BGG Top Games – 5301 – 5400

We’re quickly moving through the 5000s in the Boardgame Geek game rankings list, and this week is actually pretty good and pretty bad.

Pretty good because I’ve actually played three of them!

(actually 4, but the extra one jumped up into last week’s century so I won’t talk about it)

Pretty bad because only one of them is a game I greatly enjoyed (though another one is definitely decent and I’d play it again).

At this point, are we really here for the games I’ve played, or more just to talk about some other games that probably wouldn’t get talked about much if I wasn’t doing these posts?

If at all?

That’s why you’re here, right?

You can tell me. I won’t say anything.

Before we get to this week’s century, though, let’s check in on our experiment and see how high it’s skyrocketed in a couple of days to a week.

Last week, at the time of posting on Wednesday morning, Forest Shuffle: Smoky Mountains was at #3848 and moving up quickly.

I’m starting this post on Friday afternoon and it’s already at #3678. Almost 200 in two days.

Of course, the experiment is at the time of posting, and it’s currently at #3227 and oh my god is it jumping up the charts!

Something to keep an eye on, so we’ll definitely do this next week.

This week’s century can be found here.

Of course, if you’re looking at this tomorrow, it will…probably not have changed much.

But it might have!

(Hell, Forest Shuffle jumped 70 points between Tuesday night and this morning)

As I mentioned, I’ve played three of the games this week and I owned one of them.

Of course, that one was the good game.

Before I get to my introduction word count limit, let’s get started.

The first game I’ve played in this century is one that I haven’t played since 2016, so my memory of it is not great.

Clubs (#5319) is a “new” (ok, it came out in 2013) take on card-shedding games in that you only want to get Clubs (they’re the only ones who score).

You are trying to get rid of the cards in your hand as fast as possible.

Somebody starts by playing a set of cards of the same number (which can be only one card if they want) or a run of 2 or more consecutive numbers.

The other players have to either pass or play cards that are ranked higher (either higher in number or a higher number of cards if it’s a run).

Play goes around the table until everybody passes, in which case the person who played collects all the cards.

The first player who gets rid of all their cards gets maximum points (depending on player count) and also points for each Club they took (the higher-value Clubs are worth less than the low ones)

However, if you are the last person to have cards in your hand in the round, then you don’t get any points, not even for the Clubs you have taken.

First player to 50 wins the game.

I wasn’t that impressed with this game back in 2016 (rated it a 6.5, which is fine). I think I might like it more now that I’m more familiar with card-shedding games and actually really enjoy them.

I’d love to try it again and see what happens.

The next one on the list was the first in the GMT Games “Lunch Time Games” line of 2-player games, Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis, 1860-61 (#5386)

This isn’t really a wargame, which is how I got a couple of non-wargamers to actually play it with me enough to review.

This game has players either being on the Unionist side or the Secessionist side, and are playing cards to exert influence on various sectors of the United States for their aims.

This struggle was to determine whether the country would split apart into open warfare or if it could be salvaged during the whole Secession Crisis right before the American Civil War.

There are four “crisis dimensions” where the players are trying to exert political influence by placing cubes in one of the three areas of each dimension.

This is a card-driven game, so each turn you are going to play one of your cards for either influence points or to do the event (if it’s your event, of course).

There is a variant (adopted as a rule in future additions to the Lunch Time Game line) that will allow a player to discard a card to use the event you bypassed, but that’s not in the standard rules.

So there’s no danger in playing an opponent’s event card for the points.

Each round, you’re going to be keeping one of your dealt cards back for the “final crisis,” and then you will score each dimension and see if you were able to gain your objective for that round.

The final crisis has players sorting their held-back cards and then playing them one at a time together, using the bottom of the card (Armaments, Public Opinion, or Secession).

If you played separate ones, then each player can place influence in dimension they played.

If you played the same, then you have to remove the influence from somewhere in that dimension, or two tokens anywhere else.

Then you do another round of scoring.

I really enjoy the final crisis aspect of this game, along with how you gain more influence cubes to spend.

The cubes on the left are where you will be pulling them.

Each time you “breach” a new section of it, something will happen.

The first player to breach the “Final Crisis” area will get four extra cubes, but they lose a VP.

It’s all quite intricate, and yet a bit abstract, which some people have a problem with.

But overall I enjoyed this one.

The final game that I’ve played was fun, though I think it would be more fun with more players.

Farm Hand (#5371) is a “micro card game” of 21 cards and plays 1-5 players.

Which seems like a lot for only 21 cards!

There is an element of trick-taking in this game, but different suits have different values of cards (and one only has one card!). You can see what suits people have, but not what the value is (unless it’s the only card, of course).

There’s a handy list of card distribution to help you.

There’s also a bidding element, because everybody will simultaneously bid to see how many tricks they will take this round.

They do that by secretly holding up their fingers and then revealing it at the same time.

The other conceit in the game is that each round will have progressively more cards dealt out to players.

The first round only has one!

It is a must-follow trick-taking game, except that the highest card wins the trick regardless of the suit led, and that if two cards of the same value are played, they cancel each other and the next higher card wins.

If you make your bid exactly, then you get a number of points equal to the round number.

If not, then you lose a point for each value you missed it by (if you bid 2 and you got 1, then you lose 1 point).

This is a fun little game, very short but punchy and can lead to some laughs as players knock each other out to make sure they don’t make their bid.

Knowing what suits they have (and if the Mountain, the value it is) really makes this game a bit more tactical than it would otherwise be.

I’d play this one again.

We’re now past the ones I’ve played.

What other gems might we find in this list?

How about yet another variation on 6 Nimmt!?

6 nimmt! Baron Oxx (#5307 but it jumped to #5263 by today!) has the same basic card play as 6 Nimmt, where there are five rows of cards out. Each player places a card face down and then everybody simultaneously reveals them. They are then put out in order from lowest to highest.

In this version, though, the numbers on the cards don’t matter except to determine who places their card first.

If you end up taking the row, those cards are worth points (which are bad in this game).

In the original, you had to play based on the number on the card.

In Baron Oxx, you are paying attention to the colour of the bulls.

You must play your card to the end of a row with bulls that match one of the colours on your card.

As soon as a row has six bull heads of the same colour (it might not be the sixth card in this case), that’s when you take the row.

So in the picture above, it’s safe to play that blue bull head to the middle row because that would make only two blues.

There is the Baron, who is considered to be all six colours and thus can be played anywhere.

But he’s worth a bunch of points, which means you don’t want to collect that row.

Sounds like an interesting variation. Not one I would necessarily seek out, but I’d gladly play it to see how it feels compared to the original.

I’m sure there would be even more laughter than usual with this game.

Let’s get nostalgic for a moment.

Not for a game I’ve played, but for a game I remember being kind of excited about way back in the day.

Freedom in the Galaxy: The Star Rebellions; 5764 AD (#5323) was a massive new science fiction wargame when it came out from Avalon Hill back in 1979.

I was only 9 years old!

But I remember seeing it referenced in the General magazine (the Avalon Hill house magazine) and it just looked cool.

I had nobody to play it with (hell, I was only 9!), so I never actually got it.

But the concept intrigued me for a while after that while I was playing Squad Leader and the like.

The game takes anywhere from 60 to 1200 minutes (that’s 1-20 hours!), which means there must be scenarios in it.

The rebels are trying to instill insurrections in the various parts of the galaxy as shown by the linked concentric circles on the map.

Let’s blurb this one:

“The map board schematically represents over 30 solar systems. Unit types include armed forces, spaceships, Imperial characters and individual Rebels. The Rebel player must start insurrections on various planets hoping to cause a domino effect and topple the Empire’s power base. The Imperial player must garrison planets, quash rebellion and conduct diplomatic missions to maintain a high loyalty factor. There are three levels of complexity to the game system. Combat is dice-based and cross-referenced on various Combat Results Tables (CRT).”

As you can see from the pic above, the components were…very 1979.

But wow, would I love to see this game in action at some point.

It’s probably horribly unbalanced or something.

I don’t know.

There must still be an active fanbase for this, at least somewhat.

The last post in the BGG forum for the game was only a month ago!

Anyway, it just feels like it would be a cool game.

Going much more recent, another neat-sounding game that has been getting raves from wargamers I know is Purple Haze (#5375).

This is “an immersive story-creation Tactical level Campaign wargame for 1 to 4 players that drops you into the heart of darkness: Vietnam, 1967.”

You lead a squad of US Marines through the best and worst of the terrain in Vietnam, trying to execute the mission you were given while making sure your men stay alive.

Let’s finish the blurb from BGG:

“It is in part a story-creation game, in part a Tactical level wargame, and in part a Campaign game. Your decisions determine the story. Your tactics decide the outcome of life and death firefights. Your men will suffer. Some won’t make it home. Those that do will get wiser, get tougher. The goal: Complete the mission, and get out alive.”

This game sounds really intense, and it’s a cooperative game for 1-4 players, so you could do a solo campaign if you want.

Intense, but gripping, I’ve heard nothing but praise about this game from those friends who have played it.

My good friend Zilla Blitz has an overview video of it from a year or so ago (which I’m almost positive I watched but hadn’t given the thumbs up, but I have now!)

This is probably a game I’ll never play, but if I did, I would be happy (and sad, and scared, and all of the emotions that not bringing all of your boys home can instill in you).

Next let’s talk about Trismegistus (#5374).

This one reimplements Trismegistus: The Ultimate Formula (which happens to be #906) and is supposed to be a bit more streamlined and easier to play (though not too easy!).

I saw Heavy Cardboard play the original game, and it looked really intriguing. Really hard to wrap my head around, but intriguing!

Is the new version supposed to be easier for head-wrapping?

It says “The new edition features a more accessible and less complex set of game mechanics.”

Did fans of the game really want that?

Is this version down in the 5300s because it’s pretty much brand new? Will it reach the original’s top 1000 ranking at all?

Who knows?

The game features dice-rolling and using the alchemical icons on the dice for various transmutations and experiments, so that apparently hasn’t changed much.

It still looks like a cool game, and if it’s a bit more accessible, maybe I could actually play it?

Not that I had a chance to try the original. I didn’t actively avoid it.

It looked great too, from the HC playthrough.

Finally, a truly solo wargame instead of a wargame that can be played solo.

Hapsburg Eclipse: the Great War in Eastern Europe 1914-1918 (#5333) looks seriously cool.

It’s a “state of siege” game where various things are advancing toward you on various tracks, and you have to play whack-a-mole to try and keep any of them from reaching you by the game end.

Let’s blurb this one:

“The player controls the leadership of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, peripherally, the German Central Staff who assumes greater and greater control over their ally. The Austro-Hungarians have unique challenges as they try to survive the onslaught of the “Russian Steamroller” and try to conquer the Serbs in the South. The mission will be complicated by the perseverance of those enemies; the difficulties with new fronts in Romania, the Balkans, and the Italian border; and the difficulty of keeping the Empire’s restive nationalities from revolting from Hapsburg Rule.

The war started poorly for the Austro-Hungarians, with major Russian advances in the East and no progress against the Serbians. As time went on and the Austro-Hungarians bounced from one crisis to another, the Germans started to take more control as the price for their aid. In the end, the war was too much for the disparate nationalities of Austria-Hungary to take, and when it became clear that the Central Powers could not win the war, the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated.

Can you succeed in keeping the Hapsburg Monarchy intact? Play Hapsburg Eclipse and find out!”

It looks like there are a lot of things to keep track of as things slowly get worse and worse for you.

It looks like there are various cards that will bring more nasty things down on you.

Including a bunch of revolts!

At 30 minutes and maybe a small footprint, maybe this is one I could try out one of these days.

According to Boardgame Bliss, there is a 2nd Edition of this game coming, so maybe sooner than I had thought!

There you go, another neat group of games (and some not so neat).

Anything in here you’ve played? Recommend? Avoid?

Or want to play?

Let me know in the comments.