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A Gaming Life
BGG Top Games – 4401 – 4500
We’re halfway through the 4000s in our weekly look at games on the Boardgame Geek top games list, and things are looking up again.
Slightly.
Last week, I had only played two of the games in that century and I was beginning to despair that this series might soon be coming to an end.
But then this week hits!
And I’ve played/own…three games.
It’s a start!
Before we get into that, though, let’s follow our two experiments to see where they’re at this week.
Last week, The Game Makers (recently fulfilled from Kickstarter by Bezier Games) was at #3265.
I’m writing this on Friday night (and this is posting on the next Wednesday), and it’s currently at #3212. A gain of 53 in the space of two days.
Good! But slowing.
When this posts, it’s now at #3078, which isn’t too bad!
Slowing a bit, but that’s still just under around 150 spots in 5 days.
The other one I fully expect to hit the Top 100 at some point, which is good because I will soon own it and play it!
Wingspan Pocket was at #2417 when last week’s post went live.
On Friday night, it was at #2350. A 67-point gain.
Is it slowing down? Maybe?
Of course now it’s at #2023 so hard to say?
Another week of checking and we’ll see what happens.
These experiments are always fun, and if any hot new game intersects with one of these posts, a new experiment might happen.
So stay tuned!
This week’s list can be found here.
As ever, (make your own time travel joke here)
As mentioned above, I have three games owned and three games played in it, so at least I’ll have a little something to talk about.
I’m about at my introduction limit, so let’s begin!
Read MoreAugust 2026 Gaming
August was a booming month for gaming, despite there not being any conventions or anything.
Well, maybe not “booming,” but certainly better than last month!
Lunch time games at work certainly helped matters, plus there were a few Sundays where multiple games got played.
Of course, six games of Final Girl also assisted in that total, but that’s only one game, so didn’t contribute much to the actual game count (just the plays).
Overall, I played 20 games a total of 33 times (as compared to 15 games 24 times last month), which is pretty good.
Six new to me games really did contribute to that, though I’ll talk about them in next week’s post.
Here are the games I played in August 2024.
And here they are in grid format.
Many thanks to Boardgame Stats for the great app that lets me get these figures.
There were a few games that hadn’t been played in a while, so I’ll make note of those.
Don’t forget that you can click on the pictures to expand them if you want.
Read MoreThings Are Getting Stranger – Final Girl – The Falconwood Files Review
I’m actually surprised that it took the Final Girl franchise until Series 3 to do a film based on Stranger Things.
However, when they decide to do so, they go whole hog and throw in everything but the kitchen sink.
Did you think there was so much going on in that series that there was no way Final Girl could include it all?
Ye of little faith.
The Falconwood Files was designed by Mike Martins with artwork by Vincent Dutrait. It is part of Series 3 and was published in 2025.
(Need I remind you that you can click on a picture to blow it up? I didn’t think so)
I have to say that Dutrait’s artwork in this one is a lot better than in the North Pole one.
The map is actually readable and is really well laid out, though I’ll get to that when I get to the location.
I just wanted to mention that up front, because he is a great artist, but North Pole Nightmare was just really hard to navigate.
The Falconwood Files totally references Stranger Things, except of course there’s not a group of 80s kids in it running around getting in the way when they should be home doing homework.
But everything else is in there!
Let’s go with the killer first, as usual.
Read MoreThe Distant Sound of Thunder – Rumble Nation Review
That’s the sound of a medieval nation in the throes of civil war.
Also the sound of dice hitting the table!
Both sound ominous.
Rumble Nation is a dice-chucking area control game where players are attempting to take over as many provinces as possible in medieval Japan.
It was designed by Yogi Shinichi (与儀新一) with artwork by Toru Kageyama, Yogi Shinichi (与儀新一), and ヤマモトマサアã‚（Yamamoto Masaaki).
It was published in 2017 by Hobby Japan.
And it is awesome for what it is.
The mechanics of the game are simple and it will take all of 20-25 minutes to play, even though there are tactical depths to the game, depending on your dice rolls.
That’s because the layout of the map is different each time, making many of your decisions depend on the makeup.
It’s not that Japan changes shape.
It’s not a Transformer or anything (RIP Peter Cullen).
No, each game, the provinces are seeded with a number from 2-12.
That’s the order they score in (ascending), which becomes very important.
Lots of other important stuff in there too.
Read MoreBGG Top Games – 4301 – 4400
Welcome to another look at a century of Boardgame Geek game rankings!
These posts have been really cool for me because of the conversations they’ve started with friends and colleagues, but they’ve usually had at least a few games that I’ve played and can talk about with some semblance of knowledge.
That may not be the case for the next couple of weeks, though.
We’re getting down into the areas where I’m lucky to have played a couple of them, but that is actually a blessing in disguise in some ways.
This gives me an opportunity to talk about games that might be of interest!
Really quickly, because this is the first time that this has happened.
After writing last week’s post (but before it actually posted), I actually played a game that was in that century.
On Sunday, between writing and posting, I played Hanami (currently #4019, so maybe it qualifies for another experiment?), which is a reimplementation of the classic Samurai system, and it’s actually quite good!
I did enjoy it and I wonder if this will ever happen again?
It might!
Also, speaking of last week, we have two experiments still going on that I want to check in on.
The Game Makers (from Bezier Games) is freshly published and we are going to track how high it goes, since it happened to be in a century that I was writing about.
When last week’s post went live, it was #3420. I’m currently writing this on Thursday evening last week, and it’s at #3409.
Seems to be slowing down, but we’ll see what it is when this posts. Which is #3265.
Not gangbusters, but still moving steadily!
The other experiment is Wingspan Pocket, which hit the ground running and is racing up the charts.
When last week posted, it was #2879. As of when I’m writing this on Thursday, it’s currently #2728!
Slowed down a little bit since last week, but now (at the time of this posting) it’s #2417.
Top 100, here we come?
We’ll keep an eye out.
This week’s century of games can be found here.
Keep in mind that these rankings could change and that favourite game that you were looking for isn’t actually there if you come look at this during the apocalypse.
Because you need a good game to keep you occupied when something like that happens.
And it’s not very good for games I’ve played, with only two (owning one of those).
I’ll talk about those and then get onto some more interesting games (maybe).
Or maybe not!
Since I’m already way over my introduction limit, let’s get started!
Read MoreIs Expertise Overrated? – Era of Experts Review (Inventors of the South Tigris Expansion)
Era of Experts is the expansion for the really long and intricate, but still quite good Inventors of the South Tigris game from Garphill Games.
It has taken a while to actually get enough plays of this expansion in order to do a review.
That’s because the base game itself is quite long and has been difficult to get to the table since I was able to review it.
I had one play of the expansion last year and then…nothing.
I finally got a 3-player game going a couple of weeks ago and managed to get a second play in.
Thank God that this expansion forces you to play the short game.
I don’t think I’ll ever play the long game again, even without the expansion (a 3-player game of that took us 4 hours).
Before I go any further on this one, though, Era of Experts was designed by Shem Phillips and S J MacDonald and was published in 2025. It has artwork from the Mico (Mihajlo Dimitrievski).
After having played it a couple of times, I don’t think I ever want to play the base game without it.
It’s that good.
Is it enough to move the base game further up into my Top 50, or at least prevent it from falling off?
Time will tell.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Game Systems
Those of you who follow this blog (hi, Doug!) know that I’m a huge Final Girl fanboy.
See that page for all of my individual feature film reviews!
I have everything, except maybe some promos and stuff.
I have the Season 3 Ultimate Box and the Season 4 Catch-up box (which is basically the Ultimate box but with only the final Series 4 film as well as other stuff, but room to place the Series 4 films I already have).
The release schedule of the films, every few months, has seemed pretty cool, but since I came in near the end, I have been playing catch up by buying films as they became available.
I didn’t really think anything of their film release schedule until I saw a troll post on Boardgame Geek questioning how Van Ryder Games is handling the releases of this game (which I’m not going to link to, because the guy posts things and then just runs away without engaging) and then this review from user Andrew Clarke.
I’ll talk more about it after the break.
Read MoreBGG Top Games – 4201 – 4300
The last century of the BGG Top Games list was actually not too bad.
Lots of nostalgic wargames for me, plus having played a few of the really cool games on the list.
Still, the number of games played wasn’t the largest.
Will this century be better?
Last week did spark a bit of cool discussion among my friends, along with an explanation for how one game jumped really high between when I started the post and when it actually posted.
That’s what I love about doing these!
That type of discussion is priceless.
Not only that, but I’m monitoring two experiments from the last two weeks.
These are two hot new games that coincided with the century I was writing about, but which are going to go much, much higher.
First, The Game Makers (the hot new game from Bezier Games) was at #3550 at the time of posting last week.
Right now, the game is at #3420
A huge jump!
Probably even more of a jump, however, is the brand new “gonna be a huge hit” Wingspan game from Elizabeth Hargrave and Stonemaier Games.
Last week, Wingspan Pocket was at #3466 at the time of posting.
Now it’s at #2879.
Top 100 here we come!
Nothing new like that this week, but let’s get into it so my editor doesn’t start hitting me with a wet towel for going over the word count.
This week’s list can be found here, but keep the usual caveat in mind. Blah blah some lame future joke blah blah things can change blah blah blah.
This week’s stats are 5 games played and 3 owned (2 of those played), but it’s a bit of a cheat because one of those is a standalone expansion.
Ouch, my introductory word quota is behind me, so let’s begin!
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 04 – Closed for Renovation (The Sequel)
If you’re experiencing deja vu with this post title, think of us poor Combat Commander ladder players!
June’s game was the same scenario, but how the sides were chosen was different (and of course, the opponent would be different, most likely).
Didn’t matter to me. I was still the Americans, and I was still destined to lose.
Or was I?
Welcome to another tale from the Combat Commander ladder, administered by the indescribable Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame (ok, I guess by calling him indescribable, I just described him? Is that a paradox? My brain hurts).
Anyway, as mentioned in June’s post, this scenario has an American force of Elite and Line troops attacking a rather large building in the center of the map that’s loaded with Germans.
No, it’s a chateau, not a castle.
And it contains nothing but death, in the form of two heavy machine guns.
Surprisingly, in this sequel play of this scenario, the Americans are actually winning a bunch of games, so it’s not as lopsided as I mentioned in the June write-up.
Would I be one of ones who did better?
This month’s opponent was Max R from out east, so we had to once again navigate a 3-hour time difference. Thankfully, he didn’t mind being up late on a Friday night.
(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up)
The Germans (Max – grey) set up everything except a Weapons Team and the Infantry Gun, anywhere up to 9 hexes from the bottom edge of the board, though the Wire has to be adjacent to a building hex.
Then the Americans (Me – green) set up in the top row, followed by the Germans setting up their IG.
After seeing Max’s set up, I didn’t change a thing from my June setup, thinking that it was more an execution problem than a bad plan. He only had one squad on the right side, though I figured as soon as I put a major force over there, the Infantry Gun was going there.
I was right.
The only change was that now Buehler was attacking the chateau while Wray was attacking down the road. I was also looking to possibly flank the chateau rather than exiting, but we would see what happened.
Once again, the American radio would be heavily relied upon for smoke, because that is a lot of open ground to cover.
Also, I had no idea that there were a bunch of freakin’ zombies in this field.
More on that later.
Let’s see whether I could change history by actually doing something positive this time.
Read MoreI Think This is an OSHA Violation – Final Girl – The Marrek Murders Review
I mean, with all of these death traps scattered around the warehouse, who do we sue?
Another in the Series 3 feature films for the wonderful Final Girl solo franchise, we once again have a film that adds a bunch of stuff to keep track of and modify the usual gameplay for the game.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as long as the fiddliness doesn’t get too bad.
(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up)
The Marrek Murders patterns itself after the Saw movies (or at least the killer, anyway) and takes place in a warehouse that’s just brimming with traps.
That’s because the Tormentor just loves her traps!
It’s how she gets her jollies, since she’s actually pretty weak otherwise.
The Marrek Murders was designed by A.J. Porfirio with artwork by Agnieszka Dabrowiecka and was published by Van Ryder Games in 2025.
As I said, the Tormentor love her traps, so she has a lot of similarities to Jigsaw from the Saw films.
The Marrek Warehouse doesn’t seem to be from a horror movie that I know, but I don’t know a lot about horror movies so I’m probably missing it.
There’s a lot to like about this one, so let’s get started.
Read More