My introduction to board gaming as a full-fledged hobby started with two college friends and a game called Settlers of Catan. Since then, I have played at least 200+ board games. Inspired by my desire to improve my writing skills and ability to express myself, I decided to come up with a list ranking my top 100 board games I have played throughout my years. I used PubMeeple to rank them based off my personal enjoyment, that’s it!
If you want to know the previous entries, click any of the following:
#100 to #91; #90 to #81; #80 to #71; #70 to #61, #60 to #51,
#50 to #41, #40 to #31
Thank you for reading!
#30: Orléans (2014)
When someone showed me this box, the first thing that came out of my uncultured mouth was, “What does dragons, knights and monks have to do with New Orleans?” Seconds later, I was put on blast as they explained this game took place in medieval Loire Valley, France and had nothing to do with the Big Easy. Whoops, haha. Orléans is a medium weight eurogame sharing lots of similarities with deck-builders because it has bag-building as its central mechanic.
Instead of a deck, you will fill your fluffy pouch with tokens representing farmers, knights, monks, etc. that’ll help you build a respectable trade network in the region. Each round, you replenish and reshuffle your bag meaning you don’t have to wait a few turns to draw that king you just bought. However, there’s a chance you may never draw him and end up drawing the same damn merchant each turn. That’s the double-edged sword of bag-builders. Luckily, Orléans helps mitigate those concerns by allowing you to leave your drawn tokens in your inventory instead of the bag or better yet, use those tokens to prepare your actions for future turns.
This is a fantastic strategy game with smoothly blends bag-building and worker placement together. The tactical element encouraging forward thinking. The diverse, viable strategies one can follow. The excitement of being neck-to-neck against another person to reach the milestone first for scarce citizens acting as a juicy, scoring multipliers. Personally though, I think it feels incomplete without the Trades & Intrigue expansion which brings improved town hall boards with better rewards and the concept of orders making that gigantic map more than just a diversion.
#29: Werewords (2017)
Werewords is a social deduction game with elements taken from 20 questions. It’s not the first game of its kind which is Oink Games’ Insider. I enjoyed Insider but felt it was easy for the infiltrator to win without having to lift a finger. If no one guesses the secret word, the game says everybody loses but I firmly believes that’s a win for the baddies. There was no real incentive to participate as an infiltrator as everyone else will try their darndest to figure out the word.
Here, Werewords has a better framework. The werewolves need to ask questions to deter villagers away from figuring out the secret word. The seer tries to help the villagers without trying to give away their identity to the wolves. Whether the secret word is guessed correctly or not, the losing side has a chance to guess who is their target (Seer or Werewolf) which adds another layer to the game. It can get wild when everyone finds out the Mayor answering their questions turned out to be a wolf in disguise.
This is my go-to game for casual game nights with a large party. It’s hard for us to stop playing after one round.
#28: Suburbia (2012)
Definitely one of those “don’t judge a board game by its cover” or in this case, aesthetics. I wanted to play Suburbia for the longest time as I loved building and destroying cities when I had SimCity 4 installed in the family computer. But I never bothered to because of how bland the tiles looked. It’s why I still haven’t tried Castles of Burgundy despite the glowing praise it receives from the board gaming community but that’s another story. I finally pulled the triggered when the Collector’s Edition was released as the bold and vibrant colors of the tiles brought life to a game that looked as pale as a ghost.
Suburbia captures the city building aspect of SimCity well. You can develop your city however you like. You could open up a Maestro’s Steakhouse at the start to generate lots of income until everyone else decides to open up a McDonald’s in their neighborhood. Nothing is stopping you from building an airport next to a residential district. However that comes with consequences unless you don’t care about your reputation or city’s growth. Each tile you come across makes sense in the real world and helps add personality to your developing city.
Your city’s growth is tied to both your income and reputation which respectively, affects how much money and residents you get each turn. When your population reaches certain thresholds, both traits will diminish. It’s important to increase these traits or else your city will be stagnant. This leaves you with tricky decisions where sometimes, you need to compromise your artistic vision to boost your economy or have a chance at winning important awards that separate the best cities from Detroit. In all of my playthroughs, most victories were heavily influenced by the public awards as well everyone’s personal objective.
If there’s one thing Beizer Games should do with Suburbia is to utilize an existing IP with the game’s system. It would be amazing to build your own South Park, Colorado or Springfield, Illinois.
#27: Carcassonne (2000)
A simple tile placement game where everyone contributes to building a beautiful medieval landscape together, leaving their meeples behind to claim certain features like cities, roads, and churches. But underneath its easygoing surface lies the ability to be sinister. You can place a tile to make it difficult for someone to finish their city or to slowly creep into someone else’s progress and leech off their hard work.
Then there are these farmers who do nothing but lay on the grass for the entire game, giving its owner 3 points per completed city in their field. Many times has victory been stolen away by these degenerates and every time it happens, the runner-up spews salt and demand for vengeance. After writing this blurb, I now regret selling my copy of Carcassonne but luckily, I can still play this on Tabletop Simulator.
#26: Race for the Galaxy (2007)
There is a popular rule to watching anime that you should watch a series’ first three episodes before you consider dropping it. Same applies for Race for the Galaxy. My first game went terrible as my friends and I struggled to grasp the iconography and trade mechanics. Second game went better but nobody had a clue for strategies. We thought this game might be a dud. But during the third game, we figured out which cards synergized well with each other and that’s when the game finally clicked for all of us.
Race for the Galaxy is 30 minutes of tough decisions: deciding what action to take or what cards to keep/discard when building your tableau. It has Puerto Rico’s role selection mechanic but everyone simultaneously choose their actions, leaving some room for mind games. Your tableau of settlements and machines represents your engine that can go into different paths of victory such as military or development.
After each date with the game, I learn more about the 109 cards in its deck. In between, I contemplate which strategies or synergies I should attempt next game. What I love about Race for the Galaxy is the depth it provides for being a “small” card game that’s fast and easy to play multiple games back-to-back. I imagine this would be ranked higher if I played a couple more games.
#25: Tyrants of the Underdark (2016)
If you love seeing nothing but blue and purple, then you will love Tyrants of the Underdark. Setting the bad joke aside, this is a wonderful hybrid between a deck-builder and an area control game. In this game, you manage two types of currency: influence used to purchase better cards for your deck and power used to expand board presence with little plastic shields. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel of either mechanic but it mashes them well together to create a refreshing experience. How? Well, I’ll get to that.
One path to victory is to promote cards in your deck which is their take on deck-culling and it’s damn satisfying. Each time you promote a card, your deck not only becomes more efficient with less rubbish but you’ll be rewarded with victory points at the end of the game. It forces you to make interesting decisions and consider short-term utility versus long-term scoring.
Another path to take is conquest. The board is cramped with contestable territories being a hop and a skip away from three neighboring territories. Player conflict is inevitable especially when you can deploy spies to extend your presence anywhere on the board to expand your presence or deny someone complete control over a city, cutting off their supply to victory point tokens in the process. The large focus on player interaction is uncommonly found in deck-builders and it’s feel like a breath of fresh air.
It’s a damn shame Gale Force Nine stopped supporting this game after a two-deck expansions with production issues. It’s a great game where both mechanics compliment each other like peanut butter and jelly. All it needed was more decks and maps from the Dungeons & Dragon universe to sustain high replayability. Okay, maybe it needs an expansion to address the pain and frustration dealing with an Ascension-style market with scarce avenues for influence and expensive, powerful cards that can be game-breaking in the hands of lucky fat cats.
#24: The Resistance (2009)
Boy, do I have fond memories of the Resistance back in college. This is a dangerous game to play with your friends and family. I remember the constant bickering and arguing that occurred during AND after every game. The number of relationships nearly destroyed by this little red box was TOO DAMN HIGH. Nonetheless, this is the pinnacle of social deduction games.
Each game, everyone is secretly divided into two factions: the Resistance, an organization fighting against a tyrannical empire, and the Spies trying to sabotage the rebels’ progress from the inside. There are five missions. The Resistance wins if three missions end in success while the spies win if three missions fails. There is no player elimination. Everyone plays a pivotal role in deciding a mission’s outcome through the power of nomination and discussion. Even if nobody talks, information is revealed through how they vote for each lineup.
Unless you only play this with the exact same group, each game progresses differently as everyone behaves differently especially under pressure. The meta can vary between groups. If spies are on the first mission, then they usually pass the first mission to gain trust and it’s difficult to avoid suspicion in a small group. But there might be someone crazy enough to do the opposite and try to gaslight everyone else into thinking the other player is the spy. A bold strategy that’s enough to create tension, and chaos around the table.
There is a medieval version called Avalon. While I prefer the dystopian theme, I recommend Avalon because it introduces of the Merlin and Assassin roles. Both roles spice up the game and balances the game at higher player counts. The Merlin can help their fellow members deduce their allies while the Assassin is there as a countermeasure to prevent the Merlin from being too obvious.
#23: Among the Stars (2012)
Among the Stars is often compared to 7 Wonders because both are drafting games with similar turn structures. However, Among the Stars differentiates itself by focusing on tile placement. Throughout the game, you will draft location cards and place them in your tableau representing your space station. But placing a location card requires credits and eventually, you need to sacrifice a turn to draft and discard for some space cash. Also, some location cards require energy from nearby power reactors or grant additional victory points depending on their surroundings. Altogether, there’s another layer of decision making where you need to plan ahead and manage your resource wisely to build a kickass station.
I’ll admit 7 Wonders is the superior drafting game of the two because of the variable scoring paths and how each age feels dynamic with different cards to draft. In Among the Stars, there is no difference between the first year and fourth year. You’re drafting a card from the same pool 24 times. But I prefer Among the Stars because when the game ends, I can take pride in my awkwardly shaped space station with an entertainment district surrounded by military sectors and power sectors. A glamourous light shining in the black sea of war and technology.
#22: Dixit! (2008)
Catan may have brought me to the world of modern board gaming but it was Dixit that convinced me to stay. This was the first board game I bought to start building my collection.
Dixit is a party game that doubles as a reverse Rorschach examination. Everyone takes turns being the storyteller, delivering a clue accompanied with their card. The clue can be anything. A word, a phrase, or even a song. Everyone else will throw a card from their hand that best fits the clue. The storyteller must come up with a clue subtle enough for at least one other person to know which card belongs to them without making it too obvious for everyone to figure out.
In place of inkblots are the beautiful illustrations on the oversized cards. They are not too bare or busy, leaving plenty of room for open interpretation. My friends and I always find ourselves laughing out loud. We tend to dissect how someone would come up with a ridiculous clue or how they associated the storyteller’s clue with an image. This is a fun and silly game where one can freely express their logic, imagination, and occasional side jokes.
#21: The Quest for El Dorado (2017)
Reiner Knizia has created one, if not the most, refined deck-builder with the Quest for El Dorado. A race through the dense jungles, rapid rivers, and local villages of South America in order to reach the legendary land of gold. If you want to get there first, then you need to find the right balance between building your deck and moving across the board. Each turn, you draw four cards. Cards can be used for their effects or as currency but not both. However what makes this game brilliant is the option to reserve the cards in your hand for next turn, allowing you to setup for bigger turns or purchases.
You can strategically position yourself to force your opponents to take detours while you can spend your turn buying better tools for upcoming obstacles. The modular hex boards open up endless possibilities for track layouts. Having discovered the game this year, it’s slowly becoming one of my favorites. A short and sweet racing deck-builder with an elegant system and wide replayability specially when you add expansions to the mix.
