Top 100 Games: 80-71

Welcome back!  We’re tackling ten more titles in my top 100 games today.  It’s been a lot of fun to write about all of these titles so far.  I think taking the time to consider what each game is at its core, thinking about what the hook is for me, and finding a way to put that into words is making me a better games teacher, if nothing else.  It’s also a process that can be a bit revelatory, as you’ll see in this set.  Give it a look, and if it makes you feel things, feel free to leave a comment. Onward!

#80 Bites
BGG Rank: 2265
Plays: 6
My Rating: 7
BGG Rating: 6.078
User Avg Rating: 7.2

Bites pits you against opponents in a race to collect the best food as ants at a picnic.  What’s the best food?  Well, that’s where the fun is.  You don’t really know what a specific food (green pepper, peanut butter sandwich, swiss cheese, apple, and grapes) is going to be worth until the ant that matches each food gets to the anthill and alights on a space with a point value.  Get the purple ant on the three-point space and every grape will be worth three points.  Got a hoard of apples but the red ant ended up on zero?  Too bad for you.  

You can move any ant on your turn to the next food item that matches them, meaning no ant belongs to a specific player.  After you move, you take the food before or after the space where you end up.  The trail of food is mixed every time, and different scoring cards, bonuses, and rules change the game every time.  It’s cute, beautifully produced, and really easy to teach and play, but it also holds a ton of strategic choices.  It’s a perfect “one-more-time” game.

#79 Medici
BGG Rank: 585
Plays: 12
My Rating: 7.6
BGG Rating: 6.831
User Avg Rating: 7.2

Yeah, back again with a bidding game (I’m def wrong about not liking them).  In Medici, blah blah Italian families buying and shipping goods blah blah.  The theme is boring as heck.  That’s not at all why anyone likes this game, I promise.  Each round you flip and auction goods cards, choosing whether to auction 1, 2, or 3 goods in a lot.  You bid with points.  Yeah.  Money is points in this game, so there’s no futzing around with several currencies.  It’s somewhat easier to tell what things are worth because, well, you wouldn’t pay ten points to get five points, so you know where to draw the line on bidding.  Sort of.

Majorities in acquired goods and having the most valuable cargo in your ship each round will get you bonus points (read: money to bid with), and with the full player count this game can be VICIOUS.  It’s all good fun, though, and it’s short enough that you don’t feel like you’re wasting a whole evening getting crushed if you do poorly.  It’s clean, fun, and relatively simple to get to the table.  If you’re at all into bidding games, give it a go.  And shoot for higher player counts.  It’s really best with a full table.

#78 Akrotiri
BGG Rank: 805
Plays: 6
My Rating: 8.5
BGG Rating: 6.676
User Avg Rating: 7.2

Every time I tell someone about Akrotiri, I tell them it’s my favorite 2-player only game.  That’s a lie, apparently, based on how this list came out.  But it’s unique and cool and pretty.  It’s amazing how it feels like there’s no way you’re going to be able to achieve the goals on the cards in front of you, but before long you’re sailing around the archipelago and finding lost temples, using your cards to find exactly the right spot on the map. 

The way you find those temples is through a cool icon system on your cards.  Each tile you place at the beginning of a turn has a symbol on it in one of four elements.  Your map cards tell you that a temple is, for example, above a water icon, below three fire icons, and to the left of a leaf icon.  You have to find a place on the map (based on the tiles already placed or that you’ll place in the future) that satisfies those conditions, sail there, and uncover a temple.  But the icons on the card are relative to where you’re sitting.  So the same card in your opponent’s hand might end up pointing to a completely different destination. 

It’s a tight race with a tight economy where you pick your own goals.  Tougher, more expensive goals mean more points.  It’s a delicate balance, and every game is so close.  I just love it, and some day I’ll buy another copy and paint the wooden bits different colors than the copy I have so I can try it with 4, something the rules allow for.  Neat!

#77 Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King
BGG Rank: 226
Plays: 4
My Rating: 7.5
BGG Rating: 7.253
User Avg Rating: 7.4

I’m gonna brag a little here.  I’ve never lost this game.  Not only that, but I’ve never even come close.  Thing is, I have no idea why that is.  I don’t feel like I have any special ability or understanding or anything.  I just…win.  Okay.  I’ll stop.

This may look like Carcassonne on the surface, but while it’s a map-building, tile-laying game, it’s quite different.  Each round you’re drawing three tiles, setting a price on them, and revealing your offerings at the same time as other players.  Then everyone goes around and buys or doesn’t buy tiles.  Anything that doesn’t sell, you have to buy at the price you set.  It’s a razor thin margin between making something attractively priced and pricing something juuuuuust high enough to discourage people from buying a tile because you want it.  Of course, if someone buys it, you at least get that money.  A perfect sale round is intoxicating.  And the scoring for icons on the tiles changes each round. Those differences are determined at the start of the game, so you can work toward later game scorings even from the first round, sweeping up points from players who weren’t as well prepared.  It’s just good.  And I just love it.

I haven’t played it in a while.  You know why?  I bought the Journeyman expansion, tried to learn it, and put it back in the box.  Now it feels too complicated to get out.  It’s a common problem I have.  Maybe that’s a topic for another blog.  

#76 Nova Luna
BGG Rank: 536
Plays: 13
My Rating: 7.7
BGG Rating: 6.883
User Avg Rating: 7.4

Here’s a theme you’re really going to love!  You’re doing…something?  Maybe the new moon is involved?  There’s a time track?  Yeah…I got nothing here.  This game is essentially themeless.  It’s just tiles and disks and colors you have to put together in smart ways to complete goals before your opponent.  Sounds like a yawnfest, but Robb and I just play it over and over again.  

You’re drafting tiles from a central ring, moving forward on a time track to pay for them, and adding them to your array, hoping to accomplish the goals on the tile or goals on previously placed tiles.  They’re all things like “this tile must touch two other teal tiles” or “this tile has to touch a yellow, a blue, and an orange tile.”  When you achieve that goal, you place a disk on it.  First person to place all their disks wins.  And that time track?  The person furthest back on it is the one who gets to take a turn, so if you take a very expensive tile and jump ahead on the track, your opponent might get several turns in a row.  It really burns when it happens to you, but when you get to do the same, it’s awesome.  As far as themeless games go, this one’s pretty great.

#75 Qwixx
BGG Rank: 823
Plays: 33
My Rating: 8.2
BGG Rating: 6.009
User Avg Rating: 6.9

I actually own the deluxe version of this game with the dry erase boards, but, maybe somewhat surprisingly, I would not recommend it.  Just save a few bucks and get the version with paper sheets.  The dry erase boards will stain and wear out and generally get ruined if you play this with any frequency.  I ended up laminating all 8 boards, which was a huge pain in the dick.  I’d much prefer the paper sheets.  But if you don’t want either, just use the app for a score sheet.  That works too.

But enough about the score sheets.  This game is a joy.  Roll some dice, cross off a number in one of four rows, either all decreasing or all increasing.  You get points for how many you’ve crossed off when the game ends.  It’s hella simple, and you can teach it to literally anyone.  You might want to buy a second copy so you can give it away to people who fall in love with it.  I promise it will happen.  Probably.

#74 Carcassonne
BGG Rank: 198
Plays: 25
My Rating: 8.5
BGG Rating: 7.305
User Avg Rating: 7.4

Ah.  The grand daddy of welcoming games.  This was one of the first games I ever bought when I was getting into the hobby.  I picked it up with my employee discount when I worked at Barnes & Noble, since I’d been curious about it for a long time. It felt like a big, scary step when I brought it home.  Robb and I learned it, and we both just loved it.  It blew the top of my head off when I realized there were a ton of games out there doing things I’d never considered, and I immediately became a little bit of a board game junkie.

We very quickly got the Inns & Cathedrals expansion, and it became a staple of the game.  Now we never play with the base game only.  There’s always The River and Inns & Cathedrals.  And even after 25 plays, we still bust it out once a month or so to lay tiles and claim towns and fields and monasteries and roads.  And he almost always wins.  Damn farmers.

#73 Catan
BGG Rank: 456
Plays: 24
My Rating: 8
BGG Rating: 6.956
User Avg Rating: 7.1

I swear this didn’t happen on purpose.  Both of these quintessential welcoming games ended up back to back on my list by pure chance.  But here we are!  Catan is another staple of gaming that showed me something new that cardboard could do.  After my first game I realized the tiles could be randomized, and I was so excited to play it again that I think I just set it up randomly to see what lands might be generated each game.  It’s so fun to me that the map layout dictates the economy each game, with some layouts being brick and wood heavy, some being ore and wheat heavy, and some being a hopeless mess of garbage that makes everyone groan.

Sure, it’s super random, and the dice can feel punishing.  Sure, there are turns where you just don’t do anything.  Sure, sometimes people don’t want to trade and the game grinds to a halt.  But I just really love planning, working with what comes up, and trying to make the best of whatever situation arises.  It might be cool to hate on Catan, but honestly, it’s still one of my favorites.  I think it always will be.

#72 Caverna: The Cave Farmers
BGG Rank: 38
Plays: 1
My Rating: 8
BGG Rating: 7.812
User Avg Rating: 8.0

Y’all. Chances are, you’re gonna need a bigger table to play Caverna.  But all those sprawling options are what makes this game so awesome.  We’ve only played it once (at a friend’s house, where they have a huge table), but it was great trying to put together a strategy to scrape more points together than any of your opponents.  We all did different things, and in the end my animal farming strategy won me the game by a single point.  It was epic.  And I do mean in length and complexity and magnitude.

You play as a dwarf, farming and mining, building animal pens and pastures in the forest and rooms and workshops in your cave.  The two-pronged effort can leave you feeling like there’s more to do than you could possibly tackle.  You’d be right for thinking so.  That’s why you have to pick some things that couple well, try to build an economy, and expand your family (and, of course, feed them).  It can be overwhelming, and one of our players was completely lost at first.  The freedom that comes from being able to do basically whatever you want can definitely give you galaxy brain.  But as long as you pick something and stick with it, you’ll probably do quite well at Caverna.

#71 Archaeology: The New Expedition
BGG Rank: 980
Plays: 7
My Rating: 8
BGG Rating: 6.571
User Avg Rating: 7.1

Finally, let’s talk about this unassuming card game you might have dismissed.  Draw a card.  Maybe it’s exactly what you wanted, and you can turn in a set for a few points.  Maybe it’s not what you were looking for, but if you find two more you can turn them in for a ton of points.  Do you trade it in at the market for cards that match what you already have?  Do you hang on to it in hopes that you find more of them?  Have you considered the sandstorms that can make you discard half your cards to the market?  What about the thief that can pluck a card from your collection?  Is it worth it?  

Those decisions are what makes this game appeal to me so hard.  I just love trying to put together an amazing set of cards and turn them in to the museum for crazy points.  And that’s not even mentioning the map cards that let you go looking for riches in whatever structure you happen to pick at setup.  You know, typing this up has made me realize that the theme of this is really stealing from native people and profiting by sending it to a museum.  Hm.  That’s no good.  This might not stay on my list for much longer, given that realization.  You mileage may vary on the theme, but the mechanisms are really fun.  I long for a day when I don’t have revelations like this one that ruin a game for me because the theme is distasteful.  *sigh*

Well. That’s a downer, but it ends another set of ten of my top 100 games.  What are some games you really want to like but find the theme gross?  Were there any on this list that you’ve not played?  I’d love to hear how you got into the hobby.  Was it through a well known welcoming game, or did you come in a different way?

I’ll be back with another set of games in a bit.  Until then, thank you for your time and attention.  I appreciate your eyeballs.

~Justin

More Top Games:
100-91 
90-81 
70-61 
60-51 
50-41 
40-31 
30-21 
20-11 
10-1