BGG Top Games – 3001 – 3100

It’s Wednesday, the middle of the week, so how about a middle post about Boardgame Geek rankings?

I mentioned last week that I’ll keep doing these until I hit a week where I haven’t played anything.

That ain’t this week!

I should remind folks that, if I’ve played a number of the games in a century, I’m not going to talk about all of them.

That would make these posts way too long.

This came up last week when somebody thought I hadn’t played a game that I had but just hadn’t talked about.

Anyway, these posts are still sparking some good discussions, and maybe my friend Tavendale is still thinking of nicking my idea.

Hopefully!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

As long as I enjoy doing them, they will get done.

In the meantime, here’s the century we’re looking at today.

Getting down a bit deeper in the BGG rankings, but still finding some interesting stuff!

This century, I’ve played 5 of the games and I own (or have owned) 2 of them.

Not a huge number, but still enough to talk about.

As usual, the rankings may change if you’re reading this a few weeks in the future.

I don’t have any more time travel jokes, so I’ll stop.

I still have a bunch of space left before my 300-word introduction limit, but maybe we’ll use some of that extra space on the back end.

Let’s begin!

The first game on the list for me is a game that I enjoy, but it’s not anywhere near my Top 50.

It’s easy to play at lunch, easy to teach, and plays a bunch of players (making it the perfect lunchtime game!)

The City (#3010) was reimplemented by the much better Jump Drive, but it’s still a great tableau-builder.

It’s a classic card game where you are placing a card into your tableau and paying for it with other cards in your hand.

So you have to decide which cards you want to play and which ones you would rather pay with.

Each turn, you get card income (meaning you draw that many cards) and point income (meaning you get that many points), and you’re trying to balance that out to make sure you accelerate your points at the right time while still drawing enough cards that you get some choice on what to play next round.

It definitely has a runaway leader issue, but it’s a 10 minute game, so why complain?

It goes over 6-8 rounds (typically), but when somebody hits 50 points at the end of the round, that’s when the game ends.

I enjoy this one. Not a top game, but always willing to play it. Though I think Jump Drive is a better game, I don’t own it!

Others must agree, because it’s ranked #1227

The next game on the list, once again I don’t really count it because it’s a standalone expansion.

Smash Up: What Were We Thinking (#3039) is a great expansion to this game.

It adds some wonderful factions to the game, like the Grannies, who manipulate your deck by wanting to play cards off the bottom of it.

The Teddy Bears are also so good!

A standalone expansion, so not really a “game,” but you can play it 2 players, so I guess that’s something.

This game is great, and this expansion is a wonderful addition to it.

Reforest (#3059, a massive 23 point jump from when I wrote this and it was at #3082!) is a little card game that I think I need to play again because it didn’t really hit with me the first time.

I can definitely see potential in it, which is why I want to try it again.

It’s a tableau-building game where you are trying to put together the most beautiful forest in a mountainous region.

It’s a rather unique tableau, because you’re not building a grid or just a line or anything like that.

No, you’re building a mountain, with a broader base and then a peak.

Each plant card that you play has an elevation that it must be played at.

You can also cover plants with other plants, as long as they are bigger.

The sun symbol will determine whether the covered card stays in play (it doesn’t require sun, and then you get the icons and points at the bottom of the card) or whether it becomes “stored energy”.

Stored energy will help you pay for putting future cards out, as you have to pay plant cards from your hand or stored energy in order to place them.

Each time the deck runs out, a player will earn that round’s Animal card, which is achieved by meeting the conditions on the card.

For example, the Roosevelt Elk requires the most visible green icons in the forest.

New cards are also added to the deck, growing the deck and also making up for the cards that are already out.

After three rounds, total up all the points and whoever has the most is the winner!

I did enjoy this one, but for some reason it just seemed kind of listless. Maybe it was because I played it on a Sunday morning of a long con, so I was kind of tired.

I don’t know.

I would love to try it again, and I’m sure I would think better on it.

Sierra West (#3087) I played back in 2019 when a friend was going to be trading it away, but wanted to play it one last time.

It’s an action selection game that’s also modular. You can add up to 4 different modules to the game so each playthrough can vary quite a bit.

But the basic mechanism is that you have 3 action cards in your hand each turn, and you have to place them so that the actions you want to do will be on display for the two pioneers that will be moving.

Once everybody’s done that, you’ll move your two pioneers (top and bottom) along the path, in any order you want.

So the top pioneer can move to get a boot (movement up the mountain or along the trail), then get some food, then the mule special bonus, another boot, and some stone.

The bottom one will get two stone, then can spend a resource to dig (to let you claim a mountain card or get a new cabin), get two wood, and then two resources to dig again.

The mountain is made up of overlaid cards that you will move your climber up. You will be digging and taking cards from it to add to your deck, so the mountain will erode away over the game.

Boots also let you move along the trail, which will get you benefits as well as multiply your Homestead scoring (which other actions will let you move up).

It’s all very interesting, and while it’s not a game that will amaze you, it’s nice and cozy with some good decisions, especially depending on what module you’re playing with.

I’d play it again, but I don’t think anybody I know owns it anymore.

Finally, in games that I’ve played, we have 9 Lives (#3100), and we’ll see if this one is actually in this century by the time this post goes live on Wednesday (I’m writing on Saturday).

(It isn’t, falling to #3103)

Too bad. I’ve already written about it, so it stays, though I will update its ranking so you’ll know if it’s there or not.

9 Lives is a trick-taking game that I’ve played once, and I discovered we played it wrong.

There are four suits of cards in the game.

The cat artwork is adorable in an abstract kind of way, and each number has its own cat.

Also, the backs of the cards show the colour, so everybody knows what suits you have, just not the numbers.

The game is played to 9 points, or a number of rounds equal to the number of players if nobody has reached 9.

Then you’re bidding to guess how many tricks you will take.

The numbers wrap around, so blue is predicting that they’ll take either 2 or 6 tricks.

They’ll get more points than brown, because brown is predicting a broader range (2,3,6 or 7 tricks).

Only two players can go on a bid, one on each side. After that, nobody can make that bid.

Then you start playing tricks as normal, but here’s the thing we missed.

When you win a trick, you take one of the cards from that trick into your hand.

That means the round won’t necessarily end after a certain number of tricks. It could go on for a bit as different players win tricks.

The round only ends when somebody runs out of cards.

Which means the round won’t end if you’re out of cards but you win the trick. Because you take one back!

It has the “must-follow, one suit is trump” mechanic (purple in this case), but that “take a card back into your hand” mechanic is a game changer and also makes the betting much more interesting.

I would love to play this one again, playing it correctly.

I love trick-takers (probably even more than I did when we played this in 2023), and novelty in the trick-taking realm is always welcome!

With that done, let’s get into games that are intriguing or have something else of note about them.

The first one I have to talk about is the classic Kingmaker (#3036), mainly because I played it a few times back in college (early 1990s).

This game came out in 1974!

But it definitely is a classic game of the Wars of the Roses in England, between the Lancasters and the Yorks.

Essentially players are nobles who are trying to gain the most influence and control over the various possible royal heirs of a weak king, and install that heir on the throne of England.

Look at that board!

This is one of the early Avalon Hill editions of the game.

Gibsons came out with a new version of it back in 2023 that looked amazing, but sadly I doubted I could get it played so didn’t spring for it.

That version currently sits at #6385, so I’m wondering if it just hasn’t caught on.

Maybe people don’t care about the Wars of the Roses like they used to?

Anyway, I would love to play this one again, and would love to try the new version!

This version would work too, though.

Do you like jazz?

I love jazz and don’t really listen to it enough.

So I’m really intrigued by 1923 Cotton Club (#3034)

Players in this worker placement, drafting game are trying to smuggle illicit booze during Prohibition while trying to increase the prestige of their jazz club by bringing in the best jazz artists, attracting celebrities and other important people into your club.

I mean, look at that amazing card art!

Let’s blurb this one:

“1923 Cotton Club is played over a maximum of six rounds in which the players can use three pawns to select between different actions: make improvements, ask for a loan, get a tip-off, associate with gangsters, smuggling, hire artists and attract celebrities. All to collect more reputation than all the other clubs in New York! The player with the most reputation points at the end wins.”

I can’t comment on how good the game is, or will be, but the theme and the artwork has just hooked me.

I’ll have to keep an eye out for this one.

I just might buy it!

If it ever comes back into stock in Canada.

A noteworthy game that, if I had space, I’d love to try is Fields of Fire: Deluxe Edition (#3024, a massive 20 point jump since I wrote this and it was at #3044).

This is a solo wargame where you are playing one of three different campaigns with an American rifle company.

Interestingly enough, it’s all cards. There is no board. The “board” is a bunch of location cards.

Let’s blurb this one too.

“Fields of Fire is a solitaire game of commanding a rifle company between World War II and the Present Day. The game is different from many tactical games in that it is diceless and card based. There are two decks used to play. The Terrain Deck is based on a specific region and is used to build a map for the various missions your company must perform. The Action deck serves many purposes in controlling combat, command and control, and various activity attempts. The units of the company are counters representing headquarters elements, squads, weapons teams, forward observers, individual vehicles or helicopters. A single game is a mission and several missions from a historical campaign are strung together for the player to manage experience and replacements. A mission can be played in about 1 – 4 hours.”

I had Fields of Fire II (which covered a different company) and I had two major problems with it.

First, I (and many other people) had a really hard time deciphering the rulebook.

Secondly, there was no way I had enough space to actually set this up and play it.

My starry eyes got in the way of reality and I bought it anyway.

I traded it away after a year or so.

This deluxe version of the first game seems to have solved my first problem with the game, as it appears to be much easier to understand and there is some training leading you into your first campaign.

But I still don’t have room for it, so my buying this must remain aspirational.

A couple of my friends love it, though!

As a fan of Point Salad, I’m also very intrigued by the new (2025) Point Galaxy (#3038, an 18 point jump since I wrote this on Saturday, when it was #3056), and I’m surprised it’s this far down.

Not sure if this is the level it’s going to remain at or if it might be climbing (slowly).

It’s a more complicated variation of the original game, with the same card drafting but adding sequence building and set collection to the mix.

In fact, the rules of play are virtually the same. You’re drafting 2 cards from the market of 6 (or you can choose 1-2 “Space” cards, which is basically the card backs.

You’re starting with a Sun card and you can get other Sun cards, which will score each solar system you build based on the conditions on it.

The solar systems, you have to place planets in sequence (ascending or descending order) and if you draft a planet that won’t fit in one of your solar systems, you have to start a new one!

There are other aspects to the game, obviously. I’m just scratching the surface with that description.

It obviously will take more thought than the original game (more thought than the second game, Point City? I don’t know, I never played it), so it’s a bit more complex.

Probably not so complex that you couldn’t play it with non-gamers, though I would suggest playing the original first to get them used to the whole drafting thing.

But what do I know? I’ve never played this one!

I’d like to, though.

Finally, I’m just happy to see the really old (1946!) classic game Stratego (#3098) on this list and not too far down.

I grew up with this game and it was always fun, though I don’t know how fun I would find it now.

It’s very basic.

It’s capture the flag with hidden pieces, and bombs!

You move your pieces forward and blindly attack unknown opponent pieces.

I’m not even going to try to explain how the combat works, because the ranking of the pieces keeps changing.

At first, the best pieces were the higher-numbered ones and they would win the battle. Then, when introduced in the USA, they switched it so that lower-numbered pieces won (switching the Marshal from a 10 to a 1 in the process, for example).

Now, I think it’s back to the old way with higher-numbers winning.

Whatever.

The idea of capturing the flag, and surrounding your flag with bombs (which will blow anybody away who attacks it) is always there.

I don’t know if I would find it fun now, but I have a lot of nostalgia for this one.

There you have it!

Another century of boardgames on Boardgame Geek.

Have you played any of these? Any that I missed that you like?

Let me know in the comments.