Top Ten | Board Games

I have a large collection of modern/hobby board games—too many really (I freely admit I have a problem). In any case, I track the games that I own and that I play on BoardGameGeek, and this page chronicles my addiction.

Top 10 Favorite Games

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (2015)

Played Played 23 times • Rating:

• Designed By: Rob Daviau,Matt Leacock

Action Points • Cooperative Game • Hand Management • Legacy Game • Point to Point Movement • Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game • Set Collection • Tags • Trading • Variable Player Powers

Pandemic Legacy is a co-operative campaign game, with an overarching story arc played through 12-24 sessions, depending on how well your group does at the game. At the beginning, the game starts in a very similar fashion as basic Pandemic, in which your team of disease-fighting specialists races against the clock to travel around the world, treating disease hot spots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand.

Gloomhaven (2017)

Played Played 30 times • Rating:

• Designed By: Isaac Childres

Action Queue • Action Retrieval • Campaign / Battle Card Driven • Card Play Conflict Resolution • Communication Limits • Cooperative Game • Critical Hits and Failures • Deck Construction • Grid Movement • Hand Management • Hexagon Grid • Legacy Game • Line of Sight • Modular Board • Multi-Use Cards • Narrative Choice / Paragraph • Once-Per-Game Abilities • Role Playing • Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game • Simultaneous Action Selection • Solo / Solitaire Game • Storytelling • Tags • Variable Player Powers

Gloomhaven is a game of Euro-inspired tactical combat in a persistent world of shifting motives. Players will take on the roles of wandering adventurers with their own special sets of skills and their own reasons for traveling to this dark corner of the world. Players must work together out of necessity to clear out menacing dungeons and forgotten ruins. In the process, they will enhance their abilities with experience and loot, discover new locations to explore and plunder, and expand an ever-branching story fueled by the decisions they make.

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (2011)

Played Played 41 times • Rating:

• Designed By: Nate French

Cooperative Game • Deck Construction • Events • Hand Management • Player Elimination • Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game • Solo / Solitaire Game • Variable Set-up

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is a cooperative adventure game in which the players attempt to complete a scenario, each with up to three heroes of their choice and a deck of allies, events and attachments to support them. Each round, players send their heroes and allies to quest or to fight with enemies that engage them. However, as the heroes and allies exhaust after questing, defending, or attacking, the players' options are typically insufficient to deal with everything at once. Therefore, players need to determine whether it is more urgent to quest and make progress in the scenario while the enemy forces gain power, or to take down enemies while making no progress, not knowing what will come next.

7 Wonders (2010)

Played Played 29 times • Rating:

• Designed By: Antoine Bauza

Closed Drafting • Hand Management • Neighbor Scope • Set Collection • Simultaneous Action Selection • Variable Player Powers

You are the leader of one of the 7 great cities of the Ancient World. Gather resources, develop commercial routes, and affirm your military supremacy. Build your city and erect an architectural wonder which will transcend future times.

Race for the Galaxy (2007)

Played Played 30 times • Rating:

• Designed By: Thomas Lehmann

Follow • Hand Management • Multi-Use Cards • Simultaneous Action Selection • Tags

In the card game Race for the Galaxy, players build galactic civilizations by playing game cards in front of them that represent worlds or technical and social developments. Some worlds allow players to produce goods, which can be consumed later to gain either card draws or victory points when the appropriate technologies are available to them. These are mainly provided by the developments and worlds that are not able to produce, but the fancier production worlds also give these bonuses.

Viticulture (2013)

Played Played 12 times • Rating:

• Designed By: Jamey Stegmaier,Alan Stone

Contracts • Hand Management • Income • Race • Turn Order: Progressive • Worker Placement

In Viticulture, the players find themselves in the roles of people in rustic, pre-modern Tuscany who have inherited meager vineyards. They have a few plots of land, an old crushpad, a tiny cellar, and three workers. They each have a dream of being the first to call their winery a true success.

51st State: Master Set (2016)

Played Played 7 times • Rating:

• Designed By: Ignacy Trzewiczek

Hand Management • Open Drafting • Variable Phase Order • Variable Player Powers • Worker Placement

The world you know no longer exists. There is no government. No army. No civilization. The United States has collapsed, and now thirty years after the war started, new powers finally try to take control over the ruined country, try to establish a new order, try to control others and create a new country, a new state: the 51st State.

Ascension (2010)

Played Played 18 times • Rating:

• Designed By: John Fiorillo,Justin Gary,Brian M. Kibler

Deck, Bag, and Pool Building • Hand Management • Open Drafting

Ascension is a deck-building game in which players spend Runes to acquire more powerful cards for their deck. It offers a dynamic play experience where players have to react and adjust their strategy accordingly. Each player starts with a small deck of cards, and uses those cards to acquire more and better cards for their deck, with the goal of earning the most Honor Points by gaining cards and defeating monsters.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig (2014)

Played Played 12 times • Rating:

• Designed By: Ted Alspach

End Game Bonuses • Hidden Victory Points • I Cut, You Choose • Increase Value of Unchosen Resources • Pattern Building • Set Collection • Tile Placement • Turn Order: Progressive

In the tile-laying game Castles of Mad King Ludwig, players are tasked with building an amazing, extravagant castle for King Ludwig II of Bavaria...one room at a time. You see, the King loves castles, having built Neuschwanstein (the castle that inspired the Disney theme park castles) and others, but now he's commissioned you to build the biggest, best castle ever — subject, of course, to his ever-changing whims. Each player acts as a building contractor who is adding rooms to the castle he's building while also selling his services to other players.

#10

Ticket to Ride (2004)

Played Played 28 times • Rating:

8.5

• Designed By: Alan R. Moon

Connections • Contracts • End Game Bonuses • Hand Management • Network and Route Building • Open Drafting • Push Your Luck • Set Collection

With elegantly simple gameplay, Ticket to Ride can be learned in under 15 minutes. Players collect cards of various types of train cars they then use to claim railway routes in North America. The longer the routes, the more points they earn. Additional points come to those who fulfill Destination Tickets – goal cards that connect distant cities; and to the player who builds the longest continuous route.