New releases often get most of the attention here at the Opinionated Gamers, so today we’ll be shining the spotlight on older games that made it into our Top 100 lists.  Aside from the four games mentioned in Monday’s piece about our collective Top Games (i.e., Can’t Stop, Crokinole, Acquire, and Bridge), there were 70 different games from before 1990 that appeared among our all-time favorites.  Here are all of our older favorites that were included on multiple Top 100 lists submitted by OG members:

Favorites of Four

There were three games released before 1990 that made it onto the Top 100 list of four different OG members:

• Cosmic Encounter (1977)
• Hare & Tortoise (1973)
• Liar’s Dice / Perudo / Bluff (1800)

Alan How: Cosmic Encounter is my favourite game of all time. I have every version and played the 1977 original version more than 100 times. I love the player interaction so you ask for help, but the current situation makes you decide on which side or not; the variety of alien powers provide near infinite changes to the game and just when you think one power is overpowered it gets zapped. Nothing is certain and you can have shared victories (which feel just as great as solo ones). The game is quick to set up and play and what it makes my top game is because of the fun and laughter I’ve enjoyed since I first played it. The others are very good, but not in the same league for me.

Fraser McHarg: One of our treasured possessions is an Eon Cosmic Encounter set. Will never play with some of the expansions I admit, but overall a great and truly chaotic game.

Nate Beeler: Liar’s Dice has had many iterations over the years. There’s the version tied into Pirates of the Caribbean that briefly brought it back to prominence. There’s also the nearly unplayable Perudo version on BGA. Heck, my dad used to play a version using the serial numbers on dollar bills with his friends. But for me, the real version is the pink Milton Bradley box from 1987. Throw in some small house rules suggested by my friend Peter to make it completely fair, and you’ve got what I consider a near perfect game.

Larry Levy:  Hare & Tortoise made my list and it’s a brilliant design.  It’s one of the very few race games I love, thanks to its very clever and elegant mathematical underpinnings.  I see no reason to rely on luck in what is mostly a game of skill, so I make it a point of pride to never jug the hare unless I can’t avoid doing so and I’ve done very well over the years with that strategy.  This used to get a lot of play, but it’s been a while since it’s gotten to the table and I miss it.

I won’t veto a game of Liar’s Dice, but it’s by no means a favorite of mine.  Small wonder, given how disinterested and inept I am at bluffing.  Still, the game deserves its popularity and long life.

Cosmic, OTOH, is a game I do try to avoid.  Historically, it’s one of the most important games ever designed, thanks to its revolutionary concept of using player powers to break the rules of the game, but it’s also extremely chaotic and I pretty much hate chaos.  It doesn’t help that my first introduction to the game was with a group that loved to play with all the expansions and who felt that the more chaos, the better!  So no thanks.

Three is a Crowd

There were a handful of games from before 1990 that made it onto the list of all-time favorites of three OG participants:

• Diplomacy (1959)
• Merchant of Venus (1988)
• Montage (1973)
• Password (1962)

Talia Rosen: I’m happy to see Montage here.  This was the first game that I ever backed on Kickstarter way back in 2011 when this 1973 release by Joli Quentin Kansil was reprinted by Gryphon Games.  This brilliant four-player team word game deserves to be as well-known as Codenames!  Such a unique and engaging game for two couples to play against each other! And of course, Allan B. Calhamer is still a genius just like in 2009 and in 1959.

Larry:  I agree with Talia that Montage is amazing.  It encourages clever thinking, empathy, and a good vocabulary, while also featuring so many pee-in-your-pants hilarious moments!  You need the right group for it, but it’s fantastic fun if you can get an appropriate foursome together.

Then there’s Diplomacy, which 65 years after its release, remains a cult favorite and a completely unique game.  I can’t imagine playing it today, but I have such fond memories of earlier matches, including many all-day face-to-face games that really tested your stamina–but it was so worth it!  I see no reason why this won’t continue to be played 65 years from now!

Nate: I haven’t played competitive Password with a timer in many many years. It’s how it used to be played in the tournament at the Gathering of Friends, and how I’d play with our regular group back in the day. Played that way, the game is one of my top five games, easily. Nowadays, the game still comes out fairly regularly, but it’s always in a more chill setting where we drop the timer and go easy with the rules a little. That works great, and the game in that form is still in my top 100. There’s just something special about that pressure filled tightrope walk of trying to find the perfect clue while managing the clock to give your partner enough time to consider the implications of the clues you didn’t give. It’s pure magic when it works.

I also agree that Montage is a great game, btw. I don’t own it, but I did help make a custom copy for a friend before it was reprinted. It feels correct that it should be matched up with Password, here.

Dale: I think I forgot to put Montage on my list – and it should be there.  However, like Tichu – it’s a game that only works for me with four players of equal clue giving and clue solving ability.  I still remember a grand game with four players who all loved doing cryptic crosswords.  That was a highlight of a Gathering of Friends many moons ago.

Alan: Merchant of Venus is the only one of these I’d play today. The others all shone years ago, but I’d not expect to play any of them again.

Fraser: I played a lot of Diplomacy in my younger days, probably because I had time for seven player games of Diplomacy when I was young!  I have not played Merchants of Venus enough and have never played the other two.

Jonathan: I have not played Merchant of Venus in a long time, but I won’t be letting it go any time soon.

A Pair of Fans

These games from before 1990 have two big fans among OG submissions for this week of Top 100 games:

• Ave Caesar (1989)
• Axis & Allies (1981)
• Chess (1475)
• Civilization (1980)
• Code 777 (1985)
• Crude: The Oil Game (1974)
• Die Macher (1986)
• Entenrallye (1989)
• Hearts (1850)
• Poker (1810)
• Scattergories (1988)
• Scrabble (1948)
• Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective (1982)
• Spades (1938)

Talia: I’m happy to see that I’m not the only Die Macher fan, which reminds me that I’ve only played this Karl-Heinz Schmiel gem 13 times, and I need to make time to get it back to the table!  The 4-5 hours that this game takes really do fly by, and it’s more rewarding and invigorating than playing several different shorter games.  I was disappointed to see that none of my fellow OG members included the brilliant 1982 game Survive by Julian Courtland-Smith on their lists.  I absolutely adore the four-player madness of this Parker Brothers classic, which is way ahead of its time with an action point movement system on a hexagonal grid and really stands the test of time!

Nate: I helped get Chess listed here. I also considered Poker and Scattergories, which are games I really enjoy. No excuse for not adding Scattergories, but I’m pretty sure I left Poker off because of the need for wagering to make it work. That just feels different. I suspect there are more fans of Chess among the OG crowd than the two of us, but as a lifestyle game others may have also felt it was different enough to leave off. I guess I’m ok just being a patzer and enjoying the play without feeling the need to study and get better (though I do have plenty of partly read chess books).

Die Macher is incredibly fun, but I every time I have played it I have had to relearn it (not a quick teach). That will be true again the next time I play. 

Fraser: A group of us would get together at an out of town games convention each year  and the Saturday morning was reserved for our annual Die Macher game (using the Moskito edition, with an English  rules translation).  Sure it runs 4-5 hours, but it is just continuous micro turns so there is not really any down time. Great game.  Civilization is a little like Diplomacy in that you need to find a whole bunch of players and set aside a whole day which becomes harder and harder to arrange.  Well worth it though. Nuclear War, Ogre, and The Russian Campaign (the Jedko original) were some of my other entries of mine for pre 1990 games.

What are your favorite games from before 1990?