Top 50 Games Played of All Time – 2026 Edition (#40-31)

This year’s second installment of the Top 50 games played of all time and it’s the second on two weeks!

I’m on a roll.

Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up the weekly basis for this so I can be done in early February.

The whole idea of doing a Top 50 list is just so thrilling to me, because it means that I’ve actually played enough to make one.

Did I think, almost 9 years ago, that I would be doing this and have played over 650 games?

I don’t think so.

One of the neat things about doing the comparisons for a list like this is seeing the movement from one year to the next list two years later.

Some of it was really amazing.

My biggest drop off of the Top 50 from 2024 was Heaven & Ale, which had a massive nosedive from 50 down to 258!

I’m not sure exactly why that is, except I haven’t played it since 2022 and just thinking about trying to score the thing makes my head hurt.

It was intriguing to me back in the day, and I certainly wouldn’t say no to trying it again to see if I can rekindle the fire.

But I’m not eager to.

Which is too bad, because the mechanics of it are quite interesting.

Oh well, you can’t have everything.

Anyway, before we get started on this week’s 10 games, I just want to repeat the caveat that while I have played a hefty number of games, I haven’t played that many.

A large number of well-regarded games are not going to be represented here.

So you Skyteam fans are just going to have to land the damned plane yourselves!

However, I am rooting for you.

Also, many of the ratings are after one play, so things can change drastically in another two years.

With that, let’s begin!

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

Designer: Jacob Fryxelius

Artists: Isaac Fryxelius, Daniel Fryxelius

Players: 1-5

2024 Rank: 16

Terraforming Mars is almost a mainstay at conventions for us now, with at least one play per weekend.

It’s not so much at our Sundays anymore, though that could because the one person who owns it has the Big Box and it’s not something that you bring just in case you might play.

But I still do play it a fair amount each year!

I do like the tile placement and definitely the card play.

I’m still involved with numerous asynchronous Boardgame Arena games with my friends.

This game really shines with the Prelude expansion, and even more so with Prelude 2 because these are Prelude cards that encompass all of the expansions.

They are so cool.

Preludes with Colonies are great!

The game can run a little long.

Don’t do what we did one convention Friday and think “oh, we have 5 players and it’s 10:00 pm, but we all know the game, so why not Terraforming Mars?”

Just don’t do it.

I beg of you.

I still made it to Angelina’s the next morning for breakfast, so that was good at least.

Still, it’s always going to be an option for us because I really do like it.

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

Designers: Sydney Engelstein, Jacob Fryxelius, Nick Little

Artists: a lot!

Players: 1-4

2024 Rank: 15

Even though both games dropped, both Terraforming Mars and Ares Expedition remain joined at the hip, with Ares coming in one step ahead of its forebear, just like last time.

Which shows that I still do prefer Ares Expedition, mainly because there are more opportunities to play it!

Even with the expansions, it takes just over an hour so it works at the end of a game day if you have a bit of time to kill (though you do need more time than Fliptoons takes, for example).

This game is just so straightforward, and it does have that Race for the Galaxy feel, where you are choosing an action and while everybody gets to do all of the chosen actions, you get a bit of a bonus for the action you chose.

Maybe you get extra megacredits because you chose “Production,” or you get to a discount because you chose the Green action.

The expansions, with upgraded action cards, milestones and goals, and the Infrastructure track, make this game even better, but the base game itself is still very good.

It still has a bit of the Terraforming Mars feel, with the tags and all of that, but it’s much more than just a streamlined version of that game.

It’s a solid game in its own right.

It’s not a game to build a game day around, but it is a nice game to include in a “let’s play some shorter games and fill up a day” game days.

38) Unconscious Mind (2024 – Fantasia Games)

Designers: Laskas, Jonny Pac, Yoma, Antonio Zax

Artists: Andrew Bosley, Vincent Dutrait, Yoma

Players: 1-4

2024 Rank: Not Played

This ranking is almost totally based on potential and how intriguing the game is, since I’ve only played it once.

This is a worker placement game about psychology, specifically Freud, and it’s just a fascinating game.

It’s more than just worker placement, though, as it’s engine-building as you are trying to diagnose various patients in order to get points.

Of course, that part is all a bit abstract, as you are basically trying to get the right symbols to match their needs.

There’s just something about this game that grabs me and makes me want to play it again, though.

The worker placement aspect, where you are putting ideas out on an action and doing it, is really intriguing.

The workers block that specific space, but the action is not blocked if there are other empty action spaces around it. When you place the idea marker, you have multiple choices of actions to do, and that is really cool.

The rondel with treatment options just adds to all that.

I only have one play of it, so it might prove to be a game that I end up not really caring for, but my one play (even though I sucked really badly at it) made me want to play it again.

Sadly, one of the guys who owns the game moved away, so I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to play it again.

It’s a complicated game (so my wife would hate it), but it’s just something I’d like to try again.

Watch, I’ll play it again and in 2028, it will be down at #300.

But it will have been worth it!

37) Combat Commander: Pacific (2008 – GMT Games)

Designers: John Foley, Chad Jensen, Kai Jensen

Artists: Lee Brimmicombe-Wood, Chad Jensen, Rodger B. MacGowan, Leland Myrick, Mark Simonitch

Players: 2

2024 Rank: 27

Combat Commander: Pacific falls a bit more this year after a big fall 2 years ago.

Of course, you know I love the Combat Commander system, so it will probably always remain on the Top 50, but other games are jumping ahead of it.

I think it’s because it’s just a bit too random, even though one of the biggest random things from Europe is actually removed in this one.

In Pacific, instead of a “Recover” card that lets you try (but maybe not succeed) to rally all of your broken units, you instead get “Revive” points that you spend to rally specific units.

I also don’t really care for the fact that your opponent can break your weapons rather than it just happening randomly.

Yes, randomness could be a bad thing, but I’m not sure how “I play this card so now your major weapon is broken” is really that thematic.

Plus the possibility of a major turn that just completely destroys the scenario for the Japanese (an Event that can suddenly put you in the Banzai posture).

I do still really like the game, though, because the core Combat Commander mechanics are still there and really fun to play.

I love the Caves and how they work, how the Japanese have really strong morale but if you manage to break them, they are terrible.

I will never not play Combat Commander (either version), and this one is still a great one.

Just not quite as great as it used to be, in my opinion.

36) Pax Pamir 2nd Edition (2019 – Wehrlegig Games)

Designer: Cole Wehrle

Artist: Cole Wehrle

Players: 1-5

2024 Rank: 11

Another Cole Wehrle game!

I have played this a couple of times recently on Rally the Troops and Boardgame Arena, but I haven’t played it on the table since 2020.

I must get that rectified soon!

That’s probably why it’s fallen from the 11 spot, though.

It’s still a great game with area control, a bit of negotiation (just a touch, so it doesn’t annoy me like many negotiation games do), and a card tableau-builder as well.

I love the effects on the cards and what they can do, but what is really intriguing is the faction alliance system.

You are choosing, through your card play, who you support (the Russians, the British, or the Afghan government) and you are trying to be their best supporter compared to the other players.

I love the cloth map too!

It’s just such a great presentation and it’s stayed in my brain even as I haven’t played it in so long.

35) The Bell of Treason: 1938 Munich Crisis in Czechoslovakia (2025 – GMT Games)

Designer: Petr Mojžíš

Artist: Tomasz Niedzinski

Players: 1-2

2024 Rank: Not Played

The Bell of Treason takes the best parts of Fort Sumter and Red Flag Over Paris and combines them into a brilliant 2-player lunch-time game about a subject we haven’t really seen many games about.

The game still has contested sections with three different areas that players are vying for control of, but this time the placement of cubes in adjacent areas is not that obvious.

It’s still a card-driven game where you will be playing a card for its event or its Operation Points.

You can play an opponent’s event for the OP and your opponent can then discard a card with the same or a higher number of OPs to play it out of the discard pile if they want to.

In this game, players are on the two sides of the debate in Czechoslovakia in 1938, in regards to the crisis of Hitler’s attempts to take over the country.

There’s the “Concede” side, which advocates conceding to the Germans to avoid war, and the “Defend” side wants to resist it, militarily if necessary.

Usually in the “Final Crisis” games, with a couple of exceptions it’s easy to see space adjacency so that you know when you can place influence cubes in an adjacent space.

However, as you can see from the map above, there are a lot of 1-way arrows, meaning that adjacency only goes one way!

There are also plenty of arrows that move from one crisis dimension (group of 3 spaces of the same colour) to another one.

Finally, while you are trying to gain victory points, you always have to be aware of the looming Nazi menace, and it is theoretically possible that noone wins, if the Germans invade before the Czech military is ready for them (this means that the Defend faction did not encourage mobilization fast enough).

This game is just so tense (unless I’m playing Bryan, in which case it’s a foregone conclusion) and I love that about it.

It’s definitely my favourite Final Crisis game and I hope GMT keeps coming out with games like this.

34) Fliptoons (2025 – Thunderworks Games)

Designer: Jordy Adan, Renato Simões

Artist: Diego Sá

Players: 1-4

2024 Rank: Not Played

And then there’s Fliptoons, which appears to be all the rage (at least at the Dice Tower), probably because it’s a fun card game, a bit chaotic but you can direct that chaos a little bit by making sure you draft the appropriate cards for your deck.

Each round, you’ll flip 6 (possibly more) cards out into a 3×2 tableau (or is that 2×3? I always get those mixed up) and then total up your Fame points.

Your initial deck is 6 cards, but as you add more, there will be some cards that don’t come out.

Also, some cards will “stack” onto another card, making it so you can have more than 6 out.

The market that you can buy cards from is based on the number in the lower left corner of the card, so available cards will shift in price depending on what comes out.

As soon as somebody gets 30 fame in a round, that will trigger the final round (and that person will get +3 fame in that final round).

Whoever gets the most Fame out of their tableau in that final round wins!

I love that you can win the game even though you didn’t trigger the final round, meaning you’re not out of the game.

You could have had a bad round and your opponent had a really good one, but then in the final round their dealt cards sucked while yours were very good.

The art on this is amazing, the play is fun and it can be a perfect lunch time game as it takes about 30-45 minutes.

I just love everything about this game.

33) Smartphone Inc. (2018 – Cosmodrome Games)

Designer: Ivan Lashin

Artist: Viktor Miller Gausa

Players: 1-5

2024 Rank: 38

The first increase this year!

I don’t normally go in for economic games (you’ll notice that Brass is nowhere to be seen), but for some reason Smartphone Inc just speaks to me.

It’s a game about producing and selling smartphones around the world.

You’re establishing yourself in different markets, spreading your reach like a virus, but each region has a saturation point and after that, nobody else can break into it.

Also, each round you are deciding what price point to sell your phones at. The lower the price, the earlier in turn order you will go, but also the less amount of money you will receive when selling!

That push and pull is so delicious, as is the decision on when you should just go for the high-priced phones to bring in the cash and damn turn order.

You’re also developing phone technologies, of which each region wants a certain number of these types.

Each round, you will also be formulating what actions you will be doing by arranging your action pieces in a way so that the actions you want will be showing.

You have to overlap at least 2 spaces on a card, so you can’t do everything!

The whole game is quite intricate and normally that turns me off when we’re talking about intricate economics.

But it works here, and that’s why it’s also the first position increase in my Top 50.

32) Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon (2024 – Sorry We Are French/Pandasaurus)

Designers: Fabio Lopiano, Nestore Mangone

Artist: David Sitbon

Players: 1-4

2024 Rank: Not Played

Shackleton Base is a game that was introduced to me through a Heavy Cardboard playthrough, and it looked so cool that I knew I had to play it.

It’s an action selection game about colonizing the Moon, and helping three different corporations (which are random each time out of…8 possibilities, I believe? Correct me if I’m wrong) to exploit opportunities there as well.

You’re building stuff in the crater, getting them off of your playerboard and thus unlocking other things possibly.

But, as an action, you can also place one of the astronauts you drafted at the beginning of the round onto one edge of the crater and then do that astronaut’s action on all of the connected spaced.

So that blue astronaut can activate all of the spaces stretching out from where he is (so 4 in this case).

If you have a building in the space, then activation is free.

If you don’t, you have to pay the person with the biggest presence in order to activate the space.

Yellow astronauts get resources. Blue ones get to activate the attached corporation tokens, and red astronauts will get you money.

You can also do command actions with the astronauts, which if you use the right colour, will also get you a bonus action (but otherwise you can use any colour).

The corporations in the game are very cool, all diverse and giving you different options for how to exploit them.

This game just really captured my attention and I want to play it more.

I hope it makes it out to the table again soon, but right now its first play gets it fairly high in my estimation!

31) Kanban: Driver’s Edition (2014 – Stronghold Games)

Designer: Vital Lacerda

Artist: Naomi Robinson, William Bricker, Vital Lacerda

Players: 2-4 players

2024 Rank: Not Played

Finally, we get to the first (but I don’t think last? Knowing that would require me to actually look ahead) Vital Lacerda game on this list.

I’d been dying to play Kanban for a long time, even trying a few asynchronous games on a now-defunct web site.

Learning that way didn’t really stick, so I was glad to finally get it to the table last March.

This is different from the EV version that’s available from Eagle Gryphon Games (2020) which I haven’t played. This particular version is no longer available.

But it’s still fun!

You’re making cars, all the while dealing with the manager from Hell, Sandra.

It has the typical Lacerda action selection mechanism, where it seems very simple.

Take one action each turn.

But in this case, you’re planning your actions by placing your workers in the different work zones and then they are executed from left to right.

And Sandra moves from one section to another, so she may end up acting before some of your actions.

You have to get car designs, manufacture the parts that they need, use those parts to send a car to the assembly line, and then either upgrade the car design or send it out for final production.

You can also do extra training to become really good at certain departments.

You know, like some workaholics out there that have to be better than all their other fellow employees.

Sandra will judge whatever department she ends up in, so players who have the least expertise in that department will suffer some penalties (or, if you play with “nice” Sandra, whoever has the most gets a benefit).

Eventually there will be meetings where you are presenting things to boost your VP and prestige.

Part (and only part!) of the reason I loved this game is that, in my one play (after our aborted play where we ran out of time but also played it a bit wrong), I came within 2 points of winning!

But the combination of how the actions work, how you have to be aware of what Sandra will be evaluating, and how you have to be efficient to get cars built with maximum efficiency, really made me love this game.

Are there better Lacerda games?

Probably, though I haven’t played them yet (he says, not remembering if there’s one higher!).

I’m not 100% sure what, if any, changes there are in the EV edition, but I wouldn’t mind playing that for the comparison (and to knock another Top 100 BGG game off of my list).

But I don’t know anybody who has it!

In the meantime, I really enjoyed this one and would definitely play it again.

There you have it!

The next 10 in my Top 50 Games Played of all time.

What do you think of any of these?

Anything you love? Hate? Have a love/hate relationship with?

Let me know in the comments.

Top 50 Games Played of All Time – 2026 Edition (50-41)
Top 50 Games Played of All Time – 2026 Edition (40-31) – You’re here!