Today’s article is the second part of our 100 Games for the Aspiring Board Game Cafe series, which we started yesterday. 

For the uninitiated, a board game cafe usually serves food and drink, with some being more like coffee shops and others more like bars. But one component all of them I’ve been to has in common is a game library, consisting of several hundred titles that guests can check out and play with their friends. 

A friend of mine is opening a game cafe soon, and he asked me for a list of about 100 games that I thought should be included in his library. I could have easily listed a hundred games on my own, but I thought getting votes from all of the OG-ers would have been a more interesting exercise. 

This series is split into four parts. Part I included games 76-100 on the list.  This is Part II and includes games 51-75. Part III, publishing Thursday, includes games 26-50. And Part IV, publishing Friday, includes the top 25, plus comments from the OG-er on the list in general.  

The Quick Notes on Methodology

We listed our full methodology in our first post this week, so check that out, but here is the abbreviated version. 

For purposes of this project, I simply asked everybody to vote for 20 games that they’d recommend.  Each member of the OG was offered the chance to vote for up to 20 games, and they could give one game 25 points, one game 24 points, all the way down to giving one 6 points.  OGers could then give 5 points to any and all games that they also thought were good recommendations.  We all put our votes into a spreadsheet and calculated the top 100.  

We had 16 OG-ers vote, and 116 different games received votes.  In this series you’ll see designations for gold, silver, and bronze.  Those represent the number of voters that put a given game in the #1, #2, and #3 spot, respectively, by a writer. 

GAMES #75 to #51

#75 – 25 Points – Ark Nova

#73 (Two Way Tie) – 26 Points – Copenhagen

#73 (Two Way Tie) – 26 Points – Ethnos

#72 – 27 Points – Werewords

#71 – 28 Points (1 Bronze) – Lost Ruins of Arnak

#69 (Two Way Tie) – 30 Points – Iwari

#69 (Two Way Tie) – 30 Points – Sagrada

#68 – 31 Points – Mysterium

#67 – 32 Points – Takenoko

#66 – 33 Points – Race for the Galaxy

#65 – 34 Points – Ricochet Robots

#63 (Two Way Tie) – 35 Points – Time’s Up

#63 (Two Way Tie) – 35 Points – Stone Age

#62 – 36 Points – New York Slice

#61 – 37 Points – Cash and Guns

#60 – 38 Points – El Grande

#59 – 39 Points – Qwixx

#57 (Two Way Tie) – 40 Points – Viticulture

#57 (Two Way Tie) – 40 Points – Bang!

#56 – 41 Points – Agricola

#53 (Three Way Tie) – 43 Points – Imhotep

#53 (Three Way Tie) – 43 Points – Isle of Skye

#53 (Three Way Tie) – 43 Points – Pictures

#51 (Two Way Tie) – 44 Points – Galaxy Trucker

#51 (Two Way Tie) – 44 Points – Kingdom Builder

More to come tomorrow!

Past Articles in the 10 Great Series:

10 Great Worker Placement Games

10 Great Games by Reiner Knizia

10 Great Roll ‘n Writes

10 Great Ticket to Ride Maps

10 Great Games of the 2010s

10 Great 2-Player Games

10 Great Card Games

10 Great Deduction Games

10 Great Animal Games