How To Play Vegetable Stock

Vegetable Stock is a simple game of drafting and vegetable market manipulation. It is played over six rounds, and the veggies you draft, you want them to be worth the most at the end of the game. Each round a number of the player plus one. In turn order players draft a card with three vegetable symbols on it.

The last card, the one not drafted, is what determines the market. It pushes the vegetables on it higher in price. But if you push too high, the market crashes and resets. But don’t worry, it can climb up again. After the six rounds, players multiple their number of veggies by the current value of those veggies and the person with the most valuable vegetables wins.

What Doesn’t Work

Just minor nitpicks here. Firstly, this is a game that is nearly impossible to find. I ordered it from Taiwan Boardgame Design and had it shipped from Taiwan. That is the only way that I could find it. So if this game looks fun, know that it’s a bit of work to get it. The price isn’t too bad, though a bit higher than if you could get it locally, for what is basically a deck of cards.

The other thing is that I wish it came with a score pad. Yes, it would add to the box size, possible. But there is room for more in the box, though the box is small. Give me a score pad and let me do the scoring on that. My math skills are good from playing board games and just decent in general. It is a lot of numbers to hold in your head to multiply one veggies times three then count up another group of veggies to multiply by four and then add those two numbers together. A score sheet would make it simpler.

What Works

As for what works, I think the core of the game is solid. The drafting is very nice because it is a choice, but the choices are limited. On your turn you do one thing, you draft a card. So turns are quick that way. But as the game progresses you start to think about what card you are leaving behind. The decision space is small, but there are decisions to make in the game.

The stock market works as well. This goes into that decision that you make. When it’s your turn to pick, you think about what you are leaving behind and how it will influence the stock market. Because sometimes you might have a lot of a single card and if it crashes that would ruin your score. So drafting more of that is good, but you other times need to let it crash, maybe early, so you can push it back up again.

And the time frame of the game is great. A two player game takes 10 minutes. More players, sure it takes longer, but the turns are snappy. And if people know how to play, a lot of the judgments on what to take and leave can be done more quickly, especially early in the game.

Who Is It For

This is a filler game through and through. I think for more casual gamers it might fit into that category with games like Skip Bo or Uno. Where the idea is play a short game and enjoy that experience. But for gamers, I think it is also a good filler game. There is more going on than a lot of fillers. You manipulate that stock market. It is a decision versus some fillers which are just actions for the sake of filling up time. So I think that Vegetable Stock can work for a lot of people.

Final Thoughts – Vegetable Stock

This is a fun filler game. It is one that plays well with a wide range, 2-6, of players. Now, there is more randomness with more players because at six you only control the final card one time. But it’s such a fast filler that I think it’s a moot point for the most part. You hope that how you manipulate and how cards come out that it’ll end like you want. And at lower player counts there is more control and thought put into it.

And it is a game that I’ve found I shuffle up and play again when I play it. The game is so fast that it’d work for a lunch time game with co-workers, between classes, or at a restaurant waiting for your food to come. And once a game is done, I play again because I have more time. Which to me is a sign of a good filler. You want it to fill the time, but not to over fill the time. And some filler games might give you 30 minutes of light game or a random amount of time. Vegetable Stock doesn’t do that. It is a set time that works well.

My Grade: B
Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: B+

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The Board Game Terms

Fast or Short

This is a game that doesn’t take too much time to play. So something that’s probably 30 minutes or less in terms of how long the game actually takes.

Quick

Quick is more about how engaged and involved you are in turns. And how long those turns take.

Long

Long is going to be the length of the game. So we’re probably talking about 90 minutes or more.

Slow

Slow talks about games that are going to encourage longer turns. Less engagement when it isn’t your turn and if there are a lot of people that the whole game could scale up considerably based off of player count.

Quick vs Fast

So, this is the one that I want to focus on more so, because I think that long and slow fall into an area that makes sense once we look at these other two. And I think that quick is really the highlight of what we are looking at and what I want in a game.

The Issue

Often times with board games, and let’s step back and talk about the issue, a board game might get a bad rap because it is a long game. Or people will be less apt to play it because it becomes more of an event. And on the flip side, some people look at little fillers as bad because they are too short to make a meaningful decision.

Let’s just say, in my opinion, both of these opinions are wrong. You can make meaningful decisions in a short game. And in a long game, it doesn’t mean that it’s not optimized for what it should be. But people are judging the game based off of how long or short, fast, the game is.

The Importance of Being Quick

For me, though, a game is more about whether it is quick or slow. Because that determines, more so, your engagement in the game. If a game has quick and punchy turns, then the players at the table are less apt to get distracted. And this is true even in a longer game. It doesn’t matter that the game takes longer, it matters if you are engaged in a game.

And the reason why I thought about this with Aldarra is that Aldrarra is not a short game. Now, almost three hours for three players, definitely longer than a normal game would be. Probably if people know the game, two hours for three players or slightly less, and that’s a pretty long game. But because of how tight the board is and how close you are to your enemies, you stay engaged. And the turns are pretty quick, even combat generally went quickly.

And that was with a three hour game. Now, on the flip side, you can play games that are short in how long the game takes. But you aren’t engaged in what is going on. A lot of classic games might fall into that category. Something like Yahtzee or Skip-Bo, it doesn’t matter what you do, really, for it to affect my turn. Not the best examples, but Skip-Bo works decently since you might have a long turn. Yes, the game won’t take longer because of that turn, but it does make a turn and game feel longer for everyone else.

Decision Making Space

So, I also don’t want to say that games need light decision making space. I think that’s some of the reason people shy away from smaller games, they think it’ll be too light. But there is a difference between simple decision making and engaging decision making. If I care what you’re doing on your turn, then it doesn’t matter if it takes a while.

It is more that I need to care in that case. In the case of Aldarra, I care about what you’re doing, even if you aren’t attacking me. Why, because it changes the board state a lot, it might open up new opportunities for me to move in, or it might squeeze into a smaller area. But what you do matters to me in that case and affects my strategy. Or you might be attacking me, and then I really care.

So What Is My Preferred?

Let’s wrap this up talking about what I look for. And honestly, the big thing for me is that I look for quick games. Now, this can mean a few different things, though I’ve mainly talked about it in terms of how long turns take. But again, that doesn’t matter so much, it’s more, how quickly do I move from decision to decision.

Decision to Decision Quickly

A bigger game might give me an option to follow your action on a turn if I have resources or something like that. I know that Scythe is a game that uses that mechanic. Well, your turn might take a while, but I can follow what you do, and do my own things, I’m interested. Or Ganz Schon Clever (or any of the Clever trilogy), you roll and I care about the dice that you leave behind. So even though I don’t have a full turn, I care of what you are doing.

And I think that moving from decision to decision makes the game feel faster. Area control is good for that, I care what you do because I don’t want you to attack me. And I do want you to weaken your armies and the other players. But a lot of other games make that work as well.

All At Once

There is another type of game as well, everyone go at once that works as well. This falls into the category of real time games, something I don’t love, but more so roll and write games. Metro X, Cartographers, and Welcome To… just off the top of my head, those are easy ones to play because everyone fills in things at the same time. There isn’t the pressure of a speed element instead it’s a smaller decision space and everyone acting at once, and that works well.

Story

And one final way that works for me, is if your turn has story to it. A lot of the time this means literally there is story that is being read out. But it can also mean that the game has a whole narrative flow. Pandemic Legacy Season 1 or 2 would be an example of this. And being cooperative helps, but you decide what you want to do on your turn, and that creates the story of what is happening. Especially in Season 2 with the discovery aspect, the game tells a great story.

Final Quick vs Fast Board Game Thoughts

Do you find that you have a preference, maybe based on length a board game takes? And is it really the length of the game that makes a difference?

I do feel that game length does matter, but I think for a lot of gamers that perception of game length often is tied to the decision making space. And for me, that is more about the quickness of a game versus how long a game might take. And how meaningful and interesting the decision that I can make are. Do you find something similar to that as you think about games?

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So we are going to look at a number of classic board games and see how well they hold up now. Am I still interested in playing them myself still? Or are they games that I’ve played and I’m done with now.

Uno

Uno is a simple game with simple rules. You play down a matching color or number. It is pretty typical, and really is what so many card games are based off of. Which means that there is take that, you can skip someone else’s turn, make them draw, sometimes draw four, or reverse it away from them.

This is a game that I rate pretty lowly at this point. It is an okay one growing up, but there are so many more card games that I’d play now. Something like Ohanami is just as simple and way more fun. And games can take a long time, or be over really quickly. Is there strategy, a tiny bit, but sometimes it is just luck.

Grade: 3/10

Skip-Bo

Now we move to another pretty simple card game. This one is about putting cards down in numerical order to get rid of your pile of cards. But there are Skip-Bo cards that can be used as any number. When you can’t play anymore, or don’t want to, you discard a card to one of three discard piles you have. You can use those cards to help play out more cards later, assuming the card you need is on top of the discard.

This game is generally play out everything that you can, and then wait for your next turn. But sometimes you don’t want to because you don’t want to leave your opponent(s) opportunities to play down a card from their pile. So you might pull back a little bit. And adding cards to your discard pile is also an interesting decision space in the game. I’d play this one again, though it is very light and simple.

Grade: 5/10

Dutch Blitz

Much like Skip-Bo where you are trying to get rid of all of your cards and putting them down in numerical order, you do that with Dutch Blitz as well. Except that Dutch Blitz is done in real time. You flip two cards from your pile and you can play the top one down. The game is fast and hectic, and can reach a situation where no one can play at which point you flip one card before flipping two again.

This is another one that I wouldn’t mind playing again. I likely won’t pull out my copy of the game though, because the game is just okay. It is a speed game that works for some quick entertainment. And it is again really easy to learn and play. It won’t be for everyone, though, because of that real time speed aspect.

Grade: 5/10

Yahtzee

Now, this one is going to be the highest graded game on the list. I think in 2020 it was in my Top 100, just barely, or just missed it. Yahtzee is a fun roll and write game where you are trying to get certain rolls of dice. It might be sets of numbers, or a run, or a full house, or all of the same number, a Yahtzee. And depending on what you get determines where you can place it on the score sheet.

My family and I play this one often. We kind of have it down to a science knowing what the odds are on certain rolls and what roll is the best one to go for in a given situation. It makes the game kind of silly because we can make snap decisions on what to do, when to push our luck, and stuff like that. I dropped on my list because I have played it a lot, but it is still a fun one.

Grade: 7.5/10

Scrabble

Not too far behind Yahtzee is Scrabble, another game I’d play again for sure. It is a lot of fun to try and come up with good words. But that’s not how you optimize Scrabble. It is about scoring as many points as you can with the words that you have. So if you can build off of what other people have done to create multiple words at once, that is how you do well.

And while I like Scrabble, I do think that it has diminishing returns. Or more so, skill level for the game matters a lot. Using all your letters can score you a ton of points, but that is tricky. So setting it up that your opponents can’t score well and that they’ll give you spots to score a lot is more what the game is about. Vocabulary doesn’t matter, it’s more about knowing the board and how leverage scoring.

Grade: 6.5/10

Clue

Another one that I don’t mind, are there better deduction games that don’t having you roll and move, for sure. And it sucks if you get stuck without being able to try and find out information, but the game is still interesting. And when you play, you start to realize how you can get information not on your turn. How you can create scenarios where it is meaningful information to help you narrow down things quickly.

This is like Scrabble. There is the game you are playing that you can play easily. Then there is the game that you can play which will get you the win. So you need kind of the same level of skill for players, otherwise some players will have a distinct advantage as they play. And the roll and move and potential dead turns isn’t fun.

Grade: 6.5/10

Monopoly

Monopoly is a classic game of too long game play and not enough interesting choices. You roll the dice, you move, you buy the property, if you can, and if not, it goes up for auction. That is a rule that no one remembers, though, and that makes Monopoly take forever. And even with that rule the game is way too long for the decisions that you make.

Maybe if the game played faster it’d be better for me. But it isn’t that, and never will be. Yes, it is extremely popular because everyone knows it. And there is a Monopoly for everything. So if you want a copy, it is a game that people know how to play, even if they don’t know the actual rules.

That is the one thing cool about Monopoly. People know how to play the game, not because people read the rules. Monopoly’s rules are an oral tradition at this point. That means that rules might vary from teacher to teacher. It doesn’t make the game any better, but it is interesting.

Grade: 1/10

Life

While I do like Life better than Monopoly, Life has less decision making space than Monopoly. In Life you spin a spinner and something happens to you. Never versions offer some choices. Like what house you buy, you draw two and buy the cheaper. Why, because how much money you have at the end of the game is what determines if you win.

Why do I like it better than Monopoly, all be it barely, because it tells a silly story. You spin and move, sure. But you spin and move and get a job, a house, a spouse, kids, and a lot of other random things that happen. So at the end of the game, you have a story that you can tell about your family. Is it a dumb game, yes, but it is silly as you play.

Grade: 2/10

Rummikub

Now we come back to another game that I generally like the puzzle of. You create sets of tiles based off of number without repeating colors or runs in colors. The game play is pretty simple. You build off of what is already out there, and draw a tile each turn. Your goal is to get rid of all your tiles. But if you can puzzle out a way to move those sets around into runs or vice-a-versa, that is so much fun.

Rummikub really gives you a way to feel clever. Now to do that it is basically causing every player at the table to have analysis paralysis. Especially late in the game when there are a ton of tiles on the table. But it is a simple game and easy to teach. And it feels enough different from a lot of classic games that it works.

Grade: 5/10

Set

Finally we have Set. This is a game where skill matters a ton. Some people are good at pattern recognition and others aren’t. You are looking at a 3×4 grid, I think or maybe 3×3 and looking for a set of three cards that match up some way. They can be completely different in every way. Or they need to match exactly one thing. or they need to match all but one thing. It is tricky to explain without the cards.

This is a game that I kind of like. It’s tricky, I like it because I am very good at pattern recognition. It isn’t a great game, but it is one that works for a wide audience. Though, sometimes that audience will get stomped.

Playing Set growing up, I’d generally play with two cousins. I forget how many possible sets you can get, but on average, I’d probably have 70% of the sets, my other cousin would get 28% of them, and the third player would maybe get one. And that was his goal in those games, get a set. So, Set is not a game that everyone will be as good at.

Grade: 5/10

There we have it. 10 Classic Games with a quick review on all of them. Are there any games from your childhood that you still play? Are there any that you won’t play? Let me know in the comments below.

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Why Talk About Changing Tastes?

I talk about that some in my article of Filler, Family Weight, and Other Board Game Classifications. The simplest way to put it is that as you game more your tastes will change. For a lot of board gamers, games like Munchkin, Fluxx, Ticket To Ride, Carcassonne, and Catan were the games that got them into the hobby board game areas. Before that, they were playing games like Uno, Skip-Bo, Monopoly, Phase 10, Clue, and Scrabble.

I think that’s a pretty common journey. It starts with playing those classic games that we grew up with, or our parents grew up with. Then when games like Catan came around, I at least had a friend who introduced me to that and then later Ticket to Ride. But now I don’t have Catan in my collection anymore, and Ticket to Ride rarely gets played. What changed or why did things change?

Why Do Tastes Change?

I think that everyone grows and changes in almost everything. I’m not sure if there is anything that people can’t change from. And I think board games show one way and an often way that people do change. Some people will always stick with a more basic game, they have found the level that they like. They want to play the classic games, and that is totally fine. But for myself and others into hobby board games, I think it’s important to remember the journey and how we can help people along that journey.

So I’m going to talk about two games that helped draw me into the hobby and probably did for a lot of people, Fluxx and Munchkin. I could talk about Catan, but I think that Fluxx and Munchkin explain it well. Both of those games are light card games that have you trying to mess over your opponents, take their stuff or stop them from winning. Now, this should sound familiar. That is basically how Uno works. You are trying to stop your opponents from winning as much as you are planning on your own victory itself. Or the game Sorry, you want to stop them from winning.

Why did we stop playing Sorry and Uno for Fluxx and Munchkin?

We stopped playing them, because Fluxx and Munchkin offered more in way of the game. When you play Fluxx , you are creating and changing the rules to the game. Sure it’s very simple draw one card and play one card, unless the rules say otherwise. In Munckin you are trying to make your character stronger to defeat more monsters and your opponent weaker or their monsters stronger, so that they can’t. There is more to think about with your card play.

Both of those games take something that we know and build upon it. They add more to the rules of the game, barely, and they offer more choices. To go back to Catan, I sometimes say that if someone like’s Monopoly they should try Catan. Why, because some of the pieces feel similar, but the game offers more choices. Now that’s a bigger jump than Uno to Fluxx, but it’s about finding stepping stones.

Why did we stop playing Fluxx and Munckin?

And this is a cycle that for hobby gamers repeats fairly often. I stopped playing Fluxx and Munchkin, though I still have both, because I wanted games that gave me more choices yet again. One thing that I find is that the more games I play the less true randomness I want in it.

Sure Tainted Grail might have a random encounter or unexpected outcome in an exploration, but I still make more choices. I play down all the cards for combat. Gloomhaven has a deck AI for the monsters, that is random, but I can plan out what I do and have knowledge on what the monsters might be doing. There is no, will I or won’t I draw the right card, because there isn’t a truly right card. It is how can I make what I have available to me work the best.

This is true for most all the games I play now. Some are smaller and more random, like Claim, but even that is less random and offers more choice than some other trick taking games. And it is an extremely light and fast two player filler game. While Fluxx and Munchkin might be light, they take longer than a filler. When I want that lighter, fluffier game, I want it to be played fast now.

What Do We Learn From Changing Tastes?

To start, I think it’s important to remember that our tastes have changed. They might change again, and those we play with, their tastes might change as well. There can be a disparity between gamers. Those of us who love those heavier games and those who love the lighter or more traditional games. It is easy at times to forget that we started there with more traditional games as well.

Even if you are starting now with a game like Horrified and Pandemic which are more on the hobby side of gaming, you will still have a progression to your gaming. You might not like those games as well in the future because you’ve mined them for what they have and now you want more. And we don’t want to forget, because when we forget, that is when we stop bringing people into the hobby.

And that really is my main point. I know I talked about this as well. When you think about your changing tastes over time, it comes into play with bringing people into the hobby. I am in a bunch of board game groups on Facebook, and I know I wrote an article based off of what I saw in those groups. I can’t find it right now, but let me recap.

The Scenario

A new person to the hobby side of board gaming joins one of these groups. They are all excited because they just got Cards Against Humanity, their group loves Munchkin and Catan, and they want to know what game they should get next.

The first two responses are:
“Those games suck.”
“Scythe”

What’s Wrong With This?

Well, there are a lot of obvious things wrong with it, and I know it’ll stand out to most people. Even the people who commented those things, stepping back and looking at it objectively and not in the moment can spot what is wrong. The first one doesn’t answer the questions and belittles the person who is excited about board games for their choice in board games.

The second one is a bit harder to see. Scythe might be a great game, it is on my to play list. But Scythe is a big euro style game that is a massive step up from something like Munchkin, Cards Against Humanity and Catan. That answer might intimidate a new gamer out of the hobby or make them feel dumb because they don’t understand the game. The Scythe recommendation is like giving someone a calculus test after they’ve just learned their multiplication tables, it’s too big a gap.

Both of these answers, the people writing them have forgotten their journey. They don’t remember how their tastes changed over time. And I get it, they are passionate about loving Scythe or wanting people to play what they find to be better games. But for almost every gamer, there is a journey.

So How Do We Be Better?

Staying on my scenario, I think that there are two better responses, though one of them is actually not responding. To paraphrase Thumper from Bambi, if you can’t say anything nice, be quiet. Now that doesn’t apply to every situation, but for someone excited about board games and on their journey, however deep it leads them into the hobby, be nice. So if you can’t be nice, be quiet.

Or, pause, think about your journey. Think about two types of games for the person who asks that question. The first is, when you were playing games like Catan and Munchkin, what other games were you playing? Secondly, what were the games that helped you take the next step? Then give two pieces of advice on what to get next. One for that point in time the person is in, and one for what might be a next step. Then explain why for both of them.

We really can use our knowledge to encourage people along their journey. I know that I want more people to play board games with, and I’m not facing a shortage. Games get played almost every Tuesday and Wednesday. I had people over to game on Saturday for a game night, I’ll have people over this Saturday, and I still want to play more games. And from that amount of gaming, I still want to play more.

But I know that I need to be careful not to push too far with my passion for people I don’t know are as passionate about board games. I want to give everyone them as gifts or to play games with non-gamers. That is amazing when I can and they love them or like them. But I shouldn’t pull Terraforming Mars off the shelf with a new gamer.

What Were the Board Games on Your Journey?

So, a little exercise for myself and everyone else. What has your board game journey looked like? What were the points where you paused and grew as a gamer?

For me:
Growing up: Uno, Skip-Bo, Dutch Blitz and the like were very common and got me into the idea of gaming.
Around End of High School: Got introduced to the modern classics of Ticket to Ride and Catan and dove into those.
Post College: Got into Magic the Gathering and introduced to more games like Dominion and Power Grid
First Board Game I Loved: Betrayal At House on the Hill, this really got me into board gaming and buying board games

Since then it’s been a slow and steady trying of different games and growing. Probably should say the final stop I can think of was about 3 years ago when we started playing Gloomhaven and I feel in love with the blended mechanics of Amerithrash and Euro as well as I fell in love with campaign games.

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A card game is a board game!

Let Me Explain

The easy way to talk about this is to talk about sets and subsets. This is a nerdy topic and something that I know well from the math courses I’ve taken and the computer programming I’ve done.

Let’s say that we’re talking about some numbers here, 1, 2, 3, …, 10. So our whole set of numbers is one through ten. In that, I can create a smaller set of numbers, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10, so all of the even numbers. Those are evens but they are also still numbers.

This is how it works for board games as well. I have all my board games, Gloomhaven, Ticket to Ride, Uno, Skip-bo, Catan, and Splendor. That is my set, board games. Within board games we have subsets. Ticket to Ride, Catan, and Splendor would fall into a subset of gateway games. Uno and Skip-bo, those are both what type of game, a card game.

Why Not Just Call The Set Games?

Well, we can, we can call the whole set games and then we bring in some other things. Video Games, those are games, Role Playing Games, those are games. And then becomes subsets of what is known as a game. Then, since we’re dealing with mostly analog where there are components needed, I create a subset known as board games.

Now, an RPG is mostly analog and you have things that you need, paper, pencil, dice, so why a separate category for them?

Board Games are a subset separate from an RPG because with a board game you get everything in a self contained box or shipment. In an RPG, I buy stuff separately, I don’t get my dice that I need for the game because I bought a book or put together a character. The pencils don’t come with anything. With a board game I get everything all at once. I don’t have to buy separate trains for Ticket to Ride, I don’t buy a pack of Wild Draw 4’s for Uno. Those all come in the game.

That is why I put card games as a subset of board games and board games as a subset of games.

So Why Is This A Question?

This is a question because I see a lot of new gamers, people who are super excited about board games but will turn up their nose at card games. This goes back to how people limit themselves as gamers. I have talked about that a lot in this article, Why Limit the Board Games You Play.

I won’t touch on everything again from that article, about how elitism in the views of certain types of games can hurt people joining into the hobby, but also hurt yourself from finding great games to play. This is the same here, people who separate the two, they are keeping great games from themselves.

Marvel Champions, a game that is in my Top 10, that game is just cards. That game offers amazing decisions. It gives you challenges to beat the bad guy and to deal with the threats showing up. Building the character is fascinating, and playing the different aspects changes up every superhero. But there is no board. It is a still a board game, but if someone can’t get past that there is no board, they, in my opinion, are missing out on a great game.

So How Do We Counteract This?

Firstly, be willing to try new games or different games. The more that we play all sorts of games with all sorts of people, the more acceptable that card games are board games will become. It also opens up eyes that card games can offer a ton of challenges and there are a ton of options out there.

What we are fighting against, and what people who make the distinction between card games are board games is mainly the people who think of Uno, Skip-bo, or anything with a deck of cards. They think that card games means something that they played as a kid with their Grandma. And those games have a place, but people who want to grow as gamers will often look down on them.

Secondly, refer to all games as board games. It doesn’t matter if it’s Yahtzee with everyone having their own sheet or Skip-Bo with a deck of cards. We want to change the perception, change how we talk about them. The more common the wordage is used, the more common it will be.

Finally, if someone is going to thumb their nose at a game without a board, remember that is their loss. Don’t feel like it is less because they do. Instead, just play the game, enjoy it, and if they want to miss out on a fun time, that is their issue. And if they see people having fun with a “card” game, they will probably start to be more interested in them.

What do you think, is a card game a board game? Is it a subset of that larger group?

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The Collection

Numbers

A’s – B’s – C’s – D’s – E and F’s – G and H’s – I, J and K’s – L’s – M’s – N, O, and P’s – Q and R’s

S’s

Sagrada (and Expansions)

I wish that I had backed Sagrada on Kickstarter, not because there is anything special with that edition really compared to what I have, but because I like the game that much. This dice drafting game just works and looks amazing on the table. The theme of stained glass windows appeals to most everyone, even non-nerdy gamers. And the concept of taking a die and placing it into your stained glass window makes sense. Add in that the dice look amazing in the windows because they are translucent, it sells the game even more on the table.

Status: Played

Santorini

I don’t always love abstract games. But Santorini looks great on the table, and that counts for a lot in a game, in my opinion. Especially for a game that is abstract. The simple game play helps the game be even more appealing. You are just moving a piece and building a level. The goal is to make it to the third level of a building, which is simple enough. And when the game becomes too simple, you can add in god cards which give players powers.

Status: To Be Played

Say Bye to the Villains

I like extremely tough cooperative games. Say Bye to the Villains fits that mold perfectly as I have yet to win it. But for me, I don’t see that as a negative, mainly because we are always close to winning. None of the games feel like we’re too far away which is saying something considering how many times I’ve played it. It also helps that the game play is simple enough. You are just playing cards that eat up time, and the game isn’t too long either. For some people it would be a negative, but for me, it’s a good thing. It feels like there’s always just one more thing to do in the Say Bye to the Villains than you have time for.

Status: Played

Scattergories

I have a game from 1988 on my list. And yes, I play Scattergories still. Scattergories is a party game that works well since it depends on the players creativity but not on in-jokes. It also works well over Zoom which has gotten it played several times this year. The game is simple and everyone understands what is going on when played. Scattergories isn’t a game that I’ll pull out all the time, but people have fun when it is pulled out. And it’s a game that everyone knows because it’s been around so long.

Status: Played

Scrabble

If you thought Scattergories was old, think again. I have Scrabble in my collection as well. Scrabble being published in 1948 might make it the oldest game in my collection. I still enjoy playing Scrabble, though. I prefer regular Scrabble to the “quick” Scrabble or Banagrams. The main reason is that Scrabble has more strategy and tactics than those do. In Banagrams it is purely pattern recognition and while I am good at it, it isn’t as fun. I prefer to think about how I might be setting up my opponent in Scrabble and the strategy that comes with that.

Status: Played

SeaFall

I wanted to like SeaFall so badly. And it’s funny that I do have a copy of it still. I was gifted a copy that a friend got for cheap. SeaFall promised that it was going to be an epic seafaring game where the story unfolded as you explored. Instead, we got a story that was a mess and complicated but only because it didn’t unfold in order. Compared to other Legacy Games, story happened much more randomly and the games themselves took too long. I wanted a game that told epic punchy story about adventure on the high seas. And, I think that is possible within SeaFall, how the story works, though, needs to be reworked.

Status: Played

Second Chance

I like flip and writes as I’ve said many a time before. Second Chance is a simple flip and write. You try and fill as much of your square as possible and that’s it. To do that you are putting in polyomino like shapes onto your board. If you can’t place one of the two shapes, you get a second chance card, a card only you can use. If you are able to use it, you stay in the game and continue playing. If not, you are out and count up the empty spaces you have left. The game is that simple. But it works well because it gives a chance for people to be creative in how they fill in the shapes. You doodle on them so you can tell what is filled and what isn’t, or create patterns. And that part of the game is really a lot of fun. Plus, the game works for everyone since it is so simple.

Status: Played

Sentinel Tactics: The Flame of Freedom

Honestly, I ordered this game on accident. I thought I was ordering another expansion for Sentinels of the Multiverse, but I ordered Sentinel Tactics. Thankfully I ordered a standalone game, not an expansion for Sentinels Tactics. Sentinel Tactics still takes place in the Sentinels of the Multiverse world, but is a tactical game, as the name implies. You move chits around a modular board playing through scenarios that have you trying to beat a villain. I hope it’s good, I know one person who said it was interesting, if not, I got it on a steep sale, so I can always use it to get store credit at my FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store) for a game I want.

Status: To Be Played

Sentinels of the Multiverse (and Expansions Galore)

What, this game comes after Sentinel Tactics alphabetically, who’d have guessed. I picked up the base game used from my FLGS. Sentinals is a game that I’ve wanted to try for a while because of the superhero theme. Then when Tom Vassal played it on a What’s Appening stream for the Dice Tower, I decided it looked good enough to pick up. Then, Black Friday rolled around and Greater Than Games had a massive sale. So I picked up a ton of expansions for it, almost a literal ton. I believe it was 17 expansions for it, plus Sentinel Tactics. I still need to get it to the table, and I plan on starting just with the base game, but I love the superhero world and the comics that come with some of the boxes.

Status: To Be Played

Shadowrun Crossfire: Prime Runner Edition

I picked this one up recently as well. Shadowrun Crossfire first came onto my radar when I played it at Fantasy Flight Game Center off of their demo wall. I knew when I played it that I’d pick it up eventually. I really like the world of Shadowrun. A world where big corporations are running things, and hackers go on runs to try and get data and take them down. The cyberpunk setting works really well for me. I know there are some knocks on the game with how slowly characters level up, but I am still excited to play through it’s campaign.

Status: Played

Shadowrun: Sprawl Ops (with Cooperative Expansion)

This game was a bit of a mess getting it from Kickstarter. The shipping company messed up royally, and while we did get cool extra boards, the creators who were doing updates were not professional about everything. I don’t have any issue with the publisher Catalyst Game Labs, but with Lynnvander Studios, I’d be hesitant to back any of their projects again. The game looks amazing and has a great cyberpunk aesthetic, though, so I am excited to play it. And the game comes in a massive box, where even the box looks awesomely cyberpunk.

Status: To Be Played

Shadows of Brimstone: City of the Ancients

I have some beefs with this game, though it is still on my shelf. The main beef I have is that it sucks to put together. All the little minis come in a lot of pieces and are not easy to put together. This sounds like it’s been rectified to some extent in other prints of this box. However, the game itself is a lot of fun. It’s a weird west game where you are pushing deep into a mine to try and complete objectives. But there are monsters in there, and you might stumble into a whole other world if you aren’t careful. I want more time to play it, but I have to reassemble my minis first, which might be a good winter project, assuming I remember how they go together.

Status: Played

Shadows of Kilforth: A Fantasy Quest Game

I have mentioned a few places that have caused me to pick up games and Shadows of Kilforth is one of those game. This fantasy game with an Eastern flare to it, was one that I saw the original, Gloom of Kilforth played on the Rolling Solo channel on YouTube. The game play looked interesting, so when a sequel showed up on Kickstarter, it felt like a good game to back. I still think it will be, I just need to get it sorted and ready for the table. This game is one that I should be able to play solo on Malts and Meeples in the new year sometime.

Status: To Be Played

Shakespeare

I’m ashamed of how long this game has been on my shelf without getting played. My wife picked it up for we as a gift, and as a game that she’d also like the theme of. But it’s euro game, so I don’t get those off my shelf as much. I am interested in it as I like the theme of putting on a play. Getting costumes, actors, sets, and more ready sounds like a lot of fun, I just haven’t played it yet. I am excited to try it still, I just need to sit down and learn the rules so we can get it to the table.

Status: To Be Played

The Siblings Trouble

I picked this one up off of Kickstarter because of how much I had enjoyed Lift Off! from the same design and company. This one is a light RPG like game that is targeted for families with kids. It is meant to be a way to get that RPG feel without having as much of a ruleset as something like Dungeons and Dragons does. I’m waiting until the toddler is old enough to play it with us because the game looks very cute.

Status: To Be Played

Silver: Amulet (and Coin, Bullet, and Dagger)

Silver: Amulet was a game that I got to try at GenCon in 2019. The game has a puzzle feel to it as you are trying to score the fewest points in your village. The twist comes with being able to swap out two cards for one card, if the cards are the same number. Add in a lot of powers on your cards, and you have an interesting puzzle. And then to top that all off, you don’t know what most of your cards are at the start of the game. The amulet, coin, bullet, and dagger all do different things, so depending on which version you play there will be a unique special power. And the cards you play with between the games can be mixed together, you just need one set of each number to make it work.

Status: Played

Silver & Gold

Roll and write, you know the drill. I like them, and this one does something cool. You fill in spots on cards, which seems bad. But the cards are dry erase, so you can play with them over and over again. It is a clever twist as you start to do set collection with them and score points off of which ones you have filled in. You still make combos though. If you cross of a treasure spot, that allows you to fill in another spot on any of your cards, and there are palm trees that are worth points as well. Super small sized game, but looks to pack a lot of game into it.

Status: To Be Played

Skip-Bo

The section of old games apparently. Skip-Bo is a classic game that I grew up playing less than I’d want in some ways. Fairly often for a simple card game Uno would be the game picked. But Skip-Bo had more interesting game play to it than Uno does. I like figuring out how to place your discards in the most optimal way possible, and sometimes stopping early to try and lock an opponent from being able to play easily. Now, the game can drag because of poor card draw, but it is generally quite fast.

Status: Played

Skulk Hollow

A two player game that was on Kickstarter. Again from the same company as Lift Off! Skulk Hollow is an asymmetric two player game. One person plays as the fox kingdom and the other as the old guardian that has awakened. The fox player needs to get onto the guardian, since it is to too large to beat otherwise, and take out it’s different actions. The monster generally has it’s own objective, but can by taking out the fox leader. The game has simple card play but is very tactical in nature and the box comes with multiple leaders for the fox and guardians for a ton of replayability.

Status: Played

Skull

The first time I played Skull, I wasn’t sure how much I liked it. It had weird coasters that you played with, and it was a push your luck sort of game. However, the more I played it, the more interesting it became, how did you successfully bluff someone into picking from your pile which has a skull in it, when that will bust you if you get stuck with the bid. The bluffing is what makes this game, it doesn’t have a lot of strategy to it, but if you can bluff and read your opponents you’ll do well in this game. And the coaster shaped “cards” are still weird.

Status: Played

Small World (and Small World Underground)

Small World was one of the gateway games for me that got me into the hobby. I like how it has Risk elements, but it’s actually fun. It has a lot of attacking and defeating your enemy, but in a fun way. You aren’t rolling die like in Risk, the battles are determined just by if you have enough pieces of cardboard to beat an area. The powers and races make this game work though, because something like undead ghouls or flying halflings are just silly, and you can get some great combinations, like commando elves or flying sorcerers that can put a bit of a target on your back. Game is a lot of fun every time I play it, which is about once a year.

Status: Played

Sonora

I’ve talked about roll and writes, and flip and writes, even a draft and write, but I haven’t mentioned my flick and write. Sonora is a combotastic [blank] and write game. To start your turn you flick disks around a board which determine who much you get to put in certain areas. Some of them are simple race to completion, others have you putting pieces in like they are Tetris, or filling in dots, or closing off sections of the board. It has a ton going on, and if you get the right things, you then get more to fill in other areas and it can repeat even more. It is extremely satisfying.

Status: Played

Specter Ops

A game that I picked up used, but that was on my radar for a long time. Spector Ops is a one versus all game, but the one is hidden. They are moving around to various objectives trying to get them all. The concept is so interesting to me. I want to play both sides of it, see how well I can hide where I’m at and see how well I can deduce where someone else is going. It feels like it should be a good and challenging experience.

Status: To Be Played

Splendor

Splendor is a light and small engine building game. You are collecting gems to get cards that have permanent gems and sometimes points. And you can use those permanent gems to get even more cards which games on them and the process repeats until someone has 15 points. The game is really simple to play, the theme is not there, but that’s okay. It is meant as an introduction to engine building and it works for that. Not one I want to play all the time, but I keep it on the shelf for what it is.

Status: Played

Star Wars: Destiny

Fantasy Flight Games foray into collectible card games. It was a fun game because it wasn’t only card it was nice chunky dice as well. And I like the Star Wars theme better than say, Magic the Gathering. The issue is that the game isn’t quite as good, and people didn’t get into it as much. Destiny is now a retired game, but one that had a good following and people were sad to see leave. What I think worked well was that none of the cards were rarer than the others. So you got good stuff all the time. That was part of what killed it as well, Magic works because it has a massive secondary market for it for FLGS’s, Destiny had none.

Status: Played

Star Wars: Imperial Assault

The Star Wars dungeon crawl. This game does one thing that I really wish the Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth did, and that is that it is adjacent to the main story and the main characters. But I can’t play as Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, those are characters who just make appearances. But out of the base box, you are still playing around the original trilogy storyline. The game also has an app, so it can be one versus all, but it can also be fully cooperative. I need to play it more because I’ve liked the plays I’ve had.

Status: Play

Star Wars: Unlock!

The unlock games are basically escape room games in in a box. And the Star Wars: Unlock! game is a game that is an escape room in a box with a Star Wars theme. I like these games because they are very puzzly and can give you an experience while you play them. I’ve heard that the Star Wars: Unlock is a bit easier than some of the other ones, but I’m fine with that as it’ll be more accessible to more people. I want to play this over the holidays, and that’s the one downside, once you’ve played an unlock game once, you can’t play it again because you’ll know how it goes, still $30 for three hour long experiences in a group isn’t bad.

Status: To Be Played

Stipulations

I talk about this game a lot, mainly because I really like it was a party game. Stipulations asks the question, what horrible thing will your friends come up with. If you have the super power of flight, what’s the stipulation, or the dream job of being a movie actor, what is the stipulation. This game does what most party games do, it ends up with a lot of in jokes, but it is a fun time and compared to something like Apples to Apples which is basically always clean or Cards Against Humanity which is always dirty, Stipulations can be tailored to those whom you’re playing with.

Status: Played

Super Fantasy Brawl

I’ve decided that I really like games that Mythic Games puts out, or at least in concept. Reichbusters looks like a fun twist on a dungeon crawl, and Super Fantasy Brawl seems like a really accessible two player fighting game. The game has chunky minis that look great, and simple but interesting card play. I like that you play three cards on your turn and those cards have to be of different colors, but each character, of the three you have doesn’t correspond to a color, so if you get a red and a yellow card for one character, you can activate that character twice, from my understanding. I really want to give this one a whirl as it has an epic table presence for a fairly simple seeming game, rules wise.

Status: To Be Played

Super-Skill Pinball: 4-cade

You know the drill, I love my roll and write games. And I like the theme on this one a ton. I like the idea of playing a pinball machine and seeing what the high score is that I can get on it. I like the mechanics of how the ball can bounce around and how it will only bounce certain ways and generally down. You are also trying to bounce it up higher and complete combos on things, just like in real pinball to get even more points. And it’s called 4-cade because there are 4 different machines that you can play.

Status: To Be Played

Sushi Go Party!

This was another early game for my collection as it was on Wil Wheaton’s Table Top show. It is a card drafting game, a mechanic that I quite enjoy, with set collection as well. The game works well, even though with new players you sometimes have someone get off on what they are drafting. Sushi Go Party! also gives you ways to change everything up, so that you can have different combinations of foods on the menu. The game has a very cute table appeal and is just a hit basically all the time.

Status: Played

Sword and Sorcery (plus Expansions)

Sword and Sorcery is a classic dungeon crawl game. This one is pure Amerithrash dice chucking fun. I like how much mitigation you have, but only mitigation in having multiple symbols to use on the dice and being able to reroll dice. My knock on this game is that it is almost a little bit too easy at times. You get great weapons for completing things and now you are hitting really hard and can take down monsters fast. Granted if you roll poorly no matter what you’ll do poorly. I wish it had a bit more of a story to it, but overall, the story isn’t too bad and the game is meant to be mainly a dice chucking dungeon crawl anyways.

Status: Played

Sword Art Online Board Game: Sword of Fellows

I love Sword Art Online, one of my favorite anime, and I’ve watched it multiple times. I am also working on a game idea based off of some of the isekai themes from it. But this game is a bit sad, the anime is big and epic, this game is tiny. it does get some things right, mainly the combat of switching in and out and not letting the bad guy go feels like it matches the theme. I need to play this one not solo, because I think it might be better that way and have less upkeep for one player. I’m hoping some day we’ll get a truly epic Sword Art Online board game.

Status: Played

So that’s all of the S’s, there are ton of them. I hope that you were able to stick it out, hte rest of the list will be a lot shorter. There are so many good games in the S’s as well and a lot that I need to play. Which one should I play first? Do I have something that seems like it’s missing to you? I’m guessing people will say Scythe, which I owned, but got rid of.

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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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Now, this is my top 100 games, not the 100 objectively best games, these are my 100 favorite games. To get this list, I go through all the games that I’ve ranked on BGG, minus a few, which I’ll get to in a second, and then using PubMeeple.com’s ranking engine, I go through and do the one versus one comparisons on the games until they are all sorted. This gives you a one to one comparison between the games and in my case was something around 1000 different comparisons. I could have done only my top ranked games, but this gives a chance for a game that I maybe haven’t rerated recently to show up on the list, even if I’ve rated it lower. So, I said this was minus a few games, and I don’t mean ones like Monopoly or Cards Against Humanity that I don’t like, those I actually rated, I’m talking about actually things like ICECOOL 2, Dice Throne Season 2, or Star Wars Destiny Two Player, because I have ICECOOL, Dice Throne Season One, and Destiny that I counted for those.

Next, when I do these lists, if the game sounds interesting to you, I want to give you a chance to pick it up. I always, and especially this year, recommend you order from your FLGS, but some of you might not have a local game store, some of them might be closed due to Covid, some local game stores aren’t friendly, and I fully recognize that sometimes you need a game, funds are tight, and online is cheaper, so don’t feel like you can use your local store, I hope you do pick them up online, more games to play, more fun options to introduce people to, no matter where they come from is great. I’m going to be linking to either CoolStuffInc or Amazon for where you can pick up the games immediately if you want.

Finally, this is obviously just my opinion. There are some games that you’ll hate that I love, almost guaranteed for some of you in my Top 10 even, and there will be some games that you love that won’t make my list, they were obviously my number 101 (all of them). And if it was on the list last year, I’m going to try and put down the number it was at before, just to see which ones move up and which ones move down and what new games have hit the list.

But, without further ado, here’s my list starting with 100 through 91.

100. Lazer Ryderz

Lazer Ryderz is a game of goofy fun as it’s basically light bikes like you see in Tron and you are racing them around, leaving your path behind you hoping someone else will run into it, and trying to get goals. You basically have to go off of feel because you decide where you start at the edge of the table with your eyes closes, when laying down your track route, once you pick up a piece and put it over the top of the table, you’re committing to it. And it’s all in 80’s neon glory looking like a big four pack of VHS. So it has that goofy feel to go with what’s a very goofy game. Good one for when you want something pretty fast and very casual to play.

Last Year: 100

99. Ra

This game is interesting as it’s bidding, it’s set collection and it’s push your luck. I like the bidding mechanic in it a lot as you bid you put that number into the middle if you win the bid and take the number that was there, so it’s possible late in a round to hold onto a low number in order to be able to grab a high number from the middle and change your fate for a future round. There’s also some interesting push your luck because when you’re the last person who can bid, you can always draw more and more tiles, but if you get the wrong tiles you’ll bust. The game maybe plays a touch long for me for what it does, but I like the strategy in it, and I like the bidding in it.

Last Year: Not Ranked

98. Shadowrun: Crossfire

We’ll see a game very similar to this coming up, but this is one that I wish I had in my collection, but I want to find used. I like it for the theme a lot. I enjoy the cyberpunk setting that it’s in, and the idea of going on these runs, missions, to take down the evil corporations. It’s something that is very interesting. Plus it’s deck building, so you can specialize, but that might not always be the best because you don’t know who you’ll have to face off against next and that might not work with your skill set. But other people can help you some as well, which makes it interesting to see how that works. And it’s scenario building as well which is fun as well.

Last Year: 91

97. Legends of Andor

This is a dungeon crawl, kind of, really Legends of Andor is more of a scenario based puzzle as you try and rush to get everything done before the time runs out. And you can kill monsters, but that advances the timer, so you need to understand that is happening and figure out how to balance out killing monsters while trying to complete the mission while trying not to let the story advance too quickly so that you run out of time to complete it. The game does one thing I really like and that’s having both the male and female version of the heroes so people don’t feel like they are locked in playing a certain character because of the sex of that character. I think the one thing that might confuse people about this game is that it looks like it should be a big fight the monsters adventure, but really it’s a very tightly made puzzle where every decision really matters.

Last Year: 86

96. The Lord of the Rings: Journey to Mordor

So, first off, no link for this, it’s out of print from what I can tell and I couldn’t find it even on Amazon which is saying something. This is a little push your luck roll and write game where you are trying to get the ring to Mount Doom and by the first to throw it in. Thematically it doesn’t make sense because you can’t have one ring to rule them all and then four different groups each having the one ring, but as a roll and write, it was pretty solid fun. There are definitely others that I like better but this one was a good time and it plays fast. There is some take that to it which can be a negative thing, but it didn’t seem like there was too much and the game didn’t overstay it’s welcome to make the take that a big deal.

Last Year: Not Ranked

95. Takenoko

This game is a really cute game. Takenoko has adorable little panda figure, and you are stacking up different colors of bamboo. There’s really just a lot of fun stuff in this game. You are growing the bamboo, moving the panda and having him eat it, putting out and irrigating more tiles to grow even more bamboo all to complete different scoring base off of bamboo growth, title placement, or what the panda has eaten and you’re seeing how many you can get done before all the turns run out. This is a game that has an amazing table presence with the bamboo growing up and the panda and gardener figures, and it’s a very enjoyable game to boot without being too complex.

Last Year: 97

94. Dragonfire

So this is the game that is based off of the game system as Shadowrun: Crossfire. Whereas Shadowrun is a future cyberpunk setting, Dragonfire is classic Dungeons and Dragons setting where you are taking on monsters, fighting through scenarios, leveling up your characters and doing it all over again. I think that this game has worked out some of the kinks from the original and it has definitely gotten more support with a lot of scenario packs having come out for it. This just allows you to build into more and more game play and pick the scenarios that look interesting to you. Plus, deck building is always a plus in a game for me.

Last Year: 93

93. Yahtzee

Second roll and write on the list, and this is the original roll and write. I still enjoy Yahtzee today because everyone understands how it works and the rules are simple. In fact we’ll see other games on the list that use a similar mechanic to Yahtzee. But what I like is that I kind of have it down, now that doesn’t mean that I roll a Yahtzee always, but it means that I can look and see what I might want to be doing, what I’ll want to keep, what the odds are of me getting what I need, when it’s worth it to push for a large straight, when it isn’t and so on. Plus, I can play it with my parents and it isn’t as much of a game that plays itself like a lot of the more classic games that we’d play such as Uno or Skip-Bo, which are number 101 in case you were wondering.

Last Year: Not Ranked

92. Pandemic

Last year this was a fair amount higher on my list, but it’s dropped some just because of having played Legacy Season 1 twice and Season 2 once, and Season 0 is coming out soon-ish. Base Pandemic is still a good game, it just feels like the introductory cooperative game that it is. It’s easy to teach, it’s easy to play, but it can be fairly hard to win, depending on how things come up. The game is a classic game for a reason and it is one that I won’t turn down playing, though, I’m not sure it’s one I’d immediately pull off the shelf myself when it comes to introductory games at this point. I think that it really highlights, beyond being a cooperative game, is how every players part of the game can be different with the variable player powers, and I think for new players that is something that is cool and uinique.

Last Year: 50

91. Tsuro

This one also slipped for me because in some ways I’ve played it too much now. I think that this is a fun group game, and I think it’s one of a few games that plays fast and plays a large number but it isn’t just another party game. In this you are trying to be the last person on the board but you must follow the path that you lay out in front of you. And you have to be concerned about the other players as well. If you get to close, you could have to follow a path that someone else lays down, and that might run you off the board, in which case you’re out of the game, or it might hit another players pawn, in which case both of you are knocked out. So there’s some strategic avoidance but you also don’t want to stick yourself in a corner with no way out. It’s a fun game, just one that I’ve played a lot.

Last Year: 61

So we have a few movers in this section with three previously not in the Top 100 games, and two dropping a ways. Oddly enough, the very first game on the list, Number 100 was Number 100 the year before, good job Lazer Ryderz in being consistent.

Looking at this list, are there any of the games that stand out to you as ones that you want to play? If you’ve played any of the games, which is your favorite on this section of the list? Let me know in the comments on on Twitter.

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Deck Building

Most people are familiar with games that use decks of cards, from the kids game Candyland to something like Uno or Skip-bo to party games like Cards Against Humanity. All of these games use a communal deck of cards that players draw from to get their hand or to take an action and then they play those cards. It’s a very straight forward concept and you have a deck of cards that is consistent that you’ll be drawing the cards from and you’ll get whatever you get from that pool of cards.

A deck building game builds upon this idea of the deck of cards, but instead of having 108 cards in the Uno deck that everyone shares, instead you have your own deck of 10 or 12 or some number of cards. And when you start the game everyone’s decks are the same. But as the game goes on, you purchase more cards from a pool of cards that are face up to add to your deck. So when you have to reshuffle, now your deck is different than another persons deck.

A simple example of this is Ascension. In Ascension, you start with a deck of 10 cards, eight that give you points to purchase more cards, and two that let you fight monsters. The cards that you buy, some of them allow you to draw more cards when you play them, or get more points for purchasing more cards, or they’ll help you fight monsters. So by the time you shuffle again, you will have two or more different cards than the person you’re playing against, so the hand you’ll draw will be different from a hand of cards that they can draw. The further you get into the game and the more cards that you add to your deck, the more different your deck of cards will be from another players and the more different your strategy will be from another player. The deck building aspect of the game allows players to create a deck that matches how they want to play the game.

All deck building games give you a way to acquire more cards. In Ascension you purchase them, so a card that costs more will mean that you need more points to purchase it, so you might not be able to right away. This tends to be a core mechanic as well of a lot of deck building games is that they build up to you doing bigger and bigger things, but we’ll talk about what that mechanic is known as in a future article.

There are two main types of deck building games. The static market game or the changing market game. Ascension is an example of a changing market game. You have six cards to make your purchase from or to fight if they are monsters. When you purchase a card or defeat a monster, a new card is flipped down into the market form a draw pile and you don’t know what that card is going to be. So a card you want one turn might not be there the following turn, or might not be there at all again in a game. In a static market game you have a certain number of piles of cards, all the cards in those piles are identical so when you buy the top one, you know what the one underneath it is going to be. This allows you, from the start of the game, to determine a long term strategy throughout the game and to really dictate what your deck is going to be capable of doing. Dominion is an example of a static market deck building game. Now, it comes down to preference as to which one you like better. With the static deck it is going to more heavily favor the more experienced player or the player with better long term planning skills, because at the start of the game you can sit down, look at the static market and make your plan. If a changing market, you might come in with a plan but then need to adjust it on the fly, but it’ll keep the game more balanced between more and less experienced players. Neither is really a bad thing, it just comes down to personal preference.

Let’s talk about some deck building games that you might want to checkout if this sounds interesting.

Gateway/Intro To Deck Building Game

Ascension – For me, Ascension is the ideal deck building game, the changing market place means that a more experienced player doesn’t have a massive advantage and while there are some better strategies, it all depends on how the market comes out. It also works well because you are just doing two things with your cards, mainly, you are either buying with the purchasing power on the cards or you are fighting a monster with a fighting power on a the cards. A few cards do a few more things, like draw more cards from your deck but they are generally simple. The theme isn’t really there, but in most pure deck building games, which Ascension is, the theme will be missing or barely there anyways.

Medium Weight Deck Building Game

Clank! – Now, regular Clank! isn’t my favorite way to play Clank!. I like Clank! In! Space! better, but there’s just a little bit more going on than a medium weight deck building game. Clank! again has a variable market and monsters to fight, but you’ve added in some additional elements. It does more of one thing you see in Ascension, which is creating combos based off of who you’ve gotten, and it adds in more than just purchase and fight. You now have the ability to move and you are pushing your luck. Also, good cards might have negative consequences as well. It adds a bit more complexity and a bit more strategy to the game, even with a changing market place.

Heavy/Complex Deck Building Game

Aeon’s End: War Eternal – I had a few options to pick here, but I went with Aeon’s End: War Eternal. A lot of deck building games add to their complexity not so much the deck building aspect, but from additional pieces to the game play. Aeon’s End: War Eternal (or any of the Aeon’s End Games) are good examples of this. The deck building uses a static market, but you are presented with more choices. You have to cast spells at monsters, but to do that you have to purchase more spells, but with your money you also need to open breaches to cast those spells. Plus, all of the Aeon’s End games add in something else interesting, not only is there a lot of strategy to what you get from the market, you also don’t shuffle your deck, you just discard cards, so if you can plan it out correctly you can stack the deck in a particular order to get a lot of well balanced hands or maybe a hand with a lot of purchasing power in order to get a very strong spell. There’s just more to think about, though this game is cooperative so a more experienced player can help and teach a new player to the game.

Now, there are a lot of deck building games out there to choose from and some that fall into the category that I’d qualify as more deck construction games that work off of some of the same principles as a deck building game. Have you tried a deck building game before? Do they sound fun to you?

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Games can be split into four different categories in my opinion. There are light weight, family weight, medium weight, and heavy weight games. And for me, that goes from the least complex to the most complex games. I am sure that other people might have an extra category at the end of super heavy weight games for the 18XX games and Train Games (not Ticket to Ride), where you playing in a very heavy economic game and you might actually need a calculator to figure out what is going on, on your turn, not just to add up scores at the end of a game.

Let’s first talk about why games are split into these categories. There are a ton of ways to sort or categorize games such as by some mechanic in the game or the theme of the game, but where those tell you some about the game, the weight of a game is really to help you determine the complexity of the game. The heavier a game is, the more complex that it’s going to be, and the more time commitment is going to be needed for learning the game and possibly for playing the game. However, not all games that have a lot of rules have a high weight to the game. Gloomhaven, for example, on Board Game Geek, is rated at a 3.79 out of 5 for weight, which puts it at a medium heavy, and it has a pretty hefty rule book.

What is a Light Weight game?

A light weight game is going to be those filler sorts of games. Something Tsuro, is a light weight game because the rules are simple to teach and the game is easy to play. Party games also fall into this category as you can generally pull them out and get them taught and to the table in five minutes. People aren’t likely to have many questions either about them when you are playing them. And if there is a question that comes up, the rules are likely so simple that you don’t need to look up anything and can just answer it. Kids games would also fall into this category, though, not all of them. But simple games like Chutes (Snakes) and Ladders or Candyland, that people normally think of, are so simple that you really just do what the game tells you, versus make any decision in the game. That’s another area where the complexity of the game is pretty low, even in Tsuro, you have three tiles and while you have some choice at the start of the game, the choice doesn’t matter much then. And in the later part of the game, the choice matters, but you have an obvious choice so you don’t have to think about it much.

What is a Family Weight Game?

So just by thinking what is a bit more complex than the light weight games, you can start to figure out what family weight games are. The best way to describe it is that these are the games that you play with your parents if they aren’t board gamers growing up. Or growing up only played a few like Skip-Bo, Uno, Rummikub, and Yahtzee. The latter two would actually probably fall into the family weight category. But more modern games that are family weight would be things like Carcassone, Ticket to Ride, and Catan. These games have more complex rules than light games, but generally there aren’t edge cases where you have to remember that something only happens in a specific situation. These games also start to offer meaningful decisions. Yes, they are generally not that complex, but Carcassone gives you choices when you place figures like knights, farmers, thieves, and monks (if I have the terms correct). In Catan you determine where you start and where you build towards, and in Ticket to Ride, do you take those train cars you want or do you play a route before someone else can get it? But the decisions are still pretty simple and you can probably do either option and end up being fine in the game. These games also can still end up with a run away winner. Other games would something like Sushi Go! Party, Pandemic, Dominion or Welcome To…

What are Medium Weight Games?

Again, we’re taking it up in complexity of game play and learning. These games still aren’t too difficult to learn, but there are going to be more moving parts. Xenoshyft: Onslaught would be a good example of this. Where Dominion is just a deck builder that is pretty easy to each, Xenoshyft actually has you doing something more in the game, and you are faced with more decisions than just buying a card worth points, a card worth money, or a card that draws you more cards. Another game that would fit into this category is Seven Wonders. Much like Xenoshyft builds upon the fundamentals and adds in more to deck building, Seven Wonders is a more complex card drafting game as compared to Sushi Go! Party. You also start to get edge cases in the games where certain cards together interact in a way that you can’t just naturally figure out. But there aren’t so many of these that once you’ve played the game a few times that you won’t know what is going. I actually think that Gloomhaven falls into the heavier side of Medium Weight games. There are certainly a good number of rules, but once you know them, you can play without looking things up, and it doesn’t take too long to know the rules once you start playing. I’d also put a game like Pandemic Legacy in a medium weight game. The rules don’t vary greatly from base Pandemic, but since the rules are changing, you need to remember everything that is going on.

Finally, What are Heavy Weight Games?

Again, not too difficult to figure out, but these are the games that you have a lot of text on a lot of cards, there is a lot of complexity in these games. I would put games like Cry Havoc and Root into this category where you have asymmetrical powers. Because of this, each person has edge cases that are different than other people at the table. And you need to teach each character separately. These games also have a lot of what I’d call book keeping. That doesn’t always mean taking notes, but it means that there are a lot of phases and some of the phases are resetting things to a starting turn point. Two good examples of this are a couple of cooperative games from Portal Games, First Martian and Robinson Crusoe. In these games, there are certain game events that happen at the end of every turn or end of every round that you need to do. Star Wars: Rebellion is also a heavy game with asymmetrical goals going on, though the actions of the players are pretty similar. But there are a lot of decisions that you have to make in the game, and if you mess up a single decision that can cost you the game. Even a game that is generally panned like SeaFall can fall into this category because the rules are complex (some do to poor writing), but the game offers a ton of tactical decisions that you have to think about.

Finally, let’s talk about what this means for your gaming collection. Do you need a game(s) of each type? I don’t think that you do, if you know your gaming group will never want to play a light filler game, why do you have one of those in your collection or go out of your way to buy one? The same goes for very heavy games, if I know that I don’t want to play a highly tactical war game, I don’t need one in my collection just so I have one just in case. That said, I would try and keep a good variety in your collection that makes sense for the gaming group that you have. For example, according to Board Game Geek, out of the 253 games that I’ve rated on the site (or own), 3 of them are over 4 for weight, so pretty heavy. 23 of them are at 1.25 or lower (1 is the lowest possible number) and all of those are extremely light. That means that I have a lot in the middle, though I tend to skew lighter as those games are easier to get to the table with my gaming group.

So, what does your collection look like? What’s the average weight of the games that you like, do you skew more towards heavy games or do you find your collection to have a lot of filler and party games you can pull out any time?

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