BGG Top Games – 5201 – 5300

This is a weird week in the weekly look at the top ranked games on Boardgame Geek (though saying “top” when we’re down in the 5000s seems a little off).

I have played only one of these games, but it is actually pretty good, and probably even better if I could get it to the table again.

But overall, as far as these posts go, it’s a slow week because there’s only one game.

Which will give me a lot of time to talk about other, maybe more interesting games.

Or maybe not.

But first, let’s get to our current experiment.

Forest Shuffle: Smoky Mountains is still moving up the charts.

When the previous post went live on Thursday, this was at #4567.

I’m starting this post on Friday night, so only a day later, and it’s currently at #4484.

That’s almost 100 spots in one day!

As of this posting, it’s currently #3848, which is a jump of over 600 in less than a week!

Yeah, we’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

Anyway, on to this week’s century.

It can be found here.

Keep in mind, as usual, that things can change if you’re coming at this from the future.

So if you’re a rogue AI that is doing everything it can to take down the human Federation that’s spanning the galaxy now, the games might be different!

As I mentioned, I’ve only played one of these games and I do own it.

Sadly, I’ve only played it once but I want to get it to the table again!

Let’s get this party started and be done with it.

While I’m a huge fan of Garphill’s “trilogy” games, I haven’t looked into all of their games in the Ancients line.

I do have a few, though, and one that I backed and got played when I first received it back in 2025 was Assyria: 2nd Edition (#5211).

This a reworking of the classic Assyria game that’s currently ranked at #2930.

This is a game where you are various tribes that eventually joined to form the Assyrian Empire. But before then, they expanded as nomadic tribes around the Tigris & Euphrates river, establishing little townships, farming and fishing, and building huge ziggurats, while also cultivating relationships with neighbouring empires.

The way of establishing turn order in the game is really cool.

In the turn order from the previous round, you are essentially bidding for turn order in the current round.

You place your piece next to one of the rows of two food cards and one action card.

If you place in one of the lower two spaces, that will cost you a victory point or three.

But if there is any space lower, you can be outbid for that and you have to go to a different row.

Thus, you can just spend the points outright if you really want to get that space (or those food/action cards, if that’s the most important thing for you this turn).

You will then be placing a certain number of huts out on the board based on the round (plus any in your personal supply), gaining camels or scoring points based on where you put your huts.

You spend camels to take various actions as shown on your player board.

You have to feed all of your huts based on the food required in the spaces they are in, and that’s where the food cards you have collected come in.

The game goes six rounds and at the end of round three, all huts in the river areas will be washed away by the flood, but you will score points for your ziggurats and what level you’ve reached of worship of the gods.

The ziggurats are the only permanent fixtures on the land, as they don’t need to be fed and don’t wash away.

I really do want to play this again. Our one play of it was brutally long, and it probably shouldn’t have been.

I think it would be a good 3-player game, at least until players have more of an idea what to do in the game.

I’m going to make this happen soon.

That’s it for games that I’ve played!

Short list, right?

Let’s get into some of the games that are noteworthy in other ways.

I’ll start with a wargame in this instance because it’s a game about a subject that I just haven’t seen any games about (though granted, not being much of a wargamer, I know that’s not saying much).

Reluctant Enemies: Operation Exporter (#5214) is a wargame about the Commonwealth invasion of Syria & Lebanon in World War II (held by the Vichy French after the French surrender to the Germans).

This one was published by Multi-Man Publishing in 2014 and it’s an intriguing topic!

Most mentions of Vichy France in games, to my knowledge, are mostly strategic level games where you might have to deal with them as you are dealing with everything else.

Specific battles with the Vichy French, though? In battles that aren’t the Allied invasion of North Africa?

Maybe I’m totally wrong and somebody can correct me.

Anyway, this is a small game that’s designed almost as an introduction to MMP’s Operational Combat System series of games.

It’s one map, about 60 counters in play at any one time in total (not even per side), and can cover battles that are far-ranging desert battles as well as close in mountainous fighting.

I can’t tell from the description if there are scenarios or not, but I’m not sure a projected play time of 750 minutes could really be considered “introductory?”

I guess for a long-term wargame, it could be.

Looking at some of the images on BGG, they mention specific scenarios, so there evidently are, which would greatly help with the play time.

The game does seem super-cool and I have heard good things about the OCS system (sorry for the redundancy there), so maybe this is a game I wouldn’t mind trying except that it’s probably wildly out of print by now.

Maybe one day.

Going much lighter, there’s Hitster: Rock (#5228), which is another in the Hitster series of music timelining (yes, I’m making up words, because I’m a politician).

Just like in the others (none of which I have played), you draw a music card, scan the QR code with the Hitster app, have the song play on Spotify, and then you have to place it in your timeline of other Rock songs so that they are in order by date of release.

If you got it right, you get to keep it and score it. If you didn’t, sucks to be you.

The description says that “special Hitster cards can add an extra layer of excitement…” and also that there are 300 songs available to choose from.

You only have to guess when the song was released in comparison to other songs in your timeline, so you don’t have to know the exact year, unless you want to play in expert mode.

I’m not really a party game type of person, but these kinds of games can be fun. Almost like trivia about a specific subject, but not exactly.

I love trivia stuff.

It plays 2-10 players and won’t overstay its welcome (though at 10 players I guess I could see it taking an hour).

There are other Hitster games out there, of course, including the original which is currently ranked #477 (wow, that’s high!)

This is one I’d love to try out.

The nostalgia nut in me has to mention this next game, because I loved sports simulations back in the day (though I didn’t play many of them).

Statis Pro Baseball (#5254) was published by Avalon Hill in 1971 and pretty much continuously updated through 1992, when a royalties rights issue between Major League Baseball and Avalon Hill put an end to it.

I love these statistical simulations where you are rolling dice for players and using their statistical probabilities to determine what happens to them.

My brother and his friends used to play this one (or Stratomatic Baseball, I don’t remember) and I think I might have even done a game or two. They played an entire season, though my brother did let me dabble.

There are tons of stats and tables and things that you are comparing your dice rolls to.

I love the computerized ones even more because that’s all behind the scenes, but there’s something to be said for the nostalgia of rolling dice and doing the checking yourself.

This is from the description on BGG, though I don’t know if it still holds true:

“While the Avalon Hill Statis Pro Baseball game is no longer in production, it is possible to make your own player cards using the Statis Pro Baseball card formulas provided with the game. Moreover, PDFs of fan-made seasons and teams can be found online either free or for purchase.”

If it is, that’s amazing.

Getting back to wargames for a moment, let’s go solitaire!

Stalingrad: Advance to the Volga (#5292) is a solitaire game about the German attempt to take the Soviet city of Stalingrad in September – October 1942.

The game system handles the Soviet forces, which are much more static than the highly mobile German forces.

Not that this mattered in history, as the Soviets held their ground and then other Soviet forces surrounded the Germans, forcing them to surrender in 1943.

This is apparently a huge game, and potentially long at a maximum time (on BGG, which of course can lie) of 300 minutes.

Even the minimum time is 120 minutes!

It’s an area movement game and the board (it’s a beauty, ain’t it?) is divided into 50 areas.

Here’s a more detailed look at a few areas, also from the Players’ Aid post.

It looks like a marvelous system, though the board looks huge and there’s no way I can get it played at home, so sadly this will probably not be played by me.

But I want to…

How about a little formula one racing now?

I mentioned while talking about Statis Pro Baseball that I had only played a couple of the old school Avalon Hill sports games back in the day.

One of them was about Indy Car racing, though there was one about Formula One that I never got played.

This isn’t it, but it reminded me of it!

Pole Position (#5240) is a 1-6 player game about Formula One racing.

It looks kind of intricate too! Especially with all of the things the description says it takes into account (let’s blurb since I haven’t done that yet):

“Pole Position is a race game that has the following features:

• Box entry: to change the kind of tyres and repair car damage.
• Climatology: get the best tyre according the weather.
• 4 types of tyres (soft, hard, intermediate, hard rain)
• Auction for overtake.
• Asymmetry of drivers and teams.
• Collisions, breakdowns
• Campaign mode: world championship
• 8 different circuits

Each race lasts 5 or 6 laps. In each race you have to choose which kind of tyres you use. Your strategy during the race is crucial:

When to enter box: this is a crucial decision in the game you have to enter your box depending on the weather and the car damage.

When to overtake: Overtake it’s not an easy question, you have to decide the right moment.

When and how use your break points, engine points and driver points during the race.

At 2.94 complexity, this all makes sense!

It also seems seriously cool, especially if you are into racing.

I can’t make any sense of how the game is played from the description, but it has seriously whet my whistle to try this one out if I could.

Lots of dice apparently, but it looks like a lot of preparation and decision-making as well.

I love it!

Finally, let’s go traveling down the California coast in Big Sur (#5212), published back in 2025 by 25th Century Games.

This game looks really quick at 15-30 minutes, and will give you a chance to check out the scenery and landmarks in this beautiful area (from what I’ve heard, since I’ve sadly never been there).

In the game, you’re drafting cards to either use as resources to build your big road or as the road sections themselves.

Your path will score based on what types of terrain you’ve connected and other conditions like that.

You can also add landmarks to enhance the road even further.

The landmarks are based on actual ones from the Big Sur area, which is really nice.

It looks like a fun little game and if I wasn’t so inundated with playable games at lunch, I’d probably pick it up.

Maybe sometime in the future.

But would I play it?

Hell yeah!

Not a bad-looking set of games if I do say so myself.

Have you played any of these? Thoughts on them? Or anything that I should play or avoid in this century?

Let me know in the comments.