Top 100 Board Games: 30-21

It’s been a bit since my last entry. I’m still working on it, but sometimes life just gets in the way. I’m gonna try to commit to a schedule in the future as a new year’s resolution, but I don’t know what that’s gonna look like.

Anyway, you’re not here for that. Check out this list! Ten more games, and these are super great! I’d be thrilled to play any of them at any time. I’d say these games give anyone a good look at my gaming tastes. Let’s get to it!

#30 Terra Mystica
BGG Rank: 23
Plays: 3
My Rating: 8.8
BGG Rating: 7.951
User Avg Rating: 8.1

There’s something special about this big dumb hulk of a thing.  It’s a beast to set up.  It’s a beast to teach.  It’s a beast to relearn every time I want to play it again.  And it’s long.  So very long.  And yet, here it sits on my list.  There’s just something about receiving a player power, looking at the board, and clawing toward points in a way that makes sense for your faction.  

In the briefest of descriptions, Terra Mystica is a dry euro game that has you settling some fantasy lands alongside friends and soon-to-be enemies by terraforming areas into more favorable terrain, building out to gain more income and player powers, and ultimately spending several turns trying to pull of a great strategic coup only to realize you’ve miscalculated your resource income and you’re short one crucial thing you need to pull it off.

It’s really a fun game, and the magic bowls will make absolutely zero sense to you the first time you play.  And maybe the second.  But when it clicks, all of a sudden you’re not scared to throw some away to cycle that pot faster and get a windfall of stupid-good actions all at once.  I think you should give it a try at least once.  And then one more time, because the end of that first game will stick with you until you screw up in a different way.  Just like those power bowls, it’s a cycle.

#29 Fjords
BGG Rank: 3992
Plays: 3
My Rating: 8
BGG Rating: 5.795
User Avg Rating: 7.3

Fjords is a relaxing map making game that somehow turns into a knife fight in a phone booth.  You and a friend or two or three are just building a beautiful scandinavian landscape, placing longhouses from which will spring hordes of conquerors, and then realizing what is about to happen and doing your damnedest to screw over your friends’ plans for having their own little slice of heaven among the fjords. 

The second phase of the game, when all the map tiles are placed, sees you placing vikings one at a time onto the hex map to claim terrain.  One wrong move can net your opponents serious points that could have been yours if you had ONLY SEEN WHAT THEY WERE DOING ONE TURN EARLIER!

You spend a while building the map, and the viking phase is over in a flash, which feels sorta thematic for what you’re doing.  There’s no fighting, really, just spreading out strategically.  The base game is a really good time, and the Kickstarter version I got came with runestones to mix up the game.  I haven’t even touched them yet.  I just love the base game so much that I haven’t needed to.

#28 Yokohama
BGG Rank: 118
Plays: 1
My Rating: 8
BGG Rating: 7.476
User Avg Rating: 7.8

Do you like Istanbul?  Do you want to play three games of it at once?  Cool.  Give Yokohama a try!  If you’re paying attention, you’ll see that I’ve only ever played this once.  It was a three-handed solo game that lasted forever.  It was a ton of fun and I couldn’t wait to teach it and play it with someone who I thought would enjoy it as much as I do.  That was FIVE YEARS AGO.  Five years.

Some day I will find someone who actually wants to play this game with me, and we’ll have a great time moving our pieces across the ten thousand board spaces, acquiring fish and tea and contracts, donating to the church, and shipping goods across the sea.  It’s a neat efficiency puzzle that I still remember making me feel great.

There are a few games in my collection that share the same feat.  I truly believe there are games in my collection that will never get played (looking at you, Oath, Shogun, Empires of the Void II), and I hope this isn’t going to be one of them.  It just looks so complicated on the table that it scares people away.  I can relate.

#27 Can’t Stop
BGG Rank: 756
Plays: 36
My Rating: 8.6
BGG Rating: 6.707
User Avg Rating: 6.9

This game, on the other hand, I’ve played almost 40 times.  Why?  Because I CAN’T STOP.  It’s quick.  It’s fun.  And god damnit, I’m going to make it to the top of the 7 row in one turn, I’m just sure of it this time!  Oh, a 2?  I’ll take that instead.  I only have to roll two more to conquer that column.  I’m sure it’ll happen!  Spoiler alert: it probably won’t.

You roll 4 dice, make 2 pairs, and moveone of 3 markers up the matching columns on the stop-sign-shaped board.  You make it to the top of 3 columns?  You win.  You roll a pair that doesn’t match something you’re going for that round?  You bust and lose that round’s progress.  It’s that simple.  Seriously.  And it’s compelling as heck.  

Get on that 6, 7, 8 game and you could win it in one turn.  It’s not probable, but it’s possible.  I’ve never done it in real life, just on the now-deceased app.  And it felt so good.  Whenever we have a little time at the end of game night, I reach for this one.  Everyone understands how it works, the math behind it, and the risks and rewards of playing it.  It just creates fun.  Worth every penny.

#26 Acquire
BGG Rank: 303
Plays: 2
My Rating: 6.8
BGG Rating: 7.134
User Avg Rating: 7.3

Acquire is one of those games I was curious about but figured I probably wouldn’t like.  It seemed like an extremely dry game where you had little control over what happened.  I’d also seen various versions that looked so different from each other.  I was confused for a long time.  Then I watched a playthrough of it, and I knew I had to have it.  

Basically, you’re drawing tiles out of a bag that give you a spot on a 100 or more space (again, versioning) board.  Think Battleship.  You know, like B4 and J10.  That tile is a building you can place into the grid.  If you ever put more than one building next to each other, you can incorporate it and start collecting stock for that building.  The value of that stock depends on the size of the complex when it is inevitably gobbled up by a bigger complex encroaching on its area.  When that happens, people get paid out for their shares.  They can then decide to trade them in 2-1 for the new company or keep them in hopes of starting that company again.  

It’s less complex than I’ve made it seem, but it’s great to watch the board unfold and fortunes come and go.  It’s a classic for a reason, and you owe it to yourself to give this one a try.  If you don’t have a copy or can’t find a copy, I’d always be happy to teach it.

#25 Via Nebula
BGG Rank: 963
Plays: 3
My Rating: 7.5
BGG Rating: 6.578
User Avg Rating: 7

Three words:  shared route building.  The second I heard a description of this game I knew I had to have it.  You uncover pathways through the dense fog of this land, finding building sites and trying to connect them to places where you have found resources.  Connect the right recipe on a card to build that building, which will give you points and maybe a power.  I actually can’t remember if there’s powers on the cards.

Whatever.  It’s really good.  The components are awesome.  The tray in the box is one of the best and one of the first of its kind.  I love that you have to try to help yourself without helping out your opponents too much.  They can steal resources from the site where they’re stockpiled, since all resources are public.  So not only are you trying to acquire resources for your buildings, but you’re trying to make sure that others can’t get to them.  Use those movement restrictions to your advantage to be the first to construct a certain number of buildings.  Most points wins, which is usually the person who triggered the endgame, but it doesn’t have to be.

If you want a comparison, my first thought was that it was TransAmerica but with a game attached to it.  It’s a solid title with a lot to offer, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome.  Also, the board is double sided, so you can play an easier or harder game.  Bonus!

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

Medici is, simply put, the best bidding game out there.  Sure, the theme is boring, but the game is dynamite.  It’s dead simple, too.  Your points are money, so the economy is just a question of how many points something is worth versus how much you’re willing to give up for it.  It’s easier to value something when you know that it’s possibly going to get you 10 points, which is ten dollars.  

You fill your ship with goods each round, gaining bonus points for the most valuable ship and the majority in each of sex (seven?) goods.  Three rounds, and whomever has the most money (points) is the winner.  It’s just so satisfying and so fun flipping over goods cards and stopping when you have a juicy set of goods you know your opponents will fight over.

There’s not much more to say about it.  I only wish they hadn’t killed the app for this.  It was a great way to play it over and over.  This is a hard one for me to get to the table with a game group that doesn’t love auction games.  That said, I still try.  It’s worth it, and someday they’ll enjoy themselves.

#23 Terraforming Mars
BGG Rank: 5
Plays: 8
My Rating: 9.2
BGG Rating: 8.259
User Avg Rating: 8.4

The fifth most popular game in the world at the time of me making this list.  That’s a pretty huge claim.  And, honestly, maybe BGG isn’t the most accurate ranking of popularity of games in the whole world.  I’d imagine Chess and Go and Poker are probably way more popular than anything on this list.  But being in the top 5 on BGG is a big deal.  And this game deserves to be here.

You’re buying and playing cards, placing cities and forests and oceans on Mars to try and raise the temperature and oxygen level to habitable levels, all while trying to be the one who does the best at this collective task.  There are so many expansions to this game, and you don’t need any of them to have a good time, although Prelude has been said to speed the game along to a place where it feels like it’s going along at a good clip.  The start can be slow.

I just love how everything works together in this game.  It’s a tight race to the top, and feeling like a badass in one area or another makes me want to play this game over and over.  Sure, the art is terrible and the game is a little too long, but I don’t even care.  It’s friggin good.  Build your tableau.  Introduce critters to the red planet.  Crash an asteroid into the ground for fun and profit.

#22 Coimbra
BGG Rank: 187
Plays: 2
My Rating: 8.6
BGG Rating: 7.321
User Avg Rating: 7.7

One of my favorite types of games feature mechanisms that are all tied up in a tight little knot.  Every decision you make affects every facet of strategy.  Coimbra fits snugly in this category.  You’re placing dice to sort of bid for the order in which you take cards that then go into a tableau, building an income engine that can ultimately give you end game scoring.  The color of the die you place moves markers on different matching tracks, and, if I remember correctly, do some other things, too. 

Look, it’s been a while since I’ve played this one because it’s sort of a beast to teach.  You have to teach everything up front, since anything you do can change a lot of factors all at once.  It’s not easy to get to the table, but oh my gosh it’s fun to pull levers and try to put something together.  Also, there’s a map element to it that I didn’t even mention.

It’s colorful.  It’s beautiful.  It’s got great components.  And it’s a hell of a lot of fun to try to figure out.  I’d recommend it when you want to play around in a strategic playground while…doing…whatever it is the theme is.  I don’t even care.  Just give me more colorful, knotty euros. 

#21 Five Tribes
BGG Rank: 73
Plays: 7
My Rating: 9
BGG Rating: 7.635
User Avg Rating: 7.8

In Five Tribes there are, you guessed it, five tribes.  But you’re not one of them.  You’re an outsider vying for the sultanate by manipulating those tribes into doing your will.  Also there’s genies.  Whatever.  Theme.  What you’re doing is plopping out a shitload of meeples onto a board and using a mancala mechanic to pick everything up from one board and drop meeples one at a time on neighboring boards as you sort of travel across the map.  The last meeple you drop activates the tribe that matches its color, meaning you scoop up all the meeples that match the last one you placed on that tile, and you do the action of that tribe.

These actions can be assassinating a meeple, collecting viziers, controlling genies, or scoring points for surrounding tiles with matching meeples.  It all seems very convoluted, and choosing what to do can lead to some analysis paralysis.  But the game itself is pretty simple, and there are a lot of paths to victory, all of which are equally viable.

I seriously love this game.  I own all the expansions, but I’ve never played any of them.  That’s how good the base game is.  I’ll always be down for a game of Five Tribes, because each game is a different puzzle to crack with a random layout of meeples.  It’s just good fun all around.

I’m getting excited for the top 20 games! Honestly, at this point in the list, any game would be a good one to try if you’ve never played them. Pick a game and slap it on the table! You’ll have a good time. And going forward on this list, it just gets better!

I appreciate your eyeballs!

~Justin

More Top Games:
100-91 
90-81 
80-71 
70-61 
60-51 
50-41 
40-31 
20-11 
10-1