The Tablestop 100 - #50-#41

Sorry for the delay of this, I will try to keep these updates more on time...

Today I break into my Top 50, these games keep getting better..

#50

SHADOW HUNTERS - A game night staple for many months, this hidden role game is unique in theme and execution. Players can be on one of three different teams - Hunters, Shadows and Neutrals, each character has a win condition. The Hunters will be fighting to destroy the Shadows and vice versa, while the Neutrals have very unique ways to win. One big problem, you don't know who anyone is, so you may be attacking a team mate or someone who wants to die. A great silly fun way to warm you up on a game night as you can have upto 8 players battling it our.

#49

TINY TOWNS - Players compete to build up their towns in the most efficient way to score bonuses from the variety of buildings available to them. This light weight game has an enjoyable puzzle to how you place the building resources to be able to complete a building in your town. Creating combos of scoring buildings is satisfying and the mechanics are easy enough to teach to the newest of players.

#48

CARTOGRAPHERS - Here is another game that gives you the feeling of being creative while working on a puzzle, this flip and write has you mapping out a new land. You get to create the landscape using the shared cards and each season ends with scoring for certain objectives that change each game. Even though using the same cards every turn players drawn maps will often end up looking very different as their world grows before them. Such a complete package of a game in surprisingly small box.

#47

ANACHRONY - This game is all about timey-wimey worker placement, players are factions competing over the limited resources the world has to offer, but you have the opportunity to get resources from the future, as long as you don't create a paradox by  not having them available as the game moves forward. This heavy euro features great strategic planning from round to round as you make sure you have enough to survive while your faction grows.

#46

LEGENDARY ENCOUNTERS: ALIEN - The first in the Encounters series of Legendary games, this is by far my favorite. Through the deckbuilding and the way the incoming threats move through the facility toward you it really does amazingly well in capturing the essence of the movies. Each card scan and flip has you on the edge of your seat as you work your way through the Alien series of movies. There is even an option to have one of the players working against the rest of the team as a corporate puppet for Weyland Yutani. 

#45

LORDS OF XIDIT - A great darkness has fallen over the land and mythical beasts are rising up to destroy the villages. Players are competing to be the greatest hero of Xidit by roaming the lands, recruiting villagers and defeating the creatures. All this is achieved through programming your actions each round, which can often lead to situations where you don't get what you want as other players are a step ahead of you. I really enjoy the clever end scoring goals which force you to balance your choices as you play, this game makes sure you have to be aware of what your opponents are up to each turn. It can be very interactive and satisfying.

#44

ROLL FOR THE GALAXY - The eternal choice between Race and Roll. For me I have to give it to the tactile nature of Roll. I love rolling the dice and planning out how to use them, hoping that the other players trigger the actions I need. It is great at giving you that clever feeling when all your plans fall into place each round, as you build up your space empire.

#43

THE LOST RUINS OF ARNAK - I haven't gotten to play many releases from 2020, but I did pick this one up and my few plays have hit that right spot for me. The combination of worker placement and deck building flows together smoothly, the feeling of exploration as you add in more locations on the map and then figuring how to move up the discovery track can leave you with great satisfaction. I especially love how the card market is handled as the game progresses, emphasizing the discovery of powerful lost treasures.

#42

THE VOYAGES OF MARCO POLO - I remember this as one of my earlier experiences in heavier styled euros with complex mechanics, well I thought so at the time. The dice placement around the board is great, as you try to make the most out of your rolls each round. Your explorers head out to the east along the varied amount of roads, each with their own goals of places to visit, turning in trading contracts along the way to help. Then the unique player powers that all seem broken, but all work fine when pitted against one another, speaks to the balance of this game.

#41

HASPELKNECHT - Hardly the most exciting theme of coal mining in Germany, but this game really surprised me and every play has left me wanting to play again. What sets it apart is the action selection method as players have to choose from colored disks to trigger certain actions. The ultimate goals having you mining out coal with the help of technologies that you can build up during the game from a board that can vary from game to game. I recommend checking this one out.

NEXT STOP: See you next time as we move onto the next ten games..

TableStop's Top 100 Games - #60-#51

Happy Valentine's Day! 

Today I see out the bottom half of the Top 100, let's work our way to #51...

#60

WITNESS - A totally unique deduction puzzle game which takes the Telephone game to the extreme. Each player is given part of the information needed to solve a puzzling case, but to spread that information around the table you have to whisper to your neighbor, who then in turn pass it onto the next person. This game has to be played with exactly 4 people, but offers a great take on what for the most part in the early cases would be easy to solve logic problems and makes them challenging to get.

#59

CROKINOLE - I am bad at dexterity games in general, my flicks often fly off in the wrong direction and my balancing skills aren't what they used to be. But this Canadian pub game is a classic, it's shuffleboard but all the players can sit around the same table. Yes this could be considered to be a push into a list of 'board games' but that element of being together at a table, laughing at how bad we all are at flicking discs and cheering on everyone else when they hit that perfect shot, makes all my excuses for me.

#58

TROYES - I love clever dice drafting and Troyes has it. Each round players roll their personal pool of dice so that you can choose actions to complete around the board, the twist here is that other players can use your dice if they want for a cost. Yes you do get compensated when that juicy '6' you just rolled gets purchased from you, and oh how you had plans for that one! But often that is a minor inconvenience as the tactical nature of this euro game shines out. It plays a good quick clip and once you get the hang of it turns are smooth. 

#57

AQUASPHERE - One of the more theme filled Felds, or as theme filled as he can get. Players are controlling robots on an underwater survey station, programming them to do their bidding to score the oodles of points you can gain. There is a great puzzle to how you choose actions as you are limited by what you choose each round based on the order they are placed, it's hard to explain but just know you won't be able to do everything you want to do and that's okay. Feld is a master of creating games that have this feeling of combos and rewarding deluges of points and this is no exception.

#56

SKULL KING - A good old trick taking game, taking it's structure from the parlor game 'Oh Hell' Skull King has you bidding for how many tricks you think you will win each round. Get that bid correct and you score well, get that bid wrong and you are losing points. There is a great balance and I love the feeling of trying to win just that right amount of tricks, then finding ways to lose tricks as well. This is an amazing family level game and always enjoyable.

#55

RUSSIAN RAILROADS - A modern classic in the worker placement genre. Building up your rail empire in Russia has never been so much fun. The game has a satisfy escalation of points gaining as each round you will gain more and more, as you spread the extent of your rail empire out on your personal board. The straight forward gameplay of placing workers makes it easy to understand how to play, but the choice of what to do is a different feeling. The expansions to this add great variety and I'm looking forward to the big box coming later this year with everything in one place.

#54

ALHAMBRA - Speaking of modern classic, this is a staple game, coming up on 20 years old Alhambra will always be a go to game when bringing a new person into the hobby, especially if they mention loving Monopoly. Get money, get buildings, score points. The tile laying as you build out your Alhambra always has a nice feeling of growth, with fun back and forth with opponents as you try to be the one monopolizing the gardens.

#53

AQUATICA - Such a clever design, the unique nature of the engine building in this one grabbed me as soon as I saw it. Players compete the claim depth cards to placing into their player board, then you must exploit those depths through a combination of playing characters cards from hand and then triggering powers on the depths to combo turns. Each game has unique goals that have to be completed to end the game, players race toward these goals to become the lord of the depths.

#52

YEDO - Yes this can be a brutal game, and I do need to get myself a copy of the new beautiful deluxe edition, but Yedo's blend of worker placement and bidding comes across as a great thematic tie in. Send your clan members out into the city to exploit the different areas for resources and also to complete missions as you seek to appease the Shogun. The brutal part of this games comes partly in the form of the night watch who can arrest your clan members and your opponents can give them a helping hand in doing so. Then you also have to watch out for those event cards that can shut down areas of the map. This game is not for the light hearted but can be so rewarding if you can take the heat.

#51

THE QUACKS OF QUEDLINBURG - Some games are just pure fun. Sure you can trying to balance out a plan in Quacks, but the great push your luck nature of pulling ingredients from a bag to make the best potion without blowing up is simply awesome. There is a huge amount variability in this as well with many different ways the ingredients can be setup to act each game. This is another great family round the table together experience.

NEXT STOP: We enter the Top 50..

TableStop's Top 100 Games - #70-#61

Welcome back to this continued trip through my favorite 100 games, today we move past #70 and into the 60s. Some great strong titles here and they only get better...

#70

CASTELL - What first got me interested in this game was the very unique theme, following the tradition of Castell from Catalonia, it is a festival in which people building human towers of upto 10 people high. You run a castell team going from region to region showing off your balancing skills, to that end the game uses a clever set collection method in which you stack your team members from higher value upto lower values. Such an awesome surprising game for me and nothing matches building up your tower to score the best performance.

#69

GENTES - Here is a euro game that follows developing civilizations, players grow their population and build temples across the map. This one features a clever time themed action selection mechanic - time is a resource. Each era you only have some much time to spend on actions, these actions have varying time costs. Players are faced with the puzzle of how to balance what actions you want to take and what time you have left each era into doing them.

#68

PANDEMIC LEGACY: SEASON 1 - The grand daddy of all co-op games Pandemic gets the Legacy treatment. Legacy games are ones that evolve over the play through, players will make decision that could permanently change the game world. Cards get torn up. Stickers get placed on the board. A story evolves. Has such a great experience playing through this one, although I won't be playing it again it stands solidly in my memory.

#67

GAIA PROJECT - A little cheat here, as I feel I could squeeze Terra Mystica into this spot as well. I put Gaia Project here as I prefer the game board as it is more open for the players, also I prefer the sci-fi theme that this one takes. Players compete for control of planets to build up their races for domination of the game. 

#66

JUST ONE - This is by far my favorite party game, the clever co-op nature of this word guessing game puts it above Codenames. It is so easy to explain and has a nice player count. It has great moments of trying to come up with clue words that everyone else isn't giving to the guesser.

#65

7 WONDERS DUEL - This two player only implementation of it's bigger brother gives us a great twist on drafting. There is an awesome back and forth between players as one pushes toward a military victory are you letting the opponent push forward in science. The first expansion really opens this game up more and gives you many more options in your quest for victoy.

#64

KEYFLOWER - A fantastic blend of worker placement, auction and tile laying this game is so clever. Each season players use workers to either bid for tiles to improve your personal tableau or you can place them as workers on the tiles up for bid or as workers in your opponents villages. But one clever restriction if a certain color meeple has already been used, you have to use the same color. SO in turn each meeple becomes a form of resource, but players keep how many they have of each secret, leaving a great tactical selection each round knowing you can lock someone out completely if they lack that color.

#63

ORLEANS - Taking a twist on worker placement bty building up a bag of workers from which you draw them out of each round. Players build up this bag with farmers, merchants, priests and you need certain combos of them to do certain actions. This game cuts down on time by having a simultaneous part of placing these workers and then in turn you trigger the actions you wish to. Also is a great looking production from TMG as always.

#62

CLANS OF CALEDONIA - Heavily influenced by Terra Mystica comes this game in which clans compete to build up their production of goods across the farming lands of Caledonia. So that they may trade and export the goods to become the most prestigious. This game offers a great strategic challenge as you build up your economy across the modular boards, each clan can have unique powers to further from your decisions. Such a great game.

#61

WESTERN LEGENDS - Have you wanted to be an outlaw in the Wild West on the run from the law, robbing banks and rustling cattle? Or do you long to be that lawman hunting down the outlaws? Or does your idea of the Old West having you working hard mining for gold, before gambling your money away at a poker table? If you answer yes to any of those questions then this sandbox game is the one for you, such great emergent gameplay as players build their own stories across the plains of the West.

NEXT STOP: Hoping to be back tomorrow to round off the first half of this Top 100. See you then!

TableStop's Top 100 Games - #80-#71

Welcome back to the TableStop, here we are getting to this third stop in this trip through my favorite 100 games. This day we march on through #80 to #71.

#80

NEAR AND FAR - Of all the Red Raven games I've played this is certainly the pinnacle in story telling and combing that with a euro style game. Players are adventurers, building up their parties and going out on adventures in search of the Last Ruin. Had a wonderful time playing through this with my family and we still have other content to go back to check out, so much in this box. Plus they have just announced a sequel 'Now or Never' to look forward to.

#79

SPECTER OPS - Hidden movement games hold a special place in the hobby for me, I still own my childhood copy of Scotland Yard. Specter Ops adds special powers to a great theme of the player who is hidden being an operative trying to bring down the evil Raxxon corporation. My plays of this have often led to moments of tension as the escape from the facility comes down to the wire.

#78

THE ISLE OF CATS - We must save the cats, and only the cats! Lord Vesh is on his way to the island to destroy everything and they must be saved, players must compete to load up their boats with the many varieties of cats. To implement all your actions and even setup scoring, players will draft cards into hands each round and depending on how you play them you can collect cats, setup end game scoring or find the treasures hidden on the island. The central puzzle is placing the cats, which are all polyomino shapes, onto your boat in the most efficient way. 

#77

TICKET TO RIDE - One of the first games I played when getting into the hobby, this game is still the backbone of many a game night and introduction to the hobby for many others for me. This entry encompasses all versions of the game, United Kingdom being my favorite expansion and Europe being my favorite base board. But as it is essentially the same game across all versions I am putting them all together.

#76

HANSA TEUTONICA - The cover and art for this game screams dry themeless euro, and I can not argue that point. But beyond that is a great puzzle of a game, as players are working to build up influences on trade routes across Germany. You have to upgrade your skills which in turn opens up your available worker pool. Love this game and picked up the big box recently which contains the expansion maps that tweak some rules.

#75

TRICKERION: LEGENDS OF ILLUSION - One of the heaviest games in my Top 100, this pure strategy game puts you in the role of turn of the century magician. You have to collect the resources and hiring assistants to help you set up your great illusions, then you have to find the time to perform them. What I have loved in my plays of this is the ability for me to set an end goal and work towards that, elevated by many chances for you to find satisfaction in setting up the correct illusions at the right time. This game is so well balanced and nuanced.

#74

ROLL PLAYER - In this game you are rolling up your character for a DnD campaign. By drafting dice you are building up their stats, your choices may be influenced by your role, backstory and traits that you have. They even created expansions that allow you to use these characters against enemies. Thunderworks have created their own universe of games and each one is brilliant. 

#73

THE CLIMBERS - You can be forgiven for thinking this is a dexterity game, it isn't that. It is a free standing puzzle as the climbers fight to become the person on the highest spot on the wooden block tower. Each turn you can move up, move blocks or even use your special ladders to get to high points. Not only a great competitive puzzle, but it looks great as your tower builds ever taller.

#72

EUPHORIA: BUILDING A BETTER DYSTOPIA - This contains one of the best implementations of a theme to mechanics that I've ever seen in a game. Players have dice that represent their workers, the numbers rolled is how intelligent they are, the higher the roll the more likely they will rebel from you as they become aware of how you are using them against their will. Keep those workers dumb! The goal is essentially a race toward influence over the dystopian world of Euphoria, the first player to attain all their goals wins. 

#71

DINOSAUR ISLAND - It's Jurassic Park in a box. Build up your ultimate dinosaur theme park and compete to get people to come view your exhibits, but be cautious to improve security or you may have dinos escaping and killing your visitors. Players will draft dice to collect the needed genes to develop new dinosaurs, then hire workers to improve your park and scientists to create the creatures in the labs. This is such a bold and colorful game, that while it doesn't take itself to seriously it still offers a great gaming challenge to all.

NEXT STOP: See you all on Saturday to take the next look at #70 through to #61..

TableStop's Top 100 Games - #90-#81

Welcome back to the TableStop, thank you for joining me for the second lay over on this journey through my favorite games of all time. 

Today I run through my #90 to #81..

#90

GOLD WEST - J Alex Kevern rarely disappoints with his designs and this is my favorite. It is the Gold Rush and players are out competing for the best spots of land. The game is driven by a great action system which has you placing resources in slots on your play mat and mancala style you pick up one slot, dropping off as you go. Then your remaining resources determine what you can do on your turn. Spread out you empire, send gold, silver and copper off to be trading or complete contracts to win! I love the forward thinking of where I put my resources to plan future turns when I get to pick them up.

#89

DEAD OF WINTER - Using the great crossroads story system this great game from Plaid Hat places players in charge of survivors fighting off zombies and battling the freezing conditions. But there is a chance one of you is a traitor with their own hidden agenda. This is a tough co-op game that inspires stories which I have enjoyed many times with my family.

#88

UNDERWATER CITIES - A wonderfully deep blend of hand management and worker placement, where cards act as worker and you have opportunity to trigger more than one action on your turn if you can. Building up your network of resource building domes as you strive to develop your personal underwater city. Such a great design, I'm a huge fan of the strategic hand management that is needed throughout the game.

#87

BUMUNTU - I feel this game is overlooked and under appreciated in the gaming community. It is totally an abstract game that has you trying to set collect groupings of animals off a gridded board, each animal has a different action that will affect your movement as you try to pick them up. It has great depth for a lighter teach, move and pickup is all you do, but the choices you and your opponents make can affect the board state and even how well each animal will score at the end of the game.

#86

GUGONG - Worker placement is often one of my favorite mechanics, but I do love when a game puts a twist on how that works. Gugong is another splendid example of that. This time your 'workers' are represented by gifts you have on cards in your hands, the gifts help you influence the action spaces on the board so you can use them. The game has a great balance and multiple ways to score at the end of game.

#85

TEOTIHUACAN: CITY OF GODS - I do love me some heavy games, and this one brings brain burning to a max. Players have worker dice who grown in strength each time they get used, and the action selection uses an awesome rondell style as you move around the outside of the board. A great twist is that once your dice reach max strength they ascend and you have to give birth to new worker. The table presence is further enhanced by the pyramid that is growing in the center of the board, players are working together to build it up.

#84

SUPER MOTHERLOAD - Imagine if Dig-Dug became a board game and you have this one. Using deckbuilding players improve there hands of action cards so they can place tiles on the board representing them drilling down under the surface of a planet in the search of the motherload. Scoring through the cards and achievements that are next to the board, this really feels like a video game converted to cardboard.

#83

MISSION: RED PLANET - I absolutely love the action selection method in this game, players choose a character from their hand, each one has a value 1-10, then first player begins a countdown and when it hits your chosen number you reveal and do your action. The actions help you get astronauts on ships, so you can send them to Mars to fight over the minerals and regions on the surface. This has some great back and forth between players, as you vie for control of the regions and even send opponents rockets to the wrong locations or even send their astronauts into the great beyond.

#82

ZHANGUO - 'What's your game?' really know their games and this heavy euro is not exception. Using action cards in your hand, you can place them to trigger certain actions, depending on value you may get bonuses to your actions. Players are competing emissaries of the emperor helping to build up the Great Wall of China and gain support for the emperor from the many regions of China. This game leads to awesome decisions and satisfying outcomes as you play your cards in the right way.

#81

RES ARCANA - This tableau builder from Lehmann hits all the right spots for me, quick playing and easy to understand rules. The ability to build up combos in front of you as you race against your opponents to build up to the score that is end trigger of the game. Clever card play will always get me intrigued in a game and this has it in spades!

NEXT STOP: The countdown, or count-up, continues with #80 to #71, so buckle in and join me again in a couple of days.