Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part Four (93-91)

Julie is right, Red7 should be higher in my Top 100, probably much higher, so should Sentient, and Jekyll Vs. Hyde. Initially, I just ran our collection through the ranking engine and then I started these blog posts. Upon review, some things just seemed out of place. I think that I made some decisions based more on how much I wanted to get a game back to the table, than on how much I liked the game. Julie pointed out in several instances, "But, we've only played that game once." It's true, we have a lot of games that we have only played once. Most of these I am excited to play again. But I probably shouldn't translate that excitement into how much I like the game. I decided to do some manual adjustments to correct some of the aberrations that I found, but the ones that I have already blogged about are locked in, at least until I try this list again in another 3 or 4 years.

#93 Scooby Doo! The Board Game

This is a game that Julie and I will agree to disagree on. She likes it, but she doesn't love it. I love it. Horrified didn't make it into my Top 100. Horrified is a great game, but for me, Scooby-Doo! completely replaces it. They are both "scary-season" appropriate cooperative games, and they occupy the same basic space in game complexity (if you play Scooby-Doo! on its hardest level.) But, Scooby-Doo! is Scooby-Doo! (I think that I just won my argument there.)

In Scooby-Doo! players take the roles of the iconic characters from the classic cartoon series. You can play Scooby, Shaggy, Daphne, Velma, or Fred. The characters each have a special power that they can use once during the game by eating their scooby-snack. (Horrified doesn't have scooby-snacks. Scooby-Doo! wins.) Players move around the board collecting items to build traps to capture the big bad.

Movement is done through card play for both the players and the villain. The design here is such that moving from player actions to the villain actions is very intuitive and you'll never forget to take the villain turn (which has happened to me in some other cooperative games.) Movement cards also have an initiative value on them and this can be really important because you need to balance when you want to go compared to the other players and the villain. Timing means a lot in the game.

If characters take "damage" action cards are discarded. Running out of cards means running out of time and this is one way to lose the game. As the villain moves around the board they haunt the different locations. Having too many haunted locations will also lose you the game. For locations you have all the classics like the malt shop and the amusement park.

The board and components are beautiful. You even have the Mystery Machine that you can drive in (if you have gas!) I love Scooby-Doo! so much! It's so thematic and so much fun that it's my 93rd favorite game of all time! (Side note: there are a few Scooby-Doo games out there. If you decide to try this one, be sure to get: Scooby-Doo! The Board Game that is published by CMON. The logo is in the lower left corner of the box.)

#92 Copenhagen: Roll & Write

Copenhagen: Roll & Write is basically Tetris the board game. One player rolls a set of five dice with colors on them. The more colors that you can match, the larger Tetris sized pieces you can draw on your paper. The other player gets to choose among any unused dice to mark a different area on their sheet to gain special powers.

Tetris pieces that you draw have to start at the bottom of your grid area and go up. You can only place a piece if it can sit on top of another. It's very Tetris. You get bonus points for completing rows and columns. The game ends when someone hits a certain threshold of points and the person with the most points wins.

Copenhagen: Roll & Write scores high on the quick and easy scale. It's landing high on this list because Julie and I have played it quite a bit recently, and it's just so easy to get to the table. And yeah, the Tetris puzzle is really fun! That makes Copenhagen: Roll & Write my 92nd favorite game of all time!

#91 Lost Ruins of Arnak

Lost Ruins is one of those games that I adjusted and pushed lower down my list to give other games a chance. I remember really liking my play of this, but we have only played Lost Ruins of Arnak once and it's been awhile. So, yes! I really want to get this back to the table. But, I can't remember enough about it to do it justice here. 

I remember that it's a worker placement game and that you use workers to explore ruins to gain resources to buy cards to gain powers to perform more and better actions to explore more ruins to get more resources. Doing all these things gets you points. The actions are tied to a cool "Indiana Jones" type theme and I remember really liking it. 

I have got to get this game back to the table! Who knows with a few more plays Lost Ruins of Arnak might become even better than my 91st favorite game of all time!

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Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part Three (95-94)

#95 World's Fair 1893

World's Fair 1893 is a great little area control and set collection game with a rondel (a round action selection track) shaped like a Ferris Wheel! 

Players place workers at locations that are based on various themed categories around the wheel to claim different events to sell tickets to their attractions in order to gain points to win the game. 

You score for having a majority in a given category and for having sets of different kinds of events as well. It's a bit of a push and pull that keeps the game play interesting and challenging and this is all enhanced by the game's theme. 

The cards all have art and flavor text that is based on real attractions that were present at the World's Fair in 1893. This is so awesome and is yet another reason the World's Fair 1893 is my 95th favorite game of all time.

#94 Red7

Red7 is a simple card game. Cards come in 7 suits numbered 1-7. The core rule of Red7 is that you must have the high card to be winning and you must be winning at the end of your turn or you will be eliminated. I normally don't like player elimination in games, I think Red7 might be the only one that I own. But, Red7 plays really well at 2 players (where player elimination doesn't matter) and it plays really fast (so no one is eliminated for long.)

Suits have a hierarchy and this is used to break ties. So a 4 always beats a 3 regardless of its suit, but a red 3 is better than a green 3. The suits are the 7 colors of the rainbow and if you are familiar with the anagram Roy G. Biv, then you already have the hierarchy memorized. That is the colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. Red is the strongest color in the suit hierarchy and violet is the weakest. So the highest valued card in the deck is the Red7 and the lowest valued card is the Violet1.

But Red7 isn't just a game of "high card wins." Each suit also has a power that changes the rules of the game. One suit changes the rule to "most cards of one color wins." Another suit changes the rule to "most cards below four wins." And the Red suit changes the rule back to "high card wins." In the case of a tie, the highest numbered card in a set will decide the winner. When this is a tie, the tied high card of the highest suit in the color hierarchy wins.

On your turn you must change the conditions of the game so that you are winning. If the current rule is "high card wins" and your opponent is winning with a blue 7 in front of them, (The only card in front of you is an orange 3.) you might play the yellow 7 from your hand down in front of you so that you are winning. Now it's your opponent's turn.

Your opponent can't beat a yellow 7. They have a red 6 in their hand, and red is stronger than yellow, but you always rank the cards by number first and then by suit. Your 7 is higher than their 6, and your yellow 7 is higher than the blue 7 that they have on the table. They can't win following the rule "high card wins." However, your opponent does have an Indigo 4 in their hand. Remember that I said that the card suits carry a special ability to change the rules. They do, but not if they are played in front of you. They must be played to the discard pile to change the rules. The top card of the discard pile dictates the current rule for winning.

On a player's turn they may play a card in front of themselves to satisfy a win condition, or play a card to the discard pile to change the win conditions, or both. Your opponent plays the Indigo 4 to the discard pile changing the win condition to "most cards in a row." Then they play the red 6 down in front of themselves to satisfy the new win condition. They now have a blue 7 and a red 6 down in front of them. They have 2 cards in a row. This is more than you have. You have an orange 3 and a yellow 7 in front of you. That's only 1 card in a row. Your opponent is now winning. 

One final thing. Because the card your opponent played has a number value greater than the total number of cards in front of them (they played a 4 and only have 2 cards in front of them) they get to draw a card. This is the only way that you can draw a new card into your hand. Your opponent draws a new card adding it to their hand. It's now your turn.

I have spent way too much time on this one game, but Red7's game play is so smooth and so clever that I just felt the need to go over it in detail. This is a great game for anyone who enjoys card games. For a long time Red7 held a spot in my top 10 games of all time. It has fallen quite a bit only because Julie and I have played it sooooo much. Still, I am happy to report that Red7 is my 94th favorite game of all time!

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Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part Two (98-96)

Continuing my board game top 100 of 2024, here are entries 98-96. (At this rate, this list is going to take forever. I will try to break things up with an occasional non-board-game post.)

#98 Mindspace

Mindspace is a roll-and-write game. Each player has a dry-erase board that has a square grid area divided into zones. The grid is supposed to represent the human brain, and each zone is a different area of the brain. There are 5 dice in 5 colors. Each round all 5 dice are rolled and then placed above a row of six cards. If a 1 is rolled, it is placed above the first card. A 2 is placed above the second card, and so on. The cards show different Tetris style shapes. When a die of a specific color is placed above a card showing a specific shape, players may draw that shape in that color on their board.

The game comes with dry-erase markers in the 5 different colors. You want to fill in as much of the board as you can, but you can't place shapes of the same color next to each other. Scoring cards give players points for filling in specific patterns or areas of the brain, and the scoring cards have neat thematic descriptions based on psychology. The theme is barely there, but what is there is cleverly applied. The game is fun and quick and provides a satisfying puzzle. This is a great one to bring to the table when we want to play something, but we don't want to think too hard. That is why Mindspace is my 98th favorite game of all time.

#97 Rallyman GT

Rallyman GT is a car racing game. In Rallyman, players place dice with ascending or descending values to plot their course on a race track. The dice are custom six-sided dice each showing only a single number. There's a 1 die with only 1's, a 2 die with only 2's, and so on. However, these are actually dice and not just cube shaped markers. On each die there are one or more hazard symbols in addition to the numbers. 

The 1 & 2 dice each have one hazard symbol. The 3 & 4 dice each have 2 hazard symbols, and the 5 & 6 dice each have 3 hazard symbols in addition to their numbers. Low value dice have a single hazard symbol, but higher valued dice have more symbols. After you plot your movement, you roll the dice to see if your plan has caused you any trouble. If you roll 3 or more hazards, you lose control of your car, which is bad.

After you plot your course it's time to roll. You can choose to play it safe and roll only one die at a time. If you do this, you can stop at any time. Or you can throw caution to the wind and roll all the dice at once, accepting whatever happens as a result. This is called going "flat-out" and if you go flat-out and don't lose control of your car, then you get a focus token for each black (gear) die, and each white (coast) die that you rolled. Focus tokens are a good thing. They help you to mitigate bad luck and help you to win the race.

Rallyman GT presents a great press-your-luck puzzle. The choice for when to go flat-out is important and provides interesting tension. Curves on the track must be entered at lower speeds that are marked on the curves, and if you are going too fast then you will have to use red (brake) dice which have three hazards on them. The track itself is modular. You have a bunch of hex tiles that you can use to build whatever sort of custom race track that you want. This track building element is one of my favorite features of the game. That combined with the intense press-your-luck element makes Rallyman GT my 97th favorite game of all time.

#96 Jekyll Vs. Hyde

Jekyll Vs. Hyde is a trick-taking card game for two players. Over the course of three rounds, if Hyde is able to achieve 10 points, he wins, otherwise Jekyll wins. For a trick taking game, Jekyll Vs. Hyde is surprisingly thematic. I love the idea that in order to win, Jekyll has to keep Hyde under control (preventing him from scoring 10 points.) Note that I said "points" and not "tricks." Another thematic part of this game is how it is scored. At the end of the round, Hyde scores based on the difference in tricks taken between himself and Jekyll. So Hyde wants to be as different from Jekyll as he can, while Jekyll needs to keep the number of tricks on both sides as close to equivalent as he can. Jekyll seeks balance while Hyde seeks discord … very thematic.

The deck is made up of 25 cards. There are 7 cards each of three suits numbered 1-7 and then four special potion cards numbered 2-5. Jekyll Vs. Hyde doesn't have so much as a trump suit as it does a suit hierarchy. The hierarchy is determined during play. The first card of a given suit that is played marks that suit as the weakest in the hierarchy. Then the next suit played becomes the middle powered suit in the hierarchy, making the remaining suit the strongest in the hierarchy. You must play in suit if you can, but if you can't you can play any card paying attention to suit hierarchy because when you don't follow suit, the number on the card doesn't matter and the strongest card in the suit hierarchy will take the trick.

The potion cards trigger one of three possible special powers. Which power is triggered depends on the card played by the other player. If you lead a potion card, you can demand that the other player play a specific suit, and they must play this suit if they have it. If they don't have it, they can play any other card they want, even another potion card, but when two potion cards are played at the same time, no special powers are activated.

Jekyll Vs. Hyde is a tense, interesting, trick-taking puzzle that works great for two players. There is a cooperative version called Jekyll & Hyde Vs. Scotland Yard that I really want to try, but until then I will have to be happy with my 96th most favorite game of all time, Jekyll Vs. Hyde.

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Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part One (100-99)

It's been four years since I blogged my Board Game Top 100. I did share a Top 23 last year, but given that I want to focus on writing everyday, I have decided now would be a good time to do the Top 100 thing again. There is an online Ranking Engine on a website called PubMeeple. Their engine was made for users of the BoardGameGeek website to rank their collections. All I have to do is input my BGG user name and the Ranking Engine loads in the games in my collection for me to rank one at a time. 

I compare game to game. Would I rather play this or that. The engine organizes the games into brackets and keeps prompting me until all the games in my collection have been sorted. It's not a perfect system. Some games just don't compare well against each other because they create such different experiences, but it works well enough. I am not sure how many games I will talk about within each post. I am not going to promise a specific number. I am just going to write as much as I feel like writing each day, and we will see where that gets us.

#100 - Sentient

Sentient is an awesome card placement, dice manipulation game. In the game players roll a set of dice and then organize them in a row by color on their player board. After this players take turns selecting cards from a central market and then placing those cards in order to score them at the end of the round.

Cards are placed between the dice that you have arranged on your player board. The cards score based on the values on the dice, but there's a catch. Each card also has a mathematical symbol in its upper left and right corners: +, - or =. The + requires the player to increase the die next to that symbol by 1. The - requires the player to decrease the die next to that symbol by 1, and the = leaves the die next to it unchanged.

You need to select cards for scoring based on the dice values that you have on your player board, but also plan ahead to not what those dice values are now, but rather what they will be after they have been changed by those same cards that you plan on scoring. It's tricky, and it's actually a pretty neat puzzle.

Players also have some workers that are used for an area control part of the game. The areas represent the different kinds of cards that you can place in your tableau and if you win an area for a particular type of card, then you score extra points for those cards. This adds a set collection element to the game. 

Using your workers for this creates some tough decision making, because you can also use those workers to place over the tops of those math symbols mentioned before, neutralizing them, so that you don't have to change your dice. This is great if you already have the perfect numbers for your scoring card.

The card art on Sentient is beautiful which is what first drew me to the game. The cards show different kinds of androids or robots that supposedly you are "programming" when you place them on your board between your dice. The theme isn't really there at all, but it looks gorgeous. At the end of the day, all that matters is that Sentient is a neat and engaging puzzle, and a really fun game. That's why it's my 100th favorite game of all time.

#99 - Mint Condition Comics

While my #100 game: Sentient, may have had some pretty involved mechanisms and no theme, my next game is the opposite. It has really light mechanics, but feels very thematic. In Mint Condition Comics players are collecting comic books and trying to create sets.

Mint Condition Comics is a card drafting, set collection game. The cards represent different comic books, and the art is awesome! The central market, aka the comic book shop has some comics on display and others in face down piles. This is just like comics that are on open display in the comic shop and issues that are in the back issue bins that you have to dig through to find what you want.

There are three face down piles that represent the back issue bins, and one master draw deck that represents other comics that will come into the shop from the outside. As you look through one of the three face down piles, you may take that pile or return it face down and look at the next one. However, each time that you "skip" a pile, you draw a card from the master deck without looking at it, and add it face down to the pile that you just rejected.

When you take a pile, you add all the cards from that pile face up in front of you. This is your comic book collection. If you skip all three available back issue piles, then you must take the top two cards from the master deck and add those to your collection. Your collection will score points at the end of the game based on the number of comics that you have in each set.

Once you have comics, you can trade for the face up comics (the comics on display) in the comic shop. If you have a comic with a high rarity, you can trade for two comics of a lesser rarity with the comic shop. Alternatively, you can trade any two comics from your collection for one comic from the shop. You can also trade with other players on a one for one basis. You must always give the other player a comic of equal or greater rarity, and you can only trade for their "loose" comics (that is: lone comics that are not yet part of a set of two or greater.)

Mint Condition Comics is so thematic! The comics are all original made up titles. They aren't based on existing comics, but they feel like they could be. Every card represents a comic. It has a title, an issue number, and a rarity. Each round a random title is selected as the "hot comic" which is worth more points. The player with the most points after three rounds is the winner.

I got Mint Condition Comics following a Kickstarter Campaign four years ago. I don't think it was ever sold outside of that Kickstarter. If you ever see a copy, snatch it up. It's awesome, especially if you are a comic collector, or know someone who is. Julie isn't and she still really enjoys the game, too! That's why Mint Condition Comics is my 99th favorite game of all time!

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Arborea Board Game Review

Julie and I played Arborea yesterday. In Arborea players move workers on action tracks. There are 8 sets of tracks covering different actions you can take in the game. These actions vary from collecting resources, attracting specific creatures, collecting creatures, adding terrain cards to your personal monster ranch, training specialized workers and giving gifts to powerful sages. 

Arborea is all about manipulating the action tracks, knowing where to commit your workers, and when. Some workers have to be retrained every time you use them while others can be used again right away after they complete their tasks. This is tricky because workers are placed out on these sort of conveyor belt things. Taking action will only happen after a conveyor belt moves. The longer a worker stays on the conveyor belt, the better actions they can take, but the longer they remain unavailable to perform other jobs.

The steps to game play in a turn are spelled out on the game board and the game play loop is reasonably intuitive. This makes the game feel simple, while at the same time, you know that it's not. You have to get resources to gain terrain and then place the terrain. You then need to attract some wild monsters and then capture those monsters and place them in the habitats that you create. The proper placement of your monsters is where you are going to score most of your points.

The board and the components are beautiful, but manipulating the actions of the game to get what you want is a real brain burner. I think Arborea is the heaviest board game we own. It's probably as heavy as I want to get. I do really enjoy it, but Julie and I have played twice now. There is a 100 point score track around the outside of the board. In our first game, Julie almost lapped me in points. In our second game, she did lap me. So, I seem to be missing something, but it's a testament to Arborea's gameplay that I really enjoy the game despite losing so badly.

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