BGG Top Games – 4101 – 4200

Another week and another look at the Boardgame Geek boardgame rankings!

This time we’re moving further into the 4000s, and this is where you start finding the niche games that are really good, but not that many people know about them or play them.

This mostly applies to wargames and has been applying for a while now, but there’s definitely a great example in this week’s century.

There’s also a fair number of games I’ve played (or own) compared to recent weeks, though that’s not saying much!

Finally, we’re going to run an experiment like we did last week with The Game Makers (which is now already up to #3550, by the way).

Just how high can a new and popular game get between the time I start writing this post and the time it publishes?

Will it defeat The Game Makers?

We shall see.

This week’s list can be found here, but beware!

If you’re coming to this post in the far future, then Boardgame Geek probably doesn’t even exist anymore and you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about.

Or maybe WordPress won’t exist either by then?

Anyway, things might have changed is all I’m getting at.

My numbers this week are much better than last week, with five games played and four owned.

We’re still going strong!

And of course more interesting games to talk about.

So let’s get started before I go over word quota!

Let’s start with something easy.

Level 10 (#4131) used to be called Okey Dokey, and that’s the version I played (and reviewed) way back when.

I think it was one of my first review copies!

Level 10 looks to have a video game theme of some sort, but Okey Dokey was about setting up a musical festival.

And those are the pictures I have, so they’ll just have to do.

This is a cooperative game where players are trying to play out all of their cards to a central grid.

Each row has to be the same colour, and you have to finish one column before you can go on to the next one.

There are wild cards that could be played in lieu, but you have to also play the colour cards in numerical order, with one reset for each row (which is why the purple cards in the above picture go from 3 to the reset and then from 2 on up).

We never won this game before I ended up trading it away.

I’m sure Level 10 has some kind of similar game play, though with different theme and art and all of that.

It’s not a bad game, just incredibly random and difficult (though the “equals” cards, or their Level 10 equivalents, can help with that supposedly).

Seers Catalog (#4155) is a fun little card shedding game based on the original Of What’s Left (#7724).

I guess the Bezier name carries some weight!

Or it just has a much broader publication range.

Whichever.

Of course, being Bezier, it has a bit of a Werewolf feel to it (not in gameplay, but setting), in that you are actual Seers and all of that stuff.

Anyway, you are trying to shed most of the cards in your hand.

Not all?

No, not all.

If you get rid of all of your cards, you get 0 points.

When somebody sheds them all, players lose one point for each card still in their hand.

However, if you have fewer than 5 cards, you also get the value of the lowest card in your hand as points.

If you shed all but one card and the card you didn’t shed was a seven, then you would get six points!

This version of the game also has Artifacts that you can play to help things out.

On your turn, you’re playing a series of cards, either as a set (3-3-3, for example) or a meld (1-2-3-4, for example).

The other players have to play the same type of series, but with higher numbers.

The game goes over four rounds and whoever has the highest number of points wins.

I actually really enjoy this one, but it’s a hard game to teach so I’ve only played it twice at our work lunches.

I’ll have to rectify that soon so I can review it.

You know I love trick-taking games, especially when the twist in them is really cool.

Torchlit (#4114) is one of those games.

Torchlit has a cool dungeon exploring mechanic tied to the trick-taking, which is what makes it really neat.

In this one, you’re actually trying to tactically decide on each trick whether or not you want to try and win it.

There is a dungeon of 7 rooms put out and at the start of the round, each player will put a card facedown (your “torch”), which is essentially predicting which room your adventurer will end up in at the end of the round.

Then the tricks begin.

You must follow suit if you can, but there is no trump.

If you win the trick, your adventurer moves one space forward.

If you played off suit but played the same number as the winner, you also move.

The lowest number played (even if it won the trick because nobody else played the same colour) then gets to distribute the cards to the various rooms.

If only one card of a colour was played, then that automatically goes to that room number.

Multiple cards of the same colour, that’s when you decide which one to put out and discard the other.

On the final trick, you look at your remaining card and your torch, and decide which one you want to actually play.

The other one goes face down on its room number.

If your adventurer ends up in that room, you get additional points!

You also get one point per card in your room, and additional points if somebody else’s torch ends up in your room.

I loved this game in my one play of it.

It’s no Schadenfreude, but it is still so good.

I’d love to play it again.

Another game that I previously owned and also reviewed was Gravwell 2nd Edition (#4194)

It hasn’t reached near the heights of the game it’s reimplementing (which is currently at #1842 and I’m not going to track it further), but it’s still a fine game.

Players have ships that have all been sucked into another dimension, and they don’t have fuel, which means you have to find the fuel that you will be able to use to thrust yourself to victory.

(Ok, I realize that sounds really bad…sorry).

What’s fun about this game is that you are using other player’s ships to propel you around the board to try and escape the gravity well (I assume that’s what “gravwell” means).

You do this by playing cards that will propel you around the board.

However, those cards are played secretly and then resolved in alphabetical order.

So you may have been counting on that one ship to be nearest to you so you could slingshot with it, but suddenly it’s not the nearest ship and you’re going backwards!

This is a totally chaotic game, and it doesn’t take very long (our plays were about 45 minutes, even at 6 players), which adds to the fun.

It didn’t stay in my collection mainly because it wasn’t a huge hit with my game group, but I enjoyed it and would willingly play it again.

As far as a game I own but haven’t played (kind of), there’s really excellent tactical wargame series The Last Hundred Yards (#4175).

I say “kind of” because I actually have played a partial scenario from the first standalone expansion, Airborne Over Europe (#6766).

I’ve also played 2-3 of the scenarios from this first volume with my good friend Michael from the Boardgames Chronicle on VASSAL, but those plays were asynchronous so they don’t “count.”

This tactical World War II combat system is really good, marred only by some increasingly hard to decipher Line of Sight rules regarding hills and contours and all of that.

The Airborne scenario I played a part of at Bottoscon a couple of years ago was really cool, and I love the system of activating a company of units, and then having your opponent activate those units who could see what they did, and then going back to the active player to activate another company, etc).

That, and how all of the combat resolution happens after activation, so you put firepower markers on the stack and it follows them wherever they go that turn.

This system, I will still keep getting extensions and expansions, even though I may not be able to play it much (if at all) until I retire in a few years.

I’m so intrigued by the system that I want to keep learning and playing it.

Let’s get into games that are just interesting but that I haven’t played yet.

First, the experiment.

This week’s experiment is with the brand new Wingspan project from Elizabeth Hargrave and Stonemaier Games.

Wingspan Pocket (currently at #4106) is a shorter, more streamlined version of the ever-popular Wingspan, and it is getting a lot of buzz.

Each player has only a single row of cards to activate and there are no food tokens. Instead, the cards double as food.

It comes in a small box, easily portable with birds that are not compatible with the original game (i.e. it’s not an expansion).

It sounds really intriguing, especially to this fan of Wingspan, so I hope to play this one day.

I’m starting this post last Thursday and it will post Wednesday morning. How high will it have gone by then?

Well, it’s currently at #3466, so that’s pretty high!

That’s almost 500 spots in less than a week.

It’s awesome that I’m getting to experiment two weeks in a row.

On to other things now.

Before that, though, I have to say how funny it is that Unpublished Prototype is ranked #4117, and this entry is just a place so that those people who track their plays on Boardgame Geek have a place to track a play of some designer’s game that hasn’t been published yet.

Why is that ranked?

I have no idea.

Next, a hit of nostalgia as I go back to my Avalon Hill wargaming days when I was in high school.

Russian Front (#4162) is an old Avalon Hill game about, well, the Russian Front.

Published in 1985, I don’t know if I ever owned this one (I certainly never played it), but I remember articles in The General about it and it just tripped my nostalgia meter.

It’s apparently a game that can take upwards of 20 hours if you play the full campaign game, though other scenarios can be done in as little as 8 (WTF???), though the description actually says 2 hours for the smaller scenario(s).

It’s a pretty large operational level game with a lot of counters, and it covers the entirety of the Russian campaign, from invasion to the Russian counterattack and ultimate victory.

There are even alternate history scenarios that start the game in different times!

Intriguing.

I’ll never play it, but the fact that it exists makes me happy.

Very briefly, because I don’t want to dwell on nostalgia this whole post, is War & Peace (#4176), the game of the Napoleonic Wars.

I played this game with my brother back in the day, and I love all of that!

The game has scenarios that cover the different battles, from Austerlitz to Waterloo, and it was just so much fun.

Let’s get onto some non-wargames, though there’s still a bit of nostalgia on this first one.

Dune: A Game of Conquest and Diplomacy (#4160) is a relatively new game by Gale Force Nine (2019), but it reimplements another old Avalon Hill classic game about the Dune books and all of the intrigue among the various factions.

I remember having (and even playing once, I think?) the original game way back in the 1980s (and it is currently ranked #589, so do with that what you will).

The folded cardboard player screens were a bit annoying. I remember that part.

Let’s blurb this new, revised edition:

“Take part in one of the most famous science-fiction stories of all time. Dune: A Game of Conquest and Diplomacy builds on 40 years of development, refinement, and evolution from the original classic game. It has the same beloved DNA, flavor, tension, and themes, but with new game-board design, more spice, new streamlined rules, and a new market deck from which you can purchase game advantages. Also, the brand new two-player mode really opens up new gaming opportunities, all making the game more accessible for even the most casual gamer.

In Dune, you will take control of one of the four great factions—House Atreides, House Harkonnen, the Fremen, and the Imperium—all vying to control the most valuable resource in the universe: melange, the mysterious spice only found at great cost on the planet Dune. Ship your forces to Dune, harvest spice, seize control of strongholds, and destroy your enemies. Who will control Dune? You decide!”

I remember in the old edition that the Bene Gesserit could win if they correctly predicted who was going to win the game. They would win instead of the other winning faction.

Is that still in this edition?

I don’t know!

I don’t know if I would ever play it, but it is neat that they have a new 2-player variant.

They’ve also reduced the maximum player count from 6 to 4.

The original, I know everybody said really needed 6 players to shine.

I don’t know about the new edition.

Gale Force Nine actually remade this game in 2019 as almost a straight reprint (still allowing 6 players at least) and it’s ranked #213.

Why has the newest, reduced player count version not caught on?

Who knows?

It’s all so confusing.

Finally, let’s talk a bit about a game I had heard about at the time but I didn’t think it got much traction.

Rebuilding Seattle (#4123) is a game about the great 1889 fire in Seattle and the rebuilding of the city aftewards.

You’re managing a major neighbourhood, trying to fit new buildings into the grid, constructing landmarks, managing resources, and all of that.

Let’s blurb it:

“In Rebuilding Seattle, you’re responsible for managing the zoning and expansion of a major neighborhood! Each round your population grows, and you can either build a new building, expand into a new suburb, activate an event, or build a landmark, before earning profit based on your neighborhood’s commerce. You’ll buy building types from a shared market, looking to find shapes that fit your grid and types that fit your strategy. Triggering citywide events can change the tide of the game, offering points, money, and expansions for the players ready for it. You can even enact laws to give yourself the advantage! At the end of the game, whoever’s neighborhood has earned the most points wins.”

You can even build suburb expansions to make your neighbourhood look really cool and unique.

A new reimplementation of this game just came out this year, Rebuilding Chicago.

It’s currently all the way down at #12,372.

Will it start moving up, since it’s a new game?

I hope so!

Two experiments in one week!

There we go, another BGG century in the books.

Anything I missed that I should play?

Or that I should avoid?

What’d you think of these?

Let me know in the comments.