Welcome to the second chapter of the Opinionated Gamer’s Alphabet List!  Just to summarize, 30 of us listed our three favorite games that begin with each letter of the alphabet (as well as those that start with a numeral).  Each selected game in first, second, and third position earned 5, 3, and 2 points.  I’m presenting a summary of each category.

Here’s how the summaries are laid out.  Each category shows the total number of games that got mentions and the total number of votes cast in that category.  Next comes the 5 games that got the most votes in that category (as long as they each got at least 10 points), as well as any other games that got at least 15 points.  Each game’s year of publication is shown and the game that got the most first-place votes gets an asterisk.  This is followed by the game’s point total and, in parentheses, the number of people that voted for it.  After that top group, I also mention all the additional games that made the lists of at least three of our voters and give the number of lists it appeared on.  Finally, I’ll make some comments about the category as a whole and some things that I found interesting.

Yesterday, I covered the numeral category, as well as A, B, and C.  So let’s start with D.

D – 40 games, 80 votes

1. Dominion* (2008) – 35 (11)
2. Diplomacy (1959) – 16 (4)
3. Deep Sea Adventure (2014) – 15 (6)
4. Descent: Journeys in the Dark (2005) – 15 (4)
5. Die Macher (1986) – 13 (4)

Games with at least 3 votes:  Dune: Imperium (4), Dominant Species (3), Darwin’s Journey (3), Diamant (3), Dice Realms (3), Durch die Wuste (3), Downforce (3)

This one is no contest—it’s Dominion all the way.  After that, the votes are really well spread, with 11 games getting between 10 and 16 points and only one other game being picked by more than 4 voters.  It’s fun to see Deep Sea Adventure, the unassuming little filler from Japan, in the third spot, edging out Die Macher, perhaps the first well known complex (and long playing) game to come out of Germany.

It’s also a kick to see some lesser known games get some love from the voters.  I was pretty amazed that someone’s three favorites included D’r Af, a barely remembered Splotter racing game from the late nineties where your goal is to drive your car off the edge of the table!  Another surprise selection was Discretion, a tiny American game from a tiny American company, themed around making your fortune in the real estate market.  It was a favorite of mine back in the eighties, but I was a bit shocked that anyone else even knew about it, much less that they would include it on their ballot.  Fun stuff. Continue reading →

Happy New Year, everybody!  The OG staff wishes you all a very happy, healthy, and prosperous 2025, with more of the things you love about life and less of the things you hate.  The former will hopefully include lots of great gaming, of course!

The new year is a time when many people put together lists of resolutions.  And while that kind of introspection may not be your thing, the concept shouldn’t be a foreign one, because many gamers love making lists of games.  Top 10 lists, Desert Island lists, lists of our favorite games by timeframe, designer, and genre—all sorts of things.  Coming up with lists of games seems to be a big part of most gamers’ DNA.

One popular choice for this is an Alphabet list.  What’s your favorite game whose title begins with the letter “A”?  What about “B”?  And so on, for each letter of the alphabet.  It can be an enjoyable exercise.

Just before Thanksgiving this year, I saw a post from Caroline Black on the Geek.  Caroline regularly posts a blog on BGG called The Dyslexic Gamer that I like to check out from time to time.  Her article that day was about a couple of games in her own alphabet list.  After reading that, I realized that the OG group had never put together an alphabet list and I thought it might be a fun thing to do.  I put my own list together, posted it to a shared spreadsheet, and asked the group if anyone else would like to come up with their own list.  The results were pretty impressive:  we wound up with contributions from 30 people!  With that much data to work from, it was obvious that an article needed to be written to summarize it all.  Dale asked me if I wanted to ring in the New Year with a 3 part piece, and I agreed.  So thank you, Caroline, for the inspiration!

Continue reading →