BGG Top Games – 2101 – 2200

It’s been a short hiatus for these posts since I’ve had end of month stuff to do, but after a couple of weeks, we are back!

Once again we are going through a century of games rated on Boardgame Geek, from 2101 to 2200.

This week there are a few decent games in here, though not a huge number that I’m that interested in.

As I said last time, though, sometimes taking a look at these rankings that are further down from the Top 1000, you find some up and comers that you know won’t be here for long, but it’s nice to see where they started before they meteor to near the top.

(Meteor is a verb…look it up! I have a new dictionary right here you can do it in…ignore the fact that there’s handwriting in it)

There is one game like that this week, though I’m not sure how far it will meteor. I would definitely guess the Top 1000, but we’ll have to see.

But for now, we can talk about it!

Here’s the list I’m taking these from, of course, though obviously things will change over time and, depending on when you are reading this, it may have changed a lot.

In this week’s list, I own (or have owned) four of them and have played eight of them.

So not too bad!

Let’s begin with stuff I’ve played and then go from there.

The Expanse Board Game (#2123) is a game I played back in 2018 and I don’t have a lot of memories about it, but I do remember that almost seemed like an homage to Twilight Struggle, though it does have a shorter playing time.

It was designed by Geoff Engelstein, so you know that a lot of thought went into the design.

It has a beautiful board and has a deck of action cards that can be used for operations or the event, just like Twilight Struggle.

Of course, if you aren’t one of the factions on the card, you can’t use the event. But your opponent(s) can if they are one of those factions.

In an interesting twist, if you’re playing the card and can do the event, you can spend one CP (Control Point) to save the Event for a later turn. Maybe when it’s more beneficial?

That’s your other option on your turn. Instead of playing an Action Card, you can play a Saved Event.

The deck is also put together so that there are Score cards scattered throughout the deck.

When somebody takes a Score card instead of a regular Action card from the market, then scoring happens.

This is also where you determine who controls the Rocinante, which is a nice twist because you don’t actually get to play any of the main characters of the show (except as Action cards, of course).

Instead, you’re factions from the series.

It was an interesting game, and I certainly wouldn’t mind playing it again.

I’m not even sure if Brendan has it anymore.

The next game I wanted to talk about was Favor of the Pharaoh (#2149), a dice rolling, push your luck (kind of) game from Bezier Games that I own and have played a ton of times.

It’s an Egyptian reskin of To Court the King but with a few added bits and bobs (I’ve never played the original, but we’ll be talking about it in a few weeks if I continue this series).

You’re going to be rolling dice to hopefully acquire tiles that will give you more dice. Because of course, as you go up the tiers, the tiles have an increasing dice cost.

For example, the Serf only requires you to roll a pair. That pair can be on any number of dice, so you could roll 4 dice and as long as you have one pair in there, you can take a Serf (which you can only have one of each tile).

However, the Master Artisan requires three 6s and two 1s to be rolled, meaning you have to have 5 dice!

The tiles will give you bonuses, either new dice or abilities to modify dice, and your quest is to eventually roll 7 of a kind in order to earn the Queen.

Once somebody does that, then everybody else gets a chance to beat that score.

So if you rolled seven 3s, then everybody else can try to roll higher.

If they don’t, you win!

If somebody does (say they rolled seven 5s), then you get one more chance to beat that one, and the Queen gives you an extra die of any number (meaning you will have at least 8 dice).

If you don’t beat them, then they win!

It’s a really fast game full of chucking dice and I do enjoy it when it hits the table.

I do have to mention my one aborted play of Colonial Twilight: The French Algerian War 1954-62 (#2157), a fun 2-player COIN game designed by Brian Train (which is one reason I’m mentioning it!).

I say “aborted play” because after the teach and getting about half-way through the game, it was clear my opponent had missed one of the big things about her faction and there was no way that she could succeed given how far behind she had fallen.

It was still a really intriguing game and I’d like to get it to the table again, though long (or longer than an hour, anyway) 2-player games just don’t get played much nowadays.

But the design is brilliant and maybe I can get somebody to play it at one of the conventions I’m going to.

Though they’d have to have a copy! As I don’t, sadly.

Now we get to the game that I am counting on to be much higher soon. I don’t know if it will get out of this century before this post is published (I’m writing it on Monday and it’s going live on Wednesday), but we’ll see.

Molly House (#2183) is another brilliant game, co-designed by Cole Wehrle but also designed by Jo Kelly (whose entry this was for the Zenobia Awards that year).

This is a game with interesting mechanics that also just makes you think.

The premise is that players are gender-defying mollies in early 18th Century London (where being gender-defying was not only frowned upon, but could be dangerous).

You’re throwing grand masquerade balls (like in the picture above), cruising back alleys, and trying to avoid the morality police who can devastate you with simple exposure.

The Vice cards are an interesting mechanic as they are cards you play to the Masquerades, but they are also collected as reputation with certain factions of the London underworld.

It’s all in the cause of creating joy, and I really love how everybody can lose the game if not enough joy is created.

Which means that sure, nobody was actually killed or put in jail, but it’s still not a good thing.

I had two plays of this in fairly quick succession but haven’t been able to play it again for a while now.

I should change that soon.

One game I have played quite a few times is an engine destruction game called Empire’s End (#2176).

This game is by the great John D. Clair and is a bit of a departure for him.

This takes a mechanic from No Thanks and melds it into the game where you are trying to manage the destruction of your empire so that your remaining empire is better than your opponents.

Or, you could let it all go to shit but get a lot of points in other ways.

The game is played in a series of rounds where there will either be production, a war, an ability to craft, or (for the most part) one or more disasters that will be happening to somebody’s empire.

In this case, a disaster (or two) is revealed and players have to bid on not taking it.

The disaster card will tell you what you have to bid, though you can always bid gold because it is wild.

In a nice twist, though, the person who ends up taking the disaster will also get benefits.

Sure, the empire tile at that position (6 or 8 above) will be destroyed.

But you get all of the goodies that were bid on it.

Not only that, but each disaster has a positive ability or effect on the bottom and you place that card underneath one of your still healthy empire tiles.

The Revolt on the right above will give you 1 point per axe you have in your possession at the end of the game, as long as the tile it is under is still active.

The Revolt on the left will give you another sword for upcoming wars as long as its tile is still active.

So you can get better by losing!

Some people don’t like this “managed destruction” type of game (hi, James!), but I really do enjoy this one.

Finally, Age of War (#2179) is a quick little dice game that I haven’t talked about much but it is still fun to play.

You are attempting to take over castles in feudal Japan by rolling the right combination of dice faces.

If you collect a set of the same colour, not only will you get more points (each individual one is worth the number of points on the card, but a set will be more than the sum), but they can’t be stolen.

If you don’t have a complete set, with one extra die hit, somebody can take it from you.

When you’re rolling the dice, you’re looking for symbols to match one of the rows on the card.

You then choose a card where you can conquer a line and take it.

Remove those dice and roll again.

If you can’t conquer a line with those dice, remove one and roll again.

If you match all of the lines (the Emperor’s Head on the top left is only required if are stealing it), then you take the card.

The game ends when all cards are taken, and then you total your points.

It’s a Knizia dice game, so what can go wrong?

I enjoy this one, but haven’t played it since 2019!

I’ll have to see if somebody still has it.

Now let’s move on to a couple that I may want to play some day.

Daitoshi (#2102) is another game from Devir that looks really interesting, and it might advance out of this list before the post goes live! If you don’t see it, check the 2000s.

A lot of different worker placement and rondel mechanics in this one.

It’s a game about using the power of steam to make your city great, including contributing to the city’s huge steam machine that apparently will be the best thing since…some thing that’s really great.

Let’s blurb this one:

“We have finally perfected the power of steam, and we can now use it to our advantage! We live in an unprecedented era of progress, and new steam-powered inventions are developed faster than ever. Cities are growing, trade is flourishing, and we are developing our most ambitious machine ever: a giant contraption that will bring even more progress to the city. Yes, some trees are being cut down, and the river doesn’t flow as plentifully as before, but there’s still an abundance of trees and water, and we can use the extra space to expand our city — and it’s not like the old creatures on those forests can do anything about it.

On your turn in Daitoshi, you either produce or move your magnate to a new district in which you will be able to send your workers to work, command the exploit of forest or river hexes to fuel your endless need for steam, and perform an action to expand and show your greatness to the city.”

I first heard of this game with a Heavy Cardboard playthrough that I watched (of course) and it looked really intriguing.

I would definitely like to give this one a try, though I’m not intrigued enough to buy it sight unseen.

The game play does look really fun, though, if you like that sort of thing (yes, rondels, worker placement, etc).

Chakra (#2115) I’ve actually played asynchronously on Boardgame Arena, so I kind of have played it.

It seems like a fun little game that wouldn’t take too much time on the table.

In the game, you’re trying to harmonize your chakras so that all of the negative energy will disappear from your body and you have nothing but glowing energy.

It’s essentially an action retrieval/set collection game, where you are collecting gems to place on your player board (representing your chakras) to then cleanse yourself.

Since I don’t know a lot about this game (even my async players were at least a couple of years ago), let’s blurb this one too.

“In Chakra, each player has a board that shows the seven chakras they must fill with gems that represent the energy flowing in their body. To score points, a player must harmonize each of their chakras in the best possible way. To do so, they must take the gems and place three of them of the corresponding color in each of the chakras. During a turn, each player (who starts the game with several inspiration tokens) chooses one of the three following actions:

• Take up to three gems from one column and place them on top of their individual board — or by spending a token, place them in a more strategic position.
• Spend one token to use one of eight available actions; moving gems up or down by the number of chakra spaces indicated on the action is the key to reaching a perfect alignment.
• Meditate to reclaim an inspiration token and secretly look at the point value, which is common to all players, that a harmonized chakra (3 same-colored gems) will score.

When a player manages to align five of their chakras, the last turn is played before you perform the final scoring.”

It’s very light, but it was pretty fun as an asynchronous game and would probably be even better as a synchrononous one (or even on the table) because the actions come quickly.

Again, not one that shouted “buy me!” when I played it, but it is something that I would love to play “for real.”

Finally, just out of nostalgia, I have to mention 1962’s Strat-o-Matic Baseball (#2148), just for the sheer “wow, that’s old” fact.

I don’t think I ever played this when I was a kid, but I did play another statistics-based baseball game with my brother and his friends, and it was a lot of fun.

I love stats games. I play Out of the Park Baseball GO on my iPad all the time (I’m up to the 2033 season with my Cardinals).

I’m not sure how this one would hold up?

Are you playing with 1962 teams only?

But it’s cool that this game is still in the top 2500 on Boardgame Geek, even now.

I just had to mention it.

There we go, another century in the books and we’re getting close to #2500.

Anything in this list that you’ve played and loved? Or hated?

Anything you want to play?

Let me know in the comments.