Top 50 Games Played of All Time – 2024 Edition (#20-11)

How our tastes change over time is always kind of interesting to look at.

As a kid, I loved Brussels Sprouts!

Now, I really really hate them.

Ok, I’m kidding…nobody sane likes Brussels Sprouts.

But you get my point!

Things you like as a kid, or didn’t like as a kid, you may now feel the opposite.

Hell, that can change from year to year!

Which is definitely the case in our boardgame likes and dislikes.

Not in general, of course.

If you hate worker placement games, you’re not going to suddenly develop a taste for them.

But a particular worker placement game may get old and tired for you, or maybe you’ll have an amazing experience with it and a game that you were kind of meh about now ranks really highly for you.

I think that’s why the Dice Tower can do these lists annually and have major changes, and why I can do them every couple of years.

All that to say, welcome to the beginning of the second half of my Top 50 games played of all time!

Today we’re counting down #20-11, so we’re getting really close to the top of the top.

Will there be any surprises in there?

Maybe. And one friend will finally have his curiosity satisfied.

The usual caveats, of course.

Many of these entries are from only one play, so they could very well change if I get chances to play them again and again.

Hopefully for the better, but you never know!

Secondly, I’ve only played a little over 500 games, so there are a bunch of really popular and highly-ranked games that are just not going to be on this list.

So you War of the Ring fans can just go find your so-called “ring” yourselves and leave me out of it.

With all of that understood, let’s begin!

20) Tyrants of the Underdark (2016 – Gale Force Nine)

Designers: Peter Lee, Rodney Thompson, Andrew Veen

Artists: Lots! (and last time I posted this, none were listed…)

Players: 2-4

2022 Rank: 7

Another drop out of the Top 10!

Will there be any old ones left up there?

I think the main reason this has dropped is that I just haven’t been able to play it in quite a while.

Which is too bad, because it’s one of my favourite genres: deckbuilder with a board mechanism of some kind.

In the game, you are a faction of the Drow dark elves and you are vying for control of the vast caverns of the Underdark.

The interesting thing about this game is that the cards that you can purchase for your deck come out of two different factions. The base game comes with four factions that you can choose two from in order to put together a market deck, and there is an expansion with two more factions.

As with most deckbuilders, you play the cards in your hand, gaining Influence to let you purchase cards as well as points that will let you deploy troops to the board, working toward area control of certain cities in the Underdark, as well as possibly just outright killing opposing units.

The cards will also often have special abilities that let you do things too.

Another cool aspect of the game is the Promotion mechanism, which works similar to the “burying” mechanism in Valley of the Kings. Your cards are worth a certain number of points at the end of the game.

However, if you manage to promote them (using other cards’ abilities to do so, usually), they are out of your deck and useless to you, but they are worth more points at the end of the game.

There are a couple of different strategies that you can use to succeed in the game, which I truly like as well.

This is a game I really need to get to the table again.

A 2nd edition of the game came out a couple of years ago, which revised the components somewhat and also made it so all cards look and feel the same (the original expansion’s cards were a bit stiffer than the base game’s cards, making them stand out a bit if you didn’t sleeve them).

I still really love this game. I just want to renew my love for it by actually playing it again.

Soon!

19) Obsession (2018 – Kayenta Games)

Designer: Dan Hallagan

Artist: Dan Hallagan

Players: 1-4

2022 Rank: New (Hadn’t Played)

This one was really a surprise for me (and for others, I know!)

I had been wanting to play it for a while now, partially because it is currently in the BGG Top 100 and I want to play as many of those as I can.

But also because I had heard it was a really great game.

I finally got the chance to play it on Christmas Eve and realized that all of the hype was real.

Is it because it was my first and only play?

Maybe, but I’m beginning to doubt it after a couple of asynchronous plays on Boardgame Arena.

In the game, you are basically vying for the attention of a brother or sister of a prominent family, trying to get them to join your family, at least for a little while.

You are also trying to get the best estate to attract the local gentry to events at it.

Each turn, you activate one of the rooms that you have on your estate, perhaps to hold a cricket match, or maybe have a musical outdoor constitutional.

The cards in your hand are the “friends” (I use that term loosely) that you can have come to these events.

Maybe these friends will attract new and better friends?

I like the mechanisms of building your estate up by buying new rooms, using those rooms to then flip them over for more points (or sometimes just positive points when the are initially negative points). You have to be careful buying rooms near the end of the game because you can only activate one room each turn and there are only so many turns!

Having to have the right servants available for either the activity or for some of the guests you are having over makes the game a bit more thinky, especially because you can spend reputation to refresh your servants (once used, it takes two turns before a servant can be used again normally).

I just think the choices in this game are really interesting, and I really loved what the game provided.

It helped that I won, but only because it illustrated the different roads to victory you might choose.

Awesome game, I doubt that further plays will make this go down, but who knows?

It might even go up next time (in 2026, wow, that seems far away).

18) Fantastic Factories (2019 – Metafactory Games)

Designers: Joseph Z Chen, Justin Faulkner

Artist: Joseph Z Chen

Players: 1-5

2022 Rank: 16

This game has been remarkably stable over the years, hovering around this area. In 2019, it wasn’t in the Top 25 but I think it was close.

Then last time it was #16.

It hasn’t fallen much!

I know some people don’t like this game because there’s a bit too much luck in it and you can get stuck if your dice rolls aren’t very good.

But I don’t really care about that.

The game consists of you getting blueprint cards into your hand, and the resources to help you build them.

These buildings will sometimes get you VP at the end of the game but also will do something to help your engine, depending on the type of building it is.

It could actually mitigate some of your dice, gain resources, or maybe let you use a die to produce some good stuff.

It’s always good to produce goods, because once somebody has produced 12 goods, that triggers the endgame.

Your player board is always available to help you produce energy or steel as well, though if you roll really badly you may not be able to get exactly what you need.

The Manufactions expansion does help with that, giving you vitamins that let you adjust dice, but you do have to get a way to produce vitamins or they may not help you for long.

I do see the problem, but it just hasn’t hampered my enjoyment of this game at all.

It’s a wonderful game.

17) Underwater Cities (2018 – Rio Grande Games)

Designer: Vladimír Suchý

Artists: Uildrim, Milan Vavroň

Players: 1-4

2022 Rank: New (hadn’t played)

Underwater Cities is a game that I had wanted to play for such a long time.

It had such a good reputation, it was in the BGG Top 100 (still solidly is), and had some comparisons to one of my favourite games, Terraforming Mars (even though there are plenty of differences).

I finally got it to the table…twice in one month!

The first time I tried it, I almost won (came within a couple of points) and I really seemed to understand it.

It was one of those rare engine-building games that I just seemed to “get” right off the bat.

But that could have been a one-off.

Second play…I won by a couple of points!

It seems that wasn’t a fluke.

In the game, you are trying to build an underwater community of domed cities.

What do I love about this game?

I think one of the things is definitely the ability to combo cards and your resource gathering.

Like the Autonomous Systems card above, that lets you get an additional credit for each connected city that has a desalination plant.

Or the Negotiation Team that lets you use the card’s effect that you discarded when using the “Always Available” Action slot (usually that’s just a way to get cards when you’re stuck).

It’s definitely an engine-building game of a sort, as you are trying to spread out your cities, connect them with tunnels, and have them producing resources and points as much as you can.

I think the action selection mechanism is also pretty cool.

Each player will be choosing 3 actions in a round, but no action can be taken more than once. So your decision space will start getting constricted as the round goes on.

The game’s just tight enough that I really love it. There are always so many things you want to do, but you only have 3 actions and the one you wanted might have been taken already!

It’s been a while since I played it, so it’s probably time that it comes to the table again.

16) Terraforming Mars (2016 – Stronghold Games/Fryx Games)

Designer: Jacob Fryxelius

Artists: Isaac Fryxelius, Daniel Fryxelius

Players: 1-5

2022 Rank: 8

Another Top 10 casualty!!

This time it’s not because I haven’t played it in a while. I have played a fair amount of Terraforming Mars recently, either on Boardgame Arena or on the table.

It’s still in my top 100, so it’s obviously not a bad game, but I guess some of the luster has fallen off of it for some reason.

It’s long (depending on the players, of course), it takes a while to set up and there are just games that do the same thing but better, in my opinion.

I do like the table presence this game has, though. Between the sometimes huge tableau of cards you have in front of you to how the board looks as it slowly gets terraformed, it’s quite the striking presence.

I like how you can concentrate on a couple of different ways to do things, and you can still win! You don’t have to be the one terraforming the planet, as long as you are getting out a bunch of VP cards, getting points for some of your blue cards where you collect things, or what have you.

I do think this game really needs the Prelude expansion to put it over the top, though. That gives you a bit of a boost at the beginning of the game as well as helps you decide a direction to take your game.

The app continues to have some problems (including the fact that in asynchronous games, only the final player can see the results. They have to tell the other players. What the hell?), but it just introduced the Venus expansion (I haven’t played that yet on the app) and it was a fun way to play the game before.

With it on Boardgame Arena now, though, I will be looking forward to a lot more plays.

Maybe this ranking will go up again?

15) Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition (2021 – Stronghold Games/Fryx Games)

Designers: Sydney Engelstein, Jacob Fryxelius, Nick Little

Artists: Lots!

Players: 1-4

2022 Rank: 21

Or maybe it won’t…because its successor has surpassed it!

Yes, Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition has now moved ahead of the original in my estimation.

Why is that?

It’s fast (about 50-60 minutes without the expansions, maybe 70 minutes with), it uses the Race for the Galaxy mechanism of “everybody chooses the action they want to do; then everybody can do all of the actions chosen, with the player who chose the action getting a stronger one”.

You still have a huge tableau of cards in front of you, and you’re still terraforming Mars. You’re just not putting anything actually on a board except Ocean tiles.

There is the confusion at the end of the game, or even in the middle when one of the parameters is maxed out, that can really be annoying.

“I’m raising the Oxygen twice in the Development Phase to max it out, anybody else?”

“I am too, so we both get two Terraforming Ratings. Even though my cards let me do it three times.”

That’s the downside of simultaneous actions, and it’s the one thing that slows the game down.

The expansions (except Crisis, which is the cooperative one which I’ve never played) really make this game shine even more.

The ability to upgrade your action cards is so cool.

It also adds the milestones and awards from the original game to this one, which also greatly helps.

I’ll willingly play the original as well (it’s #16 after all!), but this one is even better for my taste because it streamlines so many things.

14) Schadenfreude (2021 – Studio Turbine)

Designer: ctr

Artist: N/A

Players: 3-5

2022 Rank: New (hadn’t played)

We finally reach what is my favourite trick-taking card game right now.

(I guess that’s a spoiler that no other trick-taking games are on this list?)

This is such a fabulous game, because it takes the normal trick-taking mechanism and turns it on its head with a vengeance.

You are trying to get a ton of points, but not too many points. The first player to hit 40 points at the end of the round ends the game…but they lose!

The winner is the player closest to 40 without going over.

You can’t just avoid getting points, or you will lose.

There are four suits, like most of these games. There are a couple of cards in each suit that are negative. Then there is one Zero and one Ten card that can be any suit.

When you win a trick, you collect the card you won it with and any non-suit cards that were in the trick.

If you get two of the same number, they will cancel each other out and you won’t score them.

Whether that’s good or bad depends on how close to 40 you are.

Oh, right. I forgot.

The winner of the trick isn’t the highest number played.

It’s the second-highest number! So you can avoid winning a trick if you play the highest number of that suit…unless everybody else is out of that suit, of course.

I like that each suit has a symbol as well as a colour, since the blue and purple are really way too close for comfort.

Just pay attention to the symbol, though, and you’re fine.

Thus, it’s colorblind friendly.

I talked about the cool twists that Cat in the Box has, but this one is even cooler.

I love the balance that you have to have of getting points but not going overboard.

It’s a tricky one!

(Editor: “Ugh, that was terrible”)

13) Amalfi: Renaissance (2023 – Sylex)

Designer: Takeo Yamada

Artist: Urabe Rocinante

Players: 1-4

2022 Rank: New (hadn’t played)

Another game that’s new to this list, and I think the reason I really love Amalfi is that your resources are your workers and your workers are your resources.

What do I mean?

Well, you are exploring and trading in the Mediterranean (sorry, Tom) and you are using action spaces to do so.

Your ships are your workers, and you are sending them to the action space in order to do something.

However, the remaining ships you have are actually your resources when you do that.

So if you go to a space that tells you to send two ships to the Wood resource, you do that on your player board.

Then you can use those resources to do other things, like play one of the character cards in your hand.

You just move the ships that were in the Wood space back down to your available space.

They become workers again!

Inevitably, though, you are going to run out of ships. You do have to build more since you only have four to start with. You will run out of things to do with them during your round and you may have to pass.

Or you may use your last ship because you need that one more resource to do something, moving it to the spent area of your board.

I love that, and I love the variety of character cards and ship locations that you can build that only you can use (though somebody can put a Lighthouse on your action space, giving them a benefit when you use it)

There’s just so much to love about this game. Variable end of round goals that scale to what round they come out in.

Why don’t more games do that?

You’re going to have fewer user-controlled action spaces early in the game, so you get more points for the ones you do have if that goal comes out in Round 1.

It’s ingenious!

This is another game that I kind of “got” right off the bat, which did make it more satisfying.

I’m not saying I’m great at it, but I don’t embarrass myself.

That certainly helps put it in my Top 20.

If you can play this one on Boardgame Arena, I highly recommend it.

12) Wingspan (2019 – Stonemaier Games)

Designer: Elizabeth Hargrave

Artists: Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas, Greg May, Beth Sobel

Players: 1-5

2022 Rank: 12

You know what’s amazing?

I did the Pubmeeple ranking for my Top 25 in 2022 and my Top 50 this year.

I clicked one way or the other on a couple of thousand matchups.

And Wingspan stayed exactly where it was at number 12.

That’s uncanny!

Wingspan is another great tableau-building card game where this time you are trying to build an aviary full of beautiful birds.

Birds that will get you points.

And lay eggs.

And get you more points!

I have to admit that I’ve mostly played this on the wonderful Monster Couch app version of the game, but I have played it on the table a few times and it’s still a winner even there.

The table presence is actually very cool, with the birdfeeder dice tower that lets you roll the food dice, as well as everybody having their own player board with all of the pretty birds on them.

Some people say that this game is terrible, that as soon as you see your opening hand of birds and goal cards, you can almost predict what your score is going to be.

I don’t really share that criticism, though.

I really like how you have a certain number of actions each round, and they will get less each round as you are using one of your action cubes for the end of round goal.

Things get tighter, but hopefully you have some good birds out on your board to make each action you take that much stronger.

The expansions add a bunch of new mechanics and birds from different continents.

I have only played the Oceania expansion once on the table, but I’ve played the app version a few times and I really like what it adds.

As I said, some people don’t like this one, so you might not either.

But I suggest you try it, just to see.

You might love it.

11) Pax Pamir: 2nd Edition (2019 – Wehrlegig Games)

Designer: Cole Wehrle

Artist: Cole Wehrle

Players: 1-5

2022 Rank: 15

This one is a rarity!

I haven’t played Pax Pamir in ages, other than a couple of asynchronous games on Boardgame Arena.

Yet it’s gone up in my rankings.

What?????

This is just such a neat game of indirect area control, a fascinating look at the history of a section of the world that is not much studied outside of academia, and it has such interesting mechanics.

I think it going up means I need to play it again.

This is a game about the “Great Game” in Afghanistan in the 1800s, between the British, the Russians, and local Afghan chieftains.

However, you are not any of those.

Instead, you are trying to have the most influence with one of them, and then want to help them dominate the board.

Which is a really cool cloth board.

You will be collecting cards and playing them to your tableau in front of you, and these cards will help you place pieces on the board based on the faction that you are currently aligned with.

You can also only have so many cards in your tableau, so you have to play that wisely.

The faction influencing, the buying of cards, the spy mechanism (which can let you destroy cards of your opponents, or at least make them have to ask you nicely if they want to use them), all of them are so great.

You’re trying to balance all of the factions so none of them (except yours!) gets too prominent.

It’s just so good, and crunchy and brain burny (that’s not a word, but I don’t care), that I really want to play it again.

We’re almost to the end! This was the penultimate episode of my Top 50.

I wonder what the Top 10 has in store? Considering how many have already dropped out?

You can probably guess a few of them if you follow this blog at all.

What do you think of these 10?

Let me know in the comments.

Top 50 Games Played of All Time – 2024 Edition (50-41)
Top 50 Games Played of All Time – 2024 Edition (40-31)
Top 50 Games Played of All Time – 2024 Edition (30-21)
Top 50 Games Played of All Time – 2024 Edition (20-11) – You’re here!