Top 100 Board Games: 70-61

This section of games has a lot of titles that many would consider to be classics, even if they’re modern classics. I don’t care what anyone calls them; I just think they’re fun! Check these titles out below!

#70 Master Word
BGG Rank: 3717
Plays: 5
My Rating: 9.5
BGG Rating: 5.826
User Avg Rating: 7

The first time I played this game it was a lot of laughter and some fun reveals. The second time I played this game my throat was sore the next day from shouting.  There’s no calm in between. It’s one or the other, and if you have people in your group who overthink things or who have trouble realizing this is a cooperative game and the mastermind is not trying to fool the others, it can get a little ugly.  

Basically, you get a category that everyone knows and a word that only one person knows. That word is what you’re trying to get players to guess. They can write statements about the word, such as “commonly found in ordinary grocery stores,” in sets according to the number of players, and then the mastermind has to indicate how many of the presented statements are true. Players get several rounds to suss out the answer. Hilarity and frustration ensues.

The cards increase in difficulty as you get deeper into the deck. We’re about 8 cards in a a group, and I can’t imagine how anyone might guess anything harder than, say, “rooster.” That one caused a fight. It may seem simple, but once people are working together and the mastermind can’t say anything, it’s easy for them to decide things are true that aren’t. But if you like word games and have a group who works well together, I’d recommend it. We really loved it, despite the frustration.  And even after our first game, we had great stories to tell.

#69 Trails of Tucana
BGG Rank: 715
Plays: 2
My Rating: 7
BGG Rating: 6.732
User Avg Rating: 7.5

Flip two cards featuring terrain types on them. Draw a line on your map connecting two tiles which feature those terrains. Connect landmarks to score points, and be the best trail builder in this flip and fill game. It’s quick. It’s smart. And it doesn’t overstay its welcome.  

That’s what makes Trails of Tucana so brilliant. The concept of the game can be taught in literally under a minute. Most people understand pathmaking. And the bonuses you get for connecting various features on the map make the choices of where you draw those trails oh-so-satisfying and juicy. You get more points for connecting things before your opponents, and you’ll be grateful for those few extra points at the end of this one, because the scores always seem to be close for us. Maybe some day we’ll try the advanced side, which is just a longer game, as far as I can tell.  

#68 Alhambra: The Card Game
BGG Rank: 3675
Plays: 9
My Rating: 8.5
BGG Rating: 5.831
User Avg Rating: 6.4

When I learned this game, I learned it as Belgique, a game celebrating the parks and museums and architectural wonders of Germany. Our friends bought it for $5 from a clearance rack at Gen Con one year, and we all still agree it was the best $5 any of us has ever spent. But tracking down a copy of this majority set collection card game proved impossible until we all realized that this game was just a reskin of Alhambra: The Card Game!  

The first chance I got, I bought a copy of this much overlooked, “buy it sharp,” palace building game. It cost more than $5 at the time, and now it can be pretty hard to find. I’m just glad we got a copy, because this is one of those games that I could teach to my family of non-hobby gamers. Your choices are to take money in one of four color-coded currencies or buy a card in one of six (seven?) building colors. Pay the exact price of the card with the correct currency for where it sits in the market (that’s buying it sharp), and you’ll get another action.  Plan right, and you could clear the entire market out.  It feels so good to string actions together after careful planning, and it feels so good to buy a card you know someone else is gunning for and blowing their big turn.  

I am not good at this game, but I really do love it.

#67 Istanbul
BGG Rank: 144
Plays: 7
My Rating: 8
BGG Rating: 7.412
User Avg Rating: 7.6

Ah! I mentioned this one in my last post as being a game I adore but don’t get out as much now that I own the expansions. That mental block is a shame, as this game is a brilliant pathing and efficiency puzzle that can be different every time you play it. You lay out the 16 locations in a 4×4 grid, and you travel that grid dropping off or collecting workers, getting goods, and ultimately trying to be the first to trade enough coins and goods to snag 5 (or 6) rubies. The way those tiles come out, though, can affect the whole game. Is the tea house where you can gamble for cash close to the caravansary where you can pay coins to expand your cart? That might be a valuable loop to exploit. Are some goods close to their respective mosques? Might want to be the first to grab those associated upgrades.

It always makes me tax my brain trying to figure out the best route around the board so I don’t run out of workers before I can make things happen. That puzzle just makes me so happy, and even the best laid plans can be foiled by someone taking your spot on the board. I don’t care how good that spot is. I’m NOT paying you to use it. No way. I’ll just find a different space to go to this time. Those are the breaks in Istanbul.

#66 Riverboat
BGG Rank: 925
Plays: 1
My Rating: 7.5
BGG Rating: 6.599
User Avg Rating: 7.5

I guess you’re planting crops, selling them, and shipping them down river in this game. I heard Theo, Geeky Gaymer Guy, gushing about this one, took one look at the components, and knew I had to give it a shot. When I got it out of the box and did a solo, three-handed play, it was different than I expected it to be, but oh my gosh was it good. I love a game where you have to do the best with whatever random stuff you’re given, and this game does that pretty flawlessly. A random flip of cards tells you what fields you get to plant. Then you draft tiles to plant crops there, trying to satisfy conditions to earn points when you ship those goods downriver.

It sounds dry, and maybe it is. But if a game being dry is a sin, then I’m gonna have a lot of games I love to play in hell. The way you can build your own victory conditions out of the boats you choose from the harbor each round makes all the planning and careful drafting so satisfying in the end. I only hope I can get real people to play it with me so it won’t take 3 hours next time.

#65 Azul
BGG Rank: 65
Plays: 16
My Rating: 8
BGG Rating: 7.671
User Avg Rating: 7.8

Apparently I sync up with BGG on this one. We both think it deserves the 65th spot in our lists. Neat coincidence!

If you’re looking to get into hobby gaming, or if you have friends who are intimidated by complex rulesets, go get a copy of Azul. It’s dead simple, gorgeous, and it plays so quickly that I can all but guarantee everyone will want to immediately give it another go when you’re done.  

The theme is whatever, Spanish palace blah blah blah tiles. But the drafting mechanism makes sense and leaves room for strategic selections that make you feel like a genius. Of course, it can also be super mean, especially at 2 players.  Select some tiles, put them in the planning rows, and when those are full, transfer one tile to the main wall design, scoring adjacency points and completing columns and a row for bonuses. Spoiler alert: this is my favorite of all the Azul games and the one that started the series. It’s easily the most elegant, teachable, and replayable of the bunch. And when you’ve exhausted both the printed side and the build-your-own-pattern side of the board, you can try one of the other titles in the series. I’d suggest Summer Pavilion. But honestly, this game is one I can see playing for the rest of my life.

#64 Just One
BGG Rank: 146
Plays: 7
My Rating: 7
BGG Rating: 7.405
User Avg Rating: 7.6

Cooperative party games that also happen to be word games land in a very weird sweet spot for me. I like a game everyone can get involved in. I love a game where we’re all trying to work together, and I LOVE a good word game. Just One manages to teach itself in the title. Everyone has a dry-erase placard and a marker. You make a pile of 13 cards with 5 words on them apiece. The active player takes and shows a card with 5 word choices on it and then picks a number 1-5 without looking at the card. The clue givers are going to look at the card, see which word the person chose, and then write JUST ONE word on their placard that might clue the active player in to the word they unknowingly chose.  

The twist is that before the active player gets to see the clues everyone wrote down, all the clue givers have to show each other what they wrote. Anyone who duplicated a clue has to erase it, and the guesser doesn’t get to see it. For example, the word to guess is milk. So your awesome clues of “chocolate,” “dairy,” “drink,” and “cold” were ruined by another “drink.” Therefore, the active player gets to see “chocolate,” “dairy,” and” cold.” Sure, they might guess their word, but they’re probably more likely to guess “ice cream.” Crucial bits of info can be lost, leaving the rest of the clues misleading and strange. It’s a hell of a lot of fun, and our group always gets a huge laugh out of Just One.  

#63 Splendor
BGG Rank: 193
Plays: 55
My Rating: 9
BGG Rating: 7.316
User Avg Rating: 7.4

I remember when I bought this game. The woman at the game store put a pile of the chips in my hand after explaining a game that, to me, sounded pretty basic. She must have seen me coming, because I walked out of there with the game after feeling the heft of those tokens. Like I’ve said, I’m a slut for good bits. I immediately went over to my friend Hamster’s place, and we broke it out of the box. We must have played six games of it in a row!  It just blew our minds.

There might not be much apparent appeal in taking colored chips, turning them in for cards with permanent reserve currency and points, and racing to get 15 points before your opponents, but even with a tacked on theme (there’s a Marvel one now if you’re into that), it’s just super compelling to me. If you haven’t tried it, give it a whirl. There’s a pretty cheap app you can get if you can’t find a physical copy, and the AI is good. I’d recommend Splendor wholeheartedly.

#62 Castello Methoni
BGG Rank: 7584
Plays: 2
My Rating: 5.8
BGG Rating: 5.600
User Avg Rating: 6.8

Sometimes I have absolutely no interest in or knowledge of a game, and I buy it on the word of a passionate reviewer. Such is the case with Castello Methoni. I think right now the only place you can get it is from the Board Game Geek Store. And the reviewer I saw speak about it was BGG’s own W. Eric Martin, who speaks passionately and intelligently about pretty much every game he reviews. Consider that your warning. I buy a lot of games he talks about.  

The economy of this game is run by the players as they build out the board, claiming space for their faction and deciding how to value tracts of land as they take over leadership with their color of pieces. The bits for this are cute little plastic walls and fortresses and stuff, and the artwork is gorgeous. It’s a game that’s deeper than it looks at first glance, and I’m going to need more than two plays of this to wrap my head around it. It’s at this spot on my list because I can see what Eric was talking about, and I am interested to try it again.

#61 Space Base
BGG Rank: 192
Plays: 5
My Rating: 7.5
BGG Rating: 7.316
User Avg Rating: 7.6

Build a better space fleet by leveraging the power of probability! At least, I think that’s the theme here. Basically, you’re rolling a pair of dice on your turn, and you’re activating ships with values between 1 and 12. You can either activate both dice separately or take them as their paired value.  Either way, the ships being activated bring you income, currency, and points. The game is a race to 40 points. Although, you could be lucky enough to acquire the “YOU WIN” card and activate it, winning you the game instantly, but it’s not bloody likely.

Space Base is a game that feels a lot like Machi Koro, and it has a theme I like less.  And yet, I like this better. There’s more of a variety of powers, and you’re not hurting anyone on your turn. Also, you can really customize what rewards you get in a way that feels cooler and more free than Machi Koro. It’s a simple game with simple mechanisms, but I just really like putting together a huge payoff and then nailing it. Sometimes, though, the dice just don’t play nice.

Did anything on this list catch your eye? Any classics you haven’t tried yet or games that just didn’t speak to you? I’d love to see your opinions in the comments. Stay tuned as I wrap up the bottom 50 of my top 100 games next time.

As always, I appreciate your eyeballs, and thanks for giving me your time and attention.

~Justin

More Top Games:
100-91 
90-81 
80-71 
60-51 
50-41 
40-31 
30-21 
20-11 
10-1