Board Game Top 100 – 25-21

25 – Blue Moon City

In Blue Moon City players rebuild the city of Blue Moon using card sets from their hands. When you contribute to the reconstruction of a building, you place a cube on the building card. Once the card is complete the building is flipped over. Everyone that contributed to the building gets the benefit that the building provides. The player that contributed the most to the reconstruction of the building also gains a bonus benefit. A flipped over building provides bonuses to adjacent buildings as these are completed as well. Players collect crystals in this way to contribute to the building of a massive obelisk and once one player contributes enough to the completion of the obelisk the game ends with the player who completed the obelisk being the winner.

24 – The Quest for El Dorado

A simple family weight deck-builder with board game elements, in Quest for El Dorado players are racing through the jungle in search of the famed city of gold. Cards in your hand dictate your movement through the jungle and different cards specialize in different terrain types. Optimizing your hand of cards to move through the jungle more quickly than your opponents, and choosing the path that will work best for your hand of cards is key to success. The jungle is made up of modular tiles that can be arranged to create courses of various difficulties which gives The Quest for El Dorado a lot of replayability. The Quest for El Dorado is a great game for all ages and would be the perfect choice to introduce someone to the concept of deck-building who had never tried it before.

23 – Evolution: The Beginning

Evolution: The Beginning is a family weight engine building card game. Engine building is a genre of game where players build a tableau of cards in front of them designed to provide on-going benefits (an engine.) The best of these allow players to create a synergy between various cards for greater effect. Evolution is really good at this. In this case your “engine” is made up of evolving species of animals. Some animals eat plants while others eat meat, and those will attack your opponents’ cards to stay alive. This “take-that” element would normally turn me off of a game, but here it is so completely integrated in the theme that I don’t mind it. One thing that I don’t like about attack type games is that the weakest players tend to get ganged up on. This isn’t a problem in a two-player game, and personally I would probably only play games like this one with two players. That’s works fine here since

Julie

and I really like Evolution: The Beginning a lot!

22 – Super Motherload

Like The Quest for El Dorado above, Super Motherload is an awesome deck building game with a neat theme and some pretty cool board game mechanics thrown in. In Super Motherload players are miners on Mars drilling deeper and deeper for the richest resources. The “deck” that you are building is your drilling crew, folks (cards) who will help you to achieve your goals. The board (actually boards) is a depiction of the land that you are drilling into. As you drill you take the rewards shown on the board and then cover the area drilled with black-out tiles to show that the area is now nothing but a hole. The game is played over four boards. When you reach the bottom of one, you place an new board underneath it. You cycle through the boards so you only ever need two on the table at a time, and the game comes with numerous boards (all double sided) for massive replayability. I love Super Motherload. It kind of reminds me of Dig Dug the board game!

21 – Karuba

Karuba is super easy to understand, but really engaging to play. Here you place tiles that show differing paths through a jungle. Your goal is to create paths for your explorers to reach the temples that match their meeple colors. The tiles are drawn from a bag and the number on the tile is announced BINGO style. Then all players take the tile that was called out and either place it on the board or discard it for movement. When you discard a tile for movement, you are able to move one of your meeple explorers a number of spaces equal to the number of exits from the tile. For example: a straight path has 2 exits, so you can move a meeple 2 spaces; a “T” junction has 3 exits; and a crossroads has 4 exits. Getting to a temple of a specific color first allows you to claim the best treasures (victory points) and some tiles that you place may have gold or gems on them (more victory points.) That’s the whole game: place or discard a tile; get your meeples to their temples as efficiently as you can. Everyone plays at the same time, so Karuba plays as quickly with 4 players as it does with 2. (I have even considered buying a second copy of the game so that I can facilitate up to 8 players.) What’s so awesome is how every player is playing the exact same game, but everyone’s board will look completely different by the end of the game. Karuba is an awesome family game!!

Board Game Top 100 – 25-21

25 – Blue Moon City

In Blue Moon City players rebuild the city of Blue Moon using card sets from their hands. When you contribute to the reconstruction of a building, you place a cube on the building card. Once the card is complete the building is flipped over. Everyone that contributed to the building gets the benefit that the building provides. The player that contributed the most to the reconstruction of the building also gains a bonus benefit. A flipped over building provides bonuses to adjacent buildings as these are completed as well. Players collect crystals in this way to contribute to the building of a massive obelisk and once one player contributes enough to the completion of the obelisk the game ends with the player who completed the obelisk being the winner.

24 – The Quest for El Dorado

A simple family weight deck-builder with board game elements, in Quest for El Dorado players are racing through the jungle in search of the famed city of gold. Cards in your hand dictate your movement through the jungle and different cards specialize in different terrain types. Optimizing your hand of cards to move through the jungle more quickly than your opponents, and choosing the path that will work best for your hand of cards is key to success. The jungle is made up of modular tiles that can be arranged to create courses of various difficulties which gives The Quest for El Dorado a lot of replayability. The Quest for El Dorado is a great game for all ages and would be the perfect choice to introduce someone to the concept of deck-building who had never tried it before.

23 – Evolution: The Beginning

Evolution: The Beginning is a family weight engine building card game. Engine building is a genre of game where players build a tableau of cards in front of them designed to provide on-going benefits (an engine.) The best of these allow players to create a synergy between various cards for greater effect. Evolution is really good at this. In this case your “engine” is made up of evolving species of animals. Some animals eat plants while others eat meat, and those will attack your opponents’ cards to stay alive. This “take-that” element would normally turn me off of a game, but here it is so completely integrated in the theme that I don’t mind it. One thing that I don’t like about attack type games is that the weakest players tend to get ganged up on. This isn’t a problem in a two-player game, and personally I would probably only play games like this one with two players. That’s works fine here since

Julie

and I really like Evolution: The Beginning a lot!

22 – Super Motherload

Like The Quest for El Dorado above, Super Motherload is an awesome deck building game with a neat theme and some pretty cool board game mechanics thrown in. In Super Motherload players are miners on Mars drilling deeper and deeper for the richest resources. The “deck” that you are building is your drilling crew, folks (cards) who will help you to achieve your goals. The board (actually boards) is a depiction of the land that you are drilling into. As you drill you take the rewards shown on the board and then cover the area drilled with black-out tiles to show that the area is now nothing but a hole. The game is played over four boards. When you reach the bottom of one, you place an new board underneath it. You cycle through the boards so you only ever need two on the table at a time, and the game comes with numerous boards (all double sided) for massive replayability. I love Super Motherload. It kind of reminds me of Dig Dug the board game!

21 – Karuba

Karuba is super easy to understand, but really engaging to play. Here you place tiles that show differing paths through a jungle. Your goal is to create paths for your explorers to reach the temples that match their meeple colors. The tiles are drawn from a bag and the number on the tile is announced BINGO style. Then all players take the tile that was called out and either place it on the board or discard it for movement. When you discard a tile for movement, you are able to move one of your meeple explorers a number of spaces equal to the number of exits from the tile. For example: a straight path has 2 exits, so you can move a meeple 2 spaces; a “T” junction has 3 exits; and a crossroads has 4 exits. Getting to a temple of a specific color first allows you to claim the best treasures (victory points) and some tiles that you place may have gold or gems on them (more victory points.) That’s the whole game: place or discard a tile; get your meeples to their temples as efficiently as you can. Everyone plays at the same time, so Karuba plays as quickly with 4 players as it does with 2. (I have even considered buying a second copy of the game so that I can facilitate up to 8 players.) What’s so awesome is how every player is playing the exact same game, but everyone’s board will look completely different by the end of the game. Karuba is an awesome family game!!

Board Game Top 100 – 30-26

 

30 – Portobello Market

Portobello Market gets it’s name from the famous road market in London. Players attempt to obtain a majority of market stalls in different sections of the board. Placing your stalls is dependent upon the movement of a Bobby (policeman) meeple, but if you really need him to go somewhere, you can pay him a little coin. Points are scored by the placement of shoppers and some shoppers spend more than others, so you are in competition with the other players to attract the best. It’s an interesting twist on area control, that’s more puzzley than other games of this type and Julie and I really enjoy it.

29 – Livingstone

In Livingstone, players are explorers moving down the Zambezi River. On your turn you can take one of the following actions: set a camp, mine for gems, earn some coins, or draw a card. This is a dice drafting game with an interesting mechanism. When you take a die and it comes back around to your turn, the next die that you pick has to be higher than the one you took before. Higher dice give you more valuable actions for greater points, but it means that you don’t get to do as much on your turn. For example, if you take a 6 then you get to set a camp at the farthest spot up the embankment (the most valuable points wise,) draw 6 gems out of the gem bag (giving you the best chance at the most valuable gems,) or take 6 coins, but when the dice pool comes around again, you won’t be able to take another die because nothing is higher than 6. Do you grab the highest die, or grab a lower one hoping to get more actions than your opponents? You can also use a die of any value to draw a card. Cards can give a variety of benefits, but since they work the same with a 1 or a 6, it’s best to use the lower dice to draw cards. Movement down the river is really just a turn counter, but it feels thematic and the game is really fun. Also, everyone has a little treasure box that they can put some coins in each turn. At the end of the game money placed in the box is each players tribute to the Queen. The person who gave the smallest tribute to the Queen is the automatic loser of the game, even if they had the most points. So, be careful not to be too stingy! Livingstone is a great family game! Even Kaylee will play it!

28 – Nations The Dice Game

In Nations The Dice Game, players roll custom dice to gain the resources on the dice to build different buildings to advance their civilization. The buildings give victory points or benefits like certain resources or ways to mitigate your dice rolls, or even new dice to add to your pool. The game is played over 4 rounds and scoring is checked at the end of each round. Building your pool of custom dice is key to winning the game. Different dice favor certain types of results and you will want to optimize the combinations that you collect to obtain the results that you want. Nations The Dice Game is like a deck-building game, but instead of a deck of cards, you’re building a pool of dice.

27 – The Dwarves

Based on the novel Die Zwerge [Eng. The Dwarves] by Markus Heitz, the goal of the cooperative game The Dwarves is to keep evil from flooding Girdlegard. Another cooperative game in the mold of pandemic, the Dwarves scores high because of its thematic ties to its source material. Based on a book that I’ve never even read, I still feel transported to the fantasy world that is this game’s setting when I play the game. Evil orcs, elves (yep, elves are evil), and trolls, are all marching their armies toward the Dwarven capital and players must work together to stop them. You must also manage the political climate in the Dwarven council to gain benefits that help you during play and go on quests to level up your characters. Dwarves is a rich cooperative fantasy adventure game and one of the best in my collection.

26 – Cacao

Cacao combines tile laying with worker placement in an interesting way. There are a few tiles out on the table to start, and these show actions that a player can take. Players have tiles in their hands that show workers around the outside edges. The actions you take are based upon which tiles you have placed your workers next to. During play new action tiles come out and your options continuously grow as you try to figure out the best way to place your personal tiles to create the best opportunities for your workers. This is a fun puzzley little tile layer about growing and harvesting Cacao. Yum!

Board Game Top 100 – 30-26

 

30 – Portobello Market

Portobello Market gets it’s name from the famous road market in London. Players attempt to obtain a majority of market stalls in different sections of the board. Placing your stalls is dependent upon the movement of a Bobby (policeman) meeple, but if you really need him to go somewhere, you can pay him a little coin. Points are scored by the placement of shoppers and some shoppers spend more than others, so you are in competition with the other players to attract the best. It’s an interesting twist on area control, that’s more puzzley than other games of this type and Julie and I really enjoy it.

29 – Livingstone

In Livingstone, players are explorers moving down the Zambezi River. On your turn you can take one of the following actions: set a camp, mine for gems, earn some coins, or draw a card. This is a dice drafting game with an interesting mechanism. When you take a die and it comes back around to your turn, the next die that you pick has to be higher than the one you took before. Higher dice give you more valuable actions for greater points, but it means that you don’t get to do as much on your turn. For example, if you take a 6 then you get to set a camp at the farthest spot up the embankment (the most valuable points wise,) draw 6 gems out of the gem bag (giving you the best chance at the most valuable gems,) or take 6 coins, but when the dice pool comes around again, you won’t be able to take another die because nothing is higher than 6. Do you grab the highest die, or grab a lower one hoping to get more actions than your opponents? You can also use a die of any value to draw a card. Cards can give a variety of benefits, but since they work the same with a 1 or a 6, it’s best to use the lower dice to draw cards. Movement down the river is really just a turn counter, but it feels thematic and the game is really fun. Also, everyone has a little treasure box that they can put some coins in each turn. At the end of the game money placed in the box is each players tribute to the Queen. The person who gave the smallest tribute to the Queen is the automatic loser of the game, even if they had the most points. So, be careful not to be too stingy! Livingstone is a great family game! Even Kaylee will play it!

28 – Nations The Dice Game

In Nations The Dice Game, players roll custom dice to gain the resources on the dice to build different buildings to advance their civilization. The buildings give victory points or benefits like certain resources or ways to mitigate your dice rolls, or even new dice to add to your pool. The game is played over 4 rounds and scoring is checked at the end of each round. Building your pool of custom dice is key to winning the game. Different dice favor certain types of results and you will want to optimize the combinations that you collect to obtain the results that you want. Nations The Dice Game is like a deck-building game, but instead of a deck of cards, you’re building a pool of dice.

27 – The Dwarves

Based on the novel Die Zwerge [Eng. The Dwarves] by Markus Heitz, the goal of the cooperative game The Dwarves is to keep evil from flooding Girdlegard. Another cooperative game in the mold of pandemic, the Dwarves scores high because of its thematic ties to its source material. Based on a book that I’ve never even read, I still feel transported to the fantasy world that is this game’s setting when I play the game. Evil orcs, elves (yep, elves are evil), and trolls, are all marching their armies toward the Dwarven capital and players must work together to stop them. You must also manage the political climate in the Dwarven council to gain benefits that help you during play and go on quests to level up your characters. Dwarves is a rich cooperative fantasy adventure game and one of the best in my collection.

26 – Cacao

Cacao combines tile laying with worker placement in an interesting way. There are a few tiles out on the table to start, and these show actions that a player can take. Players have tiles in their hands that show workers around the outside edges. The actions you take are based upon which tiles you have placed your workers next to. During play new action tiles come out and your options continuously grow as you try to figure out the best way to place your personal tiles to create the best opportunities for your workers. This is a fun puzzley little tile layer about growing and harvesting Cacao. Yum!

Board Game Top 100 – 35-31

35 – Quirky Circuits

In Quirky Circuits players work together to program a robot to move around a board filled with different objects and try to achieve certain objectives. I talked a bit about programmed movement with River Dragons. The idea is that we all play cards in advance and then watch them play out one at a time. Cards in Quirky Circuits move your robot forward or cause it to turn. Things like that. The trick with Quirky Circuits is that everyone is controlling the same robot and while everyone knows what the goal is, you aren’t allowed to talk strategy. You do have some information. When I play a card in front of me that moves the robot forward, you can see from the back of the card that it’s a movement card, but you have no idea how far. Completing the course is not straight forward because inevitably you won’t draw the cards that you need to move the robot the way that you want. So, you have to get creative, and unfortunately, that will usually throw your teammates for a loop. The thing about it is that it’s actually hilarious to watch the robot veer off course. One mistake means that every card played after that is likely to make matters worse, and all you can do is watch to see what happens as your program gets played out. Quirky Circuits is great, chaotic, unpredictable, fun!

34 – Smiths of Winterforge

In Smiths of Winterforge players are dwarven craftsmen working to forge various items for profit and victory points. This game has a really cool feel to it as you must go to the market place and purchase goods with which to forge the items that you have taken commissions to make. These items have a difficulty number on them that you must roll on your dice. Starting out you will want to craft simple, easy to make items. As you make items you will become more skilled and be able to take on more difficult commissions. In addition to difficulty every commission tells you the types of raw materials needed in the items construction. When you go to buy materials, the quality of material that you buy determines which dice you get to roll. You can spend more money on better materials, or you can buy cheaper materials and hope to pull off a lucky roll. If you fail the roll, don’t worry … you actually gain a token that will make your next attempt a little easier and you can try again. You will eventually succeed, but with cheaper materials you are gambling that the project won’t take too long, because time is money, and money leads to victory.

33 – Meduris

Meduris is an awesome little resource management and area control game where you build settlements to gain points. It's got an interesting worker placement mechanic where workers are able to stack on top of each other and the worker on the top of the stack gets the most stuff! I've not seen anything like it in any other game that I've played. All the settlements are built in this large circle and unbroken groups of settlements are worth money to whoever holds the majority of buildings in the group. The groupings can be broken up by the placement of temples and these are key to scoring points. The mechanisms in Meduris are simple, but mastery is tricky.

32 – Walking in Burano

In Walking in Burano Players are building beautiful, brightly colored houses (using cards). Each house section displays specific features like: curtains, lights, flowers, chimneys, or even kitty cats! These score points depending on the resident that you match with the house. The puzzle is in getting the right sections for each house and then matching it with the right person. Matching colors in your houses is also important, but each distinctive color bears a watermark making the game color-blind friendly. "Walking in Burano" is fast, fun and engaging!

31 – Fabled Fruit

In Fabled Fruit players are collecting sets of fruits (cards) to turn in to purchase fruit juice (more cards.) This is a really neat little set collection worker placement game. The twist here is that the locations that you place your workers on to perform actions are the same cards you are trying to buy for points. So what happens when you buy up a location? A new one takes its place. A new location, with a new ability and a new way to manipulate the system to collect more fruits to make more juice to win the game! Fabled Fruit is an incredible innovation in that every time you play the game is a little different. As players gain points and take cards, new cards come out. New ways to play are introduced, and you barely scratch the surface after a single play. The game gives you a simple method for saving your progress so that you can pick up exactly where you left off. The stack of cards provide 59 different powers, but there are 4 of each card (236 total) so when a new power comes out, it sticks around for a little while so everyone gets a chance to use it, and see how it works before it gets all bought up for victory points and goes away. It took Julie and me several weeks to work our way all the way through that deck and we played it a lot! There was a time when Fabled Fruit was my favorite game. It’s definitely something special.

Board Game Top 100 – 35-31

35 – Quirky Circuits

In Quirky Circuits players work together to program a robot to move around a board filled with different objects and try to achieve certain objectives. I talked a bit about programmed movement with River Dragons. The idea is that we all play cards in advance and then watch them play out one at a time. Cards in Quirky Circuits move your robot forward or cause it to turn. Things like that. The trick with Quirky Circuits is that everyone is controlling the same robot and while everyone knows what the goal is, you aren’t allowed to talk strategy. You do have some information. When I play a card in front of me that moves the robot forward, you can see from the back of the card that it’s a movement card, but you have no idea how far. Completing the course is not straight forward because inevitably you won’t draw the cards that you need to move the robot the way that you want. So, you have to get creative, and unfortunately, that will usually throw your teammates for a loop. The thing about it is that it’s actually hilarious to watch the robot veer off course. One mistake means that every card played after that is likely to make matters worse, and all you can do is watch to see what happens as your program gets played out. Quirky Circuits is great, chaotic, unpredictable, fun!

34 – Smiths of Winterforge

In Smiths of Winterforge players are dwarven craftsmen working to forge various items for profit and victory points. This game has a really cool feel to it as you must go to the market place and purchase goods with which to forge the items that you have taken commissions to make. These items have a difficulty number on them that you must roll on your dice. Starting out you will want to craft simple, easy to make items. As you make items you will become more skilled and be able to take on more difficult commissions. In addition to difficulty every commission tells you the types of raw materials needed in the items construction. When you go to buy materials, the quality of material that you buy determines which dice you get to roll. You can spend more money on better materials, or you can buy cheaper materials and hope to pull off a lucky roll. If you fail the roll, don’t worry … you actually gain a token that will make your next attempt a little easier and you can try again. You will eventually succeed, but with cheaper materials you are gambling that the project won’t take too long, because time is money, and money leads to victory.

33 – Meduris

Meduris is an awesome little resource management and area control game where you build settlements to gain points. It's got an interesting worker placement mechanic where workers are able to stack on top of each other and the worker on the top of the stack gets the most stuff! I've not seen anything like it in any other game that I've played. All the settlements are built in this large circle and unbroken groups of settlements are worth money to whoever holds the majority of buildings in the group. The groupings can be broken up by the placement of temples and these are key to scoring points. The mechanisms in Meduris are simple, but mastery is tricky.

32 – Walking in Burano

In Walking in Burano Players are building beautiful, brightly colored houses (using cards). Each house section displays specific features like: curtains, lights, flowers, chimneys, or even kitty cats! These score points depending on the resident that you match with the house. The puzzle is in getting the right sections for each house and then matching it with the right person. Matching colors in your houses is also important, but each distinctive color bears a watermark making the game color-blind friendly. "Walking in Burano" is fast, fun and engaging!

31 – Fabled Fruit

In Fabled Fruit players are collecting sets of fruits (cards) to turn in to purchase fruit juice (more cards.) This is a really neat little set collection worker placement game. The twist here is that the locations that you place your workers on to perform actions are the same cards you are trying to buy for points. So what happens when you buy up a location? A new one takes its place. A new location, with a new ability and a new way to manipulate the system to collect more fruits to make more juice to win the game! Fabled Fruit is an incredible innovation in that every time you play the game is a little different. As players gain points and take cards, new cards come out. New ways to play are introduced, and you barely scratch the surface after a single play. The game gives you a simple method for saving your progress so that you can pick up exactly where you left off. The stack of cards provide 59 different powers, but there are 4 of each card (236 total) so when a new power comes out, it sticks around for a little while so everyone gets a chance to use it, and see how it works before it gets all bought up for victory points and goes away. It took Julie and me several weeks to work our way all the way through that deck and we played it a lot! There was a time when Fabled Fruit was my favorite game. It’s definitely something special.

Board Game Top 100 – 40-36

 

40 – Kingsburg

Kingsburg is a dice placement game where you use your dice to curry the favor of various influential figures of the nobility. Said influence comes back to you in the form of resources that you can use to build up the strength of your own personal little township. Players add buildings to their personal tableau and these provide permanent benefits like ways to mitigate dice, military strength, and victory points. I mention military strength, but Kingburg isn’t a “take-that” kind of game. Each round of Kingburg is divided into four seasons. In the first three seasons you are building up your town, but when winter comes, there is a monster attack. This comes in the form of a random card draw, and it attacks all players. So, it’s fair to everyone, and everyone needs to be ready, because … “Winter is coming.”

39 – Agricola Family Edition

Agricola Family Edition is a reimplementation of Agricola, which is a much heavier game. There’s a great resource for board game enthusiasts available on the interwebs called, board game geek (boardgamegeek.com); BGG lists information about all kinds of board games. It’s where I go when I want to know something. One of the things that BGG does is that it gives each game a “weight” on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being the simplest of games and 5 being the most daunting. Tic-Tac-Toe for example has a listed weight of 1.16, while chess has a listed weight of 3.71. With only a 5 point scale to work with it might be difficult to know where your personal tastes fall. For me, games between 2 and 3 on the scale seem to be my favorite, with 2.5 being my sweet spot.

The original Agricola has a listed weight of 3.64 (close to chess), while the Family Edition has a weight of 2.4, perfect! Now, I tend to prefer lighter games. When I sit down to play, I want to feel like I’m … well, playing – not running a marathon or taking a math test. So, I was happy to see that the publishers of Agricola, which is a very popular farm sim game, saw that there was a market for an easier more accessible version. I have mentioned before that I like farm sim style games, and Agricola is arguably the best. In Agricola Family Edition, I add buildings to my farm, grow crops, raise livestock, expand my family and my home, all in the pursuit of victory points. Everything is done through worker placement, where I take farmers from my home, and put them on spaces on the game board to take the actions, or gain the resources that I need to accomplish my goals. It all works beautifully here, because the designers started with a time tested masterpiece, and just made it easier to play. It doesn’t hurt that worker placement is one of my favorite game mechanics. Agricola Family Edition is a great game about building the most prosperous farm, and I love it.

38 – Village

Village is a worker placement game that is set in a Village. You have workers that you place on locations in the village to do various things. You have a player board which represents your small personal farm, and you are trying to evolve it as well as your workers in the Village. The twist with this game is that workers that you place in the village stay there and work … forever. Well okay, not forever, but until they die. That’s right, in Village your workers die. Village is played across generations and this creates a layered game play experience that is really interesting and challenging. I mentioned game weight when talking about Agricola above. Village has a listed weight of 3.07, which nudges it close to being too heavy. I remember after the first time we played that

Julie

and I laid awake talking about strategies, and what we might do differently the next time we play. So, complexity can be a rewarding thing, but it comes at a cost. Julie and I love Village and are intrigued by the challenge it presents, but we haven’t gotten it back to the table. Because, along with the added complexity comes an added time commitment. For us, it’s difficult to get the longer games played. We have to be prepared to invest four plus hours of our day to a game. That doesn’t happen often, but when it does, Julie and I will be playing, Village.

37 – Rallyman GT

I shared a post about Rallyman GT a short while ago, so I’m not going to talk too much about it here, but I will hit the high spots. GT is a car racing game. The track is modular hex tiles that you build yourself into any configuration. You place dice to establish your route around the track. Then you roll those dice. Dice have hazards on them and if you roll too many hazards you risk damaging your car. When you roll, you have the option of rolling one die at a time to play it safe. This enables you to stop when you want, and can allow you to avoid damaging your car, or you can roll all the dice at once. In this instance, you must take what you get, and this is a big gamble, but if you take it, you get special tokens that allow you to save dice rolls on subsequent turns, ensuring you have a better time on a later turn. Ideally, when you need it most. Rallyman GT provides a great balance of push your luck and risk vs reward. It’s a great car racing game.

36 – Rise of Augustus

Rise of Augustus showed me how a game that I would not consider to be a board game, could in fact be a brilliant board game. That game is BINGO. In Rise of Augustus players have cards in front of them. These cards have spaces that need to be covered in order to win the card. One player is the caller, that person pulls out a token from a bag and calls out the symbol on the token. Then everyone including the caller covers that symbol on the cards in front of them. When a player has completed a card, they call out, “Ave Caesar!” And they gain the benefit shown on the card. Some cards provide immediate bonuses, some add to your game engine providing permanent benefits to help you during the game, some cards provide graphic elements that contribute to the set collection aspect of the game. There are many things to consider, because there are a lot of different ways to score points, and once you have won your first card, you must choose your replacement from a limited selection. Picking the right cards in the right combinations is key to winning the game. Rise of Augustus is an awesome game! The BINGO game play means that every player is fully engaged on every turn. That means that Rise of Augustus plays just as well at 6 players as it does at 2. Who knew that BINGO could be so challenging, and so much fun!?

Board Game Top 100 – 40-36

 

40 – Kingsburg

Kingsburg is a dice placement game where you use your dice to curry the favor of various influential figures of the nobility. Said influence comes back to you in the form of resources that you can use to build up the strength of your own personal little township. Players add buildings to their personal tableau and these provide permanent benefits like ways to mitigate dice, military strength, and victory points. I mention military strength, but Kingburg isn’t a “take-that” kind of game. Each round of Kingburg is divided into four seasons. In the first three seasons you are building up your town, but when winter comes, there is a monster attack. This comes in the form of a random card draw, and it attacks all players. So, it’s fair to everyone, and everyone needs to be ready, because … “Winter is coming.”

39 – Agricola Family Edition

Agricola Family Edition is a reimplementation of Agricola, which is a much heavier game. There’s a great resource for board game enthusiasts available on the interwebs called, board game geek (boardgamegeek.com); BGG lists information about all kinds of board games. It’s where I go when I want to know something. One of the things that BGG does is that it gives each game a “weight” on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being the simplest of games and 5 being the most daunting. Tic-Tac-Toe for example has a listed weight of 1.16, while chess has a listed weight of 3.71. With only a 5 point scale to work with it might be difficult to know where your personal tastes fall. For me, games between 2 and 3 on the scale seem to be my favorite, with 2.5 being my sweet spot.

The original Agricola has a listed weight of 3.64 (close to chess), while the Family Edition has a weight of 2.4, perfect! Now, I tend to prefer lighter games. When I sit down to play, I want to feel like I’m … well, playing – not running a marathon or taking a math test. So, I was happy to see that the publishers of Agricola, which is a very popular farm sim game, saw that there was a market for an easier more accessible version. I have mentioned before that I like farm sim style games, and Agricola is arguably the best. In Agricola Family Edition, I add buildings to my farm, grow crops, raise livestock, expand my family and my home, all in the pursuit of victory points. Everything is done through worker placement, where I take farmers from my home, and put them on spaces on the game board to take the actions, or gain the resources that I need to accomplish my goals. It all works beautifully here, because the designers started with a time tested masterpiece, and just made it easier to play. It doesn’t hurt that worker placement is one of my favorite game mechanics. Agricola Family Edition is a great game about building the most prosperous farm, and I love it.

38 – Village

Village is a worker placement game that is set in a Village. You have workers that you place on locations in the village to do various things. You have a player board which represents your small personal farm, and you are trying to evolve it as well as your workers in the Village. The twist with this game is that workers that you place in the village stay there and work … forever. Well okay, not forever, but until they die. That’s right, in Village your workers die. Village is played across generations and this creates a layered game play experience that is really interesting and challenging. I mentioned game weight when talking about Agricola above. Village has a listed weight of 3.07, which nudges it close to being too heavy. I remember after the first time we played that

Julie

and I laid awake talking about strategies, and what we might do differently the next time we play. So, complexity can be a rewarding thing, but it comes at a cost. Julie and I love Village and are intrigued by the challenge it presents, but we haven’t gotten it back to the table. Because, along with the added complexity comes an added time commitment. For us, it’s difficult to get the longer games played. We have to be prepared to invest four plus hours of our day to a game. That doesn’t happen often, but when it does, Julie and I will be playing, Village.

37 – Rallyman GT

I shared a post about Rallyman GT a short while ago, so I’m not going to talk too much about it here, but I will hit the high spots. GT is a car racing game. The track is modular hex tiles that you build yourself into any configuration. You place dice to establish your route around the track. Then you roll those dice. Dice have hazards on them and if you roll too many hazards you risk damaging your car. When you roll, you have the option of rolling one die at a time to play it safe. This enables you to stop when you want, and can allow you to avoid damaging your car, or you can roll all the dice at once. In this instance, you must take what you get, and this is a big gamble, but if you take it, you get special tokens that allow you to save dice rolls on subsequent turns, ensuring you have a better time on a later turn. Ideally, when you need it most. Rallyman GT provides a great balance of push your luck and risk vs reward. It’s a great car racing game.

36 – Rise of Augustus

Rise of Augustus showed me how a game that I would not consider to be a board game, could in fact be a brilliant board game. That game is BINGO. In Rise of Augustus players have cards in front of them. These cards have spaces that need to be covered in order to win the card. One player is the caller, that person pulls out a token from a bag and calls out the symbol on the token. Then everyone including the caller covers that symbol on the cards in front of them. When a player has completed a card, they call out, “Ave Caesar!” And they gain the benefit shown on the card. Some cards provide immediate bonuses, some add to your game engine providing permanent benefits to help you during the game, some cards provide graphic elements that contribute to the set collection aspect of the game. There are many things to consider, because there are a lot of different ways to score points, and once you have won your first card, you must choose your replacement from a limited selection. Picking the right cards in the right combinations is key to winning the game. Rise of Augustus is an awesome game! The BINGO game play means that every player is fully engaged on every turn. That means that Rise of Augustus plays just as well at 6 players as it does at 2. Who knew that BINGO could be so challenging, and so much fun!?

A Tale of Time Past!

Last week's story featured the art of Don Newton. I decided I'd like a little more of him. So, here's a story from Batman 328 drawn by Don Newton.

A Tale of Time Past!

Last week's story featured the art of Don Newton. I decided I'd like a little more of him. So, here's a story from Batman 328 drawn by Don Newton.