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
Thank you for reading!
#90: Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate (2017)
Betrayal at House on the Hill is made up of two phases — exploration and the haunt. The exploration phase is enjoyable. You and your friends exploring a haunted house, uncovering new rooms and ominous events that adds immersion to the overall experience. I love the aspect of creating the building’s layout as everyone takes different paths in their exploration.
But shit gets real when the Haunt phase occurs. At this point, you and your friends are caught in a scenario where someone at the table is THE traitor (DUN, DUN, DUUUN). Each scenario is based off a popular horror trope (like zombies, vampires, and the Ghost of Julius Caesar) and comes with their own set of rules, mechanics, and win conditions for both sides.
That sounds awesome, right? Unfortunately, this is where the fun in Betrayal dissipates thanks to the poorly written rulebooks and imbalanced scenarios. Even if everyone has a strong reading comprehension, there’s always an argument at the table about how the rules should be implemented. That and the game usually end with one side dominating majority of the haunt phase with little to no effort.
We would need to wait thirteen years for Baldur’s Gate to arrive. It retains what works in House on the Hill while refining some of its mechanics (ex: character abilities, haunt roll) and scenarios to make the Haunt phase actually enjoyable. But it comes at the cost of trading the charming yet cheesy horror B-movie atmosphere for a generic Dungeons & Dragons atmosphere. As someone who cares a lot about theming, I think it’s worth the sacrifice for a better gateway game.
#89: Run, Fight, or Die: Reloaded (2019)
Run, Fight, or Die: Reloaded is a dice-chucking zombie romp, Yahtzee-style. You roll dice to search for weapons and followers, discover new areas, and deal with the endless horde of flesh-eating zombies moving closing towards you every round. The game is easy to explain but playing it makes me sweat bullets. I’m constantly thinking two to three turns ahead, juggling my will to survive with my need for better tools, better rolls, and victory points. The existence of player interaction and a mutant zombie mucking things up every round doesn’t make survival any easier.
I received this at a local gaming meetup’s white elephant gift exchange (my gift was Jamaica) and I was not disappointed. The presentation is great. I like the art style, the colorful cast of characters, and the plastic zombie miniatures that actually smell like rotting flesh (not sure if that’s intentional or not). It’s not mind-blowing but I found narrowly escaping death by killing a gigantic horde of zombies to be satisfying. This will be in my collection for awhile as I don’t have anything else that resembles this mechanically and thematically.
#88: Dimension (2014)
A fast-paced puzzler where you have a minute to stack colorful spheres while adhering to the many task cards at hand (ex: black spheres cannot touch each other; blue spheres cannot be placed higher than green spheres). With a limited space to work with and a limited time to figure out how, it can get frantic easily.
Dimension is a very fun puzzle to tackle. However it lacks variety within the task cards. After three games, I’ve seen all what it has to offer. This one is best played once in a blue moon and only for a short period of time.
#87: Arcadia Quest (2014)
My friends and I expect Arcadia Quest (AQ) to be an epic dungeon crawling campaign where we all work together to fight monsters and finish quests. Turns out, we are half correct.
Each player in AQ leads a guild of three misfits of mercenaries on a campaign to reclaim the kingdom of Arcadia from an evil vampire lord. Throughout the campaign, you’re indeed slaying monsters and completing quests. But most of the time, you’re trying to kill members of rival guilds because apparently, Arcadia is a dog eat dog kingdom where only one guild is acknowledged when it comes to saving the world. In reality, Arcadia Quest is a fantasy skirmisher with light PvE elements.
Most campaign-style games are play through it once and forget about it. But AQ strives in replayability thanks to the large pool of heroes to build your guild from (not including expansion and dozen of Kickstarter exclusives) and variable powers you can purchase after each round. A campaign in AQ lasts six games with eleven scenarios to choose from. Each campaign is going to feel different whether it’s team composition, tactics, and route.
I want to love Arcadia Quest for the cute, chibi miniatures and the satisfying sense of progression it provides. It’s very entertaining to nuke monsters and your friends with beefed up equipment. But the latter half of the campaign introduced oppressive items including Death Swarm, Hate, and Bombs that weren’t fun to deal with. Combat is heavily reliant on dice. While it is exciting to roll critical hits to narrowly avoid death, there are an abundance of defensive armor and reroll items that makes attacking feel horrible and games much longer to finish. Finishing a campaign turned into a bloody chore for us towards the end.
Perhaps Masmorra: Dungeons of Arcadia would have been the better choice to match our expectations of a cooperative dungeon crawler.
#86: Photosynthesis (2017)
Who knew planting trees could be cutthroat and brain-burning? I sure as hell didn’t. But thank you Photosynthesis for teaching me that.
At the start, everyone is planting seeds and collecting energy from the bright, cheery sun revolving around the forest. But as those seeds mature into trees, those trees create shadows preventing some from collecting energy. In time, those trees that bathe in sunlight will grow bigger casting a wider shadow over the inferior trees. A natural example of the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration.
Your goal is to collect victory points by growing your trees to their fullest before uprooting them after they outlived their purpose. Light points (or energy) is precious because it’s what lets you buy supplies, plant seeds, grow trees, and uproot trees. You’re constantly planning multiple turns ahead, taking the rotating sun in consideration, deciding where to plant your seeds or when to grow your trees all in order to optimize your light collection while trying to throw shade at the competition.
This is something I enjoy here and there. Sometimes, I feel the game is already decided by whoever goes first.
#85: Tragedy Looper (2011)
Tragedy Looper is a one-of-a-kind game. An intense battle between warring minds as one player is the Mastermind pitted against everyone one who are the Protagonists. Both sides will manipulate the board and its residents to alter the game’s events towards their favor.
The Protagonists have one objective: complete the scenario without losing. As obvious as that sounds, the Protagonists begin the game having no idea what the hell is going or how they lose. The Mastermind, on the other hand, knows everything about the scenario and is doing whatever it takes to trigger a disaster. Whenever that happens, the Protagonists “lose” and the board is rewind back to the beginning. Through trial-and-error, the Protagonists need to figure out their losing conditions and prevent them from happening before they run out of continues.
It’s enjoyable to play on either side. As one of the Protagonists, I’m unraveling a mystery with a limited amount of information. As the Mastermind, I always have a shit eating grin whenever the Protagonists are struggling or chasing red herrings I left behind.
As cool as Tragedy Looper sounds, I have trouble bringing this to the table. It’s difficult to teach new players as the mechanics are wildly abstract. With each game lasting well around two hours and scenarios having no replayability, a game can easily be ruined if someone forgets or misinterprets a rule. I have witnessed games where someone who was struggling with the rules made one mistake that cost their entire team the victory. It was tragic.
Oh I would love to play this again if I could find a group who is willing to endure the high entry barrier and strictness that comes with its logical deduction gameplay.
#84: Arctic Scavengers (2009)
A thematic deck-builder that has player conflict? Where do I sign up? Set in a future where all of Earth has turned into a gigantic ball of frozen hell, you lead a small tribe of survivors. You gather scarce resources and recruit mercenaries in an effort to survive as the biggest clan at the table.
Two things that stop Arctic Scavengers from becoming a Dominion clone are the junkyard pile and the skirmish deck. The junkyard provides another way for players to obtain cards. As you sift through the rubbles of useless garbage, you might find useful tools like rifles and medicine. Also as a free action, you can trash any number of cards from your hand to further clog the pile which is something I haven’t seen in another deck-builder.
The first two rounds play like Dominion. The third round introduces the skirmish phase where the top card of the skirmish card is up for grabs. The catch is one player knows what that card is. They start that round carrying out their turn as usual except at the end, they play all of their leftover cards face-down for the skirmish phase. This makes Arctic Scavengers more interesting as bluffing is incorporated and you have more decisions to make. Should I use this Brawler to dig for resources or put him in the skirmish? If my opponent is putting their entire hand into the skirmish, should I not bother or are they bluffing?
I recently revisited the deck-builder and had lukewarm feelings for it which I thought was weird. I remember playing it for the first time thinking it was amazing. The mechanics, hand management, and decision making involved makes playing Arctic Scavengers feel like a fight for survival. If I had to guess why the change of heart, it’s probably because the card play lacks combos and variety in card effects.
#83: Love Letter (2012)
Love Letter is great if you need to kill time and wait for your friends to finish their game so you can join them afterward. The rules are easy to understand. It has enough bluffing, deduction, and interaction to keep everyone engaged.
There are multiple variations of Love Letter albeit most of them are no longer in print. My favorite version is Archer: Once You Go Blackmail… which adds another layer of player interaction and deduction with the Hidden Identity Card mechanic. Plus, it features characters from a fantastic show.
#82: Sentinels of the Multiverse (2011)
Everyone has dreamt of being a superhero at some point in their lives. I remember wanting to be an X-Men after obsessing over the animated series growing up. If I was a mutant, then I would want invisibility as a superpower.
Sentinels of the Multiverse (SotM) does an amazing job fulfilling that fantasy with their own Sentinel Comics universe. You and your friends control a powerful superhero and work together like the Avengers to take down wicked villains in dangerous environments. Each hero comes with their own deck of cards showcasing their unique abilities and personalities. The same goes for the villains and environments involved.
For example: there’s Tachyon, inspired by DC Comic’s Flash, who can burn through her deck at blazing speed to provide burst damage and utility for her team. Baron Blade is an arrogant mad scientist who hides in his mobile station, letting his minions and inventions do his dirty work. The Insula Primalis environment features dinosaurs who join the fray, attacking both sides of the conflict with the appearance of a volcano wreaking havoc on the battlefield. You can mix-and-match these decks to create plenty of interesting scenarios.
The game is easy to teach newcomers. On your turn: check for turn effects, play a card, use a power, draw a card. But without an accountant or an experienced player to keep track of all the modifiers and card effects involved, then the game easily falls apart. In the first few games, every minute, someone went: “Oh, I should have taken 2 damage from this card earlier” or “Ahh, I forgot to resolve my end turn effect. Everyone discard a card now”.
To be honest, Sentinels of the Multiverse is ranked this high for its sentimental value. I remember how I played the hell out of this game when I first bought it. But SotM hasn’t aged well since its debut. Largely because decision making is as shallow as Marvel’s movie villains not named Thanos. Imagine playing Legacy where most of your turns consist of using your only power to bolster your allies’ attacks or the Egyptian God Ra where you have to decide if you want to deal fire damage to the henchman or deal MORE fire damage instead.
I am thankful I have the digital version to streamline everything for me in case I need to get my superhero fix.
#81: Karmaka (2016)
A spiritual race where we start off as lowly dung beetles, climbing up the karmic ladder until one has achieved transcendence. As the title suggests, this revolves around the law of karma: “what goes around comes around”.
You start with six cards. You can play a card as a deed for points, use its effect, or reserve for your future life. When you run out of cards, you die and reincarnate. If you have enough points from a single color, then you move onto the next stage. Otherwise, you reincarnate into the same state as before and get a compensation to make ascending easier. Either way, you start over with six cards.
What makes Karmaka fun is the card play. Whenever you play a card for its effect, beneficial or harmful, someone else has the opportunity to take that card with them to their future life which may come back to haunt you. It’s a fantastic mechanic making you think about what you want to do versus the possible outcomes that might happen later.
