BGG Top Games – 2501 – 2600

It’s time for another century of Boardgame Geek rated games, getting down into the second half of the 2000s and seeing what’s there.

This one isn’t quite going to be the bonanza that last time’s was, but there are definitely some good games in here so I still would hesitate to say we’re in the dregs of the BGG lists.

I know I keep saying it, but I’m so glad I’m doing these posts because I get to talk about games that don’t get talked about too much.

And these posts do seem to spark discussion among my friends about games that I have never heard of.

I don’t really care that these don’t get a lot of views overall.

That discussion is the main reason I do these, and it makes my heart sing.

So please keep it up!

Let’s get into this quickly so maybe the post won’t be quite as long as usual.

This week’s list is here, though keep in mind that the rankings can change as time goes on.

So if you’re a Killer from the Future taking time out from your evil quest to check out what boardgames were popular back in this age, don’t be surprised if it’s different when you go back to your time!

(I may have just teased what my next Final Girl review will be about).

I don’t see any new games in this list, so there aren’t any up and comers that are just here at this moment but will soon be skyrocketing further towards the top.

Instead, these are probably set pretty well and won’t change too much.

For this century, I’ve played seven of them and own (or previously owned) five, so not bad!

Let’s do what Pink says and…

The only song of hers I kind of like.

The first game in this list that I’ve played (and previously owned) is Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa (#2503).

Yeah, I won’t be typing that whole name again.

This is a game that I actually bought and reviewed because I love Twilight Struggle so much.

How can you go wrong with a very short (doable in a lunch time) version of the game, concentrated in the Horn of Africa?

The game is good and I did enjoy it, but the condensed nature means that you are way more prone to bad cards and bad dice rolls killilng your game.

In the big 3-hour game, that’s kind of mitigated because if you are drawing your opponent’s cards, they are probably drawing yours too.

The condensed version, that may be the case, but it hits you a lot harder.

The victory point swings aren’t as pronounced and it’s harder to bring things back to your side if you find yourself in a downward spiral.

It’s still a great concept and I’d definitely play it again, but it wasn’t enough for me to actually keep it.

I am looking forward to Twilight Struggle: South Asian Monsoon as kind of a median version between these two games.

It’s still available at P500 prices!

I can’t really avoid talking about one of the worst games I’ve ever played.

Hellapagos (#2547) is a semi-cooperative where you are actually competing, because you want to be the only ones actually alive and escaping being trapped on a deserted island.

I played this at a Bottoscon because a friend had it and wanted to try it.

We had some laughs, but this was not quite my least favourite game of all time, but very close to it.

Add a real-time element where you have to make decisions quickly, and it would be right there.

Water and food are scarce, so you’re wanting to make sure that you are the one that gets enough to survive, even as you are trying to build a raft to get off of the island.

As long as you do, who cares about everybody else?

Maybe you can team with somebody so you both get off?

The BGG listing says it best:

“Hellapagos is a “co-opetition” game in which players struggle to survive on a desert island and build a raft to escape before a hurricane devastates them. While players need to work together, it’s not likely that everyone will survive this backstabbing negotiation game for up to twelve players.”

Yeah, no thanks.

If I need backstabbing negotiation, I’ll play Diplomacy and really lose all my friends.

Covert (#2551) is a game that I bought because it sounded really interesting, but never got to play my copy of it.

I was at a convention and did a scheduled game of somebody else’s copy, but still have never played mine.

I’m not sure exactly why, because I seem to recall liking it when I played it.

It has some dice placement mechanisms, plus some code-breaking and set collection by the cards you are trying to get.

The cold war setting and the dice placement where you have to place in consecutive order is actually pretty cool, but I honestly remember almost nothing about this game.

I should really get the rules out and maybe bring it to a game day before I decide whether or not to try and sell/trade it.

It’s not really getting talked about (the last post in the BGG forums is from January 2025), but maybe there’s more to it than it seems?

I think I will bring it out at some point, but it will require a total rules refresh first.

Guilds of London (#2561) is a game that I remember really liking at the time, but it never came out again and I’ve lost all memory of how it plays.

Abi brought it out in 2016 (I had no idea I knew Abi in 2016!) and I rated it a 7.5 on BGG, but for the life of me I can’t remember why.

I actually won! Beating Abi 56-54.

But yeah, no memory.

So let’s blurb!

“In Guilds of London, you place your liverymen in strategic Guilds, building your power base, so that you can achieve the status of Master in many of them. You also have the opportunity to spread your power into the commercially valuable Ulster or Virginia plantations. Control of each Guild provides victory points and additional actions that you can exploit, so that you can control the future development of the city.”

Yeah, that doesn’t help.

My play of this is so old that I don’t even have a picture, sadly.

I’d love to play it again, just to see what made me rate it highly at the time, but I doubt Abi still has it.

Oh well!

The Flow of History (#2567), however, is a game that I did enjoy, but just not enough to keep, though mainly that’s because others in my group also have it.

This is a civilization game done only in cards, but nowhere near as complex as Through the Ages.

You are building your civilization through some rather innovative bidding mechanics, in that you place your token on a card, but somebody else can take it from you, giving you a little bit of compensation.

You essentially “invest” in a card by putting money on it, but you don’t take it right away.

Others can “snipe” it by paying you the amount you had invested.

You don’t have to complete the card right away if you want to do other things, of course.

Time goes on, you are trying to collect set icons for various scoring (or maybe even attacking) possibilities, and it is just kind of a cool game.

Also, while you can collect multiple cards of the same colour, the top effect (like the blue effect of you getting shields based on how many plant icons you have) only is in effect until you buy another blue card to put on top of it.

So collecting cards can be strategic.

It didn’t resonate with me enough to keep it, but I know that if I want to play it, I can ask Tartan to bring it out to our next game day that he comes to and it can get played.

Valletta (#2569) is another game that Abi brought and that I rated highly, but since I haven’t played it since 2018, I have no idea why.

In the game, you are “laying the foundations of Valletta, the future capital of Malta.”

I assume it’s done through some card play, based on the picture that I do have.

But how all this works?

Let’s blurb it and see what happens.

“In Valletta, players take inspiration from Jean Parisot de Valette in order to procure raw materials; hire merchants, bricklayers and roofers; and build their own version of the magnificent capital, with its mighty bastions, baroque buildings, and a right-angled street network. Cultivate your contacts with the Order of Malta to improve your reputation.

Players are supervised in their work by de Valette, who patrols his streets as a building inspector. When he reaches the end of his patrol, the game ends and a winner is determined.“

Nope!

Another game that I’d love to try again to see what I liked about it, but that Abi probably doesn’t own anymore.

The final game on this list that I’ve played is Corrosion (#2580), a game that I kind of enjoyed but our one play of it with two other players went so badly that it just hasn’t gotten to the table again.

It’s too bad, because it has an interesting resource-management, rondel type mechanism.

You’re building machines using resources that are on your personal rondel.

You can play an Engineer card to do something, or rotate your corrosion wheel to affect the values of your resources.

You also have to time the use of your resources with the wheel, because if the wheel goes too far, they’ve essentially rusted away and you can’t use them anymore.

You can also play temporary machines that will give you bonuses until time reaches a point where they rust away as well.

I remember really liking this puzzle. I should bring it out again.

Time to relearn the rules!

I also own, but haven’t played yet, Versailles 1919 (#2565), a negotiation game about the post World War I diplomatic deliberations in trying to hold Germany accountable as well as advancing your country’s interests.

It looks really intriguing but unless I bring it to Bottoscon or something, I’m not sure if this is going to get played by my game group.

I’ve read the rules multiple times and it looks so cool, but then after thinking about it a bit, I’m like “eh, I don’t want to try and convince them.”

Maybe one day I will be brave enough to do so.

I love how you have a bunch of different topics to discuss and place influence on to make sure it goes your way, but you sometimes have to make deals to make them go your way.

Each topic has at least two outcomes, and the player with the most influence on it decides which one to implement.

You can make a deal with them to say “I will make this issue trigger on your turn, but only if you make the outcome this…”

I just really want to play this, and one day I will force it.

One shout-out I have to give is to Rise and Decline of the Third Reich (#2595), which is probably one of the first games I ever played.

This was when I was a kid, so it’s not a recorded play, but my brother owned this and we played it a few times.

This was mentioned in my How I Became a Gamer post, and while I don’t remember the details of the game, I have fond memories of playing it with my brother.

I doubt I played it well (I don’t do grand strategy well now, much less when I was 9 or 10 years old), but I was into studying World War II and this game was a godsend for that.

With all of that, it’s a good thing that there aren’t many games in this century that I really want to play and haven’t, because the post is getting kind of long.

Quests of Valeria (#2534) just sounds interesting because I love Valeria games.

The description on BGG is so basic that I’m not really sure what you’re doing, other than hiring adventurers to fulfill quests.

Let’s blurb this one.

“Quests of Valeria is a unique set collection game where players gather Citizens to fill requirements on a Quest. Hire Citizens from the line in the Tavern that provide you with additional actions to build combo’s of free actions!

Players take turns taking 2 actions from the following: Drawing cards, Hiring Citizens, Reserving a Quest, or Completing a Quest. When Hiring a Citizen, players pay the cost by discarding cards in their hand and taking the Citizen from the Tavern to their Guild (tableau). Some Citizens have bonus actions and they trigger as soon as they enter a player’s Guild. When Completing a Quest, players must send Citizens from their Guild that match the requirements on the Quest to the discard pile. When a player completes 5 Quests, the game ends and player’s reveal their Guild Master and count up Victory Points.“

It’s a 20-45 minute game, which sounds perfect for us, and it does sound like it might be fun.

I have never seen it, though. It’s not even on the Daily Magic web site, so it’s probably long out of print.

There’s also Archeos Society (#2560) which, as I mentioned last time, reimplements Ethnos but uses tracks rather than area control.

It’s broadly considered not as good as the original, at least by fans of the original.

For those of who haven’t played the original?

You might like it.

It has tracks!

I wouldn’t mind trying this, though true fans of Ethnos think this game is nothing compared to the original.

I’d like to be able to make that determination for myself.

Finally, I do like the original Castle Panic, so I definitely wouldn’t mind at least trying Star Trek Panic (#2501).

The original is a tower defense game where monsters appear in the outer rings of the board and slowly move toward the castle in the middle of it.

Players cooperate to kill the monsters before the whole castle is destroyed.

I’ve won with one tower remaining.

In this one, the Enterprise is surrounded by alien enemies (nasty Klingons!) that are slowly breaking through its shields and trying to destroy it.

Short blurb:

“In addition, the game features mission cards that have unique challenges based on the original Star Trek series as well as character cards so that players can assume the roles of Star Trek icons like Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.”

Yeah, I’m down for that.

Sounds pretty basic and corny, but maybe good for a laugh?

Otherwise, there’s not much to recommend in this century (he says, 2600 words later).

I’m up for next week, though!

What do you recommend (or desperately avoid) in this century of games?

Let me know in the comments.