As I approach the hump of middle age, I am trying to take a step back and look at what I’ve managed to do (and what I plan to still accomplish).  I’ve been playing games for over half of the days I’ve been around, and I’ve played a lot of games that I’ve enjoyed (and sadly, quite a few that I haven’t).  Thanks to a recent comment on our internal Opinionated Gamers mailing list, I took a look at the games database on BGG to see just how many different games that I have played.  I figured it would be fitting at this time to look at the Top 40 games (as ranked on BGG) to see how they have held up over the years, and what my feelings are about them…

Note on my methodology – almost all of this is being done from memory.  While I used to be fanatical about keeping stats on playing games, I stopped that habit about 8 or 9 years ago when I discovered that I was obsessed with keeping stats about gaming.  It was getting so bad that the stats were becoming more important than the playing of the games themselves!  Thus, I don’t have any record on BGG or elsewhere of most of my data.

Ratings are based on what I feel at this very moment.  I do not have a spreadsheet anywhere where I keep rankings.  I generally can remember how many times I’ve played a game (as long as I use broad enough buckets) – I will estimate with the following scale

• Once
• Less than 10
• 10-100
• >100
• >1000

Of the top 40 games, I have played 32 of them, and based on my rankings, I can say that my tastes seem to diverge from the BGG userbase!  In any event, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to go through the top 40 games and see what I think of them…

(Ratings based on current BGG Rank as of 3/20/2014)

#1 Twilight Struggle

Rating: Not for me.

Times Played: <10

Comments: This one never really captured my attention.  First, and foremost, it’s a 2p only game, and frankly I don’t have time set aside for 2p gaming.  Almost all of my gaming time is set up for groups, and in that scenario, it is very unlikely to only have 2p present.  Until just recently, my kids weren’t old enough to play big boy games at home, though I suppose that I will soon be able to count on ready and willing opponents at home (assuming that the homework is done!).  But back to Twilight Struggle… I am not a fan of asymmetric games, and the card driven action here required more time to be invested in it than I was willing to invest.  I’ve played the game against aficionados (such as Alan Moon) who completely whipped my butt at this game – because they knew which cards were in the deck; what they could do, and as a result, they could make much better informed decisions about how and when to play certain cards.  The best I could hope for was that a sweet combo showed up in my hand so that I could play it.  I can see where people who have the time/inclination to play a game 50 times could love it, but that’s just not me.

#2 Through the Ages

Rating: Neutral

Times Played: 10-100

Comments: This is one that I want to love, but I really just can’t get past Neutral anymore.  I currently have no desire to play it again – partly because it’s so long, partly because I still feel that the whole military beat-up-on-the-guy-in-last-place thing is wonky, partly because I am turned off by the amount of card variance in a four hour game.  I respect the design, and I think that it’s aptly described as “Civ-lite”, but there just isn’t room in my life for four hour games.  I think I need “Through the Ages-lite”! I’m guessing that I played this 10-15 times in the first year of release and then maybe only 3 or 4 times since…

#3 Agricola

Rating: I love it!

Times Played: >100 (prob closer to 300 if you count solo games)

Comments: (OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER – I did help work on the solo game for the 2^nd edition, so I am somewhat biased towards this game).  This is one of my all time Top 5 games – there’s so much going on in this game, and each game must be approached carefully due to the occupation and improvement cards that you are dealt.  I know that I just complained that card luck ruins Through the Ages for me, and for many, the luck in the deal here is just as large an issue.  However, I think that there is still plenty of room to develop different strategies in this game regardless of what cards you are dealt.  The other facet of this game (which can be found in many of my alltime favorite games) is that this is a “Turn Zero” game.  What I mean by that is – before the game even really starts, you have a chance to look at the game setup to devise a strategy, and then you have all game to implement it.

#4 Puerto Rico

Rating: Neutral

Times Played: >100

Comments: I current rate this one “Neutral” because I’m just burned out on it, and my last few games of this have been unsatisfying – as a result, I don’t really have a strong desire to play it again.  There was a time when this was the rage, and everyone was playing it.  I probably have played this at least 200 times on BSW (oh the days when I played games on BSW all the time…)  So many people were playing it at such a high level that there were widely accepted Opening Theories / Strategies to playing the game – and that’s not what I’m looking for in my boardgaming.  I don’t want to study a manual on how to play correctly – if I did, I would take up Chess or Go. I feel like I’ve explored this one to the limit after so many online plays.  While I certainly don’t claim to have mastered it – in fact, I’m actually not that great at the game (probably because I have refused to “study” it) – I don’t see myself playing it much any more other than the occasional game to introduce it to newbies.

#5 Android: Netrunner

Rating: N/A (The original version is Not for me…)

Times Played: Zero

Comments: Haven’t played it. I played the original, and was very unimpressed.  I know that this is supposed to be better, but I still haven’t been convinced to try it.  Asymmetrical 2-player only games just don’t do it for me.

#6 Terra Mystica

Rating: I like it.

Times Played: around 10

Comments: I have enjoyed most of my games of Terra Mystica, though I have not fallen in love with it like some of the other Opinionated Gamers.  I like the variety that you get in the game – depending on which of the 14 races you choose (or are dealt), you end up approaching the game in a completely different manner due to the varying special abilities.  This vast selection of races though is also what keeps me from loving the game overall – because I haven’t had enough time to play enough games with any of the races to feel comfortable with the strategy.  And to be clear, that isn’t a failing of the game, that is more a failing of my schedule.  I still haven’t played a game with each of the 14 races, though I hope to get to that goal in 2014.  I just have to find non-AP prone players to do that with…

#7 Eclipse

Rating: Not for me.

Times Played: 1-10

Comments: I have thought for a long while that the BGG ratings and mine do not line up because there seems to be a predilection amongst the BGG user base for long complex games which I have been personally moving away from.  Three to four hour games don’t do it for me.  Heck, in the time that it takes to set this one up, I’d have enough time to get in a rousing game of Web of Power or Dominion.  That being said, I’ve played this three or four times, and it has been the best tolerated of the genre for me.

#8 Power Grid

Rating: I love it!

Times Played: 50-100

Comments: This is another of my all-time favorite games, though now that I think about it, I may not have played this more than once in the past year!  I love the constant fight for efficiency in this game (power plant efficiency) as well as the all important turn order battle that is played until the final round.  In this game, going first in the round is a huge advantage, but this reward is given to the player who is doing poorest in the game at the time.  I know that this sandbagging mechanic turns a lot of gamers off, but I am fascinated by it.  The steady stream of expansion boards keeps the game fresh as each different map has its own idiosyncracies to learn about.  This is a game that I’d be happy to play whenever anyone suggests it.

#9 Mage Knight

Rating: Neutral

Times Played: 2

Comments: Of this sort of game, it’s the one I’ve liked the most.  But then again, I’d rather go home early from a game night than play this sort of game.  I’m a Euro-gamer, not a RPG guy, and not a cooperative guy.

#10 Le Havre

Rating: I like it.

Times Played: >10

Comments: This has been described by some as a “spreadsheet” game – one where you manage resources and abilities on varied buildings, and I would not disagree with that description.  I like this one, but not as much as Agricola or Ora&Labora (all three of these are by Uwe Rosenberg).  I am not a big fan of the fixed number of turns (i.e. as the number of players goes up, the number of actions that each individual player takes goes down) – and as a result, this is a game I really only like with 3 players.  It would be good with 2, but as I said earlier, I don’t play many 2 player games.  Another thing that props up the rating is that one of the ships in the game is named for me.  Admittely, it’s not as nice as the ships named after fellow OG writers Melissa or Larry Levy, but that’s life…

#11 The Castles of Burgundy

Rating: I love it!

Times Played: >10

Comments: This is my favorite of the Feld games, and in fact, it is the only one that I really have a strong desire to keep in my game collection.  Many people (including myself) have commented that the recent Feld games all feel similar – there are multiple ways to score points, some sort of penalty in each of those categories if you are unable to reach a threshold, no way to do well in all of the scoring methods, and some sort of chit/token that allows you to break the standard rules.  The only thing that differs is the theme added to the game and the particulars of the special action chits.  Burgundy fits this description perfectly, but in my opinion, does it the best of the Feldian oeuvre.

#12 Robinson Crusoe

Rating: N/A

Times Played: zero

Comments: I didn’t get this when it originally came out because it was a cooperative game.  As it remains a cooperative game, I still have no desire to play it.

#13 Brass

Rating: not for me

Times Played: four or five (well, if you count aborted games)

Comments: This is a game that was ruined by the abysmal rules.  My first two attempts to play it were at a Great Lakes Games, and we had to abort both games because we made major rules mistakes due to the organization (or lack thereof) of those rules.  There are so many exceptions and caveats in the rules that the whole thing feels simply thrown together.  And don’t get me started about the link that isn’t a link to Birkhead…  There have been a few re-writings of the rules since then, but this bad first impression turned me off on the game.  Like many other under-developed games, I have too many other choices in new games to wade through a half-baked one.  I think there is probably a good game here.  The fact that the game was re-implemented as Age of Industry tells me that for sure. I have played and enjoyed that one well-enough.  But, the fact that the game had to be re-written, playtested and re-released as something else only highlights that Brass was not a finished product.

#14 Tzolk’in

Rating: I like it

Times Played: 3-5

Comments: I loved this one when I first tried it at the Gathering of Friends, and while it has fallen from the ranks of the loved, it is still an intriguing worker placement game that I look forward to playing again.   The timing aspect of the game is fascinating, as you are trying to get your workers on the right gear at the right times to get the actions you want.  The gear on the board are a super eye-catching element, and for the first few games, the novelty of the working gear mechanism was enough to bring the game back to the table again and again.  Once the novelty wears off, what you have left is a solid game with a very interesting timing mechanic – something that puts it solidly in the “I like it” group of games, but there not enough to “love it” for me.  I would be happy to play this with non AP-prone folks, but would run away screaming if any known slow players wanted to play this.

#15 Caverna

Rating: I like it.

Times Played: 4

Comments: This is one of the few games that I can accurately count the number of plays (mostly because it’s so dang new).  This game builds on the Agricola engine and adds a cave/rock excavation part to your player board as well as adding expeditions as a different method of scoring VPs and gaining resources.  I think it’s a solid game (well, once you get rid of the Infinite Ore combo loophole) – but I simply prefer Agricola better.  I think a lot of that comes from the sheer number of plays that I’ve put into the ‘Gric.  Some of the rules in Caverna were possibly developed to address perceived shortcomings from Agricola – i.e. you no longer need to fight for an oven/grill to eat animals, you don’t have to worry about occupational variability (as there are no such cards), but they don’t seem to mesh together as well.  I still have enjoyed my games of Caverna, and I still have plenty of room to explore it, but I think that if I were given the choice between playing the two tonight, I’d still choose Agricola 7 or 8 times out of 10 over Caverna.

#16 Caylus

Rating: I love it!

Times Played: >100

Comments: Another game that I have played many many times on BSW.  This game invented the genre of Worker Placement (at least for me), and like many of the seminal games, I prefer the original to the followup versions.  Every placement of your workers takes thought, and the many a game has hinged upon a single space of movement of the provost.  While the selection of buildings isn’t that large (35ish?), the order in which they come out (as well as ownership) changes how you approach each game.  Trying to figure out when best to score Favors is an added layer of complexity (which I think I still don’t fully understand how to do well… even after 100+ games).

#17 7 Wonders

Rating: I like it.

Times Played: 10-100

Comments: When this game initially came out, I fell in love with it.  The card drafting was a then-underused mechanic, and was a breath of fresh air at the time. There is a little bit of a learning curve to learn the iconography, but it’s something that most games should grasp before the end of their first game (and those games really should be only 20-30 minutes).  After dozens of games, I have found that I still like the game with lower numbers of players (4 or less) as there seems to be a higher feeling of interaction – both in using the opponent’s card tableaus as well as having a chance to see cards more than once.  In a 7 player game, I really don’t care too much about what is going on other than my RHO and LHO – I only pay attention to their cards at the end when we score.   The upcoming expansion (which I had a chance to play with Mr. Bauza at GenCon 2013) may push this back into the “I love it” category though…

#18 War of the Ring (2^nd Edition)

Rating: n/a

Times Played: zero

Comments: I defer all comments here to Tom Rosen who was once trying to play this game once a day in 2013.

#19 Dominion

Rating: I love it!

Times Played: >3000 (seriously)

Comments: (OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER – I was one of the two developers for Dominion. That seriously clouds my opinion of the game. Take everything I say about it knowing that I worked on it for over two years…)  I have played Dominion more than any other game, and I frankly doubt that it will ever be eclipsed on the lifetime played scale.  Like Caylus, this was the founder of a genre, and I still appreciate this more than any of the followup games.  The best feature of the game (IMHO) is the near infinite variety of gameplay as this is dictated by which 10 Kingdom cards are included in any particular game.  Additionally, Dominion is a “Turn Zero” game in that much of the game strategy can be planned before the game even starts, and as I have mentioned, this is a mechanic that strongly appeals to me.

#20 Dominion: Intrigue

Rating: I love it!

Times Played: >3000 (seriously)

Comments: (OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER – I was one of the two developers for Dominion. That seriously clouds my opinion of the game. Take everything I say about it knowing that I worked on it for over two years…)  See the discussion above.  Honestly, I don’t care if you consider this an expansion or a standalone, and there have been about 1,000 threads on the Geek arguing for each side.  It’s included on this list because it has a ranking.  I still love it.  Oh, and since I’ve been asked, my favorite way to play is to draw 10 kingdom cards out at random (from the entire Dominion universe) and just play.

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Well, that’s the first half of the Top 20 – I will get to the rest of it tomorrow or over the weekend!

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor