Top 100 Games – 100 – 91

100 – Silver

Silver I believe has been on the list every year that I’ve made it. Last year it was on the list at #84 and now it is barely hanging out with #100. A lot of that is that I just haven’t played it recently. If I were to play it more, it might move back up.

But in Silver you are trying to get the fewest points possible in your village. The trick is that you have five cards, all face down, to make your village and you don’t know what they are. You look at two to start the game and then after that, you play down cards that allow you to look at and swap out your cards, or your opponents. Until someone calls for a vote and you see who is lowest. But that can only be done if you’ve got fewer than your five cards, which you can do if trade in two cards of the same number on a turn.

Overall a solid fun time. It’s one of the more take that sort of games on the list. You can put high number cards into your opponents village or steal cards from them. But it’s fast and offers a ton of variety, so I appreciate it a lot for that.

Buy on Miniature Market

99 – Merchants Cove

This one was much higher last year at #79. I played a lot of new games this past year, which is why we’re seeing some drop. Merchants Cove also suffers a little bit by being a really big game to table for a game I prefer to play with two players.

But the game does a ton of cool things. Each player has a mini game that they are doing, whether it’s a roll and write, spin and move, or playing with marbles. All of these mini games gives the players goods that they can then sell. And you want to sell for as much money as possible as the merchants come into the docks along the cove.

Each mini game is quite light, and how the merchants come in is about the most player interaction, quite indirect that there is in the game. But I found each mini game to be fun, and there is some strategy and puzzle for getting the merchants into the boats you want them in and getting those boats to the dock. Downside is for being light, it takes a while to play.

Buy on Final Frontier Games

98 – Quadropolis

New to the list in 2022, Quadropolis is a city building game from Days of Wonder. It’s not a heavy game but it does a lot of very interesting things. And that’s what really stands out to me about this game and got it to the list. Just how you get your buildings for your town and how you can place them in your town is really interesting.

You have tiles that you place along the edge of the board where you are getting the city buildings. It tells you how far in, the third tile for example, that you need to go and take that tile. So there is interesting strategy there. Plus, because I put down a three, now on my city board, I can only place in a row or column with a three.

Since you score points by where you put buildings, the whole placement puzzle becomes really interesting. What you do on your turn is very simple, pick up a tile and place it onto your board. But there is a good amount of thinking that goes into what tile you pick and how you get to pick it so you can place it where it’s best for you.

Buy on Amazon

97 – Small World

Dropping from #75 last year, Small World is one of the few classic games, or modern classics left on the list. Ticket to Ride, Catan and Carcassonne are all off the list now. But Small World sticks around because of the variability to it. The combos or the races and powers make the game stand out.

This is a game that I describe as Risk, but fun. Small World has you conquering areas to score points over a number of rounds. But the board is so small that conflicts will happen. And when conflicts happen, you might get wiped off the board, nearly. So instead of being out of the game or in a horrible position, you go into decline and get a new race and power combo and come in and wreck everyone.

This is something that’d be a fine game if it wasn’t, though for the races and powers. Those combos really give each game a different feel. You might be flying giants or underworld halflings or wealthy tritons. And different combos each game mean that you’ll never play the exact same game.

Buy on Cool Stuff Inc

96 – Hero Realms

Another new to the list game, Hero Realms is one that I got to play for the first time at Gen Con this past August. Since then, I bought it and I have played it a whole lot more. There is an app for it as well, which is great. Hero Realms is a deck building game and one that pits you head to head against your opponent trying to knock down their life.

Like most deck building games, it works with factions and those factions play off the other cards in their faction. Some factions are better at maintaining your health, others are about getting more purchase power, others are all about combat. So you can really tailor how you build, but you need to build fast.

Hero Realms is not a deck building game that takes a while to build up your purchase power. You can buy powerful cards fast, and when you hit for 10-15 damage a turn after four turns, the game is going to be over fast. So it’s very much a race to build up as fast as you can, and because of that one you can play a few times in a row.

Buy on Amazon

95 – Ascension

Another deck building game, Ascension is my introductory deck builder. It does a lot of things well, gives you fun factions and combos that play off of each other while being fairly basic. Down from #53 last year, that is again because I haven’t played it as much recently. And probably because I played the app a ton for about a year or so, and it’s a solid app.

Ascension does what you expect a deck building game to do. You buy cards, and factions cause combos to happen. But as compared to Hero Realms, you fight monsters not your opponent and that fighting, which isn’t in Dominion, I think makes the game more fun. It’s, unlike Dominion, not about ramping purchase power only. You need to fight, but it’s not only about the fighting. You get points for killing monsters but also for the cards you buy. So it’s a nice blend of scoring.

Buy on Amazon

94 – Ra

Ra is a game that is on the list and then will drop off and come back on. I recently picked it up, so hopefully that’ll mean it gets more play. But it floats around because of how interesting the auction is for the game.

In Ra you are doing set collection, basically, to score points. But how you get those tiles that you collect is through an auction. And the auction is the meat of the game. When you bid on something in the auction, you use a tile with a number, not money. So if I someone has bid a 5 and I only have a 8 to bid higher, if I want it, I bid that 8 and there is no change back. But along with losing that 8 tile I get the number, left over bidding tile, in the middle. And that might take me from a 8 to a 10, or an 8 to 1. And that can determine if you want to bid or not as well.

The game is pretty simple, I feel. But the auction mechanic definitely creates a unique feel to the game. And the auction being the main focus is a lot of fun for the game.

Late Pledge on Gamefound

93 – Similo

Similo also has dropped on the list. Honestly, most will have unless they are new on the list. Similo is a party game that offers a solid cooperative experience. At #61 last year, it has moved down because party games tend to drop over time. The more you play a party game, or at least for some of them, the more they feel the same.

Similo, though, does a solid job of being different. In this game it is cooperative where one person is giving clues to the other players. Those players are trying to eliminate the wrong answers, until it’s down to two and then players pick between those. But the twist on the game is that you might have woodland creatures and use other woodland creatures to say if your creature is similar to dissimilar. And the more rounds players don’t eliminate your choice the more they need to eliminate with the clues. So you start with one and eventually are getting rid of 4 cards out of 6.

What makes it more fun, though, is taking woodland creatures, having them as the choices and then using monsters, or historical figures, or mythological creatures to give the clues. Is a bear more or less like Zeus? Or how do you keep a mummy around with the option of some woodland creatures? The mix and match part adds a lot of variety to the game.

Buy on Cool Stuff Inc

92 – Asking for Trobils

Another one that I got to try and Gen Con and got a solid play in, hence slipping onto the list is Asking for Trobils. Clearly new to the list with trying it this year, but Asking for Trobils is going to be a worker placement game. A genre that doesn’t show up too much on my list.

In Asking for Trobils you fly around space, go to different worker placement locations, build ships, get resources and ultimately are trying to trap Trobils. The Trobils that you are dealing with give you points for scoring at the end of the game.

I really appreciate the goofy nature of the game. But to go along with that, it’s also a fast worker placement game. There aren’t that many spots to place and when you do, there isn’t that much to do with it. Each action is simple and fast and I like that to just make a game a lot of fun.

Buy on GameNerdz

91 – Parade

Finally wrapping out this part of my Top 100, we have Parade. #65 last year, Parade is another one that I should really get played again. I like a lot how it works and how it’s this light but interesting puzzle. It’s one that gives you a bit of brain burn, though.

In Parade you are playing down cards and then based off of the number you played, you can ignore some cards, and take cards of the same color or equal or lower numbers. It’s a lot to think about as you try and get as few cards from the row as possible and as few points as possible. And that is a fun twist as well for shooting for low points.

One twist that I really enjoy in the game is that if you have the most of a color, the most cards not highest total on them, each card is worth one point each. So a 5, 6, 8, and 10 instead of being 29 points is 4 points instead. It’s one that’s been harder to find, but when you can, I definitely recommend grabbing a light card game. If it’s between prints, like it is now, probably wait to grab it until it’s cheaper though.

Buy on Amazon

Upcoming Streams

Well, Wednesday it’s more Stars of Akarios. You can click the notification bell for that one here. And join me for some planetary exploration as we have a pretty new bit of story and world to explore. We’ll see if I make a poor choice or not.

And then next Monday the Top 100 2022 Edition 90 – 81 is going to be streamed on the channel. Again, click that notification bell. And the rest of the videos through the bottom half of the list are up as well. So click on the notification bells for them. Right now the only Monday I’m not sure that I’ll be streaming this is Halloween, but we’ll see, it might be a stream just slightly later in the day.

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Ohanami

Ohanami is probably the easiest game on the list and the most traditional. You are playing cards down in order, but it has a twist on that. In Ohanami you draft two cards from a hand and add them to any of three columns in front of you. The cards must be higher, or lower than the number at the bottom of top of the column. Basically you’re creating three numerical columns.

But the twist comes in, besides drafting being new to some people, in how the scoring works. You draft three hands, each hand you score different things. But the same things. So the first hand you score blue cards, next, blue and green. So even though blue cards are worth only three points, if you can score them all three times, you got nine points. Get a blue card that last round, and you only score three points for it. So there is strategy of what you draft and when you draft it. That’s the general twist, but it’s still a very easy game to play.

Claim

This is a trick taking game for maybe that person who likes trick taking but wants more. While it generally follows the standard trick taking focus of higher card beats lower card and following suits, Claim does a lot of things differently. In particular that you play two hands. The first hand, you are trying to win tricks to win cards for your second hand. You either are trying to win a face up card with a higher value, or lose a trick to get the card off the top of draw pile of the face up card is low. Then you use those cards to win majority in the different suits.

This game has a fantasy theme. That means it might not work as well for everyone. But it also is a theme that allows the game to have powers. If, for example, you win a trick that where you led dwarves, the person with the lower dwarf value takes the cards. You still lead the next trick though. Or a knight will always beat a goblin, if you can short suit yourself.

A lot of trick taking games can take too long when they try and be clever, but Claim does not fall into that trap. The game still plays very fast, and there are multiple sets so you can try a lot of different combinations of suits and powers if you want. This game also would be a great stocking stuffer.

Point Salad

This game has a goofy name, but it is about making a salad, so it makes sense. In Point Salad, you are collecting different vegetables to make a salad that is worth the most points. This is done by drafting two vegetables from a tableau in the middle of the board to add to your own tableau.

Point Salad, again, does something different, though, in how you score at the end of the game. As well as drafting vegetables you also draft cards that will score, for you. So I might draft a card that says per every two onions I have, I get five points. Now, I am going to be drafting as many onions as I can. I might get another scoring card that says, every onion and tomato pair is worth six points, so now if I can get tomatoes, my onions will help me score even more.

While that might sound like there is a lot to keep track of, there really isn’t. Either you pick a scoring card or two vegetable cards. The game works well at all player counts, and it is one that is easy to shuffle up and play a number of times in a sitting, especially in smaller groups.

Parade

This is a game where you don’t want to get cards, but how you get cards is done in a very cool way. You play from a hand of cards to a big line of cards. The number on the card determines how many cards you can ignore. After that you take any card that matches the color of the card you took, or is lower in value.

But you don’t want cards, so you need to plan out your turns to get as little as possible. You score the point value of the cards you have at the end of the game. Unless you have collected more of a color than anyone else. Those cards are worth a point per card instead of face value. So you can push for a lot in one color to try and score as little as possible that way. Lowest score wins.

Not Alone

This one is going to be very different for people who know card games. This is a one versus all game where a spaceship has crashed onto a hostile planet and the planet is trying to kill them. The one person plays the planet and the monsters and things on the planet. The other people are playing the crew members who are trying to survive long enough for a ship to be sent to rescue them.

It’s a really fun game of cat and mouse. And it is just done with cards. The crew can go to different locations, based off of cards that they play. And the person playing the planet/monster can go to one location to try and stop the players from activating the ability at that location and dealing them damage. I like that the players can discuss what they want to do as much as they want, but the person who is the planet needs to be able to hear them.

Honorable Mentions

There are obviously a ton of card games out there. Something like Medium is a good card party game where people are trying to guess the same word between two prompt words. Or Marvel Champions is a card game, it is just a much bigger and more in depth super hero game. Hats is a fun puzzle of a game where you are collection sets of hats and trying to manipulate it so you score lots of points.

And that’s barely scratching the surface. Do you have a go to card game as a gift?

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See the previous parts of the list below:

100 Through 91

90 Through 81

80 through 71

Top 100 Board Games – 70 through 61

70. Point Salad

A game about making a salad, this game has you getting as many points as you can. You do this by drafting either cards to add to your salad or cards to help you score your salad. The game is very easy to teach and play. And it plays differently every time, you don’t always play with all of the cards, so while the number of vegetable cards is the same at player counts, what cards are drafted and what scoring is used can change up. It’s a nice twist on drafting.

Buy on Miniature Market

69. Twice as Clever! (Doppelt So Clever)

The most complicated of the three “Clever” games. This one has you scoring points in a lot of different ways, I won’t go into detail because without context it means nothing. It’s an abstract roll and write game where you try and score the most points. It’s really based off of combos and foxes. As you score more points and fill in things in areas you unlock bonuses to fill in spots in other areas. And the foxes, they score with the number of foxes times your lowest in all areas. It’s a nice way to make you focus on everything.

Buy on Miniature Market

68. Hanabi

This game won the Spiel Das Jahres I believe, and it’s a game that still holds up. You are trying to play down cards in ascending order, but you can’t see your cards. Instead everyone else is giving you clues. But you are also giving them clues, and you have a limited number of clues you can give. The game works because of how you give clues, you can either tell people a color or a number. But you need to point to all the cards of a color or a number when giving the clue.

Buy on Miniature Market

67. Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game

Most social deduction games are little, this one is big. In it you’re trying to get the Galactica to Earth after Cylon attack. But the Cylons, while most are toasters, some look like people. And some of the Cylons might not even know they are Cylon. This game works because it’s a game with the social deduction and hidden traitor aspect to it. Can you read who is the player or players who are suspicious? It’s a long game but an epic experience. I could see this getting replaced, though, by Unfathomable for me.

Not Available

66. Cross Clues

A game with a grid and a cooperative party game. This has you coming up with clues to get people to guess your junction on the grid. Clues can only be one word and need to tie together two words on the axis. So if it goes ABCD on the top and 1234 on the side, you might have A3 which gives you the words Kite and Cat. What one would would you give to get people to guess A3? Maybe tail? But what if B3 is Dog and Cat, would people think you mean that? And everyone is trying to come up with a clue to give. Fast paced and a lot of fun.

Buy on Miniature Market

65. Parade

Parade is an abstract game where you are creating a line-up of characters from Alice in Wonderland. It’s not that the theme is great on this one, it is that the game play is a lot of fun. You are playing cards from your hand to the parade. The number on the card determines how many cards you skip over. Then the number and color tell you what cards in the rest of the parade you will take, low numbers or cards of the same color. You want low points but if you have the most of a color instead of being face value for points, each card counts as one point, so some really good choices.

Buy on Miniature Market

64. The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game

The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game, besides having a very long name, is an interesting game because it has theme. But you bring the theme to the game. What the game does, with the scenarios being books, how the characters play, the investigations and the bad guys all are thematic, but the story doesn’t emerge unless you know it. Then the game makes more sense as you overcome obstacles, gain advantages, solve cases and defeat villains. It’s a solid mechanical game that’s great for Dresden Files fans.

Buy on Miniature Market

63. Hats

Another abstract Alice in Wonderland themed game. In Hats you are trying to collect the hats that are worth the most points. But to do that, you are taking cards off of the table at the Madd Hatters tea party. The cards you play out from your hand have to go to the table and the ones coming off the table are your scoring. Each spot at the table scores a different number of points. If there are two hats of the same type on the table at the end, hats of that type are worth the lowest. It’s a good abstract puzzle of a game.

Buy on Amazon

62. Deadly Doodles

Another new game to the list, Twice as Clever! was the first. Deadly Doodles is also a roll and write game. In it, you are delving into a dungeon to fight monsters, find weapons and get treasure. The game in it’s base is a pretty simple roll and write game. But you can make it more complex with Deadly Doodles 2 and the different dungeon types in there. You do need both of them to be able to play those more complex dungeons. But it’s a nice one to stream and a good solo or group roll and write game.

Buy on Miniature Market

61. Similo

Another party game and another cooperative party game and another new game. Similo was a game I knew about but wasn’t interested in until I saw Horrible Guild play it on their channel. Similo is a game of giving clues to get players to narrow it down to one thing. The trick is that the clue giver can only tell you if their card they play down is or isn’t like the target card. And you have to eliminate more as you go on. What makes this so much fun is that you might be using mythical figures to get people to guess animals, or the other way around. Good simple party game to start a game night.

Buy on Miniature Market

The Next Ten

Like I said at the beginning the next ten are going to come out on Wednesday. The streams are always at 8 PM Central Time and you can click the notification bell for it here. And you can always subscribe and click the notification bell on the channel as a whole. I hope that you can join me then.

Monday streams will start coming back probably after the Top 10 list is done. Though, if I decide to do some solo gaming some Monday, maybe I’ll have a surprise stream and just go with that. Let me know what small solo-able games you want to see me play.

What is your favorite game from this group of 10, and which one do you want to play most?

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Top 10 Pallet Cleanser Games

10. Parade

This one is one that I just got back to the table recently. It’s a good time and it’s a very simple game. You are creating a line of characters from Alice in Wonderland. The theme is not that important, but the game play is very cool, you are putting them down and based off of color and number. You are trying to collect as few points as possible, which is a fun twist. And you score the face value unless you have the most of a color in which case the cards are worth one point. It plays very fast, but you need to think about what you are playing down.

9. Ohanami

This one is even lighter than Parade in what you are doing. You are drafting two cards from a hand and adding them in three columns. The trick is you need to always go higher or lower than the numbers in the column. Now that’s not too hard with three columns, but if you get stuck with bad cards you need to have planned for that. Plus the scoring is fun in that you score blue, then blue and green, then blue, green, grey, and pink over the various hands. It creates a nice puzzle of when you ideally draft cards. Very fast, light, but fun game that gives you enough to think about.

8. Point Salad

Point Salad is another drafting game, this one where you are trying to get the most points possible. This is a play off of euro games where everything you do gets you points, which is there point salad comes from. In this case you are either drafting cards that make up your salad, two of them on a turn, or a card that will give you points based off of what you have in your salad. The only question is can you balance getting cards that give you positive points for the vegetables that you have. Good game with the simple concept but that adds in enough to think about.

7. Draftosaurus

This is going simpler than say Point Salad or Parade, but not by much. I call this game a roll and write, even though you aren’t writing anything down. Instead you are drafting dinosaur meeples and placing them onto your board. You do roll an die and that decides where the dinosaur can be placed. Each dinosaur pen gives different points. The game plays in about 15 minutes and it’s one that you’ll reset and play again. This one is really good if you just don’t want to think about much of anything until later in the game because the first few picks will determine what you need.

6. Metro X

I didn’t want to put too many roll and write games on the list, but a lot of them make good pallet cleansers. So I picked ones that could be played solo and pretty quickly. I really like Metro X as a pallet cleanser because you do have interesting choices to make. The bus routes interconnect and when you hit a filled in bus route that stops your placement. So you need to get skips which allow you to pass over stuff, and you need to optimally place your filled in stops. And a game takes 15 minutes solo.

5. Ganz Schon Clever

Yes, it’s another roll and write, and this might be one people thought of first. I do have one higher on the list. This is a good one because, one there is a very nice app, but too it is very satisfying. You get a lot of combos in the game, so you can plan out or take huge turns as you fill in everything you can. It’s a good puzzle to figure out, and even when you’ve figured it out, it’s a good puzzle to optimize. The follow-ups, Doppelt So Clever, and Clever Hoch Drei are also really good pallet cleansers, but I didn’t want only roll and writes.

4. Railroad Ink Challenge

The final roll and write on the list, this one I like because it provides a bit more variability for a roll and write, and again a nice app. The variability comes from the challenges that you have, which can really shape your game, if you let it. It challenges you to try and get them done because 12 points is solid and you have a timer in this game for when you can get those points. The original would also work if I wanted something a bit lighter to play without the challenges.

In the game, though, you are trying to connect bus and train routes around your board. You get points for going through the middle spots but also the more you connect. And you can use special things to fill in spots a few times a game. There’s just enough to make this game really fascinating to play.

3. Hanamikoji

By far the thinkiest game on the list, a two player on game that plays fast, Hanamikoji was one of the first ones that I thought of. In this one you are trying to win the favor of seven different Geisha or at least the majority, but giving them gifts. Generally at the end of one round the player with the most favor wins, but it can take several rounds to reach a win threshold.

But to give them gives you have four actions you can take and you can take each one once a round. The are discarding two cards that won’t be used face down, playing a card face down that will be used as a gift, giving three cards for your opponent to pick one from, and letting your opponent pick between two sets of two cards. That’s it, but there’s so much to think about that it makes the game very challenging. It might be too thinky for some people. At least to be a true pallet cleanser.

2. A Gentle Rain

The last two games are purely solo games, this is the lighter of the two. In this game you are just flipping out a tile and matching it on the board. You are trying to create spots where all four corners meet. At least if there were corners, there aren’t but when you do complete that, you can place a disc into the open spot. The goal is to get all of the discs onto the board. It’s simple in what you do, there is a little strategy, and just enough to keep your mind engaged as you play. Only downside I have with it is that it takes up a bunch of space.

1. Orchard

Finally, no shock, we have Orchard. This game makes you think more than A Gentle Rain does. The dice placement piece works so well. And I love the card placement as well. In this game you stack cards so like trees cover each other, when you do, you place a die. The higher the stack of overlapping you can make, the more that tree produces. It’s just playing down 9 cards, but you need to think about each placement. And you just see if you can beat your previous score. But I love to sit down and play this one on repeat while watching sports.

What games do you like to sit down with when you want to play something fast that keeps you still engaged? And do you play board games to ever clear you mind like I do?

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Let’s see everything that was played.

Orchard: A 9 Card Solitaire Game – 28 Plays

So that is a ton of plays of this game. But I talked about it in my recent review, this is a very easy game to get to the table. It calls itself a 9 card game, there are actually 18. But you only use 9 each game. That means I can shuffle up once, split the deck and play twice in a row. It’s also a good solo game because it doesn’t take up much space. I got in something like 10 plays during under a quarter of a college football game. This is a really good solo game.

Aeon’s End Legacy – 4 Plays

So, like I said, probably not getting that played tonight. But I’ve really loved my playthroughs of this game. It’ll be on the list for the last time next month though. I only have one more to go. But you can check out all the plays over on Malts and Meeples. Really good legacy game and I can’t stress enough, this is how I’d recommend that people learn to play Aeon’s End, it teaches you so well.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon – 3 Plays

We’re getting towards the end game of Tainted Grail as well. I do think it’ll run through all of September as we only will get in a couple of plays. But I’m still really loving the game. I and I really like how much the world has changed because of a few things we’ve done. I’m not sure it always changes that way, but it’s given us some cool and interesting things to think about. The story is really what makes this game so good

The Night Cage – 3 Plays

I’ve been waiting on this one to show up for a bit, so when it did, I needed to get it to the table. And it was a lot of fun to get it to the table. I like Night Cage as almost a horror themed game, well, it is one but it gives you that feeling of tension. I think that the candle burning down as you play out tiles and showing how that is shortening up works really well.

Downforce – 2 Plays

It happens from time to time but not all that often that I will get an expansion after playing a game. In the case of Downforce, I liked the two plays of it that I had so much that I got two expansions for it. Those expansions are just more maps to race around, but it’s going to be a lot of fun to get those to the table. I think that this upcoming months board game night might be racing games.

Claim – 2 Plays

It’d been a while but every time I play a trick taking game, I realize that I do like trick taking. It is just a lot of fun to see how well I can play. And it is interesting too because with this game, you are first winning tricks to build your hand to then win tricks to actually win the game. First game was close then dominated in the second one, which is the only downside I have for this game, it can be a bit swingy.

Hanamikoji – 2 Plays

In terms of two player games, I think that Hanamikoji is my favorite. I really like how smoothly and simply it plays. I could have used this for my abstract game example because it’s easy to learn abut offers amazing decision making space. One that I know I’ll keep on coming back to.

Deranged – 1 Plays

Got this during 2020 and needless to say, I didn’t get 3+ player games to the table then. But I got to play the introductory scenario of the game again. And I still really enjoy this game even after so long. This was one that I originally played and demoed at GenCon back in 2019. Another horror themed game but one that is lighter in tone than Night Cage but also more thematic as you try and break curses. I want to play the bigger version of the game just to see how it goes.

Detective: Dig Deeper – 1 Plays

So I’ve talked about Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game a fair amount. It is one of my favorite thematic games where what you are doing matches the theme so well. This takes you into the 70’s, so things are a bit different but still offers an amazing thematic experience. And I am curious to see who will be the next designer they announce for this signature series because it is fun to see what other people are doing.

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition – 1 Plays

Got in a really fast play of this game last night. And it was surprising how fast, basically one hour for two players. Generally they’ve taken longer, but we got our engines up and running very quickly. I still really like this game. The mechanics are smooth and that engine building aspect is so much fun. I need to get the paper off of my overlays for the boards so I can make it even easier to keep track of things. I know some people are mad about Target getting retail copies before they got their nicer Kickstarter copies, but it’s a really good game.

Parade – 1 Plays

This small little card game with kind of an Alice in Wonderland theme is always fun to play. I like it as a puzzle to solve, how you can push for a fair amount of one color if you can avoid the rest of the colors. The clever thing of having the most of a color and that making all those cards worth a point each instead of face value really works for me. And the game plays pretty quickly, you need to think a bit on your turn, but you don’t have too many options to get analysis paralysis.

Calico – 1 Plays

Another play of Calico, and the more I get of it, the more I realize how much I like the game. It just works for me because it is a simple game to play but the puzzle gives you hard choices. Plus it’s cats so that theme is always good. I do think it might be too much of a puzzle for really casual gamers, but overall it’ll be one that works for a lot of people.

Cartographers – 1 Plays

This, I think, is becoming my favorite roll and write game. It just works so well and works well with a large group of players. I like making maps and I can’t wait to get more maps and more expansions and stuff for this game. If you want a thematic roll and write, this isn’t the best, Super-Skill Pinball 4-Cade I would say is, but it’s up there. And I think the simplicity of this game with the theme of map making is going to draw people in.

Sonora – 1 Plays

Another roll and write game, but of course this starts with flicking. I really like this game. It is not the easiest roll and write game to play. It is so combotastic that filling out your board can take a while. And for some people that take longer. But I still really like it for that aspect. In fact, it’s very high on my list because it feels different every time. I can pick a new area to try and optimize.

Dice Throne – 1 Plays

A game I got in last night of Vampire versus Samurai and the Samurai had no problem winning. I was rolling really poorly as the vampire. And I was really pushing for blood power. I want to try that match-up again, or play around more with the Vampire Lord. I feel like I need to come up with a better strategy. Even getting stomped, I want to play it again and still love the game.

Railroad Ink Challenge – 1 Plays

Final game played this month. Railroad Ink Challenge I think is a better version of Railroad Ink. I talked about it before, it just offers more to do. This one was fun because we had eight people playing it. That means that we had a lot of wildly different boards and scores. The challenges just offer more direction early in the game. Regular Railroad Ink is fine, but challenge for me is the better of the two, though harder to teach.

Yearly Gaming Stats

So like I said, I am all caught up. 244 total plays and 121 plays left to go in 121 days. With that there are 62 different games that I’ve played and 7 that I’ve played over 10 times. I think that Orchard is going to help me keep up on my plays, and probably a few more of A Gentle Rain coming as well. I’m also now at 22% of the base, not expansion, board games that I own played in this calendar year.

So which of those games would you want to play from this past month?

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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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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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Skull

This is a game that I already know that I like, and it’s a pretty simple game. In fact it’s already been on my top 100. What I liked about this game is that it’s a very simple push your luck bluffing game. All you’re doing is putting down coasters (basically) face down that either have a rose or a skull on them. Eventually someone will start bidding, the trick is that you have to flip over all of yours first, so I might be five, knowing that I have a skull, which will bust me in my stack, in hopes that you’ll bid six, and flip over mine and bust. Simple concept, simple game play, but interesting bluffing and reading your opponent aspect.

Mariposas

I blame this one on GloryHoundd and DrGloryHogg. They did a play through of it, and it wasn’t really on my radar that much, but the game play looked simple and interesting, which is what I look for fairly often in games. I find that I tend to buy bigger games, like the big campaign games I back on Kickstarter, or I want it to be a streamlined game that I can pull out for a board game night, once those happen again. Mariposas looks really interesting in how you are flying butterflies north, going through generations, trying to score points based on cards that really drive you further and further north, but then you start racing south to get your last generation of butterflies all the way back down to where they’ll winter. The game play just has you playing cards, collection sets of flowers, and moving your butterflies, so it’s something that I can teach easily and a theme that is less hard core nerdy than a fantasy game that’d do something similar.

Ygdrassil Chronicles

This one was more a buy on a whim, because I saw this at GenCon in 2019, and I thought that it looked cool. Plus, I’ve heard good things about the original Ygdrassil. This is not the normal type of game that would draw me in, but variable player powers and cooperative play are always things that interest me. Plus the giant 3D tree just looks cool, so I’m always in for a game that can help sell itself on the table. I’m excited to learn and try this one.

Now, we’re getting to the two that I ordered which triggered this:

Parade

Parade is an interesting little game with a pasted on Alice in Wonderland theme, or really artwork. But the game is still a lot of fun. In this game you’re collecting sets of colors, but you don’t want all the colors, more chances to score, and you don’t want lots of points in the colors. You want to have the fewest points possible, but depending on the color and number you play you collect cards. Adding to that, maybe you do want a lot of cards of a single color, or at least more than everyone else, because if you have the most of the color they are only worth one point per card instead of face value. Interesting game with massively disparate scores, but a lot of fun, because it plays pretty fast, and it’s a fairly random game, but one that you can think about your turn as it comes up, and limited amount of AP in the game.

Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade

A long name for a roll and write, so I’m just going to call it Super-Skill Pinball, this is one that has been on my radar for a bit, because it is a roll and write game, and is just coming out now. In this game you are playing one of four arcade machines (everyone is playing a like machine), one person will roll the dice and everyone will use one of the two dice to do a shot, you are trying to hit bumpers and keep your ball up as long as you can scoring as many points as you can. There are ways the ball has to move around certain things, and push your luck elements on some of them that can score you more. The game works well because you can do all the pinball stuff such as nudge the table, but don’t nudge it too much so you don’t end up with a title. I like roll and write games a lot, there will be a lot in my top 100, and they work well with lots of different groups of people, so this one with it’s unique theme really interested me.

Which of these games is the most interesting to you?

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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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Stocking Stuffers are going to be small games, though a few of them might be slightly too large for a small stocking, but they are going to be smaller games and hopefully slightly cheaper options for you as well. These games are not going to be big and grandiose, but hopefully you’ll find a good range of games for the people in your lives. This list isn’t in a best to worst or vice-a-versa order, just alphabetical

Age of War – This game will easily fit into a stocking. It is a simple little dice game where you are trying to collect fortresses by rolling combinations on the dice. If you get a set, you can lock them in, but if not, someone can try and steal it from you, though it’s a little bit trickier. This game is very simple and small. It’s a good game for people who like a bit of dice rolling, but don’t want anything too thinky.

Boss Monster – A game that’s a bit bigger than Age of War, but it’s still easy to play. Each person is a monster in a 8-bit video game and you are trying to set-up your dungeon and lair so that you can defeat all the heroes who are coming from the town. But you also have to be able to attract them. But if they don’t die in your dungeon, you don’t want to take too much damage. This is for someone who likes a lot of nerdy things and retro video games being one of them. There are good nods to other nerdy things on the cards.

Cat Cafe – Your crazy cat lady aunt will love you for this game, though you’ll probably have to teach it to her. It’s a bit more complex than some roll and writes, but in the game, you are creating your own cat towers to attract cats to you. You score in various ways by placing mice toys together or by getting food dishes or other things your cats would love. This is a good game for the whole family.

Criss Cross – Another roll and write, you might see a third on the list, but Criss Cross is a little game, but a good one for people who like to puzzle out the best score. In Criss Cross you are rolling dice and everyone is placing the symbols rolled onto their own board, but you have to remember that you are scoring both columns and rows, so you don’t want to have too many of them that score zero. It’s a very small game and easy to play multiple times.

Gloom – This is completely different than the other games, because Gloom is a story telling game. In it you are taking turns playing down cards to either make your opponents characters lives go better, or to make yours go worst until you can kill off your whole family. You are telling the horrible things that are happening to them as you play card. This has a nice dark humor to the game, and it just ends up being silly fun for a potentially dark theme. Plus, the cards are clear plastic, so that they stack on top of previous cards and you can see through.

Hanabi – A card driven game, Hanabi is unique because the cards aren’t facing you. Your hand of cards is facing your opponents and they are giving clues to help you play down your cards. You are all trying to work together to get stacks of fireworks from 1 to 5 of their colors, but if you play down the wrong number or the wrong color, you lose a fuse, and you don’t want it to blow up in your face. It’s a unique idea and it works well for a small box game.

Hanamikoji – This is a great game to get for your significant other, if they enjoy gaming. It’s a two player only abstract game where you are trying to win favors of various Geisha. But to do so, you must give them gifts using four actions that you can take. And your opponent has the same four actions. When you use them and the choices you make are what work well in this thinky game. It plays fast, though, and generally I’ve found that people want to play again after the first game.

Just One – Okay, you’ll need a large stocking for this one. The game isn’t that huge, but it’s larger than most. A cooperative word based party game, this one is great for your family if you are sick and tired of playing the same party games over and over again from the 90’s or you’ve read every single Apples to Apples and Cards Against Humanity card. In Just One, one person is it, and you are all trying to get them to guess a word, but you can only write down a one word clue. If you match with someone, though, both clues are hidden. It’s a super fun game that takes the place of a lot of other party games.

Onirim – Maybe you have a family member who likes to play solitaire games, probably including solitaire, but they haven’t jumped into modern board games. Onirim is a great game for a solitaire player with simple rules in the base game, and a lot of challenge as you are playing cards, it’s one of the best purely solo games out there. The artwork is unique, but I like it, and the game is small, just a bunch of cards, so it won’t feel like too much.

Parade – This game can be a bit hard to find, but if you can get your hands on it, it’s an interesting card collection game where you are trying to get as few cards and as few points as possible. But, in a twist, if you get the most of a certain color/suit, those cards only count as a single point. It’s an abstract little game, but the Alice in Wonderland artwork will draw people in.

Say Bye to the Villains – If the person likes hard games, this will be a good option. Say Bye to the Villains is a very hard game, I haven’t beaten it, but a ton of fun. You are all Samurai who have 10 days to prepare to fight a group of villains at the end of that time each of you will face off against one. You can prepare by improving your stats or scouting out the villains. This game works well, because it’s cooperative and you feel like you can’t get everything done that you need to. Extremely tough, good variety in the game, and if you are looking for a challenge it’ll be a good choice.

Second Chance – We’re back to roll and writes, but Second Chance is a great one for it, and a simpler one. In this game, two cards are flipped and you have to draw in the shape shown of one of them on your board. The person who has the fewest spaces left at the end of the game wins. However, to keep it from being the same, each person has a unique starting shape, and if you use larger shapes, you might run out of room faster, but you get a bonus spot. If you can’t fill in one of the shapes, you get a second chance, and if you can use that new shape, that is just for you, you can keep playing. The game has a nice art feel to it and works well in large groups. Another game that you will play multiple times in a single sitting.

Stipulations – Another party game is making the list, and this one will easily fit in a stocking. Too many party games either need to have a ton of cards, Apples to Apples/Cards Against Humanity, because you go through them quickly, or they have large pieces like Catch Phrase, but Stipulations is a fun game in a small package. In the game the person who is it picks a dream job, super power, life time supply or fulfilled dream that then other players write a stipulation for. It’s a good creative game, and one that you can make as dirty or as clean as you want, so you can always play with anyone.

Unlock! – Any of the Unlock games, or the Exit games, would work in this spot, but if you have someone who loves escape rooms, give them an escape room in a box. Unlock puts you into a situation that you have to combine cards, solve riddles and other puzzles and figure out the solution before time runs out. And then when it does, you can still finish, you just get fewer points, but you can watch the clock count down and get stressed out. If you are looking for that escape room experience but on a budget, it works well with groups too, probably up to 6 players maximum, though I think 4 is the ideal number.

Alright, I don’t know how many that was, but it’s a good variety of games that you can stick in people stockings. If you want, you can probably find one for everyone in your family. Board games are fun to give and get over the holidays because you can then turn them into a family activity if you want.

Which game would you want to get in your stocking? Which one would you be most apt to give?

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