Tag: monikers

Kyle Hanley’s Top 100 Games of All Time (2020 Edition): 100-91

I interrupt your horrifying 2020 to bring you a bright ray of board game sunshine: it’s my top 100 games of all time!

Last year, around the late Fall/early winter period, I shared with the public for the first time ever my top 100 board games of all time. However, that was the 2019 edition. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that a LOT can change in a year. Therefore, I think it’s fun and far more accurate to update the list year to year and this right here is the start of my 2020 list.

If you’re completely new to this, you can check out my 2019 list on my site. I obviously still have it posted, both for posterity and because there’s no way something I spent that amount of time on is getting removed. I made a little post (Yep, That Time Again, Let’s Do Another Top 100!) a week ago introducing how I’m gonna handle this year’s top 100 versus last year’s, particularly when it comes to games that I already wrote about. Check out that link above for a quick primer to see what’s in store.

With those things out of the way, let’s get into it!

100. Monikers

Last year’s ranking: 86 (-14)

What I said last year

Monikers is a game that is based on a public domain game that has several different names: Fishbowl, The Hat Game and Celebrity are a few of the names given to the DIY versions you play with your friends, while people in the hobby will recognize Time’s Up as an officially published version of the game system….Monikers/Fishbowl/The Hat Game/Celebrity/Time’s Up is a game where two (or more) teams are trying to guess more words and phrases than the other team(s). These words and phrases are on cards that make up a unique deck for that game. On your team’s turn, a clue giver is trying to give clues to lead your team to guessing whatever is on that card. Pretty standard party game stuff, so far. But there are two unique twists that make this game as memorable and funny as it is.

The first twist is that the game is played over three rounds and each round narrows the amount of stuff the clue giver can say and give to their team in order to guess the word. First round is easy: the clue giver can say whatever they want as long as it isn’t part of the word or phrase itself. Second round is tougher: in this round, the clue giver can only give ONE word to lead their team to winning the card. Third round is madness: only charades/silent gestures can be used to get your team to guess the card.

Which of course leads me to the second twist that makes this game system so brilliant. During these three rounds, the SAME deck of cards is being used. This means players have to remember from previous rounds what words have been guessed and use that to their advantage as the clues get vaguer and more stupid as the game goes on

The end result is a hilarious game where inside jokes and callbacks run rampant. As you get deeper and deeper into the game, your brain latches onto references from previous rounds, creating a cacophony of laughter whenever they pop back up. This leads to situations like in a recent game for me, where somebody pantomiming a fire breathing dragon led to someone (correctly) shouting, “BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH.” Another saw a friend of mine running to block a door with his back, fear and panic on his face in order to get across the word “Hodor”. Perhaps my favorite of all is a very simple moment when my friend gave a serene, welcoming gesture with his hands and face which got me to correctly guess, “Richard Attenborough”.

It’s these little moments that pepper a night of Monikers that make it such a fun, hysterical experience. There’s not much else to add, so I’ll close with my favorite Monikers story. One night, I introduced it to three friends and we were playing 2 v. 2 for an hour or so. Another friend came in during the third round of a game and saw us guessing extremely specific prompts off of fairly basic charades gestures. She stood there dumbfounded, not realizing it wasn’t normal Charades, and just softly said, “how did you guys do that.”

What I say now

Yeah, Monikers is still a blast. It does, however, find itself sinking on my list, dangerously close to falling out the bottom, because of its fairly specific niche it fills. I really only play Monikers at big parties, where we have at least 6-8 willing players, and outside of that setting, I don’t find myself drawn to it. The fact that I haven’t had a social situation like that since (checks watch) mid-March due to a deadly virus raging across the planet, perhaps compounds this issue.

Still, the fun memories Monikers has provided me with and the always hilarious experiences that occur when it’s pulled out means it can feel secure here in my top 100 for at least another year.

99. Silver & Gold

Last year’s ranking: N/A

Well, that didn’t take long! Just two games in and we already have a newcomer. Welcome to the list, buddy!

Our fresh face here is Phil Walker-Harding’s Silver & Gold, a roll/flip and write that has the distinction of being my favorite in the genre. In this game, you won’t be crooning Christmas songs as the name may imply. Nope, here you’re in the role of pirates crossing off ‘X’s off treasure maps, as you do between binging rum and hanging out with Johnny Depp.

The game is essentially a deck of cards that represent these treasure maps. You start the game with two and then a separate deck reveals a polyomino shape for that turn. That shape is the shape all players must draw on one of their two maps. “Wait,” you say, your face flushed with panic, “draw on a card!? What am I, some kind of serial killer!? That’s how John Wayne Gacy started!”

Relax, friend, because one of the coolest things about Silver & Gold is that the cards are all dry erase. That means you take a marker, mark out the squares  and at the end of the game, everything comes off! Your goal is to mark off all the squares on a card as quickly and efficiently as possible. As you fill in cards you place them to the side like a pirate secretary filing paperwork and then you grab a new one from an ever-changing display.

Playing these minigames of Pirate Tetris as efficiently as possible is made all the more fun by the extra small but meaningful decisions Walker-Harding has peppered along the way. Some of the squares on the maps have different icons. There’s coins and palm trees which can provide big point bonuses when filled in at the right time, as well as ‘X’s that allow you to immediately cross off another square (which can be chained together to satisfying effect). Plus, many of the cards include end game point bonuses for completing certain color cards. Trying to formulate a strategy around one of these mechanisms gives Silver & Gold a slight but noticeable extra oomph and provides a solid amount of replay value.

The biggest criticism I have of this game is that it can be a very heads down experience. Aside from occasionally having a card you wanted taken from the display and the race to gold coins, it feels like you’re just paying attention to your own maps with little room for player interaction. This is, of course, a common thread among roll and writes, a big reason why the genre often falls flat for me. Silver & Gold does what it can to mask this, but even that feels like not quite enough.

But as I’ll say quite often throughout this list, making it anywhere on this top 100 means it’s a great game, so 99 is quite impressive for Silver & Gold!

98. Brave Rats

Last year’s ranking: N/A

One thing I was surprised by when I looked through my 2019 top 100, besides how insufferable I am, is how much I apparently like role selection games. I’ve always known it to be a mechanism I liked, but I like it a LOT more than I realized. We can add another piece of evidence to the sprawling “Does Kyle REALLY like role selection??” cork board that some haggard detective is currently standing front of: my number 98 game, new to the top 100, Brave Rats.

Brave Rats is designed by Senji Kanai, designer of Love Letter, another role selection game that happened to make my top 100 last year (will it return? STAY TUNED). And when you squint at both Love Letter and Brave Rats, you can certainly see the connective tissue. In fact, I’ve often described Brave Rats as a 2-player version of Love Letter.

Like Love Letter, Brave Rats has players picking role/character cards, trying to trigger their powers and/or ensure that their character’s number is bigger than their opponents. Whereas Love Letter involved players drawing from a deck, managing a teensy tiny hand of two, Brave Rats is a 2 player only game where both players have an identical hand of 8 cards. The cards (again, like Love Letter) are different characters that are numbered and include some sort of zany special power that will obliterate any chance of your game following those pesky things called ‘rules’.

You see, at its core, Brave Rats is basically a game of War (that sounds dreadful, but keep reading). You play a card and the number on it needs to be higher than the number on your opponent’s card. If it is, you win the round! First to four rounds wins.

Okay, sounds simple, but imagine playing a game of War in which you and your opponent are crammed into a giant clothes dryer and you’re spending the game tumbling together around in a kinetic blur. That’s what Brave Rats truly is.

So, let’s say you play the ‘Assassin’, a 3, which means the lowest strength wins but your opponent played ‘The Wizard’ which cancels out your card so never mind, the ‘Wizard’ has a higher  value so they still win BUT WAIT, ACTUALLY on the previous round you played the ‘General’ which provides +2 to your card in the next round so your ‘Assassin’ isn’t a 3, it’s a 5, so it’s a tie which means this round is put on hold and the cards are put to the side so that whoever wins the next round wins both that round and THIS round and this is just a small example of the nonsensical, topsy turvy fun that Brave Rats provides.

Games can even last, hilariously, less than 5 seconds. A ‘Prince’ card automatically wins the round they’re played in BUT if your opponent plays the ‘Princess’ card, they automatically win the game. I’ve played many a game with my girlfriend where I play my ‘Prince’ as my first card, thinking, ‘No way she plays her Princess THIS early, heh heh oh look she did, I just lost” and the game is over just like that. It’s moments like this and the example above that make Brave Rats such a supremely silly but memorable game that I have a blast playing over and over again.

This has been an amazing game for me the past couple months in quarantine, since it’s just me and my girlfriend playing lots of two player games. The main reason this sits at 98 and not higher is because, like a powerful blood magic spell, the whirlwind of chaos this game conjures comes at a price. Often times there’ll be edge cases as to who truly wins the round and there’s a player aid devoted to tiebreakers with a surprisingly daunting spreadsheet to resolve who wins what and when.

Despite that fiddliness, Brave Rats is an absolute delight of a microgame and one that I anticipate could climb up the more I play.

97. Majesty: For the Realm

Last year’s ranking: N/A

My number 97 comes from designer Marc Andre, who is best known for making the smash hit Splendor. While I quite like Splendor, it isn’t quite a top 100 game for me. Therefore, I find it a little disappointing that his follow up, Majesty: For the Realm, hasn’t gotten near the buzz Splendor did because I, obviously, find it to be a better game.

Like Splendor, Majesty is a gateway level engine builder perfect for rookies to the genre. Whereas Splendor had players collecting and spending poker chips to buy victory points, Majesty has you drafting cards to slot into a tableau so that they can net you exponential returns. Every player starts with a row of cards representing a village, with locations like the Mill, the Brewery and the Castle.

On your turn, you draft a card from a display, following a Small World-esque system; the first card is free and every card past that requires you to drop a meeple on everything that comes before it. You then take the card and put it in its proper location: Millers go the Mill, Brewers go to the Brewery and so on. This gives you an amount of points, the amount of which is determined by the number of cards already at that location and/or the number of cards at other places in your tableau.

The points you’re rewarded start off small, like the drizzle before a spring shower, and eventually become laughably huge, turning that drizzle into the monsoon scene from Jumanji. So many engine builders revolve around building engines that either make actions more efficient or allow you to trigger chain reactions that lead to an eventual windfall of resources or points. In Majesty, it’s far simpler. Things just snowball till you blink and suddenly you have 200 points. It’s a refreshingly elegant and satisfying way to tackle a mechanism that, I think, can sometimes transform its games into downtime filled slogs as every player needs to wait for their opponent to trigger 14 different cards that lead into each other.

These point explosions that come at you like a fireworks display’s grand finale are made all the more satisfying by the chunky point tokens you get from scoring. They aren’t quite the tactile delight that the Splendor poker chips are but they’re damn close. Obviously, this is a fairly shallow observation to make, but components can add a lot to a game and the gratifying clickety clack of these point chips elevate the already rewarding engine building that Majesty provides.

The interesting thing about Majesty is that this isn’t new to my collection or a game I just played this year for the first time. I’ve had Majesty since it released back in 2018 and it’s always been a game I’ve really liked. I just happen to rediscover my love for it this year, thanks to quarantine gaming with my girlfriend. We’ve been playing it a bunch over the past few months and it’s been a wonderful experience, like greeting an old friend you haven’t seen in a while.

Majesty certainly isn’t the deepest game and there’s a certain strategy that I think is perhaps overpowered (there is a ‘variety point bonus’ for getting all your locations filled that seems to always decide the outcome), but this is one hell of an underrated game that deserves more love.

96. Celestia

Last year’s ranking: 83 (-13)

What I said last year

Celestia is a push your luck game in the style of Incan Gold, where you and a group are pressing forward on an increasingly dangerous path, and the crux of the game is deciding whether to stay and take guaranteed points or to stay juuust a bit longer to squeeze out a bit more. While Incan Gold has you going through a fairly generic temple setting, Celestia has you travelling on a steampunk style airship, making pit stops in a vibrant Wonderland-esque cul-de-sac of floating cities.

Celestia is played over a series of ‘journeys’, which involve moving from city to city. At each city, a new captain takes over making this either the most fair, egalitarian group of air travelers ever assembled or the most indecisive. Whoever the captain is must roll a certain number of threat dice, the number of which gradually increases throughout the journey. These threat dice might be rolled to a blank side, which reveals no threat (awesome!), or show some sort of threat icon (booo!). The threats involve things like ‘Sky Pirates’, ‘Lightning’ or ‘A Whole Shit Ton of Birds’. The captain must beat these threats by playing cards from their hand which have a matching icon. If the captain does, congratulations! Onward to the next floating city that definitely isn’t just an LSD hallucination! However, if the captain CAN’T play cards to beat the threats? Well. Hope your family took out a nice life insurance policy, because that airship is going DOWN.

The key here is that before the Captain reveals whether or not they can defeat the threats and safely fly everyone to the next city, every other player gets to decide whether to stay with their fearless leader or parachute on down to the current city tile the ship is on, grabbing a victory point card from the city. Victory points increase down the path, which entices people to stay on board but the chance of getting NO points can scare even the most stronghearted explorer. After all, you know what they say: a bird in the hand is worth two in the flaming airship wreckage.

While players decide whether or not to drop out, the Captain can say whether or not they have the cards to beat the dice. The fun part is, they can tell the truth or bend it to their advantage. This extra bit of bluffing is what makes Celestia sing, and it creates lots of table talk and negotiation as people try to figure out what to do. Every game I see alliances form, with two or three people becoming each other’s Ride or Die, always jumping ship at the same time or sticking together during even the darkest of times. It’s hilarious when one of these alliances goes deep down the journey’s path, managing to snag a high point victory card from one of the final cities as everyone else bitterly mumbles under their breath. It’s even funnier when an alliance foolishly crashes together, making one wonder if Kool Aid is one of the in flight refreshments.

Like many push your luck games, Celestia is full of laugh out loud and stand up moments. Add in the extra social dynamic of bluffing and table talk, and you have an easy top 100 entry for me.

What I say now

Celestia finds itself falling down my list. One of the biggest reason for this is Celestia’s player count. The box says 2-6, but like an insecure man stuffing the groin area of his pants with a sock, that’s way overcompensating. This game is ostensibly a 4-6 player game and that’s bad news. Not just because of *gestures to the pandemic* that, but also because Celestia faces a lot of competition in my collection at that player count. If I’m in a situation where I need a game that plays best with 4 or more, Celestia finds itself low on the list of options.

One reason for this is my main criticism against this game. It’s a criticism I swore I brought up last year but, looking back, it appears not. It’s never too late to complain, though, so let me complain! My biggest critique of Celestia is that has a very slow pace in the first half of the game. It’s a game to 50 points and I always feel like the first 25-35 points take FOREVER to get. I have a couple specific memories of playing this game for 20-25 minutes, looking at my stock of points to discover I only had, like, 12. I will admit that the last third of the game feels much quicker and more intense, with everybody suddenly within arm’s reach of the 50 point target. But getting to that final act feels like climbing up a hill made entirely of treacle.

I still obviously quite like Celestia; any game on this top 100 is a game that I really enjoy playing. When/If the pandemic ever ends and I get a chance to play this again, I could definitely see this solidifying a place on the list. For now? Let’s just say its facing a little turbulence and that there is a faint whiff of whiskey wafting from the captain’s cockpit. (It’s an airship metaphor. Like the game. Get it? Venmo me your tips)

95. Condottiere

Last year’s ranking: 97 (+2)

What I said last year

Anyone who has played The Witcher 3 will immediately recognize Condottiere as something familiar: this game is basically Gwent…In Condottiere, players are vying over control of 13th century Italy with the end goal being to either control 3 adjacent territories on the board or simply controlling 5 in all. These territories are won by playing battles, which is where the Gwent similarities start to pile up. Players are playing cards from their hands, most of which are soldiers with values attached to them. Ultimately, by the time the battle ends you want your little battle line of cards to have the highest value so that you can claim the territory with one of your cubes.

Of course, it’s not that simple. There are a handful of special cards that spice things up like Grandma’s marinara. There are drummers which double the value of your battle line, there’s a Bishop who destroys every copy of the highest valued soldier (what a cranky old man), there’s even a card that ends the battle abruptly, resulting in hilarious moments where someone wins a territory with one dude holding a crossbow in their line.

At its core, Condottiere is a tense game of hand management. You’re constantly debating whether you want to spend your best cards and really commit to winning that territory, or if you just want to retreat and save your hand for another day. In a clever rule, if you’re the only person with solider cards in your hand in between battles, the round actually ends and you have to discard your whole hand, thus meaning hoarding till everyone else is depleted won’t work. When you throw in some politicking with your friends, the game REALLY comes alive. The last game I played of this was an absolute blast, and a lot of that had to do with the constant fragile alliances being made and immediately being broken as people were selfishly trying to win each territory for themselves.

If there is a main gripe I have with this game that keeps it from being higher on the list, it’s that you can really be boned by a bad hand of cards in this game. I usually don’t mind luck of the draw, but in this game it stings a lot more for some reason. Probably because there isn’t much of a way to mitigate a bad hand and since you’re stuck with it for an entire round, it can be deflating to watch battle after battle being lost. I once drew a hand that was essentially a high school marching band, with nothing but drummers and very few soldiers and it was not fun.

Outside of this unfortunate luck of the draw, Condottiere is a fantastic card game that seems to get even better with each play.

What I say now

It’s funny that Condottiere follows Celestia on the list. Remember when I said Celestia is competing against a lot of great 4-6 games in my collection? Condottiere is one of the games I’d choose over Celestia! Well, this is awkward. Sorry, Celestia, I didn’t think you’d still be in the room.

I don’t have much to add or change to what I said last year. Everything still stands and this is one of many games I can’t WAIT to play again when game nights are safe to have again.

94. Kodachi

Last year’s ranking: N/A

My number 94 is another new game to the list, a push your luck, hand management game called Kodachi. Set in 12th century Japan, players find themselves in the roles of ninjas breaking into various estates, hoping to defeat guards and grab some loot in an effort to get the most points. Just like real 12th century Japan!

Kodachi is a push your luck game in same vein as Incan Gold or Port Royal; you’re revealing cards from a deck and hoping you don’t bust. What separates this game from those, however, is its hand management system. The cards you’re revealing in Kodachi represent guards and they have a number you must beat by playing a value from your hand. What value must you play? Ahh, that depends on how you decided to approach this round.

You see, when you turn over the first guard to start your turn, you have a choice: are you going to break into this estate using stealth or strength? If you use stealth, then to beat the guards you draw you must play a value lower than their number. If you use strength, however, then you must play a value higher than their number. This decision to either tip toe around like Solid Snake or lay waste to every living thing in your path like John Wick is a reliably tense one, forcing you to compare the first guard to the cards in your hand, trying to figure out what is the safest bet going forward.

If you ever draw a guard you can’t beat, you bust and your turn ends. If you decide to end your turn before that happens, though, you get to draft cards from the various cards you’ve drawn. You can take guard cards, which provide a treasure to represent the loot they’ve dropped, or you can spend treasure gained in this fashion to grab new cards to add to your hand/deck. This adds a subtle dash of deckbuilding to the game and helps you fashion a deck that can go in any number of ways. Perhaps you grab cards of varying values, hedging your bets so that you can be prepared for any roster of guards you face; or maybe you focus on exclusively low or high values, so you can consistently approach your turns with the same mentality; or maybe you don’t even focus on the cards that provide values and instead grab ones that reward end game points, sacrificing deck versatility in an effort to bolster your final score. For a game that isn’t primarily a deckbuilder, it’s a surprisingly robust amount of strategic choice you have in crafting your deck.

This unique combination of three mechanisms I love (push your luck, deckbuilding and hand management) makes Kodachi a veritable parfait of gaming excellence. It’s a little slower and more deliberate than most push your luck games of this time, which is perhaps a reason it finds itself in the 90s of this list rather than higher, but the more you play the more you’ll appreciate Kodachi’s expertly woven patchwork of elements. It’s a game that doesn’t get talked about too often, so definitely keep an eye out for this one.

93. Carcassonne

Last year’s ranking: 76 (-17)

What I said last year

Carcassonne tasks players with building the titular city as well as its surrounding countryside, placing tiles out in a communal landscape…and placing their meeples on various features to try and score them if they ever finish them before game’s end. As the landscape grows, players become invested in certain areas, creating a tense race to the finish line as each player hopes and prays the tile they draw is the exact tile they need to complete something (Narrator voice: “They won’t.”)

There’s just so much to love about Carcassonne, but one thing I’ve always adored is how it’s very versatile in the type of game it can be. If you want to play a peaceful game of city building, not getting in each other’s ways and just enjoying the piece of art everyone is creating, this game allows that. However, if you want a vicious game of cutthroat maneuvers and constantly butting heads, Carcassonne can be as mean as all hell. I have some friends who enjoy the more peaceful playstyle, and it’s always a serene, relaxing experience. But I have other friends who will ALWAYS place tiles in a way that either attempts to snipe your territory or that makes it incredibly difficult for you to complete the feature you’re working on. Whether it’s a lovely stroll through idyllic France or an absolute massacre, Carcassonne manages to be a great time either way.

I am a little surprised Carcassonne is relatively low on this list (not that spot 76 is anything to sneeze at!) and I simply think that’s because I played SO much of this when first getting into the hobby. When first getting into board gaming, I pretty much exclusively played cooperative games. When I did play a competitive game, though, Carcassonne was ALWAYS the one to hit the table. It certainly holds a nostalgic corner of my heart, but I do think the constant play of it in those first few years has resulted in a tad bit of burnout.

Regardless, Carcassonne is still amazing and anybody who hasn’t played it absolutely needs to. It is an evergreen classic in this hobby for a reason, and there are so many tile layers we have Carcassonne to thank for.

What I say now

I express surprise in last year’s entry for Carcassonne that it was lower on the list than I expected. And here we are, a year later, and Carcassonne is even lower at 93. Turns out my suspicions of burn out last year turned out to be true. I simply don’t have the desire to pull out this game too often because of how much I played this game in my days of being a youthful, vigorous 26-27 year old.

I did get to play this a few months ago for the first time in AGES and I definitely enjoyed it, marveling at it from a design and innovation perspective. But it also didn’t fire me up like many of the games higher on my top 100 do. It’s still an excellent game, but I have a feeling this old timer may retire to a life in Florida by the next top 100.

92. Lanterns

Last year’s ranking: 80 (-12)

What I said last year

Despite never catching fire quite like Ticket to Ride or Splendor, Lanterns is still one of the more popular gateway games in the hobby. This is for very good reason, and I actually like it more than those gateway behemoths I just mentioned. Lanterns is simple, quick, but incredibly puzzle-y and interactive, something every great gateway game should strive for.

In Lanterns, you’ll be dropping the titular paper lanterns into a big ass lake, watching them float around like multicolored lily pads. Normally this would be littering, but this is the big Harvest Festival, which means who cares if they’re not biodegradable! This is for the Emperor!

You’ll be placing tiles down into a communal landscape (like many tile laying games) and collecting different colored cards based on how you place them. The tiles are sectioned off into quarters, each with a different batch of colored lanterns inside. Upon placement of the tile, the players all receive a colored card matching the colored lanterns that are facing them. As the game goes on, you’re trying to cash in sets of these cards to gain points from constantly diluting pile of tokens.

Not since this past Thanksgiving with your Trump loving Uncle have you cared more about where people are sitting at a table. You have to constantly be peeking at the cards they’ve collected and making sure you don’t allow them to get a set while also being sure to get colors that YOU could use. Bonus cards applied from color adjacency and getting tokens from decorative floats that allow you to exchange cards add even more layers to this scrumptious puzzle. You’ll be fidgeting with your hand of three tiles, rotating them and squinting at the board, imagining the ramifications of each decision. The fact that this is all done in a brisk 30 minutes and that it can be taught to all your non gamer friends helps cement Lanterns right here at spot 80.

What I say now

Lanterns, like Carcassonne, is another tile laying gateway game that finds itself slipping. Unlike Carcassonne, though, I actually think the slippage here isn’t due to me liking the game less, but rather it getting pushed back thanks to so many new games entering the top 100 (or returning games moving up the list). I played Lanterns about a month ago, in fact, and had a blast with it. I’d say I enjoy it just as much now as I did in 2019.

That being said, stagnation can spell doom for Lanterns’ presence on my next top 100. If more new games come onto the list, the sheer lack of space could cause Lanterns to float away without a trace.

91. Hive Mind

Last year’s ranking: 75 (-16)

What I said last year

Designed by industry legend Richard Garfield (the guy who designed Magic: The Gathering, perhaps you’ve heard of it), Hive Mind is a ridiculously simple party game that can be explained by simply saying this: it’s reverse Scattergories. On your turn, you pick a card from a box and pick one of the six prompts it has (or even create your own if you’re feeling adventurous). These prompts are things like “Name 5 rides you’d find at an amusement park” or “Name 3 things that are red” or “Name 10 reasons why Boar & Arrow is your favorite board game blogger”. After the prompt is given, players write their answers and then, one by one, share what they’ve written. So, using the “Name 3 things that are red” prompt, I might write ‘firetruck’, ‘Elmo’, and ‘bricks’. As I say these answers, anyone who matches with me announces (read: shout excitedly and obnoxiously) that they have the same answer and people get points based on how many others they matched with. Whoever has the least matches gets knocked down a level in a big beehive (there’s a bee theme to this game, by the way, so I’ll try and fit my ‘beeconomy’ joke in here somewhere), and a new round is played until someone is kicked out of the hive.

The fun in this comes from the loud, raucous conversations that these prompts and answers ignite. Going back to the example prompt I gave, I say firetruck and the entire table cheers that they match except for one person, who puts their head in their hands and groans, moaning, “How did I not think of firetrucks.” But then I get to ‘bricks’ and nobody matches on that so I complain for two straight minutes about how on earth can you not say bricks, things are literally described as ‘brick red’, come on! All of this with slightly more cursing, of course, this blog is trying to stay in the PG to PG-13 range. Then it goes onto the next person, which starts a brand-new batch of groans and high fives. It’s an incredibly social game, one where you want to agree with people which is a delightful change of pace from many social board games.

Hive Mind has easily been one of the most successful games with non-gamers for me. It’s sooo easy to teach and the fact that most people already have played Scattergories means they have a touchstone to help them understand it even easier. It’s a favorite at holiday family functions for me, with my mom constantly asking me if I’ve “brought the bee game”. My 90+ year old grandfather, who was in the last months of his life and entering the nasty stages of dementia, was able to play this game with us and everyone had an absolute blast with it. Not to get sappy, but aren’t moments like that what board games are all about?

If you have a game group that enjoys these casual kinds of party games, it’s tough to find a better recommendation than Hive Mind.

What I say now

Similar to Lanterns, my opinion on Hive Mind hasn’t really changed. I still think it’s one of the best mass market style party games in the hobby and is an essential part of anybody’s collection, gamer or non-gamer. But my love also hasn’t really increased, either. And that’s not a bad thing!

I will admit, I’m a little surprised this fell as much as it did. This is one of the few games I have been able to play remotely with friends during the pandemic. I thought those recent plays, partnered with the rare instances of solace and companionship I’ve felt over 2020 that those plays brought, would have either kept it where it was or even nudged it upwards. The fact that it didn’t makes me wonder…am I…am I a bad person?? I mean, I’m awful, just the worst, but seeing proof is always a little disarming.

Anyway, Hive Mind is still great.

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That’ll do it for part one! I think this format I’ve come up with for this year is working pretty well, so I’ll stick with it for now. Come back next week for 90-81!

Kyle Hanley’s Top 100 Games of all Time (2019 Edition): 90-81

Welcome back! This is the second part of my Top 100 Games of all Time (2019 Edition)! This means I’m tackling 90-81. If you need a recap on 100-91, click here. Otherwise, let’s get on with it!

90. Dead of Winter

dead of winter cover

Dead of Winter is a tough one for me. On the one hand, it’s given me some of the most memorable and truly cinematic moments of my board gaming career (is career the right word? Using it anyway). On the other hand, it’s got some serious flaws that have prevented me from getting it to the table lately.

Let’s deal with that icky stuff first so that we end on a high note. For one, this game is loooong. And I don’t mind long games, but this is also a game where a lot of what you’re doing is really similar. You visit locations, mill that location’s deck looking for what you want, maybe kill some zombies and rinse and repeat for 2-3 hours (make that even longer if you’re playing with the full five player count). The game’s drama comes forth in the uncertainty of whether there is a traitor or not and the infighting that should hopefully begin brewing but if you have an uneventful game where nothing triggers that sort of dissention, Dead of Winter can draaag.

Like most semi cooperatives, this is also a very fragile design. One player can torpedo the whole thing, and I’ve even experienced it happen. I played a 5 hour game of this (at the 5 players, which I would not recommend) once and it all ended with one of the players saying, “If I don’t win this, no one will” and then she proceeded to throw all the hard work we spent the entire night doing and cost us the game. You can argue that’s a player problem and not a game problem, which is valid, but I’d also argue that a player making those kinds of moves is perfectly allowed in a semi cooperative design space so we shouldn’t blame a player when they take that avenue. Her decision is even pretty thematic given the game’s post apocalypse theme. While I applaud Dead of Winter for creating a moment that we could see in a zombie movie, I’ll also point out that there’s a reason every character in those movies is miserable. Add to this that luck can WILDLY swing this game (and not in a fun way) and you can see why I have reservations about Dead of Winter.

Okay, so this is a top 100 list so maybe I should say good things about the game, eh? Despite these things I just mentioned, this game still has a place in my top 100 because it does other things very, very well. I mentioned before that the game can often create moments of infighting and mistrust and when those do occur, the game comes alive. One of the first times I played this game, there was an incredible moment where me and another player had a ten minute debate about whether or not to cast out our third member of the colony. That third member pleaded with us as we discussed his fate, and I was full of dread and guilt as we made the decision to exile him. The fact that a game was able to create such an intense, visceral moment with just bits of cardboard continues to impress me to this day.

Dead of Winter is also richly thematic and atmospheric, something that will always draw me to a game. Characters all have appropriate special abilities given their occupation before the end of the world, items make thematic sense and this is all supported by wonderfully immersive, blood drenched art. There is also the famed Crossroads system found in this game, in which players can trigger story moments based on something specific they do on their turn. While they don’t trigger as often as I’d like, when they DO it once again creates great, cinematic moments that make this game feel one of a kind.

So, yes, I have problems with Dead of Winter, but when it’s good, it’s freaking good.

89. Samurai Spirit

samurai spirit cover

The next game is a pure cooperative, this one designed by Antoine Bauza. His most famous cooperative is Ghost Stories (now reprinted as Last Bastion), but I actually think I prefer Samurai Spirit.

Samurai Spirit is a push your luck game that basically rips off the plot of Seven Samurai. You and your friends are a bunch of samurai protecting a village from bandits and you can also turn into animals. Okay, I don’t remember that scene, but I’m sure it’s in the Director’s Cut.

How you defend the village is by drawing cards from a deck of bandits and placing them on either the left or right side of your character’s player board. Placing it on the left means you’re matching up  symbols that may be present on the bandit card, which helps prevent various penalties at the end of the round. If you’re not able to match symbols or simply don’t want to, you can place it on the right which triggers a mini game of Blackjack. Every bandit has a number and when you place that card to the right of your board, you adjust a little meter by that amount. Every samurai has a number on that meter that is a ‘sweet spot’ that allows them to activate a special power but if you go beyond that you bust and you’re out of the round. So, yeah, totally Blackjack but with samurais.

Players also have the option to instead support another player and pass a token representing their passive special ability to someone else. This is at the cost of placing a facedown bandit card by the village board, which could result in the village being harmed if that bandit card is revealed to have a ‘fire’ symbol at the end of the round. This adds yet another element of push your luck, but this ability to support other players can create really cool combos between everyone at the table. It’s a cooperative game where you actually feel like you’re cooperating and that’s always a plus, yanno?

Samurai Spirit isn’t perfect, which keeps it here in the high 80s. The game can be somewhat hit or miss depending on the construction of the bandit deck. Since the bandit deck is built from a bigger supply of bandit cards that are randomly chosen, you can end up with some bandit decks that are way too hard or way too easy. This is particularly true at the lower player counts, where the deck is smaller and therefore the deck makeup could be a lot less balanced. Will you be facing Satan’s Personal Army or the bandit equivalent of The Three Stooges? It’s a toss up, and that can create either very frustrating games or very boring games.

Despite these balance concerns, when Samurai Spirit is firing on all cylinders, it’s a hidden gem of a cooperative game. Lots of fun, with just the right amount of cooperation, luck and tactics.

88. Magic Maze

magic maze cover

Let’s move onto number 88: Magic Maze, the cooperative game about fantasy characters stealing their equipment back from a mall.

Magic Maze has a couple of real unique selling points. One, it’s real time which isn’t SUPER unique but it does separate itself from a lot of other turn based co-ops. Two, you don’t control a pawn or character in this game. You control actions. I may be the guy who moves characters north and east, but you may be the character who moves them south and through portals and Jenny over there may be the one who can trigger escalators and move pawns west. The game is played out over an ever-evolving map of tiles that come out throughout the game and you need to pay attention to when it’s your turn to move a pawn and navigate this sprawling labyrinth as it spreads across your table like a fungus.

Did I mention you can’t talk? Because you can’t talk. Between this and The Mind on my last entry, I’m beginning to think I just don’t like talking to people? Anyway, you’re not allowed to communicate and direct people around unless a pawn goes to a little hourglass symbol. This helps reset the clock and allows players to talk until the next pawn is moved, in which case it goes back to pretending like everyone’s at a funeral.

There is one way to communicate and it’s hilarious. It comes in the form of a big red pawn called the “Do Something” pawn and it is a hellish invention. When you see somebody blankly staring at the board when they’re OBVIOUSLY supposed to move the dwarf pawn down to the next tile, you simply pick up the “Do Something” pawn and start smacking it down in front of them like a gavel to get their attention. If you’re a jackass, at least. You could just set it down in front of them politely, but where’s the fun in that? Watch with delight as your friend frantically darts their eyes around the board, wondering why you’re going to town on the “Do Something” pawn like the world’s most coked up judge.

All these rules combine to make one of the most manic, fun gaming experiences you can ask for. Magic Maze is easily one of my favorite games to bring out to new people, watching their eyes light up as they realize they’re about to experience something they’ve never had before. And then watch that amazement and wonder turn to pure hatred and fury as you’re slamming the “Do Something” pawn in front of them.

Magic Maze would be higher if it was a little bit deeper. The game offers a wide range of scenarios and extra rules as you get longer and longer into the game, but most of them are kind of ‘meh’. The best scenarios are definitely the first three or four, where the game is much more basic. I hear the expansion fixes some of this, but I unfortunately don’t have it. Despite this, it’s still a solid entry on my top 100 and I never have anything less than a blast when playing this game.

87. Kreus

kreus cover

Kreus is definitely one of the more obscure and underrated games on this list. It is yet another cooperative game with limited communication, which leads me to believe this top 100 may have just been an excuse to confess my issues with communicating with people.

ANYWAY, MOVING ON.

Kreus is a game where you and your fellow players are gods and goddesses of Greek mythology, trying to create a planet because you’re bored or something. I’m dreading having to explain it and the rules beyond that, because this is a surprisingly tricky game to explain despite how simple it is. The first four or five times I taught this game, I managed to miss a rule every time and somehow it was always a DIFFERENT rule. Very embarrassing. So strap in!

(takes deep gulp of air)

In Kreus, the planet you and your teammates are trying to make is represented by a flowchart. The flowchart is made up of features of the planet, like mountains, river, fish, flowers, etc., as well as the Elements that make up those features. The Elements are just different colored orbs. A deck of cards that contain these features and elements is completely dealt out to the players. Then, round by round you and everyone else are going to try and make the planet according to the flowchart, starting from the top and working your way on down until you’re able to cap it off with the “Planet” card, which is the cherry on top of this cosmic sundae. The actual gameplay is playing cards simultaneously and face down. Starting with the first player, you reveal and place your card into the flowchart you’re trying to make, as long as its legal. If it’s not legal (as in you played an element that isn’t needed for the played features or you played a feature that doesn’t have its prerequisites built yet), the card is discarded and your margin of error get that much thinner.

(long exhale)

Okay, so that’s a sort of okay description. The trick in this game is, as I mentioned, the lack of communication. Obviously if this game allowed you to just freely discuss the contents of your hands, you would be able to find the perfect order to play your cards. Having restrictions on that makes this a tense puzzle of reading your players moves and making your best guess of what they played so YOU know what to play. You can spend gems to activate special actions that help alleviate the restrictions, like showing a card to another player or exchanging cards, but even that comes with some sense of reading between the lines (“why the hell did they show me a fish”).

This game is very reminiscent of The Mind, in that you’re trying to play cards in a certain order without being able to actually discuss it. The Mind is more based from a social perspective however, while Kreus is more seeded in trying to game the system. Based on what’s in your hand, versus what has already been played, versus what special abilities other players have triggered that round, you can make your best assessment on what you need to play. When you and your teammates manage to play the correct sequence of cards without a single word spoken? That’s the kinda magical moment that keeps Kreus on my top 100.

86. Monikers

monikers cover

Monikers is a game that is based on a public domain game that has several different names: Fishbowl, The Hat Game and Celebrity are a few of the names given to the DIY versions you play with your friends, while people in the hobby will recognize Time’s Up as an officially published version of the game system. So, you could technically put any of those versions here at my 86 spot but Monikers is the version of this game that I own and have played endless hours of, so that’s the one I’m putting on my list.

Monikers/Fishbowl/The Hat Game/Celebrity/Time’s Up is a game where two (or more) teams are trying to guess more words and phrases than the other team(s). These words and phrases are on cards that make up a unique deck for that game. On your team’s turn, a clue giver is trying to give clues to lead your team to guessing whatever is on that card. Pretty standard party game stuff, so far. But there are two unique twists that make this game as memorable and funny as it is.

The first twist is that the game is played over three rounds and each round narrows the amount of stuff the clue giver can say and give to their team in order to guess the word. First round is easy: the clue giver can say whatever they want as long as it isn’t part of the word or phrase itself. Second round is tougher: in this round, the clue giver can only give ONE word to lead their team to winning the card. Third round is madness: only charades/silent gestures can be used to get your team to guess the card.

Which of course leads me to the second twist that makes this game system so brilliant. During these three rounds, the SAME deck of cards is being used. This means players have to remember from previous rounds what words have been guessed and use that to their advantage as the clues get vaguer and more stupid as the game goes on

The end result is a hilarious game where inside jokes and callbacks run rampant. As you get deeper and deeper into the game, your brain latches onto references from previous rounds, creating a cacophony of laughter whenever they pop back up. This leads to situations like in a recent game for me, where somebody pantomiming a fire breathing dragon led to someone (correctly) shouting, “BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH.” Another saw a friend of mine running to block a door with his back, fear and panic on his face in order to get across the word “Hodor”. Perhaps my favorite of all is a very simple moment when my friend gave a serene, welcoming gesture with his hands and face which got me to correctly guess, “Richard Attenborough”.

It’s these little moments that pepper a night of Monikers that make it such a fun, hysterical experience. There’s not much else to add, so I’ll close with my favorite Monikers story. One night, I introduced it to three friends and we were playing 2 v. 2 for an hour or so. Another friend came in during the third round of a game and saw us guessing extremely specific prompts off of fairly basic charades gestures. She stood there dumbfounded, not realizing it wasn’t normal Charades, and just softly said, “how did you guys do that.”

If you like party games or often find yourself playing games in big groups, it’s tough to go wrong with Monikers. Just be prepared for the entire night to go by without realizing it.

85. Claim

Claim cover

2019 brought a lot of big life events for me. I moved in with a girlfriend for the first time, I was asked to be my best friend’s best man in his wedding, I got my first ever paid freelance writing job. But these are all dwarfed by one realization I made in 2019. And that realization is: I really like trick taking games.

Now, I don’t want to be too broad here. I still don’t care for your standard, ‘old fashioned’ trick taking games like Euchre or Bridge. Things that you would play in the kitchen of your grandparents’ house/apartment need not apply here. But when a trick taking game takes that basic premise of playing suited cards and trying to win tricks mixes that up with some other mechanism or clever twist? I discovered in 2019, that I adore those kinds of games. The first game of this type is Claim, a two-player trick taking game about trying to win factions in a goofy, medieval fantasy world.

There are a lot of cool little twists that make Claim so unique and clever. The first is the round structure. Claim is played over two rounds, where the first round is spent winning cards that will then form your hand in the second round. This itself is brilliant, but then when you add in the faction abilities, Claim somehow gets even better. You see, the suits in Claim are different factions/ fantasy races. You have things like Knights, Goblins, Dwarves, etc. These factions all have a specific ability that activates at certain times. For example, a Knight card will always beat a Goblin card, even if the Goblin card has a higher value. Then there’s the shape shifting Dopplegangers, which act as wild cards and can allow you to play them instead of the led suit. These abilities add an extra layer to an already delicious parfait of subtle strategy and quick, satisfying card play.

Add to this some incredible art by The Miko, who is easily one of my top 3 favorite artists in board games, and you’ve got an amazingly charming card game that you’ll want to play again and again.

84. Take 5

take 5 cover

Also known as 6 Nimmt!, Take 5 is an incredibly clever and chaotic card game that can be taught to just about anyone.  In the game, you and the other players are simultaneously playing cards face down and then revealing, watching as they get sucked into an ever growing display of cards, hoping they latch onto a spot that doesn’t result in you taking any cards from said display. This is one of those games where taking cards means taking points and points = bad.

The display of cards is made up of four rows, all of which have a maximum card capacity of five. When you play a card from your hand, starting with the lowest number played, you must then place that card at the last spot of one of the rows following these two rules: rows must be in ascending value AND you must place your card next to the card it’s closest in value to. So, if I play a 28 and the four rows end in a 57, 83, 17 and 26, I would place my card next to the 28.

But what happens when you can’t place a card down? What if your card is lower than the ends of all the rows? As a penalty, you take a row of your choice and replace it with the card you played. Sounds awful, BUT it’s not as bad as the other thing that might happen. Remember when I said each row only has a max capacity of five cards? Yeah, this game is called Take 5 for a reason. If you play a card that would end up being the 6th card in that row, you’re forced to take ALL five cards in that row, leaving behind the card you played to start a new row as a shameful reminder of your folly.

Thus creates a wild, raucous experience of pushing your luck and playing the odds, hoping that you can dodge sucking up any cards like an over eager vacuum cleaner. Every card you play feels like a coin you’re dropping into a slot machine, with the revelation of everyone’s cards acting like the pull of the lever as you desperately hope to see that nobody interfered with your plans. When things go well, you breathe a sigh of relief as you harmlessly place your card into its rightful spot, your muscles relaxing as you live to see another day. But when something you didn’t predict does happen, and you’re stuck putting your card at the end of a truly nasty row? It’s a hilarious exercise in futility, as you watch helplessly as your card slides into spot as if being drawn in by a tractor beam that you can’t control. Then, like a rogue Mento falling into a bottle of Diet Coke, the row explodes and ends up in your lap as the entire table laughs and high fives.

It’s tense, it’s exciting, it’s hilarious. Yes, it sucks when you get stuck with a bunch of cards with high point values (represented by bull horns for some reason), but this is a rare game where failing can be as fun as succeeding. This is mostly because EVERYBODY is suffering at the table, as volleys of groaning and cursing go back and forth in an exercise I can only call Misery Tennis. But while everybody else is groaning, you’re laughing and when YOU’RE groaning, they’re laughing. After all, this I just a small 30 minute card game, not some sort of 3 hour Euro. Best to not take it too seriously and enjoy it, even if you just had a stratospherically bad round.

Take 5 is one of the most recent additions to my collection (thanks to an amazing review by Shut Up and Sit Down) and the fact that it has already broken onto my top 100 shows all you need to know about it. I can definitely see this game being even higher come 2020.

83. Celestia

celestia cover

I may have mentioned it on my previous list (jesus, two entries in and they’re already starting to blend together, please help), but if I haven’t then allow me to say it now: I effing love push your luck. In fact, it is my favorite board game mechanism. As such, when a game is centered on that mechanism, I’m inclined to like it. It’s no surprise, then, that Celestia finds itself on my top 100.

Celestia is a push your luck game in the style of Incan Gold, where you and a group are pressing forward on an increasingly dangerous path, and the crux of the game is deciding whether to stay and take guaranteed points or to stay juuust a bit longer to squeeze out a bit more. While Incan Gold has you going through a fairly generic temple setting, Celestia has you travelling on a steampunk style airship, making pit stops in a vibrant Wonderland-esque cul-de-sac of floating cities.

Celestia is played over a series of ‘journeys’, which involve moving from city to city. At each city, a new captain takes over making this either the most fair, egalitarian group of air travelers ever assembled or the most indecisive. Whoever the captain is must roll a certain number of threat dice, the number of which gradually increases throughout the journey. These threat dice might be rolled to a blank side, which reveals no threat (awesome!), or show some sort of threat icon (booo!). The threats involve things like ‘Sky Pirates’, ‘Lightning’ or ‘A Whole Shit Ton of Birds’. The captain must beat these threats by playing cards from their hand which have a matching icon. If the captain does, congratulations! Onward to the next floating city that definitely isn’t just an LSD hallucination! However, if the captain CAN’T play cards to beat the threats? Well. Hope your family took out a nice life insurance policy, because that airship is going DOWN.

The key here is that before the Captain reveals whether or not they can defeat the threats and safely fly everyone to the next city, every other player gets to decide whether to stay with their fearless leader or parachute on down to the current city tile the ship is on, grabbing a victory point card from the city. Victory points increase down the path, which entices people to stay on board but the chance of getting NO points can scare even the most stronghearted explorer. After all, you know what they say: a bird in the hand is worth two in the flaming airship wreckage.

While players decide whether or not to drop out, the Captain can say whether or not they have the cards to beat the dice. The fun part is, they can tell the truth or bend it to their advantage. This extra bit of bluffing is what makes Celestia sing, and it creates lots of table talk and negotiation as people try to figure out what to do. Every game I see alliances form, with two or three people becoming each other’s Ride or Die, always jumping ship at the same time or sticking together during even the darkest of times. It’s hilarious when one of these alliances goes deep down the journey’s path, managing to snag a high point victory card from one of the final cities as everyone else bitterly mumbles under their breath. It’s even funnier when an alliance foolishly crashes together, making one wonder if Kool Aid is one of the in flight refreshments.

Like many push your luck games, Celestia is full of laugh out loud and stand up moments. Add in the extra social dynamic of bluffing and table talk, and you have an easy top 100 entry for me.

82. Mysterium

mysterium cover

Ohh, Mysterium. I have such conflicted feelings about you, you beautiful bastard. Mysterium is a cooperative party(ish) game where one player is a ghost who has been murdered and the rest of the players are trying to figure out the who, where and how of said murder. The ghost does this by giving cards with surreal, dream like illustrations on them to try and point the other players to pictures of suspects, locations and weapons.

It’s easily become one of the most popular gateway games in the hobby over the past handful of years and it was one of my favorites upon first becoming a board gamer. I do have conflicted feelings about it, however, and I simultaneously think the 82 spot is too low AND too high for this game.

Let’s start with the negative: this game is a bear to set up. This is ostensibly a party game, which means you’ll be playing it in, you guessed it, party type settings. The problem is, party games should take no longer than five minutes to set up and play and even that is pushing it a bit. I can’t count how many times I’ve been setting up Mysterium with a big group of people watching me expectantly, as I apologize profusely for taking so long to set up as I rummage through the box like it’s a crate of Legos, looking for the exact right piece. There’s lots of shuffling, randomly picking cards, finding duplicates of all those cards, shuffling and randomly picking again based on each player in the game, then getting everything set up in the exact right area, and more and more and more. What’s worse, a lot of what’s being set up is the secret information for the ghost which means nobody else can really help them out. This results in scenarios like mentioned above, with most of the group staring blankly at one person as they clumsily sort through cards like the world’s least prepared amateur magician. I have decided against bringing Mysterium to many parties because I dread that cumbersome and long set up time.

Another big minus for it is that despite this game’s fairly simple rules overhead (person plays a card which other players then have to link with another card), there are some real fiddly bits that can grind the game down, ESPECIALLY with the end game. I HATE the final round of this game. I won’t go into the gritty details of it, but the last round, assuming your group makes it there, has this real contrived, convoluted set up and pay off that never fails to feel like the game has fallen flat on its face. If there was ever a second edition of this game which smoothed out the end game and streamlined set up (WITHOUT app assistance, that’s cheating), Mysterium would probably be in my top 50 games, not just my top 100.

Phew. Okay. Now that I’m done railing against this game, let’s talk about why it is in my top 100! That’d probably be helpful.

Despite its rough edges, Mysterium still sits on my top 100 because I love the rest of the game so damn much. I love its theme and concept. It’s unique and immersive and the rule where the ghost can’t talk and can only communicate via knocking on the table is one of my favorite rules ever. The art is astounding. And I’m not just talking about the dream like vision cards the ghost is doling out for clues. I mean the art representing the suspects, the parts of the mansion, and the weapons is fantastic as well. It has this somewhat dark, Victorian era tone to it that perfectly fits the theme and further helps to make this one of the most atmospheric games you can play. And speaking of playing the game: that’s amazing too! I am very much a right brained individual, so games that focus on creativity and imagination (usually a staple of party games) are right in my wheelhouse. I love being the ghost and trying to figure out how to link the cards in my hand with the cards I need to get the other players to guess. As the paranormal investigator, I love trying to get inside the ghost’s head and to spot connections among the visions I’ve been given. All of these things combine to make a truly special gaming experience, even with the loud complaints I logged against it.

So, yeah. As you can tell, I have mixed feelings on Mysterium. It might be the most flawed game on this list, but the fact that it’s on here tells you all you need to know.

81. Circle the Wagons

circle the wagons cover

Loyal readers of this blog know I love me some Button Shy. Button Shy is a game publisher that’s been making a ton of waves in the industry lately, thanks to their portable wallet games. They’re appropriately named since they literally come in a little wallet. Besides the unique packaging, these games also have another trademark: they’re all comprised of only 18 cards. These microgames often pack a big punch despite their diminutive size and I’ve reviewed Stew, Sprawlopolis, Tussie Mussie and Seasons of Rice over the past year in an effort to showcase how awesome this publisher is.

Yet here we are at number 81 with a Button Shy game I HAVEN’T reviewed yet, something I quite regret because it’s one of my favorites from the company. Circle the Wagons is a two player tile laying game (played with cards) where both players are competing to make the best frontier town. Cards involve symbols of various Wild West tropes, like six shooters, bottles of moonshine and forts. These icons are laid on top of various land types, such as mountains, plains and deserts. The goal is to take these cards and puzzle them together in such a way that you earn the most points, combining points given from your biggest contiguous areas of each land type AND points from three random public scoring objectives.

This is all pretty typical tile laying stuff, so what separates Circle the Wagons from the rest? That lies in its brilliant drafting mechanism. Taking its name quite literally, you take all the cards available in the game and put them in a giant circle. Players then take turns drafting the cards they want to use from the circle starting with the first available card. BUT you have a choice: take that first available card for free OR jump ahead in the circular queue to grab something that might seem a little more beneficial for your landscape. The catch being, all the cards you skipped? They go straight to your opponent.

With this simple but incredibly clever system, Circle the Wagons becomes a superbly tactical experience that has you sweating every decision, despite the fact that it’s a mere 18 cards. Do you jump ahead to take that card that fits perfectly in your landscape, knowing you’re giving your opponent a ton of stuff for free? Or do you play conservatively, tip toeing down the circle, daring your opponent to be the first to jump ahead and play the part of a Wild West Santa Claus? It’s tight, it’s addictive and at just around ten minutes per play, it’s incredibly quick. Like many of the microgames and fillers I’ll have on this list, it’s one you’ll easily find yourself playing repeatedly in the same sitting, the board game equivalent of a bag of potato chips. If you’re new to Button Shy and are looking for a starting point, Circle the Wagons is as good as any.

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That’s another one in the books, folks! Thanks for joining and check back in a week or so for 80-71!