Top 100 Board Games: 60-51

We’re at the end of the bottom half of my list. By now maybe you have a better idea of what I’m into and how I operate. If not, well, there’s a lot more coming. Let’s get this half over with and get to the good stuff!

#60 Heul Doch! Mau Mau
BGG Rank: 4439
Plays: 3
My Rating: 6.8
BGG Rating: 5.753
User Avg Rating: 6.7

This card game is so mean that it comes with a tissue in the box. I’m not even joking. The title roughly translates to “Why don’t you cry about it! Wahhh wahhhh!” That said, it’s really a great time, and it’s not long enough to make the meanness feel disheartening. You’re trying to play cards to your own stack of cards, but you HAVE to play to another person’s stack if you can. To reset your pile you can play an onion card, and at the end of the game you count the number of onion cards in your pile and that’s the face value of the card you lose all of. It can be devastating if you don’t keep an accurate count of what you’ve played.

I wish this one played more people, since we always seem to have too many at game night for this. But early in the night or late in the night, sometimes this one has hit the table to groans. I appreciate what it does with its simple rules, and it’s worth trying to snag a copy from overseas. I think maybe there’s a DIsney version coming out stateside, but you won’t catch me buying anything from them.

#59 Five Crowns
BGG Rank: 4165
Plays: 59
My Rating: 8
BGG Rating: 5.779
User Avg Rating: 6

Yeah, we really have played this game that many times. My brother met his wife while in the service, and her family were huge fans of this one. She introduced it to our family, and we introduced it to everyone who would be willing to play. There’s nothing groundbreaking about this game. You’re just making sets and runs and trying to play all your cards to go out, sticking others with points. It’s a great game for chatting, drinking, and swearing at each other. You play 10 rounds, the first with 3 cards dealt to you and 3s are wild, and the second with 4 cards dealt to you and 4s are wild. Continue up to 13 cards with Kings wild. Five suits make this one a little easier to make runs. And someone ALWAYS has a buttload of points by the end. That someone is usually me. Did I mention you’re trying not to score points.

It holds sentimental value more than any other game I own. Within the family we’ve probably got 10 copies of this game. It’s simple to find at Target or Wal Mart or whatever, and it’s worth the asking price. Simple, fun, with a dash of luck, it’s one your family will probably be happy to play with you. Just don’t be surprised when grandma calls you an asshole for going out and sticking her with 75 points worth of cards in her sweet, spotted hands.

#58 Las Vegas
BGG Rank: 545
Plays: 32
My Rating: 8
BGG Rating: 6.878
User Avg Rating: 7.1

Roll all of your dice. Place all of one denomination on the matching casino. If you have the most dice on that casino when everyone has rolled and placed their dice, you win the jackpot that was dealt there at the beginning of the round. Ties cancel each other out, leading to lots of laughs and shouting. That’s Las Vegas…baby? 

This is one of those games that I bust out at every gathering where people want to play a game but don’t want to learn a bunch of rules. If you can roll dice, you can play this game, and you’re more than likely going to be on equal footing with anyone who has played it, say, 32 times before. There’s not much else to it, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun. If you play with fewer than the max number of players, use the dummy dice. They can lead to hilarious situations nobody was expecting, and sometimes they’re even put to strategic use to thwart your friends. If you find a copy, get this. And skip the Royale version with all the bells and whistles. It’s not worth it.

#57 Milestones
BGG Rank: 3027
Plays: 3
My Rating: 7.7
BGG Rating: 5.924
User Avg Rating: 6.6

This was another game recommended by someone online. I saw the artwork and wondered how I hadn’t seen this Uwe Rosenberg game before. Turns out, it’s not Uwe. It just has similar art. In this game you build your own rondel, a circular path that dictates what actions are available to you at any time. You can go as far as you’d like around this path, but in doing so you miss out on everything you skip. You want to collect three different resources, build roads and buildings, and score points for the milestones around your structures. Each time around the circle you have to discard one of the worker tiles that’s on the path. Keeping up with that, deciding what you want to keep and what you maybe don’t need anymore, is a really fun exercise. Scoring those juicy point combos for far away milestones just feels good, too. 

This game is frequently on sale from online retailers, as it was pretty overlooked when it came out, I think. There’s a solid game here with a lot of fun in the box. If you’re looking for a euro with a cool action selection mechanism that doesn’t overstay its welcome, walk the extra few miles to your FLGS and see if they’ve got a dusty copy of Milestones on a shelf somewhere.

#56 Century: Spice Road
BGG Rank: 285
Plays: 10
My Rating: 8.2
BGG Rating: 7.156
User Avg Rating: 7.3

People often joke about dry games, saying things like, “What’s so fun about trading cubes for other cubes and trading those cubes in for others until you trade them in for points?” And my answer is usually that it’s satisfying. This game feels like someone was dared to make an awesome game out of the trade-cubes-for-other-cubes mechanism, and lemme tell you. They succeeded! 

You’re going to be buying cards from a market, using those cards to trade spices (cubes) for more valuable spices (other cubes), and ultimately fulfilling spice orders (cards with cube recipes on them) for points, Sounds like a crashing bore, but honestly, this game is great fun. It’s really an efficiency puzzle and a little bit of a hand management game, as you can take a rest turn to recover all your played cards and start the whole mess over again. This also comes in a Golem edition, which is just different artwork. I’ll stick with my spices out of spite, as I’m still bitter that they said they weren’t releasing the golem edition, and then they did after I bought this. And then they said there would be no more golem titles, and then they made this game’s sequels into golem titles. Oh, did I mention this is the first game in a trilogy that can be combined together to change up the games? Well, now I have.

#55 Nuns on the Run
BGG Rank: 1928
Plays: 18
My Rating: 8.8
BGG Rating: 6.173
User Avg Rating: 6.5

I saw this game on a table at my very first GenCon, and I didn’t know what it was, but the map of the church and its ground was enough for me to know I had to have it. I worked past my social anxiety and asked the folks what game it was, found it, and bought it. I’m so glad I did. It’s my fiance’s favorite game now, and it’s only partially because the theme of being young nuns sneaking around and hiding from the old nuns is amazing.

Hidden movement games can be a bear to teach, especially if there are a bunch of rules one party should know and a bunch of information to keep secret. Thankfully, this game simplifies the formula without losing any of the fun. You’ve got to get out of your cell, make it to a key and your secret wish, and make it back to your cell without getting caught. Someone has to play the Abbess and Prioress, stomping around listening for the naughty novices, but it’s just as fun as sneaking around, so that shouldn’t be too hard to get a volunteer for. 

Inevitably, you will plan a perfect route to and from, start to execute it, and be foiled by another player who gets caught making too much noise and draws the attention of the guards, screwing you over in the process while they skip away unscathed. It’s so much fun, and I’m so glad I saw it on that table almost ten years ago.

#54 Paris Connection
BGG Rank: 1740
Plays: 3
My Rating: 7.4
BGG Rating: 6.229
User Avg Rating: 6.7

This is about as simple a train game as you can get. You either lay track in one of six colors or take shares in one of six colors. Shares are cashed in for the value of the corresponding company at the end of the game, and that value is determined by how many cities the tracks connect to. The game ends when enough train tokens are exhausted or when someone builds to a specific city on the map in the far south. 

The fun in this one is deciding whether to increase shares or increase values. When do you stop building and let others do it for you? How can you know when to dump a company for a different one? How do you keep a company you have invested in all to yourself and not alert others to how valuable it is? You want to differentiate your portfolio from others, but it’s pretty obvious what the value of things is. It’s a great puzzle, and I’ve taught it to people who don’t play train games or complex games. I’ve brought it out at game night, too, and it satisfies a large crowd! Even better, I got it on super sale for, like, $6. It’s worth every dollar and then some.

#53 Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers
BGG Rank: 1757
Plays: 8
My Rating: 8.5
BGG Rating: 6.223
User Avg Rating: 7.5

This scenario-driven sequel to Burgle Bros has you scheming to pull a heist on a crowded and noisy casino. While I don’t like this one as well as its older brother (spoiler alert), it’s still a really solid game that my fiance and I have puzzled over for many hours. Evading the guards, braving the hazards of the pool and lounge event cards, finding your informants, and busting into the safe only to THEN reveal what’s in it and how you have to get it out of the building is a great twist on the original. Sometimes it’s a man-eating tiger, and you have to keep the guards out of its path and get out. Sometimes it’s gravity boots or a celebrity you have to get out. I won’t spoil the hilarity of each scenario, but suffice it to say that it’s always a brilliant puzzle.

We’ve played seven of the included nine scenarios and thoroughly enjoyed every one we’ve played, win or lose. We’ve won more than lost, but I think we’ve lost on two of them. And sometimes you may not even get the safe open to find out what heist you’re attempting to pull off. It’s a solid challenge with a good sense of humor and some awesome player powers. Even if you haven’t played the original, I’d recommend this one if you’re into tough co-op games.

#52 The Search for Planet X
BGG Rank: 130
Plays: 1
My Rating: 7.7
BGG Rating: 7.438
User Avg Rating: 8.1

I’ve only completed one search for the elusive Planet X, and it was a solo endeavor. That said, it’s cool that there is a deduction game you can play by yourself. If you know me, you know I’ll play any and all deduction games that come my way. I buy so many of them that I still have yet to try several (we can talk about my backlog later). So finding one I can play any time was a big score. 

So why have I only given this one a single play? Because part of the fun of deduction games is racing an opponent to the correct answer and comparing where we were when it’s all over. I’m gonna get this one to my friend Julie’s house one day and we’ll give it a proper try. I know I love this one because the theme is good, there are steps to take and points to score to put you ahead even if you’re not the one to figure it all out in the end. That’s different for a deduction game. Besides that, the astronomy theme is super compelling to me. So I’m comfortable having it at the near halfway mark on my list despite a single play. Maybe that says something good about The Search for Planet X.

#51 Deep Sea Adventure
BGG Rank: 706
Plays: 5
My Rating: 8
BGG Rating: 6.738
User Avg Rating: 6.9

There’s a lot of screaming in this tiny box of drowning your friends in a race for the most valuable treasure. A month ago I would have rated this much lower, but we had several plays of it at game night that were some of the most exciting, frustrating, and fun games we’ve ever had–and I mean, like, of everything we’ve ever played.

You see, sharing oxygen with everyone makes for tense turns where you’re praying for high die rolls to lug your armload of treasure back to the boat. But some moron just keeps grabbing more treasure with no hope of ever making it back to the boat. And because of that shared oxygen pool, they’re breathing 4x the air that you are, draining the supply every time their turn comes around. And at some point you realize there’s just no way you’re going to survive this round, and that’s when you curse your friends out and drown.

It’s loads of fun, and for just a few little chits and some wooden diver meeples, Oink Games has made something special here. They always do great stuff, and this is maybe the best game they’ve ever made. You can teach it in five minutes, tops, and it’s only in playing it that you realize how devious and hilarious the design really is. Take a dive with your friends and see if they’re really loyal or if they value treasure more than they value the very air they (or you) breathe!

With that, we’re now at the halfway point. You know what that means! DRUM SOLO!!!!!

*drum solo commences, and it is epic*

Next time, we’ll breach the top half of this list, finally. Forget everything you’ve seen here. It’s all garbage compared to what comes after!

As always, I appreciate your eyeballs.

~Justin

More Top Games:
100-91 
90-81 
80-71 
70-61 
50-41 
40-31 
30-21 
20-11 
10-1