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

20. For Northwood! A Solo Trick-Taking Game

Published By: Side Room Games
Designer: Wilhelm Su

Buy For Northwood!

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

19. Marvel Champions: The Card Game

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

Buy Marvel Champions

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

18. Floriferous

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

Buy Floriferous

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

17. Stars of Akarios

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

Buy Stars of Akarios

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

16. Clank!: Catacombs

Published By: Dire Wolf
Designer: Paul Dennen

Buy Clank! Catacombs

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

15. Roll Player Adventures

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

Buy Roll Player Adventures

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

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

Published By: Office Dog
Designer: Bryan Bommueller

Buy The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game

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

13. Pirates of Maracaibo

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

Buy Pirates of Maracaibo

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

12. Mistborn: The Deckbuilding Game

Published By: Brotherwise Games
Designer: John D. Clair

By Mistborn The Deck Building Game

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

11. Sleeping Gods

Published By: Red Raven Games
Designer: Ryan Laukat

Buy Sleeping Gods

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

Join Next Week

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

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

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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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Catch Up on the Top 100 Games

100 through 91

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition – 90 through 81

90. Wandering Towers

Published By: Capstone Games
Designers: Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer

Buy Wandering Towers.

This is just a fun simple game of trying to remember where you wizards are hiding and get them to the main tower. I like how easy it is to make it work. You play out two cards and if you have potion bottles filled you can cast a spell. The spells are simple, the cards are simple, you choose to either move a wizard or a tower as far as it says on the card. But it’s still a lot of fun because of that memory aspect and burying your opponents wizards under a stack of towers.

89. Grove: 9 care solitaire game

Published By: Side Room Games
Designer: Mark Tuck

Buy Grove.

This one is two games in one really with Grove and Orchard. I put them together because the games are very similar, though I do slightly prefer Grove. In this game you stack cards to get matching tree types to overlap. As they overlap you tick up dice that are going to give you more points. The more points you have at the end of nine cards, the better you do at the game. Grove adds in scoring cards, and that addition is what pushes it over because it’s bonus scoring, but also how many points you need to beat to win the game.

88. Via Magica

Published By: Hurrican
Designer: Paolo Mori

Buy Via Magica.

It is weird to think that drawing chips out of bag and everyone getting a cube to add to their spells, basically bingo, can make a fun game. But it is great in Via Magica. This is a simple game with powers that you get from completing spells. It’s one of two games that actually has abilities or powers from completing spells on this section of the top 10. But it’s all about drawing those chips and hoping to get the right ones. Or then being smart about the spells you take so you can always use the chips.

87. No Thanks!

Published By: AMIGO
Designer: Thorsten Gimmier

Buy No Thanks!

This section of the list has a few push your luck games on it. No Thanks! isn’t a tradition push your luck game, but it does have those elements. In particular, you need to decide when it is worth taking a card. Cards are bad, cards give you points, so you want to say no thanks to them. But you need chips to do that, so No Thanks! is a game about determining when there are enough chips on a card to make it worth taking. Because, not only a chips needed for saying no thanks, they are also negative one point per chip at the end of the round.

86. Strike

Published By: Ravensburger
Designer: Dieter Nuble

Buy Strike.

Imagine a gladiatorial battle in the Coliseum. Actually don’t, this game is all about rolling dice to get pairs and knowing when to stop if you don’t get pairs. You just want to be the last one in the game and that’s it. It’s a simple game and simple system but it is always fun when it hits the table. I think everyone just likes to make a decision to roll a fist full of dice. And if you don’t get any matches, you can always roll more dice that you held back, but beware the one because when a die lands on that side, that die is gone forever.

85. Marvel United

Published By: CMON and Spin Master
Designers: Andrea Chiarvesio and Eric M. Lang

Buy Marvel United Multiverse Core Box.

Do you want to team-up as Marvel heroes to defeat villains in a fast and easy game? Marvel United is great for that. You pick your hero, the villain to go up against, and a few locations and you are ready to play. This game is all about managing what the villain is doing, and they do some fun stuff, and then chaining off of what your superhero teammates did, because you use the last card played, to have a great turn. This is a great game to teach people cooperative game play because you can really cooperate. And there is so much for it.

84. Homebrewers

Published By: Greater Than Games
Designers: Matthew O’Malley and Ben Rosset

Buy Homebrewers.

I like brewing beer, I did it for a long time. I’m not sure it’s hobby I’m going to return to. But I can still get my beer brewing fix with Homebrewers. This is about brewing the best beers you can. You brew a beer and you go up on a track, then you need to deal with the spent grains, sanitize, get more grains and brew again. All of that is like homebrewining.

But then the game offers different ingredients you add to your brewing. And these cards stick around between brews. So if you brew a porter with almonds, you now always will. And those ingredients give you brew something special that might be more money, or it might be that you move up on another beer. At the end, you just want to be the best homebrewer out there.

83. Chronicles of Drunagor: Age of Darkness

Published By: Creative Games Studio
Designer: Eurico Cunha Neta

Buy Chronicles of Drunagor.

I love my big campaign games. And Chronicles of Drunagor is no expection. It is just lower on the list because one of them has to be and it is one that I haven’t played a ton of. There is so much in the game, but I highlight three things in the video. I want to highlight one here, the activation system. You use different colored cubes to activate abilities of those colors. But when you run out of cubes or need a specific ability, you need to pull back those cubes. Then you cover up a spot so you can’t use it. It’s a unique system that I find a lot of fun.

82. PUSH

Published By: Ravensburger
Designers: Prospero Hall and Brian Kirk

Buy Push Here.

I like simple push your luck games, and PUSH is my favorite of them. This one is just push your luck, but as compared to other simple push your luck games, this one offers just a few choices. Mainly you create three stacks of cards on your turn. But those stacks can’t have the same color or number in a single stack, aka you can’t have two blue cards in a stack. Well, that is easy enough, you could stop early. If you do that, then other players could push their luck for more points. And then there is the die, if you have the roll the die, you might lose cards. It’s all about balancing that risk for points.

81. Potion Explosion

Published By: Horrible Guild
Designers: Stefano Castelli, Andrea Crespi, and Lorezno Silva

Buy Potion Explosion Here.

If you want a game that feels like app game, Potion Explosion definitely meets that need. It is one of those games where if like colors are touching they explode, or in this case, you get them. And it’s all about chaining together colors of marbles the best you can, and then you use them to complete spells. And those spells give you points that you need to win the game, but they also give you one time abilities that you can use to chain together more marbles and complete more spells. This game is just tactile and fun.

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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Follow the Chronofiends!! Campaign.

Chronofiends!! Highlights

My plan is not to go into game play in depth here. This is not like my normal reviews where I’m going to give my grade an opinion at the end. The company sent me a prototype of the game to cover. So it is unfair for me to give a review on it. Instead, I want to highlight elements of Chronofiends!! that will help you make your decision on knowing if this is the right game for you to back.

Ease of System

This one is a mixed bag. Mainly, it is a mixed bag because it is not the fastest set-up in the world. It is not like the system or scenarios are that complex, but there are a number of pieces to get out of the box. But when you get to the game play itself the system is slick and easy to play.

In particular, I like the turn order. This is not unique to Chronofiends!! where the player highest on the turn order goes next, but it is easy to keep track of. And the turn itself is easy to keep track of, you move and then you complete some task in a room. The trickiest bit of the system is when the chronofiends go and you need to pay attention to which way they move.

Leveling/Powering Up

The leveling up skills system is really fun as well. The more time you spend doing something the more knowledgeable you become at it. That is easy to keep track of as you play as well. And then to have something that you are good at improve over and over so as the loops get shorter and shorter you can still have a chance, it’s a smart system.

It is a system that I didn’t utilize to the best of my ability in my streamed playthrough. But I want to talk about that more in the next section.

Keeping on this, I mentioned how the system is smart. It is smart for two reasons. Firstly, the shorter time period keeps the pressure on you. But you also feel more powerful as you go. So it is this race condition as you play, can your power out pace the reduction in time that is happening?

Strategy/Looping

So now let’s dive into this looping and strategy that it forces (and that I didn’t use that well). What do I mean by that? In Chronofiends!!, kind of like in TIME Stories, you loop back. And as a player and character you keep the knowledge that you have of the space ship. So it is easier to go through because you know what you are coming up against.

There is also, then, gaining experience. So not only do you know that you are coming up against, you also know how to deal with it better. But there are elements that are different. While the work that you’ve done does reset, the chronofiends do not. Each time you play or each time you loop that is going to make the game different.

Now, in my play I think I took a less than ideal strategy. I think the first loop or two can be avoiding, finding, and leveling up. I went after the big objective the second time. It does help with leveling up, but not so much avoiding and finding. When you play, that is going to help you out, I think. But it means that there is strategy and planning you need to do as a player.

The Be Aware

I only want to call out one thing in the be aware section. So no sub headers for it. But this is not a small game. I think the box size, and this is not the final box size, kind of hides how large this game can be. I definitely had to adjust my normal streaming set-up because of the size. This is not a negative or positive for the game. But know what you play on. This is not going to be a coffee table game, nor does it need to be that.

Final Thoughts

So, I won’t give a grade or anything like that. I think that Chronofiends!! has a lot of positives to it and gives you an interesting time travel game. And I like that compared to TIME Stories where a loop can be ruined by bad luck of a die roll, you are in control here. Sure the chronofiends might get you, but there is strategy around where you go and how they go with that.

And as I mentioned, depending on your strategy that is going to affect how you want to play solo. I think I played more as I laid out in my section on strategy, I might have won. That said, it is easy to play two handed solo. There is not a ton to keep track of per character, so that is going to make it dealers choice for that. And information is not hidden, so no advantage playing two handed that way.

What do you think of Chronofiends!!? Is it a game that you are going to be checking out when it comes to crowdfunding? Again, follow the campaign here.

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Top 10 Games to Buy at Gen Con

Honorable Mention: Pirates of Maracaibo: Commanders

Is this 11 games, no it is not. Why, because Pirates of Maracaibo: Commanders is an expansion. So it doesn’t count as a game. No, more so you know if you are interested in this based off of if you like Pirates of Maracaibo or not. There are some new things like commanders that give you an asymmetric starting point. Plus there is rum as a new resource because it should have always been there. There are mix and match explore tracks. And there are now cannons and things you can fight with cannons. It adds a little bit, but not too much in my opinion.

10. Buffet Boss

So the list officially starts with Buffet Boss. This is a stacking game. I believe you draft things from a buffet and then you stack them on edge on your plate and you see how high you can stack them. The higher you get, the more satisfied you are with the buffet. Of course, if you get too much that isn’t good because they won’t balance or they will topple over. This sounds like a silly fun game.

9. Cat Tower

The next game on the list is another dexterity game and the last dexterity game. Cat Tower is a game where you work cooperatively to get a cat as high in the tower as you can. But the edges of things that you use to balance aren’t always even, some might even say that the tower is a bit cattywampus. The story of the game is sweet though and the game play looks fun.

So, if you want to know the story, and this is just the theme of the game not how it is plays, the cats mom has died. And the cat wants to build a tower up to heaven to find their mom. It’s a sad but sweet theme.

8. Trinket Trove

Trinket Trove is a set collection bidding game. This one has cute artwork, but let’s talk about how the game works Because that is what draws me into this one. In Trinket Trove a number of cards are flipped over that you bid on. And you bid with the cards in your hand to get them. So you are giving up something that you might need. The more cards you bid, the sooner you pick. But, and here is the twist, when you bid, the cards you bid are now a new pile of cards for people to take. So it is a great puzzly sounding time with a simple game but fun strategy.

7. Koi

Koi is on my Gen Con list just because it is pretty. If you can’t guess, Koi is about Koi and building a Koi pond. And this game looks great. I assume that each element of the Koi pond score in different ways. But there are elements like arches that you add to your pond, fish that you add and more. And it is a 3D presence to the game which I’m not sure is in every version of the game but I hope so. This is one just from an aesthetic point of view that I want to track down.

6. 12 Rivers

I feel bad about 12 Rivers being outside of my Top 5 on this Gen Con list because I think it looks really intriguing. Some of that, though, is that I mainly know the board. The board is this 12 marble track where there are spots for players to put their blockers. And then you release all the marbles. As the marbles travel down the rivers they hit a blocker. If you block early you might get a specific marble, you could get blocked too if you aren’t high enough. Or further down more will make it to you, but it might not be the ones you want.

That physical element of the game is what gets me. I love Potion Explosion for that. And this one gives me that same toy feel for the game. I hope that the rest of the game is good to go with it and that the game isn’t just all that.

5. First-Class Letters

First-Class Letters is a roll and write word game, and I like roll and write games. In this game you roll four dice. All the players need to find words that use three of those four dice and that don’t use the other one. The more of the letters you use, the more points you get. And you need to put them in alphabetical order. So that is going to be pretty easy the first few times, but, there is more. You also seed the first letter of three of the spots, in alphabetical order, so that is going to limit you more. I think this sounds simple but like a ton of fun.

4. Tricky Kids

Tricky Kids is a trick taking game that looks like it’s for kids. But I’m not 100% sure that it is. In this game you play three hands of seven cards each. And each time you need to assign the values to your cards. Yes, this game there are suits on the cards but no numbers. So you divvy up 21 points between them as you start playing. And yes, you want to win tricks, but when you win tricks you get tokens. And you know what the tokens are and when they are showing up. It sounds like a simple but very fun big twist in trick taking.

3. Slam Throne

Slam Throne could be my #1 on this list. But I think you’ll see why the other two beat it out. This is Dice Throne but pogs. Dice Throne teased and joked about this for years on April Fool’s Day. But it is finally a reality now. You play pogs with powers and abilities and try and take out your opponents stack before they take out yours. This sounds dumb and goofy and 100% a good time. I wish I was going to be at Gen Con because I expect this one to sell out. I asked for a friend to grab it for me, I hope they don’t stand in line early, I can always get it later.

2. Tag Team

Tag Team is a weird game because it gives me Dice Throne vibes, but it’s also auto-battler. So let’s talk about how this works. An auto-battler is a game that when it comes to fighting the fight just happens.

You start with two characters and one card for each character. You both flip over the cards and check what they do. Then after you play out those two cards, you draw three more and pick one to add to your cards. You add it without changing the order of the others. But you add it to the top, bottom, or middle and then you go again. So you start to figure out where to put a block for a big attack. But maybe your opponent thought you would so they changed that with how they added their card.

I love how it works and I love the head games for it. But it isn’t just all head games. As you pick between those three cards, you create strategies and synergies as you play. And the game comes with a ton of characters. I can not way to get this in my hands, I have it pre-ordered.

1. Ace of Spades

The final one on the list is Ace of Spades. This one is getting great reviews 8’s and 8.5 from the Dice Tower and they all really liked it. It is a solo or two player boss battling game. Now, I like a good boss battler, but this one is different with a weird west theme, but let’s talk about how it works.

You face off against monsters and bad guys and you want to take them down. How do you take them down? Not by rolling dice but by playing out poker hands. And each type of hand is going to do some damage. Better hands will do more damage. As you progress the enemies you face start to have powers and abilities that they use against you. But when you beat them, you get one time or ongoing powers as well.

The theme of this game is a ton like Balatro. But it is going to be simpler than that because Balatro changes cards and I’m glad it’s not a Balatro legacy game, though that could be cool. This is one that I’d wait in line for at Gen Con. But it is available to pre-order from Devir, so I just did that today.

Final Thoughts

Oh how I wish I was going to Gen Con. If you are, let me know about some of these games. And let me know which of these games are the most interesting to you. I also remind myself that all of these games will be available at retail at some point in time. So even if I don’t get them, like I said, I expect Slam Throne to sell fast, I will get it eventually. And I am really excited to try all of these games and give you reviews in the future.

What game tops your list that you are anticipating?

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How To Play Dedale

Dedale is a card playing game where you overlap the cards to create different rooms to trap the minotaur in. This is a cooperative game that is able to be played solo. And the turns are very simple, as you play one of the two cards, overlapping other cards in the labyrinth. If you complete the goal before all the cards are played, you win the game. If not, you can restart that level and try again.

Now, that is the vast majority of the game. But I want to touch on the one rule of playing out cards. The first thing is that when you play out a card, you must overlap. And while you still have cards in your draw pile, you must overlap a square that matches the color of the square on the back of a card. So the game controls where you are able to play cards. When the draw pile runs out, you place your card however youw ant.

And let’s talk really quickly about what a level looks like. In one level you need to get torches in a row and then that room closed off. Another one you want to have only a single color in the room with the minotaur. And as you go up in level the difficulty level gets higher.

What Doesn’t Work

The difficulty is inconsistent in the game. And I don’t just mean with the leveling up. I think that the new levels are basically always more challenging. And I haven’t beat all of them yet. But because it is card draw there is a higher element of randomness to the game. And the more players you play with, the more random it is going to get. So as a solo game the first five levels might be extremely simple, but at three or four players way more challenging.

And I don’t think that the challenges are all that fun in the game. So each level provides something but it’s really a lot of variation on the same themes. And I think there is a missed opportunity. Everything is always, trap the minotaur in a room with a certain condition. Why not make it, give the minotaur a single path with a certain condition? It is possible to have more variety than the game has.

What Works

Now, there are some elements that does work. Firstly, the challenges while not super exciting, they do level up nicely in difficulty. As a two player game, myself and another player on BGA were able to comfortably handle them going up to about level 6. At level 7 it became much more of a challenge. Though, see what I said about where the challenge comes from above.

The game is also simple and fast to play. A turn won’t take long at all. You know your objective so you simply go for that. And the limit on where you play is going to mean that you are limited in what you do. Even as the labyrinth gets bigger it isn’t too much.

Who Is Dedale For?

I think this is a fun game for people who like a puzzle of a game. If you want a challenge of a puzzle that isn’t an escape room game, but is a good puzzle, Dedale is strong that way. It is a bit more random than something like Relics of Rajavihara a solo puzzle game that I love, but it is going to give you that sort of feel.

Final Thought on Dedale

So, I want to compare Dedale to Relics of Rajavihara. And I think the big thing is that I sold Relics of Rajavihara and I bought it back because I want to do the puzzles again. It is just a fun experience to set-up the challenge and see if I can figure it out. Dedale on the other hand, having to replay a challenge starts to feel like a slog. The puzzles don’t do enough for me to generate a ton of interest in what’s happening and that’s a flaw for the game.

For a game that is a puzzle to try and solve, having randomness is not a good thing. And I also look at it as I think about games where I overlay cards. I own Grove and Orchard which I love. This one tries to do more with the levels and puzzle and just takes the fun out of the fast game.

Now, this is all pretty negative. And I don’t love Dedale. I don’t think it is a horrible game either. I think that it is mainly just a pretty boring game. And I think that there are better puzzle games out there or card layering games out there. So while I had some fun with it, the more I played it on BGA the less interesting it became.

My Grade: C-
Gamer Grade: C-
Casual Grade: B-
Strategy (out of 10): 3
Luck (out of 10): 7

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How To Play At The Helm

At The Helm is a hand management and deck building game where you are trying to beat three challenges. Each challenge is going to want different symbols played out to beat it. Some want a lot of sails played in a single turn. Others want a lot of sails total but it isn’t turn based, or it could be attacks or money that they want as well.

To do this you need to play out cards from your hand of three cards. Every card does some different effect and some of them might do two different ones that you choose between. But a lot are going to give you that attack, sail, or purchase/money. As well as they give you health which you need in the game.

After you play one or two cards each turn you draw back up to three. If there is a broken heart symbol on the card you take a damage (or two from some). You might also lose health from triggers on the challenges you are going after. Such as the giant squid deals you a damage if you damage it with the harpoon.

Then, if you run out of cards, you automatically get a card from the market. Huzzah, free purchase, but once all the cards are gone and you need to reshuffle you lose the game. But if you defeat all three challenges, you win the game.

What Doesn’t Work

Variety is going to be my one negative for the game. I talked about how there is some variety in the game on the stream. But that mainly comes from changing up the challenges. I think that there are good deck building strategies, but those strategies never change, at least not much. So it’s about those challenges. I think I say this a lot about the Button Shy Games, but with only 18 cards, it limits what you do, so almost all of them you probably want an expansion for it to add more variety to the game.

What Works

Let’s talk two things that I generally mention either as a negative or positive. But the game is very fast, which is good, most Button Shy Games are. And for a small solo game, I want it to be that. But At The Helm is also a consistent footprint that isn’t too large. I like that it’s a fixed footprint as well. There are some that I’ve played where the footprint can vary considerably or be dynamic throughout the game.

The hand management aspect of the game works well. I like that determination of how many cards to play because the more you play each turn, the faster you get through your deck. But if you dig for specific cards, well, you likely will find that you end up in trouble because you aren’t fully optimizing what you do.

And I think adding cards to your deck in this game is interesting as well. I did call out that one element of the game is not obvious, and I missed it, because it’s tucked in part of the rules where it doesn’t make as much sense. Not a big negative, but I like how when you run out of cards to play you get to add in a card. That is a good countdown timer and it means that you don’t always need to buy cards.

Who Is At The Helm For?

I think that people who enjoy a good puzzle of a game are going to enjoy At The Helm. Now, I think it’s less of a puzzle game than some. This one is more about reacting to the cards you get in hand and balancing that line of healing up and spending time doing that, versus working on the challenges. So people who like that puzzle but also that hand management or deck building aspect of a game should enjoy this one. And this one is better than some for people who travel as well.

Final Thoughts on At The Helm

I enjoyed this game quite well. I think that it’s one that is easier to understand the rules than some. I do think that the rules needed that tiny bit of extra work. Mainly, where do you place certain key parts of the rules would make a lot of sense. I get that it’s probably a me issue because I should have read everything better. But I suspect there are a number of other players of the game who missed the adding purchased cards to the hand rule as well.

The game is fast, and I like the aesthetic of the game. I think that it works very well and it really does feel like a tightly designed game. The theme is just there enough through that aesthetic as well which is nice. I don’t love it when a game is just all mechanisms with a theme that could be anything. But, with At The Helm, I don’t think that it’s that.

And the game play is so fast and consistent in what you are doing, it feels less lucky than some of the other games. And it feels more like a game than a puzzle than some of the other solo games from Button Shy. For that reason, I do enjoy this one more, and while I suspect that an expansion or two would make it more playable in the long run with that variety, it works really well as it is.

My Grade: B+
Strategy: B+
Luck: C-

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How To Play Unsurmountable

Like all games from Button Shy, Unsurmountable is an 18 card game. Though, there are expansions. In this game you are trying to use all 17 mountain cards and the helicopter to complete an assent of the mountain. You need to make it from one of the bottom edges of the mountain to the top as you build it out in a four wide triangle.

Each turn you do one of two things. You either take the left most card from the “base camp” row of cards and add it to your mountain. You want to connect the paths so that you can make it to the top as you are placing out cards.

The other option is that you can spend one of the other cards, four at the start of a base game, to use it’s special ability. These abilities allow you to manipulate the order of the cards in the base camp, remove cards or add cards in other ways to the mountain and more.

Once you complete one of those two actions you refill your base camp, shifting all the cards to the left and continue. At the end of the game, when your mountain is built, you check to see if you can create a path to the top. If you can, you win.

What Doesn’t Work

This is a solo game with a fair amount of luck to it. If you get the right cards to come out in the right order, you just build the mountain. The powers, they don’t matter so much. But, if you don’t get the right cards, it’s more of a puzzle. So there is a variability in the game as to how you win. Sometimes you win it is pure luck, other times, no matter what you do, or nearly that, there is nothing you could do to win.

What Works

That negative said, this game does give you a good puzzle. The powers on the cards are interesting. Though, as I talk about at the end of the video, maybe not balanced. For example, adding an extra card to the row just gives you more options. But, removing one makes it harder, and the likelihood you want to play either card on the mountain is fairly low. But the rest of the cards offer a lot of fun choices and decisions about which to use.

The game is also again a pretty small footprint and fast to play. I play four games in my video and that is not a long video. In fact, I even spend time talking at the end about some thoughts on the game, so it’s less than that run time for four games. Granted, one game I didn’t play out completely. I knew based off of the cards that I had, I wasn’t going to be able to complete it. But that’s not a bad thing, it means that the game plays fast, and you know when it’s over, no questioning if you can complete it.

Who Is Unsurmountable For?

I think people who like a solo puzzle will find this one fun. As compared to some Button Shy Games, I think that this one might benefit more from expansions. The base game, as you play it, you know what cards do fast. That isn’t a bad thing, but it does limit a potential shelf life of a game. But for someone who wants a lot of small solo games, maybe travels often or finds themselves waiting often, a game like this is very good.

My Final Thoughts on Unsurmountable

This is an interesting game, and I mean that in a good way. I like the game, but also I think that I need the expansions to keep it around. So I am buying the expansions for it. The nice thing about a lot of Button Shy Games is that you get them for $15 and can sell them for $10, so if I don’t find that’s enough for the game, that’s okay. But I think what the game does is interesting.

The reason that it’s kind of riding that edge for me is because I own a lot of little solo games. So which is going to be the one that I play? And Unsurmountable is on the higher end of luck. I won a game without having to use a power for a long time. Why, because that is the order the cards were shuffled into. Am I likely to get that order again, no. But it is possible to just shuffle into a win, which I’m not going to say is bad design.

But it is a testament to the level of luck in the game. And I want to do more than just play out cards in the order I drew them. And most of the time I know with Unsurmountable that I will. If the expansions add some more into the mix, though, that’d be great.

My Grade: C+
Strategy: B
Luck: B

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How To Play Ancient Realm

Ancient Realm is a solo game where you are trying to get your highest score, and there are different levels of score, while building up your society. The game is done by creating this line of cards that is going to be your society. This is a mixture of market cards and wonder cards. You are always able to play a market card, but the wonder cards have a cost that you need to pay that’s either wheat, wood, or stone.

Gaining Resources

To play a card you add it to either end of the tableau that you’re building. Or you place the card above part or all of other cards. Then you activate the cards which you are covering up, or the parts of the card that you are covering up. That is how you are going to get more resources, whether it’s the three above or there is also gold as well that you can get.

However, to get resources, sometimes there is a cost, and you need to be able to pay that in gold. Or if you cover up a mine, you get gold, but all mines have scoring on them, so if you cover it up you can’t score it.

Building Wonders

Then you use those resources to play out wonders. And wonders are going to help you in various ways. The first way is that it gets you more points. But equally as big is that it can make it more efficient to get resources. Plus, and I forgot this from time to time, the market card that is next to be in play has a specific rule on it that you can use as well. That might make it easier to trade resources. Or it might make it so that you can build a wonder cheaper.

After all the wonders and market cards are built or wonder cards are sold for either a resource or two gold, you tally up your score. You want to beat 49 otherwise your land is ruinous. But there are a lot of different tiers to shoot for in the game.

What Doesn’t Work

I really don’t have a negative. I’ll probably talk more about the feel of the game in the Who Is Ancient Realm For section. But the closest thing to a negative might be that there are a few things to keep track of, like the bonuses from wonders and the bonus from that next market card up. But that’s not really a negative, it’s just a learning curve for the game.

What Works

I like the system of covering up cards to activate them a lot. You want to be smart about it, or more likely you need to be smart about it. If you aren’t smart about it, you’ll either get too many resources and have leftovers when the game ends, or you cover up something you need for scoring. So it’s really a good efficiency puzzle to get as many wonders played as possible.

Another element that I think works well is the mines. Gold is great because you can spend two for a resource. But it’s also not great because if you cover up a mine you cover up a scoring opportunity. So you need, again this efficiency puzzle, to be smart on which ones you cover up and cover up as few as possible. Granted, some mines you might look at and realize that you won’t score them or score well on them, so you want to cover up them.

The game is also good in time and space on the table. Now this isn’t the smallest in terms of solo games. Nor is it the shortest game in terms of solo play. But neither make it feel like too much work to get it to the table. And I think that there are ways that you could compact the footprint so it doesn’t get quite as large. Though, the play of cards at the end is definitely going to take up some space.

Who is Ancient Realm For?

I think that this is a good game for people who like puzzle solo games. The game is really that efficiency puzzle. So if someone wants a game that is a bit more open in what you can do, I suspect this might feel like too much of a brain burner. But if that’s what you’re looking for it’s a good and fast brain burner of a game.

My Final Thoughts on Ancient Realm

I enjoyed this game a lot. For the Button Shy solo games, Ancient Realm is one of my favorites. I really like it when a game gives me a good puzzle. Because, a lot of the time, when I play a solo game, I do so to keep my brain engaged. There are a lot of things that I could do to spend time, but so many of them just really turn my brain off. So I like it when I can keep my brain going and enjoy a game as well.

This one also is a tight enough game, see that efficiency puzzle comment, that I feel like I can spot the better options pretty quickly. I don’t want a brain burner of a game to give me too many options. Especially for a solo game. So with Ancient Realm it is a easy to see what might be my options and then what might be the best one of them. At least that’s how it feels. I maybe make the decision too fast, but I don’t want the game to take too long as a small solo experience. And if I play poorly, I can always shuffle up and try again.

My Grade: B+
Strategy: B+
Luck: C

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How To Play ROVE

ROVE is a solo only game where you are trying to complete seven missions. In each mission you need to configure the placement of various modules from the ROVE lander that has broken. To do this, you spend energy. One energy allows you to activate a card. So let’s talk about how it works with the modules.

Each module has a specific way that it can move and a special power. The special powers, however, are only a single use per game. And you need to complete seven missions. So you plan carefully when you use those powers. Otherwise the modules move in different ways. One needs to cross over another module but it can move in any direction. A couple others can just cross over modules but might move only diagonally, for example.

Once you complete one mission you flip out a new mission card and you refresh your energy cards so that you have five, on normal, or fewer, four or three for hard and impossible settings. You do this until you have seven cards into play for missions and you either have run out of energy trying to complete a mission or you complete them all. If you do, you win.

What Doesn’t Work

This game takes up a bit of space. As you move all of the cards around things are going to shift a fair amount. So for a solo game that is just 18 cards, and six of them really in play that take up so mush space, it’s a bit of a table hog. Now that said, it’s really not that much space. But let’s say it’s not a game that you could easily play on a TV tray or something like that, it needs more space.

What Works

I like the different levels that you can play the game at. I played twice and the second game, on hard, I felt like it was actually a bit more challenging. When you get energy cards and you have two three energies available, you never really feel the crunch of movement. But with four cards and you just have twos and ones, well there is more intensity there. I think that hard is probably where I’ll play the game most, though I’m sure I’ll dabble with impossible and lose quickly.

The game is also fast. I was worried when I pulled the game off the shelf and learned the rules that with seven missions it’d be a very slow game. But it’s definitely not a slow game. I got through two plays in about half an hour. And that’s a great amount of time for a game like this. Each mission is it’s own puzzle, but you quickly figure out how to solve them as you go and you come up with a plan before you start moving cards around.

Finally, it’s a silly little thing, but I like how the cards create a picture, or panorama as you go. And you get to see what the silly little robot is doing, that’s a great fun element to the game. It takes what’s really a very mechanical puzzle of a game and gives you a goofy little element to it to inject the theme. It’s something that works well, and is just that nice little bit of flavor.

Who Is ROVE For?

This is going to be for that person who loves solo games. Sometimes a solo game could maybe be a two player game if you want to just work together and talk through ideas. But ROVE is really focused down on figuring out that challenge as to where you place everything. And because of that it’s a bit of a quieter game. Obviously I talked through it all on my video, but off camera, I think I’d just play it as a quieter time, so it’s truly a solo puzzle of a game.

My Final Thoughts on ROVE

I enjoyed ROVE quite well. The theme is fun and it is really bolstered by the little artwork in the game. Without that, the game really focuses on functional cards, which isn’t a bad thing, more just a statement of how the cards are in the game.

I want to know what the expansions add to the game. Because, I didn’t mention this as a negative, because the game balances for it, I feel like the game is a bit easy on the normal mode. Hard feels like a normal mode to me and I think that impossible could even be a good challenge from time to time, though I do expect that to be near impossible. But if the expansions add a little bit of complexity to the game, where it feels like the challenge would be harder, than I think my grade on the game would go even higher.

My Grade: B
Strategy: A
Luck: D

Just a reminder, that I changed up the scales so that you can know how lucky or strategic a game is. ROVE is very strategic in nature. Not maybe for super long term planning, but when it comes down to have everything works. And there is some luck in what is flipped, but it’s very minimal for the game. It’s more that you need to be good at having reactive strategy.

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