This is going to be a list article, with all my unplayed games ranked. But before I dive into that, I want to talk about some of the terms that I just used. Mainly shelf of shame and shelf of opportunity. They are the same term phrased in different ways. Let’s dive into them and then the big list of games to play.

Shelf of Shame vs Shelf of Opportunity

This is a term that I’ve heard thrown around for a few years now. The idea that games on your shelf have this title. First off, I think this is kind of silly. Games that you haven’t played don’t have a special spot in existence. Now, maybe they do have a special spot on your shelf, but they aren’t held in any sort of light. They are just a board game.

But the first term I heard is Shelf of Shame. The idea behind this is that you feel bad since you haven’t played all your games. This is silly. I go back to my talk about collection versus a hobby. Know what you have on your shelf. For me, board games are a collection and a hobby. That means it’s fine to not get to every game quickly. They are part of my collection. But I play them, as they are part of my hobby as well, and hobbies get used or worked on.

Then came the term Shelf of Opportunity. Shelf of Shame is very negative, and opportunity sounds much better. But I, again, find this not much better. Yes, they are games that you play eventually. And yes, it spins it in a positive light. But both terms keep a focus on the fact the games aren’t played.

What Do I Call Them?

I call them what they are. Board games to be played. A board game is just an object. In labeling them either way, it places power on that object. Yes, one puts it in the light of a game being an opportunity for something new, and new exciting opportunities are good. But it leaves the pressure on actually playing the game.

Like I said, I play games. I buy games. Board Games are a collection and a hobby for me. I own games that might take a long time to get played. Campaign games where I play one at a time or two, and I am already playing two. Those wait for when I have time, and that is okay. I feel like the label places a cloud, no matter what label, over the games, and in the end of the day, games are just games.

If I never play a game in my collection and it collects dust for five years. I shouldn’t feel bad about leaving that opportunity out there. I most definitely shouldn’t feel shame. It is a game and I play games. So I play other games and not the game that is sitting there. I am still enjoying the hobby without playing every game I own.

So Why Write This Out?

I gave myself a challenge at the beginning of the year. Not because I feel guilt about games that I haven’t played. But because it is fun to play games. And I want to play games, I want to experience new games, and I want to cover new games.

For me, my challenge isn’t to get all the games off the shelf. It isn’t because I feel like I miss out on an opportunity. And I care not about shame from it. For me it’s about trying new things and almost making a game out of it. If I don’t make it by the end of the year, I don’t care. I play these for fun.

Unplayed Board Game List

Let’s Talk About the List

124 Games on it, and my goal is to get it down below 100 by the end of the year. You add in a bunch of Kickstarter games coming in, and you can see why it is a big list and also a challenge. And of course, then, there are campaign games on the list. If we look at campaign style games, I think we’re sitting at 14 on the list. And that is a lot of games to play through a campaign of, so that isn’t going to happen. Though, with Sleeping Gods coming off the list to start the year, it will some over on Malts and Meeples.

There are also some kids games on the list. Right now, I don’t think I will play those this year. Monza looks fun, but the toddler isn’t quite ready for it. But the toddler is also three, so who knows, maybe by the end of the year, we can play those games a bit more. But right now I’m not expecting to.

I also think it’s important to note that a lot of big games are at the top. Those are the ones that I’m most excited to play and cover. And some of them should be getting played soon. Probably after this weekend I’ll be lining up a time to get started playing Roll Player Adventures.

To go along with that, there are a lot of solo games as well. I could play, in the top 20, around 75% of them solo and some of them are solo only games. So I need to start knocking those out first, because they are high on my list. That won’t be how I get under 100, though.

Final Thoughts

I think that it is fine to challenge yourself to play your unplayed games. I think it is fine to limit how many unplayed games you own. When that becomes the focus or the obsession, I think that is when we start to lose the focus on what we are doing. Or when tie to it other emotions, like shame.

When I see people post about clearing their shelf of shame, I am sure it feels good for them. But on the flip side, in the comments, you see people feeling guilty about their unplayed games. I am not that way. I don’t feel guilt over that. And you shouldn’t either.

This is an odd article, I wanted to talk more about the games, and I will soon. But before I could do that, I think it is import to talk about the shame or guilt that can be thrown around in the hobby. Not always intentionally malicious but always harmful.

Also, let me know what game you think I need to try first. What is your favorite on the list that I have too low, or that you know I would like or should try?

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10 – Criss Cross

This was one of the first roll and write games that I picked up. I saw it on the Brothers Murph YouTube channel, found here. I really like the simplicity of this game, and how it plays so incredibly fast. All you are trying to do is get like symbols in columns and rows, which is easy enough to do in one of them, but in both can be a bit tricky. And the more you get the more points it is. The main thing you have to pay attention to is that you aren’t blocking yourself into a single spot in two places on the board because you have to place the rolled symbols adjacent to each other. This one also works really well over Zoom or some other meeting software. You can find my full review here.

9 – Metro X

The newest game to the list is Metro X, this one I just wrote my review about yesterday, you can find it here. I like how this game makes you think for something that is pretty straight forward in what you are doing. I think that it works well solo as the game is really a multi-player solitaire as a lot of these games are. Some of the excitement that comes from the game is seeing what cards are going to be flipped over, especially when you really need a skip or maybe that free space card to show up way more often than they do, or they show up at the wrong time where it really doesn’t help you that much. And the components are really nice for the game.

8 – Second Chance

Another one of the first roll and write, or really a flip and write, that I got. Second Chance is a lot of fun and a very peaceful game. I don’t think there are that many board games that I would consider to be really peaceful. Now that isn’t to say that I don’t fine most games to be pretty relaxing or destressing anyways, because I just love games, but Second Chance is really peaceful, which is great. You flip two shapes, and everyone places them on their board, and then repeat that. It is peaceful as you doodle on your board, filling in the shapes that you’ve placed, and while you can plan ahead a little, most people don’t too much. Just a good game overall that you can find my review of here.

7 – Twice as Clever!

There are going to be a number of games from this series by Wolfgang Warsch. While there are older roll and writes out there, Yahtzee missed my list but an obvious forefather, this line of roll and writes definitely brought them into the board gaming spotlight. You are rolling dice in all of them, picking one, setting aside anything lower, repeating the process until you don’t have any dice to roll or you’ve used three dice. Then the other players pick a die to use from those that you didn’t. This version is my least favorite just because I feel like it’s a bit more complex, but mainly for complexities sake. This one has combos but it doesn’t feel like the combos do as much.

6 – Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade

A newer game to me, though not as new as Metro X, this one has a theme that I was really excited for. I like playing pinball machines, though in 2020 it hasn’t happened as often. So when there was a roll and write pinball game coming out I thought it’d be interesting. I’ve written some opening thoughts on it here, but I want to play it more to give it a full review. What works so well for me is the flow of how you fill in spaces. There are the bumpers in the upper section that you can just ping around on for a while, but once the ball drops out of that, it will start falling, so you need to figure out, best you can, how to control that fall, hitting the sides along the way, before you flip it back up. Point scoring is nice and easy, for the most part, and the components are really good.

5 – Clever Hoch Drei

The next of the series by Wolfgang Warsch , and actually the most recent of the roll and writes, Clever Hoch Drei, which I’m getting from Germany, has been a blast to play. This one returns you to a ton of combos in the game, something I feel like is missing slightly in Twice As Clever. But it actually has some really interesting choices in it with how you fill in the sections. I like that this and Twice as Clever also incentivize going for specific things, like rerolls or plus ones, to get even more bonuses. The main mechanics stay the same as well, so it makes teaching it easy if someone already knows either That’s Pretty Clever or Twice as Clever.

4 – Cartographers

I almost missed this one when I was ranking my roll and writes because I have it on another shelf. This one is set in the Roll Player world, which really doesn’t matter. It’s about making a map, but that’s fairly weird how that works or doesn’t work, because there are monsters on the board. But it’s still a lot of fun. There are two things that stand out to me, the first being the scoring system where you play through four seasons and in the first season you are scoring objectives A and B, then in summer, B and C, but when you get to Winter, you are scoring D and A. So each thing gets scored twice, and you have to balance how much you go for scoring, because if you push hard for B in rounds one and two, you might not score as many points later. I also find the monsters interesting. It makes the game less multi-player solitaire because your opponents place the monsters (unless you’re playing solo) and they are going to try and place it in the worst spot possible for you. You can find my full thoughts on Cartographers here.

3 – That’s Pretty Clever

The first and my favorite for the roll and writes that are part of what currently sits at a trilogy of games. I fully expect that there could be more because they are certainly popular enough. I like this one for a couple of reasons better than the others. Firstly, it was the first that I really played of them, which there is a nostalgia factor. But I also like it because it is the simplest. It makes it the easiest to teach in a lot of ways, and playing it over Zoom works well because while it takes a minute to draw out the board, it can be done easier than the others. The dice mechanics are the same, and overall, just a game design that I really like. You can find my full review here for more information on the game.

2 – Sonora

Now, for something completely different. Flipping cards or rolling dice to fill in stuff on the boards is common and normal, Sonora, by Pandasaurus Games, is a flicking game and then you fill stuff in. I think it might be possible to get good at the flicking aspect of it, but you don’t need to be great. No matter where you end up with flicking, you will score points, and that’s fun, and you can generally land it into the large area that you want, you might not get double the area if you can’t flick as well. This game is all about the combos when it comes to filling things in, and there are four areas to do it in. If you wanted, you can really focus on one area, or you can diversify to some extent, and the scoring seems really balanced in all of them. Definitely a really fun game to checkout, and you can find more about it here.

1 – Welcome To

Finally, my number one, still, though, I think that all of the top 4 could be my number one on any given day, is Welcome To. I really like this game, and I’m not even always that great at it. I like building my perfect Stepford neighborhood, with it’s white picket fences and most definitely not anything crazy that will go wrong there, but that’s for someone else to deal with, I’m just building Helmouth on a Hell Mouth, a pet cemetery and probably more cursed things, and that’s just the flavor I add to the game. This game has a lot of different ways to score points and you can push your luck as well, but there’s also strategy as you consider how many of each number have passed by, I always seem to find something else that I want to think about or try in the game each time that I play it. I’ve had this one in my Top 100 games since I’ve played it and it’s stayed strong, you can see why I love it so much here.

Now, I have a few more roll and writes on my shelf to try. I have the Red Box for Railroad Ink, Booomerang, Floor Plan, Welcome to New Las Vegas, and Patchwork Doodle all to try as well. And I had two, Cat Café and Yahtzee that just missed the list. Yes, I still do enjoy the original, Yahtzee, as well, though that game mainly plays itself now.

What is your favorite roll and write game?

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Fox in the Forest/Fox in the Forest Duet

Two different versions of a trick taking game. But both are two player only only games. In Fox in the Forest, you are trying to take tricks, but scoring is more challenging than just taking all of the tricks. Certain cards have certain powers on them. In Fox in the Forest Duet you are working together, trying to keep the fox moving along the board and picking up tokens, more tokens you get the better you do, but it’s still trick taking. There are paw prints on the cards, or fox symbols I forget which, and that is how much the fox moves, but which direction depends on who wins the trick. Both of these are clever little games and good for 2020 if you have a limited number of players you can play with.

Zombie Dice

While the previous ones were for casual gamers, I think that this one is one you can pull out with anyone. It’s a simple push your luck game where you are grabbing three dice from a cup, rolling them, keeping brains, seeing if you’ve been shot, and then deciding if you want to draw more dice and roll those. There is a bit more going on than that, but that’s basically it. Once someone hits the point total to win, everyone else get’s one shot to push their luck. It’s like a simpler version of the game Farkle, and it has a theme. I think that the theme and the simplicity of the game is going to draw people in, even though the theme is just goofy fun versus involved in the tactics. It also is really small and needs about no table space, just enough to roll the dice, so it’s good for at a bar, or a picnic.

Onirim

I’ve done two player, any number of player, and now a solo board game. Onirim is one of the best known solo games. It’s all about playing out cards, matching colors and changing symbols so that you can get doors out and escape the nightmares. It’s really an abstract game, but it’s a lot of fun. Plus, the new printing has all the expansions in the base box, which I need to learn all of them. The game is clever in what it does, because there are very powerful key cards, key cards can be played like any other card to find a door, but if you flip a door from the top of the deck and you have a matching key color, you can just spend the key and immediately get that door, or you can use it to look at the top five cards of your deck, discard one, can’t be a door, and order the rest how you want, or finally you can use it to stop some other affect from a nightmare being drawn. And the nightmares have as many things they can force you to do as the keys. It’s a really interesting puzzle to see if you make the right decisions with those really important cards.

Hanabi

Maybe you like the idea of a cooperative game, Hanabi is a very small box cooperative game where you are trying to put on the best firework short. You want to display all five colors of fireworks from 1 to 5, playing down their cards in order. However, you can’t see all the cards, in fact, you can’t see your cards, but you can see everyone else’s cards. On your turn, you can do one of three things. You can spend a clue token to give another player a clue as to what they have in their hand. The clues would be something like “This and this card are blue” or “That’s a two and that’s a two”. You have to give the person all of the information for a given color or number. You can also play down a card to one of the rows of fireworks, but if you get it wrong, the fuse gets shorter. Or you can discard a card to get another clue token to use. The game is somewhat lucky as you try and give specific enough clues to be helpful, but are stuck some on the draw. But the more you play, the more you know how to give good clues that mean something, even if it might not be as obviously straight forward.

Ganz Schon Clever

There are so many roll and write or flip and write games that I could say. Silver & Gold, Railroad Ink, Patchwork Doodle, Floor Plan, Second Chance, Cross Cross, Cat Cafe, and Cartographers are all ones that would pretty easily fit into a stocking. But I’m picking Ganz Schon Clever because that’s the one that I’ve been playing a lot of recently. It’s an interesting little puzzle of a roll and write, where you have five different areas where you are placing die values. Each of them scores in their own different way, and each of them has their own way you want to place the dice. It’s an interesting challenge and it’s based so much off of combos and how you can fill in a spot in one row to then be able to fill in a spot in another. It’s very satisfying that way.

Now, there are a lot more small games out there that’d work well, obviously I tossed out a bunch of roll and writes. But if none of those work for you, you can also find games like Stipulations, Parade, The Lost Expedition, Not Alone, Love Letter, Hanamikoji, Marrying Mr Darcy, Point Salad, Gloom, Arboretum, and so many more. There are a lot of good small games out there that are a lot more than just just a take that sort of game, or the classics like Uno, Skip-bo, and Pit.

What small game would you like to find in your stocking at the holidays?

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Point of Order is going to be me running down the game(s) that I ordered and why I picked them up. The reason for doing this is kind of a sneak preview as to what’s going to be coming for reviews in the future, but also help show why I thought some games might be a good fit for me and maybe, give you some insight if into if they might be a good fit for you.

So let’s run them now, it’s a bigger order this time, so it’ll be a bit of reading to get through it, but hopefully enlightening.

Silver
So, this is one that I got a chance to play at GenCon and since it was such a small game, it kind if paled in comparison to some of the other games I played there, and I thought it was just okay. But then I downloaded it to my phone, and I’ve had a lot of fun just knocking out a fast game of it against the computer. What keeps drawing me back to it is the simplicity of the game. In Silver, you are trying to get your village to score the fewest points, there are werewolves because it’s Bezier Games, but that’s a mute point to the game. You do this by swapping cards out from your face down group of five cards. However, you don’t know what all your cards are. At the start of each round, there are four, you look at two of your cards. Then on your turn you look at the top card and either swap it with a card in your five or use it’s power, or you can use the top card of the deck to swap into your row. Now, the swap is 1 for 1, unless, you have two of the same card from the five in front of you that you can swap. So if I had two sixes, I could swap it for a five, now I’d have four cards in front of me and be scoring 7 less points. Once you have less than four cards, you can call for a vote if you want, and if you have the fewest points on your villagers, you get 0 points, but if you’re wrong or you didn’t call for the vote, you get the points on your villagers, and plus 10 if you were wrong when calling for the vote. It’s a push your luck, bluffing (kind of), and memory game. It plays fast over four rounds and because of enjoying it more on my phone, I decided to pick it up.

Cartographers
This one one will be way shorter to write about, because I’ve already don’t a TableTopTakes review of it. This is a flip and write map making game with some fun scoring. The map making part is pretty loosely themed on there, but the scoring puzzle is a lot of fun, and the fact that it’s an interactive flip and write is great. So for the scoring, you have four different scoring things, A, B, C, D. And you score two each season, for A & B, then B & C, C & D, and eventually D & A. So you have to think about both short turn and long term scoring. Plus, then, you have your own board, but if a monster comes up (and they will) you have to pass your board to the left or right and that player will put a monster somewhere on your board in spot that’ll surely mess things up for you. I really enjoy roll/flip and writes, and this one stands up as one that has a fun theme and some more interactivity going on.

Ascension: Delirium
Now, some of why I got this was because I needed to make it to $100 for free shipping and nothing was jumping out at me. But I really love Ascension, in my Top 10 Gateway game list, it was #10, because for me it’s an ideal introduction to deckbuilding for the base game. And the expansions add more and can be combined with it. So I’m excited to try out this one and to try out Dreamscape the other expansion that I have. I’m curious to see how the strategies might change, and sometime play a massive six player game with one of the expansions mixed in. This is one where I know I’ll enjoy the expansions, and even if they don’t come off the shelf a lot, I’ll still get them played once and a while.

Silver & Gold
So, this isn’t related to Silver. Instead it’s a flip and write game where you are drafting island cards and trying to fill them in, which scores you points, and combing covering up palm trees, treasures, and I think more to allow you to cover up more things. This game was interesting to me after I watched Board Game Geeks Game Night Youtube Show with it. What was interesting about it was that you don’t have your own play sheet that you’re filling in. You are drafting/taking island cards and actually writing on those cards. The cards are dry erase so that you can play, score, erase, and play again. That just seems like a novel idea and I’ve really been digging roll or flip and write games recently.

Clank! Acquisitions Inc Legacy
Multiple things drew me to this game, first it’s a legacy game. I think I own, have owned, or have played most legacy games out there. They are just a blast generally in my opinion, and are very fascinating to see how they end up working. With Clank! Legacy, I already know that I like Clank! In! Space! and while this is fantasy themed, that’s fine because I love Acquisitions Inc. podcast/video series that Penny Arcade does at their #PAX conventions. From what I’ve heard about this, it implements it really well and creates an interesting story throughout while being a really fun game to play. And while none of the others take themselves seriously in the Clank! line of games, this one I’ll get more of the in jokes because I’ve watched all of Acquisitions Inc. And easy purchase, just was waiting to have a group to play it, but it was on sale, so I decided to pick it up anyways even before having a group lined up.

Forgotten Waters
This one I’m really excited for, but it’s a pre-order. So one of my favorite games is Dead of Winter. And what makes it a lot of fun is that it uses crossroads cards. These cards get triggered sometimes where you go some play, do some action and all of a sudden you’re interrupted because you triggered this crossroads event where you have to make a decision that will affect the game in some way, but you don’t know how. Forgotten Waters is a pirate themed game that uses that, plus it has an app that tells you things to do and helps you set-up scenarios, plus you’re using a storybook type thing, similar to Mice and Mystics, Aftermath, and Stuffed Fables. I think all of that combined together sounds really cool, and I’ve been looking for a cool pirate themed game that is a bit more tongue in cheek than something like Merchants and Marauders which is a fun game, but a bit heavier.

Marvel Champions Neoprene Playmat
Final item on the list, and it’s not a game. There are several reasons that I wanted to get this, the first is that it looks cool, and it’s big so you can play with a bunch of people using mat. The other is that whenever I cut my finger nails, I can never pick up cards. So on a neoprene mat which I’d be able to use for other games as well, though it does have a layout for Marvel Champions, I won’t be trying multiple times to pick them up or scooting them to the edge of the table so I can grab them. I won’t say that this really makes Marvel Champions that much easier to play, but it can help keep the table neater, plus easier to pick up cards.

So, that’s the order that I have coming in. I’d say that some of that is thanks to Covid-19 because I’m bored and I think that some of these games will be good ones that I can play with my wife while waiting for board game nights to happen again.

Are there any of the games that seem the most interesting to you? Any that you’ve picked up or want to pick up?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

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