BGG Top Games – 4201 – 4300

The last century of the BGG Top Games list was actually not too bad.

Lots of nostalgic wargames for me, plus having played a few of the really cool games on the list.

Still, the number of games played wasn’t the largest.

Will this century be better?

Last week did spark a bit of cool discussion among my friends, along with an explanation for how one game jumped really high between when I started the post and when it actually posted.

That’s what I love about doing these!

That type of discussion is priceless.

Not only that, but I’m monitoring two experiments from the last two weeks.

These are two hot new games that coincided with the century I was writing about, but which are going to go much, much higher.

First, The Game Makers (the hot new game from Bezier Games) was at #3550 at the time of posting last week.

Right now, the game is at #3420

A huge jump!

Probably even more of a jump, however, is the brand new “gonna be a huge hit” Wingspan game from Elizabeth Hargrave and Stonemaier Games.

Last week, Wingspan Pocket was at #3466 at the time of posting.

Now it’s at #2879.

Top 100 here we come!

Nothing new like that this week, but let’s get into it so my editor doesn’t start hitting me with a wet towel for going over the word count.

This week’s list can be found here, but keep the usual caveat in mind. Blah blah some lame future joke blah blah things can change blah blah blah.

This week’s stats are 5 games played and 3 owned (2 of those played), but it’s a bit of a cheat because one of those is a standalone expansion.

Ouch, my introductory word quota is behind me, so let’s begin!

The first game I have played in this century is another Nimmt game!

In this case, 11 nimmt! (#4221), which is a cool variation on the 6 Nimmt! (or whatever name it’s going by now, quit hiding!) classic card game with lots of bulls.

Not bullshit, though there is some in there.

Bulls.

Unlike its predecessor, where you are choosing a card along with the other players, revealing it, and then playing it in numerical order so that you may get a bunch of bulls that you don’t want (points are bad in that game), in this one you just have a hand of 10 cards that you are trying to get rid of.

The top card of the deck is turned over and that becomes a discard stack.

On your turn, you have to play a card to the top of the stack, but it has to be higher than what’s already on there and it can only be 10 or less higher.

If it’s 11+ higher, you have to take the stack into your hand!

More cards to get rid of.

But if the stack had 3 or more cards left, you also gain a bull card.

This will allow you to play multiple cards to the stack, as long as all of them are 10 or lower above the top card.

When you take a pile, two more cards are turned over from the deck, forming two more discard stacks.

Getting multiple bulls will let you play to multiple stacks!

So getting bull cards can be good, and sometimes you will strategically take a stack just so you can get the bulls.

When somebody runs out of cards, each player totals how many bulls on cards they have in their hand.

You play rounds equal to the number of players, and the lowest score wins!

I really liked this game, much better than its predecessor, though this one doesn’t come out as often.

I’ve only seen it once, the time we played.

But it’s a good one.

Another game I’ve played, and am not surprised it’s this far down in the rankings, is DOG (#4260).

I don’t remember a lot about this game, but I remember that while I enjoyed playing it with my friends, it’s certainly not a game that I would request.

It has many similarities to Sorry and Parchisi, trying to move your tokens from your home base to the target area faster than anybody else can.

This time, though, you have a partner!

Yes, it’s a team game.

You’re using cards to move your tokens clockwise around the board, trying to get back to your four target spaces. Each round, partners will swap a card and, if one player completes the mission, their card play now helps their partner instead.

Players use these cards to move their pawns, but some of the cards are special action cards instead of numbers.

It’s a fine enough game that I don’t mind playing it, but it’s never going to be a go-to game.

I wouldn’t say no, though.

A much better game is one of the newer Knizia games.

EGO (#4262) came out in 2025 and doesn’t appear to have made much of a dent in things (watch this one start rising before this post actually goes live).

Which is strange for a Knizia!

It is a new game that reimplements his older game, Beowulf: The Legend (which is currently at #3583).

I guess that means that neither one has really moved the needle much.

I can’t completely disagree because, while EGO is a decent game, it’s not one that really gripped me that hard.

Essentially players have met a couple of alien species and they are now going out into space to negotiate with them, using your patented charm.

Or you could just end up being an asshole and they hate you now.

You’re going along the board, left to right and then down to the next alien and repeating that, but each section of the alien’s board is different.

There’s some ways to exchange cards, there are some push your luck spaces, and some auction spaces.

I love the way I worded this in my New to Me Games post for September 2025 (my one play of this game) when talking about the push your luck spaces (sorry for the indulgence):

“Then there’s a push your luck (or “risk”) space where you are flipping cards from the top of the deck, trying to get one of those two symbols.

If all the revealed cards have at least one of those symbols, then you succeed! You collect all the cards into your hand.

If at least one card does but not all, then you collect the cards that did but you also get the penalty shown.

If none of them did, nothing happens. The aliens are just confused about why the hell you’re bothering them with this shit, but they’re not upset.”

You have to remember to save up cards of certain symbols for the endgame alien board, because you can spend some of them for points.

We ended up using a lot during the game and didn’t have much in the way of endgame scoring.

Like I said: fine, but didn’t really grab me.

Finally, Welcome to Centerville (#4282) is a game designed by Chad Jensen (of Combat Commander fame, so you know I love it) that I haven’t played in years but I still own.

I should bring it out one of these days and revisit it.

This is a crazy urban planning game where you are using dice rolls to place urban developments, gain wealth and prestige, and maybe add some parks or get some other types of prestige going.

You roll your dice and you can reroll anything but hourglasses, because they are the timer for the game.

You’re putting cubes out into the city, but you also need to do parks and educate your population and other things like that.

There’s also a politics track that you can go up and try to inhibit other players.

I don’t have a lot of memories of this game (I last played it in 2019), but I remember liking it well enough and I probably should play it again so I can decide whether it’s worth keeping.

It’s a GMT game, so you know there are going to be cubes and such.

I should definitely get this played again!

Finally, just really briefly, is a standalone Smash Up expansion, That ’70s Expansion (#4295).

All of the Smash Up expansions have their great qualities, and this one is really cool.

Some great factions, and I love the Truckers.

Still, this isn’t really a game, but just basically a way to play Smash Up 2-players, which I really hate.

This needs to be a 3-player game at least for me, which means the expansions just help the base game.

I do really enjoy this one, though!

While I still have some word count left, let’s talk about some games that might be of interest for one reason or another.

The game I own without having played is Minerva (#4226), and I have tried reading the rules to this one and it’s all Greek to me.

I don’t have the space to get it out and try to learn it by doing a couple of sample turns, so this one has languished in my To Be Played pile.

But it sounded really interesting, which is why I traded for it!

Apparently the Roman Empire sent out estate managers to manage properties and territories in the Empire.

Let’s blurb this one, because I know nothing about it!

“The players are one of these managers, in charge of one of the Roman cities, all aiming to become a prosperous and important city, like Rome, the glorious capital. Only the player who develops his city best, will earn the favour of the goddess Minerva and win the game.

The player who has the most Victory Points (VP) at the end of the game wins.

In order to gain VPs, the players will build military facilities to earn military fame, develop cultural facilities to assist cultural activities, and construct temples and layout the city so that it is worthy of its temples.

But all of this requires resources and gold. And only building impressive buildings won’t get anyone far without any inhabitants. The players will have to build living quarters so that the other buildings can have an effect.”

Yeah, I’m not sure either.

I should break this out again and try to learn it, and then bring it to a game day.

Or not…

How about games that sound interesting?

There is a version of Legendary in this century, which is always cool (though I haven’t played any variations except Aliens).

Legendary: Big Trouble in Little China (#4216) seems like an odd duck since that movie is a cult classic but wasn’t a massive hit.

And it’s from the 80s!

I never saw the movie and thus have no real desire to revisit it, but apparently some people do!

Though not enough to get it out of the 4000s anyway…

It does follow the typical Legendary format of having a market of cards and you are playing the cards from your hand in order to do something.

Unlike the Marvel version, this is a straight cooperative game, rather than a semi-coop.

Most of the rules are probably the same, though I would assume there are some differences.

But I don’t know!

I’m also a sucker for a good Valeria game from Daily Magic, but one I’ve never seen before is Siege of Valeria (#4233).

This appears to be a sort of tower defense game (which may be why I never bothered with it?).

There are dice, managing a hand of cards, and performing combos with all of your special abilities (probably from the cards).

The BGG description isn’t that helpful, so I won’t blurb it.

But it could be fun?

I’d love to try it one day.

Of course, it has the usual Valeria artwork.

It’s too bad this game may be out of print!

I, Napoleon (#4230) is a solo game where you are living Napoleon’s life and seeing if you can do “better,” or at least seeing what you can do differently than what happened in real life.

I was super jazzed to get this when it was first on the P500, and then around the time it was going to ship, I got cold feet. I don’t know if it was the cost or what.

Maybe it was the fact that I actually saw pictures of it in action and realized that I would never have room at home to play it?

Whatever it was, I cancelled my order.

Then when the GMT P500 sale happened that next year, where you could get games at 50% off depending on how many P500 orders you had done that year, I decided to take the plunge (which tells me that it was probably money, though maybe I just decided “fuck it, I’ll find room”).

And it was sold out.

Anyway, I still don’t have this game and it’s really, really intriguing.

Let’s blurb it and see what’s so enticing about it:

“I, Napoleon is a solitaire historical role-playing card game in which you step into the boots of Captain Buonaparte (as he still was) in the year 1793. Louis XVI has just gone to the guillotine, the brothers Robespierre control the destiny of France, and all Europe has joined French Royalists to take down France, end the Revolution, and restore peace and safety for the hereditary principles that have underlain society for 1000 years.

As an ambitious but unknown young artillery officer, who speaks French with a Corsican accent, you would seem to be an unlikely agent of destiny. Can you harness a brilliant mind, titanic energies, and a sometimes terrifying charisma to leave your mark on history? Or will you die a minor footnote in the story of France?”

One of these days, my friend.

One of these days.

Let’s flash back to about 24 weeks or so ago (wow, have I been doing these posts for more than 24 weeks now? Sheesh!)

Shipwrights of the North Sea (#4280) rounds out this week’s century, and it’s noteworthy because while I’ve never played it, I have played (and reviewed!) its Redux Edition, which apparently is a much better game (and also more highly ranked, being #1816 right now, hence the 24 weeks).

In this game, you are viking shipwrights building those hearty viking vessels so that other vikings can go out and pillage and plunder.

Apparently this version was so ill-received that this is the statement that Shem Phillips put on the description for the Redux version:

“Shipwrights of the North Sea: Redux is an entirely new game. While it shares a lot of thematic elements and player goals from the original, the core gameplay has been completely rebuilt to create an experience much more in line with what fans of Garphill Games have come to expect.”

I had a friend who played this version and hated it with a fiery passion.

He was much more pleased with the new version, though it’s still not an amazing game.

But it’s certainly fun at least!

This one didn’t sound fun at all, so I’m surprised it’s up even this high.

We’ve come all this way and haven’t even talked about a wargame yet (though at least I, Napoleon is from a wargame company and involves somebody who was heavily involved in war).

So for Andrew’s sake, let’s talk about Shifting Sands: the Campaign for North Africa 1940-1943 (#4210)

This game was published by Multi-Man Publishing (the publisher of the seemingly wonderful and incredibly intimidating Advanced Squad Leader series) way back in 2006.

This game covers the entirety of the North African campaign up through 1943, during World War II.

Let’s blurb it because it sounds really interesting!

“Shifting Sands is a point-to-point movement, card driven game based on the World War II African campaigns of 1940-1943. From the first Italian attempts to cross “The Wire” through the Torch invasion, all aspects of the campaign for North Africa are covered including the Abyssinian Campaign of 1940-1941. Like the commanders of the day, you’ll need to try and achieve your goals while events in other theaters influence your ability to maintain any semblance of a plan.”

It apparently has a thin rulebook, with only 16 pages of rules and then a bunch of scenarios and designer notes to fill it out.

It looks pretty cool. I don’t know how long the scenarios are, but the play time on BGG is listed as 240-300 minutes (so a short wargame).

I’m not a wargamer at heart and don’t know the history, but I’m not familiar with any games that cover the initial Italian Abyssinian Campaign of 1940-41.

This one does!

I’d be up for it, if I could get past my semi-aversion to really long games.

Ok, I’m really brushing up hard against my word count quota for these posts, so we’ll stop there.

Any games in here you like or hate?

Anything you in this century that you would suggest?

Let me know in the comments.