• Add More Players
• Add More Content
• Change Up The Content

Most of the ones I’m going to want expansion for will be in the last two categories. Rarely do I want to add more players to a game, unless it doesn’t change how long the game is. Six player Catan, for example, takes longer than two player Catan.

So let’s get to the list.

Points Salad

Point Salad should really have an expansion, but it is not an easy one to give an expansion to. Point Salad is a set collection game where you draft cards from a tableau. You either draft vegetables or scoring cards. And that is why it’s tricky. The scoring cards are on the back of the vegetables, so you can’t just add in more veggies easily. If you added more you’d need to redo every single card, and at that point, it’s just a new game.

So how would I make it work?

I think I’d add in a toppings expansion. So stuff like croutons, bacon, cheese, nuts, dressing, things like that. And they would influence how scoring goes. But they would need to be in the big tableau to able able to score. I don’t know how you’d change it up too much with them, but maybe they get played in a row of veggies or they use up certain veggies for their scoring.

Homebrewers

Homebrewers is one where I just want more content for it. I want more end game scoring objectives, I want more playable characters, I want more ingredients to brew with. The game is a ton of fun and a really fast engine building game with a theme I love of brewing beer.

Mainly, I think with the ingredients there is room for more powers that you could add to them. And more things you could do to play around with the different types of ingredients. So that’s what I’d really like for it. It’d just be more stuff that you could do. I know there is an equipment pack for it, but that’s impossible to find, so I consider Homebrewers one that needs an expansion.

Sonora

Sonora might seem like an odd one, how would you expands this roll and write game? In it you flick discs, that determines where you can write. So you write on your player board in four different areas that all combo together. Sonora is a roll and write game where it is all about the combos.

This is one where with how they built it that you can slide the main board in and out, I want to see a new main board and new player boards. Give me a whole new Sonora puzzle with completely new roll and write sections to be working on, all while still flicking discs. That would just be fun to have more for the game.

Mesozooic

One that I wrote about recently. Mesozooic is a combination of a drafting game and a sliding puzzle. It is a lot of fun as you try and complete routes in your dinosaur park, get enclosures completed, things like that. You can read more about it here.

I’d like to see an expansion that adds in some new scoring. I do need to mess around with the advanced scoring cards as well. But even more wouldn’t be bad. And I wouldn’t even mind seeing more players add to this game. It’d make the game even more random at higher player counts. But that’s okay, the sliding puzzle itself makes the game pretty random as it is.

Ohanami

Ohanami is an interesting little game about putting numbers in order. The game is simple in that you draft two cards and you add them to any of three columns you have going. But the number must be either higher or lower than what is already in that column. Plus there is scoring that develops over time.

What would I add to Ohanami? Probably ways to score more points. So a new scoring pad and some scoring cards that give you bonus points. Like a multiplier for the longest run of numbers that you have consecutively in a column. Points for the column with the most cards in it, stuff like that. And have there be three bonus cards you play with each time. Just seems like a simple edition that could add more to the game.

Paper Dungeons: A Dungeon Scrawler Game

Paper Dungeons, another game that I’ve talked about recently. In fact, you can see me play it over on Malts and Meeples YouTube Channel. Or you can watch it right below. But this is a dungeon crawling roll and write game where you are leveling up heroes, fighting monsters, crafting items and more. It’s a great puzzle of a game.

I want to see more monsters added to this game. More monsters with different rewards and possible even some different behaviors. Or maybe even trait cards you could play on monsters that make you consider how strong you want to be when fighting it. Stuff like that which change up the monsters and maybe make them feel more unique.

Titan Race

And the final one is Titan Race. This is a racing game where you can race a few different ways. You can loop over the same track three times, or you can make a grand prix and play on three boards. Each board has special interactions, might hand out damage, might let you jump or move faster. And each racer has a power as well that they can use.

Titan Race is a game that won’t get an expansion, it’s been out for a while at this point. But I’d love one for it with more boards and more racers. I think that when it comes in Tiny Turbo Cars might replace this. But Titan Race will be simpler, so it might be one that sticks around for that, because the game is a lot of fun. I’d like more boards and more variety and maybe even the shot for a longer race, though that’d make the game take longer

What Board Games Do You Want To Get Expansions?

What are some games that you think need expansions. So many games these days do get expansions so it was a trickier list to make than sometimes. But I think I came up with a lot of good games. And while I was writing the article, I ordered the equipment expansions for Homebrewers, so it only should kind of make my list.

There are some games, like Unfathomable, the more I play it the more I might want an expansion. But right now I don’t need one for it. And if it makes it more complex to teach or get to the table, I won’t get it to the table as much. Or it depends on how well I can keep them separated to pick and choose what I want to play with.

Let me know ones you’d like to see get expansions down in the comments below.

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Ranking My Fantasy Games

46: The Red Dragon Inn

This should be a game that I like more than I do, it’s basically a hand management game around drinking in a bar after you’ve been out adventuring and gambling to win money and getting in fights. And I suspect I do I like this game more than I think. I just don’t like it at high player counts. Most of the time when I play The Red Dragon Inn it is over the recommended player count, to me this is a 4 player game only. I don’t want fewer, I don’t want more. At four, it’d feel like good silly fun and not a slog.

45: God of War: The Card Game

God of War is another theme in a game that I should love, but the game around it wasn’t that great. The deck building was interesting in the game. But the card play and the monsters that you fight, those aren’t all that interesting. It feels like the game was meant for mass market without hitting mass market. Or it’s a weird area in between mass market and hobby.

44: Kodama: The Tree Spirits

This is one that barely falls into the fantasy area. Yes, it does have the tree spirits, but that’s barely part of the game. It’s more about building out trees trying to create runs of the different things that you want. In concept it’s not that bad, and in game play it is okay. Kodoma is one of those games where I think a lot of people will enjoy it, and it’s not a bad game, but it won’t be many people’s favorite game.

43: Stuffed Fables

This is a game, in Stuffed Fables, I should maybe have given more tries. The theme of a being stuffed animals and toys of a kid trying to get their blanket back that was stolen, super cute. And the game was cute when I played it, but also more complex than it should be. I get what Plaid Hat Games is doing with their adventure book games, but with changing rules it just made it more complex than I wanted.

42: SeaFall

SeaFall, people would probably put that to the bottom of their lists because it is not a good legacy game. Though, legacy games, to me, have higher standards than most other games. If I am only going to get a limited use out of it, it needs to be epic. I liked the mechanics pretty well though they needed to be less punishing. But the story was a bit too scattered, though, with some tweaking, could be made better.

41: Near and Far

Well, I just wrapped up Sleeping Gods, that isn’t on the list yet, so I like it better. For me, Near and Far is a cool concept, a cool world, and just falls flat. The game has story, and even vignettes of story like Sleeping Gods, but it’s more mechanics than anything. And I think since it’s competitive the game couldn’t get away from the mechanics as much as how you score points.

40: Legacy of Dragonholt

Legacy of Dragonholt is another one of those games that isn’t bad, but could have been better. The system for an RPG/Choose Your Own Adventure game is fun. The story is okay, and that’s what kept me from diving back into it. It wasn’t that the concept of the story wasn’t good, but the execution of it felt too YA (young adult) and not a well written YA story, but one that got published because other YA books similar were well done and popular. I’d love to see Fantasy Flight come back to this system, keep some of the ideas and just improve the writing.

39: Fae

Fae is a fantasy game in cover art only. It is really an abstract game where you are a fae creature who is then hidden from everyone else and you try and score the most points. The game is good, and I like the challenge of trying to score points but not make it too obvious so that people tank your fae’s scoring. A clever idea and very abstract.

38: Legends of Andor

Another game that was in my collection and then left. And another one that is fun, it is an efficiency puzzle of how you get through the story as effectively as possible so you don’t trigger end game too early. My issue with it is only a me issue, I have too many campaign games. I let it go when I realized I would only ever play the starting scenario at least for right now. When I have capacity for that campaign, then I might get it back.

37: Sword & Sorcery

Sword & Sorcery left my collection, but that’s because I did play through the campaign. It is a fun campaign but one that I knew I wouldn’t revisit. The depth of game play is fun for a lighter dice chucking game. And the story is also light, well, in terms of the decisions that you make. I wish the story branched more, and that your powers would change up more, because once you found a few good things, you just did those.

36: Shadows of Brimstone: City of the Ancients

Shadows of Brimstone is one that hasn’t left my collection as a campaign game, but maybe should. The only issue is that I need to glue the figures back together. My first gluing didn’t stick as well as it should have, because I didn’t use the right glue. But also, it’s a theme that I don’t have games for, the weird west. So monsters and other worlds all messing with the old west. I love that theme and there aren’t many games or good books that I’ve found with it.

35: Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth

Another campaign game, and another one that left my collection just because I wasn’t going to get to it anytime soon. But it’s Lord of the Rings, and app assisted from Fantasy Flight Games. The story was fun that I did play through. The writing was well done, which I appreciated, and you can see is something that’s important to me. Definitely a good one for Lord of the Ring fans, which I am.

34: Krosmaster: Arena

This is a skirmish game with fantasy characters casting spells, summoning monsters, and hacking and slashing away. I like that you pick and build the teams that you play with. I like the dice rolling and how you can play with secondary objectives so it’s not just knock out your opponent. But you can play just with knocking people out as well. Krosmaster is one I would keep but I didn’t have people to play it with, and now I have another skirmish game or two that I put over it.

33: Too Many Bones

This one will probably move up the list when my Gamefound comes in for the latest expansions. Not that I own any other Too Many Bones, but that might start me getting more. This is kind of a short campaign game where you fight some battles and then fight against a boss. But where the game really shines is how you build up your characters. Each of them do different things, and how you level them up gives you room to explore a character multiple times. Plus it’s a different fantasy world than anything else out there.

32: Lord of the Rings: Journey To Mordor

This is a roll and write game, but it is a fun little one. Not one that I own or one that I’d go and seek out to add to my roll and write collection. But Journey to Mordor basically has you advancing your Hobbit on their journey to Mordor while trying not to let the Nazgul get you. Very simple roll and write but it has a little more player interaction, so it feels different than some.

31: The Hobbit

Speaking of Hobbits, we have The Hobbit. This is a competitive game about dwarves trying to get treasure, which is kind of what the book is as well. I like the mechanics where you are leveling up skills based off of cards you play. But you want to balance it so everyone levels up because you can’t defeat the monsters all by yourself. So it’s semi-cooperative, but not in a way that someone is working against the group, it’s just that sometimes you let another person get the better thing.

30: Deadly Doodles

Another roll and write game, and this one I think has dropped a little on my list. It’s a good simple roll and write where you are trying to get treasures, find weapons and defeat monsters. And what you do gives you points. There are some different dungeons which add in more things to do as well, which I need to play around with.

29: The Lord of the Rings

And even more Lord of the Rings, this is the classic Fantasy Flight Game. I like how it plays through the books. And you play as the Hobbits taking the ring to Mordor. It is fairly abstracted, but the locations you go and the scenes you play through are all very Lord of the Rings, so it feels more thematic than just with what you are doing. Plus it’s a really tough cooperative game and I like those.

28: Titan Race

Normally I don’t love games that have a lot of in your face, try and mess the other person over, but Titan Race is a lot of fun. This is a fast game and a silly game with great fantasy in it. Titan Race is very silly and I like how the tracks work. You can either do a race where you loop over the same board over and over again, or you can do a grand prix and go over three boards and each board does different things. And those things make the game even sillier.

27: Claim

Claim is a two player trick taking game which is odd. Plus the first hand you play doesn’t actually give you a score, it is how you build your hand for trick taking. It’s such a clever idea and I like that it plays really fast. The fantasy theme comes in that the different suits are fantasy races. And each of those fantasy races has it’s own powers, or they might. Some of them there are just more of, whereas others have powers. A knight always beats a goblin, for example. So it puts even more of a twist on trick taking in a way I really enjoy.

26: Paper Dungeons: A Dungeon Scrawler

I don’t know where this one will end up, so middle of the list is good for right now. I don’t know where it’s going to end up because I’ve only played this roll and write game once. And I liked it a lot, it’s a dungeon crawler as a roll and write. But as compared to Deadly Doodles where you go into a dungeon and cross over stuff, you do a lot more in this game. You level up your heroes, you have powers and abilities, you craft items and brew potions. And the better you do in other things, better you can explore. A lot going on, but not too hard.

25: Skulk Hollow

Skulk Hollow is a game of woodland creatures, the Foxen, fighting against a Guardian. It’s a two player only game and one that is very asymmetrical. As the guardian my goal might change from game to game, depending on which guardian I am. And the Foxen, well they always want to beat down the Guardian. And the Foxen can change up depending on who their leader is. Really cute game and fast to learn and play.

24: Silver

I think I say this every time I talk about Silver, but it reminds me of a game I played growing up with a deck of cards. In Silver you have a village in front of you and you want the lowest score possible. You know what two of the cards are in your village. You don’t know the other three. So now you swap cards out or play them for powers to get rid of cards in your village and lower your score. It’s simple, it’s fun, there’s a lot of take that, yet it feels nostalgic in a good way.

23: Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure

Clank is a fun push your luck, deck building, dungeon delving game. You want to get the best treasure that you can, but as you get cards, make noise, and well, annoy the dragon because it’s their horde, now the dragon starts damaging you. So you could jump in, grab the first thing you see and run, but if someone else can make it out, now they have more points and better treasure than you. Really fun game and easy enough to play for most people.

22: Deranged

Deranged might fall more into a horror game. But there is a magical gate and fantastical monsters who are out to get you. And you yourself can become one of those fantastical monsters if you don’t deal with your curses and get out in time, why, because you might become Deranged. The game has a lot going on, but I like the dual use cards and the theme of the game. A little horror I’m most certainly interested.

21: Village Attacks

Village Attacks is another darker themed game because you for sure are the monsters. And after a long day of terrifying villagers, you are ready to settle down. But nope, here some villagers to break down your door because clearly you’re the monsters, not the people trying to trash your place. That sounds light, and I find it silly, but it is themed dark. Still a very nice tower defense type of game.

20: The Grimm Masquerade

Themed with Grimm Fairy Tales, The Grimm Masquerade is a deduction game. You are each a masked party goer, one of the Grimm characters. You are of course looking for something, a glass slipper for Cinderella, but also have something you don’t want. Can you get what you need or make everyone else bust before they figure out who you are?

19: Ascension: Deckbuilding Game

Another deck building game, Ascension is fantasy themed. Really, like most pure deck building games, it’s about building up an engine that gives you points. I just like this fantasy theme and variability of it better than something like Dominion. But that’s not what we’re talking about. This lets you get heroes and casters and sages and constructions to fight monsters, get more income and buy more cards. I like that it offers a ton of different strategy for the game.

18: Res Arcana

Res Arcana is another in theme only fantasy games. You are basically building out an engine to get points and who can do it better to get points faster. I like it though with the theme of brewing potions and dragons and places of power. It makes it feel different, and I also like that you only have 8 cards to make your engine with.

17: The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game

The Dresden Files are my favorite fantasy series. I love the world that Jim Butcher has created. The game, it does a good job of giving you the pieces of that world. But you need to know the world to connect them together. So it’s not the best fantasy game or story game for everyone, but if you know the series, it’s a lot of fun to play.

16: Small World

Small World is Risk with fantasy creatures, crazy powers, and well, a whole lot more fun. What really works is that this is a small board. The game is in your face, but it’s in everyone’s face. The option of hiding away in Australia is gone that you’d have in Risk. Plus, you get crazy combos. Flying Halflings, Seafaring Giants, Wealthy Trolls, all of them are possible. Really accessible game too for most new gamers.

15: The Lost Expedition

This one is on the list because of the expansions and promo cards. I don’t think in the base game there is anything too fantastical, but werewolves, fountain of youth, yeah, those are fantasy. This is all about surviving to get to the lost city of Z. The game is a really good cooperative one that if you have someone who is a alpha player, it keeps them from being too much of one.

14: Century: Golem Edition

This is another one where the theme is fantasy, but game play doesn’t really shine through on that. Still, the artwork and gem pieces are great, and I wouldn’t want a different theme. It’s a hand management game where you are building up cards in your hand to use them to turn gems into other gems until you get the right combinations to get golems. And the golems at the end of the game give you points. What is so amazing about this game is that turns are super fast, so while there are good decisions to be made, it doesn’t take long to get back to your turn.

13: Potion Explosion

We’ve all probably seen the app games where you get like colors to touch and that removes them from the board and if more hit, those are removed as well. That is what Potion Explosion is. You are making crazy potions by pulling dice and trying to get the like colors to hit. Light game with a great table presence.

12: Root

Root was one where I was thinking, is this actually fantasy. Well, let’s see, it’s animals fighting and building, so yes, that seems like fantasy. But really, it’s a confrontational game where you fight it out with your group trying to get points to win the game with everyone trying to keep everyone else in check. Great asymmetrical game, just know it’ll take some time to teach. And don’t let the artwork fool you, this is not a nice sweet happy game.

11: Roll Player

Roll Player is a game about making your Dungeons and Dragons (or Generic RPG) character. You draft dice to put them into various stats for your class. It’s a lot of fun as you try and match up colors and get the numbers right to score more points. Plus you buy up gear and abilities which can influence your stats or points as well. And that’s the game, it’s about building up your character.

10: Spire’s End

Spire’s End, coming soon to Malts and Meeples is a story adventure game. In Spire’s End you wake up to find a spire has appeared at the edge of your town and many people are missing. You and others go into the tower, fight monsters, make choices, and generally go on a weird and dark adventure. Really like this one as a solo game.

9: Super Fantasy Brawl

Super Fantasy Brawl, it’s in the name that it’s fantasy. Super Fantasy Brawl is a two player skirmish game where you are trying to complete objectives in an arena and knock out your opponents. Complete objectives, get trophies. Knock out your opponent, get trophies. The first to five wins. What I really like is the turn speed, you play up to three cards, one of each color and do what it says on the cards. And the cards you play determine who moves. Light game but very tactical in how you play.

8: Cartographers

The second game I have in the Roll Player world, won’t be the last. But Cartographers is a roll and write game where you are making a map of the land. And you get points for making it in certain ways. Forests surrounding mountains might give you a point or two, things like that. What makes it fantastical is that you put monsters on the map as well. And you don’t put your own down, you put them on your opponents board in the worst spot for them to make them score negative points.

7: Sleeping Gods

Sleeping Gods, well, you can watch me play this one I just wrapped it up over on Malts and Meeples. Sleeping Gods is a big adventure game where you, as the crew of the Manticore are transported to a new world. You want to get home, but in order to do that you must awaken the sleeping gods and all you know is that totems might help with that, not where to find them. So it’s really a sandbox game of exploring, finding quests, fighting monsters and more.

6: Roll Player Adventures

Roll Player Adventures, the final Roll Player world game, this is an adventure game set in the world of Roll Player, using mechanics or dice mechanics that feel like Roll Player, and it’s really good. I really like that Roll Player Adventures is an easy game to learn and a lighter game to play. A lot of the big adventure games can have a lot to keep track of and a lot of tokens. Roll Player Adventures has enough, but not too much. And the world you play in isn’t too dark.

5: Aeon’s End

Aeon’s End is another deck building game and the highest on the list. This is a cooperative game where you play as breach mages trying to fight off nemesis that come through. The game does two really interesting things for me. Firstly, you never shuffle your deck. So when you discard cards you can kind of put them in an order. And the other is that turn order is random. There is a deck, in a two player game, which has two activations for each character and two for the Nemesis. On a really bad draw you could go twice with each character and then two Nemesis turns, plus then shuffle that up again and two more Nemesis turns.

4: Lords of Hellas

Lords of Hellas is fantasy in the future, or mythology in the future. It’s a cyber world of Greek gods. An odd setting with some amazing miniatures and mechanical creatures. But a really good game with some rough edges and a lot of ways to win. To me that is one of the best parts of the game where you are able to win in a number of different ways. You might fight monsters or build and control a monument or take over areas, how you play is up to you and the powers you have.

3: Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

Tainted Grail, if Roll Player is light fantasy or happy fantasy, Tainted Grail is very dark fantasy. The world of Avalon is falling apart, the Menhir that drove back the wyrdness are failing and you aren’t sent out to stop it. You are sent out to find out what happened to the people who are better equipped to do this than you. But the story in Tainted Grail is amazing and one that I highly recommend people track down, which can be hard. Also know that this is a survival game with a ton of story, if you want the story, play in storymode, I am.

2: Dice Throne

Odd one to put on the list but Dice Throne is very much fantasy. It is fantasy head to battling in almost a Mortal Kombat type setting but it is still fantasy. My Pyromancer is going to blast your Barbarian with fire or then there is a Seraph or a Treant or a Gunslinger, all sorts of things, and you can take any of them up against each other. I’m so excited, it isn’t that far out to when Marvel Dice Throne will be delivered, several months but not that far. And Marvel Dice Throne is compatible and can be played with everything else I already have.

1: Gloomhaven

Finally, my #1 game of all time, Gloomhaven, This is a massive fantasy game of dungeon crawling combat. It is amazing and what really makes it is the card play. You pick two cards to play, one will determine how fast you go. Then when you go you use the top of one card and the bottom of the others to move and attack, so you can set yourself up for some epic turns or make it flexible to cover a changing board state. And there are so many different characters that are interesting to play as.

Final Thoughts

I love fantasy as a theme. A lot of my favorite series are fantasy for books in particular. And for board games, there are a lot of games that use the fantasy theme. But when you get down to some of my favorite games of all time, the big fantasy games are hard to beat. I think that my Top 3 games are all fantasy games. And I even skipped some games, like stuff in the Lovecraftian Mythos because while they are fantasy, I feel they are more horror. Maybe I’ll do a horror game ranking soon.

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124-101

100 – 76

Unplayed Board Games 75 -51

75: HEXplore It: The Forest of Adrimon

Yes, this moved up slightly. Mainly because I missed it and I didn’t want to go back and adjust it a few spots. But I do think it could be higher. HEXplore It is an adventure style game, so one that I think I’ll like. And the Forest of Adrimon is supposed to be one of the easier to get into. It has some feel like another game that will be on another list in that it’s an RPG but a board game.

74: Formula D

Racing games, I’ve really been digging them lately. And in general I’ve liked them. I have TItans Race which I enjoy as a silly racing game. And Downforce which is amazing for racing and betting. But Formula D is the most involved and I really want to give it a whirl. I think doing something that simulates racing a bit more might be cool, though possibly slower in terms of game play.

73: Arkham Horror 3rd Edition

I am surprised how far down Arkham Horror 3rd Edition is. I like Arkham Horror 2nd Edition but I got rid of it because it is too long. So I suspect I’m going to like this version of it as well, and a shorter play time. So I need to get it to the table. But I think because it is familiar and because I have games like Arkham Horror The Card Game and Mansions of Madness, I feel like I might not need to play this as soon,

72: Fireball Island: The Curse of Vul-Kar

I bought this one when it was cheap at Target. Well, the price hasn’t changed, but the version of the game now at Target is a cheaper one, and I think smaller. This is when shipping was backed up so Target bought a bunch of Restoration Games’ stock. This is going to be a good and silly time. But I just need to find the time to play it. I don’t think game play will last too long for it.

71: Everdell

Everdell for a lot of people, I’d guess, is higher on the list. I know this is a well loved game, and the tableau and engine building it looks to offer seems great. Plus then the artwork is amazing on the game. I definitely notice that I’m a big fan of engine building games, and ones where they have some of those more euro mechanics to them as well. It’s lower for me just because it is a bit less thematic.

70: The Table Is Lava

This is a silly game. The Table Is Lava has you throwing cards onto the table, placing down meeples to get points. But when you throw you try and knock down other peoples meeples which is hilarious to me. I’m going to turn off the fan in the game room when I play this one because that might interfere with throwing cards. Should just bust this one and have a good time with it some game night.

69: Star Wars: Unlock!

The last of the escape room style games that I own. It’s higher than the Lovecraftian themed one just because of theme and being three games in one box. My wife and I need to play these because we both like Star Wars. And after the Olympics and before Moon Knight comes out, it’d give us something to do for a few weeks. I’ve heard they aren’t too challenging, but it’s still Star Wars, so I’m sure it’ll be fun.

68: Cockroach Poker

And a small game in Cockroach Poker, this is almost a classic filler game, if not one, at this point. You either tell the truth about the card you pass or you lie. And you don’t want to get sets. If you call the persons bluff and they were telling the truth, you get the card. If you can call and they were lying, they get the card. Or you can peek at it and pass telling the next person who you think it is. Clever idea, seems like it should be fun with the right groups.

67: Drawn to Adventure

By the name Drawn to Adventure might sound like a roll and write, and it is a roll and write. It’s about adventuring the best that you can. And you do it over several maps. The production is great, but one thing keeps it down the list a bit. The several maps makes me wonder how long the game will take. If it’s interesting enough, it being a bit longer won’t be bad, but we’ll have to see.

66: Matcha

This is a little card game that I don’t know a ton about. But I like the tea theme and I like the aesthetic. So why so high on the list? It seems to do some things that I like, and it’s a two player game. That makes it easier to get to the table. I like set collection and hand management. It’ll be interesting to see how the bluffing works.

65: Mariposas

A couple games about butterflies on the list, but only one on this section. Mariposas is about generations of butterflies flying up north and then returning back to the south for the winter. I like the idea and it’ll be interesting to see how it goes over. The pieces are solid and the mechanics seems simple enough. It’s more about the puzzle of getting as far north as you can but then being able to go fast south again.

64: Tannhauser

A grail game for me, Tannhauser is lower on the list, just because I think it might take me a bit to learn. But I love the World War II theme of it, plus a bit of a weird world setting as well. Plus, it’s another game that Sam Healey was a big fan of, and like I said, his and my tastes generally match pretty well. It’s hard to find, though, because it’s out of print, so I’m glad to just own it.

63: Air, Land, and Sea

A little lane battling two player card game. I actually have this one sitting at work waiting to get played. Probably will happen next week. It’s a short little game where you deploy out troops to try and win three different theaters of war, air, land, and sea. I don’t know that it’ll be my go to two player game, but it’d be nice to have on in the mix.

62: Shakespeare

A Euro game at the middle of the list, Shakespeare is about putting on a play. You do different rehearsals, build sets, get actors, and get costumes to do the best performance possible. It’s been in my collection for a while, but I don’t want to get rid of it. Even with the fact it’s a euro, I like the theme a lot. And I( think that it’ll be a puzzle that works for me.

61: Foodies

Foodies is one of three games that I own where you roll dice and everyone can do something. Space Base, higher on this list, and My Farm Shop, already played, are the other two. I previously have owned Machi Koro, and I want to buy Machi Koro Legacy when I have a group for it. It’s a mechanic that I like, but will Foodies beat out My Farm Shop? And could Space Base beat out both of them?

60: Papillon

Another butterfly game, and this one is higher, slightly because the aesthetic is cooler. Plus, I like some of how the game works. You build out different patches of flowers, trying to close them off then place butterflies on locations And those locations are an area control/majority battle. So the game seems really cool and offers different areas to focus on for strategy. Diversify across all flowers to get some points in a lot of spot. Or go for a lot of points in a few spots.

59: Valor & Villainy: Minions of Mordak

This is another one versus all game like Descent. But this one is newer and I’m getting the campaign or legacy version of this via Kickstarter with Lludwick’s Labyrinth. I do want to try this version as well as both the villain and the heroes and see how it plays. Mechanically I think it is interesting and I like the leveling up that you do in just a single scenario.

58: Flick of Faith

Two dexterity games now in a row. Flick of Faith reminds me a bit of Sonora, but just with flicking being the focus of it versus the roll and write aspect. You flick discs trying to get control of certain spots. And you have bigger discs that are harder to knock out of the way. And then there are god powers that change up how you play the game each round.

57: Rhino Hero Super Battle

The other dexterity game is about stacking. Three on this section of the list with The Table Is Lava. And this one definitely needs the fan off as you try and be at the top of the tower, or at least the highest up when it topples over. Unless, you knock it over, and then everyone else wins. Simple game, but I like simple and fun dexterity games.

56: Doodle Dungeon

Doodle Dungeon is a roll and write game, but the biggest box I have, well, up there with Sonora, and I own the Railroad Ink big box. But this is a dungeon crawling or creating game, which I think leans into the Boss Monster side of things. We aren’t the heroes, we’re the monsters in the dungeon trying to stop heroes. I need to look into this one more, but I think it’s going to feel like a much bigger game than a normal roll and write.

55: The Bloody Inn

A game with a morbid theme but one that seems like a lot of fun. In The Bloody Inn, you run an inn. But you find out that it’s more lucrative to kill off the people staying there, hide their bodies, and take their money. Who can do that the best, and will the police crack down on you? Card game but one that the theme while morbid is also funny.

54: Wingspan

Wingspan is not a game that I thought I’d own. But a friend got an extra copy, so we traded games. And I do think that I’ll like Wingspan. It’s a tableau building game about bird watching. That theme isn’t that interesting to me, but everyone seems to love the game. Family weight plus game, it might work well for a lot of groups. I am excited to try it for that reason.

53: Welcome To New Las Vegas

Another roll and write, we have four on this chunk of the list, one more to come. And Welcome To New Leas Vegas is a harder. That’s kept it on my shelf. One thing that I like about it’s predecessor Welcome To, is that it’s easy to play. I can teach that game to basically anyone. But will this one be too hard for my group. I need to try it and see.

52: Welcome to Dino World

The other roll and write is Welcome to Dino World. I like the idea of a dinosaur park. I didn’t grow up watching Jurassic Park and the sequels, but the concept is still fun. This one looks like a good time and you can have dinosaurs escape which every good dinosaur park should have happen. Because I’ll never ask if it should be done, just if it can be.

51: Camel Up

Final game is another racing game. Camel Up is kind of a classic at this point in time. Mainly because the game is goofy. You bet on who wins and the earlier you bet on it, the more you can win. But it’s hard to know who can win. The camels, as they race, stack. And the camel on top is in the lead. But if a camel on the bottom moves, they move the stack. So a camel can get lucky, move up to land on someone and then bound ahead again when that came moves.

Final Thoughts

We definitely had a few bigger games this time. And four roll and writes. But we’re still not to the big ones yet. The top 25, for sure, will be a lot of big games. And I do think that the roll and writes will be played on this section of the list. Plus some of the games like Matcha and Air, Land and Sea should be easy to get to the table.

Which game would you want to play on this section of the list? Which one should I play first?

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If you want to join in on the live stream and see the games as I talk about them as well as comment on my choices, you can join on Wednesdays from now until November 17th. I stream over on Malts and Meeples on YouTube at 8 PM Central Time. And if you need to catch up on the list.

100 Through 91

Top 100 Board Games 90 – 81

90. Skulk Hollow

A fun and pretty simple and fast two player asymmetrical game. One person plays as foxes who are trying to take down the other players guardian. The guardian has it’s goal, to take out the foxes leader to some other objective. The foxes are trying to get onto the guardian and hit it, taking out all of it’s health locations and disabling abilities. This is all done through some pretty simple card draw that makes the game easy to play.

Buy On Miniature Market

89. Titan Race

This might be the first racing game that I ever got. It is a light and silly little one, which is what I look for in a filler. In this game you are racing across one board three times or three boards. You use special powers to stop your opponents, knock them off course, and get further ahead. The game play is fun too because you are drafting dice to figure out what your movement is. It’s a good game that can probably be played with all ages.

Not Available

88. King of Tokyo

A classic game at this point, King of Tokyo is about all those monsters you know the names of hitting each other to get into Tokyo. Granted none of the monsters are actually named right because of licensing costs. But this is a great game that uses the Yahtzee style mechanic of rolling dice, keeping, and then rolling up to twice more. You can win by knocking out the other monsters, the most fun way, or by points. This is a game I don’t always pull out, but when I do, it’s a good time.

Buy On Coolstuff Inc

87. Tokyo Highway

Keeping on the theme of Tokyo, we have Tokyo Highway. A game that is as much a piece of art as it is a game. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a game there, but when you finish playing it looks amazing. In this game you build highways through Tokyo while going over and under other roads. The trick is you can only raise or lower your road by one each time, and can’t touch the table with your road. If you go over or under another road you get to put out cars, but that’s harder because you can’t touch the other roads or knock them over. A fun and beautiful dexterity game.

Buy on Miniature Market

86. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

Not even the first deck builder on my list, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle is one of the easier ones to teach. First there is the theme that makes it easier to get to the table, people know Harry Potter. And a lot of people love Harry Potter. So it’s something that people can jump into as they know the spells and characters you add to your deck. And the game grows and progresses the further you play into it. Even just playing the first book several times, it’s a fun game that is very accessible.

Buy on Amazon

85. Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game

This is the zombie survival game in the lines of The Walking Dead. Yes, you have to kill zombies in the game, but it’s about how you can work together as players while still trying to complete your own secret objective. That part of the game is good, but where it really shires is the Crossroads cards. These offer you challenging decisions as to if you rescue someone or not because that means another mouth to feed. I do house rule this one by drawing two Crossroads cards. Only one can happen, but it means that they happen more often.

Buy on Miniature Market

84. Silver

This game is tricky to explain, but not that hard to play. In the game you are drawing a card and deciding what to do with it, do you add it to your village or discard it for a power. The interesting bit is that you have a village of five in front of you but the cards are face down. At the beginning of each of the four rounds, you look at two of them. So you need to figure out ways to see your other cards, or maybe swap them blindly. And to get rid of cards completely so you have the lowest score. Good little take that type of game.

Buy on Amazon

83. Hues and Cues

There are a few party games on my list, but this one wasn’t there last year because I had yet to play it. It’s a game about trying to get people to guess a color. But you first give a one word clue and then a two word clue. As the person giving the clue, you get points for more people getting close or the right guess. And for the guessers you want to get close because that gives you points. Giving clues to guess colors is definitely different and feels unique for a party game.

Buy on Amazon

82. Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure Game

Clank! A Deck Building Adventure Game I own but I haven’t played my copy. I have played on Table Top Simulator on Steam and had a blast with it. It’s a great push your luck deck building game.

You delve into a dungeon to steal a dragon’s treasure. But as you go through the dungeon you make noise and clank. When the dragon awakens he draws from a bag that has your clank and others. If too much is drawn you die. But if you can get in and then get back out with the best treasure and most points, or the other players die, you can win the game. It’s light goofy and fun. And I really need to play Clank! Legacy.

Buy on Miniature Market

81. Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension

This is an odd game, it is fairly abstract but challenging and fun. Gravwell, I’m not doing the full title, has you sucked into another dimension and trying to escape back home before the portal closes. All while there is a black hole you don’t want to get sucked into. You are also out of your normal fuel, it’s not a good day. So you play down different elements as your fuel.

And this is where the game gets odd because some fuel pulls you towards the closest ship, some push you away and some draw ships towards you. Plus, every player plays down an element at the same time and they activate in alphabetical order. So if you play a later letter, like P let’s say, that might move you a long way towards the closest ship, but will that be the right direction when you get to activate. Silly game with a great and different mechanic to it.

Buy On Miniature Market

The Next Ten

So there we have it, we’re 20 games in between the two weeks. And every time I do the list I come up with a game I want to play And I come up with a game I think was too low.

If you want to join in on the next 10 live, you can do that on Wednesday September 29th at 8 PM Central Time. And then all the rest of the Wednesday’s up through November 17th. That’s over on the Malts and Meeples YouTube Channel. Subscribe and click the notification bell so you know when I go live.

And let me know which of these 10 is your favorite and which one do you want to try?

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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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100 to 91

90 to 81

80 to 71

70 to 61

Plus a few notes on how I’ve put together the list:

• These are my favorite, you want what people consider best, see the Board Game Geek Top 100
• If a game you love isn’t on the list, it might be be coming, I might not have played it, and if I have, it’s 101
• If a game looks cool, I have links to buy it from CoolStuffInc or Amazon, or you can grab most at your FLGS
• There are a few games, Destiny 2 Player versus regular Destiny where if they are basically the same thing, I only do one of them

60. Hanabi

Hanabi is an interesting game, because it’s a twist on a fairly simple board game concept. There are a lot of games where you are trying to put out numbers in ascending order, in this case 1 through 5. In this one, you can’t see your cards, so you have a hand of cards and they are all facing away from you. So you can give clues to your fellow players, such as what cards in their hand are a given color or what cards in their hand are a given number, but you can’t give both. And you have a limited number of clues but you can get more, you just have to discard a card to get one back. The game is an interesting push and pull of how much you know and how much you don’t. It is also a game that works well at all player counts, so that is fun as well. Cool concept, good execution and just good fun.

Last Year: 44

59. Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension

We go from one kind of tricky game to wrap your head around to another with Gravwell. In this game you are trying to escape from a black hole and get to a wormhole before it closes. To do that, you are racing against your fellow players using whatever you can find as fuel to power your ship. Now, I make that sound fairly thematic, it is quite abstract. But what makes this game is the playing of fuels, they are all elements, so you go in alphabetical order of the element as everyone plays their fuel for the round all at once. And most of the fuel, it causes you to go towards the nearest object, whether that is in front of or behind you. There are some fuels that repel you from the nearest object and others that draw the other ships towards you, so it’s a guessing game of what you think other people might have and how quickly they might be going, because maybe the person behind you will go fast and get too close so if you go towards the object you’ll get pulled towards them, or maybe they want to go a ways and will go with one later in the alphabet, so you’ll want to be pulled by the person in front of you. It’s really a game about reading and guessing what your opponents will do.

Last Year: 66

58. Photosynthesis

This is a mean game about growing trees. Which, that sounds kind of odd, but it’s mean because you can block your opponents trees from getting sunlight. Now, that doesn’t seem all that mean, except that is how you get your action points to grow trees, harvest trees for points, and plant more trees. So if the sun is positioned right and your tree is tall enough, you can cast a shadow on shorter or like height trees. It’s an interesting thing as you plan out where the trees are going to go so you’re not only going to be set-up for your next turn but will be set-up for futures ones as well. And you have to ask, is it worth it to maybe have a really bad turn if you can set-up a great turn down the line. You can plan this because the sun moves each turn around the board, and you have a certain number of times around the board for the game, so you know where it’s going to be all of the following turns as you plan. And I say that this game is mean, it’s more that it can be mean, most of the time you aren’t thinking about blocking as much as you are planning out your turn.

Last Year: 28

57. Five Tribes

A gateway style game that has just a bit more going on, this is also a point salad game as well. By that I mean that everything gives you points. You place a camel, you’ll get points for that tile, there’s a palm tree or a palace on it, points, viziers, points, collections of spices, points, and so on and so forth. This game uses a fun mancala style meeple movement. Whatever meeple color you decide to end up with is what you end up doing, it can be shopping, buying a Djinn, or a few more options such as just getting money. I like this game because you can set-up some great turns, and in two player, you could even find a couple of great turns in a row if you wanted or you could move stuff to set-up yourself for a good turn. You can do this because turn order is bid upon. If you find a great turn, you can bid higher for it, and while it’d have to be a really great turn to bid too high, you can go for something or block someone from getting something if you see what they are after. This game works well because you can score points in so many ways, so most of the time you can focus in on one or two of them as well, so someone learning the game doesn’t have to have a whole grasp on the strategy for everything. And for gamers, it feels like there is more going on to be paid attention to than your standard gateway game.

Last Year: 47

56. The Lord of the Rings

One of the earlier cooperative games, this game is all about getting the Fellowship to Mordor and tossing the ring into the fire. But you’re doing this by playing through the whole trilogy of The Lord of the Rings. You get gifts and cards along the way as you advance all while trying to keep Sauron’s eye off of you. There are a lot of boards in this game as you play out cards to advance upon different tracks and play through different things, it might be the mines of Moria or Helms Deep, but you are playing through the story and you can potentially get stuff along the way such as at Rivendell or from Galadriel. The game is really hard as you push your way through all of the story and the different maps. You need to balance card use so that you can make it down the main path, but some of the other paths do offer good things as well and you want to try and do them also. Overall, a fun and hard cooperative game that is really expensive in that link, but there’s a new printing coming out soon, so wait for that.

Last Year: 85

55. Small World

I’ve talked about Small World Underground already, this is just basic Small World and I like it better. I think that the game, while being slightly simpler, is easier to play and grasp onto and since I have an expansion for that, it adds in some additional fun that way as well. This game is all about rushing in with one group of fantasy creatures, beating up and getting beat up, going into decline, picking a new group of fantasy creatures, and doing it all over again. I always call this Risk but fun, and that’s because Risk can gang up and knock one person out quickly, whereas in this game, you can always come back in again so you’re never truly out of the game. And the game plays faster as well in comparison to Risk. This game works because it doesn’t take itself seriously, so you get your fun combos and even when you get beat down, who knows, maybe the flying halflings will come in and save the day for you.

Last Year: 24

54. Cat Cafe

An interesting roll and write, this one is all about attracting the most cats to you in the cat cafe. You do this carefully curating a creative collection of cat toys, beds, and food. They all score in different ways, the toy mouse will score more points for the largest group of them that you have, while the cat bed wants different things around it on all sides to score you more points. Plus, you’re also working on filling up cat trees so that they score you the most possible points for having them completed. The end game is trigger when one person completes their third cat tree. What works nicely in this game is that everyone is doing things at the same time. You draft dice, and then you, using the final dice, place something on a cat tree at the level of the number on either your drafted dice or the group die, and then an item with the other one. You have ways to adjust the numbers which works well, and you can score the cats at times as well to get you more points in game. Overall, a fun and cute roll and write that has a fair amount going on all things considered.

Last Year: 54

53. Titan Race

If you’ve ever wanted to race on the back of monsters this is the game for you. A light dice drafting, take that, monster racing game, this is all about completing three laps or the grand circuit of three maps, faster than anyone else. But while you’re doing that you’re trying to stay out of lava on some maps, make a sweet jump to move faster on other maps, or sliding across ice. All of this while jostling for position. You roll dice for the number of players and then players take turns drafting dice and making their move, and so the last player doesn’t get stuck with one die, come their turn, they pick them all up and roll them again. This game is somewhat random because of the dice rolling, but you can plan as bumping into someone deals them damage, and pushes them further forward, but might be what you need to push them into lava which will knock them out for a round, which might get you past them. The game is silly fun and a very good time for a light racing style game.

Last Year: 48

52. Potion Explosion

People are pretty familiar with app games where you try and get like colors touching, and if they do, they disappear, and if those make a like match, they disappear and so on and so forth. Potion Explosion is like that with marbles. In this game you are trying to complete potions, use their powers, and score points from them. You do this by collecting ingredients. You pull out one marble, if the marbles that hit are the same color, you get all of those color that are touching, and if that causes more to hit, you do it again. Then you can store a few ingredients for later, but you’re mainly trying to put them into potions and get as many of those done as possible. The game is nice because it has a great toy affect. It also works well because as you get more potions done, you can really start to combo stuff using the powers of the potions to have big turns. This is a game that’ll attract people to it because of how it looks on the table, and it’s basically gateway level.

Last Year: Not Ranked

51. Skulk Hollow

Generally I don’t have a ton of two player games. My wife and I do play a few two player games sometimes, but this one caught my eye when it was on Kickstarter. The company is one that I am familiar with and they always make beautiful projects, and this one seems like an interesting balance of strategy and cuteness on the board. In this game one person takes on the foxes of the forest who have built up a settlement in this town. Another is an ancient guardian that has awoken. The guardians are all trying to do something different to win the game it might just be take out a lot of foxes, or it could be placing tentacles on the board or something like that. The foxes on the other hand are all about getting to the guardian, hopping on it, and chopping away at their health, doing that can take out different actions for the guardian. The game has a good and different feel as you play it because of how the guardians change and how the different leaders can affect play for the fox player as well. It’s one that I think works well for people because it is pretty simple and it offers some good choices with how the game play works.

Last Year: Not Ranked

What’s your favorite from this section? Any that stand out, any based off of my taste that you think I should try or you think will be higher on the list?

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***Disclaimer***
These rankings are the opinion of yours truly, and if you don’t like them, that’s okay. We all have different tastes in games and that is great. There are some games that I’ve only played as a demo, and I felt like I got enough of a feel to put them on the list, thanks GenCon for all the demos. These are living rankings so next year I’m sure that things will change, so I’ll probably be doing another one next year. Thanks to Board Game Geek for letting me enter/rate my collection and games I’ve played. Thanks to Pub Meeple for creating a tool that pulls in those games that I’ve rated and creating a ranking tool. Again, the numbers and names will be linked to Cool Stuff Inc and Amazon if you’re interested in the games.

50 – Pandemic
This game is just a good game, and one that’s been around for a little while, but still is a lot of fun. The cooperative nature of the game and the unique roles for each player in what they can do best works really well. In this game you are trying to cure four diseases from the board before you run out of cards, have too many outbreaks, or run out of one of the four diseases cubes. You do this by curing the diseases and trying to collect sets of cards of various colors that match up with the diseases. All the while the diseases are spreading and if you aren’t on top of it, they can get out of control in one part of the world. There’s just something nice about the standard version of Pandemic that makes it easy to get out to the table with people. Really enjoyable game, and you can play on hard mode where you try and eradicate all the diseases, which is what several people I’ve met thing the actual rules are.

49 – Cosmic Encounter
This game is a weird one on the list. You are one of various alien races, but what race you are can change, you are trying to get onto enough different planets before other people do, but you can share a victory. I think the best way to put it is that Cosmic Encounter is a silly negotiating game where you are vying to spread across planets, with the weirdest aliens out there. What is cool about this game is that everyone can be engaged in what is going on every turn. When someone else is going for a planet, they can ask for help, and you can piggy back along with them, and the same for defense. So it’s easily possible to be involved in every turn. In the end, the strongest force wins, but you can play cards to modify that, and some of those cards allow you to negotiate. But if both sides don’t negotiate, the one side will lose, but they get something from the other person. There’s give and take as you try and guess what the other person is going to play and talk through what sort of deals you can work out. Cosmic Encounter is a space game that doesn’t feel huge and doesn’t take itself seriously, but is a lot of fun. I can see this as a game that would fall flat for some groups, though, if they aren’t into the negotiating.

48 – Titan Race
In a land where there are fantastical monsters, known as titans, what do you do, you race them. Each player is a team of a lava and a rider who are trying to race across the same board three times faster than everyone else, dropping traps, pushing the other titans into lava, going over jumps, sliding on ice or whatever else the board might have on it. Last game was silly, this one is silly and light and just fun to play. You can get special powers that you can use, in fact your titan and rider will have their own special power to start the game, and you are drafting dice to determine how far and in what direction you go. This is meant as a light game, this is actually a pretty little game, I wish it was larger, because it would make a good kids game if it weren’t for all the small pieces. The fun thing is that while you can just do laps on the one board, you can also do the “grand prix” where you put three of the boards together and race through all of them. That makes the game even a bit more variable. Simple game but a ton of fun.

47 – Five Tribes
This game is a point salad game where everyone gets a point for everything that they do. But with that, there is some strategy as well. You can’t just take any move, because while it might give you points, which are coins in the game, there might be better scoring options out there. In Five Tribes, you bid for turn order, and then, using a mancala like mechanism of moving pieces around the board, you pick up meeples off of a square, and placing one at a time, drop them off on other squares and whatever one you are left with, you take it and all matching, which there have to be, meeples from the square and do that action. But then, each square has other actions you can take as well on it, and are they worth it to get more points, maybe shopping in the market, or will that cost be higher than the return. And then there are Djinn which can change up how you score and give you more points, if you buy them. Plus, there are other meeples that just give you points at the end of the game, some give you money during the game, and some can be used to kill other meeples. So picking the right move becomes important, and if there is one great move out there, do you bid higher when picking your potential starting spot, or do you hope other players haven’t seen the move. For a bunch of randomness in the set-up, once you get into the game, there is a ton of strategy as you try and find those best scoring moves.

46 – Ascension: Deckbuilding Game
Ascension is my generic deck builder on the list. A lot of people would pick Dominion, but I like Ascension a ton better. In this game, you are still just building your deck, but the mechanics of how many cards you can buy and how many cards you can play are much simpler, because you can spend all your money to buy as much as you want and you can play all of your cards if you want. Plus, there are monsters to attack as this is a fantasy theme, versus a “trading in the Mediterranean” theme. But the theme doesn’t really matter. There are four factions in the game that you can buy from, plus generic other cards like a mystic that gives you more buying power, or heavy infantry that gives you more attack power. You also have cards that you can get which are constructs that stay in play and give you a bonus each turn, but a monster might destroy them. Overall, this feels like it plays as fast as Dominion, there isn’t just a single puzzle to solve, because you don’t know how cards will come up, Ascension is just more enjoyable for me, and the expansions seem to add more interesting things into the game. Some people will like the static market of Dominion, but Ascension, I think, offers more interesting choices than Dominion.

45 – Homebrewers
This is one of the games that I demoed at GenCon, but don’t worry, I own it as well. Homebrewers is a game about a homebrewing club and brewing beer. In the game, you are working on brewing the best beer possible in four different styles of beer. You can get ingredients to improve your beer, but you can’t just brew all the time, like in real homebrewing, you have to clean stuff up, you have to get the grains before you can add in the weird stuff. The big reason you’re doing this is to have the best beers in the different types to win the summer beer dabbler and Oktoberfest. At it’s heart, Homebrewers is an engine building game where you are trying to get beers to brew that will help you be able to brew more beer, get more money, and get more points throughout the game. Each character is quite hipster, but they also have their hipster powers which give them something unique that they can do on their turn. I played a character that could get an extra die, which meant an extra thing I could do, each turn if I paid in $1. This is a fun game, and it’s a very fast engine building game. And you can make some extremely weird beers.

44 – Hanabi
I feel like Hanabi is a polarizing game, because it’s not an easy game to master, in my opinion. In Hanabi, you are making fireworks, but there is a twist, you have a hand of cards, or tiles in the deluxe version of the game, but they are facing away from you. You, and your fellow players are trying to create stacks from 1 to 5 of each color of firework before a fuse runs low because of mistakes that you’ve made. But how do you know what to play if you can’t see your cards, just guess? Nope, there are tokens that people can use on their turn to give clues about what you have in your hand. The trick is, they can only point at the cards, not tell you what they are completely. So you can give a clue like, these two cards are red, because one of them is a red 1 and you need to play that, but you can’t just point to that red card, you need to point to both. The same with numbers, something might be the 4 that you need to play, but if there are two 4’s in the person’s hand, you have to point at both of them. So giving good clues can be tricky, but you also don’t want to guess at what card to play. The game has a good puzzle feel to it, and there are some clues that are better than others that you can give. A really fun game and very challenging, but not for people who want to know completely what they need to do.

43 – Say Bye to the Villains
This is the hardest game to win on the list. By that, I mean I’ve never won this game. It’s a cooperative game, so that’s fine, because that means that everyone who has played with me has never won as well (at least in games I’ve played with them). In this game you are Samurai who are going to defeat villains, and you have 10 days to prepare, which means 10 points that you can spend. Each character needs to prepare in a different way, but the villains are also prepared with things that can hurt you and henchmen that can beef them up, but you don’t know what those cards are. So, do you spend time making yourself stronger, do you spend time looking to see how strong the villains are? There are more things to do in this game than you’ll ever be able to do. And that’s fine, that’s the fun of the challenge, hoping that you’ve looked at all the right things in order to defeat the villains as each Samurai matches up against one villain. As I said, I have yet to win this game. But that’s cool because I love the challenge and getting close and falling just short pushes me to want to try again and do better. One of these days I’ll beat the game.

42 – Stipulations
This is the party game for this section of the list. Stipulations for me kills off games like Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity where you are matching up something to what the person who is it picked. This time you are writing it yourself. The advantage of that is it can be as clean or as dirty as you want, and you can tailor it to your group. The person who is it picks from one of four categories on the card, super power, lifetime supply, dream job, and a fourth category that I’m completely blanking on right now, but 50% of the time it’ll be super power anyways. Then everyone else writes a stipulation for it. Maybe you have the super power of flying, but…

You can only fly two feet off the ground.

You can only fly when farting.

You can only fly up, when you want to come down you just free fall.

You can only fly when naked.

This game is just goofy fun and while there is a weird scoring set-up for the game, we generally play with Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity rules where the person who wrote the best answer gets it and then at the end of two or maybe three times around the table, the person with the most wins. This game is more creative and just works so much better than those other two.

41 – Not Alone
Not Alone is an interesting big group game of one versus all. The all are the crew of a spaceship that has crashed onto an alien planet and are now exploring and trying to find their way off of the planet. There is one problem, the player who is by themselves, they are a monster on the planet who doesn’t like the fact that there are people around. And they are trying to track down and eat the crew members or have the planet do that for them. It’s a game of cat and mouse as the crew tries to go to places where the monster won’t go and to do this they play cards. They can even discuss strategy, but they have to do it so that the monster can here them, because, just maybe, the monster is part of the planet itself. This game, the monster races to take out the crew enough times to eat them all and stop them from being able to escape before the rescue ship gets there. There’s a real puzzle to playing the crew, and the monster has some interesting choices to make guessing where the crew will go next and hoping to get as many of them as possible as they split up. It’s a challenging game, but a lot of fun to play both sides of it.

That’s the next ten done. I think this is the longest and most detailed post I’ve done on my top 100 games thus far. I expect that trend to continue as I get into games that I really know and love and I want to play all the time.

Is there a game on the list that stands out to you as one that you really want to play? Or is there a game on the list that you really love, or really hate?

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In Titan Race, you take on the roll of one of several Titans have their own special powers and are racing around weird maps. A game consists of looping over the same map three times, avoiding the traps and other players on the board, and dealing with whatever unique effect is on the map. Each round consists of one player rolling a number of dice equal to the number of Titans in the game. Starting with the first player, each player drafts a die and uses the movement rules shown on that die to determine what direction they go. The players continue around drafting dice until each person has used a die. Then the first player moves to the next player and the process is repeated.

Titan Race is a pretty simple game that has a few things that make it unique. The first is that as well as it being a race game, where the winning goal is to loop the board three times, it is also a combat game where you are trying to knock other players out for a round so that you can get further ahead. You have certain spots you can land to get ability cards that you can then use that might heal your damage, or damage your opponent. Plus, if you run into an opponent, you do push them and that deals them a damage as well. And if you set it up correctly, for example, on the lava map, you can cause a lot of damage to happen and hopefully get that turn where the player is knocked down and recovering to get ahead of them. And then they’ll start trying to chase you down so that you get knocked out as well. Plus each rider has their own ability which will make a difference in how well they can attack or move as well.

For me, Titan Race really shines not in the base mode of the game, but in the Grand Prix mode, where instead of looping over the same board three times, you run your way down across three boards. That means that you are dealing with three different terrains. Yes, you might lose some of the value of dropping traps, but if you get ahead you can do that, but the variety in boards is great. On some worlds, like the lava world, you can end up in lava and get damage dealt to you whereas the ice world allows you to slide across the map in interesting ways. Hopefully, not helping your opponents by pushing them forward when you do that. And like there are six different Titans, there are 6 different boards, though, it is three double sided boards, so you have a good variety of the terrains. And you can put the terrain in any order creating more variety.

While Titan Race isn’t a complex game, it is a good game night game. The game is simple enough that even more board game adjacent people are going to be able to pick it up quickly, and it’s a game that works with most ages. It does have a few small pieces that you might lose, but for the most part, the lap tracker pieces, I don’t use, because we are playing Grand Prix, not looping over a single map, so we only go over the board a single time. The life trackers are small as well, but I haven’t found that an issue or that they get bumped off a spot too much as the footprint on the table is small, so you aren’t reaching far for anything. Now, at times the game can be too simple. If the dice aren’t in your favor and someone else is able to get into a lead, it’s hard to stop them as you can’t drop traps in front of them. This is one advantage of looping over the same board, but, like I said above, it makes less variety in the game by doing that.

While I enjoy this game, I can see it being a game that not everyone will enjoy. This is not a heavy game and clearly falls into the filler category, but some people don’t like light fillers and would prefer just a fast but thinky game, Titan Race won’t provide that. I do think that it is a game you can pull out in a lot of situations because of the light theme and light complexity, and I like to have games like that in my collection. I’m not sure that Titan Race is always the filler game that I’d pull out, but being able to play up to 6 and not being a party game is really nice. Overall, I think more people will enjoy this game than those who don’t, but it won’t be for every group.

Overall Grade: B
Gamer Grade: D+
Casual Grade: B+

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Let’s talk a little bit about what I would look for in a kids game. I think that a lot of people are used to pretty boring kids games. Games like Candyland and Chutes and Ladders has no real strategy to them, and they are boring for the adults to play. I personally think board games for kids should challenge them some. They don’t need to be too hard or too confusing, but a game that challenges a kid to develop reasoning and planning skills are going to be a good thing. I also think that it is fine for parents to beat kids at games. It doesn’t mean that you have to go all out or always beat them, but learning to lose gracefully is something that a lot of adults could stand to learn, so it’s good to teach kids that as well.

But what are some good kids games?

Stuffed Fables
Stuffed Fables came up on the story game, and it has an amazing story of stuffed animals protecting a little girl while she sleeps. The downside to this game and the thing that you should be aware of is that there are some small pieces and little fiddly bits in the game. However, the game is cooperative, so the information of what is going on is known to everyone and you can work together as a team. The story should keep kids engaged.

Mice and Mystics
From the same designer and the predecessor to Stuffed Fables, Mice and Mystics is for a slightly older group of kids, but has a very Redwall feel towards it. Another cooperative game, it’s going to be one that you can probably play with a younger age, though they’ll mainly be rolling dice and making fewer decisions.

Lift Off!
I’m not sure in the ability to get this game still as I got it as a kickstarter, but Lift Off! is a fun game where you are playing cards and moving around tons of adorable meeples to try and get your guys off of the planet first before the planet blows up. However, each way off the planet can only hold so many guys and only launches at certain points in time. It’s a fun game that offers enough decisions to keep everyone engaged, but not so many that it would be confusing to kids.

Haba Games
Now, this is just a category, and I haven’t even played their games, but Haba is a game company that really focuses on making kids games. Their two most famous, Rhino Hero and Rhino Hero Super Battle. They are both tower building dexterity games where you are trying to get a hero to the top, but in Rhino Hero Super Battle, each person has their own hero and they fight along their way to the top. Any dexterity game is going to be nice, because kids are often more dexterous than the adults.

Ice Cool
Another dexterity game, and the last dexterity game for this list, Ice Cool is about a Penguin High School, but would play really well with young kids and is a ton of fun for adults as well. And now with Ice Cool 2, you can play up to 8 players, instead of just 4. In this game, you are flicking penguins around trying to collect fist or race around the board. It’s a ton of fun, and it’s fun for the adults to try a crazy shot and hope it works, but sometimes you just flick the penguin as hard as possible and you bounce through a couple of doors, and other times, you bounce off a wall and end up back where you started.

Titan Race
Final game on the list, Titan Race does have a few small pieces, but you don’t need to use them, you can just do a grand prix style. In the game you are playing cards, once in a while that you might have to help kids with, but the big thing you are doing is drafting dice and moving as the dice show. You could easily simplify this game so that you don’t use the cards and it’s all about drafting dice and not pushing other characters forward. The minis are fun in this game, and kids will definitely like them and the artwork of this game.

Now, that’s a solid selection of kids games. There are more, some on the Intro Games list, that could work for kids as well. There are also games like Catan Junior or My Little Scythe that are simplified or tweaked versions of bigger games that would work well with kids as well. And judge with your own kid what games will work for them and which ones won’t. If you checkout the YouTube channel Watch It Played, you can watch the host play fairly complicated games with his son, and the games might seem like they are going to be too challenging for him, but it completely depends on the kid. The Dice Tower also has some really fun reviews by Dan and Cora in the Board Game Breakfast where they look at games for 4-6 year olds (they’ve been doing it while Cora was 4 and now she’s 6). So that’s another great resource.

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