Top 100 Board Games of All Time, 2022 Edition (10-1)

So here we go: the definitive list of top ten board games in the world, as of right this moment. All those other games I’ve listed before? They’re all crap. Fuck you, game #11, you didn’t cut the mustard. Here, this list here, is the good shit.

But you know, if you’re actually interested in the older entries, here they are:
 100-91 90-81 80-71 70-61 60-51 50-41 40-31 30-21 20-11

Like many gamers, I had quite a backlog coming out of the pandemic, so this year I put special emphasis on playing lots of new games and evaluating them, and it shows in the results. Roughly 30% of the list is new blood, which is very high, but frankly the list had gotten somewhat stagnant in recent years, and so a shakeup was in order.

The top of the list isn’t as fluid as the rest, though. Only two new games in the top that I’ve never listed before, although as we will see, one of them is a variant of my former #1 game of all time…

On to the list!

10. Architects of the West Kingdom

Released: 2018
Designer: S J Macdonald, Shem Phillips
Players: 1-5
Estimated Time: 60-80 minutes

It’s weird to not think of Shem Phillips as an up-and-coming design talent. His breakout hit, Raiders of the North Sea (an excellent title that fell off the list this year), put him on the map and since then he’s released about a game a year. All of them solid. Most of them bangers. We’ve already seen one already (Paladins of the West Kingdom).

The thread that connects Shem’s games is to reinvent the worker placement mechanic in interesting and creative ways. Architects is his best title. In most worker placement games, when you place a worker, you take an action and no one else can go there. As an example, you might go to the lumber mill, take one piece of wood, and then noone else can go to the lumbermill until a game mechanic makes you move or remove your worker.

In Architects, anyone can go to the lumber mill, even if someone’s there. More to the point, you can go to the lumber mill, and not only are you not prevented from doing so, but the strength of the action is based on how many dudes you’ve got there. As an example, placing your fourth dude on the lumber mill will get you four pieces of lumber.

That’s a lot of lumber! Such power is not without it’s downsides though. Clump up your workers too much, and they’ll be a tempting target for your opponent. They can place a worker to arrest all of your workers in a single location and send them to jail. They’ll end up getting rewards for their efforts, and you’ll need to waste a turn busting them out of prison. This press-your-luck mechanism transforms simple worker placement into a very different kind of game entirely, one with a lot more interactivity, and one with a lot more risk vs reward evaluation.

As an aside, Shem’s newest game Wayfarers of the South Tigris currently sits on my gaming table unplayed. Itarrived too late to make this list, but looking it over, it looks very likely that something’s going to have to be bumped out to make room for it next year.

9. Gùgōng

Released: 2018
Designer: Andreas Steding
Players: 1-5
Estimated Time: 60-90

Some games are basically solitaire – your game interactions don’t affect other people very much. Some games are highly interactive, and the pinnacle of that experience are games with a high ‘take that’ factor (or ‘fuck you’ factor, if you’re less PC about it). This game is a different animal entirely – it is a game where players are very highly likely to accidentally screw over their opponent’s plans. As a result, some of the funniest game nights I’ve ever had have centered on games of Gugong.

The premise is simple. There are seven action spaces around the board, and each action space has, at any given time, a card on it representing a gift with a number from 1 to 9. Each round, you’ll have a hand of (at least) four gift cards also with a number.

This game attempts to reflect a period of Chinese history that was rife with corruption. The government outlawed bribes and gift giving, and so instead corrupt merchants got around that with gift exchanges – you give a government official a gift more valuable than what he has, and take his card. And so it is here. Want to take an action where the gift card is a 7? You’ll need to play an 8 or a 9. Have a 1 in your hand? It will only beat 9s. To make matters more complex, the card you pick up will (almost always) be worse than you placed down, and won’t be playable until next round.

The thing that makes this fiendish, of course, is that you’re constantly messing up other people’s plans. My 7 is perfectly fine for placing on that 4-spot. But that option disappears if you drop an 8 on it before my turn comes around. This is one of those games where you need to get in the mindset of not getting too attached to your plans, but if you can get into that mental headspace, Gugong can be uproariously fantastic.

8. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1

Released: 2015
Designer: Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock
Players: 2-4
Estimated Time: 60 minutes

I honestly don’t get too many campaign games. Frankly, myself and those at my table would prefer to see a variety of games than stick to one week-over-week, and in many campaign games, the game doesn’t really unfold and stretch its wings until you get a few missions in. Which is challenging because if the first games don’t grab you, the table is going to be reluctant to bring it to the table again to go deeper. This doesn’t happen in Pandemic Legacy.

Right out of the box, before anything else happens, you’re playing Pandemic, the 2008 granddaddy of cooperative gaming with virtually no gameplay changes, so you know it’s good. Early on, though, a card will tell you to pick up another card in the game and– destroy it. And so you rip it in half. And if your group hasn’t played a campaign game before, they’ll audibly gasp.

The rest of the game will be modified as the game goes on, adding new complexity, player roles and challenges. There are places in the rulebook to add stickers as they’re unlocked. In the box, there are 8 smaller boxes with new game components to add as the game unfolds. There are marks next to each city on your board that you cross out when a city gets overrun – too many marks and the city is permanently destroyed for the rest of the campaign. And the story itself is very dynamic – with both triumphs and… let’s just call them ‘unexpected setbacks’.

Since Season 1 has been released, there have been two more released. Scuttlebutt says that Season 2 more radically invents the formula, where Season 0 is a prequel set in the cold war and in general is less adventurous but better reviewed. I haven’t played either yet – my attention for campaign games went to another game this year — as we shall soon see.

7. Lost Ruins of Arnak

Released: 2020
Designer: Elwen, Min
Players: 1-4
Estimated Time: 30-120

Arnak is a “worker placement+deckbuilder” game, an unusual and relatively new game genre that’s enjoyed some success. We’ve already looked at another one on this list – Dune Imperium – and there are many who believe that Dune is the superior game. I’m here to tell you these people are wrong.

Dune is excellent and a worthy addition to any game library, especially if you love sci-fi involving gigantic drug-addled invertibrates. But Arnak‘s Indiana Jones’ inspired theme is criminally underexplored in board games, and really sings here. Dune is slick and glossy. Arnak is a huge, gaudy visual feast. Dune is simple and streamlined. Arnak is more fiddly, and offers more varied, interesting and thematically appropriate paths to victory.

The gameplay conceit is simple – you’re trying to find the titular Lost Ruins. To do so, you’ll explore lots of random locations, which results in adding new action spaces on a board. New worker placement games added to a board is a game mechanic I always love, as it always creates a new dynamic puzzle for people to react to. They’ll also be accruing resources and acquiring new cards, in hopes of making a deck that allows them to explore deeper and gain greater efficiencies.

In all seriousness, you can’t go wrong with either game. But to me, Dune is an excellent snack, whereas Lost Ruins of Arnak is a sumptuous feast.

6. Yokohama

Released: 2016
Designer: Hisashi Hayashi
Players: 2-4
Estimated Time: 90 minutes

Yokohama has an intimidating board presence. More than a dozen game boards are laid out in a pyramid-shape meant to represent the sleepy village of Yokohama as it is on the cusp of becoming a major Japanese city. But don’t be intimidated. The game is far simpler than it looks, and underneath all this cardboard is a finely tuned game design machine.

The core game concept is borrowed heavily from Istanbul. On a players turn, they will start by either dropping three workers (little meeples) on three different locations – or alternatively dropping two workers on the same location. Then they move their big meeple (representing the head of their company) to any location, assuming they can trace a path of workers between their start and final location.

The strength of the action where they land is based on the number of pieces of wood in their color where they land. This includes their chairman as well as any workers they placed. But it can also include houses and warehouses they build. Want your game plan to really lean into fish and tea? Well, build houses there, and all your actions in those spots immediately become more powerful.

Yokohama was my number one game last year, and I have a hard time seeing it fall out of the top 10 anytime soon. It’s just too good of a core game design, and while heavy, one that will keep me fascinated for years to come.

5. Beyond the Sun

Released: 2020
Designer: Dennis K Chan
Players: 2-4
Estimated Time: 60-120

Beyond the Sun is basically “Skill Trees: The Game” and if that description appeals to you, you probably should just go over to Amazon and order it right now.

The centerpiece of the game is a massive skill tree. Players start with basic technologies, which act as prereqs for other, better technologies. When players advance to a skillbox that is as of yet undiscovered, they choose between two technologies which will go into that skillbox. Other players can, later on, unlock the technology you discovered.

Skillboxes offer you a variety of upgrades to your experience, including persistent effects, but also including new worker placement locations, which are more powerful than the basic ones all players have access to later in the game. But because this is a worker placement game, two players sharing the same tech means sometimes they’re fighting for the same space, which encourages you to unlock new technologies no one has ever seen before.

On a smaller board to the side is a tiny little galaxy map, with a handful of galactic locations for players to fight for. Ultimately, your skill tree advances lead here, to players building ships and traversing the galaxy, with the purpose of adding these zones to your empire – and earning not just special bonuses but also the victory points they represent.

If I had one complaint about the game, it’s that it feels a little dry. The core board is basically a string of boxes, and the player boards (shown above) definitely favor functionality over aesthetics. But that’s never slowed down anyone’s appreciation for Beyond the Sun. If you like fiddling with skill trees, this game will sing to you.

4. Champions of Midgard

Released: 2015
Designer: Ole Steiness
Players: 2015
Estimated Time: 60-90 minutes

Champions of Midgard is a midweight game that combines basic worker placement with the dice-chucking of an Ameritrash combat game. It’s relatively simple for its weight class, easy to teach, and rarely exceeds that 90 minute playtime.

On a player’s turn, they’ll place meeples to earn various resources, such as wood, food and gold. But the most important resource a player can earn are dice – these represent your viking warriors and your boat can hold eight of them. There are three colors of dice, each with different sides to them that represents different offensive and defensive abilities.

After the worker placement phase, players will divide up their dice to attack monsters that they’ve called dibs on. If you kill monsters, you can get big rewards – but the dice are random, life is fleeting, and you’re always a couple bad rolls away from calamity.

Champions of Midgard is a fantastic game, and relatively easy to get to the table. Some players don’t like the randomness of the dice, though, and while I don’t agree, the Valhalla expansion solves this nicely. Not only does it add three new kinds of dice, it also rewards you with chits when your vikings die, that can be traded for benefits. Benefits so nice that sometimes the right move is to send your Viking clan straight into the meat grinder.

3. Whistle Mountain

Released: 2020
Designer: Scott Caputo, Luke Laurie
Players: 2-4
Estimated Time: 60-90 minutes

Whistle Mountain is a new entry on the list, and definitely the highest all-new game to do so. Coming in this high is pretty impressive, which gives you an idea of how much I like this game. I love this game.

By now, you’ve probably noticed that I like worker placement games. Well, this is a worker placement game on five bags of crack. It’s a game where players create the placement opportunities themselves, and where the game state constantly destroys them.

The center of the board is a large grid. On that grid, you will slowly build scaffolding. As the scaffolding develops, they will slowly add rooms to the scaffolding.

Your ‘workers’ are three airships. One takes one space, one takes two, and the last takes three. Airships can only be placed in certain locations, but they gain all the benefits on the tiles (scaffolding and rooms) that their airship is adjacent to. Your big ship could potentially touch more spaces, but your small ship is much better at taking advantage of tiny spaces.

To make matters more challenging, once your careful stack of machinery and scaffolding gets above a certain height, the valley begins to flood. Flooding will cover up the lower levels of scaffolding, which means that old locations get wiped off the map.

Whistle Mountain is not a casual game and I wouldn’t drop it in front of everyone. But if you have a gaggle of seasoned gamers who love surfing on the edge of chaos, Whistle Mountain is really hard to beat.

2. Clank Legacy – Acquisitions Incorporated

Released: 2019
Designer: Andy Clautice, Paul Dennen
Players: 2-4
Estimated Time: 90-120 Minutes

This is the other new game on my list, but since it’s a tweak of one of my top games of all-time – Clank was my number one game a couple years ago – it only kind of counts. I knew I’d love it as soon as I saw the box, I just needed to be willing to commit to the campaign.

The basic Clank formula is largely unchanged. This is a deckbuilder with a board presence, where players are trying to explore a dungeon, grab the shiniest bauble they can find and get out. The complication is that they’ll make noise along the way (‘clank’), which is represented as cubes. Occasionally the dragon attacks, at which point cubes are pulled out of the bag. If your cubes are pulled, you take damage.

The core formula of Clank is perfect, and one that is appreciable by both hardcore and casual gamers alike. Part of the reason its so great is that Clank accelerates so smoothly. The end of almost every game is entertaining as hell, everyone tries to make a mad dash out of the dungeon before being barbequed by dragon fire.

Clank: Legacy expands on this with the usual fare, of course. As players adventure, they’ll add new cards to the market to buy, or add stickers to the deck, or add new rules to the rulebook and game components to the box. But the real charm of the game is the writing.

Clank: Legacy partnered with Penny Arcade to help flesh out the writing, and the result is a god damned treat. In this new Clank world, adventuring is a corporate enterprise, complete with helicopter bosses, annual reviews, and corporate espionage against a rival firm. And every game design decision in the campaign just works masterfully to support this vision.

I’m always reluctant to give out too many details in campaign games, as I don’t want to scuttle the surprises. But a great example is that a few missions in, the game adds a new resource called Interns. What are interns good for? Mostly, for throwing in front of monsters to soak damage for you. And as a bonus, when an intern dies, he gets thrown in the dragon bag, and could be drawn instead of a player cube. Which strongly incentivizes the whole table to hilariously farm interns and throw them into the meat grinder.

Clank! was already a great game, but Clank: Legacy takes it to the next level, because lighthearted tone of the game and the Penny Arcade writing go together like peanut butter and chocolate. If you have a gaming group that loves absurdity can commit to the whole campaign (about 10 games), definitely recommended.

1. Great Western Trail

Released: 2016
Designer: Alexander Pfister
Players: 2-4
Estimated Time: 75-150 minutes

Great Western Trail is Alexander Pfister’s opus, a nearly flawless game about driving cattle from Texas to Kansas City. Also, it’s got meeples with little cowboy hats.

The basics are simple. A player has a hand of cards (that happen to be cows). They want to end up in Kansas City with the best hand of cards possible – which happens to be unique high value cows. They’ll cash in those cows, earn victory points, and be sent back to Nowhere, texas to do it again.

The path from Nowhere to Kansas City has many stops. A player can move up to three spaces each turn. Each space that they stop on has different actions they can take, such as adding new cows to their deck, building new buildings to stop at that are more powerful, unlocking new victory cards, and so on.

But each of these stops ALSO offers rewards – usually cash – for crappy cows. You want to get these cows out of your deck anyway. So using these spaces not only gains you benefits, they also provide an opportunity for you to weed through your deck to get those high value cards you want to find before you get to Kansas City.

Great Western Trail is a great game straight out of the box, but it really cements it’s #1 status with the addition of the Rails to the North expansion (pictured above). This adds a new vector to the game, where players can try to build houses to connect railroad towns beyond Kansas City. It definitely makes the game heavier – and players who are overwhelmed may opt to ignore this secondary board entirely – but it adds another gameplay vector and also loosens up some tight spots in the game balance that players often stumbled over early in the game. Definitely recommended as well.

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And that’s it for this year’s list! Be sure to check back next year, when I defy my better judgment and do this all over again!

Also, please do leave a comment here if you read this far – tell me what I inspired you to buy, or what I forgot to rank. Making lists like this is pretty high effort, and it’s good to know it’s reaching people. See you next year!