Top 50 Games Played of All Time – 2026 Edition (#50-41)

Two years goes by so fast.

Hell, even a month goes by so fast, as I remember looking forward to all of the holiday fun and time off in December, and now it’s January and where did the time go?

However, it has been two years since I did a Top 50 Games Played of All Time list, and it’s that time again!

The Top 50 in 2024 was based on me having played 534 games in total by the end of 2023.

At the end of 2025, I have now played 687 unique games, so it’s time to look back and see which ones are the best ones out there, at least in my opinion.

Last time I expanded to a Top 50 (instead of Top 25) because I had played so many games finally. It didn’t feel weird doing a list that was more than 10% of the games I’d played.

I won’t be doing a Top 100 until I get to 1000 games, so it won’t be for another 4-5 years, I don’t think.

At least not at this rate.

How did I compile this list?

Much thanks to the wonderful PubMeeple ranking engine for letting me choose all of the Boardgame Geek games that I’ve rated and then compare two of them at a time for a total of almost 3400 comparisons.

Yes, that is me.

It takes a long time, and will take longer as there are more games.

But I love seeing not only the Top 50, but also the rankings below that and how things change.

Maybe something dropped from 189 to 286!

How am I to know that unless I compare them all?

One day I may get too tired to do all of that, though at least PubMeeple lets you do it over a series of days so you don’t have to do it all at once.

Anyway, we both know that you just want to see what games are on my list, so let me say a couple of things before we get started.

First, many of these games were only played once, so my rankings/feelings about the game are based on that play.

Subsequent plays may increase/decrease my regard for them, so next time there may be a lot of movement.

Secondly, because I’ve only played 687 games (and only just over half of the Top 100 on BGG), many games that are highly-regarded will just not appear here because I haven’t played them.

So you Star Wars: Rebellion fans are just going to have to come to a Canadian convention that I’m going to so we can play it.

Ok?

Finally, this list was compiled on December 31st, 2025, so rest assured that by the time the final installment has been posted in early February, I will have played something new to me that I would have included in the Top 50 if I had only played it.

Check out this list in 2028 and see it!

There will be some surprises in this list for long-time followers of this blog.

Big surprises.

One thing that’s not a surprise?

Lucky Loop is still at the bottom, at #687

With that, let’s begin!

Oh, shut up.

Just a note that for each game, if I’ve reviewed it, the link will be to the review. If not, then it will be to the Boardgame Geek entry.

50) In the Shadows: Resistance in France 1943-1944 (2025 – GMT Games)

Designers: Daniel Bullock, Joe Schmidt

Artist: Terry Leeds

Players: 1-2

2024 Rank – Not Played

We start off this Top 50 with an amazing 2-player game that fits perfectly at lunch (though we have so many players now that 2-player games don’t really get played).

In the Shadows is a game that’s becoming more relevant every day, a face-off between terrifying Occupation forces (both German and French police) and Resistance cells (both active Maquis fighters as well as cells that don’t fight).

The asymmetric goals in the game are just wonderful, with the Occupation being the only one who can win or lose.

The Resistance just has to impede them from winning (and thus, they lose).

I really love the card play in this one, because not only do the points on the cards determine how many action points you have on that turn, but the higher of the two will let that player determine who goes first that round.

Sometimes it’s important to go last, for a number of reasons.

This game makes you think and it’s actually kind of chilling how the removed Resistance units are “Disappeared”.

Not captured, but just gone.

That’s really ominous.

I highly recommend this one, and it’s why it cracks into the Top 50 on its first opportunity.

49) Fantastic Factories (2019 – Deep Water Games)

Designers: Joseph Z. Chen, Justin Faulkner

Artist: Joseph Z. Chen

Players: 1-5

2024 Rank: 18

Fantastic Factories takes a big fall, but is still right on the edge of my Top 50.

The only reason I can think of for the fall, since I did play it a couple of times in the past year, is that it just got surpassed by a bunch of other games.

I still enjoy the dice rolling and placement on the various building cards I’ve played.

The artwork is really cute and looks great on the table.

It also can finish in an hour or less, making it a great lunchtime or other short-time game.

It is really a great game! Which is why it didn’t fall completely off of the list.

48) Shadow Kingdoms of Valeria (2021 – Daily Magic Games)

Designer: Stan Kordonskiy

Artist: Mihajlo Dimitrievski

Players: 1-5

2024 Rank: 37

A bit of a fall but not a large one, Shadow Kingdoms of Valeria is still one of my favourites.

I think part of the reason it stayed in my Top 50 is that I finally got the Riftlands expansion played, which adds some really cool stuff and different avenues of scoring points!

Honestly, this might have fallen a bit further if that hadn’t happened, because one of the issues with the base game is that you can be out of the running fairly early if you don’t keep pace with completing battle plans.

It also gives you asymmetric player powers which you can lean into in order to pave your path to victory as well!

Even just the base game is fun, though.

I love the shrines and how you have to move your avatar from one to another (or back to your board if you’re completing a battle plan) and draft dice (soldiers) that will then help you do those battle plans.

The artwork is typical Mico gorgeousness. I like the dark tones because you are literally playing the bad guys in this one.

Also, it plays 5 players brilliantly!

For those game days where you suddenly have 5 players and you don’t have any games that play 5 well.

If I can get the game played more with Riftlands, this might even move up in 2028.

We’ll see.

For now, though, it’s still in my Top 50.

(And yes, I realize a game should be able to stand on its own. Don’t @ me).

47) Inventors of the South Tigris (2024 – Garphill Games)

Designers: S J Macdonald, Shem Phillips

Artist: Mihajlo Dimitrievski

Players: 1-4

2024 Rank – Not Played

Now we get to the first South Tigris trilogy game from Garphill Games early!

Inventors of the South Tigris came out late last year and I didn’t get it played until early 2025.

But I did manage to get three plays of it in so I could review it.

Just sadly not the expansion.

Anyway, I do really like this game, but nowhere near as much as the other South Tigris games (I guess that’s a spoiler…oops!)

It’s very big and complex, the scoring mechanisms takes a lot of delicate work and thought, and it’s just a long game in our experience.

I do enjoy the intricate play required, though. You have Invention cards that you can either invent or use for some other purpose (either to discard to invent other cards, or perhaps just discard to get resources or flip craftsmen).

I really love the craftsmen tower, where your craftsmen are hanging out waiting to do their thing (and get paid for it, of course).

As they get more experienced, they move up (and get more expensive). But they will eventually start getting you points at the end of the game if you get them really well-trained.

Money is very tight in this one, which can be a problem sometimes if you haven’t figured out how to get around that.

I also like the use of dice and how you place them onto the board.

It is a brilliant game, but just not as much for me as some of the other ones.

I have to be very conscious of how much time we have before I even suggest it.

Which is making it hard to play the expansion enough to review it.

Hopefully early in 2026!

46) Molly House (2025 – Wehrlegig Games)

Designers: Jo Kelly, Cole Wehrle

Artist: Rachel Ford

Players: 1-5

2024 Rank: Not Played

The first Cole Wehrle game in this Top 50, and won’t be the last that you see even today!

Granted, he helped design this game with Jo Kelly, because this was Jo’s design to start with, and the design that won the Zenobia award.

While Cole definitely contributed some changes to the overall design, we should not just be talking about him in regards to this game.

So don’t forget Jo! I’m sure they will be coming out with even more great things soon.

Anyway, this game is a fascinating look at the British underground culture in 18th Century London.

Players are “gender-defying mollies” who are throwing masquerade balls and cruising back alleys in the city, all the while trying to evade the “moralistic constables who seek to destroy” the community.

(I’m using quotes from the BGG page to make sure I don’t get any of the terms wrong).

This is a game that really makes you think, all with a bit of a roll-and-move mechanism!

Of course, there’s much more to the game than that, because the core of the game is gaining reputation both within the community as well as outside of it (the latter of which isn’t good, but really is unavoidable).

The Masquerade balls are an exquisite mechanism, as whoever starts the ball plays a card to the center, along with the top card of the deck, and other players can contribute to it as well.

You are trying to satisfy one of the scoring possibilities with cards of the same suite, or sequential numbers, and these will give you (and others) “joy” points.

The mechanisms in this game are really cool, and it’s even possible (if players didn’t advance the overall joy enough) that nobody wins!

The artwork is also gorgeous. It will really draw people’s attention if you are playing this at a convention.

While I’ve only played this game once, it has intrigued me since then and I really do want to play it again.

It’s well worth a spot on my Top 50, and could move even higher if I could get it to the table.

It is available on Boardgame Arena and I might have to get a play in there at some point.

I did go into a bit more detail about it here, if you’re interested (not a review, but definitely more thorough description).

I highly encourage that, because I don’t have enough space to do it justice here.

Just note that this is an amazing game.

45) Guild Academies of Valeria (2023 – Daily Magic Games)

Designer: Stan Kordonskiy

Artist: Mihajlo Dimitrievski

Players: 1-4

2024 Rank – Not Played

A new Valeria game enters the house!

And it’s even better than Shadow Kingdoms, at least so far (check with me after some more play with Riftlands, as I said).

Guild Academies of Valeria is another dice-drafting game, but in this case players are heads of magic schools who are recruiting students off of the docks as they come into the city.

(Maybe something our university system should look at?)

You then have your school with classrooms that you can also spend money to get and add to your school, which will teach different types of students different things.

You’ll also be recruiting professors to your school, who will need to teach those courses.

All in the hopes that you will graduate students to go out on quests and get killed!

(ok, we don’t know they get killed, supposedly they succeed at the quest)

There’s also needing to influence various government officials in order to either get in-game benefits or endgame scoring.

It’s a menagerie of cool stuff and I really like it, though I haven’t played it for a while now.

I should break it out again.

44) Root (2018 – Leder Games)

Designer: Cole Wehrle

Artist: Kyle Ferrin

Players: 2-4 (6 with an expansion)

2024 Rank: 22

Another Cole game! And the first that’s solely his.

I haven’t played Root on the table since my first play many years ago, and I have only played the app sparingly.

I need to rectify that soon.

Yet somehow this game still stays in my consciousness enough to remain in my Top 50, even if it has fallen.

This is almost a COIN game that doesn’t look like a COIN game.

Instead, it has cutesy animals, wonderful Kyle Ferrin artwork, and asymmetric player powers that make the game kind of hard to teach but so interesting to play.

Even just the base game, the powers are really different and provide different strategic opportunities for winning.

The main way to win is for a faction to earn 30 points, and they each gain points in different ways.

You have to be aware of that so you can work on destroying their point-producing capabilities.

The expansions add more races with more different abilities, as well as new maps too.

The app is amazing and I really should get back to it at some point so I can learn the intricacies of this game.

It’s been so long since I’ve played it that I can’t go into too much detail about it, but you know it’s a good game if it’s still on your mind even with not having played it for what seems like eons.

Please, let’s get this back!

Then it might jump up further in the rankings.

43) Wingspan (2019 – Stonemaier Games)

Designer: Elizabeth Hargrave

Artists: Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas, Greg May, Beth Sobel

Players: 1-5

2024 Rank: 12

Wingspan is that tableau-building bird game where you are playing bird cards from your hand into one of the three habitat rows on your player board.

As you build attract more birds to a habitat, it becomes more expensive to put them out as you have to spend eggs to do that.

I’m not sure the egg expenditure to play birds is that thematic, but let’s just roll with it.

This goes over four rounds, with each round having one fewer action because you are using one of your action cubes to score the previous round’s bonus (compared to others).

There is also a variant where everybody scores it based on what they have, but that’s too nice for us.

I haven’t played this on the table in a couple of years (Wingpsan with the Asia and all the other expansions at Orcacon 2024), but I love the app and I’m so happy that it’s staying updated.

The app is brilliant and so beautiful, as are the cards in general!

I think the app has kept this in the Top 50 even though it has fallen a great deal.

The expansions do greatly help the game, though, as in the base game, most people are just spamming eggs the last few turns of the last round.

It’s a fun game and I really enjoy it (shut up, Cal).

Maybe one day I’ll get it to the table again, since I have it and all of the expansions except Asia (and the new one that was just announced, in case you are reading this in the future).

42) Finspan (2025 – Stonemaier Games)

Designer: David Gordon, Michael O’Connell

Artists: Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Mesa Schumacher

Players: 1-5

2024 Rank – Not Played

It’s funny. In 2024, the interesting aspect of Wingspan was that even after all of the PubMeeple comparisons, it ended up at the exact same position as it did in 2022 (#12).

This year, it fell a lot, but it ended up exactly one space behind its sister game, Finspan.

I think that Wingspan just likes synchronicity of some sort, regardless of what it is.

Finspan is an amazing game because it has fish instead of birds, has interesting play mechanics and synchronicities, and can be played in just about an hour! If it wasn’t for the setup taking some time, it would fit a work lunch very easily.

In Finspan, you are building fish habitats instead of bird ones.

While you are producing fish eggs as well as hatchlings, you are usually paying to play fish cards with other cards (though some do require eggs or hatchlings).

The fact that certain fish have to be at certain depths, but it doesn’t matter which column they’re in, makes the strategies even better because you are choosing which action to modify when you place the fish.

The habitat requirement for the fish doesn’t inhibit which action you want that fish to modify, which really works.

You are also using these cards to create hatchlings and, if they join together (by moving them, using either fish actions or a column action), they can form schools (like the red tile in the picture above).

Schools score you points.

This is a much more streamlined Wingspan but still with some strategic (or at least tactical, since you are using and drawing cards) depth that I really enjoyed.

One more play of this and I can review it!

But for now, it’s on my Top 50 so maybe a review is superfluous.

41) Arcs (2024 – Leder Games)

Designer: Cole Wehrle

Artist: Kyle Ferrin

Players: 2-4

2024 Rank – Not Played

Wow, three Cole Wehrle games in the first batch of the Top 50!

I’m sure he’d prefer that it was in the Top 10, but still. Three of them!

Arcs is an odd duck.

It isn’t a trick-taking game, but it has some trick-taking mechanics.

It’s a space area control game where you are using the actions dictated by your played cards to move ships around, attack other players, or maybe build up your fleet some, along with a few other options.

The “lead” player plays a card with a value and they have a certain number of actions based on the number used (the higher the number, the fewer actions, but the more likely you are to maintain control for next round)

Other players can then play a card of the same suit to do more actions, or they can make changes to do their own thing.

And they can even just play a card face down to “follow” the main card’s suit but only do one action.

The card’s suit will enable you to do certain actions on your turn.

So the Red 5 above will let you do two Aggression actions (either battle or move or Secure)

The map looks brilliant, with some spaces blocked off if you have fewer than 4 players.

You can move ships within a sector, but to get around the barriers between sectors, you have to come into the center ring.

We played a 3-player game of this, just the basic game (not the 3-play campaign) and it was really interesting.

It intrigued me enough that I want to play it more, which is why it’s this high on my Top 50 even though I did really poorly at it.

I love the mix of fighting and building and just moving around, and the card play is just so fun!

Another play of this will likely move it up in my estimation.

Or, maybe it will make me decide it’s not as good as I thought.

Probably the former, though.

There you have it!

The first decade of my Top 50 games played of all time, and it’s happening sooner than I thought.

I’ll keep the list below updated with the new posts, so you’ll be able to move from one to the other as they come out.

What are your thoughts on any of these games?

Let me know in the comments.

Top 50 Games Played of All Time – 2026 Edition (50-41) – You’re here!