In response to a throwaway comment in the last installment of this list, I was asked who would be my #1 sexiest starlet. I regret to inform you that some people have found it somewhat off-putting when I declare my lustful attraction to this unnamed starlet. I’m guessing it’s because I’ve officially hit the age where I’m a dirty old man. Anyway, the answer is Anne Hathaway.
On to the list!
90. Marvel United
Released: 2020
Designer: Andrew Chiarvesio, Eric M. Lang
Players: 1-4
Estimated Time: 40 minutes
Marvel: United is a very simple cooperative game, where each player controls a hero, and you’re all trying to take down a supervillain before his master plan goes off. This was a sizable kickstarter, and if you’ve gotten everything, you have access to hundreds of heroes and dozens of villains. This year, the Standalone X-Men expansion was released, and the heroes and villains within can be freely mixed and matched with the earlier Avengers-oriented set.
Look, I’m not going to lie to you. I bought this game because of the chibi miniatures. I mean, look at this shit, these are awesome:
But overall, this game is on the list because it’s a master class in how to expand an incredibly simple set of game mechanics into an absolute river of content. This game is VERY simple and easy to teach, and yet the heroes feel different from each other and appropriate to themselves, and even moreso, each villain is an entirely different puzzle to solve.
89. Bang: the Dice Game
Released: 2013
Designer: Michael Palm, Lukas Zach
Players: 3-8
Estimated Time: 15 minutes
A dice-based social deduction game. Each player is dealt a role, which is a secret. There is a sheriff, a horde of outlaws trying to kill the sheriff, a deputy trying to help him, and a renegade trying to kill everyone. And no one knows who is who. On your turn, you’ll roll dice, and from the results, deal damage to players within range, hopeful that they are a target you’re supposed to be killing. If you lose all your health, you flip over your role card, and the table erupts as your role is exposed.
Now, even before the worldwide pandemic that turned us all into shutins and shrunk board game tables, I wasn’t the biggest fan of social deduction games. Still, Bang: Dice stubbornly remains on the list as the source of some of the funniest game nights I’ve ever had.
88. Caverna: The Cave Farmers
Released: 2013
Designer: Uwe Rosenberg
Players: 1-7
Estimated Time: 30-210 minutes
Caverna is a worker placement game, where you will try to build your little dwarven homestead. You’ll plow fields, fence in livestock, harvest materials, build improvements, dig mines and even send your little guys out on adventures. As you go, your family and lands will expand, and new opportunities will emerge.
If you have Agricola, you should know that this game is very similar in many ways, but streamlined in some significant manners that result in Caverna being an excellent game (unlike Agricola which, despite its similarities, is hot garbage). Just don’t play Caverna with the max player count. It doesn’t scale to 6 or 7 very well, and in fact just bogs down completely.
87. Horrified
Released: 2019
Designer: Prospero Hall
Players: 1-5
Estimated Time: 60 minutes
Horrified is a cooperative game where players play villagers in a town suddenly besieged by classic Universal movie monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and others. In each game, there are two monsters (three if you’re hardcore) and each presents a different cooperative puzzle to solve. Each player has a unique ability, and careful planning and a fair amount of luck is required to send these monsters back to whence they came.
Horrified is, in many ways, going to be very familiar to fans of Pandemic, the all-time classic cooperative game, but at the same time, the different monsters create a lot more gameplay variety. Horrified also benefits from being very easy to teach, appealing to gamers and non-gamers alike as well as very cheap – you can often get it for under thirty bucks at Target.
86. Roll Player
Released: 2016
Designer: Keith Matejka
Players: 1-4
Estimated Time: 60-90 minutes
Do you believe the best part of D&D is rolling characters? Then this is the game for you. Roll Player is a dice drafting game – a handful of dice are rolled, and each player then selects one and adds it to their character sheet. While doing so, they’ll be trying to earn victory points by hitting target ranges for their class (Warriors want Strength, as an example), matching colors to spots, managing their alignment, and earning gold to do a little light shopping to earn some special powers and/or victory point conditions.
If this sounds appealing to you, it probably is. I will say the game definitely unfolds with the Monsters and Minions expansion and so that’s definitely worthwhile if you feel so inclined. That being said, this year the same company released Roll Player Adventures which was, in my opinion, a sprawling mess. Avoid that, and stick with the game that kicked off the franchise.
85. Dice Hospital: ER – Emergency Roll
Released: 2022
Designer: Matthew Dunstan, Brett J Gilbert
Players: 1-6
Estimated Time: 20-30 minutes
Dice Hospital: Emergency Roll is a ‘Flip and Roll and Write’ game where you’re trying to treat as many patients as possible. Three dice are rolled by a player, and that player uses one of the dice. All other players can choose from the remaining dice. As this occurs, cards are flipped from a deck – each card grants a power to one of the three dice which may factor into the player’s decision making.
If you Kickstarter a lot of games, about once a year you’ll get a game as a throw-in that’s better than the game you paid a lot of money to get. This was that game this year (in fact, it was better than TWO games in the same package: Dice Hospital and Dice Theme Park). On top of that, it’s a steal at about $15.
84. Star Wars: Rebellion
Released: 2016
Designer: Corey Konieczka
Players: 2-4
Estimated Time: 180-240 minutes
Rebellion is a rare breed: a heavyweight assymetric two-person game that’s definitely worth the lengthy time investment. The game is a highly assymetrical experience. The Empire player’s task is simple – scour the galaxy in order to find the Rebel secret base, and destroy it. The Rebellion’s task is even simpler: survive.
The overall vibe of the experience ends up providing a stark and fascinating view of guerilla tactics. In a good game, the Rebel player will feel absolutely smothered, and completely outclassed by the Empire’s superior industrial base spitting out death stars and the like, while you’re making do with scraps. Across the table, the Imperial player will be feeling baffled that, despite their massive reach, the rebels just seem to keep slipping through their fingers.
Star Wars: Rebellion has been called “Star Wars in a box” and I won’t argue that portrayal. Every game is a unique, galaxy-spanning epic with twists, turns, and inevitable betrayals. The primary fault is that this is essentially a deduction game, and like many deduction games, you occasionally have a flat game where the Imperials stumble onto the rebel base too quickly – something hard for the Rebels to recover from. But the good plays more than make up for this eventuality.
One more thing: the core combat is a tad clunky, and is greatly improved by the Rise of the Empire expansion, which also adds the characters of Rogue One to the mix. Definitely worth snagging if possible, IMHO.
83. Castles of Mad King Ludwig
Released: 2014
Designer: Ted Alspach
Players: 1-4
Estimated Time: 90 minutes
Castlies is, apparently, based on a real King Ludwig, a guy with a penchant for nutty constructions. Players try to relive his mad genius by building castles by drafting tiles, which can result in some odd and interesting mixes. Love Grotto right next to the Butter Room? Yes, please.
Points are earned primarily due to the point values of the rooms themselves, as well as bonuses for connecting certain kinds of rooms together. Also, closing off all doorways to a room will unlock that room’s special power, which is determined by the room color. The total package is relatively easy to teach and frequently quirky – quite popular with more casually gaming crowds.
Castles had actually fallen off my list the last couple of years, but this year came back on with the release of the Colossal Edition – a special edition where every piece is literally doubled in size. The good news is that this makes your resulting castle much more awesome and it’s much easier to see the tiles you’re drafting from across the table. The bad news is that it takes a ton of table space – it completely fills my very sizable dining room table with only three players. If you’re gaming on a folding card table, stick with the base set.
82. Roll Camera!
Released: 2021
Designer: Malachi Ray Rempen
Players: 1-4
Estimated Time: 45-90 minutes
Roll Camera is a cooperative game, where the table takes on different production roles on a film (director, producer, makeup artist, etc) with the hopes of making a blockbuster film that can finally break through. To do so, players will take turns rolling dice representing the different production departments, and assign those dice to actions to build sets, plan scripts, shoot scenes, etc, etc.
Roll Camera! is a charming little coop with a very approachable theme, and a result of every game will be a little film role of scenes that you’ve managed to assemble, which will tell your film’s story. Oftentimes this leads to hilarity.
Also, if you can find the Kickstarter edition, you’ll get the game in a box that looks like a movie clapperboard, and the game components fit in a gametrays that looks like a film case (see picture above). Also, as of this writing, the B-Movie Expansion is sitting on my table, although sadly unplayed. I’m very much looking forward to opening it.
81. Watergate
Released: 2019
Designer: Matthias Cramer
Players: 2
Estimated Time: 30-60 minutes
Watergate is a two-player battle over a board that looks like a Wall of Crazy. You know, the kind they have in detective shows as they try to string together evidence. You play as The Press or as the Presidency. If you’re the media, you’re desperately trying to forge links between two key witnesses and the President. If you’re Nixon, you’re trying to block those links as best you can, and stall for your time, as time is on your side.
In many ways, Watergate feels like the spiritual successor of 1960: The Making of the President and Twilight Struggle, not just because of the Cold War themes but also because of the engine of the game being dual-use cards that 1960 and Twilight Struggle used to create classic gameplay. But this game is on the list and those aren’t, largely because the formula seems to work so much better in a shorter game.
Stay tuned! New list segment coming soon! Included in the next segment are several that did not make last year’s list! Exciting!
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