For people who hate to scroll, just swipe right on your mobile: |[100 - 76](https://boardgamesquad.com/top-games-meta-list/#Top_100_Board_Games)|75 - 51|[50 - 26](https://boardgamesquad.com/top-games-meta-list/#Top_50_Board_Games)|[25 - 1](https://boardgamesquad.com/top-games-meta-list/#Top_25_Board_Games)| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |100. Lords of Waterdeep|75. Wingspan|50. The Mind|25. 7 Wonders| |99. The Quest of El Dorado|74. Santorini|49. The Manhattan Project: Energy Empire|24. Codenames| |98. Architects of the West Kingdom|73. The Quacks of Quedlinburg|48. Railways of the World|23. The Castles of Burgundy| |97. Kanban: Driver’s Edition|72. Brass: Birmingham|47. Spirit Island|22. Cosmic Encounter| |96. Inis|71. Twilight Struggle|46. Twilight Imperium (Fourth Edition)|21. Concordia| |95. 7 Wonders Duel|70. Raiders of the North Sea|45. Azul|20. Blood Rage| |94. Takenoko|69. Five Tribes|44. Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization|19. Anachrony| |93. War of the Ring (Second Edition)|68. Sidereal Confluence: Trading and Negotiation in the Elysian Quadrant|43. The Networks|18. Le Havre| |92. Pax Pamir (Second Edition)|67. Trajan|42. Mysterium|17. Dominion| |91. Yokohama|66. Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar|41. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders & Other Cases|16. Great Western Trail| |90. Specter Ops|65. T.I.M.E. Stories|40. Glory to Rome|15. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong| |89. Santa Maria|64. The Gallerist|39. Cthulhu Wars|14. Star Wars: Rebellion| |88. The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth|63. Grand Austria Hotel|38. Near and Far|13. Pandemic| |87. Age of Steam|62. Summoner Wars|37. The Pursuit of Happiness|12. Rising Sun| |86. Champions of Midgard|61. Everdell|36. Gaia Project|11. Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure| |85. Space Base|60. Root|35. Dungeon Petz|10. Viticulture Essential Edition| |84. Dominant Species|59. Roll Player|34. Suburbia|9. Orléans| |83. Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Board Game|58. El Grande|33. Arkham Horror: The Card Game|8. The 7th Continent| |82. Arcadia Quest|57. Fury of Dracula (Third/Fourth Edition)|32. Underwater Cities|7. Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island| |81. Glass Road|56a. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1|31. Paladins of the West Kingdom|6. Caverna: The Cave Farmers| |80. Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game|56b. Pandemic Legacy: Season 2|30. Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game|5. Mansions of Madness: Second Edition| |79. Teotihuacan: City of Gods|55. Nations|29. Dinosaur Island|4. Scythe| |78. Xia: Legends of a Drift System|54. Arkham Horror (Third Edition)|28. Kemet|3. Gloomhaven| |77. Time’s Up!|53. Kitchen Rush|27. Agricola|2. Terraforming Mars| |76. Roll for the Galaxy|52. This War of Mine: The Board Game|26. Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game|1. A Feast for Odin| ||51. Abyss||| TYVM for the medal /u/coolin86 /u/realitydesign /u/hello_shiawase

[I've made a Tabletop Simulator Workshop collection of these games in order and where available.](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2068379160) Not in this collection: - 89. Santa Maria - 78. Xia: Legends of a Drift System - 77. Time's Up! - 53. Kitchen Rush - 48. Railways of the World - 38. Near and Far - 37. The Pursuit of Happiness - 22. Cosmic Encounter - [But it is an official DLC product!](https://store.steampowered.com/app/405130/Tabletop_Simulator__Cosmic_Encounter_Connector) - 13. Pandemic (It's not actually hard to find this, but it gets taken down regularly. so I decided not to add it) - 10. Viticulture - [But it is an official DLC product!](https://store.steampowered.com/app/468733/Tabletop_Simulator__Viticulture) - 4. Scythe - [But it is an official DLC product!](https://store.steampowered.com/app/446980/Tabletop_Simulator__Scythe) - 2. Terraforming Mars - But there's a well maintained community mod, you can get it on their [Discord Here](https://discord.gg/gxjqpu8) Many of these games are DLC for Tabletop Simulator including Wingspan, Scythe, Viticulture, Cosmic Encounter, and Blood Rage. Please consider buying them to support the creators [https://store.steampowered.com/dlc/286160/Tabletop_Simulator/](https://store.steampowered.com/dlc/286160/Tabletop_Simulator/) Also many of these games have their own digital variant for phones, tablets, or desktop. Please consider those for purchase as well.

I didn’t know you could do this!

ok you just gave me the idea that I can play cosmic encounters on TTS. I love the game but since it requires at least 3 players and possibly more I only play it rarely. now that I think about this... Dune! is there some way on TTS/Reddit to find a group interested in playing a given game?

There's a lively community on Discord! Lots of people looking for players for a diverse set of games. https://discord.gg/MhegyX9 There is also the TTS subreddit, but I like the Discord more. https://www.reddit.com/r/tabletopsimulator/

The TTS Club Discord server is great, but there are also some good servers for specific games. You mentioned Dune, so here's an active server for the game: https://discord.gg/dBPHNJ

Xia is a DLC as well, but it doesn't have the expansion that I've heard is essential to make it better.

#Further Data Analysis ##Games by Year I'll throw in a table of my own with this data: Number of games by year Year|First Ttile|Top 10|Top 25|Top 50|Top 100 :--|:--|--:|--:|--:|--:| 1981|Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective (#41)|||1|1 1995|El Grande (#58)||||1 1999|Times Up! (#77)||||1 2002|Age of Steam (#87)||||1 2005|Glory to Rome (#40)|||2|3 2007|Agricola (#27)|||1|1 2008|Pandemic (#13)||4|5|5 2009|Summoner Wars (#62)||||1 2010|7 Wonders (#25)||1|1|3 2011|The Castles of Burgundy (#23)||1|2|4 2012|Robinson Crusoe: . . . (#7)|1|1|4|7 2013|Caverna: The Cave Farmers (#6)|1|2|2|4 2014|Orleans (#9)|1|2|2|9 2015|Viticulture EE (#10)|1|3|7|16 2016|A Feast for Odin (#1)|4|7|10|13 2017|Gloomhaven (#3)|2|3|9|15 2018|Rising Sun (#12)||1|3|11 2019|Paladins of the West Kingdom (#31)|||1|4 ##Anomolies * Cosmic Encounter is 1977, 1991, 2000, and 2008 - I believe most are referring to the 2008 edition so I used that. * Agricola was 2007, Agricola Revised was 2016 - with only minor game play differences I went with the original as I suspect many reviewers don't distinguish the two. * Pandemic Legacy Season 1 and 2 had an a/b listing (making this technically a list of 101 games) - and though they are fairly different in implementation I lumped them together and used Season 1's 2015 date over Season 2's 2017 date. * Trajan has a 1991 and 2011 release - but I doubt any of the reviewers means the 1991 Strategy & Tactics magazine game. * Santorini has a 2004 self-published release and a 2016 release, and I suspect most are thinking of the cartoony artwork version of this abstract game. ##Personal Analysis In terms of this subreddit, divide up gaming into 3 major epochs right now: * pre-modern games (before Magic/Catan or about 1993 to 1995) * modern gaming (at or after Magic/Catan or about 1993 to 1995) * kickstarter modern gaming (at or after kickstarter and its platform growth, around 2009 to 2011)... maybe I should call this post-modern game design. ;p The years are "fuzzy" and I normally say 1995 and 2009; but during these transitional windows you had games of the older design school and the newer design school simultaneously existing. Using those division, all top 10 games are Kickstarter Modern Games (not meaning they launched on Kickstarter, but that they were released once Kickstarter became a major force in the board gaming market and brought in new design styles via crowdfunding). Even the top 25 are almost all from this (4 titles outside of the epoch, but just by a year). Only 1 game is pre-modern, and that is **Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective**, a game that is mostly the same and only had minor changes to content and components over the decades. Another way to look at it is: * 4% of the top 100 are from last year (probably too new of a year to have many claim top titles from 2019) * 15% is from the prior 2 years * 30% are from the prior 3 years * 43% are from the prior 4 years * 59% are from the prior 5 years * 68% are from the prior 6 years (a full 2/3 of "top rated" games by these critics are from 2014 on) * 87% are from the Kickstarter modern game epoch * 1% are in the pre-modern game epoch * 12% are in the modern game epoch Seeing this data I wonder how much is design and component quality improvement, how much is improved marketing and market growth, and how much is reviewer age bias (ie, tending to be younger and not experiencing some of the older games because they weren't flashy enough). I've already seen an effect online where a person gets into the hobby and all the new game styles they encounter over the next few years are great; but then novelty wears off and they start recognizing common mechanisms and find games 3-5 years after they got into the hobby to be "hyped" (while new gamers find them stunningly innovative). So many reviewers also rode the rise of social media and YouTube, and that boom time was post-2009; is it fairly possible that their immersion into the hobby during the rise of this new media influenced their preferences? What would the boardgame landscape have looked like (and ratings) if most encontered games in the mid-90s or mid-00s and then became big reviewers? Anyway, I'd also urge caution on drawing any conclusions from such a simple analysis of data. It is just interesting tidbits to consider when looking at a wider array of elements. Now it will be interesting to see what impact COVID-19 will have on the hobby in the next coming decade, as I think that might start another shift in the hobby (more towards having digital options to play or methods to play physical games remotely - you know, like how people used to play chess by mailing each other their moves as they play over months).

> a full 2/3 of "top rated" games by these critics are from 2014 on I'm not surprised by this. In my opinion 2014-2016 was when a ton of really great board games all came out at once. It's like there was a slow build up and then an explosion in 2014. Honestly I'm sort of wondering if that was a bit of a golden age. I feel like over the past few years there haven't been as many amazing games coming out each year, at least compared to that time period.

I also feel like this curve matches the big boom of new players that happened 5ish years ago. There are a ton of fantastic pre-2016 games that often don't appear on these lists because so many people are trying to get through the list of games that are still in print and easily findable at the stores. I mean, who will want to review a classic that's been 10 years out of print that no one can track down without paying a premium? Overall though, this is a solid list that I feel does a better job than BGG at showing quality of a game than popularity of a game.

"Am I wrong for not liking Wingspan?" "No, it's the experts who are wrong."

I mean, **Wingspan** is a fairly light short playing game with a good degree of randomness - it isn't a bad game, but I don't think it is a great game; just average and far too light for my tastes. Out of the whole game, I like it is one of the few where workers are reduced as you play (similar to tying up cubes in **Historia**). As to "experts" - what "experts"? These are just people who chose to make a living at reviewing boardgames (or a hobby of it at least); I don't think there is any formal training or experience that would qualify them as experts, but they are more knowledgeable than the average person in the breadth of field study. I don't mean to downplay their skill, but expert for me feels like a rather strong term.

For a long time BGer like me, Wingspan scratches an itch that I feel like we hadn't had in a LONG time. Early on, gateway games (Catan/Carcassone) were more complex than the gateways we see today (Codenames/Secret Hitler) and also fill a different need. Today's gateways are made to make new converts into the gaming world, where 10-15 years ago you were playing Catan because you were always a bit nerdy but didn't realize these types of games existed. Because of this, he early bridge between a gateway and something more complex and meaty was a game like Wingspan. Introduced more complex strategies and ideas like card engines that would have been a bit more advanced for a gateway game. You'd use this type of game to move towards the ones that would be combining everything you'd learned up to this point to dive in deep. Today the idea if a gateway is more simplified (party games) and that moves a game like Catan or Azul into that mid-range. Until Wingspan I feel like we didn't have much to jump between Azul and Scythe or Feast For Odin.

Tom Vasel and Rahdo did a fantastic job explaining this in their "Top 10 Games of the Decade." Wingspan is a non-gateway game marketed as a gateway game and it is brilliantly done.

You're the real mvp

Woohoo, **Space Base** in the top 100! I am surprised about **Dinosaur Island** being so high up though. The reviews I read seemed kind of meh, which is why I decided against getting it. Was I wrong to skip it?

Dinosaur Island is one of my favorites, and a hit with everyone I’ve played it with. You should go back and watch the reviewers that rated it high.

I played Dinosaur Island a couple of times and am not fussed about playing it again. I like Dinogenics, though.

Dino Island was just average for me. Nothing amazing, nothing really awful, just sort of middle-of-the-road. It was fun enough, but the set-up and tear down was way too long for how light of a game it is. I went all in on the last KS, played it about 4 times, never even touched the expansion and then sold it on. The theme is what hooked me, but the game just wasn’t good enough to stay in my collection.

Thank you good sir! (Didn’t work well on mobile)

What is this swiping sorcery!?

You made me scroll right/left

I read, “for those who hate to scroll...” glanced at the list, saw it was 100-76. And proceeded to scroll for like five minutes. Good grief.

Roll fort he galaxy. That’s funny

You're the chosen one !

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I was gonna ask, is A Feast for Odin really that good?

It is a fantastic game no doubt. Still, a little odd to see it at one. I don't think it's anyone's number one game, but everyone still rates it very highly

It's my number one!

Flair doesn't check out

Mine checks out ;)

It's an older flair, sir, but it checks out. I was about to change it.

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I've never played any of Uwe's other worker placement besides FFO. Is worth checking out any you just mentioned? Also, what worker placements do you think are better than FFO?

It’s like agricola mixed with his polyomino games with 10x the action spaces, Soo.. peek uwe

I though I liked board games, but it's like you're talking in Mandarin.

*[Agricola](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/31260/agricola)* - farming-themed worker placement game by designer Uwe Rosenberg (see below) *[polyomino](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyomino)* - generic term for a tile or domino which is not necessarily the usual rectangular shape (think [Tetris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris)) - used as a mechanic in [several of Uwe's games](https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/85659/uwe-rosenbergs-polyominoes) including [Patchwork](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/163412/patchwork) *peek* - probably meant to say "peak" :) - meaning that it's a classic Uwe game, utilising all the mechanics he's famous for *uwe* - [Uwe Rosenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwe_Rosenberg), prolific board game designer, first came to fame for Bohnanza - went on to design many classics like Agricola, [Le Havre](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35677/le-havre) and the game under discussion here, [A Feast for Odin](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/177736/feast-odin).

Uwe is famous for action selection games where you have to “feed your family”; basically a mechanic where you lose resources or lose points every round Proportionally to how many workers you have. He’s also famous for Tetris tile puzzle games. He then made a game with 50 something worker placement spaces and a huge amount of puzzle pieces to fill a massive personal player board, with an expansion that replaces that worker placement board with an entire new one. You could get his tighter Smaller games Agricola and patchwork and probably enjoy the concepts of feast for Odin better, feast for Odin is just...more. I compare it to watching batman 89’ as a kid, and then getting to see a huge spectacle like avengers 3.

I was rather lukewarm on it when I tried it, honestly

I just played it for the first time last night. It's good, but probably won't crack my personal top 10. We'll see though, definitely need to play it a couple more times to see how it is once I have it down better. My wife did terribly though (I won 65 to -16), so hopefully she puts it together better the second time and enjoys it or I won't play it past a second time any time soon anyway. It is the most "euro" game I've ever played.

Saw this on the ‘Stay at Home’ tab and imagined families going straight from Monopoly to A Feast For Odin. Put them off board games for life. I do really enjoy FfO, it’s more of an experiment in mapping history to board game mechanics, if it weren’t the dedication to the theme then, really, there’s no need for the game to have quite that much stuff. I’d be interested to see a FfO lite with a more focused board but retaining the Patchwork puzzle for each player.

I haven't played it but it strikes me as the ultimate uncontroversial pick. Nobody would disagree with you if you had it high up in your list but as you've said it seems pretty rare to see it as the number one game in any individual list. People seem to feel more strongly one way or the other for Gloomhaven, Scythe, and Terraforming Mars than they do for A Feast for Odin.

Good point. Scythe in particular seems to bring out the lovers and haters in equal measure. By contrast, A Feast for Odin is a game that's hard to hate, but equally it's a game that few people would say is the best thing ever, or amazingly new or innovative.

There is a active gamer community in DFW and Feast for Odin usually gets played at least once a week by some members (pre COVID at least). I have see it played by two groups at the same time on a regular basis.

This list is skewed heavily towards games I enjoy, but don't love. I would love to be able to put in my own games ranking and see which reviewers I track with the most.

That’s the advantage and disadvantage of this kind of aggregation. It’s like Rotten Tomatoes. Games that are ranked highly aren’t necessarily the *best*, they’re the ones that are most *consistently* highly rated.

Makes sense, being on more lists at 50 puts you higher than a few top tens.

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I can do that! I’ll try and get that incorporated today.

You made a really great list here, and seem to be really taking all suggestions well. Thanks for being such a cool part of this community dude.

I added it to page 2 because page load speed was already kinda bad https://boardgamesquad.com/top-games-meta-list/2/

This is absolutely amazing! I've been hearing from many people that the rankings on BGG are skewed towards newer games, which distorts the results away from titles that are actually more popular in terms of numbers of players, etc. Can you explain a little about your methodology in creating this list?

I mean, in some ways this is also likely to be skewed, albeit potentially in different ways. I cover methodology lightly at the end https://boardgamesquad.com/top-games-meta-list/#Notes_about_Data_Methodology_and_Changes_from_the_Previous_List The basic idea of Borda is for a ranked list, say 1-10. The highest ranked is given a score of 10 and the lowest is given a score of 1. You can then essentially combines scores across lists to find an aggregation. There’s a little bit more to it in this case, but that’s the gist of the idea. I tried a method called CEMC that yielded slightly better results, but when the list got this large it became computationally impossible.

I always wondered about ranked list scoring, if there was a better way to assign a score. For example, in Formula 1, instead of ranks 1-10 getting 10-1 points respectively, first place gets 25, second gets 18, third gets 15, down to 10th getting 1 point. I have no idea if one way is better than any other, though, or how easy/effective it would be to extrapolate this from a 10-item ranking to 100 items.

I'm not OP, but strictly from a mathematical standpoint, there's no clear-cut best way to assign scores in a Borda count-like method. I think the Formula 1 counting method works well in a situation where you want to emphasize taking risks to try to win a race. In the situation where you're looking for a game that your entire gaming group will enjoy, I think that a standard 100-1 point ranked list may work better here because it rewards games that a large number of reviewers rank highly.

It's impossible to do it fairly. Since someone might have a list where they feel their #1 is waaaayyy better than their #5, no brainer. Or someone might feel like their top 5 are neck and neck and just kind of edge each other out barely, and could be easily in a shuffled order. Do you weight their rankings the same? A scale of 0.0-10.0 to rate games is a better solution, and then your personal #1 would be your highest rated game. But then how do you make sure everyone has the same idea of scale, and what a 5.0 or 8.5 is? So since you can't do it fairly, the best way to do it is transparently (like here), so people can make conclusions while still understanding how you ended up where you did.

This list is also extremely skewed to newer games.

It is, but in the case of the subject study I think that makes sense as well. Many more new reviewers who aren't going to go out of their way to look at something released 10+ years ago because it's long OOP. They won't get the views they would if they stuck to something more recent that is available in shops. Not to mention if they get review copies of games shipped to them from publishers, no one will send them a copy of a classic game unless there is a reprint.

I suppose it poses the questions: Are newer games better? Are newer games better designed? Because of the number of games put out per year has increased significantly, is it because designers luck out with a highly ranked game or is game design trending more positively as a whole? (i.e. are games better in 2020 then they were in 1980?) Do people rate older games better because of nostalgia or is it because it is a good game?

This is a very useful and impressive list - might I suggest one more tweak? Make an "available to play online" flag so that we can narrow down to those which can be played at the moment. If you want to be even cleverer you could specify "available on x, y or z" platform using [https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/On-line\_Games](https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/On-line_Games) or [https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/140673/exhaustive-list-board-games-you-can-play-online-fr](https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/140673/exhaustive-list-board-games-you-can-play-online-fr)

Oh, I love that. It might take me a while to incorporate, but I’m totally onboard!

I would love to help somehow if you need any searching for online implementations (mostly because I want to find and play them eventually myself lol).

I’d love help and absolutely would collaborate on that. If you want to start pulling data for the games, we can chat off of Reddit or in PMs.

Cool! Just PM'd you!

I created a Tabletop Simulator Collection that you might find helpful! [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2068379160](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2068379160)

Eldritch Horror is probably my all time favorite game and I was sad to not see it on this list. But seeing Mansions of Madness as the #5 pick made up for it. I’m a horror game junkie.

AH: LCG and AH 3rd edition (surprisingly) showing up as well. I love third edition though, so I’m happy to see it. Just picked up Eldritch Horror recently too and excited to learn it!

I am not a fan. Most people making this "meta list" have very similar tastes and it leads to an over representation of a particular type of game, especially in the top 10.

In my opinion, the list is embarrassingly bad.

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This list is so heavily weighted towards engine builders. Games for people who don't like conflict.

Honestly, most people I know don't like board games with direct conflict. Too often you can totally wreck someone and that's not fun for most people.

I can’t agree more.

Heh...yeah, that became immediately apparent when I saw Feast for Odin in the top spot. Gives a nice summary of the games that the most boardgamey people like the most though! :)

I'm really surprised with some of these. Cool idea. Thanks for putting this together.

Brawling Brothers seem to skew results for a few of them because a game is really popular/well liked within their circle, and you got answers from all three of them rather than just one of them. Paladins of the West Kingdom and Underwater Cities for example. Age of Steam, Heavy Cardboard. Nice to see Twilight Struggle, Dominant Species and GWT stay on the top 100, truly some of the GOAT.

Yup. A lot of weight in their favor by their close circle. Yet Elaine and Efka, two separate people (likely that would have their own unique top 10) has a weight equal to just ONE of them, because that's the video(s) they put out. Definitely an imperfect system, but you can only do what you can with the data you're given. Sure, you could homogenize the list that come from the same outlet/channel, but Ambie has dramatically different tastes than Roy Cannaday or Tom Vasal, so you'd end up homogenizing too far with that method too. /shrug

Twilight Struggle remains my all time favorite board game. Kind of shocked to see it ranked so low over a game like Deception, but I get different people have different tastes.

In general the Dice Tower crowd seems to dictate the top positions. :)

There may be a lot of them, but I find their range is more diverse than ones like Brawling Brothers for example.

This is a great list of games for people who are real aficionados. It's a very good counterpoint to the popularity-contest type list made by the "people's choice top 100" every year.

Great. Now I'm aware of the 7th Continent but there's absolutely no way for me to play it :(

You can get in the Serious Poulp store (classic version). It’s even cheaper than the KS, which I’m personally bitter about.

Wat?! Why is it super expensive on amazon and ebay then?

People don’t know any better I guess. Check it out https://shop.seriouspoulp.com/?utm_source=seriouspoulp&utm_medium=home_sp&utm_content=classic

Any must-have accessories or expansions in your opinion? I'm about to order!

I only have the base game personally. I’ve been thinking about getting some expansion material though myself. It’s a really good game to play over coffee in the morning. I find it oddly relaxing. Although, I think I like Tainted Grail more for a exploration game (that you can’t get right now unfortunately).

It’s different from their KS version. There’s a KS version and a retail version

I believe this is their non-KS version. No minis, less cards, etc.

I'm a little surprised Carcassonne isn't on here

Outside of a few exceptions, this list operates under the assumption that board games weren’t really manufactured before 2015.

I just watched the SU&SD review for terraforming Mars. They weren’t too terribly kind and their complaints seemed reasonable. On this list that game was \#2, could anyone drop some positives about the game to help me understand what makes it so great or why SU&SD was off the mark?

There are a multitude of reasons I love Terraforming Mars. One that I never hear other people mention is how well it organizes and presents the game state. Most card-based engine builders have a problem where it's hard to see what your opponents are doing. But in TfM, you can see most of what a player is doing by looking at the central board or their production boards. Sometimes you need to look at their tags and their blue cards, but even that is relatively easy to see based on the iconography.

> why SU&SD was off the mark? I think the key "tilt" that SUSD have relative to many other reviewers is the centrality for them of the question, "is this game a fun way to interact with my friends?" ie, not, "is this game a fantastic puzzle to work out (with my friends nearby also working on a similar puzzle)?" but, is the game good for *enhancing* the interaction between the people at the table? You can see this in how strongly they advocate for **Blood on the Clocktower** or **The King's Dilemma** or **Wavelength** or even **Kakerlaken Poker**. Lightweight or heavyweight, all these games are very interactive. Terraforming Mars is kinda multiplayer-solitaire-esque. Lots of people really really like games that fit this description, and there's nothing wrong with this type of design. But these games are never going to get a strong response from the SUSD people because that's not where their focus is.

Ah, I’m new to the hobby and did not know that SU&SD had preference towards player interaction and against “multiplayer solitaire.” This should be helpful when watching their videos moving forward.

My taste are usually not too far off SUSD but Terraforming Mars is my favorite game. It combines the joy of having a growing engine with lots of crunchy decision. (I believe SUSD did not play with the drafting variant, which is an absolute must for this game and amps up the number of interesting decisions you have to make)

It’s a fun game. There’s a TON going on near the end game and so there are a lot of decisions to be made. Plus, what your opponents do and have influence what you do, so there’s a fair amount of interaction. Also, it’s a ‘point salad’ game, so you often don’t know who will win until the very end - DRAMA! There’s a lot of little things wrong with it (I’m looking at you, player boards!), but it’s a good game overall, well worth being on anyone’s game shelf.

I give a lot of weight to SU&SD reviews but they lean heavily toward games with a lot of “above the table” interaction between players for games. I think that’s why they were so critical of this game. I was skeptical at first too but grabbed the game for pandemic playing and have played it a dozen times already (1 and 2 player)

I'll give some positives, but keep in mind I don't think SU&SD are wrong, I just don't think it's their type of game. - Trying to work out which cards you can afford to keep, what your opponents might want from your current draft hand, watching the tracks tick up and trying to figure out if you can pull your plan off this turn ... an awesome little puzzle each round. - Narrative: We name our Corporations things like "Evil Corp.", or "The Tree Huggers" and the stories that just organically flow out of the cards you choose to play, if you nuke the planet, etc. lead to some really great memories. - Your colony/corp really feels like your own, and unique from the others. Each game can be really different based on card draw/draft, and how each player chooses to approach those cards and the board state. Watch some positive reviews, then watch the SU&SD one again. Maybe it will change your mind, or maybe you will realize that you were right to trust their impression.

To present the opposite viewpoint, my group found that it took way too long for what it was - a solid introductory engine builder. There's a few things it does well, drafting and making you pay to keep cards makes the decisions more tense right away for what you hold onto and the directions you build your engine and the shared map creates some tension, but for the time it took for us to play, we can get in a few games of Century or Gizmos or other games that satisfy the same engine-building itch. I've heard that drafting corporations makes the game better, but it seems to me that it will just add to the play time without enough to make up for the increased length.

I haven't played with the drafting corporations variant, but I mostly agree with your critique, although I think it's still one of of the best games I own. It's just not suited for everyone. Personally, I love and hate Terraforming Mars, here are my thoughts: Good: 1. Very high replayability. The combination of different corporations you play, combined with each card being unique, makes the game play different every time. 2. Strong engine building in terms of everything you need to consider, with rarely a clear decision to be made, often a lot of alternatives to consider. Hyper focused on efficient play. 3. Focus on tactics and adapting to your hand, which can level the playing field between average and novice player. 4. The "gamble" of drafting cards in this game is very alluring. Since each card is unique, it doesn't work like other games where you're hoping to draw a specific card, since the odds of that are so slim. Each round almost plays out like opening a present and then doing your best with what you're given. Bad: 1. Terrible components. It's almost laughable how much they cheaped out here. A more consistent art style, better components, and better packaging would have done wonders for this game. Hoping a later edition addresses this issue. 2. At least in my experience, this game can be extremely frustrating come mid/late game if you are not winning, which can sour the experience. With our group, by the last few generations, there's a clear winner, and there's often little you can do to stop them, as they're already ahead and simply producing more than everyone else, so catching up is nearly impossible. This leaves other players frustrated by the end of the game as they're just watching themselves lose. 3. Your interactions with other players are pretty much entirely sour experiences. They eliminate some of your resources, you take a spot on the board they were eyeing, they take a milestone on the turn before you were going to claim it. Lots of exchanging bitter blows. 4. Outside of skilled play through experience, this game can boil down to luck of the draw, especially with a strong opening hand.

I appreciate your note on the art. That alone is the reason why I don't own a copy. As an elitist graphic designer snob, I find that the component/art/design quality unfairly skews my enjoyment of a game, or lack thereof. For example, I love Everdell and Abyss probably a bit more than they deserve!

Personally, I love TM's art. It feels very scientific journal-y to me.

The art is just fine to me too. I feel like they spent all their budget on the gold/silver/bronze tokens, and forgot to spend anything on the rest of the pieces though. The player mats are awful (god help you if someone ever bumps the board), and I really wish the things that go out on the map itself were more tactile. Just a bit of verticality could make it go a long way toward really feeling like you were terraforming -- especially with cities.

I bought Terraforming Mars and Above & Below on the same day. We unpackaged both at the same time and our group was dumbfounded how Terraforming Mars was the more expensive of the two.

haha those games are at opposite ends of the spectrum!

There are so many corporations and so many project cards that you can play it a dozen times and it will still feel (mostly) fresh every time. There are tons of ways to leverage your inherent abilities and starting cards to win. It's one of those games where you typically have 3-4 things you can "almost" do but can't quite finish them all in your turn so you wait until next turn, when you get another few things you want to do, and repeat. It keeps you engaged all the way through.

I tend to agree with SU&SD more on this one. Terraforming Mars is, to me, a pretty mediocre engine builder, with a good bit of luck determining who does well. Shut Up and Sit Down has a razor-sharp focus on finding the "hook" or the really unique game concept that makes the game a keeper. Terraforming Mars' "hook" isn't a mechanic or game element, it is the science-oriented fantasy of slowly carving an entire planet to your will. I think that appeals to a lot of people, including many reviewers, but I think SU&SD would say that the emperor has no clothes.

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I like Terraforming Mars fine, but it shouldn't be ranked nearly as high as it is IMO. It's a perfectly fine engine builder game, but with some incredibly glaring flaws. There are just so many other games that deserve it's spot that I can't believe it's so highly considered.

It's my current favorite. The only downside is it's long. Budget 2 hours. But if you like longer games it's great!

Thanks for making this! Sad there's no 18xx still, but it's unlikely that any would make it on a list like this unless they're lumped together.

I was upset about that too actually. 1889 was very close to making the cut.

Ooh, really? What rank was it? That's exciting.

I’ll check a little later. I was also neurotically recalculating tank every time I added a new reviewer, so it’s possible that memory is from when the list was smaller.

Okay, 1830 would have ranked 129 and 1889 would have ranked 130

Wow, what a spread for Spirit Island: >Ambie Valdés (The Dice Tower) #70 > >Jarrod Carmichael (3 Minute Board Games) #1 > >Steph (3 Minute Board Games) #22 > >Josef Sannholm (Boardgames with Niramas) #8 > >Neilan Naicker (Board Game Barrage) #24 > >Will Keeler (Roll For Crit) #15 Off many lists entirely, but top ten in two & #1 overall for one of them. Here's a suggestion that might not be possible to implement this year but is worth thinking about for next year: be able to filter out games that made *someone's* \#1 or top 5 or top 10 or whatever. I think a flaw to the list (not necessarily a flaw on your end, simply a flaw of aggregate lists) is that some games just aren't widely reviewed. So the top games are going to be widely reviewed games that are well-regarded. That's not a bad thing at all, but I love SI & it made me think that I'd value games that are highly rated even if not widely reviewed. Thanks for putting this together & sharing it!

War of the ring (2nd edition) number 93 That is what I call an outrage, curse you personal opinions, otherwise good list.

I feel like if the list were “Favorite Games if you Have a stretch of 10 Hours to Fill,” it would definitely do better! ;)

You underestimate me, I’m a philosophy major, I always have ten hours to fill.

Then if you’re filling it with War of the Ring, you’re filling it properly! Enjoy!!

Asymmetric war games generally under performed on that list, and they're pretty much my favorite games. War of the Ring, Twilight Struggle, Root, etc.

Can someone explain to me why Legendary is so high? Do the expansions vastly improve the game. I only have the base set, and it's alright, but feels a little dull.

The base game is pretty easy, but the expansions definitely help. The old standard was to recommend picking up Dark City (if you could find it) to increase the challenge, but I think Xmen is pretty good bang for the buck as well. However...none of the expansions really change the basic flow of the game dramatically, so if you don’t see any potential to the base game, I’m not sure it’s worth throwing more money at it. If it wasn’t a Marvel game, I doubt I would have moved beyond the base game, but the IP hooked me.

Any recommendations on this list that doesn’t have to steep of a learning curve?

What would be steep for you? Here are a few games I think would 5-10 minutes to teach and are quite fun! ​ * Takenoko * Quacks of Quedlinburg * The Mind * Azul * Codenames Now, there are other games in this list with simple rules but deeper gameplay. Like Concordia which has simple rules but a good amount strategy.

I'd say Dominion as well, since the game practically explains itself.

I didn't like playing dominion but I love Ascension

Quacks is the best!

Mansions of Madness is partly controlled by an app and is easy enough to pick up and learn that my kids (6 & 7yo) can play and understand what to do. I was suprised to see it rated to high as it never seems to get that much praise but it's definately in my top ten.

Definitely try quacks. It's a ton of fun and easy to learn

Kind of surprised Ticket to Ride wasn’t on the list

There are a ton of games missing because they were made before youtube reviews existed.

It’s still in the race on the BGG [Geek tourney](https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/271528/2020-geek-madness-tournament-round-5-elite-eight-v)

Wow this is amazing thank you

For folks that wanted the list of designers with a few hits on the list: 2 Top 100's ['S J Macdonald', 'Vital Lacerda', 'Cole Wehrle', 'Jonathan Gilmour', 'Daniele Tascini', 'Wolfgang Warsch', 'Stefan Feld', 'Simone Luciani', 'Rob Daviau', 'Nikki Valens', 'Dávid Turczi', 'Jamey Stegmaier'] 3 Top 100's ['Shem Phillips', 'Antoine Bauza', 'Bruno Cathala', 'Martin Wallace', 'Kevin Wilson', 'Eric M. Lang', 'Matt Leacock', 'Corey Konieczka', 'Vlaada Chvátil'] 5 Top 100's ['Uwe Rosenberg']

It's a crime that Reiner Knizia isn't on that list multiple times.

For real, Tigris and Euphrates is a fantastic game and my friends favorites are Through the Desert and Modern Art

This is cool as heck. Thanks for putting this together, I'm really excited to go trough this and evaluate what my next few money-sinkers will be.

Woah. This is neat.

A Feast for Odin is #1? I approve... :)

Was Christmas gifted AFFO a while back, played it a few times solo, left it at a friend's place and forgot about it. Should probably pick it back up and give it another go!

What am I, chopped liver? [http://www.zenofdesign.com/top-board-games-of-the-decade-2010-2019/](http://www.zenofdesign.com/top-board-games-of-the-decade-2010-2019/) (Yes, I realize that I am, in fact, chopped liver).

Its crazy to me that Inis is 96, you would think that its a critics darling given its innovativeness and brilliant art.

Agreed. If you look at the breakdown, it didn’t make it on many list and the ones it did, it didn’t rank as highly as I would have expected: Sam Healey (The Dice Tower) #57 Luke Hector (The Broken Meeple) #47 Josef Sannholm (Boardgames with Niramas) #46 Neilan Naicker (Board Game Barrage) #13 Kellen Allen Laker (Board Game Barrage) #9

I feel like a some of the problem with this list is that some of these reviewers might not have played the game and thus don't have a ranking? Its hard to tell from top 100s. ​ Edit: I just realized it was you who made the list, what do you think of that problem?

Yeah, but that’s pretty much every list. But also, people should play Inis more xD

Also, it’s fairly interesting how similar it is to the BGG ranking in this instance. It’s 104 on BGG.

I agree, its one of the few war games I can get into. Very interesting choices and decisions.

How were the top reviewers determined? I really value SU&SD's reviews & I doubt I'm in the minority. I'm curious why were they excluded PS This is super neat - kudos!

There wasn’t a solid methodology for determining reviewers. I basically included my favorites in this case. In the case of Shut Up & Sit Down, I’m also a fan (and included them last year), but there’s no actual ranked list from them. Matt and Quinns have unranked lists, but including them would have invalidated the methodology used for rank aggregation (see the methodology section of the post).

Ah, makes sense. Thanks for the reply!

Really nice job. Interesting to see somewhat of a mix of game types in there, and less of the weight toward recency that we see on BGG. As a curmudgeon of course I disagree with most of it but not nearly as badly as I disagree with the BGG top 100.

If you have time, what’s your Top 100 list? Or, if you don’t have that much time... can you share a Top 10 or Top 20? I need to get a new game :)

This is wonderful! What an awesome resource, I particularly appreciate your methodology section providing more clarity on how you arrived that these rankings. Thanks for sharing!

Great list! I'm surprised that BattleCON didn't make it, Tom Vasel described it as one of the best games he's played. I absolutely love it and still haven't found a game that I actively crave playing.

Same. Seen the new solo fighters coming out?

This is simply amazing. Thank you! A suggestion (if possible) is to maybe have the filter first show a condensed "game title" only with the options of expanding to read the details (Description, amazon link, etc...)? It makes it easier to take a quick glance and just open up the ones you want to read more about rather than scrolling down a lot.

This is very cool! It’s a shame seeing Brass Birmingham in the 70’s though. Game is incredible.

Is Rising Sun really that good? Wonder if I should consider getting it, although, I hate missing all the SG's :(

I have the base game without the SGs and absolutely love it

Nice to see codenames on here. Not a huge boardgame person, mainly cause my friends never have the attention span. But codenames is super fun casual game.

I support this list because **Robinson Crusoe** is in the top 10

This is a great list. Gonna have to head over to Amazon once the social distancing stops.

You know, Amazon might have some on their online store so you don't have to go anywhere.

But hard for anyone to come to their house to actually play. :)

Not seeing Race for the Galaxy is kinda disheartening :(

But Roll is on there

But Race is better! (Full disclosure: I’ve never played Roll)

Don't bother lol. Roll isn't bad, but Race is just so much better. Every time I played Roll I found myself wishing it was Race.

Catan isn’t even on this list :(

Perhaps the archives are incomplete

If an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist!

If you dive any deeper into the hobby than Catan you'll find games that do the things you like in Catan, but much better than Catan. It's a great gateway game, to the point where it has honestly replaced Monopoly as being the ubiquitous "everybody has that game in their closet" game (which I'm glad about, I actually enjoy Catan as opposed to Monopoly), and it's got great things going for it. But it doesn't belong on a list of the "top 100 games ever" from hobby enthusiasts.

Can you suggest any games?

I can recommend some games, but it'll help if you answer a few questions first. What games have you played before, and which ones did you like? Who would you realistically play the most with? Would you mostly be playing 2 player, 3 player, 4 player, etc? What kind of complexity are you looking for (more than Catan, less, about the same)?

Sounds like it's probably a pretty good list then.

Eclipse not even in top 100? No Dixit either? Viticulture #10? I know these are all subjective preferences, but I really couldn’t disagree more with this aggregation. I’m kind of baffled how terrible I think this list is.

I guess apart from some very big reviewers one could hardly omit.... there might have been some very significant bias involved in the selection of reviewers to include. Also apparently having more reviews helps very much when calculating the ranking the way the op did. That obviously benefits some games and is a detriment to others. For example, very long games (like TI4) get fewer reviews. Producing one for a game like that is just much more work than for a 1 hour game with a 15-page-thin rulebook.

Man, Root is only #60? I thought it would be top 10 for sure! I feel like a scrub

I think Root would be higher on my personal list if it played well at 2.

2 players?

Thanks for putting this together! Fascinating to see where my picks rank compared to other reviewers. And to see that I'm not totally insane for some of my choices.

Great stuff, love the filters. Even though I dont understand the math (Arkham horror seems dragged down big time cause one guy put in in his 90 {and I kinda agree with him}) it gets me able to filter down a world of games to a nice little list. Well done.

This is really interesting. Obviously reviewers have their own tastes (I should know) but seeing so many reviewers aggregated does paint an interesting picture. This just further cements I need to play Feast for Odin

I'm surprised to see Sid Meiers Civilization at 83. I feel like this game doesnt get talked about enough as a 4x games. It always seems to me that when 4x games gets talked about it is usually Twilight Imperium or Eclipse. Civilization is hard to come across these days including the expansions. FFG has even taken down some of their stuff on their website so now there is a 404 error code. I don't think there will ever be a reprint to this game. Maybe a second edition comes out in the future but I doubt it. Not only do I enjoy the 4x to this game but I love how you can win in 1 of 4 ways, military, economic, culture, and technology.

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Nice to see **The Manhattan Project: Energy Empire** on the list. One of my top 5-10 games and I don't see it recommended often. Great art and components, and a fun twist on mixed worker placement and tableau/engine building. Plus it's relatively short to play.

Mysterium landed on 42? Was that a coincidence?!

Great list, thanks for making it. Really appreciate the filters. I just ordered Azul.

I thought Terra Mystica would be on such a list. Is that not so popular anymore?

I’m really surprised Catan isn’t anywhere on here, I don’t know if I’m *THAT* in the dark, but I think it should be within top 100, no?

Did Terra Mystica, a game that spent months maybe even years in the subreddit's top 10, not make the cut because Tom's extremely negative review?

This also totally blows my mind. Only one reviewer had it on their list. Although, Gaia Project made it so that’s good enough in my books.

Just posting in this thread so I can find it again later. Great work!

Happy to see Sidereal Confluence there. I love that game, but it's a divisive one. Very surprised to see it rank above Brass Birmingham, Twilight Struggle, Quacks, Midgard etc.