BGG Top Games – 2201 – 2300

As we get further and further down the BGG rankings, the pickings are becoming increasingly slim.

But it’s also made me think a little bit, considering some of the games that show up in each century.

I know, thinking is dangerous, especially for me.

I might hurt myself!

But it makes me wonder about quality games that just don’t get the hype that some of the bigger releases do.

The fewer people play a game, the lower-ranked it’s going to be because it doesn’t get a lot of rankings.

This is related to the fact that some games (especially wargames, but not only them) are just niche games.

They don’t have a huge audience, but the audience that plays them really loves them.

And many are quality games.

That’s what makes these posts worthwhile to me, even as we get lower and lower into the ranks.

Last time brought out a brief discussion of The Expanse and it almost got played at Terminal City!

Unlike last time, there aren’t any up and comers that are appearing here as they experience a meteoric rise to the top.

But there are still some good ones here.

Here’s the list I’m taking these from, though keep in mind that things can change depending on when you’re reading this, so some of the games may have moved up or fallen off by that time.

I only own 2 of these and have played 9 of them.

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

The first one doesn’t really count for me, because it’s a standalone expansion that I only use as an expansion to the base game.

Smash Up: Cease & Desist (#2214) can be played as a 2-player standalone Smash Up game, but we never play it like that.

It adds 4 new factions to the mix and it’s one of my favourites because of the parodies involved.

You’ve got your Star Wars, your Star Trek, your Transformers and your Game of Thrones, each brilliantly done.

If you’re not sure what Smash Up is, read my review of the base game that goes over the whole thing.

But this expansion is so good.

Then we have a game that I own, have played on the table once, and then have played on the iPad literally thousands of times (or at least included it).

It’s another standalone expansion that can be played 2-4 players by itself.

Ascension: Rise of Vigil (#2222) is a classic expansion of this great deckbuilder game, one of the first ones I played in the modern era of gaming (as opposed to when I was a kid or in college).

It (or its companion, but I think it was this one) introduces Energy cards to the mix, calling them “treasures”.

Presumably that’s because they will introduce other types of treasures, but I don’t think they did other than perhaps in a couple of the latest expansions that haven’t made it to the app yet (perhaps because the board layout is totally changed? I don’t know).

This is the app I have played the most (over 14,000 plays, almost all 2-player) and I don’t touch it on the table anymore.

Maybe I should rectify that? I do own this one and Storm of Souls.

It is a fun game, but the app is just so breezy it’s hard to say no to it.

Anyway, this is a great expansion to the game. If you like the game on the table and don’t own this one yet, it’s well worth a look.

5-Minute Marvel (#2257) is a game that was brought to our work lunchtime games by a co-worker and, well…it hasn’t been played since I played it enough to review it.

It’s a real-time game where each session literally takes 5 minutes (it’s timed!) and you’re playing cards from your hand with the right symbols to defeat the latest challenge, on the road to that round’s boss.

However, if you’re only playing a 5-minute game, then the rounds are kind of unfulfilling by themselves.

If you’re playing as it seems it’s meant to be played, as a series of progressively harder rounds (which isn’t 5 minutes!), then it just goes on much longer than it really deserves.

I haven’t even given it back to my co-worker who owns it because I kind of feel bad for him and don’t want to return it saying “we’re never going to play this again.”

I couldn’t really get a sense of whether he likes it and would be disappointed that we don’t, or if he’s kind of lukewarm towards it himself.

Anyway, this game…exists.

Caesar’s Empire (#2275) is a game very similar to Transamerica in that you are essentially putting out roads (as opposed to rail lines) to connect back to Rome, and scoring points based on those routes.

You can also score points for having your routes used by other players to connect theirs to Rome.

You can also score points based on what provinces and other routes that you’ve built.

I think I need to play this one again. We only played it once and I was a bit meh towards it.

But Chris Yi, a Dice Tower guy whose opinions often mesh with mine (though not always) has it in his Top 100.

Just because I’ve sworn off the Dice Tower doesn’t mean I don’t have respect for some of their employees.

It’s a pretty simple game. Not quite as simple as Transamerica because you are trying to be the first to connect certain types or roads, not to mention the ability to use other players’ roads (giving them points to) in order to play what you want to play.

This is a 6.5 rating for me right now, but I’d like to play it again to see.

City of Iron (#2276) is a game I remember playing, but I remember almost nothing about.

Reading back on the New to Me post for November 2017 to get an idea of it, it appears to be a bit of a civilization-building, deckbuilding game of some sort.

You can do it through war or peacefully, by building or attacking, and it of course has the gorgeous Ryan Laukat artwork.

It’s setting is steampunk, which is pretty cool, and I remember liking the game well enough to give it a 7.

But to do any more than that, I’d have to play it again.

Since it’s Cal’s game, I probably won’t, both because he’s moved to Vancouver Island and also I doubt he still has it.

Though he might!

Going back to that New to Me Games post brings up another game on this list I’ve played and didn’t really enjoy that much.

Dragonfire (#2236) is a cooperative deckbuilding Dungeons & Dragons game.

We only played the Quickstart scenario for this one and it never got to the table again, so it’s possible there’s more to the game than I got out of it.

Enough to bump my rating up?

Maybe?

Each round, monster cards will be dealt to each player and they will have to defeat them (or get help defeating them by other players).

Each player is a character from the old Dungeons & Dragons (I think this is before 5th edition? I’m not sure).

With only the Quickstart scenario, we did miss out on a lot of the cards and other possibilities in the game.

But considering how fiddly the Quickstart was, how much more fiddly would the other stuff be?

This isn’t one I want to try again, and it kind of has died down here in the 2000s.

I don’t even hear anybody talk about it anymore, though that could change after this post!

Finally, let’s talk about Citrus (#2292), a game I recall enjoying very much, calling it (maybe before it became cliched?) a knife fight in a phone booth.

I rated it a 7.5, so I must have been impressed.

It’s a bit of tile-laying, area-majority, and drafting, where you are building (or expanding) plantations, harvesting them at just the right time so that you get a good amount of points (because harvesting means they won’t score points in other ways).

As you can see from the pic, you are vying for lots of control, and I recall really enjoying this game.

I just wish I could recall how to play it.

This is another game that seems to have come and gone and is thus just sitting here down in the 2200s.

Which is a shame.

I think.

Maybe another play is warranted?

Before I get into games that I’d like to play, I have to give a shoutout to B-17: Queen of the Skies (#2300).

This game came out in 1981 and I played a ton of it when I was a kid (prior to my modern game-playing, so it’s not officially counted as having been played for my stats), because it was a solo game about bombing Germany with these huge-ass planes.

A B-17 had a large crew, and it was kind of a campaign because you named your individual crew (I named them after friends and favourite teachers, which is why many of my crew were female). If a crewmember lasted 25 missions without getting killed, they went home heroes!

I never had anybody do that.

Part of me wants to do this again, naming my crew after friends again and just seeing how I do.

There are very cool solo games where you can do that now, like American Tank Ace (which I own) and many others.

(Quick aside, but I was recently a gunner in my friend Zilla Blitz’s British Tank Ace campaign, but after some awesome kills, I ended up dying somehow. I won’t say incompetence or anything…)

Anyway, this particular game has been reimplemented and updated by Legion Wargmes as Target for Today and it looks really cool.

A bit above the price point I want to pay for my nostalgia, but it’s good to know it’s available.

Now let’s get to games on the list that I would like to play.

There are a couple of wargames on here.

The first is almost aspirational because I know I will never play it, due to the time factor, but mostly just the fact that I suck at grand strategic thinking.

Unconditional Surrender: World War 2 in Europe (#2213) is a strategic level wargame covering World War II in Europe (hey, maybe that’s where the title came from!).

It actually plays 2-4 players, which is rare for a wargame.

It does sound interesting, though.

Let’s blurb it:

“Unconditional Surrender! World War 2 in Europe (USE) is a strategic level game covering the World War II European Theater. Players make the political decisions and control the military forces of the three major factions that struggled for European dominance and survival.

With its emphasis on force projection and decision making, players remain focused on the big picture of managing their front lines and political opportunities. Through simple mechanics and low on-map counter density, players easily handle the strategic action without a myriad of complicated subsystems or tall stacks of counters.

As one gamer put it, “It is a delight to be spending my limited brain power on making (or agonizing over) operational decisions that are as dependent upon guts as they are gray matter. This game is not a series of arithmetic exercises, and the only variable in these algorithms is nerve.”

Though the focus is on the big picture, Unconditional Surrender! still delivers historical detail. Each country has an historical army level order of battle, and its relative economic strength and national will to fight are effectively and simply modeled. Also represented are such World War II events as airdrops, Free Forces, jets, naval evacuation, partisans, radar, railroad artillery guns, and ULTRA; all neatly woven into the game’s core mechanics for ease of play”

The game looks freakin’ huge too, with two 22″ x 34″ maps.

I also love the play time, depending scenario: 30 minutes to 50 hours.

Hell, while it’s intriguing, I know I’ll never play it.

I’m including this mostly for Clio.

Before I continue, I just have to say that I love that Hearts (#2225), which was invented in 1850, and Spades (#2296), which was invented in 1938, are both included on this list.

Takes me back to my college days where we would play 500 if we weren’t playing a game like Hearts or Spades.

You can’t go wrong with a simple deck of cards and how many games you can play with them.

But I digress…

Nevsky (#2231) was the first “Levy & Campaign” game published by GMT, way back in 2019 (I know it seems weird to say “way back,” but that was 7 years ago now!).

The series (and especially this game) consists of wargames that not only have you fighting, but also have you worrying about levying troops, raising and equipping armies, and sometimes having your army disintegrate because the nobles who brought them don’t want to work with you past the term of service that was agreed.

At least not without getting some reward.

This game is about the battles between the Teutons and the Russians (or, as they were called then, the Rus) in the years 1240-1242.

Let’s blurb this one too.

“The sides every 40 days will levy various lords and vassals and their forces, transport, and capabilities, backed by higher political authorities—a papal legate for the Teutons and Novgorod’s city council (veche) for the Russians. Each lord is rated for fealty, lordship, service, and command and lays out his forces and assets on a mat. Wooden pieces represent units of knights, mounted sergeants, light and Asiatic cavalry, men-at-arms, and unarmored serfs and militia. Assets include counters for transport such as carts, boats, and sleds; provender to feed the army; and coin to pay for longer service or booty captured by ravaging or conquering enemy regions.

The players then plan and command a campaign for that 40 days with the lords who have mustered. To represent the limits of communications on medieval operations, stacks of command cards commit players to activating lords in a sequence that may or may not meet the needs of the developing situation. Cylinder pieces on the map show the lords’ maneuvers, while markers on a feudal calendar show how much longer the lords will serve, influenced by success or failure in their campaigns. When lords clash in field battle or storming a castle, players array their lords’ mats left, right, center, and reserve and attempt to rout the enemy. Various event and capability cards reveal cultural and technological particulars that influence levy, campaign, and combat.“

I haven’t played this one, but I have played the second game in the series, Almoravid, and it was pretty cool.

I own two of the games and I was going to own more before the whole situation in the US became a shitshow and I stopped going to our mailbox in the Washington to pick up GMT game orders.

Which has made me seriously consider which games I’m going to get, and I’m cutting down.

But there are a bunch in the series now and it’s just a great-looking series that you should check out, even if you don’t play the game that’s actually in this century.

Then there’s Weimar: The Fight for Democracy (#2240).

This game looks brilliant, and my desire to play it was heavily inspired by the Heavy Cardboard playthrough of the game.

Only the fact that I seriously doubt I would be able to get this to the table has kept Edward from costing me more money.

It’s a card-driven game where players are four different factions vying for control of a seriously weakened Germany after World War I.

Let’s do another blurb!

“Weimar: The Fight for Democracy is a game about the major actors in the spectrum of the new Republic. The Social Democrats and the Conservatives are trying to defend the democracy. Communists and Nationalists are looking to overthrow the government and install their own regime. Will this infant Republic survive? Or will Germany — as in history — fall to the Nazis and become a lawless state? Or will there be a Union of Socialist German Republics?

Weimar includes two major “battlefields”: In public opinion, the parties struggle to influence the important political issues like the economy, the media, or foreign affairs. Winning these issues scores points and allows them to take significant decisions. At the same time, the parties try to control the streets and position their followers in the major cities of Germany for demonstrations, street fights, and actions taken by the paramilitary organizations.

Weimar is a tense and exciting card-driven game (CDG) on a most interesting topic. Cards may be played for the event, for public opinion, or for actions in the street.”

I love the fact that players are four factions, but all of them have to be leery of the looming Nazi menace.

Nobody actually plays the Nazis. Instead, they’re just lurking and it’s very possible that nobody will win because the Nazis take over.

This time I really do want to play this…but I’m also including it for Clio.

I think this post has gone on long enough, so I’ll stop there.

Though there are a couple more intriguing games on the list.

Another century done, and even while I talk about there being not a lot of heft to the list of games this far down the BGG rankings, I am finding some great value in doing it.

I hope you feel the same.

Let me know which of these you’ve played, or want to play, in the comments.