For the last two days, I’ve been looking at creating my own gaming Hall of Fame, inspired by BGG’s recent launching of their own Hall.  I want there to be some comparison between the two groups of games, so I’m basically following their lead by focusing on “modern” board games that are at least 10 years old, no traditional games, and no roleplaying games.  I’m way too much of a masochist to simply list the games I want to honor, so I’ve decided to discuss all of the games I considered and saying why I chose the ones I did and why I left the others out.  Yup, I’m that insane.  My criteria for selection are Popularity, Innovation, Impact, and Fame.

My process is to come up with a list of prospective games in chronological order and then put them into one of four categories:

• Yes – Games I considered to be obvious choices for my Hall.  No matter how big my HoF winds up being, I will find room for all these games.
• Likely – Strong candidates that I would like to add, but which aren’t shoo-ins.  If the total number of Yes and Likely games isn’t too high, all of these will make it; otherwise, I’ll have to make some hard choices.
• Possible – Games with a pretty good argument for being added.  If, after all the Yes and Likely games are added, there’s still room, I’ll go through these and put the best ones in.
• No – Not serious candidates, but games with some notable aspects that I wanted to cite, for reasons of quality, popularity, innovation, or historical importance.

I’ve divided the time period under consideration into the following five periods:

• Period 1:  1950-1989
• Period 2:  1990-1999
• Period 3:  2000-2004
• Period 4:  2005-2009
• Period 5:  2010-2014

We’ve already covered the first three periods, looking at a total of 72 games.  Today, I’ll talk about games from Period 4 and Period 5.  So let’s start off with one of the most influential games ever designed.

Caylus (2005)
Caylus wasn’t the first game to use Worker Placement.  That honor usually is given to Richard Breese’s Keydom (1998), although Bus, from Splotter, and Way Out West (a somewhat obscure Martin Wallace game) are also occasionally mentioned.  But even though those earlier games were solid titles, no one got too excited about their mechanical innovations.  In fact, the mechanism didn’t even have a name yet.  But all that changed after William Attia and the Ystari team brought us Caylus.

While it’s true that Caylus was hugely popular—practically every early review of it was massively enthusiastic and everybody was playing it—the game’s real significance was its impact on the hobby.  Basically, the entire gaming world fell in love with Worker Placement.  And why not:  it was simple and was able to introduce player interaction into games without it feeling targeted or destructive.  Plus, the fact that actions were usually taken with what were called workers, which often tied well into each game’s theme, made them more appealing and less abstract.  In a remarkably short period of time, WP became practically the default mechanism for new designs.  Its dominance was ensured when Agricola came out a couple of years later, but make no mistake, it was Caylus that got people excited about WP.  Its successful implementation of it made it one of the go-to mechanics in the designer’s toolkit and that continues to this day.

There’s more:  the title dominated the gaming awards, earning a SdJ special award, along with winning the DSP, IGA, and a host of other lesser awards.  There was a successful card game version (Caylus Magna Carta) that was spun off of it.  And its popularity continued for well over a decade.  Simply speaking, Caylus is one of the most important games ever released.  As for which HoF category it should go in, keep in mind that the title of every Ystari design includes a “Y” and an “S”.  Yes

Shadows Over Camelot (2005)
The path to the gaming world embracing cooperative titles was a convoluted one, with several significant milestones along the way.  First, Arkham Horror more or less introduced adult cooperative gaming in 1987.  Then, Lord of the Rings (2000) became the first co-op to make a major splash.  The next step was Shadows Over Camelot and the introduction of the traitor.  Allowing for the possibility of a player trying to boobytrap the efforts of the others was considered a major advance and got a lot of people excited when the game was released.  It received a lot of play and earned the game a special award from the SdJ jury (they decided to honor it and Caylus with special awards the same year).  But the novelty of the concept soon died out and most future co-ops to hit the scene were completely cooperative.  SoC wasn’t helped by its essentially abstract game play, either.  The game still gets some play, but it’s a far cry from its heyday, so it didn’t wind up having the impact that many people thought it would have upon its release.  No

Twilight Struggle (2005)
By 2005, card-driven mechanics had revitalized wargaming.  But could they be used in games that didn’t include warfare?  That was the question posed by Jason Matthews and Ananda Gupta, a pair of gamers with backgrounds in history.  So they created Twilight Struggle, themed around the Cold War, which rose from being a word-of-mouth hit with a small initial print run, to one of the most unlikely #1 games ever.  It unseated the mighty Agricola from the top spot late in 2010 and stayed on top of the Geek ratings for more than 5 years!  Along the way, it earned a reputation as one of the best and most strategic 2-player games around, and inspired other games without fisticuffs to utilize CDW-style mechanics.  It still receives a lot of play and its Geek ranking remains in the top 15, so its status among gamers hasn’t dimmed.  Given its continued popularity and its importance in the hobby, it would hardly take a struggle to push its candidacy for the Hall.  Likely

Imperial (2006)
Very few game mechanisms can be traced to just one designer; usually, they evolve over time and with contributions from different creative people.  But the rondel is an outstanding exception, as it was invented and popularized by just one man:  Mac Gerdts.  Gerdts even coined its name.  Folks often get loose with their gaming terminology, but I (and Gerdts) define a rondel as a circular action track in which you place your token on one of the spaces in order to take that action and you can only advance the token by a limited number of spaces (usually 3 or so) each turn to take your next action.  You’re allowed to advance it further, but only by paying a stiff penalty.  It’s a great creation, since the players are given some freedom in what to do, but their choices are limited, so planning ahead is essential.  According to Gerdts, he came up with the concept during the 1980’s, but it took a couple of decades for any of his games to get published.  The first rondel game to get published was Antike in 2005.  But Imperial, in which the players bid to control one of the pre-WWI Great Powers, was a much more popular game and, based on what Gerdts has said about the game’s history, probably was designed before Antike.  So Imperial not only was the title that popularized the rondel, but may have been the first of the designer’s games to use it.  Even though Imperial was highly rated on its release and still gets a good deal of play, I don’t think it quite reaches the level of HoF status.  But the rondel has proven to be a significant member of the designer’s toolkit and has been a part of quite a few titles over the past two decades, so I think the game that really got people to notice it deserves some consideration.  No

Through the Ages (2006)
Seemingly from the moment that Francis Tresham created a new genre with his opus Civilization in 1980, the gaming world began clamoring for a Civ Lite title, a game based on the same theme that could replicate some of the sweep and intricate mechanics of the original, without requiring you to set aside an entire day to play it.  Many games tried, some with much fanfare, but they all fell short.  The thinking was that an epic game simply required an epic amount of time to play.  But then came an unknown designer from a part of the world that few people even associated with gaming, with a novel idea—how about a Civ card game?  It seemed impossible, but this was no ordinary card game:  it contained 365 of the beasties, one for each day of the year, and they represented leaders, governments, technologies—all kinds of things.  And it turned out that the man behind it, Vlaada Chvatil, was no ordinary designer.

Through the Ages took the gaming world by storm, grabbing awards and zooming to the #2 spot on the Geek in short order.  Despite the lack of a map and its scaled-down nature, it still did a fabulous job of replicating the essentials of a full Civ game and, in many ways, actually felt more thematic than the original Civ.  And even though it wasn’t short, it could still be played in half the time of Civilization.  TtA was but the first of many hit designs from Chvatil and his redesign of it also went up to #2 about a decade later.  It continues to get widespread play and remains one of the great game creations.  By no means would it be a lite choice for the Hall of Fame.  Likely

Agricola (2007)
In many ways, Agricola was just as unlikely a hit game as Through the Ages.  Sure, the designer was well known, but Uwe Rosenberg had established his reputation as a master of innovative card games and he hadn’t even had one of those for half a dozen years.  There was real doubt whether he could pull off a boardgame of this scope.  Moreover, it was from a tiny publishing house that had never attempted anything of this size.  So it was more than a little surprising when Agricola not only became a hit, but completely dominated the gaming world.  Gamers clamored for English language copies; it took over half a year for the supply to catch up with the demand.  Everyone played it, critics praised it to the skies, and it won pretty much every gaming award in existence.  In less than a year, it rose to #1 on the Geek, becoming the title that finally toppled the mighty Puerto Rico after its exceedingly long reign.

Its importance came from more than just a massive amount of gameplay.  As I mentioned earlier, Caylus was the design that popularized Worker Placement, but Agricola cemented that status, turning the mechanism into far and away the most used one for medium and heavyweight games.  The homey and reasonably realistic way its mechanics matched its very attractive theme (you didn’t just add new workers:  they were your kids and you had to expand your house to make room for them!) resonated with all kinds of gamers and other designers took notice.  Suddenly, themes based on nature and commonplace activities (like farming) became much more common.  The success of Agricola and TtA proved that more complex games could be big sellers and more and more of those began to hit the marketplace.  So Agricola was influential in many ways and its effect is still felt today.

The game remains very popular.  There are many expansions and revised ways of playing and they’ve all done exceedingly well.  The humble game with the funny name may no longer dominate the hobby, but its fame, impact, and influence remains so great that it will never have to go begging for HoF support.  Yes

Brass (2007)
Brass kind of snuck up on most gamers.  It was released at the 2007 Essen fair without much fanfare (it was the last of the Warfrog games and Martin Wallace may have had his hands full with the details of switching things over to Treefrog and its new subscription model).  It wasn’t a complicated game, but it featured unusual and innovative mechanics that took a while to absorb.  But once people began to familiarize themselves with the title, there was a growing awareness that this was one of Wallace’s best, a unique and deep economic game.  It got as high as #7 on the Geek and continues to be widely played.  And its spinoff game, Age of Industry, an expandable system which could be played on different maps, was also very popular and won an IGA award.

Like Power Grid, Brass is a game that teeters between a Possible and Likely rating for me.  The final fact in its favor is that its sequel game, Brass: Birmingham, which contains some new elements but is largely the same as the original Brass, has been the #1 game on the Geek for over two years and figures to hold on to that position for quite a while.  You could consider it a joint entry, but it feels like the Brass system is one worthy of honoring.  Likely

Race for the Galaxy (2007)
There are popular games and then there are addictive games.  Tom Lehmann’s Race for the Galaxy certainly qualifies as the latter.  There is much evidence to support this contention.  Brian Bankler mentioned on his Tao of Gaming website that during the week of the Gathering (one of the first opportunities to play the game), he played it no fewer than 50 times!  Our own Joe Huber has said he played it over 1000 times in 2007 alone (he refers to it as “the year of Race”).  And one of my friends in my game group has played it, between face-to-face contests and on the app, over 16,000 times!!!  That speaks not only to a game that is hugely enjoyable, but also exceedingly deep and replayable.

Race’s mechanics were both innovative and influential.  Cards can be used for their abilities, but also as currency, a system Lehmann first used in San Juan (Tom and Richard Borg designed the framework for that game before Andreas Seyfarth took over); this has become a staple in many other games that use cards.  The idea that players determine which phases are used each turn is a refinement taken from Puerto Rico and which has been used in other titles, including the recent Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition.  There were several popular expansions and an award-winning spinoff dice game, Roll for the Galaxy.  Even the theme proved to be significant.  Science fiction games were long considered sales poison in Germany (at the time, many Europeans much preferred historical fiction to sci-fi), but the success of Race opened the door to many other space-related games.  All of this, together with Race’s continued popularity (it still ranks in the Geek’s top 100 games), makes it a strong candidate for my Hall of Fame.  (And as an aside, how about the gaming year of 2007?  Only three games from the year made my list, but all of them earned either a Yes or a Likely rating, the first year to have as many as three reach those levels.)  Likely

Battlestar Galactica (2008)
BSG was one of the most popular of the thematic games released during the aughts.  Like Shadows Over Camelot, it was a cooperative game that included one or more traitors, but it was tied to an extremely popular TV series and its mechanics fit its theme much more closely than the earlier Arthurian game did.  This made it a big hit and it got as high as #17 in the Geek ratings.  The game is still fairly popular and there have been a number of spinoffs and expansions.  Traitor games have lost much of their appeal lately, though, so I don’t think there’s enough here for it to be a serious HoF contender.  No

Dominion (2008)
Wolfgang Kramer, one of the greatest and most prolific of all game designers, was once asked what challenges still remained for him.  He replied that he wished he could design a game that established an entire genre; it was the one thing he had never managed.  So imagine how Donald X. Vaccarino must have felt when he finally got Dominion published.  Not only did the game establish a new genre—deckbuilding—but it was a deliberate attempt to do so and it was obvious to anyone who played it that this genre would be launched and would be extremely popular.  That’s how revolutionary it was.

Deckbuilding was derived from Collectable Card Games, of course, and the source of its popularity was that so many gamers had thoroughly enjoyed playing Magic and had loved the idea of building the perfect deck.  Vaccarino figured out how to transfer the idea to a non-collectable game and make it a part of the ongoing action, instead of something players did in isolation prior to the game.  It was an immediate sensation, got all kinds of gameplay, and grabbed a ton of awards.  It inspired a bunch of other titles, which imitated or refined its concepts.  Other designers saw the promise of deckbuilding and came up with games where it wasn’t the entire focus, but was only a portion of the overall design; many of those were big hits.  Suffice it to say that deckbuilding has become one of the most significant mechanisms in games today and there is no question that it all began with Dominion.  There’s no need to build a Hall of Fame case for the game—it’s an obvious conclusion.  Yes

Le Havre (2008)
After Rosenberg’s massive success with Agricola, there was naturally a great deal of anticipation about his next big boardgame, along with some questions if he had more than one such game in him, after his extended career as a card game designer.  But he put all such worries to rest, as Le Havre was another big hit.  It was another Worker Placement game, although this time the players controlled the process as the actions came from the buildings that the players as a group built.  Le Havre was a more forgiving game than Agricola and, for a while, there was some speculation if that might lead it to being more popular than the mighty ‘Gric.  But over the years, Agricola continued strong, while there were fewer and fewer mentions of Le Havre.  It’s still made quite an impact over its life (it was rated as high as #6 and remains in the Geek’s top 100), but players have made it clear that they’d rather work on the farm than in a French port city.  Possible

Pandemic (2008)
Pandemic was the design that truly popularized cooperative gaming.  It didn’t happen right away, but the title’s intriguing theme and its straightforward, but challenging play, made it a mainstream game that appealed to both more seasoned gamers and relative newcomers.  Designer Matt Leacock came up with a very clever and elegant way of recycling previously played cards that meant that trouble spots on the board would continue to bedevil the players.  Perhaps the best indication of the game’s quality was how well it held its popularity; year after year, it was consistently at or near the top in total games played.  And, of course, when the world suffered through a real pandemic, that only enhanced the game’s sales.  Leacock and others came up with many expansions and spinoffs, keeping the game fresh.  And the original title continues to be well rated.  These are all factors in the argument for its HoF candidacy, but the biggest one is simply its role in making the gaming world want to play cooperative games, which are now one of the most popular genres in the hobby.  Likely

Stone Age (2008)
Stone Age was another title that appealed to gamers of all kinds.  It had a fun theme, straightforward rules, and everyone likes to roll dice.  Having the results of the WP actions be probabilistic was its main innovation.  It was an excellent choice as a next step for new gamers after they were exposed to their gateway game.  It continues to get steady play and is one of the more popular designs from this period.  Despite all this, there really isn’t enough here to justify HoF status.  No

Hansa Teutonica (2009)
Hansa Teutonica does have a theme (the much used medieval-merchants-in-Europe one), but mechanically, it feels very much like an abstract and games like those don’t often have wide appeal.  But HT’s mechanics are so clever and unusual that it was a big hit.  There’s an unusually high level of direct player interaction, although, in one of the title’s main innovations, “attacks” on an opponent can help them as well as hurt them.  The game continues to get a reasonable amount of play.  It’s a much admired design, making it worthy of some HoF consideration.  Possible

Small World (2009)
Small World began life in 1999 as Vinci, Philippe Keyaerts’ first published game.  It was a game of conquest where the civilizations’ abilities came from two randomly chosen tiles that gave it abilities.  The game did well, but when Keyaerts redesigned it ten years later and rethemed it to a fantasy setting, it really exploded.  Small World won numerous awards and got a huge amount of gameplay.  It’s still fairly popular, but its impact has died down a bit, so I don’t think it’s a leading contender for the Hall.  But it was quite popular for an extended period of time.  Possible

That finishes up Period 4 and it was an eventful one, with 3 Yesses and 5 Likelies.  We’re heading for the home stretch, with only five more years to go!

7 Wonders (2010)
Only two games have won all three major gaming awards (the SdJ, DSP, and IGA):  Tikal and 7 Wonders.  Unlike the Kramer/Kiesling title from a decade earlier, 7 Wonders has maintained its popularity over the years.  It isn’t hard to see why.  It effortlessly handles up to 7 players and, regardless of how many are playing, only lasts 45 minutes.  It wasn’t the first game to employ the booster draft mechanism from Magic: the Gathering (that was Fairy Tale, back in 2004), but it absolutely popularized it, to the point that it’s now often referred to as “7 Wonders drafting”.  Designer Antoine Bauza included multiple types of cards, to give the players several ways of building up their positions, but not so many as to overwhelm them.  Each game includes a large number of decisions, but none of them are too demanding or take too much time.  It’s the perfect opener for a game session, particularly for larger groups.

All of these factors have resulted in a game that is very famous, is very appealing to all kinds of gamers, and continues to get widespread play.  It’s also been the springboard to a large number of expansions, as well as some spinoff titles which have also been major successes.  Small wonder that 7 Wonders will be a member of my Hall of Fame.  Yes

The Castles of Burgundy (2011)
The alea big box games were one of the most storied set of designs in modern gaming history and Castles of Burgundy was their last big hit.  It featured another one of Stefan Feld’s clever dice mechanisms, as players used the numbers they rolled each turn to build the highest scoring settlements.  More than any other game, CoB epitomized the point salad school of design, as VPs came from many sources and the object was to gain the highest total by being as efficient as possible.

The game was very widely played (it reached a peak ranking of #8 on the Geek) and has retained its popularity over the years.  For me, it was yet another game that sat on the border between Possible and Likely for HoF consideration.  What finally swayed me for the latter is the extreme success of the 2023 Special Edition.  This massively overproduced version of CoB has a luxury price, but that hasn’t stopped a large number of gamers from buying and playing it, earning the game a ludicrously high rating.  Sure, the top flight production values have much to do with that, but the underlying game still has to be great to get folks to fork over that much moolah, no matter what it looks like.  It shows me that, given the proper setting, this remains a beloved game, over a decade after its release.  Likely

Eclipse (2011)
After the turn of the century, you started seeing more games that combined the mechanics of Eurogames with the strong themes and direct combat of American-based designs.  One popular way of doing this was with games with a Space Opera theme.  These worked well, because it was easy to give them a compelling backstory, the different extra-terrestrial races could logically be given special abilities, and it wasn’t hard to invent technologies with dramatic effects.  Twilight Imperium was the granddaddy of these games, but the most popular mainstream example was Eclipse.

Eclipse checks all the boxes for games of this sort, including a 4X experience, a lot of spaceship minis, a tech tree, smooth Euro-infused mechanics, and a good deal of combat.  It was an immediate hit, took a couple of significant awards, and got as high as #5 on the Geek.  Its popularity has continued, as it remains widely played, still sports a high rating, and its sequel game is currently ranked 18^th.  It has a pretty strong case for Hall entry and the fact that it still has a claim to be the most popular space conquest game of 3 or so hours impels me to Make it So.  Likely

King of Tokyo (2011)
Who can resist a game in which you play one of the ginormous creatures from those cheesy Japanese monster movies, tearing the crap out of Tokyo?  Most gamers couldn’t.  Richard Garfield added just enough elements and special powers to keep things interesting, but the main fun came from rolling dice and attacking your opponents.  The title had a pretty long run of heavy play, together with a goodly number of well regarded spinoffs.  In recent years, it’s kind of died off, much like all those oversized monsters inevitably did, but during its heyday, it was popular enough to deserve some consideration.  No

Risk Legacy (2011)
Risk Legacy was popular when it was released, but not tremendously so.  It’s rating on the Geek was only reasonably good and the highest ranking it ever achieved was #91.  It’s no longer in the top 500 games and last month, the Geek’s statistics show it was played fewer than a dozen times.  But what this modest hit did do was create an entirely new kind of game.  Rob Daviau (assisted by Chris Dupuis) came up with the legacy concept, so that the results of each game affected the ones to come and every group’s experience with the game was a totally unique one.  This, to put it mildly, blew people’s minds (particularly the naughty pleasure of defacing your game) and got the gaming world very excited.  This initial effort wasn’t an enormous hit because, at its heart, it was still Risk, but the legacy aspects were still executed very well and it absolutely proved how promising it could be.  The real legacy superstar was still a few years away, but this trailblazing example is still one worth citing.  Possible

Andean Abyss (2012)
Andean Abyss, designed by a CIA security analyst named Volko Ruhnke, is the first of the COIN (short for COunter-INsurgency) games.  These are multiplayer, asymmetric, card-driven wargames originally based on recent examples of counter-insurgency conflicts and irregular warfares.  These games, which feature unique and dynamic gameplay, have proven to be very successful, with a dozen titles already released and more planned.  No one of these titles particularly stand out as the most popular of the group, so I’ve cited the original game as a trailblazer.  It’s not enough to earn HoF entry, but it’s certainly worth mentioning.  No

Love Letter (2012)
In 2012, Japanese games were just making their inroads to a wider, Western audience.  The first few games to get widespread play were known for their minimalist design and none did it better than Love Letter.  The game consisted of only 16 cards and a handful of tokens, but that was still enough to get a bunch of people playing it.  Its popularity was such that it had about 30 rethemes and redesigns available.  The mania around the game has died down considerably, but it’s still a significant title, due to its role in making Japanese games more mainstream.  No

Qwixx (2012)
One of the major new game genres of the 2010’s was Roll and Write games, in which players take turns rolling (and, sometimes, rerolling) dice and then everyone has the chance to use them to write things on their scoresheet, with the goal of having the most points by game’s end.  New and more ambitious R&W titles kept appearing throughout the decade, until finally people starting getting sick of them.  But the game that really popularized the concept was Qwixx, which continues to get widespread play.  It’s not quite enough to gain HoF entrance, but it deserves notice as a trailblazer.  No

Terra Mystica (2012)
Terra Mystica came out of nowhere to be one of the dominant games of 2012.  A heavy game of perfect information that required a great deal of advance planning in order to play well, it won a ton of awards and got as high as #2 on the Geek.  It continues to be regarded as one of the best heavyweight designs and still gets steady play.  Is it enough to gain entrance into the Hall?  It’s awfully close, yet another game that teeters on the edge between Possible and Likely.  But I think I’m going to put it into the lower category.  It’s a little too much of a niche game, beloved by those who love the brainburners, but not getting much play from most of the gaming community.  It’s a close call, but given that I can’t say it’s been all that influential a design, I’m gonna go low.  Possible

Tzolk’in (2012)
One of the reasons for the popularity of Worker Placement games is that designers have figured out so many clever ways of utilizing it.  The main innovation in Tzolk’in is that time is now a factor, so that the longer a worker remains in an area, the more benefit it provides.  But what caught everyone’s attention was the physical way this was implemented, with those mesmerizing gears that advance workers every turn.  The game was a big hit and showed that CGE could succeed with non-Czech designers.  It was also an early indication that a new breed of Italian designers had arrived, as this was the first major success for Italy’s Simone Luciani and Daniele Tascini.  Despite all that, there’s not quite enough here for serious Hall consideration (it didn’t help that it came out the same year as Terra Mystica, which basically shut it out of award consideration).  Worthy of discussion, but not enough to dial it up.  Possible

Caverna (2013)
To be honest, the only reason I’m including Caverna in this list is that it reached a peak of #3 on the Geek and I wanted to include all the games that got ranked that high.  When Uwe Rosenberg first released it, its similarities to his transcendent Agricola got a lot of people excited.  The thinking was that Rosenberg was giving us two branches for this kind of game:  the more scripted and unforgiving ‘Gric, where so much effort had to be spent on achieving one kind of action (Family Growth); or the more wide open and sandbox-y Caverna, where a lot of different approaches could be rewarded.  Many reviewers of the time thought that Caverna could rival Agricola’s popularity, or at least serve as a good alternative for those who wanted a more forgiving game.  But this has not proven to be the case.  Agricola is as popular as ever, but ask yourself:  when is the last time you saw a mention of Caverna?  I’m sure it still gets played in some quarters, but from my point of view, it’s pretty much fallen off the face of the earth.  I’m not sure this fate is deserved, but over the past decade, gamers have spoken, and they overwhelmingly prefer the Farm to the Cave.  No

Concordia (2013)
It took a while for Concordia to find its audience, but its steady growth has served it well:  it reached a peak of #17 on the Geek and is still going strong, only recently falling out of the top 25.  It was also one of a handful of games to popularize “no shuffle” deckbuilding, in which all of the cards you start with and purchase are available to you after a reset, as opposed to the Dominion model, where you can only use a subset of them and, consequently, you do a lot of shuffling.  There have been some well regarded expansions and spinoffs as well.  The game has a reasonable case for Hall of Fame membership, but I don’t think its impact has been sufficient to quite make it.  Possible

Russian Railroads (2013)
I think much of what I said about Terra Mystica, I could say about Russian Railroads, only to a lesser degree.  It’s a very popular heavy game which won several awards, but appeals mostly to a smaller group of players.  I’d say it’s more accessible than TM, but it also never attained TM’s popularity (its peak rating was only #40 on the Geek).  It’s worthy of consideration, but if I don’t put TM in, I don’t see how I could argue that RR belongs.  Possible

Orleans (2014)
Orleans was, and continues to be, a very popular game, one of the first designs to feature bag building (similar to deckbuilding, except instead of dealing cards, you grab tokens from a bag—if nothing else, it takes away the need for all that shuffling!).  It has retained its popularity, currently sporting an extraordinarily high rating of over 8.0 on the Geek.  There have also been a lot of spinoff designs which have done well.  But even though it’s been a success, I don’t think it’s achieved enough to earn HoF status, so I guess it’s just left holding the bag.  No

Splendor (2014)
Splendor is one of the most popular lighter games of the past decade.  It continues to get a good deal of play and has launched quite a few expansions.  Moreover, it has inspired a goodly number of other games, which are invariably labelled “Splendor Killers”.  So despite its lightweight status, it has a lot going for it.  I don’t think it’s quite enough to gain entry to the Hall, but it’s far from a lightweight.  Possible

So that finishes up Period 5 and we should be ready to make the final decision on which games get into my HoF and which are on the outside, looking in.  But those last 5 years seemed a bit underwhelming to me.  Plenty of excellent games, but only one Yes and two Likelies, and both of those were borderline cases.  I know when I said my goal was to have comparable representation for the different Periods, it was a “want” and not a “need”, but it still feels peculiar.  Were the early teens a down period for gaming?  I don’t think so.  So what else could I do to beef up that last period?

Well, it is 2025.  I know the BGG HoF jury limited their selections to 2014, but they conducted their voting last year.  I could still include 2015 and not violate the 10 year requirement.  Would that make a difference?  Let’s take a quick look…oh yeah, there were some really promising titles released in 2015!  I know it’s changing the ground rules a bit, but…let’s do it!  So Period 5 hereby consists of the years from 2010 to 2015, and we have some more games to consider.

7 Wonders Duel (2015)
Bruno Cathala, one of the masters of 2-player games, worked with Antoine Bauza to convert the latter’s 7 Wonders into yet another smash hit.  Its rank got as high as 7 (naturally!) on the Geek and it’s still in the top 20.  All that makes it worthy of consideration, but it’s still not quite the added juice I’m looking for.  Don’t worry, we’ve got more!  Possible

Blood Rage (2015)
Eric Lang’s stock in trade is “Dudes on a Map” games and Blood Rage is an excellent example of that.  It reached a peak of #15 on the Geek and is still rated highly.  Still not quite what I’m looking for, but worth mentioning.  No

Codenames (2015)
Ah, that’s more like it!  I was lucky enough to be present (at the 2015 Gathering of Friends) when Codenames got its first major exposure to the English-speaking world and the response was so tremendous (people were literally cobbling together games from scraps of paper, because CGE had only brought two copies) that the design went from CGE saying “We’ll try to publish it this year” to “We’ve got to publish it this year!”.  And that early reaction was not inaccurate, as Codenames took the SdJ award on its way to getting massive play from just about every gamer on the planet.  A game that appeals to so many different kinds of groups, it, and its many spinoffs, continues to be exceedingly popular.  As if that wasn’t enough, CGE released a Codenames app last year and it has become a major addiction to an enormous number of players.  There’s no question that this game cracked the code for gaining entry to my Hall of Fame.  Yes

Food Chain Magnate (2015)
For those that like challenging games, there are few publishers that are as beloved as Splotter.  And Doumen and Wiersinga’s masterpiece has got to be Food Chain Magnate, which tasks players with creating the best fast food chains.  It broke into the top 25 on the Geek and delighted their fans with its deep gameplay and wonderful period art.  As has been the case with the other heavyweights I’ve discussed recently, it’s not really an accessible enough title to qualify, but it remains a yummy design and well worth putting on my menu.  No

Pandemic Legacy (2015)
The concept of the legacy game really electrified the gaming world, and after the debut of Risk Legacy, a bunch of designers released games that utilized it to some extent, with only scattered success.  But it wasn’t until Rob Daviau, who created the idea, joined forces with Matt Leacock to use Matt’s well established Pandemic as the foundation of such a game, that the concept’s great promise was finally realized.  Gamers were enthralled by Pandemic Legacy and it zoomed to the top of the Geek in less than three months (which has got to be a record)!  The game’s execution was brilliant—the storyline, with its dramatic twists and turns, the thrill of opening new envelopes with rule changes, and who knew that tearing up cards could be so satisfying?  But PL’s importance went beyond its innovation and great gameplay; it also guaranteed that legacy games were not just a gimmick, but an idea that was here to stay.  So there’s no question about this game’s legacy!  Likely

Okay, we really are done now.  Before I have to make some tough decisions about which games make my Hall, let’s take a quick look back at all the titles that were considered during the process.

• 108 games were mentioned, covering a 60 year period (1955-2015).
• The most games in a year was 5, from the following years: 1999, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2015.
• With a total of 10 games on the list, 1999-2000 was obviously a great time to be a gamer. But if you’re looking for a Golden Age of Gaming, the list would suggest 2002-2011, which contains no fewer than 15 games with a Yes or Likely rating.
• I’ve already mentioned that 2007 is the winner for most Yes/Likely titles, with 3 games.
• Finally, which designers made the list the most? Reiner Knizia (with 5) and Uwe Rosenberg (with 4) lead the way.  Francis Tresham, Wolfgang Kramer, and Rob Daviau each have 3.  14 other designers have two games apiece:  Bauza, Cathala, Chvatil, the Eon designers, Garfield, Gerdts, Hostettler, Leacock, Lehmann, Moon, Sackson, Teuber, Ulrich, and Wallace.  Just about every major designer you can think of is represented at least once.

So after three days of pontificating, here’s the big moment:  which games make my Hall of Fame?  The stated goal was to use the BGG HoF as a guide and their initial list includes 25 games.  What have we got?  Over the five periods, I’ve assigned a Yes rating to 15 games and a Likely rating to 17 designs.  So, clearly, the Possible games miss out.  All of the Yes games make it, by definition, so all that’s left is to decide which of the Likelies get picked and which don’t.  If I decide to go with a total of 25 games, that means that I have to knock out 7 of the Likelies.

That’s a lot of games to cut from what’s a very strong list of hopefuls.  Is that really the way it’s gotta be?  When I started this process, soon after the Geek announced its list, I truly didn’t know how it would turn out.  I just started listing games and giving them ratings, figuring I’d make my picks after I saw how it all played out.  As it turns out, the total number of Yesses and Likelies is comparable in size to the number of games the Geek chose.  Could I just induct them all?  Let’s make an argument for that:

• The Geek inducted 25 games to commemorate their 25^th Other than that, 25 isn’t a magic number and the reason behind it doesn’t really apply to me, other than to give me a guide of my Hall’s approximate size.
• I’ve already stretched the rules a bit by extending things to 2015. So what do we think BGG will do next year?  Will they induct additional games into their Hall?  They haven’t categorically said so, but all the indications are that they will.  More to the point, will they add some more next year?  Quite possibly.  If they do, could they add as many as 5 new games?  It wouldn’t shock me.  Both Codenames and Pandemic Legacy from 2015 would be good additions and making room for some of the older titles that didn’t get the nod the first time (perhaps including, ahem, Puerto Rico) is certainly possible.  If it turns out that way, then they’d have 30 games through 2015, very comparable to the 32 games I’m considering.
• As you’ve seen, I’ve put in a good deal of thought for which games are HoF-worthy and I’m pretty happy with the 32 games in the top two categories. Deciding which games squeeze in and which don’t would main leaving out some very deserving games, just to meet a somewhat arbitrary number.  I’d rather go with this group and let BGG catch up to me.

That’s good enough for me.  32 games it is.

So here are the games which make my Hall of Fame.  I list them in alphabetical order, together with the year of their release, along with their designer.  If there’s an asterisk next to the game, that means it made my “Yes” list; otherwise, it obviously was one of my “Likely” games.

• 1830* (1986) – Francis Tresham
• 7 Wonders* (2010) – Antoine Bauza
• Acquire* (1964) – Sid Sackson
• Age of Steam (2002) – Martin Wallace
• Agricola* (2007) – Uwe Rosenberg
• Axis & Allies (1984) – Larry Harris
• Bohnanza (1997) – Uwe Rosenberg
• Brass (2007) – Martin Wallace
• Carcassonne* (2000) – Klaus-Jurgen Wrede
• Caylus* (2005) – William Attia
• Civilization* (1980) – Francis Tresham
• Codenames* (2015) – Vlaada Chvatil
• Cosmic Encounter* (1977) – Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge, Peter Olotka, Bill Norton
• Diplomacy (1959) – Allan Calhamer
• Dominion* (2008) – Donald X. Vaccarino
• Eclipse (2011) – Touko Tahkokallio
• El Grande (1995) – Wolfgang Kramer, Richard Ulrich
• Magic: The Gathering* – Richard Garfield
• Pandemic (2008) – Matt Leacock
• Pandemic Legacy (2015) – Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock
• Power Grid (2004) – Friedemann Friese
• Puerto Rico* (2002) – Andreas Seyfarth
• Race for the Galaxy (2007) – Tom Lehmann
• Tactics II (1958) – Charles S. Roberts
• The Castles of Burgundy (2011) – Stefan Feld
• The Settlers of Catan* (1995) – Klaus Teuber
• Through the Ages (2006) – Vlaada Chvatil
• Ticket to Ride* (2004) – Alan Moon
• Tigris & Euphrates* (1997) – Reiner Knizia
• Trivial Pursuit (1981) – Scott Abbott, Chris Haney
• Twilight Struggle (2005) – Jason Matthews, Ananda Gupta
• We the People (1993) – Mark Herman

Five designers have two separate games that made my Hall:  Chvatil, Leacock, Rosenberg, Tresham, and Wallace.  As I mentioned earlier, 2007 was the only year to have three HoF games debut.

Finally, how does my Hall compare to what the BGG jury chose?  There are differences, but they’re not dramatic.  The BGG HoF includes three games I excluded:  Ra, Terra Mystica, and Concordia.  I included 8 games they did not:  Tactics II, Trivial Pursuit, Axis & Allies, We the People, Bohnanza, Puerto Rico, Age of Steam, and Eclipse.  I also included Codenames and Pandemic Legacy, but they weren’t eligible (yet) for the Geek’s Hall, since they were released in 2015.  So the two Halls are different enough to make this exercise worthwhile, but there’s still a lot of overlap between the two, which implies that the way we judged the games probably wasn’t terribly different.

So there you have it.  I hope you found my analysis entertaining, even if you didn’t always agree with my conclusions.  But what did you think of the final list?  Are there other games you would have included or some you would have left out?  Feel free to leave some comments if you think I missed the mark with some of these.  In the final analysis, the best thing about the BGG Hall of Fame is that it inspired some discussion about the greatest games that have ever been designed.  You’ve just read one person’s thoughts about which titles deserve to be honored; what about yours?