Archive: Top 25 Board Games

At the end of every year almost every website on earth produces some sort of top ten list. Well, I'm not satisfied with just the past year. I thought I would throw out my personal favorite ten board games. This is a list I've thought about for some time, but never got around to it or could quite figure out how I would order them. But I finally think I've nailed it down. So, without further ado, here we go.

10. Jet Set
The bottom of this list was actually harder to pin down than the top. Eventually I decided on Jet Set for the number 10 spot. Take the route-connecting of Ticket to Ride and make it so you actually have to pay to make routes (instead of collecting sets of same-colored cards that magically turn into routes) and you've got the basics of Jet Set. It's a tense route-building game with a nice little economic engine to boot.

9. Rails of Europe
Rails of Europe fixes the issues of the original Railroad Tycoon and offers a deep game of buying stock, delivering goods, and building a railroad network in Europe without the scariness or ruthlessness of its mean cousin, Age of Steam.

8. Kingsburg
I like games where you start out with nothing and make some choices on your way to building up something cool. However, I generally dislike heavy Euro-style games where you have to go through 5 steps before you can do anything remotely interesting. In Kingsburg, you just roll some dice. That's its main strength, and probably what makes it very well liked by pretty much everyone I teach it to.

7. Tikal
Speaking of choices, Tikal presents players with a bunch of them on every turn, as you use action points to explore the Mayan jungle to uncover temples and treasures. Of course, you can never do as much as you'd like on your turn. It's a great mix of area control, set collection, and wise allocation of scarce actions.

6. Pandemic
If you have one cooperative game in your collection, this should be it. Saving the world from nasty diseases is just fun, and for some reason has yet to get old. I've never taught this to someone that didn't enjoy it and, if we lost, didn't want to play it again.

5. Acquire
Sid Sackson's 1962 classic is still hard to beat for stock market games. No VP needed here - just "acquire" the most cash through wise stock purchasing, mergers, and buy-outs to be the king of Hotel Row. Also very popular every time I've brought it to the table.

4. Twilight Struggle
I, ahem, struggled on the order of this and number 3 below. In the end I put Twilight Struggle at number 4 because of the uneven play length - maybe you only get to see half of the game, and if you do see it all, it might take 4 hours or so (with slower players). Still, the epic scale and historical detail of this 2-player reenactment of the Cold War are unmatched.

3. 1960: The Making of the President
Many users on BoardGameGeek would cry foul at my ranking 1960 over TS, but hey, it's my list. Contrary to TS, I love that every game is a complete reenactment of the 1960 election from start to finish. Election Day is simply a great climax, and counting up all the electoral votes to determine the winner is one of my favorite moments in gaming.

2. El Grande
The grandfather of Euro-style area control games is still the best. I don't think any other game makes me as tense as El Grande, waiting to see what other people are going to do and just hoping I can make the right play to control those key Spanish provinces and score big points. And just how many cubes are in that damn Castillo???

1. Power Grid
Some people find the theme of Power Grid (building a power network) boring. I think it's cool and certainly more interesting than most Euros that involve trading various goods in the Renaissance. Plus the art that goes with it reminds me of Mr. Burns' power plant in the Simpsons. Beyond theme and aesthetics, though, I love the varied gameplay in PG. It has auctions, an economic engine, resource management, network-building, and an all-important turn order mechanism. I've been hooked since coming in 2nd place in a 6-player game at Origins 2008 by just four dollars. I still don't win very often, but will never turn down an opportunity to play Power Grid, and know that I'll have a blast doing it.

11-25:

11. Ticket to Ride: Marklin
The best Ticket to Ride. Two factors that make it so are the even mix of long and short routes and your ability to choose how many of each you draw, and the placement and movement of passengers. These elements elevate Marklin above the other TtRs to the next level of strategy and tension. Toss in the game board of Germany and train cards featuring actual cars and locomotives and I'm sold.

12. Vegas Showdown
VS is a great auction and tile placement game in which players bid on different rooms to add in building their ultimate hotel-casino. It's really fun to expand your casino and grow your income by adding such features as the Five Star Steakhouse or High Rollers Room. The tight auctions ensure that no player is ever out of the game.

13. Small World
Small World is a euro-style wargame in which players take control of a certain race and use it to take over as much of the land as possible before it's worn out. The clever "In Decline" mechanic then lets you pick a new race while tokens from your old race still earn you points as long as they're on the board. Small World gets top marks for replayability, as each race has a special power, and races are attached to further special abilities that appear in different combinations in every game. Combine that with different maps for different numbers of players - so it scales very well - and it's a sure winner.

14. Airlines: Europe
AE is Alan Moon's third design of essentially the same game. It takes some of the card selection and route-building mechanics of TtR and adds in a stock market very reminiscent of Acquire. This makes for an engaging economic game that's perfect to introduce to new gamers who have played either of its influences and are looking for the next step.

15. Memoir '44
A wargamer I am not, but Memoir '44 is the wargame for non-wargamers (some die-hard grognards will refuse to even call it a wargame). It's a 2-player squad-level reenactment of several key battles during the march to Germany in 1944. Expansions also add the Eastern Front and Mediterranean and Pacific theaters. The different scenarios pack a lot of variety and the relatively simple rules and quick length ensure that just about anyone can get into throwin' some dice and killin' some dudes.

16. Prophecy
I don't care for many fantasy adventure games. In my experience they're too long and convoluted, and downtime between your turns can be agonizing. Prophecy is by no means short (3 hours) but it's manageable and the rules are simple enough that you won't spend have the time figuring out modifiers to your die rolls. You really feel like you're building a character RPG-style as you wander around the board slaying monsters, finding loot, and increasing your strength and magic. I generally don't like to play board games solo (that's what video games are for), but Prophecy has a solo variant that I actually enjoyed. That's the mark of a good game.

17. Torres
Torres is a relatively new addition to my collection, and I've only played it twice, but I've really taken to it. It's by the same designer as my #7 game Tikal (Wolfgang Kramer), and is similar in that each player has action points on their turn. It's a pretty abstract game in which players place plastic castle pieces on the board and maneuver their knights onto them to score points and block other players. It's quite thinky and I'm not that great at it, but it's the kind of game I want to play more and more until I get good at it, and that's a high compliment.

18. Samurai
The only entry on my list from the good Doctor, Reiner Kinizia. I like Samurai because it's pretty deep in strategy but plays fairly quickly (45 minutes). You place tiles on the board to try to capture different kinds of pieces - yup, the theme is quite pasted-on. And the scoring is also a little wonky - another Kinizia hallmark. But it's tense and fun and I enjoy it for its quick delve into high strategy.

19. On the Underground
Tired of Ticket to Ride? Give this a try. The board is actually modeled after the London subway system. You build tracks wherever you like (no train cards here) to connect points on the map and try to get the world's laziest passenger to ride your lines. This makes for a more analytical experience than TtR but it's still quite accessible and a nice change of pace in the route-building genre.

 20. Imperial On the surface Imperial sounds like my dream game. You play a World War I-era war profiteer who wants to make the most money by investing in countries and controlling their armies to make them more powerful and rich. It has economics, area control, and a great historical theme. Indeed, it could possibly crack my top ten - the only problem is that it seems to be a bit daunting to some players and so I simply have a hard time getting it to the table. Perhaps some day it will see enough plays to move higher on my list.

21. Colosseum
Colosseum has a great theme - you are the impresario in a Roman colosseum, trying to put on the best show possible and impress the plebs and nobles - maybe even the emperor himself. To do this you'll engage in auctions, trading, dice rolling, and clever resource management. A bit of a kitchen sink game, but some nice variety. Bonus points for awesome names of the shows you put on - Venus' Equestrian Cavalcade, The Dialogues of Pluto, etc.

22. Bootleggers
A Euro-style game that implements its theme very well - heartening to see. Players are Prohibition-era gangsters and bootleggers, trying to supply speakeasies with as much of that sweet, sweet hooch as possible. Great supply chain system with dice rolling, nice components (plastic trucks), and also by far the meanest game on my list - the potential for screwage is very high. But you are mobsters, so it fits. Just don't plan on making any friends.

23. Shogun
Another Euro-style wargame, this one taking place in feudal Japan. The combat system is great - you throw the cubes represents all armies participating in a battle in a "cube tower," and whichever army has the most cubes fall out is the winner. Another game that would probably be higher on my list if I could get it played more often.

24. Tales of the Arabian Nights
This one makes the list for being different. There is a winner in Tales, but it's much more about the journey. It's basically a choose-your-own-adventure book in board game form, set against the backdrop of the Arabian Nights. You create your own narrative, reading story excerpts out of a game, and make decisions that will often lead to both disastrous and hilarious results for your character. When someone does manage to win, the game will have been much more about the adventures you shared then the fierce competition. Also enjoyable solo, though best with others to share the stories with.

25. Shadows over Camelot
Shadows is the next level of cooperative game after Pandemic. The constant threat of a traitor in your midst means every action that every player takes will be scrutinized. Add the fun Arthurian theme (and hopefully not too many Monty Python jokes) and you have a game that will be asked for again and again until the brave knights finally prevail.