Before we get to the list, let’s start by talking a little bit about how the list is made. You can see some of the process that I go through in this article earlier this week. But as to the games on the list, these are all games I’ve rated on Board Game Geek.

To go along with that, the games that are in my Top 100, I’ll have links to where you can buy them. I tend to do most of my board game shopping online through Miniature Market and Coolstuff Inc. I’m going to try and use their links over something like Amazon, but I do want you to be able to find these games if they look cool. Let’s get to the list.

Board Games 100-91

100. Skull

This is a great little bluffing game. Normally bluffing games aren’t my thing. I am not the best at bluffing in them, but this one works for me. It is small and it’s simple. When it comes down to it, I think the simplicity of what you are doing in the game is really what works for me. And I like the twist on it that when you bid to flip you have to flip your own stuff first. That means sometimes when you bluff you don’t have a skull in your like you’ll end up flipping our own and beat yourself.

Buy on Miniature Market

99. Takenoko

This game is just a really cute one. Takenoko has you trying to complete objectives to get the most points. The game is just maybe over a gateway game level but really good. The cute factor really sells this game for a lot of people. I like that you have three different ways that you can score points in the game. The fact you can go for panda, gardener or tile points is nice, allows for different players to have different strategies.

Buy on Miniature Market

98. Shadowrun Crossfire: Prime Runner Edition

This is one that I really need to play again. It’s a fun game where you are building out a deck of cards while trying to defeat different threats. You each also start out a different way, so like the RPG it’s based on, Shadowrun, you are building up special skills that only you have. A challenging game for sure, but I like it when my cooperative games challenge me.

Buy on Amazon

97. Photosynthesis

This is a game about trees. It looks like it should be a nice and friendly game, it is not. Photosynthesis is an abstract game where you are planting your trees, figuring out how to maximize your sun points, and blocking your opponent from getting their own sun points. It’s a good puzzle of a game though because the sun rotates around the board. That means you can set yourself up for some really good turns, but on the flip side you might end up with some turns with no points, if you aren’t careful. Fun game, but very mean.

Buy on Coolstuff Inc

96. Mysterium

Another game I haven’t played in a while, Mysterium. This one really is because of the pandemic because I think it works better at a higher count, and I don’t own the game. But in this game one person is a ghost trying to give everyone else clues so that they try and figure a murder, weapon, and location. We don’t play it quite right but we play it in a way that I think is more fun, and it keeps the base of the game the same.

Buy on Amazon

95. First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet

This one I think would be lower on the list for a lot of people because of a bad taste from the app for the start. But the game itself is a good time and you can get it cheap now. The app is definitely better than it was, but you’re trying to survive on Mars. You station might be breaking down, the :44supply ship might have crashed, or something like that and now you are trying to survive the scenario. It’s a challenging game but it feels good when you win. Think of this as The Martian the board game.

Buy on Coolstuff Inc

94. Pandemic Legacy: Season 2

I like my legacy games, and Pandemic Legacy Season 2 is a very good one. The Pandemic games really do a great job of giving you tons of new stuff to unlock during the game. And the story in this one is good. I will say you do need to play the first season of Pandemic Legacy first. Also that while the mechanics are similar to Pandemic they feel different and the game feels unique as you play it and explore the world.

Buy on Miniature Market

93. The Lord of the Rings

Another very challenging cooperative game. The Lord of the Rings is a good book themed Lord of the Rings game that is pretty abstracted. But the artwork is great, the challenge level is great, and you feel the pressure of trying to get the one ring delivered. There was a new edition that came out not too long ago, but I prefer the older version without the extra plastic in it. And I like that you play only as the Hobbits because that’s fun as well.

Buy on Miniature Market

92. Wits & Wagers

The first party game to hit the list. This is my preferred trivia game to play because you don’t need to be great at trivia. Every answer is number based and that means that you are just trying to bet on the right number without going over. So if it’s something about a movie and you know the most about movies, maybe bet on your own, but if you know nothing about sports, bet the other person who knows sports answer. Being close is just as good as being right and knowing who might know best.

Buy on Amazon

91. Criss Cross

This one has dropped a long ways. A lot of that is that I’ve played a lot of roll and write games since I did the list last. There are games that I’ve played which has pushed this one down. That said, Criss Cross is still a really good game. It’s pretty lucky as to what comes up on the dice, but how you put in that combination of two really matters, since everyone is using the same dice. It’s a good quick game and one I wouldn’t say no to playing, but I might not pull off my self as much anymore.

Not on Amazon, Miniature Market, or Coolstuff Inc

There we have the first 10 games on the list. I really like all of these. I think on my list as a whole that 7 or 7.5 is about the lowest that can make my list in terms of rankings and most will be 8’s or higher. Let me know which of these games you like best or which one you want to try.

The Next Ten

And if you want to catch it live, you can do so over on YouTube. Checkout the Malts and Meeples like at the top of the article. I have the next four videos scheduled. So you can subscribe and click that notification bell to know when I’m going live. But if you’re catching this later, 8 PM Central Time every Wednesday from now until the week before Thanksgiving, November 17th to see what games make the list.

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The Collection

Numbers

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

T’s

T.I.M.E. Stories (and Expansions)

I love this game, it is really well made in what I’ve played through of the expansions with each different scenario pack feeling it it’s something new. I’ve heard that some aren’t as strong as others, but through four of them it’s been really interesting. This reminds me of Assassin’s Creed in some ways, though depending on the scenario, less about fighting. And they have done a lot of weird things, from dragons to ancient Egypt to zombies.

Status: Played

The Table is Lava

We all know the rules of the floor is lava, don’t touch the floor. But with this, you have meeples and you are flicking cards. You flick them onto the table, and if you hit someone else’s meeples you can knock them over or knock them onto the table, which is lava, of course. But you get points if your meeples are standing up and less if they are laying down, so you have a lot of different ways to score, but also some strategy in how or where you toss your cards, because you could go to knockdowns or you could try and keep it separate so you are less likely to have meeples knocked off. It seems like silly fun.

Status: To Be Played

Tainted Grail

I love my Awaken Realms games. Tainted Grail is a massive grim dark Arthurian legend and it’s really hard. I like the fact that it’s hard, I like that the combat has you running away fairly often and that you are fighting for survival, what they advertised the game as. The story in this game is really good, and I’ve played through the first chapter multiple times and I always find something new that I haven’t done before and places that I’d love to get to, except for the time that we have left on the Menhir. I’m excited to get back to this after Christmas.

Status: Played

Takenoko

Sometimes you want a game that is just a fun time, and Takenoko with it’s fat bamboo eating panda definitely is that. This game looks family weight but has a little bit more going on as you are putting out tiles, growing bamboo, eating bamboo and more. It has some random elements with the dice, but overall is a really fun time with a lot of good decisions to make. When do you want to water a spot so it starts to grow, does it help you more than the other players by doing that, when you want to move the panda and do you want to get more panda, gardener, or tile scoring cards?

Status: Played

The Terrifying Girl Disorder

Japanime Games makes weird games that definitely have a bit of an anime feel to them even if they aren’t about an actual anime, and this is one of those games. I picked it up because it was on a sale and it looked weird. From what I remember about it, you are picking cards, almost drafting them, to get sets for the girl that you have, but that can change who you have. It is a weird game and sounds like it either will be an interesting game for some people, or that it might be a bit too much game for how small it is.

Status: To Be Played

That’s Pretty Clever

Roll and write, you know the drill. But this roll and write has the distinction of being the one that really started the roll and write craze we’re in now. Ganz Schon Clever, as it’s known in German, is a good comboing roll and write game that has a lot of interesting scoring to it. The sequels then use that and build upon it, but they are their own separate games. That’s Pretty Clever introduces one of the best ideas that I’ve seen, of foxes, these are points where if you can get them can score you a lot of points, but they only score the lowest point total of another section, so if I don’t do well, let’s say in the yellow section and get zero points, foxes are worth nothing. This forces you to diversify as you go.

Status: Played

This War of Mine

Probably better known as a video game, this war of mine is another Awaken Realms game, one of the earliest ones that they did. It is based off of the IP of the video game, and is about trying to survive in a war torn world. From what I know of the game, it’s extremely dark, depressing and hard to in. Now, not all Awaken Realms are like that, but I always expect that an Awaken Realms game will have some elements to it that are punishing. This one I want to try solo and just play in short bits because of the darkness of the theme.

Status: To Be Played

Ticket to Ride

It’s a classic gateway game for a lot of people. This one is all about collecting cards, putting down trains and completing routes. What makes this work so well as a gateway game is that you do one of a few things on your turn. You either take train cards, play down trains, or you take routes. That’s it, you don’t do more than one of those things on a turn. It makes the game easy to teach an very accessible. The game also is based around connecting those routes which is an idea that is really easy to grasp, because we’re all familiar with a road trip of going from point A to point B, with Ticket to Ride it’s just about how you get there.

Status: Played

Tiny Towns

This game has been a pretty popular one this year from AEG and last year. It is a simple cube placement game with a bit more depth than it’d first seem. What makes this really interesting for me is the picking of the resource and how I can use that to my advantage at times or to hurt someone else. Now, I don’t think that hate picking is a viable strategy, but if I see that my next opponent has a brick and wood for building a house, or straw, whatever it is, and I just have a wood, I might pick brick so that they are likely to pick straw and we both get houses, but now they have an extra brick they have to work with. And there are a ton of combinations or buildings that are really fun to work with.

Status: Played

Titan Race

Another fun filler type game is Titan Race. This one is again really easy with dice drafting and racing either across the same board three times or across three different boards once each. The game is fast and easy to learn, and each racer having their own powers is fun. What I also like about the game is that even when you are knocked down to 0, you just lose a turn and you get going again. But what is the most fun is knocking people around, being able to drop a trap right in front or someone or push them into lava, it’s great. And even though there is the take that feel to the game, since it’s so fast and so silly, people aren’t likely to have their feeling hurt.

Status: Played

Tofu Kingdom

I bet you didn’t know tofu had a kingdom. This is a bluffing game where players can either lie or tell the truth depending on what cards they have in their hand and the person who is Prince Mochi is has to try and guess who has Princess Tofu in their hand. It seems like one of those silly little games, almost social deduction, with a little bit of deduction thrown in. What is nice is that it plays a pretty large number of players. I’m curious to get it to the tale once we have people playing in person again, because it seems best at a higher player count.

Status: To Be Played

Tokyo Highway

Dexterity games are a ton of fun for me. I like them because late in a game night, you might not want to sit down and play something too meaty. Instead, you can grab out a game and try, in your tired state, to balance roads and place cars on them. Tokyo Highways is one of the most aesthetically pleasing games to see played. When you wrap it up, it’s almost a piece of artwork, which is crazy to say for a board game. And the rules are simple enough, if your road crossed over or under another road, you get to put a car on your road, the first person to get all their cars out is the winner. But you only have a limited number of discs to raise or lower your road, and without special discs you can’t raise or lower than more by one. It’s a lot of fun and tense, but so pretty that it’s calming.

Status: Played

Tsuro

This is another of the high player count but not a party game games. It’s actually one of the most played in that category for me. Tsuro, the way of the path, is about using your tiles to keep yourself on the paths as long as you can, and outlast everyone else. I think this game plays best at the higher player counts where you can knock out a game or two fast and then move onto something bigger. I’m a little bit played out of this game which is why I’ve added more games of similar player counts to my collection, but it’s still a good one when you need something fast.

Status: Played

Twice as Clever

The follow up to Ganz Schon Clever (That’s So Clever), this game takes the foundation that you get in That’s So Clever and builds upon it. Twice as Clever is by far, I’d say, the most challenging of the three games to play. You have to think a lot about all the sections because the scoring is quite different. I do like pieces of it though, the pink track is great, the grey/silver area is really interesting to think about. The yellow area is hard to rock, but if you can, you can get a lot of points and some good bonuses. It, like That’s So Clever, is all about getting as many combos as possible and getting to those foxes so you can score the most points off of them, but not forgetting to get points in every area.

Status: Played

That’s it for the T’s, definitely less than there were of the S’s, but that’s fine, I have a lot of games as it is. What is your favorite game that begins wit the Letter T? Is there any that I’m missing from my collection that you’d think I’d like?

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

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

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

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

100. Lazer Ryderz

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

Last Year: 100

99. Ra

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

Last Year: Not Ranked

98. Shadowrun: Crossfire

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

Last Year: 91

97. Legends of Andor

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

Last Year: 86

96. The Lord of the Rings: Journey to Mordor

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

Last Year: Not Ranked

95. Takenoko

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

Last Year: 97

94. Dragonfire

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

Last Year: 93

93. Yahtzee

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

Last Year: Not Ranked

92. Pandemic

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

Last Year: 50

91. Tsuro

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

Last Year: 61

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

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

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

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When I created this list, I determined that about 116 is where on my list of games (192) that I wouldn’t be always up for playing them. At 180, I hit the point where I probably wouldn’t play them again. So there are some games I enjoy that didn’t make the list, Castle Panic, Love Letter, and Forbidden Desert are probably some of the biggest names. If you’re wondering what the bottom of the list is, I’m not telling. Let’s just say it was a bad experience playing it because of some of the people and tactics to get me to try it, and the game wasn’t exciting. Also, be aware that there are some GenCon demos on the list, I feel like I got a good feeling for them, so I can rank them where they fit for me, this is also a living list so things are likely to change when I do this next year or even a few weeks from now. Finally, if there is an Amazon link for it or CoolStuffInc, I’ll share it.

100 – Lazer Ryders
Lazer Ryders is a silly game with an amazing look. The best way to describe this is that you are on light bikes and trying to get through certain spots before other people. But the game is highly reflective and silly. In this game, like I said, you are trying to get through spots, and you are creating a track as you go. But you can’t plan out your moves, once you have a piece in your hand and it’s over the table, you’re playing it. And if you crash, you start from the edge, and when you start at the edge of the table, you do so with your eyes closed. The look for this game is the best part, there are four players and the player pieces look like they are in a VHS case. It’s very 80’s-tastic, and just a fast and fun game that’s good for a laugh.

99 – Skull
I enjoyed this game as a bluffing game where you are trying to push your luck. In this game everyone is playing down coasters, face down, that have either a skull or a rose on them. Then eventually someone is going to bid as to how many of these coasters they can flip over and people take turns bidding higher until only one person is left. Then they have to flip that many coasters. But the trick is you have to flip all of yours, so are you bluffing in hopes that someone thinks that yours are safe to flip so they bust. It’s a small game, it’s a simple game, but it’s interesting and it’s very portable.

98 – Marrying Mr. Darcy
This is a game that my wife kickstarted, not me for once, huzzah! But it’s a very fun little game, especially if you enjoy Pride and Prejudice, and I like it’s snarky feel. The game keeps some snark as you build up your Bennett sister or other characters so that they are able to get their ideal suitor. It’s a very simple game and you really just flip a card and play that card. But that’s not a bad thing, my only downside to the game is that there are a few too many cards that you flip, if that was reduced by 25%, it would be great. Still, it’s not too long, so it’s a fun time and everyone always enjoys the sarcastic and goofy nature of the game.

97 – Takenoko
Sometimes you just want to eat bamboo. In Takenoko, you control bamboo growing, panda eating bamboo, and gardener growing bamboo in order to please the emperor. This game for being very cute is actually somewhat complex as you take different actions to complete objectives that you’ve drawn. It’s really a game that’s about completing sets of bamboo or growing bamboo in a certain way. The game has a nice chibi panda in it, and the bamboo pieces are cool because you set them up. It’s also a game that Kristen has enjoyed so that makes it fun to play as well, even though we don’t own the game. I don’t know that I would say it’s an introductory game, which I feel like it should be though, as there is a bunch going on.

96 – Qwirkle
Some games are good because you can play with with basically anyone. Qwirkle is one of those games, I can play it with my parents, and I can play it with siblings, and I can play it with my wife, so all different levels of gamers. It’s a good puzzle sort of game that is all about pattern recognition, but because of the luck of the draw of tiles, those who are good at pattern recognition won’t always win. In this game you are playing down tiles that have various colors and shapes on them. You score points for adding to rows of colors as long as the shape is unique or shapes as long as the color is unique. It has a bit of a scrabble feel without being a word game.

95 – Telestrations
This is a game similar in appeal to the one above, while that is more of a strategy game to be played with anyone, Telestrations is a party game for anyone. It also goes by the name Telephone-Pictionary if you are playing it without the actual game. In this game, each player has a pad, everyone rights down a phrase, word, whatever, then they pass it, the next person draws, pass it again, next person writes, and so on. Then you flip through it and laugh at how it’s changed over time. And fairly often it’s completely different. This is really more of an activity, like The Mind, because no one keeps score, but it’s a fun activity that anyone can join in.

94 – The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth
When I was saying that there were some games that I expected to move on the list, Journeys in Middle-earth is one of them. I think as I play more and get more into the story this will go up on my list. What I like about it is that it has an app that helps and you get a story because of the app. What I don’t love about it is that you have an app and the app does almost too much so you almost feel like you could play it as a computer game with just a slight tweak tot he game. It looks cool on the table, and if you wanted to take characters from the Lord of the Rings, plus a few new characters on an adventure, you can do that, though, I wish it was only new characters.

93 – Dragonfire
Every time I’ve played this game I’ve lost. But I still like it, this is based off of the Shadowrun: Crossfire system but instead of being cyberpunk, this is D&D. You get your character and class and start fighting off waves and waves of monsters, buying new cards and building up your deck. I actually grabbed this used not too long ago, so I’m excited to stream it solo, because, though it doesn’t have a true solo mode, it’s cooperative, that means I’ll be able to play through the stories that it has. I like deck building as a mechanic, and I like the scenario based game and the adventuring feel of it, and I really like D&D, so it’s a good fit for me.

92 – Charterstone
The first legacy game on the list, and no, Seafall won’t be making the list. Charterstone is really a worker placement game where you get to build the board as you go, and then in the end, you can play a worker placement game. For me, this is a good and simple game that you can play quickly, thankfully, because I don’t feel like there are massive things going on in the game, and there isn’t story. Now, I know there is technically story, but there really isn’t story that matters, so instead I just enjoy it as a straightforward worker placement game with some fun combo building. I still need to finish it, but three of us had babies in the past year who were playing it, so who knows when it will happen. If it doesn’t, I might just make the board and add in the last few buildings, we’ll see.

91 – Shadowrun: Crossfire
I could just say, see 93, so I will, see 93. That’ll give you an idea of what this game is, but what I like about this game better is that it is cyberpunk. Yes, I love D&D, but sometimes you want to play something different, and you can do that in Shadowrun: Crossfire. In fact, that’s why I kickstarted and got another Shadowrun game, because I like the cyberpunk setting. I don’t always love sci-fi, but cyberpunk style of sci-fi is great. I don’t own this one, and I don’t think that I’ve won this one either when I’ve played, but that’s fine because I never felt like I was just getting crushed by it.

Alright, that’s the first 10 games. Only 90 more to go. I’m guessing that people can probably get my top game, but there are a lot of fun games on this list still to come and probably some surprised with how high or low some games will be in my top 100.

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I have to tell the story of how we got the game, because it’s a ton of fun. Kristen and I were in Los Angeles over International Table Top Day this year to visit some of my family. They were going to be busy the evening of International Table Top Day, but they knew of a board game cafe, Game Haus, near their place, so they were dropped us off their on the way to their thing.We show up and get the last two tickets, since they were ticketing the event as they were doing a raffle for a number of games. We sit down, get our free drinks and cake and play Takenoko, possibly a future TableTopTakes right there. I comment, since I had looked at the games in the raffle, how Sagrada was the one that I was interested in winning. Then I spot it on their board game shelf and suggest that we try it. So we pull it off the shelf after playing Takenoko and play a game of it, they’ve done a couple of raffles during that time of things we weren’t too interested in. Kristen and I both enjoyed the first game of Sagrada and decided to play another one, as we’re playing that one, the guy doing the raffle comes around and reads off the last four numbers. Kristen is the winner, and it just happens to be the copy of Sagrada that they were raffling off. So we won Sagrada while we were playing Sagrada. The stars just aligned nicely on that one.

Back to the review.

Sagrada is a fun family weight strategy/puzzle game where you are rolling dice and placing them to create your stained glass window. It’s a very pretty game that requires some planning as you try and build your window, and not that much interaction between players. We brought it up to play with my parents over Mother’s Day weekend, and both of them were able to pick up the rules quickly and enjoyed it a lot. They’ve played a number of games before, but we’ve been introducing them to new games so that we’ve moved away from games like Uno ans Skip-Bo that we grew up playing. It’s a bit more complex game that is still easy enough for people who don’t play a ton of modern games to able to understand.

In Sagrada you are trying to build the best stained glass window that you can point wise. During a round, a player rolls two dice for each person plus one, and then you go around drafting dice and placing them on your stained glass window. That seems pretty simple, and that’s the big thing you need to grasp for this game, however, then there complexities that are added in. You have to place the first die in the corner, and then anything after that must be connected diagonally or orthogonally (above or below or off to either side). So that’s a bit trickier when you know that some of the spots on your stained glass window need to be a certain number or a certain color. You have to plan out what you draft, but then there’s even more. The same color or same number can’t be adjacent in rows or columns (aka orthogonally). So if you need a blue die in one spot and a three in a spot next to it, you can’t (or don’t want to) use a blue three for the blue die or a blue three for the three. Once you’ve gone ten rounds you will have a completed or nearly completed stained glass window. Then you score points. Finally there is one last thing that helps you in this game, there are stained glass window building tools cards, these can help you complete your window by moving dice, allowing you to ignore a color, or ignore a number. However, these things cost a token, and the harder your stained glass is the more tokens you have, but if you don’t use the tokens, they count for points at the end of the game.

The points in this game are fun, because each person has their own private objective, which is always scoring points based on the pips showing up for a certain die color in your stained glass window. So if I have blue, I might want to try and get more blue dice into my window to score more points, but maybe I won’t be able to because someone needs those blue dice, or because the blue dice don’t help me complete my window. Than there are public objectives, everyone knows what these are in the game, and so you might be trying to get the most sets of 3’s and 4’s on the board, or maybe you are trying to get dice of a color that are connected diagonally. There are a number of these public objectives that are shuffled up at the start of each game, so you don’t know what you are going to get until you flip them. Then you gain more points for tokens you haven’t used, and you lose points for spots open in your stained glass window, and at the end, whomever has the most points wins.

That’s actually how I would teach the game to people. Sagrada is a game that is very variable because things like the public scoring, the artist tools, and the windows you are working on can change game to game. This means that you can’t hone in on a particular strategy and it will work every time. Completing your window is always good. There’s also more variability if you’re playing with less than four people. If you’re playing with four people, every single die will be used, but if you have left, there will be some dice still left in the bag, so you might see more yellow than you do blue. I do know that to reduce that variability some people will count out dice so that there are an even number of each color that end up in the bag and in play. I don’t think that’s really needed, but I’ve only played it with two people twice, and I didn’t notice it swinging the points/game in someone’s favor, but it might. However, that fix is simple if you’re willing to quickly sort the dice.

Overall, this is a really good game. The components are really nice, and the translucent dice give it the feel of a stained glass window. It might not be the most challenging game to learn, but there are definitely intricacies to the game as you try and balance the different types of scoring, or maybe you really go for one type of scoring over another. The game is even cooler for me because some of the people who worked on graphic design is someone who I know. But even without that information, the game is going to be a lot of fun. The game that you most often here is compared to is the game Azul, which I believe is a bit more complex, and also nice looking. Personally I just liked the look of Sagrada better, which is why I have added it to my collection and likely won’t ever add Azul to my collection.

Overall Grade: A

Gamer Grade: B+

Casual Grade: A