BGG Top Games – 3201 – 3300

A short turnaround time after the last post about this, mainly because that post was late!

We’re actually getting into sections of the Boardgame Geek rankings where there are some good games that don’t deserve to be this far back, and that is the case yet again in this century.

As long as people keep discussing these posts with me (either in the comments section or in other areas, like Discord), I’ll keep pumping these out.

At least until I get to a century where I have literally played nothing!

I did check last week and all the way up to 4000, I have played at least a couple in each century.

So you’re stuck with me now, unless you hit that big gong to make me stop.

We’ll keep the introduction short so I have more time to talk about the actual games, because there are a few I’d like to talk about.

Here’s the century this list is coming from.

Though please remember that these rankings are fluid, almost like my love/hate relationship with chocolate.

They could change!

(I kid…I will always love chocolate).

We’re getting deeper and deeper, but here are the numbers for this century.

In a switch from normal, I’ve actually played 5 of the games but I own 6.

That’s unusual. Usually it’s the other way around.

With all that under our belt, let’s begin!

The first game to talk about is really high in my rankings and it’s sad it’s this deep, but I do kind of understand.

Cape May (#3220) is a really interesting game about developing the seaside resort area of this New Jersey coastal hot spot.

This is a wonderful game where you are building homes and shops, and upgrading them to businesses and Victorian mansions.

And maybe the mansions to landmarks!

I really do enjoy how you move around the town, using one of your movement cards, though once you’ve used it you can’t use it again until you collect all of your cards (which takes an action, unless you get a lucky event).

The game is a bit too tied to the goal cards, in that if you ignore them just to build landmarks or whatever, you probably won’t win.

They’re also a little, I’m not going to say unbalanced, but more that some are harder than others.

Some, like the left one above, just want you to have that number of buildings in zones.

Others, like the right one above, want you to have more of something than the other players.

In the former, you are just competing for space, to make sure you’re not closed out.

In the latter, you have to pay enough attention to what the others are doing that you may have to switch back to build stuff if one of the other players is overtaking you.

Still, this is a fun game that I really enjoy and wish it was higher in the rankings.

Inhabit the Earth (#3232), on the other hand, is a fine game but I’m not heartbroken it’s down this low.

This is a game that I enjoyed when I played it, but I didn’t really get it until near the end.

It was a game that I said (back in 2023) that I wouldn’t mind playing again, and that’s still true!

It’s just not one I’m clamoring for.

It’s basically a game where you are placing various species of animals in your tableau and then trying to move them up the track in the continent they are living on.

Depending on the cards you have played on the animal, you could conceivably even migrate the animal to another continent if you feel like it would score better there.

You need various continent or environmental icons on the animal in order to move it up the track.

You get more points the further up the track you get, and the game ends when two continents have had a player’s animal reach the top.

I don’t remember all the nuances of how you play the cards and the actions you can take and all of that (I did explain it some in my New to Me games post for September 2023).

As I said, it’s one it would be cool to play again, but I’m not begging to.

Then we have Flip City (#3273), the Tasty Minstrel (RIP) card push your luck card game of flipping cards.

This was a divisive game in its day, or at least when I played it back in 2017.

Eric Summerer (of the Dice Tower) had it high up on his Top 100 list at the time (I have no idea whether it’s even on there now) and it had become very popular.

Some of the people I played it with hated it, however.

I found it meh.

It’s a game where you are basically flipping double-sided cards from your deck (you have to shuffle the deck under the table since they are double-sided, you’d be able to see what all the cards are) onto the table.

You keep flipping until you want to stop.

If you get three frowny faces, then you bust and you don’t get to do anything.

Otherwise, the cards will give you money and other effects that will let you add cards to your deck.

You are essentially trying to get cards with ribbons, because if you flip 8 ribbons on your turn, you win!

This game was lackluster enough that I only took one picture of it, and only played it twice before trading it away.

So I didn’t even review it!

You can tell this was played in 2017, because I would have played it at least one more time, reviewed it, then traded it away.

Right underneath that is The Palace of Mad King Ludwig (#3262), a game that I enjoyed my one play of but I’ve never been able to get it to the table again, partially because of the odd table space required.

That’s because it starts crawling down the table almost like fast-growing ivy, ready to reach out and grab you.

Unlike The Castles of Mad King Ludwig, in this game everybody is working on the same palace. You’re not building your own.

I first (and last) played it in 2018, so I’m not even sure exactly how it works, but I do know there are swans that aren’t rewards and set collection this time, but instead they are the currency you are using to take room tiles and place them out.

The player boards are neat because this is where you will be keeping track of the room types you have built (since the rooms themselves won’t have any indication of who built them).

You’ll be taking tiles from the available market, for the cost in swans underneath each space

As you place tiles out, the moat around the castle will keep expanding, and that’s the timer of the game.

When the moat completely surrounds the palace, the game ends!

I really have been wanting to get this game out again, but I’ve been intimidated by the table space requirements.

In looking at these pictures again, it’s really not that bad, as it extends down from the market tiles.

I should bring it out to a game day and see what we can make of it.

Maybe this week! Since there’s a convention and everything.

Finally, talking about games that I have played, there’s another Bezier Games offering in Colony (#3275).

This is another tableau-building game where are building out your colony on Earth after the nanopocalypse, but using dice as resources.

The dice are still rolled, but the number on the dice is used as resources to build or activate buildings that you have already placed in your tableau.

You also have the ability to store a few “stable” (white die) resources, but any unstable (grey) dice you roll, you have to use that turn or they are lost.

The buildings have their own effects and also point values.

For example, the Stabilizer can turn one of your unstable resources into a stable one.

There are also attack cards, like the Pirate, which can steal resources.

The scoring is an ongoing track that records how many points in cards that you have on the table, because the first person to a certain level (based on player count) wins immediately.

There are no “equal number of turns” or anything like that.

One of your cards will, if you draft the dice properly, allow you to upgrade your cards, making them more valuable and also more useful.

Like the upgraded Stabilizer converting two unstable resources to stable, instead of just one.

I mostly enjoyed this game and it hit the table a fair amount over the years, but I finally traded it away.

It wasn’t a bad game, but it just didn’t inspire a lot of love from me.

I’d still readily play it, but it’s not something that needed to stay in my collection.

Let’s talk briefly about a couple of games that I own but haven’t managed to hit the table with them yet.

The Plum Island Horror (#3227) is a cooperative tower defense (in a way) game from GMT Games.

(Edit: Maybe it’s better defined as a “state of siege” game? Or is that an actually specific series of games?)

It’s not a war game!

Instead, there have been horrific mutations from the lab on Plum Island, and now monstrosities are rampaging.

Players are one of up to six different factions that involve moving around the city, fighting the monsters, and leading the populace to safety, and you’ll have multiple pieces to move around the board.

There are even possibilities for doing an action on another player’s turn, enhancing your ability to get things done.

This one intrigued me when I saw it.

It’s a beautiful map, interesting mechanics with the monsters moving down the various columns (or maybe occasionally moving sideways to another column? I’m not sure).

I gotta get this to the table soon, to justify how much I spent on it!

Another game I own but haven’t made it to the table with is Commands & Colors: Samurai Battles (#3280).

I love the Commands & Colors system, having played Ancients a few times and even Medieval a couple.

This one I bought in a frenzy of buying these games, mainly because it was new, in print, and didn’t have tons of expansions that I also would want to buy.

But it just hasn’t been played since then, as my opportunities to play even the other two have dried up.

Think of that picture (it’s Ancients), but with medieval Japanese soldiers instead of ancient Romans and you’ll have an idea of what this looks like.

It also incorporates Dragon cards and the Honor and Fortune tokens required to play them.

These cards have various effects on the game, some of which will greatly enhance your ability to win!

The box also has 40 scenarios.

I’d love to play one!

One day…one day.

Ok, how about games that look interesting?

First, I want to mention Chai (#3228), mainly because I’ve played the app version and it’s really great.

Would it be as good on the table?

Why not?

In the game, players are tea merchants trying to sell tea to customers and gaining tips.

(the pictures are going to be of the app version, because that’s what I have!)

I really enjoyed how you gain ingredients for your teas, where you get 3 coins for taking the action and then you have to buy ingredients that are next to each other.

When you choose them, you always pay the most expensive price (whichever section they are in) for them, so be careful!

There’s also the pantry for your pantry tiles which are also needed for your customers’ teas, and then finally you want to sell them for money.

This is a lovely, peaceful game, and one I’d really like to get to the table at some point if I could find it.

Now for ones that I don’t have any experience with whatsoever.

The British Way: Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire (#3267) is another 2-player COIN (counterinsurgency, duh) game though it’s four mini-games in one.

It’s a multipack with streamlined COIN mechanics to make it an easier introduction to players who aren’t familiar with COIN games.

Probably a lot more streamlined than Colonial Twilight!

Though I would hope players who cut their teeth on this would go on to CT, since it is that good (go, Brian Train!)

The four conflicts in this one are: communist insurgents in Malaya, militant nationalists in Kenya, and clandestine terrorist groups in both Cyprus and Palestine.

The COIN games I have played are simply wonderful, and I imagine that this 4-pack is well worth getting.

If you have another player who will play them all (which is why I haven’t bought this).

Moving away from GMT (there are a lot of GMT games on this list!), how about talking about Lost Cities: Rivals (#3259).

I love the 2-player card game Lost Cities, but this one sounds really interesting, adding an auction mechanic as well as more players.

Let’s blurb this one:

“The card deck consists of (in each of the five colors) three wager cards, two copies of cards numbered 2-5, and one copy of cards numbered 6-10; shuffle this deck, then divide it into four piles, keeping only one pile in front of players for now. From a separate deck, each player is given two differently colored wager cards at the start of play. A bank of 36 coins is divided equally among the players.

On a turn, you can either reveal the top card from the current pile (adding it to the display) or auction the cards on display. In the auction, you must raise or pass, and once only a single person remains in the auction, they pay the amount bid to the center of the table, then take any cards that they want to play and start or add to expeditions. Placing the same number in an expedition is okay. The auction winner can also place one card from the display in the box out of play. The auction winner ends their turn by adding a card to the display.

When the final card of a pile is revealed, divide all the coins in the center of the table equally among all players, then bring in a new pile to continue play. Once the final card of the final pile is revealed, the game ends immediately with no distribution of coins. For each expedition, a player scores the number of footprints on the numbered cards. If they have a wager in that color, they double that value; if two wagers, they triple it; etc. A player also scores 1 point for each gold coin they hold and 8 points for each expedition that contains at least four number cards. Whoever has the highest total wins!”

It sounds like the scoring is massively different in that you don’t get negative points for starting an expedition and then you have to get your card values high enough to overcome that.

It still has the “have to place in ascending order in each colour” rule (that’s not in what I quoted, but it is on the BGG page), but scoring doesn’t seem as punishing (and you’re only scoring the footprints anyway, not the actual number of the cards).

Intriguing.

Might suck, might not, but I’d like to try it.

Finally, there’s a game that may not be on this list by the time I post this (I’m writing it 5 days early), but we’ll give it a try!

Summoner Wars 2nd Edition Starter Set (#3299) is a 2-player card game that I have only played in app form (the original, not the 2nd edition) and I’ve just bounced really hard off of it.

I have no idea what I’m doing, even against the (supposedly) lame AI!

But so many people love this game that I feel like, if I had a good teach of it on the table, I’d probably like it.

Each player is a fantasy faction of some sort, and you play out your soldiers onto the grid, spending other cards to do so, and you’re basically maneuvering trying to kill the other player’s Summoner.

Here’s a blurb from the actual 2nd Edition set:

“Summoner Wars puts you in the role of a powerful summoner in control of a unique army, dedicated to taking control of the war-torn planet of Itharia. Display your tactical prowess by summoning units to your gates, outmaneuvering your opponent, and cutting down the enemy summoner to claim victory. Be wary though! The enemy will take advantage of every opportunity they find to destroy you and your army.”

If you’re a fan of the game and wondering why this is all the way down at #3300, keep in mind that this is the Starter Set.

The actual 2nd Edition full set is ranked #356.

That’s more like it.

So there’s another century of games!

Any that you like? Any that you hate?

Any that you’re “meh” on?

Let me know in the comments!