Designer: Elad Goldsteen

In Prime Time, you will contribute to the continuing moral and philosophical decline of America by filling the boob tube with cheap crap meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator.  Perhaps you’ll even develop the reality star that produces a know-nothing twit that gets elected president and brings the planet to the brink of disaster!  Huzzah!

You are a TV executive, that is currently running crappy, forgettable programming.  You’ll hire stars, develop shows, and secure advertisers in order to make a fortune.  Better shows and stars cost more money, and there’s an auction mechanic to claim them.  And some actors are better at certain things — you know, Sci-fi stars will do better for you in your shitty Star Trek ripoff than reality TV celebs.

Interesting Mechanic: Viewer Demographics.  For each day of the week, there are demographics that prefer to watch TV that day — blue cubes prefer Mondays, for example whereas pink ones prefer Fridays.  When players develop shows, they want to develop shows that are optimized to satisfy those demographics.  Players can look ahead in a forecast section of the board to see how demographics will change over time, and players can manipulate those cubes with HR.  It’s a neat way to capture a relatively complex problem.

There were two Television Planning games that came out near each other: Networks and Prime Time.  Both are entertaining, and most people prefer Networks as its an easier game to play, but I prefer Prime Time, as it’s a meatier, more innovative design.

Designer: Christian T. Petersen

A tense, strategic territorial control game built on the George R. R. Martin books, you control one of the great houses of Westeros, and live out your fantasy of just punishing the Lannisters just because fucking Joffrey, man.

Game of Thrones is a surprisingly simple game, at least mechanically, where players attempt to claim 7 castles in fewer than 10 turns. Each turn starts with random events (some good some bad), and then players plan what they’re going to do. Possible actions include attacking, defending, supporting a nearby army, earning command points you can bid for bonuses, and others.

Interesting Mechanic: Simultaneous Action Reveal. This is really the meat of the game – each player has a host of tokens that they can place, face down, on each of their armies, which gives other players some idea of where their focus is, but you don’t see what they actually plan to do until all tokens are revealed simultaneously. At this point, players resolve these actions one at a time in turn order. This way of commanding your troops does a great job of creating tensions, creating opportunities to bluff and feint, and to draw your opponents into a trap.

Game of Thrones has a lot going on for it beyond the license, which it captures very well. It has allusions to Diplomacy without destroying friendships, and has a feel of Risk without taking 6 hours to play. While it’s not my favorite territorial control game, it still is very, very good.

(Photo Credit: Shut Up & Sit Down)

Designer: Vital Lacerda

Live the life of a pretentious artistic tastemaker, discovering new talent and then ruthlessly exploiting their creative drive and quest for fame for your own profit and glory.

The Gallerist is a game that manages to both be dizzying complex and yet offers a surprisingly constrained set of choices to the player. You will have your own art gallery. Running it, you will need to acquire new art, advertise to lure the masses in, discover and foster new talent, and compete on the international market.

Much like the same designer’s previous work Kanban, the Gallerist is a complicated board. While there are only 8 actions you can take on any given turn, each one may have three or four subcomponent actions you need to remember to do. Also, the International Market is the least interesting part of the game, but is one of the highest scoring. The game would be served better by making this feel less tacked on. Still, if you like dense Eurogames, this is a good one.

Interesting mechanic: Assistant Actions. There are a couple of mechanics that I like about this game, but one of the most intriguing is the worker placement. When you move your worker, you can leave an assistant behind on the old spot. Your assistant doesn’t block other players from moving there, and in fact, they can go where your pawn is. However, if anyone does, you can pay a small fee to take that action as well. In a full game, this results in a lot of free actions, and figuring out how to get these free actions (or ensuring that you deny those free actions to certain players) is a key part of the strategy of the game.

(Photo Credit: An essen report for boardgamegeek)

Designer: Tom McMurchie

You are a dragon, flying through the sky. Your goal is simple, don’t fall off the edge of the earth, and try not to create a Hindenburg-sized explosion when crashing into any other dragons.

Interesting Mechanic: Tile Laying Dictating Opponent’s Paths. The gameplay is bone simple. On your turn, you lay a tile in front of your dragon, and follow the path on that tile to where it logically ends. However, if your placed tile is also in front of an opponent, you move them as well. Savvy players will figure out ways to place tiles which keep them flying while sending their opponents into oblivion.

Tsuro is a simple, elegant game that can play up to 8 players, and can be taught in about 2 minutes. It’s not going to win any awards for high strategy. Instead, it offers a simple, almost zenlike experience.

(Photo Credit: The Board Game Family)

Designer: Bruno Faidutti

You and your fellow players play gnomes on a Submarine that has seen better days. You will need to work together to deal with fires, floods and potentially a Kraken, as well as what is frankly quite rampant alcoholism.

Red November is a messy game and has a lot of rough edges, but is in general very silly fun in a small package. That being said, I’ve played this several times and I don’t believe we’ve ever won.

Key Mechanic: Time-based actions. Different actions your dwarf can take take variable amounts of time. If you take a long action, you’ll move your counter way up on the timeline, and you won’t go again until everyone else passes you. Players taking quick actions may be able to take several in a row. It’s a neat mechanic that helps put a large cost on big, impactful actions, and one I’ve seen pop up in a couple other games since (such as Alexandria).

Bonus Key Mechanic: Screw you, I’m outta here! Pretty sure the crew is going to die? Well, if they do but you manage to escape through an airlock (and past any lurking Krakens) you win! I should note that the mere existence of this mechanic is probably the reason that my group never wins.

(Photo Credit: FTL Wiki)

Designer: Richard Launius

You and your party mates have just woken a dragon up.  Do you fight, grab the treasure and claim the glory?  Or do you properly assess the threat and  flee like a little girl, stealing everything down to the brass piping on your way out the door? In this quick dice-driven dungeon escape game, you will roll several dice on your turn, and these will help determine the actions you have.

Interesting Mechanic: Forcing a Party Split.  But not everyone can fight, and not everyone can run.  And in fact, there are only limited number of slots available, such as for attack – if you roll 2 swords but two opponents roll 3 or more swords, you are out of luck for the turn.  You may be forced to run.  That being said, if the people who run get out, those who fight lose.  If the people who fight kill the dragon first, the people who run are out of luck.  This system creates a dynamic party split fairly quickly, which also is somewhat dynamic, as people who may want to flee might roll attack dice and vice versa.

(Photo Credit: LivingDice)

Designer: Rüdiger Dorn

Let’s be honest, it’s almost insulting how simple the contents of the box are. You could pretty much make your own copy with a handful of index cards and the dice you have lying around the house. That being said, while Las Vegas is an incredibly simple game, its surprisingly interesting. It’s an abstract game regarding dice rolling and pushing your luck.  On the flip side, it really does not feel like or have anything to do with the theme, short of ‘dice exist’.

You randomly lay out stacks of money next to casinos, each with a die number on them.  Players then roll all of the dice in their color, and then place all of one set of dice that share numbers on the corresponding casinos.  After all the dice have been placed in this manner, you distribute money to each player based on who had the most dice on each casino – whoever had the most die gets the largest bill, second most gets the second choice, so on and so forth.

Interesting Mechanic: Discard Ties.  There is one twist that makes this interesting, and that is that ties are bad — once rolling is completed, you simply remove all duplicate dice counts.  This dramatically adds strategy to a simple game — you can place dice strategically to cancel out an opponent’s gains, or near the end of the round, you can try to bottom feed with one die where you see two opponents are going to tie with three dice.

Las Vegas is a simple, fast and fun game.  I do wish it had more to do with its casino than just a theme, but for a quick and easy game, it’s very well done.

(Photo credit: Purple Pawn)

Designer: AJ Porfirio

Many games have a solitaire mode, for people who have no friends.  Few board games, though, are shipped ONLY with a solitaire mode.  Most gamers tend to include Friday on their list (which is a fine little deckbuilder), but I actually prefer this one, because in my alone time, I like to imagine myself talking to crazy people.

In Hostage Negotiator, you’re calling into a tense situation where a gunman has multiple hostages.  You’ll need to call in to try to defuse the situation, and try to work to free as many hostages as possible, before then talking the bad guy down (or ordering a sniper shot to take him out).  Dice rolls determine the outcomes of the chances you take, and you really ping-pong between calm and panic as you variously succeed or fail.

Interesting Mechanic: Hanging Up.  Every turn, you have a set of cards in your hand.  You play a card, and roll the result.  If you succeed, you may reduce tensions or free a hostage.  But if you miss a roll, bad things happen.  And the worst thing that can happen is the bad guy ends the conversation, thus ending the turn.  Hanging up is more likely to happen the greedier you try to be, and does a good job of creating a sense that you had control and you abruptly lost it.

(Photo Credit: As A Board Gamer)

Designers: Ted Alspach, Toryo Hojo, N2

You are the leader of a struggling post-apocalyptic settlement, where you will scavenge goods necessary to create structures necessary for the reemergence of mankind, such as GMO farms, tech labs, and, um…. investment banks?  Sure, why not.

You start with four buildings.  Each building gives you the ability to manipulate or store dice somehow.  The most important is a construction building, which allows you to build more buildings, which have an array of mechanical benefits, including giving you free dice or giving more power to manipulate them.

Interesting Mechanic: Colony is a dice drafting game unlike most others. You will roll three dice on your turn, take one and pass the other two to your left.  That player will take a die, and the next person will take a die as well.  Each die represents a different kind of good (for example, a ‘2’ represents fabric and a ‘6’ represents Uranium’).  The dice drafting game is the interesting thing, as you need to balance your own needs with the need to not give your opponents goods that are too favorable.

Colony is a pretty good game by Bezier games, who will reappear later on this list.  The dice forging mechanic is interesting, but could be further developed.  The buildings you can build are chosen randomly at the beginning of the game (you choose random stacks of cards, similar to Dominion).  Top complaint about the game is the aesthetics are somewhat lacking – for example, the dice are boring, white dice in a day and age where custom dice are common in gaming.

(Photo Credit: Bezier Games)

There’s something about a top 100 list that makes you want to say ‘bullshit’ and make your own.  For me, the list were the various top 100 lists that Dice Tower put out, which had many entries that made me want to write nasty things in the YouTube comments (because that always works).  But then I remember, hey, I have a blog.  Maybe I should use it.

So I’ll roll out the list over the weekend.  I figured it was a good enough reason to get me to think about games and to do some writing about game design.  Because I decided that one of the things I wanted to do was include at least one reason that I, as a digital game designer, like the design of the pile of cardboard in front of me.

Other notes:

• I’ve played most, but not all, of these games at least twice.  The older ones have a lot of plays, but the newer ones have fewer because I have a toddler, which limited my board game playing time (and not coincidentally, also turned a room of my house into the Horrific World of Choking Hazards.
• I made no effort to weed out the ones that are out of print.  I think that includes at least 2 in my top 20.
• I made an effort to list at least one interesting mechanic or other reason I love a game.  In many cases, it’s not the first game that has implemented that mechanic, but usually it’s the best example I’ve seen of it.
• No, I haven’t played everything.  Yes, there are whole classifications of games I’m not a big fan of.  Doing research for this little project HAS added to my ‘I gotta go play that’ list, though.
• Images, when visible, is stolen shamelessly from somewhere.
• This list is as of right this second.  Been working on this in the background for a month, and even last night, 2 games fell off the list and one fell 40 places.  I’m sure if I made this list again in February, it’d shift again.

Anyway, do enjoy one game designer’s desperate excuse to dive back into his collection, and fall back in love with some games he hasn’t played in quite some time.

The list: 

100. Colony

99. Hostage Negotiator

98. Las Vegas

97.  Dragon Rampage

96. Red November

95. Tsuro

94. The Gallerist

93. A Game of Thrones: The Board Game

92. Prime Time

91. Valeria Card Kingdoms

90. Android Infiltration

89. Nothing Personal

88. Majesty: For the Realm

87. Saint Petersburg

86. Catan

85. Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords

84. Twilight Imperium

83. Bora Bora

82. Kill Doctor Lucky

81. Cosmic Encounter

80. Argent the Consortium

79. Hey, That’s My Fish!

78. Defenders of the Realm

77. Dead of Winter

76. Twilight of the Gods

75. SET

74. Battlestar Galactica

73. Citadels

72. Courtiers

71. San Juan

70. Evo

69. Carcassonne: the City

68. Suburbia

67. Tiny Epic Galaxies

66. Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age

65. Fury of Dracula

64. Pandemic

63. Codenames

62. Ghost Stories

61. Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game

60. Imperial Settlers

59. Anachrony

58. Fortune and Glory: the Cliffhanger Game

57. Elder Sign

56. Tokaido

55. Imperial 2030

54. Kanban: Automotive Revolution

53. Guillotine

52. Aeon’s End

51. Roll for the Galaxy

50. Cards Against Humanity

49. Puerto Rico

48. Yamatai

47. Castles of Mad King Ludwig

46. Java

45. Bang! The Dice Game

44. Dominion

43. Blueprints

42. Firefly: the Game

41. Transatlantic

40. Sheriff of Nottingham

39. Dominant Species

38. Star Realms

37. Shadows Over Camelot

36. Castles of Burgundy

35. Arkham Horror: The Card Game

34. King of Tokyo

33. Azul

32. Caverna: the Cave Farmers

31. Mombasa

30. Blokus

29. 7 Wonders

28. Millennium Blades

27. Lords of Waterdeep

26: Raiders of the North Sea

25. Stockpile

24. Tyrants of the Underdark

23. Scythe

22. Porta Nigra

21. Fields of Arle

20. Yedo

18. Forbidden Desert

18. Eclipse

17. Merlin

16. Yokohama

15. Alien Frontiers

14. Tzolk’in the Mayan Calendar

13. 1960: The Making of the President

12. Sagrada

11. Star Wars: Rebellion

10. Francis Drake

9. Mission: Red Planet

8. Kingsburg

7. Power Grid

6. Chaos in the Old World

5. Terraforming Mars

4. Trajan

3. Pandemic Legacy: Season One

2. Clank!

1. Magic The Gathering

And that’s all she wrote!  If you have complaints, feel free to put them in the comments here!