Catch up on previous videos here

100 through 91
90 through 81
80 through 71
70 through 61
60 through 51
50 through 41
40 through 31
30 through 21

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition – 20 through 11

20. Heat: Pedal to the Metal

• Published by Days of Wonder in 2022
• Fly around the track and manage your engine so it doesn’t over heat to win the race

This is a great racing game. It is a nice blend of simplicity. You play cards equal to the gear that you are in for your movement. But also some complexity as you need to be smart with how you handle the curves, straightaways, how much you push your engine and when you cool it down. That cooling down part of the game is great as it really makes a difference in how you play and when you push it. Plus there are modules you use, like drafting some cards for your deck, that make the game even more fun, or you can do a series of races which is also great.

Buy Heat: Pedal to the Metal

19. Planet Unknown

• Published by Adam’s Apple Games in 2022
• Terraform your planet and increase your technology better than your opponents can

Planet Unknown is a polyomino game where you are terraforming a planet. You can play it in the basic mode where everyone is doing the same planet and same tech track, or you can do unique planets and tech tracks. I love the unique ones and I think that’s the way to go after the first game. But Planet Unknown has more than just laying out tiles, how you decide which tile is picked for you is amazing. Whomever is the leader that round turns a lazy susan full of tiles and whatever one is pointing to where you pick from, those are your options. So you can stick someone with something or sometimes get the perfect thing.

Buy Planet Unknown

18. Clank! In! Space!

• Published by Dire Wolf in 2017
• Race through a spaceship but don’t try and make too much noise as you grab a treasure and get out

This is a push your luck deckbuilding game, and I enjoy both of those elements to the game. I find that pure push your luck doesn’t always work for me, but add in deckbuilding a mechanism I love, it’s great. You build up your deck to move and grab a treasure, fight monsters, and buy more cards that are worth points. But you also need to be aware of how noisy you are. If you’re too noisy the villain, Lord Eradikus will start drawing out your cubes, if you clank, and dealing damage to you. And you might not make it out before you die.

Buy Clank! In! Space!

17. ISS Vanguard

• Published by Awaken Realms in 2022
• Explore a new solar system while you manage your crew and your ship

ISS Vanguard is a big campaign game and one that I’ve played on Malts and Meeples. Not the whole way through, but far enough to give you an idea of how it plays. The game is interesting because it plays over two parts. Part of the game is exploring planets and discovering why humanity was called out to this location in the stars. The other part is managing your ship. I was worried that managing your ship wouldn’t feel important, but it’s a great element to the game and makes it feel even more thematic.

Buy ISS Vanguard

16. Vampire the Masquerade: CHAPTERS

• Published by Flyos Games in 2023
• Enter a world of vampires and darkness as you play across missions and try and figure out what is happening in Montreal

Chapters is choose your own adventure RPG in a box. I love how it gives you this great story filled with depth and grit. And it also gives you tactical combat and dice chucking. It feels like a great blend of things that I love in board games and in RPG’s. The story is well written and while there are definitely issues with it there is an app that should be helping fix that and an upgrade pack for it. But even without that, the game is fun, and the app is free so the few spots it’s really busted should be fixed. Plus, I want to play a dark vampire game, and this gives me that in spades.

Buy Vampire: the Masquerade – CHAPTERS

15. Metal Gear Solid

• Published by CMON in 2024/2025
• Sneak around the base and battle only when you need to complete missions

Yes, there is a game on my list that isn’t out yet. Spoilers, there might be another one as well coming up in my Top 10. But that is because I’ve gotten to play the final version of the game and I feel like I’ve had enough time with it. I love this game as it’s a tactical minis game where you can fight. But fighting generally is going to be noisy and messy and you’ll be swarmed. When that happens, well, it’s probably game over for you. So instead you need to be smart, sneak around, and try and avoid the guards the best you can or lose them. All while being a pretty simple game to play.

Coming Soon

14. Lost Ruins of Arnak

• Published by Czech Games Edition in 2020
• Explore the lands, find treasure, fight monsters and discover what adventure awaits you

Lost Ruins of Arnak is a deckbuilding game. It is a worker placement game, and it’s a exploring adventure game. For me all of those elements come through. And I love the puzzle of trying to manage your two workers you get place, knowing when and where to place them, buying cards, and risking fighting monsters. Because you need to do it all, and the game isn’t that long in terms of how many rounds it is. But if you’re smart, you can stretch it out for a lot of points and a lot of chaining actions. The Expedition Leaders even adds more fun to the game and more variability as well which I love.

Buy Lost Ruins of Arnak

13. XenoShyft Onslaught

• Published by CMON in 2015
• The base is under attack by bugs, you need to build up your defenses and work together to defeat them

I think I’m the champion of XenoShyft, but I really like the game. It’s another deckbuilding game, but it’s a cooperative one. And I think that cooperative element and how incredibly interactive the cooperation is, that is what makes the game stand out to me. Plus it does a clever thing where you’re never drawing dead with money, so you can always buy cards and bolster up your defenses. Because everyone needs to be able to defend their side of the base so the bugs don’t overrun it.

Out of Print, but you can find it on eBay

12. Marvel Champions

• Published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2019
• Heroes battle villains in this Marvel Superhero game

I love Marvel, we all know that. And Marvel Champions is one of my favorite, if not my favorite Marvel themed game. What I love about this one is that you feel like you are the hero. And not only that, you need to think about being the hero but balancing that with the alter ego. If you stay in hero form the bad guy will beat you up and probably take you out. But if you are in the alter ego side, they don’t know who you are, so they’ll go back to completing their scheme. And that’s not great as well because you can’t blow your cover in alter ego form.

Buy Marvel Champions

11. Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game

• Published by Portal Games in 2018
• Take on the role of detectives and work together, take the notes, and try and solve the cases

Detective for me is my favorite deduction game. I like deduction a lot, but Detective just makes it really immersive. In the box I’m showing it has five cases that all connect into something big and impressive. And you use information that you took notes on from one case and use it in another. I think by the end of all five cases I had between 12 and 15 pages of notes that we’d look back at. And it uses a computer system as well to let you do things like compare DNA, interview witnesses, and more. The game is just this great thematic detective game for me.

Buy Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game

Upcoming Streams

Just a reminder on my streaming schedule. It’s not just all my Top 100 Games (of all time).

• Monday night, time varies, I play different small solo games, though I might be looking to start up a campaign again. And generally the streams do start between 8 and 8:30 PM central time.
• Wednesday at 9 PM central is going to continue my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition. There is one week left, which is going to be two Wednesdays out. After that I’m planning on doing some look back and look ahead videos and smaller solo games or things like Balatro and Slay the Spire.
• Friday at 9 PM central my wife and I are streaming a playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3. Join us for the adventure of Nina and Kaerok and see what choices we make.

The best way to know when we go live, though is to subscribe and click that notification bell. I can’t promise, and in fact it’s pretty unlikely, that I’ll have events to click on ahead of time. Though I do want to get better at it. I hope that you can join a stream and hop into the chat. And let me know what games in this list are your favorite or that you want to try.

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How to Play World Wonders

World Wonders is a pretty simple game of tile laying. Each round players take turns spending their seven gold. With that gold you buy tiles, roads, towers, and wonders to place on your player board. You can also buy first and second player but in a two player game that happens less.

You need to build roads so that you can place buildings. And when you place buildings you try and get matching colors or specific color combinations to get wonders. All of this is done in ways to optimize your point scoring. And each thing that you buy has a different cost, so how you spend your money matters a fair amount. Especially with wonders that cost the rest of your gold, whether that’s one gold or six.

You score in a number of different ways in World Wonders. Firstly, wonders give you points. Then there are three tracks you can go up on which push you up on your population track. If you reach the top of that population track you get points. Then surrounded buildings, on all sides not by land and those score points. But you can lose points if you take out a loan and then don’t pay them back. The player with the most points wins.

Initial Impressions

World Wonders is another tile laying, polyomino game. And that isn’t a bad thing, though, the market is starting to become very full of them. New York Zoo, Barenpark, Planet Unknown, and that’s barely scratching the surface. So it needs to stand out in a style of game that is becoming more crowded. So, does World Wonders do that?

Decision Space

From the ones that I’ve played, I haven’t played all of those listed above, I think that it does. Though, it doesn’t stand out due to complexity of the game. World Wonders is easier than most tile playing or polyomino games. I see World Wonders as a game that I can play with my family. I think once the basic rules are understood, maybe a couple of rounds, my wife will enjoy it, may parents might even enjoy it.

This is a solid and accessible game. And I think it does a good thing with game length as well. More players will make the game longer, but the game turns are simple. Buy a piece and place it, whether that’s a tower, wonder, or road. My only knock on the game is that the player aids, for a five player game, are short a couple. If you provide player aids in a game, provide one per player.

Accessibility of the Game

You see all of the wonders and you expect those to be complex. They are not. There is iconography, but after seeing one or two wonders cards, you understand it. That is a hallmark of a good design. In fact, there isn’t any language to the game which also makes it easier to play and more accessible.

A kid with limited reading ability can play this game. An adult with maybe can’t see a lot of small text would be able to sit down and play this game. Now, the tiles do have little symbols on them. Those would be the hardest element of the game to see. But that information only matters to the player who bought the tile so players can aid each other with that.

World Wonders

Is this a game that sounds interesting to you? If so it will be getting a wider release this year. I think I heard October or November, but with shipping, especially around the holidays or leading up to them, I could see this being a game that release closer to that Christmas and holiday time frame.

Just my initial impressions on it, I think this will be a game that will work for a ton of people. I like the game a lot myself. It’s accessible, it has a good play length, and the toy factor is fun. The pieces are nice quality for the game. But it doesn’t turn the game into a behemoth, so you sit down and play what feels like a normal, but slightly fancier board game.

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Checkout 100 through 91 first here.

Top 100 Games 2022 Edition 90-81

90 – The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

I really enjoy trick taking games, though not a ton of them make the top of my list. The Crew: Mission Deep Sea makes the list for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it is a cooperative trick taking game. So everyone works together to complete certain objectives. That is fun, but it is also fun because I can play the same scenario over again and I’ll have different objectives. That’s something that made me like it better than The Crew: Quest for Planet Nine which was fixed.

Buy on Cool Stuff Inc

89 – Too Many Bones: Undertow

Too Many Bones, a bit game from Chip Theory Games, is one that I think will move up higher as I get more characters and get it to the table more. I like it every time I play, but it’s a beast and I need to relearn the rules. But Too Many Bones is generally a tactical fighting game where you level up characters as you go. Eventually you face off against a big boss. What you level up are stats but then also unlock new dice and abilities to use. And then I like that fact that the characters aren’t normal. The Gearlocs aren’t cute, but what they do is different than a lot of standard fantasy games.

Buy on Chip Theory Games

88 – Downforce

Downforce is an interesting light and quick betting game. In this game you buy a car, race that car, and then get your points, or money, for who you place a bet on, where they finish, and where you vehicle finishes. There is one thing, there are more, but one in particular, that is so clever though. As the cars race along, that is done by people playing down cards. The cards have a list of car colors and how far they move. If you plan it well you can get a car trapped and slow it down, which offers more strategy than you’d expect from the game.

Buy on Miniature Market

87 – Fruit Picking

Another one that has been on the list before and another lighter game like Downforce that way. But otherwise it is more like Mancala with set collection. You move seeds around, figuring out how to land on spots where you can either get a lot more seeds or you can buy different fruit. All you are trying to do is figure out that puzzle as quickly as possible. And of course, to land in the right spot to get those fruit and collect your sets.

Buy on Amazon

86 – Atlantis Rising

Atlantis Rising is new to the list, and a very good cooperative game. As I say in the video, it’s almost an introductory or welcoming cooperative game. In this game you are trying not to keep Atlantis afloat, but as it sinks, get off the island by making technology and end up in another realm. What I like is how the board shrinks as you play, parts sink and you lose some of the better options for going out. Of course, if you want to more likely get what you need, you go out to the end of an peninsula, but there is also a great chance it’ll sink and you get nothing.

Buy on Miniature Market

85 – Flamecraft

Flamecraft is one of the prettiest games out there with all the cute dragons. But it’s a fun light game to play as well. It is a very good welcoming game because of the artwork, but because there isn’t too much going on as well. You are either adding dragons to shops to get resources on your turn, and use powers of the dragons or shop. Or you are completing goals and gaining points. It’s such a friendly game that is a lot of fun to play and look at.

Pre-Order on Miniature Market

84 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Arkham Horror: The Card Game has fallen for me a lot. Mainly because I just don’t play it or have someone to play it with consistently. For me, it is a fine solo game, but I like it better multiplayer. In this game you are an investigator looking into some strange mystery, probably dealing with an elder god or some great old one. Of course, that means weird things can happen, and Fantasy Flight Games has done a great job of putting something together that uses the cards to create really unique experiences.

Buy on Miniature Market

83 – Village Rails

Village Rails replaces Village Green for me on the list. So another new game. It is still laying out things in a 3×3 grid, but now you’re trying to connect routes and score points that way. Plus playing out train engines to get even more scoring opportunities. What I like about it though is that the route building is a bit simpler to grasp than how the greens work. It’s a solid filler style game, I’d say, where it offers good decisions but not that long a game play time.

Not Out Yet

82 – Isle of Cats

The Isle of Cats from City of Games, is a great big polyomino game where you are rescuing cats. The same for the Explore and Draw which I’d maybe rate higher but hadn’t rated yet by the time I did my list. In both you are filling up a boat with cats, trying to get families – colors of cats- next to each other on the boat. And then there are objective cards as well that you can draft and give you more end of the game scoring. There is a lot to the game but it’s a fun one to play both versions of it.

Buy on Cool Stuff Inc

81 – The Lost Expedition

The Lost Expedition is another one that has been on my list for a long time and has dropped some lately. Mainly because it got played a lot and there is less to see. But I still enjoy The Lost Expedition a lot. Mainly because it’s a cooperative game that is hard or even impossible for one player to really run for everyone. You’re trying to find the lost city of Z and explore along different paths every day. When making that path, each person needs to make the decision themselves and can’t discuss with other players. Eventually you make it, or often times you run out of food and your guides all perish.

Buy on Miniature Market

Upcoming Streams

Next Monday the Top 100 Games 2022 Edition continues. You can find the video below for that one. If you want to join live, it’ll be at 8:30 PM Central on Monday. Only week where it might not happen at that time is October 31st as it’s Halloween.

Then on Wednesday, it is time for more Stars of Akarios. This is assuming my internet is back by then. If not, I’ll tweet it out. But you can find that link here. The following week I will be out of town so no Stars of Akarios. But hopefully you are still having fun, and most likely there is a fair amount to catch up on after seven games.

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What Didn’t I Like

So, I have one thing that I want to see how it works more consistently. When I played it was only at two players. I feel like two player play was just fine. Mainly because of the card drafting piece. When you draft, you pick two cards, pass your hand, pick two cards, pass your hand, pick two cards. That means you end up drafting 4 cards. You can manipulate a little bit what the other person gets but you don’t have much variety.

Playing two player I’d almost want to create a dummy hand of six cards or so. That would just make the drafting at two players feel more dynamic. Mainly I felt like I didn’t see enough cards. You are always going to end up being “stuck” with the last two cards. But if someone had a great hand or two great cards, you just don’t see quite enough. I think that with more players, this will be less of a problem.

What I Liked

Drafting

Now, while I did complain about the card selection in the drafting, I do like the drafting quite well. And some of that is because of how it works. You draft eight total cards, but you don’t have to keep all eight of them. In fact, you likely won’t. So even if you are not getting ideal cards one round, you don’t have to keep them all and clutter up your hand. Mainly because you pay for those cards with fish, but you also need fish to entice cats into baskets to get them on your boat.

This creates a really nice tension. Do I potentially get less cats one turn because I want to keep more cards? Or do I have a lot of baskets available so I want to keep a lot of fish around to get a lot of cats in a round. It’s a meaningful choice that can really affect scoring in a lot of ways.

Scoring

And scoring itself, I feel like, is a lot of fun. Because this is kind of a point salad type of game. By point salad, I mean that basically anything you do gives you points. If you put down a global scoring card, probably you’re doing that because it gives you points. Private scoring, more points. Cats of a color next to each other, more points. Rare treasures, more points. Covering up rooms, more points. You can see, there are ton of different point options in there. So while the cards or cats might not line up perfectly with your strategy, you doing everything for points.

What I Want To Try

Firstly, I want to play this game with more people. I am curious to find out if the drafting might just be a little all over the place or if more people helps make the drafting feel more even. I keep on talking about this, it doesn’t ruin the game for me by any stretch of the imagination. There are enough other things to do that work well, but it is something that I wan to mess around with more.

I also feel like there are strategies that I want to try as well. I went fairly heavily into collecting cats. That scored me a fair number of points, but private objectives weren’t one thing that I did much. Again, I didn’t have that many come up for me to draft. How might that change strategy, or could I push even more for cats?

First Thoughts

This is a fun game, I oddly enough get some simple Blood Rage vibes from it. Not that it’s area control, but just that it’s a drafting game that has so much going on with it besides drafting. I think that it’ll end up in that rotation for when I want to play a heavier drafting game but don’t want to go all the way to Blood Rage, or maybe I don’t have the right group for Blood Rage. Isle of Cats is obviously a much cuter theme and going to be more enjoyable for more people.

But I am still backing more stuff on Kickstarter, getting more ships, and even a cool looking Isle of Cats roll and write. And if the game sounds interesting, maybe consider backing it as well. Normally I wouldn’t talk too much about a big box, but checkout that big box in the Kickstarter. It isn’t needed, but the set-up of the game can be a bit slow. The insert in the big box is supposed to help make getting it to the table faster, and I feel like that’ll be nice.

Do you like Isle of Cats?

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Numbers

A’s – B’s – C’s – D’s – E and F’s – G and H’s

I, J and K’s

ICECOOL (and ICECOOL 2)

Yes, that is how the name is listed on Board Game Geek, so I’m going with that. ICECOOL was a flicking game, that I forget where I stumbled across it, probably the Dice Tower, and what was interesting about the game is that not only were you flicking the penguins, not something that I had done before, but the box formed the penguin high school that you were flicking the penguins around. Just how the different parts of the box formed the board and stuck to together was cool. Add in ICECOOL 2, now you can play with up to 8 people, you can either do the normal way with hall monitors trying to catch the students ducking out of class or race around the board if you want another mode to play. The game is a ton of fun, and has always been a smashing success at game nights.

Status: Played

InBetween

Another game that I know I learned about on the Dice Tower, this is a two player only game that has a theme that reminded me of Stranger Things when Sam Healey would talk about it. This game has one person playing the InBetween or basically the upside-down nd the other person playing the real world. There are a group of people, and you are trying to put your influence on them and make it so that the people go to your side and not your opponents, So it’s an interesting tug of war sort of game as you try and figure out through card play how to influence that. That concept really drew me to the game, and the them, because playing a Stranger Things game, basically, sounded like a lot of fun.

Status: To Be Played

The Isle of Cats

This game has cats, that’s a selling point, but it also has your drafting cards and playing down polyominoes, think Tetris sort of pieces, which are the cats onto your ship, all the while trying to create “families” of like colored cats to score points. Plus you have objective cards, and there are sections on the boat that you need to fill up. But you have to be able to pay for this call, so you get baskets to pick up the cats you have to pay for, you have to pay for the cats with fish, because fish lure cats into baskets, and you have to pay fish for the cards that you draft that you decide to keep. There’s a lot going on in the game but all of it seems to flow together quite well.

Status: To Be Played

Just One

Party games can be hit or miss for me, but Just One is a really good game. Firstly, it’s cooperative, which I think can be an issue with other party games. I get that something like Cards Against Humanity or Apples to Apples are supposed to have the in jokes created, but it eventually just becomes people playing those in jokes because they are funny versus because they are trying that hard to win, even games like Stipulations, which I also like, eventually has people starting to put down the same jokes. Just One, however, since it is cooperative, has people focused on helping the group by coming up with a good one word clue that hopefully no one else will have. I also like how those clues work so well, one word, if it’s duplicated by someone else, you can’t see either clue. That really ups the ante for people putting out unique clues which makes guessing the right thing harder, but maybe with all the clues together a more obscure clue will make more sense.

Status: Played

King of Tokyo

My only K game as well, King of Tokyo was one of the earlier games I got. You’ll find that a lot of the earlier games are one’s that I saw on Wil Wheaton’s TableTop show. This was one that looked like a lot of fun, and still gets played probably a couple of times per year. The game works well because it is a nice simple step up from other games. You are rolling dice Yahtzee style and either getting numbers for points Farkle style, getting punches, getting energy (think currency), or healing up. Now there are more rules, but for the most part the punches and the points are what you really care about because you can either win by knocking everyone else out or by getting enough points. That’s one thing that I really enjoyed about the game is that you have two options to win as well, that wasn’t super common or possibly even a thing, in the games that I’d played before.

Status: Played

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