Normally, I do a ‘top 100 games of all time’ on an annual basis on Twitter, but frankly, that list was getting stale – moving around 90 of the same games as last year. But using the decade framing forced me to narrow my focus and give more room for the lesser games to breathe.
When evaluating, I used a very crude criteria, roughly categorized as:
*
- 25% Historical Impact. Was this game important, or part of something important/
- 25% Groovy Game Mechanics. I’m a game designer. I like designs that try interesting things, even if they don’t always work out.
- 50% Personal taste. It’s my list, so suck it, haters.
100. Nemesis (2018) The closest you can get to Aliens the Board Game without the designers being hit by a cease & desist by Fox. This semi-coop gives each players different goals that tend to emerge at the worst time – usually when the not-quite-aliens are hatching.
99. Doughnut Drive-Thru (2015) A simple worker (er, doughnut) placement game, players can either place a doughnut or claim all the doughnuts on a location. This simple mechanic can get rather cutthroat, as it becomes possible to finagle your opponent into having dead turns.
98. Fleet: The Dice Game (2018) Roll and writes were a thing late in the decade. Most of them washed off me, but one that still hits my table is this fishing-themed one, where you’ll try to build the biggest fleet of crab trawlers to supply your personal Joe’s Crab Shack.
97. Bora Bora (2013) A dense Stefan Feld Euro that tragically takes as long to teach as to play. The central mechanic is sweet, though, using dice to claim action space. You can only place dice of lower value, but higher value dice provide stronger actions.
96. Las Vegas (2012) Roll dice, then commit all of one number to that number’s casino, hoping that no one bids more dice than you do. This dice-rolling game is so simple you can build it with index cards, but it’s still a compelling play that’s extremely easy to teach.
95. Detective: City of Angels (2019) Detective-based games were a thing late in the decade, and this gumshoe-themed one was the best I played. A DM keeps the story on the rails, while each detective searches for clues & competes to solve the case first.
94. Battle of the Bards (2019) A dice-based deckbuilder where you end up rolling fistfuls of dice and trying to build the optimal medieval travelling quartet. This is a sleeper – no one talks about it, but its hit the table a lot since my kickstarter came in.
93. Porta Nigra (2015) In this game, you’ll try to build the tallest towers in the land, by… er, being the best brick purchaser in Porta Nigra. A couple of odd rules quirks, but this is a game with a fantastic table presence when you’re done.
92. Village Pillage (2019) What happens if you try to turn rock-paper-scissors into a more substantial game. Players will choose one villager to play to face off against the player to their left, and to their right, and whoever wins the RPS gets the rewards.
91. Underwater Cities (2018) A tableau builder where you form a network of domed cities, and advance them to farm resources and connect them to metropolises. Some say it’s the next Terraforming Mars – it’s not THAT good but definitely has a more streamlined midgame state.
90. Escape Plan (2019) A long, thinky eurogame from the designer of Kanban. Each player is a criminal attempting to blow town after a big heist, and along the way they’ll be raiding safe houses, grabbing the cash, and possibly turning on their friends.
89. Firefly (2013) This long, sprawling game is an unparalleled space sandbox, allowing players to traverse the galaxy, running jobs and avoiding Reavers & the law. This game is a true love letter to the Firefly license, dripping with glorious browncoat flavor.
88. QueenDomino (2017) A simple domino-based game where players build kingdoms, trying to build contiguous terrain to maximize scoring. Very similar to KingDomino, but it has a couple of additional features which adds some much needed complexity to the formula.
87. Mysterium (2015) One player plays a spirit, passing picture clues to gumshoes without speaking, and they need to work together to use these clues to figure out the details of murder cases they are solving.
86. Wingspan (2019) This relatively lightweight tableau builder revolves around your ability to build a collection of birds with special powers. The theme is not for everyone, but if you like yourself a good Sibley’s Field Guide, this game may be for you
85. The Gallerist (2015) A complex but beautiful Euro, this game has you as an art gallery owner, managing shows and recruiting up and coming artists. The worker placement game has a neat twist allowing for free turns if someone activates a space your assistant is on.
84. Blueprints (2013) Other dice drafting games have since supplanted it, but this is among the first. Players draft dice, and stack them, attempting to build simple buildings out of optimal materials. Great, quick game with slightly wonky scoring.
83. Cacao (2015) A tile laying game similar to Carcassonne, this has you as a chocolate farmer in the jungle. I like this game because it’s highly interactive – choices you make will be giving free resources & scoring to your opponents.
82. Defenders of the Realm (2010) Pandemic with a garish Ameritrash fantasy coat of paint. Players will work together, traversing the kingdom, completing quests, finding artifacts and beating back orc and dragonkin hordes before rampaging boss creatures can take the capital.
81. Scythe (2016) Rebuild a society in the wake of the Russian Revolution, if said revolution was post-apocalyptic and involved Mechs. Great action selection mechanic, FANTASTIC art. Worst part of the game is that it looks like a wargame but its not.
80. Nothing Personal (2013) A pure social heirarchy game where players will politic, scheme and deal in order to get to the top of the mob scene, where you can force other players to kiss your ring. A well-executed game in the tradition of Kremlin and Chicken Caesar.
79. Elder Sign (2011) The great ones once again threaten the world in this Lovecraftian dice-based coop game, and the only way to defeat them is to fight the forces of evil in the museum gift shop.
78. Keyflower (2012) An economic village building game that hinges upon a strange auction mechanic based upon meeple color. Look, this game is deep, intricate, wonky and very good but there’s no way to explain it in the length of a tweet.
77. Love Letter (2012) Hey, you remember when Love Letter was a thing briefly? Remember that? They made a whole bunch of variants, including a friggin’ Batman one, if that makes any sense. Anyway, this is still a pretty solid little filler social deduction-like game.
76. Fuse (2015) The only real-time game I can really stand. Players roll dice and then try to use those dice to defuse bombs — as quickly as possible. A very light, often funny coop game.
75. Dominant Species (2010) You play a class of animals (mammals, insects, etc), and your goal in this worker placement game is to breed, migrate, and fight your way across the continent before the ice age comes. Incredibly chaotic, swingy fun.
74. The Reckoners (2018) The dice-based coop gameplay shines, but honestly this is one game where the theme is king: you and your friends are fighting back in a world where the superheroes went bad and now rule the earth.
73. Tiny Epic Galaxies (2015) A simple, relatively quick 4X game that fits in your pocket. Ironically, the thing I don’t like about TEG is it’s size – your marketing gimmick gets less cute as my eyes get shittier with age, guys.
72. My Little Scythe (2017) A cute, half-hour long variant of the hard Euro Scythe, designed in part by a six-year-old (really) who wanted to play it with dad. Her design made the game center upon pie fights and chasing friendship hearts by sharing. Yes, it’s higher than Scythe.
71. Black Orchestra (2016) A tense coop game that will probably involve you escaping from a nazi prison repeatedly, Black Orchestra harkens back to a simpler, nobler time when everyone agreed that punching Nazis and killing Hitler was generally a good idea.
70. Tyrants of the Underdark (2016) This is effectively a dudes-on-a-map strategy game with a deckbuilder engine. Also, be sure to dig out your old Hot Topic gear, as it’s set in the gothiest of D&D’s settings, Drow Central.
69. Everdell (2018) It’s the tree that grabs your attention, an attractive yet useless bit of table presence. But behind that, there’s a clever furry-themed tableau builder that should appeal to fans of Imperial Settlers or Terraforming Mars.
68. Yedo (2012) It’s Lords of Waterdeep with ninjas. A worker placement game complicated by a Night Watchmen who will block off entire city blocks of placement locations – and one whose patrol can be manipulated to bedevil your opponents.
67. Teotihuacan: City of Gods (2018) Players will move workers – represented as dice – around the board. As they do so, the dice will increment, giving their actions more power. Centerpiece of the game is the great pyramid players are working to assemble.
66. Castles of Mad King Ludwig (2014) I could talk about the interesting auction system but honestly the appeal of this game is building crazy castles and having frank discussions as to why your king has attached a sex dungeon to the butter room.
65. Roll For The Galaxy (2014) For a while, dice versions of popular games were all the rage, and this is one of the good ones. Roll takes the iconography and core action selection from Race for the Galaxy and, frankly, it all works better in this more streamlined game.
64. Museum (2019) An attractive set collection game where you work as the curator of a museum, trying to assemble the best grand collection.
63. Splendor (2014) Acquire chips, trade chips for cards which may make better cards cheaper. This simple engine-building game kicked off a craze, and while it’s been surpassed, it still remains the best game of the genre to introduce to people new to the hobby.
62. Star Realms (2014) Star Realms (and its fantasy-based brother Hero Realms) are both small, delightful deckbuilding games. In this one, you’ll build the best possible fleet and use this to engage in fleet battles against your opponent.
61. Imperial Settlers (2014) An engine-building assymetric card game, this game centers upon a core ‘three ways to play a card’ mechanic which leaves you with plenty of options on your turn. I haven’t gotten to the followup Empires of the North yet.
60. Gloomhaven (2017) It’s not ‘best board game of all time’ good, but it’s still plenty good: a legacy deckbuilding tactical dungeon diver, all packed in a mammoth box containing a gazillion figurines and a large enough campaign to last most groups years.
59. Snowdonia (2012) Building the railroad’s going to take time and cooperation, as players work to clear rubble & lay track to towns on the way to Snowdonia. I like the weather system, which makes it easier or harder for players to progress the game based on luck.
58. Paladins of the West Kingdom (2019) An interesting take on worker placement, where a player’s workers are color-coded and different worker color combinations are required to activate a space. This one will probably move up as I play it more.
57. Dead of Winter (2014) I’m sick of zombie games, too, but Dead of Winter takes the familiar ‘actually the humans suck’ motif of the genre and spices it up with competing motives and a unique storytelling event system that makes this a TOLERABLE zombie game.
56. Tokaido (2012) There’s almost a zen-like nature to this one, a Japanese-themed game that challenges you to take the best walk, find the best views, and soak in the best hot tubs. It’s aesthetically gorgeous, incredibly simple and yet surprisingly vicious.
55. Walk the Plank (2013) You and your fellow players are the most disgraceful pirates on the ship, and in this game you’ll jockey position to try to avoid becoming fish food. A cute filler game with a fun premise.
54. Sheriff of Nottingham (2014) The best ‘customs official simulator’ on the market. You’ll give goods to the sheriff, declare the contents, and then hope desperately you can either con or bribe him to get your illicit contraband past him.
53. Yamatai (2017) An abstract game with an island trade coat of paint, you’ll distribute boats to enable you to build houses & temples. The turn order mechanism (players choose their turn order along with a resource grant for next turn) is a standout game mechanic here.
52. Between Two Cities (2015) In this game, you build two cities, one on your left & one on your right, each with the neighboring player. Innovative and a great intro game, as experienced players are encouraged to help newbies succeed. Great at high player counts too.
51. Fields of Arle (2014) Everything that is good from Agricola – the upgrades, the agriculture, the farming and trade – and none of the bad, all in a package tightly balanced for two players. I particularly like the spring/fall game mechanic in this one.
50. King of Tokyo (2011) Basically Godzilla Yachtzee. Players roll their dice three times, hoping to get enough matching dice to be able to attack their enemies, activate their powers, and terrorize Tokyo. Relatively easy for kids to grok too.
49. Space Base (2018) There were similar games before it – Machi Koro & Valeria Card Kingdoms – but Space Base was the one that finally put all the pieces together in the ‘build a tableau of dice targets’ genre that was fun, interesting and balanced. This one’s got legs, folks.
48. Forbidden Desert (2013) The best of the Forbidden series, this cooperative game was inspired by Pandemic, but the classic formula is subverted with the Windstorm game mechanic, which will hide valuable treasures and rearrange the game board, confounding your escape.
47. Five Tribes (2014) Innovative take on mancala gameplay, players will empty a square and move a number of squares away equal to the tribesmen they picked up, and gain bonuses for where they placed as well as the last tribesman to be placed. Great, but prone to Turn Paralysis.
46. Raiders of the North Sea (2015) A clean, relatively quick viking-themed worker placement. The core mechanic has you picking up one worker to take its action, and dropping another to take a second, which creates more interactivity than normally seen in worker placement games.
45. Aeon’s End (2016) Merges the deckbuilding of a Dominion with cooperative play, you’re a team of mages trying to banish Very Bad Things from the Realm. The mechanic I like is the way decks are flipped, not shuffled, which gives you more control over what you draw.
44. Mombasa (2015) An intricate Pfister Eurogame that has you colonizing and trading in 17th century Africa. The handbuilding mechanic in this game is the real gem: players play cards in rows but pick up columns, forcing them to balance short-term needs & long-term planning.
43. Bunny Kingdom (2017) A Richard Garfield production, this game mixes a grid-based Territorial Control mechanic similar to Acquire with a card drafting game, and adds in dozens of adorable rabbit meeples.
42. Anachrony (2017) A time travel based worker placement game where you will literally go into the future and steal resources from yourself, and then cause paradoxes if you fail to repay them. Beautiful, haunting and yet silly at the same time.
41. Argent The Consortium (2015) Otherwise known as the “The Succession Plan of Dumbledore, Only Without The License” game, this wizard-school worker placement game gives each worker powers, resulting in the meanest, most chaotic worker placement game I’ve ever seen.
40. Francis Drake (2013) A eurogame broken into two phases, and unlike most two-phased games, both are actually pretty interesting. Phase one has you competing for resources, and phase two has you play mind games to be the first to grab the Caribbean’s treasures.
39. Arkham Horror The Card Game (2016) It’s like Arkham Horror only it’s card-based and has some semblance of balance. At this point, it’s got a million expansions and I confess being way behind on them.
38. Kanban (2014) A deep, complex, thinky point salad that perfectly captures the feeling of being a middle manager working at a car factory, complete with game mechanics around hiding from your boss because you don’t have your shit together yet.
37. Millenium Blades (2016) Perhaps the most meta game on the list, it’s a board game where you are a CCG player, opening boosters, building decks and competing in CCG tournaments. Only, you know, it’s a board game. God, describing this game makes my head hurt.
36. Captain Sonar (2016) In this 6 or 8 player game, you’ll divide into two teams, both of whom choose a captain who will proceed to lead their subs into battle, until it all devolves into a hilarious shouting spree because Captain Jackass doesn’t know west from east.
35. Stockpile (2015) An easy to grok, quick to play stock trading game based upon imperfect insider information, bluffing, and a ‘friendly’ auction system that helps keep the game competitive.
34. Grand Austria Hotel (2015) As far as I’m concerned, this is absolutely the best strudel-based hotel management game on the market. The dice drafting mechanic is underrated for how deviously interesting it can be.
33. Merlin (2017) A Stefan Feld game with production values! Merlin is a rondell movement game, and its very, very good, but I moved it down because luck pays too large a role – not so much in the dice you roll as much as the quests you draw off the top of the deck.
32. Concordia (2013) A trading and expansion game set in the Roman empire, Concordia will have players compete for economic dominance. The star of this game is the hand management/deckbuilding system, which determine the strength of their actions.
31. Arboretum (2015) A deceptively elegant hand management & tableau-building game, where players must build a beautiful park and then keep the right cards in their hands to defend the right to score it. Simple, attractive, and deeper than it first seems.
30. Alien Frontiers (2010) Players will compete to colonize a planet in this dice placement game with shades of Kingsburg, but both streamlined and with a more aggressive edge. One of Kickstarter’s first board game success stories.
29. Mystic Vale (2016) Deckbuilding is old and busted – CARD building is where it’s at. Mystic Vale is a dominion-like where players assemble their cards from transparent plastic sheets to, er, build the most mystic of vales or something.
28. 7 Wonders (2010) The simple design, simultaneous gameplay, popular theme and ability to scale to 7 players gracefully made this the default ‘shit, too many people showed up for game night’ game of the decade.
27. Dinosaur Island (2017) In this theme park simulator eurogame, you will attempt to determine what number of guests can acceptably be fed to your exhibits to maximize profitability. The art style takes the 80s Miami Vice Neon knob and yanks it all the way to 11.
26. Sagrada (2017) This dice drafting game is the best stained glass window construction game on the market, and unlike the last time I made this joke, this year there’s actually some competition in the field.
25. The Castles of Burgundy (2011) Stefan Feld’s most popular game (but not his best) is somewhat drab but compelling, as players roll dice to draft tiles in order to flesh out their little chateau. Plays great at all player counts, and quickly once you know what you’re doing.
24. Red7 (2014) One card in the middle dictates the rules. On your turn, you can add a card to your tableau, and/or replace that rule card, changing the game’s win condition. But- you must be winning at the end of your turn or you’re out. Quick, tight pocket timefiller.
23. Orleans (2014) A bag-building game – as you advance your trade empire across France, you’ll add new workers to your pool that helps you further expand. I still haven’t played it’s llama-based sister game Altiplano yet, I should get around to that.
22. Blood Rage (2015) Ragnarok has fallen upon the land, and you and your fellow vikings fight to achieve ultimate glory before everyone dies. This game mixes card drafting, truly awesome minis and tightly balanced gameplay for one of Eric Lang’s best designs.
21. Azul (2017) This short, thinky filler game is the best ‘building a bathroom floor’ simulator you’re going to find on the market, with WAY more ‘fuck you’ to it than you initially would have guessed.
20. Gugong (2019) A really weird ‘worker placement’ game using cards instead of workers. Lots of games have core mechanics where you can screw your opponents over. The brilliance of this game is the high frequency when you will screw your opponents over by ACCIDENT.
19. Eclipse (2011) Part Space 4X game, part economic builder, the beauty of this design is the way they model how huge empires become inefficient and difficult to maintain.
18. Tzolkin: The Mayan Calendar (2012) It’s hard to escape the allure of the bigass wheel in the middle of this thing, a game component with huge visual appeal as well as adding a weird time-based component to the worker placement genre that breaks your brain in wonderful ways.
17. Century Golem Edition (2017) The engine-building genre was huge near the last half of the decade, and Century Spice Road was the best, with a simple core loop that still provided great depth. But if you get it, splurge for the Golem edition – the only difference is the art.
16. Caverna (2013) Agricola was not a very good game. However, it had several very good ideas, most of which found their way into Caverna, a deep game about building your farm, breeding animals, making babies, and sending them to adventure in the dungeons.
15. Lords of Waterdeep (2012) Little Timmy’s first worker placement game, this paints a surprisingly tight and simple Eurogame in an Ameritrash coat of paint where you effectively play the questgiving NPC in a D&D setting. The expansion’s corruption mechanic is great, too.
14. Quacks of Quedlinburg (2018) A bag-building, press-your-luck game, where you and your opponents will throw potion ingredients into their mystical brews and hope not to blow themselves up. Plays best with a rowdy table.
13. A Few Acres of Snow (2011) A two-person deckbuilding wargame set in the French & Indian war, this is a great game if you can overlook the colonialist tones of hiring indians to go beat up on the other guys’ indians. Hard to get now, but well worth it if you can.
12. Dominion (2008) Not released in this decade, but ultimately too important to leave off. Dominion’s core deckbuilding mechanic showed up in hundreds of games in the teens, being perhaps the most influential game of the decade. And it still holds up on its own right.
11. Architects of the West Kingdom (2018) It’s hard to say what’s better: that this is a worker placement game where you start off with a small horde of workers who amplify the effects of each other, or the fact that throwing your opponent’s workers in jail is a core mechanic.
10. Trajan (2011) A mancala manipulation eurogame about gaining power and influence in the Roman empire. It’s not pretty, but it’s deep and thinky, and it’s my favorite game from my favorite designer. It will break your brain if you play while drunk, though.
9. Great Western Trail (2016) A hand management/rondell traversal game centering upon your desperate attempt to upgrade shitty cows into better cows before you reach Kansas City. @AlexxPfister had a great decade, and I think this was his high point.
8. Star Wars Rebellion (2016) Often described as Star Wars in a box, this is asymetric gaming excellence at two players, with one playing an Empire drowning in resources and starving for information, and a Rebellion just hoping to scrabble around long enough to survive.
7. Terraforming Mars (2016) A tableau building game that ultimately centers on who can throw asteroids at the planets’ surface the best, this game can sometimes get a little long and yet few people seem to care or notice. An odd hardcore game that casuals will be okay playing.
6. Bang! The Dice Game (2013) Social deduction games were ‘a thing’ in the teens, and honestly I’m antisocial enough to shrug off most of them. The dice variant of Bang! was always an exception, being fast, fun, boisterous and random in all the best and worst ways.
5. Magic the Gathering: Commander (2011) MTG is the undisputed king of self-reinvention- watching them do so is a game design clinic. Several great expansions, but Commander stole the show, providing a great multiplayer experience designed to let the WEIRD cards hit the table.
4. Yokohama (2016) In this Economic Worker Placement game, you will walk on the backs of your assistants to drop fish off at church. Often described as ‘Istanbul on crack’. Don’t be intimidated by the table presence, this is a masterpiece of surprising depth
3. Champions of Midgard (2015) An Ameritrash worker placement game about vikings, adventure, and trying to con your neighbor into taking care of the annoying troll so you don’t have to. Valhalla expansion adds new life to the game by… making you root for the death of your squad
2. Clank! (2016) The magical thing about this deckbuilder-with-a-board is that the core clank mechanic is so novel and interesting that the end of every game is gripping and hilarious, as you desperately try to crawl out of the dungeon before the dragon goes supernova.
1. Pandemic Legacy Season One (2015) You knew a Pandemic had to be on the list. It’s tight, it’s epic, it’s hilarious, it’s depressing, and it is perhaps the best of 2 hot trends in 2010s gaming: Legacy and coop gameplay. Pandemic Legacy is my game of the decade.
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