Ripper's Top 100 Games
2015 Edition
I have been in the gaming hobby
for seven years now ever since I ordered my first batch of games with Chaos in
the Old World in 2009. This has been an
amazing experience for me and I have grown to love so much about this hobby. I
remember that my very first exposure to the hobby was with Vikings; a board
game I bought my girlfriend (now wife) for her birthday since she loved to talk
about it. After playing it for the first time I was hooked and made my first
board game order the very next week. Since than my collection has grown to over
two hundred board games and I host a game night every week at my home. I truly
love this hobby and couldn't imagine my life without the fond memories,
experiences and friends I have made through it.
Last year I decided to make
a top 50 board game list since everyone seemed to be doing it and I had a blast
trying to sort through my collection to find my favorite games. I have decided
to continue with this list only this year I am expanding the list to included
my top 100 favorite board games. Now I know I should have posted this list in
January since I made it the last week of 2015 but the Ripper is lazy some
times. So after sitting on my shelf for two months, I have finally gotten to the
task of publishing my top 100 games of all time, 2015 edition. I have compared
this list to my first list and will include the statistics for games that
appear on both list. I hope to continue to make this list every year and hope
that you enjoy my 100-91.
100. Dominion
2014 Ranking: # 40 (-60)
I
love deck building games as it is one of my favorite mechanics so I have to
give some love to the grandfather of them all. It is interesting how Dominion,
which use to be in my top ten, has fallen a little every year. To be truthful,
I think that deck builders are doing far more interesting things today and have
exceeded what Dominion can handle. But
if I am being fair, I think Dominion has the best combos out of any deck
builder, and I love the experience of playing a hand so perfect you get through
half your deck. When I want some pure card play or need to teach new players
how to play a deck builder, I always turn to Dominion. In fact, when I teach a
new deck builder I usually say,
"this is like Dominion, only here are the changes." For these reasons
it barely makes the list as my number 100.
§
Quick,
fast, easy system to learn
§
Grandfather
of one of my favorite mechanics/genres
§
Pure
card combos and quick player turns
§
Great
teaching tool
§
Starting
to feel a little outdated
99. Masters of Venice
I
listen to several pod casts regularly as it is a nice distraction from the
boring routine of my nightly shifts, and I am quite a fan of the Heavy Cardboard
pod cast. It was the Heavy Cardboard
who brought this gem to my attention and I bought the game for $12 bucks from
the bgg market after the episode. This has been one of the best purchases as
the amount of game I receive is a hundred times more than the amount I paid
for. Masters of Venice is a very unique and fun economic game where you are
playing a young merchant trying to earn prestige by selling and trading on the
market. The market is perhaps the most interesting thing as you have to manage
share prices along with orders using a peg system for each good. Some may find
the whole system to be a bit fiddly but I really enjoy this mechanic. I love
the concept of the shared action spaces as you have to select actions in secret
using a wheel and certain actions are taken by everyone when they are revealed.
This leads to a deduction element as you are trying to read your opponents to
guess what action they are most likely to choose since there is no need to take
a action if you are sure your opponent is going to activate it. Overall, this
is a great game and I need to get it to the table more.
§
Heavy
economic game
§
Interesting
market system with shares
§
Interesting
shared action concept
§
Real
value for the price
§
Rule
set and overall complexity can put some off
98. Rolling Freight
I
haven't played that many train games but I love the ones that have come across
my table. I am right now trying to dive into the world of 18xx having purchased
1830 and have also recently acquired Baltimore & Ohio. While this game is
no where near those games, I do love this unique train game which uses dice as
your action allocation. This is really a cargo shipping and route building game
where you are trying to use the dice you roll to upgrade your technology, build
routes and ship goods across the map. I feel it accomplishes the same goals as
Railroad Tycoon but I find this system to be much more enjoyable.
§
Train
theme game
§
Dice
used in interesting mechanic instead of another Yahtzee variation
§
Multiple
maps lead to variation
§
Little
long for some members of my group
97. Don't Turn Your Back
Don't
Turn Your Back combines two of my favorite mechanics: deck building and worker
placement. Essentially you are buying characters for your deck which are
workers that you send out onto the board to gain money, victory points, or seal
within the wax kingdom. I really love the concepts of this game and it is
relatively fast playing in about an hour with experience play. It is based on an RPG called Don't Rest Your
Head and the theme is that you are insomniacs who have discovered the hidden
world of nightmares and you must become a awaken character to survive. I love
the theme and the dark art of this game.
§
Combines
deck building with worker placement
§
Based
on an RPG
§
Dark,
unique theme
§
Gothic
art
96. Mission Red Planet
I
am a huge fan of steampunk hence my Victorian attire and persona. Mission Red
Planet is a pretty cool little game where you play steam punk astronauts trying
to mine the newly discovered resources on Mars. During the game you will play
an agent card from your hand each round and once play you will not get that
agent back as they will remain on the table in front of you unless you play an
agent that allows you to take them back into your hand. It is a similar
mechanic used in Concordia and I really do love it. This is a nice quick little
game that has a steam punk flavor and some intriguing game play. I am judging
this based on the first edition as I really did not care for the artistic
changes for the second.
§
Steam
punk theme
§
Interesting
card driven mechanic
§
Amazing
art work for the style
§
Light
game that has enough to keep me entertained
§
Hated
by some members of group which limits game play
95. Empires of the Void
First
let me say that I love the games produced by Ryan Laukat and think he is an
amazing one man team. I love his version of a space empire game that is found
in Empires of the Void. as it allow me to play an space empire game with my
more passive game friends. My wife in particular hates games that focus solely
on conquest but Empires of the Void has a diplomatic systems that is just as
strong as the traditional conquer the galaxy with your fleet strategy. It is
also a huge bonus that diplomacy allows you to gain access to that race's
personal ship design which cannot be gain through conquest. This allows me to
get a 4x feeling among my primary game
group with a game that they can enjoy as well.
§
A
game by Ryan Laukat
§
Unique
diplomacy concept
§
Beautiful
art and graphic design
§
Moderate
play time
94. Forge War
Forge
War is a interesting little title that is really a perfect euro game in a box.
Players are black smiths for a fantasy kingdom who must gather resources to
make weapons in order to equip adventurers who take on quest for the kingdom.
It has a really cool gather mechanic where you move a overseer along a hex map
dropping off miners as they move who than gather that resource. Opponents can
move their overseer over your place miners replacing your miners with theirs
and this leads to some interesting blocking in the game. You than have to use
your resources to build weapons whose designs you have brought and equip your
heroes who than must travel among a quest card. I think that this is a fantastic
game, and I love how the game has three different stages which reshapes the
mining board and brings out new resources as well as better weapons to build. I
would argue that you should always play the advance game as the simple version
leaves much to be desired.
§
Game
is played in stages which changes how the game feels
§
Questing
aspect which I always like
§
Simple
rules that lead to interesting game play
§
Interesting
resource gathering method
§
A
little long for most players
93. Elder Sign
2014 Ranking # 23 (-70)
Now, I am not a huge fan of dice games and tend to find most a little too light for
my taste. However, putting a Lovecraft-ian theme on a dice is one good way to get
my attention. Elder Sign is really the light version of Arkham Horror and I
feel it is a nice implementation. You play an investigator who is trying to
stop an Old One from awakening and are investigating a series of events within
a museum. This is an extremely hard game and I like how you have to sacrifice
dice if you want to continue trying to match the different challenges on the
cards. This is a solid little dice game and is an nice alternative when I don’t
have the time to play Arkham but have the itch.
§
Lovecraft
theme
§
Captures
the spirit of Arkham Horror
§
Tough
game to defeat
§
Different
than standard roll three times and see what happens
92. Castles of Burgundy
My
game group is a huge fan of Stefan Feld
and I have loved the majority of his games that have come across my
table. I don't mind that they are usually dry with little theme as I think the
overall mechanics and experience more than make up for it. Now I had heard a
lot of hype over Castles of Burgundy but I delayed in getting it until this
year. I should have picked this game up earlier as it is a great game, although
it is not his best (as I have heard a lot of reviewers claim). I really like how
simple the game is yet how much depth there is to it as well. You are really
just buying tiles and placing them on your map activating them as you do. At
the end of the game you can look at your fiefdom and feel a sense of
accomplishment.
§
Victory
point salad for the win
§
Simple
game play with some depth
§
Tile
placement game is always a plus
§
Feels
like you are developing a fiefdom
91. Vikings
Vikings
is the game that started me on my path into this wonderful hobby and will
always have a special place in my collection. I really love the pricing wheel
mechanic where the purchasing of a tile may cause the wheel to turn which
reduces the prices on all the other tiles and is something you have to plan for
when making your purchase. The rest of the game revolves around you placing
tiles and different craftsmen on the islands you are trying to settle which
will earn you victory points depending on your placement. Some argue that there
is no Norse theme here but the game
does portray the settlement of new territories and formation of trade routes
that drove the Viking era.
§
My
first hobby game
§
Great
light economic game
§
Pricing
wheel adds some interesting decisions
§
Norse
theme
So there we have it. The
first part of my top 100 games of all time. Stay tune as I will bring out the
second part of this list next week and continue on through the month until we
complete this adventure. Thanks for reading and feel free to comment below.
Board Game Ripper
No comments:
Post a Comment