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100 through 91
90 through 81

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition – 80 through 71

80. Flamecraft

• Published by Cardboard Alchemy in 2022
• Deliver on the most goals and score points as you play out adorable little dragons who help around the town

This game immediately grabs you with the artwork. The dragons are amazing, and Sandara Tang gives each of them such great personality. Beyond that the game is simple but fun, you go to a location and are either activating the cards and dragons there, or adding some, or spending resources to complete goals. As the locations get more and more dragons the more powerful they become. It’s a great ramping mechanism for a simple game. Though the game is not fast one, which might be my only knock on it.

Buy Flamecraft

79. Just One

• Published by Repos Productions in 2018
• Work together to get the guesser to the right answer with just one word

A party game on this section. I’m not sure, I expect that there are two more party games on the list, but we’ll see. I honestly have forgotten. But Just One is a great cooperative party game. One person is the guesser and everyone else needs to write down a one word clue to get the guesser to guess their one word. Sounds simple, right, but if you double up with anyone, now both those words are gone. That means that an easy clue can become very hard very fast. So you want to be obscure with your clue, but not so obscure that it won’t lead the person to the right answer.

Buy Just One

78. On Tour

• Published by BoardGameTables.com (AllPlay) in 2019
• Create the best route for your band to tour the map going from low to high numbers

This one is a fun roll and write. While I love a ton of roll and write games where they have a lot of combos, this one is a different type of puzzle. In On Tour two dice are rolled and players each place the numerical combinations on two spots on their board. But there are rules as to where they can go. And you may want to watch the city to gain bonus points, but if it won’t connect well to your route, is it worth it to push your luck?

Buy On Tour

77. Mythwind

• Published by Open Owl Studios in 2023
• Build up your settlement and play your mini game in this cozy gaming experience

Open Owl Studios went into making Mythwind with the plan of making a cozy game. So something that works well like a Stardew Valley or an Animal Crossing. They do that by creating a peaceful story world to play in, there are interesting elements to it though. And then each person plays their own little minigame. I demonstrate what the minigame for the farmer looks like. And One Stop Co-op Shop and Meet Me At The Table play some of the other ones. It’s just a unique feeling game that is fun, and relaxing to play.

Preorder Mythwind

76. Betrayal at House on the Hill

• Published by Avalon Hill in 2004
• Explore a haunted house but beware, someone is going to be come the traitor

This is a game that I still love though I haven’t played it in a few years. I fully recognize that the game has issues. When you sit down to play you know that the haunt may not work as planned because either the traitor is going to be overpowered or the other survivors will be. And the haunts themselves have janky rules. But I still love the game anyways because it’s thematic, silly, and just a fun time.

Buy Betrayal at House on the Hill 3rd Edition

75. Clever 4Ever

• Published by Schmidt Spiele in 2022
• Another combotastic game in the Clever line of roll and writes

I don’t know what else to say about this one. Clever 4Ever offers a ton of fun combos and a few different feeling sections of your sheet. How Wolfgang Warsch keeps on coming up with different and interesting ways to handle rolling five dice, using one, getting rid of lower ones and then rolling them again, I don’t know. But he does and this one is great, I especially like the sections where you can fill in different shapes depending on the number rolled. That element really feels different.

Clever 4Ever is either new to my Top 100 Games (of all time) this year or it just made the cut last year. I know I hadn’t had the game for long.

Buy Clever 4Ever

74. SpellBook

• Published by Space Cowboys in 2023
• Learn spells and feed your familiar to get the most points

This is a really simple game. All it is when you boil it down is set collection. You collect materia, you get enough of a color, you learn that spell. Then you use that spell you learned to collect more materia or learn new spells easier. Each spell you learn gives you points, or you can just feed the materia to your familiar for more points as well. The is fast, and there is a fun puzzle as to how you can optimize your spell usage as you get into the game.

Buy SpellBook

73. Century: Golem Edition

• Published by Plan B Games in 2017
• Get crystals, upgrade crystals and get golems to give you points

Another engine building game. Century: Golem Edition again, like SpellBook, has quick snappy turns. In this game it’s all about hand management and using those cards in hand to get more and upgrade crystals. Then you use those crystals to grab Golems that are going to score you points. But you literally just play a card, trade crystals for a golem, pick-up all your cards, or buy a new card. One of those things on a turn and the game just flies.

Buy Century: Golem Edition

72. New Frontiers

• Published by Rio Grande Games in 2018
• Build out the grandest space empire by doing the best action for you

New Frontiers is another engine building game. In New Frontiers you are doing it at a space level though, colonizing new planets, getting new technologies, fighting and conquering planets. All of that done through action selection where what action you pick gives you a bonus. But, everyone else is going to follow along with that action as well. So what is the best action for you and maybe not a great one for other players? I believe that New Frontiers is new to my Top 100 Games (of all time) as well though it isn’t a new game.

Buy New Frontiers

71. Meadow

• Published by Rebel Studio in 2021
• Create a beautiful tableau of nature through tricky card drafting

Meadow is another gorgeous game. I start out and end this section with beautiful games. In Meadow you want to score points by playing out creatures, taking pictures, and gaining trinkets. But to do that you need to build up your meadow from the land type up through bugs and maybe eventually all the way into deer, foxes, or other creatures. How you pick the cards you get is great. You use a fence post that tells you how far into a row or column you are picking. So you need to determine the best spots to play to get all the cards that you want and hope no one blocks you.

Buy Meadow

Final Thoughts

Firstly, let me know what your favorite of these games are. I obviously enjoy all of the tones in my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition, so Meadow needs to be my favorite. But in terms of easily getting it to the table, I’m kind of feeling a big old stream and playthrough of all the clever games on Malts and Meeples. And let me know if there is one that you would want to get played as well that you haven’t tried in my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition.

Join me next week for the next batch of games in my Top 100 Games. It’ll be starting around 9 PM Central on Wednesday if everything goes as planned. You can subscribe and click the notification bell to get notified when the video goes live. Thanks so much for watching.

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A quick recap of what is going on. The party has finished up their first year at school and after breaking Dorin, they decided it would be good to help him. This was after they had helped investigate two dragon attacks on the school. Kip was left behind to clear up a few details. Things went sideways on the trip as they were attacked by goblins multiple times, but they did get an Owlbear that Bokken named Fukuro Kuma.

The Session

Things started off not being as restful as the group would have hoped. The lands in which they were camping didn’t turn out to be too nice as the sunset and they were attacked by four specters. Things actually go really well. Even though Bokken can’t hit spirits the hardest, Barrai enhances his abilities and Thrain gives him protection from good and evil.

Now, I say it goes pretty well, Barrai is still knocked unconscious after taking down the first of the specters and drawing their ire. But Thrain is able to stabilize him with spare the dying and that worked out. Kip hearing the fight is able to join up with the party who are camping off the road. He has taken care of what he needed to in town and hurried to catch up with them. He joins as Dorin, who has his hands tied behind his back is taking off running away from the spirits.

Bokken sends Fukoro Kuma after Dorin to fetch him, but realizes that something might have been lost in translation between him and the Owlbear. This is in fact the case and Thrain, Bokken, and Kip, riding on the back of Bokken take off after Fukoro Kuma. With some dexterous grace, Kip launches off of Bokken getting into range to cast sleep on Fukuro Kuma, but it doesn’t work, he does manage to put both his bird Kraig and Dorin to sleep. This makes Dorin way easier for Fukoro Kuma to catch and he just destroys Dorin to the point that Dorin is starting to bleed out.

Thrain, being the slowest of the group, makes it up there after Bokken has distracted Fukoro Kuma with some rations. They get Dorin back to the unconscious body of Barrai and decide to settle in for the night. Bokken takes Fukoro Kuma with him to make sure that no one finds them and that the owlbear won’t eat Dorin.

The next two days were a whole lot more uneventful with Kip trying to teach Dorin how be a better pirate. Teaching him how pirates love treasure and booty, which Dorin of course will take the wrong way. They untie him to bring him into town and find out that his family actually own a textile wholesale company. This works out decently well for the group as Bokken is able to get help making armor from the goblin’s leather for Fukoro Kuma.

They send Dorin out so that they can talk to his father running the shop. They get some information including that this textile company is the one that provides the fabric to the shop where they bought their fancy clothes and where they got the clue on that wizard whom Addrus was working with. Things seem to be settling down when they hear some noises from down the street. Dorin has found his way into a bar and has picked a fight after harassing a patron. Fortunately, Bokken can squeeze into this gnome only establishment, at least built for that, and that basically does the trick.

The night ends with them finding an animal handler that Bokken leaves Fukoro Kuma with. He pays for a few months of training for Fukoro Kuma so that there won’t be a situation where the owlbear will try and kill someone in their party again. They send Dorin back off to his family and settle in for the night.

Behind the DM’s Screen

The person playing Kip was back this week. The question that came up with that is how do you get him back to the group. I’d narrated that he’d spent the day before dealing with stuff at the school. The sirens from the previous night could have been Kip had the player been able to make it to that session. So the plan was, with the amount of time wasted on finding Dorin, that’ll give Kip time to catch back up. And it worked, I just needed a reason for him to be able to find them off the main road. Having specters scream seemed like a simple solution.

Then Dorin’s home town of Castleveinea. I’m not sure that we’re done with everything that is going on there. but I’ve been dropping more hints about this textile place or really driving home the point that they gave them the address for Addruss’s friend, the wizard. So we’ll see if they go down that route or what their plan is, I feel like they are going to leave Castleveinea next session and probably think about picking up that thread (all cloth puns intended).

What do you think of this session? Have you played a game where you’ve needed to do an escort mission before? Or as a DM, have you played where the players have picked up a pet that can fight in combat. What did you do with that?

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