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

20. For Northwood! A Solo Trick-Taking Game

Published By: Side Room Games
Designer: Wilhelm Su

Buy For Northwood!

A solo trick-taking game seems like it shouldn’t work. But For Northwood! works really well. It’s a simple trick taker, you need to follow suit if you can. But the twist is that you need to win a specific number of tricks each time. You play over eight rounds and need to win between 0 and 7 tricks, exactly. That sounds impossible, but you get powers that help you manipulate your hand. It’s always a question of, which one do you go for, in terms of tricks to win, and as you get further along, can get manipulate your hand to make it work.

19. Marvel Champions: The Card Game

Published By: Fantasy Flight Games
Designers: Michael Boggs, Nate French, and Caleb Grace

Buy Marvel Champions

I love Marvel and this is the game that gives me the Marvel feel to it. You are a superhero and you want to stop the bad guys scheme and defeat them. But, thematically, when you are in your hero form the bad guy is going to fight you and you take damage. So you need to manage going between your superhero and alter ego form so you don’t get hit. Of course as your alter ego, the villains are going to be scheming away. And you can create all sorts of fun combinations of heroes and villains to face off.

18. Floriferous

Published By: Pencil First Games
Designers: Eduardo Baraf and Steve Finn

Buy Floriferous

This game is one that I think is really overlooked in the gaming community. It’s a clever drafting game that does two very interesting things. The first thing is how scoring works. You don’t have much scoring that just happens, instead you draft your scoring cards. So there is always a choice between, do I draft more flowers or do I draft scoring cards. The other is how the drafting works, and this it maybe a bigger twist. You draft from a column, how high you are in the column determines when you draft next round. So it’s very possible you want to draft a less ideal card to get a perfect card.

17. Stars of Akarios

Published By: OOMM (Open Owl Studios)
Designers: Brendan McCaskell, Jonathan Thwaites

Buy Stars of Akarios

I love my big campaign games, and Stars of Akarios is one of my favorites. This one works so well for me with the tactical space combat, the planetary exploration, and a story that doesn’t take itself too seriously. The tactical space combat really shines in the game as you use your dice to position your ship, attack, and avoid the enemies the best you can. And the exploration is a bit like The 7th Continent/Citadel where you flip over cards and create a map and really explore as you go.

16. Clank!: Catacombs

Published By: Dire Wolf
Designer: Paul Dennen

Buy Clank! Catacombs

While i just did sell all of my other Clanks, this Clank! Catacombs spot is for all of them. Clank! is a push your luck game where you build up a deck of cards to get into a catacombs, in this case, and get out with the most points and best treasure that you can. Of course, if you are too noisy doing that, you clank, and when the enemy activates it might knock down your health. So it’s this push your luck in making noise, and going deeper. I like, too, with Clank! Catacombs, the map gets built as you go, so the board really is different every time.

15. Roll Player Adventures

Published By: Thunderworks Games
Designers: Keith Matejka, James William Ryan, and Peter Andrew Ryan

Buy Roll Player Adventures

Another big campaign game here with Roll Player Adventures. This one is all about dice manipulation and a fun story. I had a great time playing through the first campaign, and the additional one that I have, I need to get to the table. The system works well, though I will say, with four players it becomes a bit easier than at lower player counts. But the simple map movement, the story, the skill checks and of course combat and leveling up make this a fun time.

14. The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

Published By: Office Dog
Designer: Bryan Bommueller

Buy The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game

I like trick-taking games. Not a ton make it to my Top 100 games mainly because a lot feel similar. The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game is one that is different. Yes, it leans into a lot of standard things, but it’s also cooperative and story based. There are other cooperative ones out there, but the story based feels unique. Especially because this closely follows the books, so you get to chapters with Goldberry and Tom Bombadil as required characters which is fun. And the cooperative elements are challenging for the game.

13. Pirates of Maracaibo

Published By: dlp games
Designers: Ralph Bienert, Ryan Hendrickson, and Alexander Pfister

Buy Pirates of Maracaibo

The second of three new games on this part of the lit in a row. Pirates of Maracaibo is a pirate resource management game. I normally would want it to have more adventure, but this one is a ton of fun. I love building up my ship and seeing what strategy of building up ship, getting treasure, exploring, and competing quests can lead to victory. And it is great because all of them feel good to do. It isn’t a game where I feel like I need to go one way, though, I think some ways are more consistent.

12. Mistborn: The Deckbuilding Game

Published By: Brotherwise Games
Designer: John D. Clair

By Mistborn The Deck Building Game

Another deckbuilding game on the list here with Mistborn. And I like Mistborn just a bit better than Clank! because of a little more pure deck building. But also it has a lot of fun elements to the game. It leans into Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn world and let’s you burn metals to play cards. I also like the turn track, you always bump up in power as you go up the track. This makes for a really great experience of feeling like the game is ramping up.

11. Sleeping Gods

Published By: Red Raven Games
Designer: Ryan Laukat

Buy Sleeping Gods

The final game on the list is another big one, though not a campaign game. Sleeping Gods is a sand box story game where you are dropped into an unknown world and need to find and deal with totems. Of course, it’s a new land, so you don’t know where those are. And there are monsters and other interesting things to deal with. You need to control 9 crew, but really, it’s one turn and you just need to remember a few key abilities as you play. So it sounds like a lot, either cooperative or solo, but it’s not too bad.

Join Next Week

Just as a reminder, I am streaming new videos most Wednesdays. Let me know what you want to see me play next on Wednesdays after this list is done. You can subscribe to the channel and click notify to know whenever a new video comes out. Currently I am playing through Legendary Kingdoms on Monday and then my wife and I are playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on Fridays. So join us for those videos.

And thank you for checking out the video and articles. Let me know what your favorite game from this chunk of 10 is and which one you would love to get played.

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Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition – Top 10

10. Aeon’s End

• Published by Indie Boards & Cards in 2016
• Defend the town of Gravehold against a Nemesis and their minions by slinging spells around

To kick off the Top 10, let’s talk about one that has been in my Top 10 for a while and one that I have basically everything for. I’m guessing I’m missing a few promo cards, but Aeon’s End is one of my favorite deck building games.

This is a deck building game, tower defense, and boss battler all wrapped into one. The name of the game in this one is variety. There are other elements I like too, but variety is huge. Each mage is unique, each nemesis is unique and the market of cards that you create is unique. Everything about the game can be mixed and matched and give endless replayability. I also like that this is a cooperative game.

And, finally, I like this game best as a solo or two player. I know that it can play more, but with the turn system, it works better at lower counts. You draw to see whose turn it is. In the deck there are two nemesis cards, and one per player at four players, or two at two players. So you get these fun moments where it swings from the players getting four turns in a row to the nemesis getting three and now things look dangerous. It makes the game feel more exciting, it just works best at two players though because of that.

Buy Aeon’s End

9. Roll Player Adventures

• Published by Thunderworks Games in 2021
• Explore the lands, beat monsters and complete skill challenges in a world that remembers what you did

Now to a really big game we have Roll Player Adventures. They took the Roll Player system, tweaked it and gave us a story and adventure game. And I think that it works really well as a game, clearly, as it’s my #9. Though, like Aeon’s End, I’ll give a caveat that difficulty changes based on player count, which, isn’t a bad thing, but it something worth noting.

In this game you play through chapters of an adventure. To do that you are fighting monsters, doing skill checks, and reading story. Whenever it’s a right or a skill check you are spending cards and resources, your health, in different stats to try and complete a dice puzzle. You need to get dice of certain colors and certain numbers into specific locations. But, the game is smart and it limits you in how much you can do that, and it is what they try and use to scale, but like I said, I think that it’s easier with more.

The story is also a lot of fun. There are games on my list that have a bigger and darker story. And I like dark stories, dark fantasy can be a lot of fun, but it’s also fun to have stories that are maybe a bit sillier at times. And, I will say, they manage to create a story where it feels like it matters and continues along with the choices that you make.

Buy Roll Player Adventures

8. Dice Throne

• Published by Dice Throne Inc. in 2018
• Fight in a Mortal Combat style tournament by chucking dice and leveling up attacks

My #8 is “Battle Yahtzee”. By that, I mean that it is Dice Throne. This is a game that is played either as a head to head battle or as king of the hill. You get a hero, or character, that you play as. And they have specific abilities that you can activate by rolling dice Yahtzee style. By that I mean you get three roles, you keep some dice each time, and you see what you get at the end.

But Dice Throne is more than just a lucky game. Yes, there is an element of luck with rolling the dice. But the game often comes down to how well you can mitigate that luck. If you manage to get off your ultimate attack, well there isn’t much your opponent can do, of course that does mean that you roll all sixes. That’s very unlikely to just happen. But with cards and your combat points you spend to play them, you are able to manipulate dice, turn them to different sides, or get rerolls to try and land those attacks.

Plus the game offers a ton of variety. The first set is more standard fantasy. But then you get into other characters like a Tactician or an Artificer who do different things. And I own the Marvel set and am waiting on the Marvel X-Men set to come as well. You pick your favorites to get, or if you’re like me, you get them all.

Buy Dice Throne

7. Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Suns

• Published by SunTzuGames in 2025
• Change the galaxy with a unlikely group of heroes in an epic sci-fi adventure

Now for a game that isn’t even out yet. Why do I have it on the list, because I have in my collection a prototype of the game. And I’ve even played it on Malts and Meeples. The game is basically set, through there are elements of the game that will change, but that’s mainly around components not around actual game play.

I love Rogue Angels. You know that by now because it’s on every list of Crowdfunding game that I’m waiting for. And yes, it will be again at the end of this year, most likely. This is another story, adventure, and combat game. And I really enjoy the story in it. I like having some campaign games that aren’t just another fantasy setting, and Rogue Angels gives you a good sci-fi setting. And I love how the combat, or mission element of the game works.

I want to say that this isn’t a game where every scenario is a go and beat someone up. No, this is a game where you might want to dive into combat. Or you might want to sneak through, and it all depends on the scenario. I love that for a game because I don’t always want to beat up the bad guys. And with how the game activates the bad guys, well, getting rid of the wrong bad guys at the wrong time just means you’ll be dealing with the other ones all the time.

Late Pledge Rogue Angels

6. Floriferous

• Published by Pencil First Games in 2021
• Create the best scoring group of flowers in this drafting game

Now we have the smallest game in my Top 10 list. But Floriferous was there last year and it is staying there again this year because I love what the game does. I enjoy a good drafting game, and I think that drafting makes sense in a lot of different games. But how Floriferous does it works for me because it combines drafting with building out your own scoring.

And the drafting itself is clever. You either draft a flower or you draft a scoring card from a column. The scoring cards are always at the bottom of the column, though, which matters for drafting the next column. Because the turn order for that next column is determined by the previous column you drafted from, aka, the higher you are up in the column the sooner you draft again. So yes, you need scoring cards, but that means you draft later next time.

I also want to call out drafting the scoring. I like it when a game does that because it offers a great decision point. When I draft, I might want that scoring card, but if you don’t have enough flowers, it won’t do much for me. And on the flip side, if I draft too many flowers I’m not going to be scoring anything.

Buy Floriferous

5. Slay the Spire

• Published by Contention Games in 2024
• Climb the spire, fight monsters and can you defeat them all in this cooperative deck building game

Next up is a new one to the list and it’s debuting all the way up at #5. Now it’s not the last new one to the list, there is one higher, though just barely higher. Slay the Spire is a video game that I love to play. In fact I’ve been on a kick of playing it recently. It’s a rogue like deck building game where you climb a tower.

The board game is the exact same thing. But it takes a solo video game experience and makes it multiplayer. In fact, while the solo is fun, I think that it’s even better two player or two handed. And I want to play it with more. Because you figure out a strategy of who wants to attack which enemies. Because each player has their own enemies that will attack them, but you can attack the other person’s enemies. So you might have more defense and handle it as well.

With all of that said, the game does change one thing. How some things activate is changed, so you’re not needing to keep track of “every seven turns” or “every three times you shuffle” but it makes it easy to keep track of. And they scale down everything. I like that because I don’t want to be keeping track of six enemies with 50 health each. So while the math is very much the same, the numbers are just lower.

Buy Slay the Spire

4. The 7th Citadel

• Published by Serious Poulp Games in 2024
• The Citadels are in ruins. How can you rebuild society and deal with the threats?

The other new to the list game and debuting at #4 is The 7th Citadel. I should have put it at #7 just to make it a bit more fitting. But I love this game and you can see me playing it for some sessions on Malts and Meeples YouTube.

This is an adventure game. These Citadels have fallen and now in a dangerous and post apocalyptic feeling world, though uniquely so, you need to survive. You play as leaders of a settlement has has formed out of the 7th Citadel. And now you need to deal with some threat that is coming.

The main mechanism is the same as The 7th Continent. You spend cards to try and complete checks, fight monsters, and deal with challenges. And the cards are going to be your life. Plus you are flipping over cards and exploring areas of the map and dealing with encounters that happen. But the game gives you more direction than the 7th Continent does as the threat gives you missions to go on as you build up your settlement for whatever that coming threat might be.

Late Pledge The 7th Citadel

3. Stars of Akarios

• Published by OOMM/Open Owl Studios in 2022
• Explore space, fight battles, and unravel the story of why you were attacked

This is the one that launched into the Top 10 last year and it’s sticking around. I love this game, clearly, but it’s another one of those big campaign games, and it’s one that’s set in space. But this game feels different than so many others. I don’t know why, but it gives me the feeling of stories like Ender’s Game and Space Dandy all wrapped into one with obvious nods to other sci-fi stories as well.

I really enjoy how they created a game that is split into three different element. The one, space exploration, is a bit weaker. There is some randomness to it, and I feel like I never found anything major on it. But I love the other two element. You get to have a 7th Citadel/7th Continent style exploration on planets. But instead of playing cards for checks you roll dice. And it’s a really fun time, but the biggest part of the game is space combat.

And I wasn’t sure how much I’d love the space combat. But I really enjoy it, it’s this great tactical puzzle as you use special abilities that you can only use so much. And then you spend dice to maneuver and you need to figure out how to even get into range to shoot the enemy and ideally in a flanking position. I love sitting there looking at the dice and trying to figure out how to make it work.

Late Pledge Stars of Akarios

2. Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon

• Published by Awaken Realms in 2019
• The lands are returning to Wyrdness, you’ve been sent out to help Avalon survive, if you can

Now or one of a few campaign games that I’ve completed, at #2 we have Tainted Grail. And this is the base game and the two expansion campaigns. I love them all. I need to play Kings of Ruin as well, but I’m not sure when I’ll get to that because of, well, my #1 on the list.

But this game, let’s start off with the highest praise, has the best writing of any board game I’ve ever played. The story that it tells is amazing and for that reason we did play in story mode to be able to experience as much of that story as possible. I’ll talk about why in a little bit. This is a grim dark game, but it manages not to dwell on the darkness to the point where it’s overbearing but creates this amazing fantastical and dangerous world to deal with.

And let’s talk about that story mode and why we played that way. One of the criticisms of the game is that it’s too hard. There is too much grind and too much survival. That is what the game was advertised as, so why people thought it was bad, and not just not for me, when they got what they knew they were going to get, I don’t know. But story mode makes it easier, but not too easy. So you do need to engage with that survival aspect of the game, but you can delve into the story more so. If you find the game, get it, and I do recommend playing on story mode.

Buy Tainted Grail

1. Gloomhaven/Frosthaven

• Published by Cephalofair Games in 2022
• Battle monsters, explore lands, and build up the town in this epic campaign

Finally the number one stays the same. The #1 on the list is really Frosthaven, Gloomhaven and Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. I don’t think it’s fair for them to be separate on the list. While Frosthaven does build on Gloomhaven and add in some elements like the town management, the core loop of the game is the same. I do think the added element of the town management would push it even a little bit higher than Gloomhaven for me though.

But the main part of the game is going into scenarios and trying to complete their objectives. This almost always includes killing some bad guys, and often times the win condition is kill all the enemies. Though in Frosthaven that is less often, though still the most common scenario goal.

The element that is the best about the game is the characters though. I love how every character is unique. And from the cards that you get to play, it feels that way. Sometimes you want to be that tanking character, or a fast damage dealer, or a support or healer character. And the games offer all of those.

And then the card play where you might want to go fast, so you can get in and out dealing damage quickly, or maybe you want to go slow to draw the enemies towards you, there is a lot of great strategy. I love picking cards, too, where I might plan to use the bottom and top halves in one way but then give myself the flexibility to change it. Needless to say, I love my #1 game.

Buy Frosthaven

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 be my 200 through 101 next week. After that I’m going to do some videos looking back on 2024. So expect to see my Top 10 Games of 2024 and probably Top 10 crowdfunding games I backed in 2024 as well.
• 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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And for other ideas check out the previous lists.

Two Player Games
Campaign Games
Solo Games
Party Games
Welcoming Games
Medium Weight Games

Thematic Games

ISS Vanguard

Now, I said that all my thematic games weren’t going to be campaign games. But I’m starting off with one of them that I’ve played some on Malts and Meeples YouTube. This is a big space adventure and exploration game. Let’s get you intrigued, possibly, by the pitch.

A message was decoded on Earth that gave us the coordinates to what looked like an empty spot out in space. The ISS Vanguard was sent out there to figure out why those coordinates were important. When they got there, they realized that wasn’t the case, there was something out there that was hidden away.

In ISS Vanguard you play as the crew of the ship exploring planets and dealing with maintaining morale and researching and improving your technologies. The game really has this interesting divide between exploring the planets which is one type of game play. And managing the ship which is another type of game play. But Awaken Realms did a great job of managing to make both of them feel important and thematic as you play.

Dungeon Kart

Next up is a racing game. Racing games often aren’t the most thematic games. But Dungeon Kart for me is a great Mario Kart style of racing game that works. It is quick, you get spells to sling around, and it feels like you are playing Mario Kart on the table top.

Each player is one of the characters from the Boss Monster world that Brotherwise has created. And they are driving around in a kart trying to get around the track the fastest. But each character has their own special things that they can do. And each vehicle has their own special ways of handling. I forget how much overlap or how static that is. But you also, at the end of each round, check to see who is where, and the further back you are, the more spells and things you get to cast and try and cast up. I love that catch-up mechanism in the game, because it makes it feel like no one is ever out of it.

Super-Skill Pinball 4-Cade

Now for the smallest of the thematic games on the list. This is a roll and write game that is pinball. You each get a board, a ball, and dice get rolled. Depending on the numbers on the dice, that determines where the ball is going to go. It always is going to move down, with a few exceptions, just like a pinball table. Then you use your flippers, launch it back up, and keep on going.

The game is all about how well you can use the dice. Two are rolled and you just use one so you generally have options. But if you need to, they offer thematic options like nudging the table. Of course, you nudge too hard, and there is a chance that you get a tilt. And the bumpers, generally three in the middle of a table, the ball can rattle around in there without needing to drop down.

They also sell a lot of options for the game. There is the base game, which I have. But there is an expansion that adds more tables. There is a Star Trek version or maybe DC is more your thing, or you want to play it at Christmas, you can buy Christmas pinball tables. You decide what makes the most sense, or intrigues you the most.

Roll Player Adventures

Now we’re onto another campaign game. The final one for the thematic games is also kind of a campaign game, but I’ll get to that. I love Roll Player Adventures, though, and it has a fun story to it. Roll Player is a thematic game about making a D&D character. Well, they took what they made in that game and created a whole world around it that you can play in Roll Player Adventures.

In this game, it’s a shorter campaign game than some. You play through stories with a map, move around that map, but the game is mainly built around dice placement and dice manipulation. You build up a hand of cards for your character, and then use those cards to get dice onto skill checks and or for fighting monsters. But you need specific color dice to do that, so you need to spend your attributes to pick the dice to get the right colors. Or maybe you just risk it and draw from the bag. There is this great balancing of resource management in the game.

I really enjoy this game. I like the game play a lot, and the story is also great. And I appreciate that it’s not that long a campaign. The game is probably best at 3 players. At 1 or 2 it is going to be harder. My play was a 4 player game, and it became a bit easy. So know that, but if you are up for a challenge at lower players or just want to enjoy the story, grab this fun, big game.

Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game

Finally for thematic games, I want to share Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game. This is the kind of a campaign game and kind of not game. Mainly because the core box is a campaign. It’s five cases that are tied closely together that tell a really good story. But they also sell single castes or a box of cases that don’t all link together.

In this game you play as detectives trying to solve cases, no surprise there. But it is more than just that. You investigate different locations, meet up with people to question them, and you even gather DNA samples. This is a very in-depth detective game. I take so many notes when I play, over the five cases in the base box, I think I ended up with 12-15 pages of notes. And you use a computer to query against the system to see if you find DNA matches, look up details from old cases, run finger prints. And you even, once in a while, look up things online to gain historical context to what is being talked about.

Now, if you want to try different versions of this you can as well. Maybe crime isn’t your thing, no big deal. You buy the Batman set, or there is Dune, or 1980’s, or other one off cases that you play as well. This is just one of the best, if not the best thematic deduction game that I’ve played.

Final Thoughts

I love so many thematic games. I even now see a few more that I could have and should have mentioned. Things like Marvel Champions is a great thematic Marvel game. Rock Hard 1977 let’s you live out your rockstar dreams. And of course I own a lot more campaign games like Stars of Akarios, The 7th Citadel, and more that I want to talk about here as well.

What are your favorite thematic games? And which one would you want to add to your holiday list or gift to someone?

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Top 5 Adventure Games

5. The 7th Citadel

A new one to the list, and yes, I do plan to get back to streaming this. I am loving the adventure nature of The 7th Citadel. The game play is a ton of fun and it’s simple. Plus, one of the things I look for in a campaign game is an enjoyable story. And I think that the different threats do offer solid stories to go with the simple actions and game play. You can watch the videos and see why I like The 7th Citadel so much as an adventure game.

But let’s talk about the simplicity of the actions as well. Everything is based around getting stars. And you just need to figure out how much you want to push to get a star. If you spend a lot of cards, that is shortening what you can do later in the game. And as you get through cards, you spend health to get them back, which means that monster battles are trickier as well. But it is all done through drawing cards and seeing what stars you get on them.

4. Roll Player Adventures

Next up we have Roll Player Adventures. This is one that I had an amazing time playing through it’s whole campaign. Another one where the mechanisms aren’t that complex and the story is great to go with it. I think it is the story that really makes it shine. Though, I will say that the game is probably best as a three player game where there is enough difficulty to start, but it won’t become too easy towards the end. Also, it sounds like the updated rules with Gulpax’s Secret expansion help with that.

The main mechanisms are around dice placement. The original Roll Player game is about creating a D&D character, or an RPG character. This takes some of those mechanisms about matching up dice and optimizing placement to defeat monsters and make skill checks. Combine that with hand management as you try and complete all of those things, it works really well as a not too complex game.

3. Sleeping Gods

Then we have Sleeping Gods. This is another one that I played on Malts and Meeples. So I’ll drop that video below. But this one I think is a bit more intimidating of a game. Though, the complexity is still not all that high in the game. You are lost in another world and you need to try and find your way back to Earth by finding these totems. The trickier bit, I think, is that you play all the characters, or less that you play all the characters more that there is a single action pool. So it’s intimidating to try and keep track of what everyone has for abilities.

This one, though has one of the most unique stories to it. It is not a game where the story comes along linearly. It is an open world sandbox style game. If you want to go west, you go west or if you want to east, you go east. But that is up for the players to decide because the game doesn’t care. You find totems and prompts and that points you in direction. You see keywords and when you stumble across that keyword later, you know where to head back to. It is an amazingly ambitious project that works really well.

2. Stars of Akarios

Next up yet another one that I streamed on Malts and Meeples YouTube channel. This one is Stars of Akarios, so we’re going from fantasy to sci-fi. This is a massive and epic game, and one that gives you a ton of adventure while being more tactical than some of the others. But the story is great, and while I get the feeling of a lot of different sci-fi tropes, I think that it handles them all well to make a massive experience.

One of the things that I love about the game is three parts of the game. Now, one of them is a weaker link. Flying through space to get from story to story or planet to planet, less exciting. But I love the planetary exploration. I get the feel of The 7th Citadel with it. But then you get this whole tactical space combat.

And it is amazing, it’s all about managing your resources and positioning yourself for big hits on the enemy. Or it might not even be about taking out an enemy but instead protecting one of your ships. So there is great variety to the game, and it even has a mission where you can side with no one, go hide in a corner and let them duke it out.

1. Tainted Grail

Finally we come down to Tainted Grail. This is my #2 game of all time, at least in my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition. We will have to see where it lands this upcoming year. But this game, I think, is going to be the one that is hardest for some people to love. But for me, it is an amazing time. And so much of that is because it is the best story that I’ve ever read in a game. The narrative is so deep and it just works.

The downside is that it is more complex than some other games. This is not just an adventure game, but Awaken Realms always sold it as a survival game as well. Now you can play on story mode and that takes that survival down a fair amount. But that doesn’t mean that the game is easy. It just means that some of the resource collection elements are simpler. There is still going to be a lot of combat, especially early campaign where you just look at them and decide to run away.

But with all that said, this game is amazing. The story easily pushes it over the hump for me to my #1 adventure game. And I like the combat and diplomacy mechanisms. They do break up what you do in the game, but I really enjoy that puzzle, working together, and optimizing that you can do.

Final Thoughts

What are some of your favorite adventure games? Let me know which ones they are down int he comment section below. I own a number, Solomon Kane, Isofarian Guard, SHEOL, Agemonia, Divinus, Nova Aetas Renaissance and more that I need to play. Adventure Games are like my dungeon crawlers and boss battlers, it’s hard to get to them all because they take up space and time.

Are there any of the adventure games on the list that you want to try?

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Stonespine Architects

I won’t do a full review of this game. And sorry about the thumbnail for the game. I blame YouTube on this one as the thumbnail in YouTube’s own studio program isn’t that. Or start screen I should say. But let’s talk a bit about the game and how it works, just highlighting some of what I like about solo play.

Firstly, I like that the game isn’t massively different. Jael, when shopping, does get to do everything at once. That’s the main difference that I see from playing with actual people. Though, I’ll be testing that out more today. But what I’m doing and how I’m going about it, that doesn’t change a ton. In fact, I think it probably simulates game play at a higher player count better than two players, even though there are only two players, kind of.

I also am a big fan of drafting. I brought it up last night on the stream, but the game is going to be fast two more players. The stream was two games in under and hour. Stonespine Architects is going to play at any player count. I do something at the same time that you do something, which I love in a game. Drafting is one of the best mechanisms for that because it offers everyone hands of cards to play with immediately.

Finally, I like the variable scoring in the game. My three bonuses are different than yours. That means that you and I compete, but not as directly over some things. And you saw that I almost always spent all my money. If I know that we both want the most traps on a path, I might not against another player. But with the solo player, it is something I can better plan around.

Upcoming Streams

On Monday I play small solo game plays. The schedule is, right now, going to look like gaming every other Monday. A chance to see people in person came up for Monday and as much as I like streaming, it’s good to socialize as well. And I might do more deck construction with Star Wars Unlimited on Mondays as well or pack openings.

On Wednesdays, I play solo campaign games. I plan on playing a campaign game coming up. Right now I’m torn between two games. Well, more than that if you watched through the end of the video. The next game is the one that I just unboxed, 7th Citadel. So I plan to start playing it next week or at least do character building and then dive into the game.

And if you want to know when I go live, the best way is to subscribe. When you subscribe, click that notification bell and you’ll get an alert whenever I’m going to go live. Follow the link – here – to subscribe.

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Catch up on my Top 100 Games (of all Time) 2023 Edition:

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) 2023 Edition – 20 through 11

20. Hanamikoji

The list, this time, starts off with a two player only game and my favorite truly two player only game. Hanamikoji is an amazing game of trying to win the favor of Geisha by giving them gifts. There are seven Geisha and each of them has a point value and equal number of gifts assigned to them. If you win the favor, give the most gifts, to four of them or eleven points, you win.

But where the game is amazing is how you hand out the gifts. Both players have four actions that they can do. And a round to see who has favor ends when both players have done all their actions. But the actions are what make the game shine.

Two of the actions are close to each other. One is to put a card face down to save it for the end of the round to give as a gift. The other is play two face down that won’t be used. Then the final two actions interact with your opponent. One is to play three cards face up and they pick one to put in front of a Geisha on their side and you get the other two. The final one is to create two groups of two cards and your opponent picks one.

Those choices are tough and I love that about the game. I even use what I play out as sometimes a way to let me opponent help me know what way to do. Or to gather information. Highly recommend this as a quick two player game.

Buy Hanamikoji

19. Cartographers

Next up is my second highest roll and write style game, and you’ll see the highest very soon. But Cartographers is a game about making maps and building it out in a way that scores you the most points. It’s odd, in theme, because you’d think you’d want all the maps to be identical, nope, not really.

But the game does two things that I really like. The first being that it has monsters, and why are monsters great, you might ask? Well, monsters are great because they are a negative to what you are doing. But it isn’t a negative that you control, it’s a negative that someone else plays on y our board. And I like that player interaction that often doesn’t exist in roll and write games. In Cartographers you got it because I want to add a monster that will mess you up.

Then the other thing is how Cartographers does the scoring. Scoring is done via seasons and each season scores two of the four areas. This isn’t that unique to Cartographers, but it is a fun twist to the game. It is also unique to roll and write games, at least the ones that I’ve come across. So in spring I score, let’s call them, A and B. Well, A isn’t going to come back around until winter when I score D and A. So there is a balance about which goals you are going for. And after summertime, B isn’t going to be scored again.

Buy Cartographers

18. Railroad Ink Challenge

And let’s go onto the top roll and write style game for me, Railroad Ink, though in particular, Railroad Ink Challenge. I love this game, and the app definitely helps, though I haven’t played it in a while. Railroad Ink is primarily about connecting railroad and road points around the edge of the board.

Railroad Ink Challenge builds upon that with a few different things. There are now stations where if you build a connection that connects roads and trains, which is a certain side of the dice, there, you get more points. And there are special sides of dice that you can use that often have those stations. Plus you get more points for traveling through the middle. And there are spots that when you cover them give you other bonuses as well. I like those additions to the game.

The one that I really like for the game, though, is the new challenge cards. The challenge cards offer different objectives on rounds three through five, that you can score. Now, you are able to score them later, but if you do that, they are worth fewer points. So it is a push to get those scores, but not too much of one to mess up your connections and longest routes because those are going to give you the most points.

Buy Railroad Ink Challenge

17. Xenoshyft

Now we’re onto the first of several games with deck building that make it towards the top of my list. I really like deck building and Xenoshyft is some of the best cooperative deck building out there. I love it for that, and for the theme which feels a whole lot like Starship Troopers as you’re fighting off wave after wave of bugs.

But let’s talk about what I really like about this deck building. There are a number of things that I cover in the video, but I’ll just hit the highlights. The first being that every turn you get money. So there is no hand where you’re not going to be able to buy a card. You will always be able to add a card, which is great because another thing I like, the cards you buy go to your hand, not into a discard for future rounds.

The other element that I really like is the amount of cooperation in the game. As you play and deal with the waves, you might end up with a hand with too many weapons or not enough troops. Well, someone can give you a troop if they have extra or to balance out the defenses better. You can pass off a weapon to someone else. They change decks they are in now. And there are consumables. I can use a consumable item, it stays in my deck, on the lane that you’re defending from the bugs just as easily as mine. So it’s a puzzle that all players work together on to solves very cooperatively.

Buy Xenoshyft

16. First Rat

Now we’re onto a game, two in row actually, that my first experience was at Gen Con in 2022. First Rat was one of the hottest games that year, and I got to play it, demo it, the very last day there. Since then it is one that has hit the table more times because of the fun theme and because it’s a thinky game, but it’s easy to play. For me, a game that makes me think but isn’t too complex to play is what I really like.

In First Rat you are rats who are trying to build rocket ships to make it to the moon, because the moon is made of cheese, obviously. To do that you need to collect resources, like baking soda, vinegar (propulsion), coffee can (fuselage), or a calculator (navigation) to build parts of the rocket. But there is more than just that going on because you are going up a track that only moves forward.

So you need to balance the speed that you go as well as pushing up other things, like lights. If you light an area that now offers doubles the resources for you. And you don’t just have one rat that goes up, you have multiple. Plus how the rats move is fun. One rat is able to move farther on a turn, but if you move two and land on the same color with both, you need to in fact, you get resources for both. It’s a fun twist and as you unlock more rats that is fun as well to figure out your engine for that game.

Buy First Rat

15. Ready Set Bet

Now the other game from Gen Con 2022 is Ready Set Bet. Ready Set Bet is not a game that immediately grabbed my attention. It’s a real time horse racing and betting game. That sounds like chaos, and in all fairness, there is a bit of chaos going on. But it is so much fun.

The game is pretty simple, one person (or an app) is calling the race. Rolling dice and moving the horses along the track. Everyone else is throwing down bets on horses to win, or get 2nd or 3rd. Plus there are other bets, that you can make. Those are going to be something like, if the 5 and 9 beat the 7 horse. Because rolling two D6, 7 is the most likely number to come up.

So how does the 7 not win the vast majority of the time? Well, because there are special rules for how horses move. All horses will move one if their number is rolled. But the less likely the number is to be rolled, the further the horse moves, if the same number is rolled twice in a row. So that can help one of those edge horses rocket up into the lead just because their number was rolled a couple of times.

I love Ready Set Bet because of that catch-up mechanism of balancing mechanism. The game is just a blast to play. And almost always a race or two throughout the game ends up with a late lead change and stand-up moments as players really want a horse to finish and with a couple of rolls they might be able to, as long as another number doesn’t come up.

Buy Ready Set Bet

14. Sleeping Gods

Now we go to a run of three bigger story driven games. The first being Sleeping Gods, and soon I’ll have Sleeping Gods: Distant Skies to add to the list as well. But this is an open world adventure and exploration game from Red Raven Games. In Sleeping Gods you can go anywhere, but you’re trying to find totems so you can get back to the real world instead of this one you blew into during a storm.

You play as the crew of the Manticore, or really as the Manticore itself. You travel around and then taking the crew to shore or other locations you interact with story. And Ryan Laukat and everyone involved did an amazing job with the story. You get to experience a chunk of it, but not too much so it’s replayable. And the story is not in any order, but the story all works because it’s exploring the world and there are a few spots where it pauses with big events no matter what.

I also like the game system. I didn’t talk about it too much in last nights video, but it is great. It’s simple in what you’re doing, spending icons, basically, a boost roles. Or some characters have icons built into them that you can use. And the combat mechanism is a bit odd, but I really enjoyed it as you try and figure out how to cover up damage spots on a monster.

Buy Sleeping Gods

13. ISS Vanguard

Now another one of the story games and another one that I played on Malts and Meeples. ISS Vanguard is an epic experience of a game. I don’t know, yet, if I can call it an adventure, but the experience of the game is amazing. Humanity has decoded coordinates hidden in human DNA for someone in the stars. So a crew has been put together to go out there, what will they find?

That’s the premise for the game and everything. Now the crew of the ISS Vanguard find themselves at those coordinates, and what they find is not what they expected. So you get to explore planets and find out what is really going on. And then you spend time maintaining and improving the ship, finding and researching new technologies and breakthroughs. Plus memorializing crew who have died and healing the injured.

I love that about this game. It offers two parts, planet and ship, and both are equally as important. When they announced the ship part, I thought it might be too much just maintenance. But there is story, there is progression and there are real decisions to be made. So I love both parts, in some ways, I almost prefer the ship part because it’s so interesting and smooth to play.

Buy ISS Vanguard

12. Roll Player Adventures

Now another campaign game, though this one shorter than ISS Vanguard. Roll Player Adventures is 11 chapters, I believe. And there is a side quest that you can do. But set in the world of Roll Player, a character creation game, and Lock-up from Thunderworks Games, this is the big adventure that you can take those characters you created or pre-generated ones on an adventure.

This game has a lot of story to it and choose your own adventure elements. But each map you play, each scenario you play, is going to continue that story. The main mechanism in the game is completing challenges or defeating monsters by dice placement and manipulation. And that is a fun element of the game. I think it’s a bit easier with more players though, so just note that.

I also like how you have three tracks in the game. That shows how much or little favor you have with a group. That is one way where the game is going to be vary variable. And I like it for the game because some elements of the map and how you interact are going to stay the same. But as your favor changes that’ll open up or close off some options to you.

Buy Roll Player Adventures

11. Aeon’s End

Finally we end with another deck building game, this one is also cooperative, and it is Aeon’s End. Aeon’s End is a game of defending the town of Gravehold from a nemesis that is coming through. Can the breach mages stand against it or will the nemesis and it’s minions overwhelm?

This is all of Aeon’s End stuff. I have played it on Malts and Meeples as well. So I’ll drop in the video below. But I love this game for it’s cooperative play and for it’s unique turn order. However, I think the turn order probably means it should be a two handed solo game, or a two player game. You put six cards, two for each character and two for the nemesis into pile at two players. Then that is shuffled and you draw your turn order randomly. Once all six are drawn, you shuffle it up again. I love that.

I also love how much the game offers for you to do with your money. You might want to buy more spells and more powerful spells to hit the nemesis or their minions. Or you might have a special power that you want to power up. But you also need to think about spending the money (gems) to open up more breaches. Because you are only able to prepare and cast spells for the numbers of breaches that you have. It’s a good system where you want to do everything but probably can’t quite, realistically.

Buy Aeon’s End

Upcoming Streams

Let’s run through the stream structure like I normally do. You might already know the schedule but in case you don’t. Wednesday at 8 PM Central I stream either a campaign game, or with this time of year it’s my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition. And join me next Wednesday for the Top 10. It goes so fast, and now I have so many games that I want to play.

Then on Monday I stream at 9 PM Central time. It’s generally a solo game. Though I’ll also do pack openings for things But normally it’s a solo game and a one off for the game like a roll and write, or sometimes a game like Under Falling Skies or For Northwood, which was on the list today.

But the best way, if you want to know when I go live or a new video goes up (it’s basically always live), please consider subscribing. You can do that here. And click that notification bell on the channel and you’ll always know when I go live.

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Top 3 Memorable Games

3. Gloomhaven Days

You might wonder why this is lower on the list, but this is mainly because the list isn’t in any order. Also because we did this a few times. When we were playing through Gloomhaven we knew how long it would take us, the game has a lot. So we set aside a few Saturdays or Sundays to play Gloomhaven. It is harder now with Frosthaven, two of us have kids. Multiple times we sat down and played three or four scenarios of Gloomhaven on a Saturday.

I remember those times because I like just having a day of gaming. And to play with a game the whole time is just great. I like days of gaming with a lot of different games. Gen Con is the main spot for that, but I’ve hosted days like that as well. But to pick one game, like Gloomhaven and have the group, drink beer, I think we’d order in pizza for dinner and just play the whole day is great. And it is one of those experiences where I know I can recreate it, but it is rarer or harder to do now.

2. Pandemic Legacy Season 1

I like legacy and campaign games. Oddly enough, I think everything on the list will be one or the other of those. But one is just a one off play. But Pandemic Legacy was a mind blowing gaming event. Or less of an event, but more a year of gaming. We got together once a month or so, and we’d play Pandemic Legacy. We would have a meal, sometimes, and play through the month or maybe a bit ahead if we wanted to get in two plays.

But it was great because it was the first time of having a group game like that. Also, when you play a legacy game for the first time, I think, unless you dislike the game, there is something special about it. I play as a character, I can die, and there is story and changes unfolding in Pandemic Legacy, that is great. And yes, it is hard to destroy the cards at first. But we got into it so we were in the experience. And, I think, it’s one of the first times where gaming was such an event and an anticipation with it. Yes, I did game nights before, but Pandemic Legacy felt different.

1. Roll Player Adventures at Gen Con

This one, I’m not sure I’d put it to the top of my list but it was one of the coolest events at Gen Con. And you’ll notice the only Gen Con related event. I thought about putting some other ones down on the list. But Roll Player Adventures stands out to me because I got to play it as a prototype. And I was there with a friend playing it with two other people. So it was a great group for it as well.

But it started off memorable when the designer/developer who was running the demo asks if we want to play the first or second scenario. If was just my friend and myself and we said second. Then we proceeded to take a stab at how well we did on the first scenario and picked all the options that were us doing it poorly.

So it was just a funny start, and then as the group dynamics were set-up throughout the game, we had a great time. And I started messing around with my character, not in a game breaking way but in a role playing way, to be the unofficial leader of the group, in their mind. It was just a blast and a silly and fun experience that playing through the whole game lived up to.

Final Thoughts

I think I could find more games that are great as I go. Playing Lords of Hellas for the first time. Starting up TIME Stories and that experience of just a different type of game. The Ice Cool Tournament at Gen Con, that maybe should have made the list. Or the games of Metal Gear Solid at CMON Expo really recently.

To a lot of other ones where it might be less about the game, but getting together with the Man vs Meeple crew twice at Gen Con and both times having the AC not working at the restaurant (and then we did game as well). And the first year I got to play Ready Set Bet for the first time and just falling in love with that game.

Or all the times playing Magic the Gathering with a group from work. We’d get together in the evenings, most of us were single and most without kids. And then playing during lunch as well, which morphed into lunch board games as well. That is when and why I got into Magic the Gathering. So many different experiences.

What are some of your best games and gaming experiences? It might even be for a mediocre game, but is the situation is right, that can still be a memorable gaming experience.

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Four Incoming Crowdfunding Games

Let’s go from little to biggest. The little ones, no issue fitting on the shelf, the biggest one, well, I’ll find a spot for it.

Fork

FORK is a little trick taking game, I believe, if I remember correctly, it stands for Fox, Owl, Rabbit, Kale. And that determines who wins the trick. Plus there is a terrain type, so if I have a creature, let’s say Owl, or the matching terrain type I beat one that isn’t.

It looks like a pretty simple trick taking game, but there was a twist that intrigued me, and more of a twist than just being the declared terrain type that sets up the trump suit. If I remember correctly, you might be able to block someone taking something if you played a Fox when they played a Fox. The foxes chased each other away or something like that I feel was the twist. I’ll have to see when it comes in.

Fliptown

Fliptown is going to be a roll and write (or flip and write) game where you are in an old west setting. The aesthetics of this one drew me in, especially because you determine what you do with playing cards. And each round three playing cards are flipped out. One of the cards, you choose, determine which of the boards you are on. Another the action you take, and the third the poker hand you’re building.

I like this idea of needing to think about these three areas. It adds in a bit of complexity to the game. And while it offers you more choices than Welcome To… does, at least with how you divide card actions, it offers a lot of choice like Welcome To… And I like the look of that in the game. Some roll and write games provide good choice, others, a bit less so.

Roll Player Adventures – Gulpax’s Secret

Now the one crowdfunding game on the list that is here already. A Roll Player Adventures expansion. If we hadn’t just started Vampire the Masquerade Chapters, I might be going back to this right away. But this is a whole new campaign for Roll Player Adventures with an updated rulebook. Though, compared to some games, I haven’t heard that this is a massive change to the rulebook, probably clarifying some.

This campaign takes place prior to the events of the main Roll Player Adventures. So that is always a bit of a question mark to me. How will it make you feel like you have choice and agency. It isn’t possible to do anything that’d affect the main game, unless they built that into it and you’d want to then replay the main game. So I hope that they do a good job of making it feel meaningful, but not like it’s undone what we’ve already done.

Marvel Zombies

Finally the monster among the group, zombies being the main monster in this game. Though from the zombies perspective the humans are monsters. This is a game that I got to play twice at CMON Expo and it was a great game both times. And I also got to win one time and then lose another time, so it wasn’t just an easy game.

I really like playing as the zombies and needing to take out bystanders and hordes of SHIELD agents who are trying to mess you up. And each superhero zombie has their own unique powers as well which I thought was fun. The progression of the game is great as well. It makes me wish that I’d backed it at the level with the giant Galactus.

But I also am glad that I didn’t. I got basically everything else except Galactus. I think there is a special character pack that I didn’t get. It was some specific artist and I thought, that looks fine but I don’t need it at that price. Even with not getting those things, it’s still coming in two boxes, and I mean shipping boxes. And those boxes will not be small, in fact they will be quite huge, so I need to find a good chunk of space.

Too Many Games, No Enough Space

Each of these games, I am excited to have come in. Some of them are going to be easier to get to the table than others. Marvel Zombies is going to be one of them that is harder. Or at least it is going to be harder to get all the content of that to the table just because there is so much content for it. And Gulpax’s Secret is going to be harder as well as a campaign game.

But FORK and Fliptown I hope to get to the table soon. And I realized that another game is getting close. It isn’t shipping yet, but Twenty Strong from Chip Theory Games just asked me to confirm my address. Since that happened, that is getting close as well. Maybe should have been a list of five games.

Which is the one that you’d want to play first?

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What Caught my Eye with Rogue Angels

So let’s talk about the reasons why I am backing this game. It’s another big campaign game, this time set in space, and I already own two games like that, ISS Vanguard and Stars of Akarios. What is it that makes me want to add Rogue Angels to my collection?

Story

I’ve experienced some of the Rogue Angels story and I’ve experienced it somewhat out of order. But the story with this game is just fun. Emil, the designer, refers to it as a Mass Effect style of story and game. One where you are making agreements with different groups, getting back stabbed, possibly turning on groups yourself, and making choices that affect where everything is going.

I really like it when the choices that I make in a game influence that game going forward. That is something that makes Stars of Akarios and Roll Player Adventures stand out to me. Rogue Angels offers that same feeling. I feel like the choices I make, in the end, really do matter and influence how the story goes. Whether it’s in that scenario or throughout the campaign.

Scenarios aren’t Kill Everything

Speaking of scenarios, one of the knocks on Gloomhaven, a game that all campaign games get to compared to, is that you just kill everything. Well, Rogue Angels is not the same game, and Frosthaven even learns from the mistakes so it’s not a kill everything, the follow up to Gloomhaven.

But Rogue Angels actively doesn’t want you to kill everything. Maybe at the end of some scenarios that is the case, but part of the puzzle is that you can’t. Enemies activate in two groups. If you kill all the red enemies, groups are red and yellow, the yellow enemies activate every time. So now you’re dealing with a group that’s harder to avoid because they are coming faster. So even when you want to kill everything, you need to be strategic about it.

Other times you really don’t. For the game reasons as before, the other group might activate faster. But your goal, and you have a limited number of turns, is to move a box of goods in a pick-up and deliver scenario. Now you have bad guys shooting at you, but if you stop to kill them, or have everyone stop to do it, you won’t win the scenario. And that is just a simple example of different scenario types.

Card Play

Card play or something interesting and unique that you do with your character are important for making a campaign game feel different. I think that there are a good number of dice chuckers out there. And I wouldn’t mind another, but I prefer it when a game does something unique. And Rogue Angels offers something different.

You get to play out two cards, or up to, each round, that do actions. It might be as simple as a basic movement or interaction with an object. Those slot into a cooldown track of 0 and immediately go back to your hand. So you could move twice. Or you might, instead, go and pull out your big gun to try and take out an enemy in a single shot. That has a cooldown of four. After four rounds you’ll get that gun back, so make that shot count.

But, if four is two long, you can hurry it along. It cools down one each turn, and then you can also not play a card to cool down again. And sometimes that is the best action, but it isn’t getting you closer to your objectives. Do you wait or do you really need that gun back now?

Dice Modifiers

And basically every card allows you to roll dice. Those dice offer some different bonuses, though not work on all cards. By that I mean that some actions allow you deal damage, interact so much, or move a distance, and you roll the dice and you can increase that. You look for +1 or +2 in those cases.

Other times, you can’t do that. The amount of damage you do is fixed, or the amount of tokens you draw on an interact is fixed. But you still get to roll some dice. Why, you can get back shields, your defense, that way, or you can get movement. It gives you, potentially a bonus.

And of course, you might need a +2 to your damage off of two dice and you don’t get it. That’s okay. There is a resource you spend to reroll. Granted that’s a limited resource as well. But if you really need to deal enough damage to take out an enemy or your cooldown track will fill up with damage, it’s a good plan.

Damage Cards

Finally, let’s talk about how you take damage, because I mentioned it above and I really like and dislike it. I dislike it because I take a lot of damage in Rogue Angels, sometimes that is even intentional. Other times, the enemies act in a way that I just can’t avoid them.

But when you take damage it goes into your cooldown track. There are some interesting things it does though. When I play a card to the track if I can’t play it to it’s cooldown slot, I can always go to a higher one. With damage, I just get that card back. So you might get back a really powerful card. But now you are trading that off for having less space in your track to play cards.

And the damage cards also are one of the ways that you can set your difficulty level. They have three different groups of bad things that they can do to you. You pick, as you start to play, what level you want to be at. It might be that you want a more casual story driven experience. So you only play with the first bad thing, and sometimes there isn’t even anything in that section. Or you play on hard core mode, and now you’re dealing with some really rough things. It’s a nice simple system to set your difficulty.

Back or Brick?

You already know that Rogue Angels is a back for me. I said that at the beginning, this is a game that I just have way to much fun with. In fact, it was my #1 anticipated crowdfunding game for the rest of the year. And now that it is live, I am even more excited for it. This is really a great game that has just enough luck an randomness that it might mess you over. But there is also a lot you can do to mitigate that, if you planned it well.

If you like campaign games, if you like fun story, I really recommend checking out Rogue Angels. Again, you can find the Kickstarter project here. Hopefully I haven’t oversold it or built up the hype too much. But don’t just take it from me, checkout other previews out there as well.

And there are more out there. Just two of the previews that I really like. And let me know if you’re interested in backing this game? What drew you in to back it?

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Why Make It Big?

These next two sections could just really start out with, so that the game stands out. A bigger game, it stands out among others. 1000+ cards, 200 minis, 500 tokens, weighs 300 lbs., all of those things stand out. It stands out on a shelf because it dominates the presence over other games. It stands out because you see it and all the stuff it comes with and it makes it more tempting.

But there are other reasons to make a game bigger. Firstly, it can lend itself to being more immersive. Hero minis fighting monster minis in a dungeon crawl, more immersive than just playing with tokens or a meeple or pawn. And you can’t really fit 200+ pages of story into that small a box. So it’s about creating that space for that immersive and epic storytelling.

Because that’s the other thing, it is more immersive and it’s more epic in nature. Again, those minis are going to make it feel that way.

But not all big games have a ton of minis, Gloomhaven for example has a few, Roll Player Adventures has one. These games are big for the story reason. But also because they offer things like, rolling a fist full of dice in Roll Player Adventures. Or 17 character classes you can play in Gloomhaven. So it isn’t just minis but it’s about the game play components as well.

Why Make it Small?

Making it small, you want it to stand out because it’s a smaller game than others. We have the Button Shy Wallet Games or the Tiny Epic game series. Those are about getting a game to be a small size, at least in a box to stand out as different from other games that way. How much game can you pack into small package.

But beyond that there are some other reasons you might go small. Portability is one of the biggest for them. It allows you to have that game that will get tossed into a backpack or suitcase on a trip. Easy enough to fly with, or even with some of the smaller ones, Orchard, Grove, For Northwood, or the Button Shy games. those can fit into a pocket and just be with you.

Besides that, I think most of the time the reasoning for making a small game or making sure it’s a small game, because some games are naturally small, is to show off that you can do it. Not a great reason, but I understand why some designers like to do that as a challenge.

Thoughts on Board Game Size

But what size is right? And I think that this is an interesting question. I think that both the massive game and the tiny game are used to extremes often for their detriment.

Let’s take The Isofarian Guard, for example. I removed two trays and now it fits, just barely, on my game table. And I don’t have a small game table. It is a game that is massive in size, and thus far, I think that it could have been scaled down, just a little bit, to make it fit better. The whole thing is done for the epic nature of the game, and it’ll make it easier to see and read. But it’s just big and bulky in areas for little reason other than to be big a bulky.

At the same time, there are games, Tiny Epic games are notoriously bad for this, that cram so much into a little box. When you start to put stuff back into the box you realize that you need a masters degree in packing logistics just to fit everything back in. It’s a constraint that then becomes a bad thing. And the flip can be true with big games. You get too much space and now what could be two boxes is size boxes.

Focal Point

The issue with either big or small, like I said, is when that becomes the focal point of the game. It reminds me of stories I’ve read or heard about. There the author writing a piece of fiction has a point they are trying to make. It starts to beat the reader across the head and become preaching a point versus telling a story.

Big and small games are like that, when they become about being big or being small. They beat you across the head with that versus being a good game. If your great game lends itself to being in a tiny package. That is great. If it needs three boxes of minis, that’s great. But it is about the game finding its size versus a size being put upon it.

What’s your favorite game that is tiny? And what is your favorite game that is massive?

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