BGG Top Games – 4701 – 4800

We’re getting close to the 5000 mark on this look at centuries of Boardgame Geek game rankings, and one thing is becoming clear:

I haven’t played a lot of these as we get deeper!

Last week was a bit of a return to form after a week where I hadn’t played anything.

This week doesn’t get quite that bad, but it’s close!

I’m not counting a game that slipped out of last week’s century and into this one, because I’ve already counted it.

But first, to our experiments, and to see whether or not it’s worth continuing these.

First, The Game Makers, published by Bezier Games, has been going up the charts since the Kickstarter began fulfilling, but it started slowing down last week.

Last week, it ended up at #2958, but as I write this on Saturday, it’s currently at #2923

Not a lot of movement!

If it hasn’t move up much by the time this posts on Wednesday, I’ll probably discontinue this one.

Since it’s at #2855 at the time of posting, I’ll give it one more week. It’s not even 100 places!

On a different front, though, Wingspan Pocket seems to be still moving steadily (if not exactl rocketing).

When last week posted, it was at #1649. As I write this on Saturday, it’s at #1604.

Maybe it’s stalling too?

As this post goes live, it’s at #1545, so maybe not heading for the Top 100.

But we’ll see!

While this week isn’t a total desert, it is certainly drought-laden, with me having only played two games and owning neither of them.

That will give us plenty to talk about in the “interesting games” category, though.

Getting close to the introduction limit, so let’s begin!

Leaping Lemmings (#4719) is probably one of the funniest games out there that is also probably more complicated than it should be.

It’s published by GMT Games, so that could explain the latter.

I haven’t played it since March 2017, but I played it twice that month!

I have fond memories of just how weird it is.

Since I don’t remember the details of how to play though, let’s blurb it:

“Objective: The player with the most victory points wins the game. To earn victory points, players dive their lemmings over the cliff edge and/or collect Lemming Chow Pellets.

The game board is a hex-based map representing the canyon down which up to six separate lemming clans will travel. The canyon ends with the cliff edge hexes, which are the lemmings’ ultimate goal. Between the lemmings and their goal there are two eagles circling overhead hoping for multiple lemming snacks.

Each turn a movement card is revealed which will allow for 2-5 lemming movement points. Card luck is mitigated in that all players use the same card to move that turn. Only the top lemming in each stack is allowed to move, so covering your opponents’ lemmings is one tactic that is used to slow them down. The down side is that the top lemming in each stack is the only one in danger of becoming eagle chow.

Special Actions allow players to briefly alter the normal rules of the game to their advantage or to their opponents’ detriment. There are 16 different Special Actions in the game.”

You can see the number of lemmings who made the leap (and got style points) at the top, as well as all the lemmings that became eagle chow at the bottom.

I remember laughing a lot during these two games, but it hasn’t seen the table in quite some time.

I’m not even sure if Lana still has it.

Maybe!

The other game that I’ve played is much more recent, and is on Boardgame Arena where I’m in a game of it as well!

First Giants (#4729) came out in 2026 and hasn’t really moved the needle that much.

It’s a reimplementation of Elysium (#683), which must mean that it has some fans. It’s in the Top 1000!

First Giants just hasn’t made much headway.

I can’t compare the two because I’ve never played Elysium before, but I really enjoyed First Giants.

I love the dinosaur fossil museum theme of it, and I like the choices it has you make, especially because putting fossils in your museum is an act of bringing your other workers back from the board.

You can get bonuses if you are first to a certain level with different types of dinosaurs, but you might have to pull back early if you want to beat somebody else to the punch.

The card selection board with its four quadrants and two cards in each is really interesting.

You can only put one worker in each quadrant before you have to bring them back.

The fossils you select can get you immediate bonuses, or you will just keep them to eventually put into your museum.

You can then group them by colour or number, and you’re trying to get the biggest set of each type.

I actually really liked this game and I’ve always wanted to try Elysium.

Now I’d like to try it to see what the differences are.

Let’s move on to some games that may have just piqued my interest, or at least made me think there’s something to write about in them.

A new rule for myself, though: nothing here is going to be near the ends of the century, unless the game is just that intriguing.

I’m getting tired of saying “well, this slipped out of the century!”

Before we do that, though, let’s get one bit of weirdness out of the way.

Colossal Cat in the Box (#4778) is just a huge version of an already great game that I’ve already reviewed!

It has a huge first-player marker, bigger boards and pieces (according to the BGG page, everything’s 4 times bigger!), and it just seems so unnecessary.

The small box was amazing and so transportable!

Unfortunately this box also has two expansions in it, which really gripes me because those don’t need to be colossal size.

It’s not like the size is important for the gameplay of them, or at least that’s not my understanding.

So why just have them in this?

Sure, it’s now just in a standard 12x12x3 box, like any other boardgame.

But card games should be small and able to tuck in a pocket of your backpack of something.

Was this a Kickstarter exclusive?

I don’t even know if it’s available anymore.

I’m beginning to wonder about them, because they’re doing things like redoing Of What’s Left even after reimplementing it with Seers Catalog.

Why?

Whatever, I just wish these expansions were available without having to try and track down all of this extra crap that I don’t really want.

Anyway, rant over.

On to the interesting games!

Junk Orbit (#4722) always looked interesting from when it first came out, but I never got around to getting it and it kind of faded out of my consciousness.

It all coming in a small cylinder like Zombie Dice didn’t help.

In Junk Orbit, players are scavengers on a spaceship, roaming space to collect junk because who knows? There might be something cool in it.

Somebody somewhere will buy it.

You deliver the junk by…shooting it at a destination city?

That also propels you the same distance in the opposite direction, so I guess you don’t actually have engines, using the junk for fuel too?

I’m so confused.

You can also hit another player’s ship with the junk you shoot out, making them discard some junk as well.

I’m just going by the BGG description (what? Read the rulebook? That wouldn’t be funny…), but that’s what it looks like from that description.

Anyway, here it is on the table and, while I joke about it above, it does look like an interesting little game.

I wouldn’t mind playing it.

Another game that made me take a second look, because I didn’t know they had branched out that much, was Quartermaster General: Victory or Death – the Peloponnesian War (#4759).

the Quartermaster General series of games that I’m familiar with have all been World War II based, with I think a World War I edition as well?

Going back to ancient times just seems…really weird, though I’m sure they made it work.

Or maybe not because it’s a 10-year old game and it’s down here in the 4700s while Quartermaster General is at #1532

I’ve never played any of the series, though one of my friends has played at least one of them. It seems to be an area control euro/wargame for 2-4 players, so maybe that crossover is why it works for them? Or they are secretly harboring a love of wargames that I had never known before.

Anyway, let’s blurb this one:

“Victory or Death: The Peloponnesian War, the next game in the Quartermaster General Series, is a card driven/hand management/area control eurogame/wargame for 2 to 4 players playing on two teams, and takes about 90 minutes to two hours to play. On one side are the Athenians and the Delian League, the Demos team; against them, the Oligarchs of Sparta and Corinth are teamed.

The Peloponnesian War is a great setting for a historical game, having two evenly matched factions with very differing capabilities. Athens (and the Delian League, including Corcyra) commanded the seas, and relied on trade to feed their masses. On land, the Spartan phalanx was virtually unbeatable, as all adult Spartan male citizens were professional soldiers

Players of Quartermaster General will find most of the concepts familiar. Since the game has a smaller maximum player count, the amount of activity during a turn has been slightly increased.For example, after the Play step there is a Planning step, when you can place a Prepare card on the table. Prepare cards in Victory or Death work a lot like Response Cards in Quartermaster General, but have a much broader scope of application. Many Prepare cards are used during the Strategy step, which is at the beginning of a player’s turn. Much of the game play is structured around putting together effective combinations of played cards and prepared cards.”

Could be cool? I’ve always been interested in trying one of these. This one, or one of the World War II ones, but it hasn’t been high on my to-do list.

And it’s colourful!

Crusader Kings (#4763) is based on the popular video game series where you are a medieval king trying to expand your empire and get your children married off to other kings so your power increases.

Or something like that.

Not only are you doing that for yourself, but for your future generations as well.

Because why shouldn’t your family rule for all eternity?

It’s very much a “dudes on a map” game, apparently from the pictures, and also apparently translates the video game pretty well.

I could never really get into the video game because all of that upkeep was just too much for me. My family died out very quickly.

But anyway, the game itself looks…at least semi-interesting?

I just don’t know if I want to devote 3+ hours to it (because BGG says 3 hours and you know that’s underestimating things).

It does look cool, though.

How about a big wargame, since I don’t know if Quartermaster General falls into that category.

World at War ’85: Storming the Gap (#4767) came to my attention fairly recently (ok, a couple of years ago) via a video from my good friend Zilla Blitz!

Though I am confused, because that video was in 2023, and the game sounded new, but BGG says it came out in 2019, and this is all apparently a series of games, and…

I just don’t know.

But it looks neat!

Maybe Zilla can explain it to me.

This is a platoon-level wargame about a possible Soviet invasion of West Germany in 1985 (maybe that’s why it’s called ’85? I am a genius!), with the Warsaw Pact attempting to seize as much of Free Europe as possible.

Zilla’s video gives you a good look at how it plays, and it’s definitely on my “would love to play at some point” list.

Europe in Turmoil (#4784) has one of the coolest covers ever.

It’s also almost the prequel to the famous and wonderful Twilight Struggle, as it uses a similar system.

In other words, it’s a card-driven game about global (though in this case, I guess it’s mainly European) politics leading up to World War I.

It even has a “Space Race” equivalent in the “Naval Arms Race”

One difference is that as things build to a climax, tensions rise and what everybody is trying to avoid will happen: World War I will break out.

Of course, if you’re winning the game, that might not be a bad thing as it does spark the end of the game.

The two sides in question are the Liberal side (democratic and socialist countries) and the Authoritarian side (Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary) and both vie for power and influence.

It just seems like such a great game, though it’s 2 players and 3-4 hours so maybe not going to get played by me any time soon.

But I’d like to!

Here’s a picture of the cards as well.

Much like Twilight Struggle, it appears the game and cards are divided into at least two eras: Victorian and Georgian, which would cover the years leading up to World War I.

Maybe one day!

Finally, let’s talk about a relatively recent game from Portal Games, where you are artists wandering the streets of Paris in the 19th & early 20th centuries, living through the struggles of life while trying to create masterpieces.

Bohemians (#4789) is a 2025 game and it has had some wonderful reviews that make me want to look it up.

Let’s blurb this one, because it did sound really interesting:

“In each round, players must plan that day’s routine and decide whether they will go on a date, participate in a social event, meet their muse, create new art, or…go to work. Each card offers them various bonuses and inspiration, so carefully managing your card supply and the order in which they’re played is crucial to getting the most inspiration. Players then spend their inspiration to purchase cards and build their deck with new habits, inspiring muses, or new achievements in their career. The artist who acquires the most achievements from the achievements deck wins.”

One of the mechanisms BGG lists for the game is “cooperative,” but it certainly doesn’t sound cooperative to me.

But it also seems like you are building a deck of cards of some kind, or maybe a pool?

It also appears that you might (or will?) acquire hardship cards during the game, anything from Violent Outbursts to Syphilis, or maybe even being shunned by your peers.

Which adds an intriguing dimension to the whole thing.

The artwork in this game looks amazing!

The hardships are especially evocative.

Space Biff’s review of the game is here, and it definitely enticed me to want to play it (though not buy it, at least not before, and now it’s sold out at my usual venue).

And that’s a wrap at the 4700s century of rated games on Boardgame Geek.

Anything I missed that you recommend?

Anything you hate in there?

What have you played?

Let me know in the comments.