Catch Up on the Top 100 Games

100 through 91
90 through 81

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition – 80 through 71

80. Rock Hard 1977

Published By: Devir
Designer: Jackie Fox

Buy Rock Hard 1977

Do you want to be a rockstar? Rock Hard 1977 is all about being a rockstar and the designer is legitimately a rockstar. In this game you place out workers in day, evening and night activities that help take you from garage band playing little local shows to playing sold out stadiums. The player who can make the journey the best is going to be the winner of the game. And each part of the day is going to let you do different things, in the day you might record a record, evening perform, and night go hang out at a club.

79. The Night Cage

Published By: Smirk & Dagger Games
Designer: Christopher Ryan Chan, Chris McMahon and Rosswell Saunders

Buy The Night Cage

I like a good spooky game. The Night Cage gives you that spooky feeling by creating tension as you race to get out of an every changing labyrinth. Can everyone get their keys and get to a portal before the candles run out and the players are lost in there forever. That counting down of tiles as they leave the board and new ones are placed out as a timer is great in this game. And it is spooky, which is hard for a board game to do.

78. Cthulhu: Death May Die

Published By: CMON Global Limited
Designers: Rob Daviau and Eric M Lang

Sold Out on online retailers, look for sellers on the Board Game Geek Marketplace or eBay.

Maybe your spooky is better with lots of giant monsters and a scenario where you know an elder being is going to come eventually. Cthulhu: Death May Die, called CDMD or Death May Die in the hobby, is a big game with minis and madness. You want to push your insanity up a little bit so that you unlock new powers and abilities to defeat the ancient horrors. But too much insanity and you knocked out of the game. This is a good beer and pretzels sort of game.

77. Captain Flip

Published By: PlayPunk
Designers: Remo Conzadori and Paolo Mori

Buy Captain Flip

Moving on from the spooky games, we have Captain Flip. This is tile laying game about filling up your pirate ship with crew. Every crew member is going to give you points, positive or negative, in some way. When you draw a tile you see one side. Then you decide do you want to place that onto your ship, or do you want flip it? If you flip it you are stuck on that side and have to put that down. It’s this balance of optimizing your score, playing out pirates, and pushing your luck as you flip the tiles.

76. Cartographers

Published By: Thunderworks Games
Designer: Jordy Adan

Buy Cartographers

Cartographers used to be my Top Roll and Write style game. Now it is dropping a bit, some because there are so many roll and write games that I like, and some because I haven’t played it recently. But I really enjoy this one and really enjoy making a map. I like the interactivity of the monsters who I play it on my opponents board in the worst spot possible for them. And I like how you score four different things, but depending on the season you score two and the season determines the two. It’s one I need to play again.

75. Letter Jam

Published By: Czech Games Edition (CGE)
Designer: Ondra Skoupy

Buy Letter Jam

Do you like word games but it seems like some people are just better at them? Letter Jam is a cooperative word game, so everyone needs to work together. In this game you don’t know the letters or the word you have. But everyone else can see one letter of yours at a time, and you can see one letter of everyone else’s. You all need to give good clues of words so people can figure out what their letter is. Say you have an “O” if I give a clue that shows you that the word uses the letters “FR[your letter]M” you can figure out what it is. But everyone needs to figure theirs out and figure out their word.

74. Can’t Stop

Published By: Eagle Gryphon Games
Designer: Sid Sackson

Buy Can’t Stop

Can’t Stop is another push your luck game to make the list. I like a good push your luck game like this one, Push, or Flip 7. They are easy to teach and play. In this one you want to get to the top of 3 columns. If you do that, you win. How do you do that, well, you roll dice and then split them into two pairs of two. The twist is that you only move up on three numbers per turn. So I might roll and get a combo to make ten and eleven, if I am not going up on ten or eleven, I lose my progress. But if I play it too safe, I lose.

73. Under Falling Skies

Published By: Czech Games Edition (CGE)
Designer: Tomas Uhlif

Buy Under Falling Skies

Do you like the movie Independence Day? Did you grow up playing the game Space Invaders. Under Falling Skies is a game that gives me the feel of both of those things. You need to research how to stop the mother ship while keeping too many of the smaller ships from making it to earth. And it uses an interesting die system. The higher the die, the more powerful the actions you can take are. But also the faster those little ships descend towards earth. I love that balancing act puzzle of the game.

72. So Clover!

Published By: Repos Production
Designer: Francois Romain

Buy So Clover!

So Clover! is a cooperative party game. It is one that is easy to teach in person and hard to explain. Basically you create a grid of cards that have words on every side. So you need to connect the two words per side with another word. Then everyone else is trying to get those words back onto the board in the right order, but the twist is there is an extra word thrown in. Plus often times the words are not easy to match. The better you do that as a group the more points you get.

71. Rallyman: DIRT

Published By: Holy Grail Games
Designer: Jean-Cristophe Bouvier

Buy Rallyman: DIRT

Finally rounding out this 10 is Rallyman: DIRT. This is another push your luck game and a racing game. In it you plot you course down the track and then get a choice. You either roll one die at a time which allows you to stop before you spin out and bad things happen. Or you roll all the dice at once. Why roll all at once? Well, when you roll all at once, you take negative one second to your time per die rolled. So you can reduce your overall time if you don’t spin out.

Join Next Week

Just as a reminder, I am streaming my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition every Wednesday night at 9 PM Central Time. The next few videos have their links up, so you can click notify on them to know when I go live. Or you can subscribe to the channel and click notify to know whenever a new video comes out. Currently I am playing through Legendary Kingdoms on Monday and then my wife and I are playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on Fridays. So join us for those videos.

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

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And for other ideas check out the previous lists.

Two Player Games
Campaign Games
Solo Games

Party Games

Just One

Just One is the first of two cooperative party games on the list. That in and of itself is fairly unique. But these games are great for when you have that person or people you play with who get too competitive or into even party games.

In Just One you give a one word clue to the person who is trying to guess a single word. The trick comes that players aren’t able to know what the other people are writing. And you want to give a different clue. Clues that are the same, both of them are erased and the person guessing gets neither of them. I like that element of the game because you want to be unique, but if you are so unique and far out there it could point someone in the wrong direction. And it is possible that people will completely skip the normal clue or the best option as well.

So Clover

The other of the cooperative party games is So Clover. Both of these games are actually from the same company, Repos Productions, who makes an interesting party game seemingly every year.

This is one that is trickier to explain than Just One. But it reminds me of a Venn Diagram in some ways. You get two words and you need to figure out how those words overlap. But you do that four times, like the shape of a four leaf clover. Each overlap is going to give you a unique combination. And after you pick your words and write them down, you remove the cards with the words, which have four words on them, and add a random other one. The other players need to work together and figure out how to put it back in the right orientation.

This game also has a nice benefit of the flow of the game. Each player can write down their combinations at the same time. And then you just go around taking turns being the person to present your set-up of words.

Ready Set Bet

This is very different from what people think of when they think of party games. But it has the excitement that I expect when I play a party game. Ready Set Bet is a horse racing bidding game that is played in real time.

One person is going to be running the race. They, in real time, are rolling dice which moves horses down the track. The other players are all betting on the race in real time. Once someone takes a spot that spot is gone. So rolling two dice you think that 7 would win most of the time, it might, but if you roll the same number twice in a row, it causes it to surge ahead. And of course, there is luck of the dice.

This game is a bit more of a game than a lot of the other ones. Those tend to be experiences. Here you need to learn a few rules and be up for adding in a bit of complexity as you go. But it still has those stand-up moments as people are racing for a betting spot, or at the end of the race, everyone is holding their breath or cheering loudly for their horse, or the one they bet the most on, to win.

Medium

Now we go to more traditional party games, though this one is still unique. In Medium you and another player partner up for a turn. It isn’t a cooperative game, but you both want to match up. That is common for party games. But here, it feels more unique because you each pick a word to play, and then you both need to come up with a word that connects the two. If you don’t on the first try, you use the words you just said and try again. You get three tries with fewer and fewer points you get each time. After a few rounds, player with the most points wins.

I like this game because it leads to weird situations. You might go in two opposite directions with what connects or is between the two. Or you might both pick different synonyms and now you need to make that work for the next guess. And as the person who is watching people guess you always know what they should say. But as the guesser you second guess yourself so much.

Blank Slate

Finally for the party games we have Blank Slate, the most traditional of the party games. In this one you are filling in a blank, so it’d be like [your word] Slate for example. And you want to match with one person with the word you write down. If you watch one with person you both get three points. Match with no one and you get no points. Or match with more people and you all get one point. The game is a race to 20 points or so, and it’s a lot of fun.

I like this one better than a lot of games like it though. It almost has a Apples to Apples feel to it, but you get to be creative. You pick the word you want to play, not some random words that you have in your hand that might not match. And you play the people around the table as well. I might find a great sports word to fill in, but if that doesn’t match the interests of the people at the table, probably not the best play.

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of good party games out there. I still even enjoy the classic party game of Scattergories. But a lot of people have played the few party games from the 80’s and 90’s a lot at this point. So these games are all newer, sometimes familiar and sometimes different, add them into your gaming rotation with friends and family around the holidays. Or give them to people so you aren’t always stuck playing the same games over and over again with them.

What is your favorite party game?

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Catch up on previous videos here

100 through 91
90 through 81
80 through 71

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition – 70 through 61

70. Sagrada

• Published by Floodgate Games in 2017
• Build the most beautiful stained glass window

This game is just a great drafting game experience. The ease of play is wonderful as well because you draft a die and place it while other people are going on drafting their own dice. Especially with the 5-6 player expansion, which can be worked into the lower player counts, it makes it so you don’t need to spend time with what others are doing. But both ways to draft the dice and place the dice are mainly the same and really good. Plus the way you need to play the dice to not have colors or numbers adjacent makes a great puzzle.

Buy Sagrada

69. Mesozooic

• Published by Z-Man Games in 2018
• Slide your dino-themed park together in this light filler game

Mesozooic has a couple of great elements to the game. Firstly it’s drafting, and I really love drafting. But the game is more than that. You also need to complete a slide puzzle. You see you draft 11 cards and shuffle them up to create a 3 tall and 4 wide grid with an open spot. Then you slide them around frantically for 45 seconds like a slide puzzle to get the best dino-park that you can. It’s silly, light, and a very fun time.

Buy Mesozooic

68. 7 Wonders Duel

• Published by Repos Production in 2015
• Draft cards and build wonders in this head to head game

I like this game better than 7 Wonders. Mainly because I played 7 Wonders a few times at two and it isn’t a good game. 7 Wonders Duel is great that way, as expected. But the game is more than just a better version, I think that the drafting is very clever. I love the trying to avoid revealing a card that is good for your opponent. And some of the cards being face down so unknown until they are revealed. And the two side ways to win with science and military add in tension to the game as well. You can’t just draft your best engine, even though you want to.

Buy 7 Wonders Duel

67. Icecool

• Published by Brain Games in 2016
• Help your penguins sneak out of class and get fish in this dexterity game

Yes, the theme of Icecool is that simple and I love it for me. I love the flicking element of the game, it’s just fun. And I really enjoy the silliness of the game. This is one of my favorites for a late night of gaming. Just sit around and flick penguins and have a laugh. It is possible to get very good at the game, but it’s also a game where players can just have a great shot by pure luck. To me that is what makes it a fun game for all ages.

Buy Icecool

66. Super Fantasy Brawl

• Published by Mythic Games in 2022
• Choose your team and face off against an opponent in an arena

This game is coming back, kind of. I say kind of, I expect that most of the game is going to be the same, but CMON bought it from the now defunct Mythic Games. So I want to see what CMON is going to do with it. Because I love the simplicity of the game. Super Fantasy Brawl has you activate three different colors of cards each round. And you can do some on defense as well, but that means you won’t do as much on your turn. Then you either try to knock out your opponents for trophies or complete goals, or most likely, do both. The game is strategic but also fast and easy to play.

Follow Super Fantasy Brawl: Reborn

65. Trailblazers

• Published by Bitewing Games in 2023
• Create the best hiking, biking, and kayaking routes

Another drafting game on the list. This is the last one for this time, but there are four and possible five if you count drafting your team in Super Fantasy Brawl. In this one you draft cards to create trails. I love the trail creation aspect of the game because you really need to strategize as to how you’re going to do that. And I like how the game becomes more complex in your trail creation throughout as you add in other hubs that you need to start and leave from for each of the three routes.

Buy Trailblazers

64. Mind Up!

• Published by Pandasaurus Games in 2023
• Play the right number to collect and create sets of colors

This game is so easy to learn and play. I actually wrote about it yesterday in that exact context, so you can checkout the article after this. But it’s simply play out a card simultaneously with the other players. Then you look to see who played the lowest number, they get the lowest number from the middle. And after that it’s about trying to get the colors you want into the highest scoring column you have. The whole thing is just a really easy to play and simple time. I explain it better in the video, by the way.

Buy Mind Up!

63. So Clover!

• Published by Repost Productions in 2021
• Can you find the right pair of words based off of one word clues?

This game is always tricky for me to explain. Basically you have cards with four words, one on each side. And you have four of them making this little four by four grid. Each side is going to have two words, if that all makes sense and you’re picturing it. You need to create a one word clue so people can guess and put it back into that same order. Not that hard, well, it is when the words don’t connect at all. And there is going to be a mystery fifth card added in. But if you give the right clues you can lead people down the right path to recreate it.

Buy So Clover!

62. The Castles of Burgundy

• Published by alea in 2019
• Take a new kingdom and turn it into a bustling land

A game that I wouldn’t have expected that I like. But I really enjoy The Castles of Burgundy, a game of using dice to purchase and place new things into your land. As well as using them to sell goods, and get workers that let you manipulate your dice. There is a bunch going on and I feel like I need to nail down my strategy for it. But I really enjoy what this offers and it’s a new type of puzzle for me to spend time diving into as a game. I even have the fancy version coming that alea did with Awaken Realms.

Buy The Castles of Burgundy

61. Letter Jam

• Published by Czech Games Edition in 2019
• Work together to figure out what everyone’s letters are because you can’t see your own

If you know what Hanabi is that will help with it. But Letter Jam is a game where you can’t see the letters that form your word. Other players can see one of them at a time but they can’t see theirs. So you give clues to help people narrow down what their letters might be for their jumbled word. Of course everyone needs to get theirs figured out by the end of the game, but it’s cooperative so the challenge is great but fun to tackle.

Buy Letter Jam

Upcoming Streams

Just a reminder on my streaming schedule.

• Monday night, time varies, I play different small solo games, though I might be looking to start up a campaign again.
• Wednesday at 9 PM central is going to continue my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition for another six weeks. After that expect this to be when I play my small games.
• Friday at 9 PM central my wife and I are streaming a playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3

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

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That one is trickier, in some ways, to pick out games for. Because, it isn’t like I can pull out a heavy board game off the shelf to play with. It is often too many people to do that with. And I need to think about the different levels of gamer and numbers as well. I like to theme the nights, as well, so people know what they are getting into.

Top 5 Themes for Board Game Night

5. Racing Games

Kicking off this board game theme list is racing games. And this actually catches some games in other categories that I came up with as well. But racing games work well because racing is a theme that people understand. I want to finish the race first. Or, a lot of racing games, I want to win the most money because I bet best on the racing games. It might be more about the betting than the racing, but people understand it either way.

The downside to some racing games, Formula D for example, is that they can take a while. But then there are other ones that are fast and action filled. You might even decide to play a dexterity game like Pitchcar in this as well. And that one might take a bit, but it has some other benefits which we’ll talk about coming up. But racing games often play a number of people, you just want to make sure they are fast moving ones, as a race should be.

4. Roll and Writes

Roll and write style games work well for a board game night as well. Mainly, again, a lot of them play higher player counts. It might be a bit solitaire in what the players are doing, but it works because everyone is playing off of the dice on their own sheet of paper.

I think of games like Cartographers, or Paper Dungeons, though, that offer a little bit of interaction that makes it work. Or other games, though, like Trek 12, Welcome To… or Railroad Ink that offer less. So you can choose between a few options, but generally you’ll find that you play a few more of these that work well as competitive but non confrontational games.

3. Dexterity Games

Now, this type of board game might seem odd to be in there for an adult group playing games. But dexterity games really do work great for a board game night. They provide a party game atmosphere without having to play party games every time. And some of them definitely handle a high player count well.

And for me, one thing that I really love is that they are light and silly, but they offer feel good moments. For example, with Pitchcar, a game of racing disc cars around a track, when someone makes an amazing shot, everyone is excited. Why, because it is an amazing shot. And even if you play the game a lot there is an element of luck to pull off an amazing shot.

2. Drafting Games

Next I want to talk about drafting games, because they are an interesting sort of game for a game night. A good drafting game is going to stand out in that it can handle a lot of people. Why, because a lot of the drafting games are fairly simple and they keep everyone engaged at the same time.

I think of games like 7 Wonders, Sushi Go Party! or any of the Ecosystem games. They all run off of a similar systems. When I am drafting a card, so are you. Everyone is involved at the same time. And 7 Wonders and Sushi Go Party! both work with a higher player count. The others could as well, it’s just fewer cards, so that limits the player count. But because you all play at once, there is no downtime which makes it easier.

1. Party Games

This is an obvious one. However, I will say, this doesn’t mean Taboo, Balderdash, Catch Phrase, and Cards Against Humanity. Thankfully, now is a good time for party games. And it is also a time where there are several cooperative ones, so it’s easy to sit down with a group and enjoy without it becoming too competitive. Which is something that is needed for some groups.

When we play party games, I think of games like Doodle Dash, Just One, Blank Slate, Medium, and So Clover that top the list. All of these are solid games with solid theories behind them as to how they work. And they provide humor and a good time through the players versus something like Cards Against Humanity which tries to add that via the cards only.

Final Thoughts

There are a ton of different themes. And often times i look at it and I think, I could mix in another type of game, or it might change based on player count. If we end up with just a few people, sure, I’m going to pull out a couple of heavier games, or even a couple of games that play at a lower player count. We get ten players, it might pivot to party game night, or we might split into two groups. It is about knowing your group for a game night.

At the same time, it’s fun to give a theme or an idea of what games are coming. Why, because then people can decide if it’s a night for them or not. Maybe you don’t like roll and write games, that is fine, you skip the board game night where it is roll and writes. But as someone coming, you now know what is coming to help you make a decision.

Do you find that your game group gravitates towards different types of themes in board games?

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Party Games

Just a quick disclaimer. I picked party games for the party game list, that makes sense. What I didn’t do was pick games that work well in big groups, though all of these do. That’s because there are some games that work well in big groups but aren’t party games. That list will come up soon.

Doodle Dash

Let’s start out with a drawing game, and a speed drawing game. If you feel like you can’t draw, that’s fine Doodle Dash is about speed too. In Doodle Dash, one person doesn’t know what everyone else is drawing. And they want to guess it on the first try. But everyone else is vying to be that first try, so they are drawing as fast as they can to be the first one ready.

When you think your picture is good enough, you grab the first player marker. The second person, who will get their picture looked at next, grabs a die and starts rolling. That die has a stop on it, once that stop is hit, everyone else stops drawing. Then the guesser sees the first and fastest picture and see if they can get it. If not, they go to the second one, and if not, they go to the rest of them to try and guess it. But the points get lower the further you go.

This game will have everyone laughing as they play it. It’s light, it’s made to be silly, and it’s a drawing game where how good you are at drawing really doesn’t matter.

Fun Facts

Next up we have Fun Facts, a new party game as well. Repos Productions has two other games on the list coming up. Fun Facts is all about how well your group knows each other because this is a cooperative game. But it isn’t one where a single person can decide everything. Every player is making the choice on their own even though you win a whole group.

The game asks you a question about yourself, like on a scale of 1 to 100, how much do you like the season fall? I don’t know, maybe 47, I like the temps but not that winter is coming here in MN. Then the person who read the question puts theirs face down. Everyone goes around adding theirs to the column of face down. All the time hoping they are putting it in the right spot. The more in the right order you get, the more points you have.

It’s a simple game, it’s kind of an ice breaker, get to know you sort of game. But it works a whole lot better than a lot of ice breakers. You find out about people and there are some good laughs too as someone widely overestimates how much they like fall or how much more than everyone they’d pay to go actually visit Jurassic Park.

Medium

Now we’re onto a game that is about working together but is not in the cooperative party games category. Medium is about matching up with the person that you teamed up with. You play a word, I play a word and we need to come up with the word that connects those two.

It’s not bad if it’s “cat” and “baby”, we’ll both likely end on “kitten”. But if we differ, now we need to come up with a new word that connects are two new words. Hopefully we got closer than we were before. Because if we didn’t different directions on it, it might be even harder to connect now. And if we miss a second time, we have a third and final shot at it. The sooner you get it, the high points you get. And if you don’t match at all, no points.

Most points at the end of the game wins. But that’s not the fun of the game, the fun of the game is watching people try to come up with a word knowing you’re doing just as poorly when it’s your turn. And when people just miss by going robber and criminal when the words were “steal” and “burglary”, everyone one having a good laugh. Or wondering when the two people take it opposite directions how they’re going to get “cactus” and “car” to work together.

So Clover

Now we’re back for some more cooperative party games. The next two are that, actually before I end on a competitive one to make an even three and three in each area. But So Clover is a great cooperative party game of having a grid of words, might be “cactus” and “car” and needing to come up with a word that connects them.

This sounds a whole lot like Medium. But the player don’t just have one of those two do, they have four of them, one for each side of the clover. And on the card there isn’t just one word, there are four, one for each side of the square card. So you need to get four clues written down one for each. Then those cards come off, a random one is mixed in, and everyone else is trying to figure out how to put it back together.

It’s fun to see how crazy some of the clues have to be to try and connect things. Or how you figure out what goes on one side, like if it’s “steal” then “robber” and “burglar” might make perfect sense. But those cards share overlap with two other clues, one on the left and one on the right, so how do you get those clues to match up right?

Just One

Then there is Just One, which might be my favorite party game, for sure is my favorite in the cooperative party games category. Just One is about giving a one word clue, one per player, to the person guessing their single word without overlapping on any of the clue words.

You see, players write down their clues and without the guesser looking all the players compare. If there is any overlap, well, those two or more that overlap are all gone. The player then only gets to see the remaining words to guess as to what their word is.

So you want to be creative as you play, you want to give a clue that others won’t likely think of, but also not too obscure that it throws off the whole guess. It’s possible to get a really confusing one in there if you aren’t careful, one that makes everything else feel different to the guesser.

Just One has those moments where you’re really happy with a clever clue that you’ve given. Or those moments where you wonder if the guesser will be able to get it because there could have been six clues and now it’s down to just two. Are those two enough for them to be able to get it? And then the moments of elation when someone gets some weird clues but still gets it anyways. A great fun time.

Blank Slate

Finally we have Blank Slate, and I think that Blank Slate is one of those party games that works well with everyone. The system is simple and it feels familiar so it’ll work well with people who maybe played games like Balderdash before or others along those lines. But this time, it’s even simpler.

In Blank Slate you are given a word and either a blank spot before or after it. You might get the world “truck” followed by a blank. Everyone writes down a word to fill in that blank. If you match with no one, you don’t get any points. If you match with just one other person both of you get three points. And if you match with more than just one person, all of you get one point.

I really like this system of wanting someone to match with you but not wanting everyone to. It’s that question, like with Just One, of how obscure do I go or how much of a stretch do I go for, versus do I play it so safe that I’ll likely overlap with more? You just never really know how it’s going to go because you might find that you’re just thinking too much like everyone else.

Final Thoughts

I know that as someone who likes board games a lot, you’re probably reading this or looking at this list wondering if these games are for you. Or you remember when party games came out before and how disappointing they were. Well, I do want to say that these aren’t your parents party games, they aren’t like Taboo or Catch Phrase or the dozen other games that were about the same.

I think that party games have come a long ways in a lot of good ways. These all feel familiar, but add in more fun. And I think with party games, that is a big thing. You want the game to be fun without being repetitive. And with the cooperative games in there, it’s a chance for even very competitive people to join in.

Do you play a certain party game around the holidays? Do you think that any of these could bump that one from the rotation?

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

100 through 91

90 through 81

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition – 80 through 71

80. So Clover!

So Clover! is a cooperative party game where players are working together to solve a puzzle. Of course, the puzzle is only as good as the person who created it. Now, that might sound mean, but everyone is put into the position of creating the puzzle.

Each player is given a two by two grid of cards that have words on each side of the card, top, bottom, left, and right. On each of the sides of that grid you’ll have two words. So each player writes down a word the best that they can which connects the two. So if you have “hot” and “dog” you might put down “ketchup” for example. Then the cards are removed and players need to try and put it back together.

That doesn’t sound too hard, but what happens if you have “dog” and “marshmallow”? How do you connect those two words? And that’s where the tricky nature of the game comes in. Plus, even if you got the perfect clue for that, there is a mystery card added in that the person writing the clues doesn’t know what that is. So your clue of “ketchup”, in the original example, is now way harder when randomly the new card has “mustard” on it. It’s a fun game which keeps everyone involved and working together.

Buy So Clover!

79. Small World

We go from a cooperative game to a game which is about taking your fantasy race or creatures and smashing your opponents. Of course, as you do that, they’ll be smashing you back in Small World. It’s an area control game where you are gathering gold from taking over areas and holding them. Of course, to get more areas, your friends need to take over your areas.

Now, it might get sucked getting your area knocked off the board. But unlike Risk, you don’t need to hide. Instead your fantasy race can go into decline and you can grab another fantasy race. Then with a new group of characters and a new special power, you can hop back onto the board taking over what your friends have built up.

The game is very in your face, but it makes it not bad because it is for everyone. And when you get beat down, you come back in with a vengeance. And, each fantasy race has it’s own power along with each special power to make them unique and different. So flying giants might work out great one game. And you’ll have underground halflings another time, or you might change from that into bivouacing trolls.

Buy Small World

78. Dice Forge

Now we’re onto a game that dropped a little bit. I think that this one dropped because I haven’t played it in a few years, but Dice Forge is a fun game. It’s a game where you are building out your own dice. Now, you don’t start from scratch you have basic things on your dice. But as you collect resources you can use them to buy cards, often how you get points, or add new sides to your dice.

Now that doesn’t take them from six sides to eight sides or mean that you get a new die. No, you remove the side of one of the dice you have and put a new side on it. It might give you more purchase power or more points, how you build it is up to you. And that is what makes the game fun, it’s a gimmick that really works. And there are a lot of strategies in what you can do.

Another thing that works really well is that when it’s not your turn you roll your dice. So on every other players turn you get a roll and collect resources. So it isn’t a slow build of adding sides. After a few rounds you can start to leap up in what you can buy. I also like that you decide where it goes on your dice. You might get more purchase power and ignore gold and point faces completely on the dice. Or you might load up one die so you always get something better.

Buy Dice Forge

77. Asking for Trobils

This is another one that as I talked about it, I want to play it more. Asking for Trobils is a pretty simple worker placement game of building traps to catch Trobils. All with a familiar but different sci-fi team on top of it. By that I mean that they take a ton of things from popular sci-fi culture and just tweak it slightly. You want classic UFO looking worker ships, you can do that. Or you can get Planet Express for the Serenity.

But I like how this game game is simple. What you do on your turn is place out a worker and take an action. Most of the time that is collecting a resource, like space carrots. Or you might trade in resources for credits or to get a trap that you need to help capture a Trobil. And once all your ships are out, you pull them back for at turn. But the game does add in theme with pirates or characters who you can hire that’ll help you and hurt your opponent. It’s not too in the face though, which is nice.

Buy Asking for Trobils

76. Just One

Now to another cooperative party game. I was going to say it’s the highest party game on my list, but I don’t think that’s right. I’m not sure if Just One is even my highest party game or not on the list. Just One, though, is the party game that I recommend most readily for people who maybe don’t like party games that well but have a group of people who like to enjoy them.

In Just One, one person is “it” they are trying to guess their word. Everyone else is going to write down a single word clue. And from the clues, the person is going to guess their one word. The twist to the game is that there can only be just one copy of a word for a clue. If there are two, or more, all of them go away and those clues will be lost. So you want to be creative, but if it’s too obscure, that might confuse things as well. It’s a great balance that way for the game that makes it better than other party games for me.

Buy Just One

75. Roll Player

Now we’re onto a competitive game where you’re trying to create the best RPG character. Roll Player is a dice drafting game where you use those dice to create the best character. Now, each character has certain things that they want. If you’re a rogue or a wizard, you wouldn’t want 18 strength now, would you? Or you might, but that’s not the stat that you care about the most and you get points for getting it in a range.

But it isn’t just about getting dice in the right places. Because sometimes you might not get the right number. You can also get points for getting the right colored dice in the right places. Or, you get money to buy equipment that gives you points. But some of my favorite is buying spells or traits to get your alignment to the right spot as well as to give you more control over the dice that you’re placing.

It does a good job of taking an element of making a character from the RPG and putting a fun game around it. So it’s two things that I enjoy.

Buy Roll Player

74. T.I.M.E Stories

Now another cooperative game, this section has a nice mix. I know for some people TIME Stories will be lower because they’ve played it all. I haven’t played all of the scenarios, but the ones that I’ve played I really like. TIME Stories is a time travel game where you’re an agent whose consciousness is sent back through time, or across the multiverse, or ahead in time to a point in time where someone is messing with time.

Yes, I said time a lot there. But in a lot of ways the game is like a puzzle or escape room that you can play through multiple times. And while you have to go back and collect items, because they drop you in at a point in time, that you’ve found before, the knowledge you gain stays with you. I really like how that works thematically.

Buy TIME Stories

73. Point Salad

All Eevee is the way to play this game, not really, Point Salad is a great set collection, open drafting game. And it’s really simple. On your turn you take two vegetables (or Eeveelutions) or a scoring card. And that’s the majority of the game.

What works well in the game, though, is that when you take your veggies (or Eeveelutions) those spots are refilled. And the cards that are used to refill it are the cards with scoring on them. The cards have scoring on the back and veggies on the front. So if you take from a column, there are three columns, it’ll flip down that scoring card. You can use that to get rid of scoring card someone else might need, but of course, they can do that to you. So when you take scoring and when you take veggies is an interesting puzzle for the game.

Buy Point Salad

72. That’s Pretty Clever!

Now we’re onto the roll and write game for the list. And the last one of the four Clever games to make the list. I’m not sure if Clever 4Ever will make the list, I need to play it more. But I really like That’s Pretty Clever as a roll and write game. It’s a good balance between a roll and write game that has enough in it and one that is too simple. It does give you a lot of combos to play with.

To me, I think that there might be elements of the others I like better. But in terms of being able to pull this game out and play it solo, That’s Pretty Clever! is the best. And I like that I can play it on an app but also that I can get people up and playing it quickly in person as well.

Buy That’s Pretty Clever!

71. No Thanks!

Finally we have No Thanks! a game about not getting points. You want to pass on the card, you have to put a chip on it, kind of a mini poker chip. But once you run out you can’t pass and you’ll have to take the card. Sot he game is a balancing act of when there are a lot of chips on a card, is it worth taking it?

The chips themselves are worth -1 point, so if you have a lot of them, you’ll counter some of the higher points. Or you can use them to avoid getting other higher cards when someone else might be stuck taking it. I really enjoy how each group sets this market, how many chips is enough to be worth taking a card that has a 30 on it, is it 10 chips or is it 20? That depends on the group you play with. You also can create runs which only score the first card in the run. But there is also a chance that the card you need in that run might not be in the round, so there is a push your luck element there as well.

Buy No Thanks!

Upcoming Streams

I’ll be doing more of my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition on next Wednesday and Wednesdays for a little bit. That is always going to be at 8 PM Central. Next week it’s going to be 70 through 61 and we’re getting close to the half way point which always seems like it’s faster than I expect.

And then I also stream on Mondays at 9 PM Central time. That is going to be for smaller solo games. I’m hoping to do Number Drop next week after opening up some Doctor Who Magic the Gathering packs last Monday. So what I stream on Monday is always all over the map.

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

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Beat the 8 Ball

Beat the 8 Ball is a game of timing. In it you have an eight ball that is spinning down a funnel. Your goal is to beat that eight ball and get points. So when it starts spinning you just release your ball and beat it, not that hard. Well, it’s trickier because you need to release it after someone else does, or everyone else and beat the eight ball. If you don’t beat the eight ball you lose points. If you’re the first person to beat it, you get no points.

The gimmick of the game, this big setup of a contraption for releasing the players balls and the funnel for the eight ball is cool. And I like the scoring of the game because it does make there be pressure. There is a skill element or a recognition element to the game. The more you play, the more you’ll know when the eight ball is going to drop. The downside is that this game could go on for a long time. It didn’t take too long for us, but if people are riding that line too closely no one will hit 10 or -10 to end the game. Or at least it’ll take a while.

Diced Veggies

You’re using dice as veggies to complete recipes and score you points in Diced Veggies by Kids Table Board Games (KTBG). To get your veggies you are using a cleaver to cut them off of a block of veggies (dice) in the middle. That’s the gimmick of the game. With the added twist on how you can cut the veggies, mainly that you can’t have more than 10 pips worth on the dice you cut.

Other than that, it’s a pretty straight forward collection game to fulfill orders or recipes in this case. And the recipes are easier or harder and give you a varying number of points. Plus you can play “hype” cards which augment a recipe. So I might have to discard another die to get a bonus four points. Or if all the dice I use on a recipe are the same value it’ll give me more points per die on the card.

My one concern about this game is the longevity of it. That’s probably true for Beat the 8 Ball as well. The game is simple and I’m not sure that the strategy will massively change over time for Diced Veggies. The upside is, it’s really easy to teach, learn, and play.

Fun Facts

Finally a cooperative party game from Repos Productions. I’ve talked about them before because they made Just One and So Clover, to great cooperative party games. While those are more game, more strategy to them, Fun Facts is more like a fun ice breaker than a game. In Fun Facts you put down a number answer to a question, like how seductive are you 0 to 100. And each person on their turn is trying to add it to a row of everyone’s answers so it’s in the right order.

Then you score points for the lowest to highest and all of them in the right order between. And you play that out over eight rounds. The gimmick is the dry erase boards, which nice raised edges so it won’t slide and erase. It’s also that trying to know your fellow players and how they’d rate themselves.

It’s a fun game because the players control the fun. And it’s about the “You’d spend that much to go to a park with actual dinosaurs?”. Or “After that weird look you gave me I assumed I was more seductive than you.” Jokes around the table but also getting to know people. And I think it’ll work longer because a lot of is it controlled by the group of players versus the game.

Final Thoughts on the Board Games with a Gimmick

Sometimes a game has a great gimmick. And sometimes the gimmick is the game. For all of these board games, I do think that there is thought put into the game aspect of what is going on. And that makes it fun. Fun Facts has the least game, but it’s a fun party game. And it has as much game as most party games. The other two give you simple board games to play. And I think that might be a downside, they might be too simple in the long run. But I can say, after playing each game, I’ve had fun with each one.

Which of the board games sounds most fun to you?

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Board Game Holiday List – Top 12 Group Games

12. Hues and Cues

Hues and Cues might be a little bit more group dependent than some of the other games. It’s about giving one and two word clues to guess a color. Let me start out by saying that this is not at all colorblind friendly, so that is some of the reason. The other is that coming up with a one or two word clue for a color can be hard at times.

But when it works, it’s a ton of fun. Because what does baby blue mean to you? That is a fun question to ask and answer. But it is also a fun game. The scoring is good for Hues and Cues as well. If you get it right, it’s 3 points and then around the spot 2, and around those 1. But as the clue giver, you score points for people being close, but only in those 3 and 2 point ranges. So it encourages everyone to try their best.

11. Cross Clues

Cross Clues is a very fun party game as well, less group dependent than Hues and Cues. In Cross Clues you have a grid, I generally play 5 by 5. The columns are letters and rows are numbers. And each column and row has a word assigned with it. You draw a coordinate, for example A2. If the ‘A’ word is “brick” and the ‘2’ word is “wolf”, you might give the clue “pig”. Then everyone else discusses where they think it might go. And your goal is to get as many right as possible. If they don’t, well, they don’t know what they missed.

What I like about Cross Clues is that it can make you think more than just what word works best. Because while “pig” might be a good clue for “brick” and “wolf” it might also work for another pair of words, and now which one do people guess. So there is an element of being clever in what you pick.

10. Medium

Medium I talked about already. You can see it on the Stocking Stuffer list, it and the next one Similo. Medium has some of the same things that Cross Clues does, trying to link two words. But instead of it being on a board and everyone guessing where, you and the person you are paired up with, you are trying to match the difference between your two words. So it might be “brick” and “wolf” still, and I might say “pig”, but I need to hope that the person I’m paired up with also says “pig”. If not we try again two more times, each time from the last words we said. Light and good for laughs.

9. Similo

Also on the stocking stuffer list, like I said. Similo is another small party game that you can play. In Similo one player is the clue giver trying to get the other players to eliminate cards based off of a card that is either similar or not to the chosen card.

It’s simple to play, but what makes it work is that I have a deck of historical figures, and I need to think, is John F. Kennedy more or less similar to Genghis Khan? But then you can also mix sets together. So now is John F. Kennedy more or less similar to a ghoul? And they have a ton of decks from historical and mythological figures to spooky monsters, woodland creatures, or Harry Potter.

8. So Clover

So Clover, continuing the list of party games, really, but there is what I’d consider a non-party game or two on the list as well. Like other games So Clover is a clever game of trying to find the connection between words again. So like a Cross Clues or Medium that way. But instead of just doing it once, you are doing it four times.

You have a four leaf clover which holds 4 cards in a square. And on each leaf you need to write down a clue for the two words that are facing that side. So back to the example, “brick” and “wolf” for “pig”. And you do that on all four sides. Then you add in a fifth card and everyone tries to put back together how your cards were on your clover. It’s a ton of fun and a good cooperative game.

7. Blank Slate

It’s word matching again, but different this time. Instead of coming up with a connection between two words, Blank Slate has you filling in the blank. So it might be ________ “cream”. You need to fill that in. And you want to match with others. Because if you match with two or more people, you all get one point. But, you really want to match with just one person, because then you get three points.

So in the example, “ice” might be the most obvious word. But “heavy” or “whipping” or “whipped” all could match with someone. Or “moisturizing” or a lot of different options. So what is most likely to get you points, but also isn’t going to match everyone. A good fast game that is just fun to sit down and play.

6. Scattergories

To flip the script we go with a classic game of Scattergories. Scattergories you don’t want to match with other people. If you can avoid it, well, then you get points for your word. If you can’t, you both cross it out.

In Scattergories you get a list and a letter. Then in a time limit, everyone writes down answers for the list, starting with that letter. You want to be unique so you don’t match other people. But sometimes, being too unique, well, if someone thought the same way you did it, you cross it out. Or, maybe you can’t think of anything unique. But if no one else puts down “grape” for a “fruit” that starts with ‘G’. You get the points. Or if only one other person did, you block them from getting points.

5. Wits & Wagers

Wits & Wagers, not as old as Scattergories is another is another classic party game. And it’s a trivia game that works because it isn’t about how knows the most. All of the trivia questions in Wits & Wagers are number based. So everyone writes down a guess and the “winner” is the closest without going over, like The Price is Right.

However that is just trivia where someone knows the most. Wits & Wagers fixes that issue by then letting people bet on what they think the right answer is. So if you know more about cars than I do, say the question was what year was the first Model T produced, I might bet with your answer if I have no clue. So it’s about knowing the people you play with as well as knowing the answer.

4. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

Now for a non-party game one, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong. Now this sounds like a big game, and it’s not, it’s again pretty simple to play. But it’s a game of hidden roles and a murderer. The goal is to figure out the weapon and clue from the murder to know who the murderer is. But as detectives, we know it’s one of us, and we only get clues from the forensic scientist who is sending up reports, which may or may not be useful.

I don’t like social deduction games, and Deception: Murder in Hong Kong has that element in the game. I don’t like them because often you are just guessing about what is happening, especially early in the game. But with Deception, you start talking you have information from the forensic scientist. So it blends in some deduction to go along with that social element of trying to point people away from you if you’re the killer or even if you’re not because you know it’s not you, but do others believe you?

3. Codenames Pictures

Back to more of a party game and this one I know a ton of people love it already, so someone might have it to bring to the holidays. Or one of the many versions of Codenames. Codenames or any of the versions, are a game where you have two teams trying to guess all their cards before the other team can. And this is done by a clue giver giving a clue and a number. It might be “Taco 2”, there are two words that pertain to tacos that you need to guess. The first to get all of theirs wins.

Now, I put down Codenames Pictures because that is the version that I prefer. The original version is just words on the cards. And sometimes you can combo words together but often times, you’re down to basically doing “synonym one”. And that isn’t that exciting.

Pictures gives you more chances to be clever, because the pictures are generally two things. It might be a cat shaped like a donut in one picture. A building with a fish coming out of the chimney in another. I like that better because it’s more chance to give clever clues and to make a light game that you’ll likely want to play again go faster.

2. Just One

We now have another game that kind of blends some of the other party games together. Just One is a guessing the word game where one person is it, and they get a word. But they don’t know what the word is. Instead, everyone else writes down one word clues and then the guesser needs to guess their word off of that.

Now that isn’t too difficult, but if I overlap my word with someone else, both of those are cancelled out. And we hide them and the guesser can’t see them. So now maybe a clue that would have made it really obvious has been cancelled out.

For example, in a game I played, the word was Karate. I wrote down “style” and my wife wrote down “discipline”. So far so good. The other two people wrote down “kid”. Those two clues cancelled out and the poor guesser had to guess “karate” from just style and discipline. Or the word was “Cookie” and two of us put down “Snickerdoodle”. So you can end up with situations where you can get it from a great clue, or where you’ve lost too many. It does that balance of wanting to go obscure but not too obscure.

1. Sushi Go Party

And finally we have Sushi Go Party. You could put in Seven Wonders as well where. Both are drafting games that play a pretty high number of players. But I prefer Sushi Go Party because for me the theme is more fun.

In Sushi Go Party you are drafting cards to create the best meal you can. Really, you are doing so to score as many points as you can. And you do that over three hands. Each type of card scores in a different way. So some cards just score a set number of points. Others, if you have more of them, they score more points. And some you want to have two, exactly two, or they are worth less points.

And Sushi Go Party offers a good amount of variety to the game. While you have one type that you need to keep in the game. You can swap around the rest to make it higher scoring, lower scoring, meaner, or however you want it to be. Or just so that you can swap stuff out again and play with a whole new set of scoring objectives.

Final Thoughts on Group Games

There are a lot of them out there, and a lot of not so great ones out there. Or a lot that just go for a different audience than works for me. Social Deduction games, for example, play well with a high player count. But I don’t like social deduction games, nor does my wife, so I don’t have them in my collection or on the list. But they might work for you.

And there are a ton of party games out there that I didn’t mention. I didn’t put down games like Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity, but there are a plethora of games like those two. And while I did pull in two from the stocking stuffer list, I didn’t from the roll and write list. And a lot of those games can play higher player counts as well, like Welcome To… , Trek 12, and more.

So what are the games that you bring to play when you get together with family or friends around the holidays?

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00 through 91 here.

90 through 81 here.

80 through 71 here.

70 through 61 here.

60 through 51 here.

50 through 41 here.

Top 100 Games 2022 Edition – 40-31

40: So Clover!

So Clover is another party game on the list and another cooperative party game. In So Clover! you are trying to come up with a word that combines two. We’ve seen this before with Medium and Cross Clues. But in So Clover, each person fills out their grid. Then another card with more words is mixed into it. It’s easy to play, hard to explain without the game. But it is a step up of a party game but still not hard to play.

Buy on Amazon

39. First Rat

First Rat immediately stuck with me because of the theme. It’s about rats building space ships to go to space. But with that theme there is a really good and fun game. Mainly, a game of moving rats up a track, but it gives you different ways to do that. You move up the track collecting resources and getting what you need to build different parts of your rocket ship.

It has a cute theme and it leans into that. Plus it is a thinky game without being overly complex which I enjoy. I need to figure out my route but I can go a number of different ways. And how you build your route, while, we are fighting over scoring, so it will affect me, but not too much. And I went a very different strategy than the other players, and still ended up very close.

Buy on Miniature Market

38. Orchard: A 9 Card Solitaire Game

Next up one of two solo only games on this part of the list. Orchard made the list last year and it’s a great solo game because it’s extremely fast and just a lot of fun to play. In the game you are stacking, or layering, cards so that like fruit trees cover like trees.

The game is just nine cards per game. And the components and package are really nice. I like the game for the speed it plays. A game of Orchard takes me five minutes. If I’m bored or I want something fast to do, Orchard is a great option. Or if i want to multitask while watching a sporting event, that is great as well.

Buy on Miniature Market

37. Welcome To…

Welcome To has dropped some on the list but still a roll and write game that I really like. I say it’s about building your perfect Stepford neighborhood. All the white picket fences are in the right spot and it’s just set-up perfectly to build you little slice of town.

What makes this game work is that it scales to any player count. But also that with that, the game play isn’t too simple. You have three choices each round of what to fill in, and there is good strategy in that. Plus there are expansions of different maps that you can play with which are fun as well.

Buy on Cool Stuff Inc

36. Mesozooic

Mesozooic is going to be an overlooked game, and some of that is that it’s not going to be a game that works for everyone. It is a light drafting game where you are getting cards to build your dinosaur zoo, a theme that is really popular right now. The drafting part of the game is light, and then the other half of the game is a sliding puzzle. You move your cards around, like a sliding puzzle, to get the most points possible out of your zoo. It’s clever, it’s light, and it’s fun. And you can pick a more complex strategy in hopes you can slide it right, or go for the easy points.

Buy on Miniature Market

35. Potion Explosion

Another light and fun game, we have Potion Explosion. This game is all about cascading marbles so that like colors hit each other. You then use those marbles, you pick up all that cascade, to complete potions. Those potions in turn give you powers that help you get more cascading marbles and even more potions.

The game moves quickly, but it’s again one of those games that are simple to play, but you can master it. And that’s the fun of a game like that one, figuring out how you can best use your potions on a turn so that you can get more potions completed. Then use those potions to complete other potions the next turn. And when you can do that, the game clicks.

Buy on Miniature Market

34. Letter Jam

Letter Jam is an odd game on this list, now not like Mesozooic odd, but odd in that it’s a cooperative word game where you can’t see your word. In fact, you don’t know what it is or any of the letters, really any clue about it.

So, everyone is trying to give the other players clues. And the clues are done in a form of a word. So let’s say that my letter was ‘A’ and someone else gives the clue, each one corresponding to a letter in front of someone else of ‘F’, blank, ‘R’, ‘M’. It’s maybe a solid clue for someone, but for me, it could be ‘FARM’, ‘FORM’, or ‘FIRM’. It’s helped me some but not that much. Letter Jam gives you a chance to give really clever and good clues, which I like.

Buy on Game Nerdz

33. Final Girl

The other solo only game on the list is Final Girl. I won’t go into how it’s played too much, but the premise, along with fun game play, are what really sell it for me. In Final Girl you are the last survivor, or will be, in a horror film. Now, will the killer get you, the ghost track you down, the monster pull you into the swamp? Or will the final girl survive?

The game play, like I said, won’t go into it too much, is a nice hand management puzzle of playing cards to get things done, having enough to get more cards and repeating the process. Van Ryder Games is really smart with how they made this game. There are elements that are consistent across the whole game. But then other things, their feature film boxes, that give you a new final girl and killer and allow you to change everything up.

Buy on Miniature Market

32. Lost Ruins of Arnak

Lost Ruins of Arnak another new to me game this year. Or I should say, one that I played for the first time this year. It’s nice getting taught a game by someone who already knows it well. And that was my experience at Gen Con. But I’ve played it more since then.

Arnak is a game where you are exploring locations, buying better gear, you can find artifacts, idols and more. Now that makes it seem thematic, and I think that the theme does come through. But Arnak is mainly a worker placement game as you send out your explorer meeples. And then deck building which is how you can get more and more actions to do and push up the tracks.

It would be lower, probably in the 60’s if it weren’t for the Expedition Leaders expansion, though. It makes it so each player starts with a different power. Some of them are easy than another, a third explorer to place on the map. But others then have more complex systems but when you leverage them it turns negative points into positive effects or things like that. The game is really fun with the expedition leaders.

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31. Super Mega Lucky Box

Final game in this section of 10 is Super Mega Lucky Box. This is another roll and write game and one that looks really simple, because it is basically bingo. But while it is simple, Super Mega Lucky Box is a lot of fun. The game has you going for a “blackout” fully filled sheet to score it. But as you complete rows and columns you get bonuses.

Sometimes the bonuses are just cross off another number on one of your other cards, you have three. Other times you get lightning bolts. And lightning bolts adjust the numbers of the card flipped that you are crossing off. You don’t have a nine, well, spend a lighting bolt and make it an eight. Spend three and makes it a six. Or stars where the more you get a round the more they are worth. Or moons where the person who has the most gets a bonus 6 points, while the least loses 6. All of those bonuses just make for a really fun game with such a simple premise.

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Upcoming Streams

If you are following along with the Top 100, you already know that the next one is going to be coming out on Monday at 8:30 PM Central Time. But if you want the link or the video you can find that here. Chat along, talk about your favorite games with me. See if we overlap as I get closer and closer to my Top 10 Games.

Then on Wednesday, no link for it yet, we have Chronicles of Drunagor. I kept this evening free so that I would have time to get it set-up and ready to be played. I’m excited to get it to the table and I hope that you’ll join with me as I play a new campaign game. Chronicles of Drunagor is going to be a big game and one that looks like a ton of fun.

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Top 10 Games to Start A Board Game Collection

10. Super Mega Lucky Box

This is a roll and write game that is basically bingo. The reason that this is lower on the list is only because there are a good number roll and write games that can work. In this one you are filling in sheets of numbers and as you get in rows and columns you get bonuses. It’s light, it’s easy, and it’s a lot of fun. Plus, there is more strategy than you’d think as you pick more cards to fill in.

9. Ohanami

Ohanami, and a few on here, are because they can remind you of other games. Ohanami has a bit of a Rack-o feel to it, but with interesting scoring. You are drafting cards, first of three drafting games on the list, and then adding them to columns. It also needs to decrease or increase the number in a column which can be a bit tricky.

But what makes this one good for a game to start a collection with is the scoring. You only score some things certain rounds. So blue cards you score every round but they are worth fewer points. Green only the 2nd and 3rd rounds and grey only the last round. Plus then pink at the end of the game. So it’s interesting strategy as to when you want to draft cards.

8. Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

This one might surprise some people, but I think a good campaign game is not a bad thing to have. And Jaws of the Lion teaches you how to play, slowly adding in rules over the first few scenarios. And it allows for deeper strategy as you go. I think that it’s on the heavier end that I’d look for if I were getting into board games. But it is pretty accessible and for someone who really wants to jump in that good big option.

7. Just One

This one you can swap out, though I’d say less easily than the roll and writes. But more so, some people just don’t want party games. Just One, I think, is different enough that it works really well. But I also get why someone might not want a party game in their collection. Or that people might already have party games. Just One is different as it’s a cooperative party game, though. So I think it works better because of that and because it’s just less random.

6. Sushi Go Party

Another drafting game with Sushi Go Party. This one is on the list as it offers simple set collection. It has great artwork, and for a drafting game, it has good variety. An issue that I have with some other drafting games no longer in my collection is the variety. I don’t think I’d recommend Sushi Go, but Sushi Go Party means that it can stick around for a really long time in a collection.

5. Sagrada

Sagrada is the last drafting game on the list. The reason I have this one here is that it’s a pretty game, there is some complexity that can be added in with which tools you use, but generally it’s not hard to table. And you can scale up in difficulty as you go. And it sells itself when you pull it out and put it on the table. The dice are great, the game is just fun and it even scales challenge level for players as well.

4. Small World

Small World is one that sticks in my collection because I play it still every couple of years. But it’s that game that is the Risk replacement for the collection. And one of two really in your face games on the list. The next one is coming up soon. Small World is all about battling over areas on a board, scoring points, but doing so with crazy class and power combinations. It’s also a game where if one person is beat up on, well, they go into decline and come back onto the board with a new combo and beat everyone else up. It’s a game of laughter and slaughter.

3. Dice Throne

I originally had King of Tokyo on the list. But I now think that Dice Throne is the better option. There is more going on but less going on in this head to head battler (or King of the Hill). It’s basically battle Yahtzee with powers and abilities for the characters you are battling with. And the fact there are so many characters out there, you can start by buying a box or two, or getting the Marvel 4 character box, and add on from there. And the game is so mix and match as well, it’s great.

2. Pandemic

Pandemic, a classic cooperative game, makes the list as well. I think that this one could also be Pandemic Legacy Season 1. It’s a good campaign option, but base Pandemic gives you more replayability and unlike my other campaign game, Pandemic Legacy can only be played once through per game purchased.

But Pandemic is a game about stopping disease outbreaks across the world and looking for cures. The cooperative nature of the game can mean that one person takes over and tries to run everyone’s turn, but push back on that. Pandemic is a great one in that most people can pretty quickly grasp it and be doing well and discussing and working together.

1. Ticket To Ride

Finally we have Ticket to Ride. Yes, I don’t have Catan on the list. I think that Catan is a solid game but Ticket to Ride has stayed on my shelf and is unlikely to leave. This set collection, route building game is just a classic at this point. And it’s a classic where there aren’t expansions. I don’t play it that often but it’s one that I won’t say no to playing and I think for a lot of people, Ticket to Ride stays around for that really accessible game to play.

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of board games that could make up a great start to a collection. Like I said, there isn’t really a right or wrong way to start it and that’s part of the fun of it. I considered games like Century: Golem Edition, Potion Explosion, Kohaku, and others for some relaxing games. Or party games like So Clover or Medium. There are really a ton of great options. And who knows you might be so excited you just want to start with 10 campaign games (not recommended).

Which game would you want to start if you were building your collection for the first time?

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