The Tablestop 100 - #30-#21

Getting closer to the top now, heading into the last third of the 100, some really solid gaming experiences are coming up and separating these is so hard.

#30

IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD - A card drafting gaming about creating a new world, much like a very similar game that has a number in the title, players are building structures in their developing world to score points in a variety of ways. Other than loving the ability to throw down combos of building out cards, this game is helped by it's speed and ease of play while still offering a great thoughtful challenge each turn as you choose what you may potentially be creating or turning into resources.

#29

DOWNFORCE - You know occasionally it is nice to get out a game that doesn't involve a spreadsheet of rule and that evokes a reaction from your inner child, for me that is this game. It is a racing game that doesn't necessarily require you to win the race, you can place bets on your opponents cars making it over the line first while helping them along by playing the right cards to move them. Restoration Games have been doing awesome things by bringing back older IPs and fitting them smoothly into the modern board gaming world.

#28

FIVE TRIBES - What another fabulous production from Days of Wonder! The decision space that is created each turn is fantastic is one, as you have to choose where to pick up workers and how to move them mancala style to another spot on the board, trigger an effect at your final destination. So many ways to score points let's player really choose how they want to play and can blur where the best action choice might be. Now it has two more expansions that really do expand on what you can do, this is certainly a modern classic.

#27

CHRONICLES OF CRIME - Now here is a game for all of you who are hooked on those true crime shows on Netflix, put your binge watching skills to the test in this very interactive investigative experience. Using a brilliant app interface you scan suspects cards to interrogate them and you even get to use VR google to stare at the crime scene for clues. How long you take can effect the game as further events can be triggered, or if you return to a location at a different time a new person might be there for you to question. With downloadable cases and more expansions to the world coming this definitely has hours of game for you. 

#26

THE CREW: THE QUEST FOR PLANET NINE - Although I haven't had much opportunity to play this game I have really enjoyed it's unique co-operative trick taking form. With just a small deck of cards and limited communication players have to work together to win the correct cards for them to complete their chosen tasks. Much like Skull King this can make losing a trick just as important as winning and the choice of which cards to shed at the right time even more impactful. With a variety if quests in the game there is many hours of deepening gameplay to be hard here.

#25

TZOLK'IN: THE MAYAN CALENDAR - This worker placement is all about timing and how you puzzle your choice out. Using one of favorite mechanics in which you have to choose to place or pick up workers, you only get your resources when you pick up and the longer your workers are out on the board the better the return. You place these workers onto interlocked dials that each round will turn moving them further round. Your ability to plan for the future will be put to the test each round, fail and you might have starving workers come the end of the season.

#24

GREAT WESTERN TRAIL - Who doesn't love having a handful of cows?! You are herding cattle via deck building, pick up those heifers and move them along the trail so you can ship them off to cities. Further the expanse of your rail network so you can get more points each round. How long you take to run the trail can impact the length of the game, take your time visiting all the action spots may leaving you behind in the bovine exportation race. Pfister designs always engross me and this is no exception.

#23

TRAJAN - A yummy point salad of a game with a wonderful action selection rondel with mancala bowls, Feld once again puts so many choices in front of the player you fell spoilt for choice on what to do. Every turn seems like a step forward and I love that progression in a game, it doesn't feel wasted as you move toward you goals and build up that big turn when you get to move a lot of your action tokens at once.

#22

RAIDERS OF THE NORTH SEA - Giving you a simple action choice each turn and using it to the max interests me a lot. Raiders has worker placement in which each round you put down one worker and pick up another, with generally quick actions attached. Your goal is build up your raiding party and then headed out over the North Sea to pillage the villages to bring back tributes to your jarl. Another game which all your efforts seem to be moving ever quicker toward the end triggers, no round counter but when two of three end goals are met the game ends. I do really like it when it feels you can have some control over when the game will finish. 

#21

CONCORDIA - Trading and travelling through the Mediterranean is hardly the most exciting theme, and often gets a bad reputation in euros but Concordia holds the banner for making it a great experience. Your actions each round are chosen from your hand of cards, you can improve that hand by purchasing cards which is also one of the timers for the game end. Also these cards are your end game scoring. This games features something I really love in modern gaming, you don't track points at all during the game, so there is no clear leader, which gives every player at the table that feeling they are still in the game with a chance to win. Brilliant!

NEXT STOP: The Tablestop 20!

The Tablestop 100 - #40-#31

Good day to all you! There may be a little delay on these last couple as I'm working on something special and different for The Tablestop 20.

Today we run on upto #31, let's get dug in..

#40

ON MARS - So this isn't my favorite Lacerda. Yet. Also, it isn't my favorite game about terraforming on Mars. Yet. But it certainly has the potential to move up the list once I can get it to the table some more. As with most of Vital's designs it is very complex and has great depth of strategy that encourages working on many different aspects. Really looking forward to getting this beast back on the table.

#39

SHERLOCK HOLMES CONSULTING DETECTIVE - Through clever story telling and use of deduction this game, at times, can really emulate the feel of being the greatest detective. You read through newspaper articles, read between the lines while questioning suspects and often makes those big leaps of logic that you often read of Sherlock doing to solve the crime. When the cases are cohesive this is a marvelous game that causes discussion, arguments and rabid note taking. Wonderful!

#38

THE MANHATTAN PROJECT - This worker placement is a literal arms race of game. Seriously, the game ends when one player has made big enough bombs and won the cold war. The main action mechanic of placing or picking up workers I have always loved, there is a great decision space in the timing of picking up your workers and fully refreshing that workforce, especially when time is of the essence. 

#37

LE HAVRE - I feel I have lost interest in alot of Uwe Rosenberg games, perhaps I need to get to player them more, but through all that it this one that stands out to me to have the best of all his designs. A single worker placement decision each turn and which port you are going to take goods from is all you have to do. But it is how you combo off those things, building buildings or ships, upgrading or sell resources and as always making enough food to feed your people at the end of a round.

#36

ARGENT: THE CONSORTIUM - Dumbledore is dead, and now you need a new headmaster! Hold on a second that's not right, but it could be. This game has players taking on the roles of teachers in a wizarding school, working on getting the votes for the mostly hidden Consortium to make them the head master. As with many Level 99 games, there is an abundance of variety in this game. Player powers can vary, the worker powers can change, the layout school can change dramatically from game to game. Such a great production and balance of variety.

#35

WINGSPAN - Props goes to first time designer Elizabeth Hargrave for this one, and a stellar production from Stonemaier Games. This engine builder themed around bringing birds into your aviary brings join to new gamers and has enough depth to keep the more strategic minded involved, plus thanks to the awesome artwork it is wonderful to look at. This is definitely a game that should be in everyone's collection.

#34

LA GRANJA - Blending influences from Stefan Feld, this great euro has great elements melded into one. Multi-use cards, that can be production for goods, or workers, or carts of items to ship off to market. Players will compete to get the best choices of dice during a round of drafting, then battle for the best market stalls to sell goods to earn them points. I do love it when I am rewarded with points for doing little things and this game succeeds in that.

#33

ROCOCO - What a wonderfully different theme, area control though dress making, as players will be competing to make the biggest splash in several different ballrooms before the end of night fireworks on the roof. A gorgeous reprint from Eagle Gryphon has really heightened an already stellar experience. There is a deck building mechanic to build up a hand of action cards to help you achieve the dress making success that you crave, which as always is satisfying. 

#32

SPACE BASE - Who doesn't love a good dice game??! Taking a resource gaining mechanic from the similar Machi Koro but upping the stakes by having players gain bonuses off other player's rolls. Expand you reach across the stars, upgrade your ships and create colonies as you race to the gaming ending goal. Much like Manhattan Project this is another game that uses a game end trigger I enjoy, a goal score giving the game that race feeling as you build up your space empire.

#31

TRAGEDY LOOPER - A complex one vs all game of cat and mouse deduction. One players is the Mastermind attempting to control the events to create a Tragedy. Their opponents are the Loopers, time traveling heroes trying to fix what is going wrong, think Quantum Leap without Ziggy and also you get to do it over and over. With the information players gain each loop they try to decipher the cause of the events from a possible list of scenarios and characters. It is worth putting in the time to learn this, as long as you have a good Mastermind to make the experience more enjoyable. A totally unique game.

NEXT STOP: Heading into the last third...

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!