to be able to grab a high number from the middle and change your fate for a future round. There’s also some interesting push your luck because when you’re the last person who can bid, you can always draw more and more tiles, but if you get the wrong tiles you’ll bust. The game maybe plays a touch long for me for what it does, but I like the strategy in it, and I like the bidding in it.

Last Year: Not Ranked

98. Shadowrun: Crossfire

We’ll see a game very similar to this coming up, but this is one that I wish I had in my collection, but I want to find used. I like it for the theme a lot. I enjoy the cyberpunk setting that it’s in, and the idea of going on these runs, missions, to take down the evil corporations. It’s something that is very interesting. Plus it’s deck building, so you can specialize, but that might not always be the best because you don’t know who you’ll have to face off against next and that might not work with your skill set. But other people can help you some as well, which makes it interesting to see how that works. And it’s scenario building as well which is fun as well.

Last Year: 91

97. Legends of Andor

This is a dungeon crawl, kind of, really Legends of Andor is more of a scenario based puzzle as you try and rush to get everything done before the time runs out. And you can kill monsters, but that advances the timer, so you need to understand that is happening and figure out how to balance out killing monsters while trying to complete the mission while trying not to let the story advance too quickly so that you run out of time to complete it. The game does one thing I really like and that’s having both the male and female version of the heroes so people don’t feel like they are locked in playing a certain character because of the sex of that character. I think the one thing that might confuse people about this game is that it looks like it should be a big fight the monsters adventure, but really it’s a very tightly made puzzle where every decision really matters.

Last Year: 86

96. The Lord of the Rings: Journey to Mordor

So, first off, no link for this, it’s out of print from what I can tell and I couldn’t find it even on Amazon which is saying something. This is a little push your luck roll and write game where you are trying to get the ring to Mount Doom and by the first to throw it in. Thematically it doesn’t make sense because you can’t have one ring to rule them all and then four different groups each having the one ring, but as a roll and write, it was pretty solid fun. There are definitely others that I like better but this one was a good time and it plays fast. There is some take that to it which can be a negative thing, but it didn’t seem like there was too much and the game didn’t overstay it’s welcome to make the take that a big deal.

Last Year: Not Ranked

95. Takenoko

This game is a really cute game. Takenoko has adorable little panda figure, and you are stacking up different colors of bamboo. There’s really just a lot of fun stuff in this game. You are growing the bamboo, moving the panda and having him eat it, putting out and irrigating more tiles to grow even more bamboo all to complete different scoring base off of bamboo growth, title placement, or what the panda has eaten and you’re seeing how many you can get done before all the turns run out. This is a game that has an amazing table presence with the bamboo growing up and the panda and gardener figures, and it’s a very enjoyable game to boot without being too complex.

Last Year: 97

94. Dragonfire

So this is the game that is based off of the game system as Shadowrun: Crossfire. Whereas Shadowrun is a future cyberpunk setting, Dragonfire is classic Dungeons and Dragons setting where you are taking on monsters, fighting through scenarios, leveling up your characters and doing it all over again. I think that this game has worked out some of the kinks from the original and it has definitely gotten more support with a lot of scenario packs having come out for it. This just allows you to build into more and more game play and pick the scenarios that look interesting to you. Plus, deck building is always a plus in a game for me.

Last Year: 93

93. Yahtzee

Second roll and write on the list, and this is the original roll and write. I still enjoy Yahtzee today because everyone understands how it works and the rules are simple. In fact we’ll see other games on the list that use a similar mechanic to Yahtzee. But what I like is that I kind of have it down, now that doesn’t mean that I roll a Yahtzee always, but it means that I can look and see what I might want to be doing, what I’ll want to keep, what the odds are of me getting what I need, when it’s worth it to push for a large straight, when it isn’t and so on. Plus, I can play it with my parents and it isn’t as much of a game that plays itself like a lot of the more classic games that we’d play such as Uno or Skip-Bo, which are number 101 in case you were wondering.

Last Year: Not Ranked

92. Pandemic

Last year this was a fair amount higher on my list, but it’s dropped some just because of having played Legacy Season 1 twice and Season 2 once, and Season 0 is coming out soon-ish. Base Pandemic is still a good game, it just feels like the introductory cooperative game that it is. It’s easy to teach, it’s easy to play, but it can be fairly hard to win, depending on how things come up. The game is a classic game for a reason and it is one that I won’t turn down playing, though, I’m not sure it’s one I’d immediately pull off the shelf myself when it comes to introductory games at this point. I think that it really highlights, beyond being a cooperative game, is how every players part of the game can be different with the variable player powers, and I think for new players that is something that is cool and uinique.

Last Year: 50

91. Tsuro

This one also slipped for me because in some ways I’ve played it too much now. I think that this is a fun group game, and I think it’s one of a few games that plays fast and plays a large number but it isn’t just another party game. In this you are trying to be the last person on the board but you must follow the path that you lay out in front of you. And you have to be concerned about the other players as well. If you get to close, you could have to follow a path that someone else lays down, and that might run you off the board, in which case you’re out of the game, or it might hit another players pawn, in which case both of you are knocked out. So there’s some strategic avoidance but you also don’t want to stick yourself in a corner with no way out. It’s a fun game, just one that I’ve played a lot.

Last Year: 61

So we have a few movers in this section with three previously not in the Top 100 games, and two dropping a ways. Oddly enough, the very first game on the list, Number 100 was Number 100 the year before, good job Lazer Ryderz in being consistent.

Looking at this list, are there any of the games that stand out to you as ones that you want to play? If you’ve played any of the games, which is your favorite on this section of the list? Let me know in the comments on on Twitter.

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