BGG Top Games – 2001 Through 2100

We’re into a new millennium!

Not year-wise, of course.

We are sadly still in 2026.

But in looking at the Boardgame Geek game rankings, we are now over 2000.

Some might say we’re getting into the dregs, where I haven’t played, or even thought about, most of the games.

Surprisingly enough, there are still some decent options here!

That’s the thing about the BGG rankings.

Depending on when you get there, sometimes you’ll see games that are on their way up.

And sometimes you’ll see them having settled around where they’re going to be.

Like I mentioned last week, Pendragon is still falling a bit, having dipped even further to #2005 (it was #2001 last week, but when I had started last week’s post, it was in the 1901-2000 range so I talked about it).

There is always so much movement in these ranges, it’s interesting to see!

In this century, I own (or have owned) four games, and have played six of them.

But in looking at the list, there are some games I wouldn’t mind trying out.

The list I’m talking about is here, though keep in mind that things can change over time.

Let’s begin with the ones that I’ve played and whether I want to keep playing them or not.

Sorcerer City (#2022) is a game I played once, with a former convention buddy Jesse back in 2020.

I was looking for a last-minute game before leaving OrcaCon , and he and his family welcomed me to their game.

It was a lot of fun!

Though I’m not sure this is my type of game overall.

It’s real-time tile placement, for one thing.

That never bodes well.

I don’t remember a lot of the details of the game, so let’s blurb it a bit.

“Every year, Sorcerer City gets built and rebuilt in magically new ways, with blocks moving and rotating in crazy directions. You and your fellow players are rival wizard architects in charge of building the same city district over five years, expanding it and rebuilding it to gain the most money, influence, magic, and victory. Unfortunately, Sorcerer City has a bit of a monster problem, so you must work hard to mitigate the effects of marauding creatures who attack your city district. The wizard architect with the most victory points at the end of five years will be crowned the new head wizard of all of Sorcerer City.

Every player starts Sorcerer City with a set of tiles, and in each round you have two minutes to build your city as optimally as you can. In between rounds you buy new tiles to add to your pool and gain other rewards. Beware though, monsters are lurking and will also be added to your deck, no doubt adding some chaos to your plans in the following rounds. After five rounds, add up all the victory points to see who is the master sorcerer builder!”

As I’ve said before, I don’t picture things and tile layouts very well, and even less so when there’s a real-time element.

Still, it was fun to play with Jesse (he recognized me from a previous Dragonflight, which was awesome!) and both he and his family were very welcoming to a refugee who just needed a game.

That’s the experience that I will remember.

The game?

It’s fine.

Skara Brae (#2021) is a rare Garphill game that I’ve had trouble getting to the table, though I hope to be able to do it this coming weekend.

This is the ultimate in resource-conversion games (think Century Spice Road on steroids), because there are literally 15 different resources, and you will be doing a fair amount of converting, and then using those resources to do things.

Each player has a set of locations (same for everyone), along with one unique one. These will be where you put your increasing number of workers in order to do actions.

On your turn, you’ll be drafting a card. If it’s a villager of some sort, they will be put under one of your Gather locations of the appropriate colour.

It could also be a Roof or some other card that will give you some benefit but won’t give you a villager.

You will know what’s going to be available in the next round, so you could pass when drafting a card. This will make you pick last this time, but will ensure you pick first next time, if there’s a really juicy card that you want.

The really interesting thing about Skara Brae is your home board, where you are storing all of these resources.

If you need to make room for something, the bar moves to the right and you have three more spaces.

However, Midden is your enemy!

Midden is waste, and at the end of each round (not turn), you will first have to feed your people (so make sure you’ve cooked some, or upgraded so that you get a free cook action at the end of each round) and then gain midden equal to what the top square of your bar is on.

So the above one would give you one midden.

Which of course you have to have (or make) room for.

There are lots of scoring avenues in the game. You definitely want to upgrade a bunch of your action tiles. That makes the action stronger and also give you 2 points.

Furnishing your home will give you more points for collecting cards (so make sure you can feed them to keep them!).

You can also move up your trading level.

All while trying to keep your midden down, since you lose one point per midden at the end of the game.

It’s an interesting game, but it took us a while to really grasp it, so it also took way longer than it should have. It should be an hour game at most and it took us 90 minutes.

Maybe if we get another couple of plays under our belt, it will be better.

Even with that, it’s never going to be at the top of my Garphill games ranking, but it will certainly be higher than 2021!

3 Chapters (#2025) is really interesting take on Fantasy Realms as well as a trick-taking game, with three rounds (or chapters) where you are trying to form your hand, then use your hand to win tricks, and then make sure you have the right combinations of cards to score a bunch of points.

The first chapter is the draft.

You start with 8 cards in hand. You choose one, and pass the others along until you have 7 cards in front of you (discard the last one).

The second chapter, you are playing that hand for tricks, though you keep the card in front of you.

Some cards will give you points for winning a trick.

The third chapter is just scoring all of the cards that you have drafted.

This is where you look at all of your cards’ scoring and tally up what you get.

If a scoring ability only happens in Chapter 2, then it will say that (like The Three Bears), but otherwise it happens in either phase.

That’s why Goldilocks will score 4 diamonds in either chapter if she’s with the Three Bears.

If you kept both, then she’ll score in Chapter 3. If you kept her but she was in a trick with the Three Bears (played by somebody else), she’ll still score for you!

It’s an intriguing game and I’m sad I’ve only had the chance to play it once.

It goes by very fast and has some interesting choices, between the draft and also deciding which card to play during each trick.

I liked this one and maybe I’ll get another chance at it at one point?

The last “played” game I’m going to talk about is New York Slice (#2091).

I actually owned this but ended up moving it on.

It has a classic “I split, you choose” mechanism where pizza slices are dealt out into a pizza, and you have to divide into a number of groupings equal to the number of players.

So in a 4-player game, you could split it into a 3-3-3-2 manner, or even a 4-2-3-2 one.

There’s also a “Today’s Special” that’s revealed.

It can be put on one of the groupings, or it could form its own grouping.

How do you score?

You can eat any slice you take that has pepperoni on it, turning it face down and getting one point per pepperoni.

Or there is set collection.

Each slice has a number on it, denoting both how many of that particular slice there are in the game and also how many points having the most of it will give you.

You also lose one point per uneaten anchovy.

Thus, the difficulty is trying to divide things so that nobody gets a really awesome set, or if they do, maybe put the 3-anchovy slice in it too (or maybe the Day Old Pizza special of the day tile, if that’s what’s on offer this round).

I actually did like this game, but not enough to keep it. It was hard to store because the box was almost literally a pizza box, and there was no neat way to keep all of the slices in there.

You basically threw everything in the box and hoped it closed.

However, I’d definitely play it if it was on offer.

The only game I own but haven’t played yet (and probably never will, so it will get sold soon) is Mr. President: the American Presidency, 2001-2020 (#2034)

Not because it’s a bad game that I don’t want to play.

It’s really intriguing!

Watching the Heavy Cardboard series of videos about the game mesmerized me and I decided that I did want it.

Paying no attention to the fact that I have nowhere near the table space to actually set it up.

This game is huge!

It does have a VASSAL module and I may play around with that, though there is a 2nd edition that just came out (along with an update kit if you already had the first edition).

Anyway, this is an intensive solo simulation of being President of the United States, trying to keep on top of domestic and foreign policy, advancing your agenda while dealing with random crises that break out all over the world.

It is very deep.

For now, since there is a 2nd edition and upgrade pack available, I may just send it on to a new home where it might get played, and if my circumstances change, pick up the 2nd edition at some point.

We’ll see.

This time, my eyes were hungrier than my stomach when I picked it up.

With deep regret in my eyes, let’s move away from the presidency and instead look at games in this century that I would really like to try out.

So I know very little about them.

First, I have to talk about Patchistory (#2017).

Not necessarily because I want to play it, though it does sound kind of cool.

But I have to comment on how many times I saw it on Clearance at Miniature Market and other venues, and thought “this looks kind of interesting” but yet never pulled the trigger.

I’m a history buff, so this should be right down my alley, right?

Let’s blurb this one and see what you think?

“Patchistory is a strategy board game with cards that symbolize historical heroes and wonders, with the whole game being divided into three eras. During the game, you acquire these cards through auctions and expand your territory by placing cards so that they overlap one another in a 5×5 space in the first era, a 6×6 space in the second era, and a 7×7 space in the third era. When your land—that is, the layout of your cards—is well built, the card functions are activated. You can earn victory points with diplomatic actions, domestic politics, war movement, the actions of production, etc., and at the end of the game, the person with the highest score after the third era wins.”

This “patching” mechanic (all this time, I didn’t realize that’s where the title of the game comes from) is actually pretty interesting.

It seems similar to Honshu in a way, if I’m understanding it correctly.

It’s also an auction game rather than drafting, so not like Honshu. You are bidding on which available land card you’re going to be putting into your space.

It’s still not enough to make me buy it, even at clearance prices, but it does intrigue me enough to want to play it at some point, if anybody else has it.

I get the feeling that it’s completely out of print now, and not even clearance racks have it anymore.

Then there’s Holland ’44: Operation Market Garden (#2046), which is one I know I will never get to play, but it does grab that part of me that just wants to play a monster wargame for 4-6 hours.

I think I’m attracted to this one because one of the first wargames I ever bought was Avalon Hill’s Storm Over Arnhem, and I still have fond memories of it.

Plus I love the movie (and the book!) A Bridge Too Far.

Also other books on the subject.

I think if I was going to play (or even just start with) one of these ‘4X wargames, this is the one I would start with, because it’s the one I have the most interest in the subject matter.

But maybe there’s a better introduction to the system than this one?

Any of my wargaming buddies care to chime in?

We don’t really play a lot of cooperative games in our gaming circle, but one I’ve heard so much about that I’d love to try one day is Chronicles of Crime: 2400 (#2026)

I’ve heard so many good things about this series of games, and a number of fans say this is the best one of the bunch, which adds to my intrigue.

This is an app-assisted cooperative game where you are investigating a series of crimes (there are 4 cases in the box, but maybe there might be more out there? I don’t know).

You’re questioning suspects, pursuing leads and following clues, but with the added dimension of lots of different technologies that make things easier…and harder!

In other words, let’s blurb this:

“In the standalone game Chronicles of Crime: 2400, you can use all the latest technology to solve crimes. Your pet Cyber-Raven can analyze evidence and search the web to find information on suspects. During the course of a scenario, you may also obtain cybernetic implants that would increase your abilities. Super-senses that help you find evidence on the crime scene? A tomograph to quickly check the person you’re talking to for cyber enhancements? Or maybe a zapper to quickly neutralize any electronic device? The future is full of useful stuff!

Be careful though, as the technology is not always on your side! Is the character you’re talking to a human or an android? Who’s hiding behind the avatars you meet in the virtual cyberspace locations? The struggle between criminals and detectives is millennia old, but at the beginning of the 25th century, it’s been taken to a whole new level.”

I doubt I’ll ever get a chance to play it.

But if I did, I would.

To avoid the risk of this going over 3000 words, let’s stop there.

Anything in this century that you’ve played and would recommend?

Or that you want to play?

Let me know in the comments.