A Ranking of Board Games

-- The tile pretty much covers it


I like board games. The time has come to rank my favorites.

Honorable Mention Category

Twilight Imperium 4th Edition
Context plays a huge role in the judgement I pass on this game. Here's the context: I've never played it with people that I like. And yet I've sunk probably ... 45 hours?? ... into playing this game. With people that are not fun. That has to mean something right? There's only one game that has given me that many hours of entertainment and wouldn't you know it's about two paragraphs away from winning a lifetime achievement award.

So yeah, Twilight Imperium is as spectacular as you've heard. The game-breaking political phases can be a blast of wheeling and dealing. Armies intimidate more than fight, which is a feature unlike anything I've ever played. There's so many absorbing choices: do you spend money to upgrade technology? Which technology do you pick? Which did your neighbor pick? Is your neighbor friendly, neutral, aggressive? Wait, should I spend my money on developing my armies instead? Or on victory objectives? Or bribing my neighbor to attack the frontrunner? The Twilight Imperium tree has hundreds of branches to climb, and each time you're guaranteed a different style of game.

But man does TI have some flaws, too. The first round is always the same and yet still takes an hour to resolve. The battles are dynamic and fun, but it seems like 80% of them end immediately due to retreats. Nothing sucks the air out of the room faster than watching one player shove his handful of ships into his opponent's stronghold, the gallery rising from their seats to watch the dice fly, hearts pounding with the knowledge that the fate of the game is about to turn ... and then a strategic retreat card is thrown out and the fight is sidestepped.

I would also like to complain about the victory point objectives because they're trash. There needed to be 20 more, and at least one or two more combat oriented objectives.

But by far the biggest negative of TI is the end game. If I'm going to sink 7 hours into a game that features ups and down and twists and turns and betrayal and strategy I better get an ending that rewards me with a dramatic conclusion. Alas, of the 7 or 8 games I've played only one ended in anything close to a shootout. More frequently it was apparent who would win with about two rounds left, which means playing out the string for a couple hours knowing nothing is really going to change on the scoreboard.

If I played this with people who were fun, or if the ending of the game wasn't Hunger Games horrible, TI is easily in my top 5.


Lord of the Rings Risk
My love of this game has been documented previously here.


Game of Thrones 2nd Edition
I've only played this game online against strangers but man even in those strung out, play-by-email matches I can see the game is riddled with promise. I've bought both the original game and the Mother of Dragons expansion, and have never played the physical copies once, meaning I'm guilty of committing the greatest of board game sins. But I will play someday and it will be glorious.

For the unfamiliar the crux of this game revolves around the ability to support battles that take place in neighboring territories. Supporting is risk free, you can't lose a single unit. You just pledge your strength to the attacker or the defender, which means you can negotiate a promise to support your neighbor if they'll support you, or if they'll pay you, or if they'll promise to attack your enemy. Or more deviously, you can tell your friend you will support them, luring them into attack that they believe they'll win with your help, and then at the last second you can pull the football away from Charlie Brown and announce you're actually supporting their enemy instead.

I've seen this play out in the heartless world of anonymous online gaming and it's tremendous. I can't wait til I get to live it with friends. But until that time comes an Honorable Mention is as far as GoT can go.


Treasure Island
I don't generally buy into the tactile experience of gaming, but I get it with Treasure Island. Marking up a beautifully colored board with a variety of tools not for fun but as the entire game mechanic is awesome. There's not quite enough in this game to make it an all-timer but it is solid.


Life Time Achievement Award

Settlers of Catan
Like re-runs of Seinfeld, I sense Settlers of Catan will be a part of my life til the end. It was the first board game I encountered that expanded my awareness beyond the existence of the mere Clue-Monopoly-Risk board games. Over the 16 years since my introduction I've probably played 100 plus games. And I still love it -- always will. I certainly don't yearn for it like I once did, but I don't know if I'd ever turn a game down.

So my first analogy was right! I don't stream intentionally stream Seinfeld but I still leave the channel on whenever Jerry and George pop up.


And now to The Top 5

The games are judged on two components: how much fun I've had with the game and how much I value the mechanics of game play.

5. Witness

I spent $70 on this simple little box and man was I worried I had lit money on fire. At the time it was the most I'd ever spent on a single game. $70 bucks later and the game has never failed me once. I adore Witness.

Play this game at night and every round will be a mix of uncontrollable laughter and head-scratching deduction. The gameplay isn't special -- you whisper, you try to memorize, and that's it -- but I've played this with a variety of groups under contrasting circumstances and every time we vow to start serious, focus to win, and then end up giggling our way to disaster.

When first contemplating the Witness purchase I rationalized the expense by telling myself I'd cruise through the booklet of mysteries and then try and resell Witness for $40 or $50. Now this game is guaranteed a permanent spot on my shelf.

Fun rating: 10 out of 10
Gameplay rating: 6 out of 10


4. Star Wars Destiny

On the nerd scale I find Star Wars to be good, Harry Potter to better, and Game of Thrones to be best. Lord of the Rings is in that group too, above Star Wars and behind HP, but it didn't fit with the nod to the General Conference alliteration. The ranking reverses if we move out of the realm of books/film and into board games where Star Wars Destiny absolutely rules.

Destiny involves a lot of luck, from the order in which you draw cards to the fate of the dice rolls, but somehow Destiny makes you feel like you're controlling the outcome. If you don't like how the dice landed? Burn a card and re-roll the whole lot. But maybe you'll need that card later. And what if your opponent is thinning out your deck? You can't afford to get rid of that card to re-roll. But you can't afford not to either. This is the magic of Destiny: a perfect blend of rapid decision making mixed with the drama of rolling cubes that never feels random.

Volume for volume this game doesn't pack the emotional punch of the Twilight brothers (Imperium and Struggle) but what it manages to do is shrink the epic nature of a planetary battle into a condensed package. It all works perfectly. Destiny is short but not shallow; lucky but not fluky; interesting but not paralyzing.

Fun rating: 9
Gameplay rating: 8


3. Arctic Scavengers

I'm continually perplexed by why this game isn't held in higher regard. Scavengers is deck building done right! I've played a handful of deck builders from El Dorado to Dominion to Undaunted, and they all range from meh to decent when compared to Scavengers. I've yet to see a deck building game deployed alongside a mechanic as entertaining as Scavengers' end of round skirmishes. The bluffing creates an excellent should-I or shouldn't-I dillema, which is then trumped by that inevitable moment when someone goes all in on the fight, rejoices in a win, and then draws their reward and finds out it's a useless sled team.

I wish this game had more expansions.

Fun rating: 9*
Gameplay rating: 9

*Bonus fun points are awarded here for the memorable time my cousin laughed heartlessly as he banished his refugees to the garbage dump which was funny at the time and even funnier when we learned that single move cost him the game.


2. Twilight Struggle

This game is a masterpiece and the internet agrees so let's just talk about the memories I have of this beauty:

- Having a shiver run down my spine just from reading the instructions and realizing what potential this game had.

- Being afraid Jackie wouldn't like it and that it would be a waste of money, which resulted in me ordering the game from China at a reduced price.

- Laughing at the ripped off Chinese components, the most entertaining of which were the game cards which were made by printing the text from the actual cards and glueing those papers to the back of Transformers playing cards. No shame.

- Getting an instant headache the first time Jackie and I tried to evaluate the three zillion different ways to deploy our seven cards.

- Pulling off a final round win by dominating Europe thanks to a timely play of the 'NATO' card

- Jackie seeing the 'Quagmire' card and learning that it was not a random word I made up once upon a time.

Fun rating: 8
Gameplay rating: 10


1. Captain Sonar

Things I like about games: decision making, risk taking, camaraderie, smack talk, yelling, stress, nerves, strategizing, variability, feeling pressured, coming up with silly names for things, laughter, theme, whispering, bluffing, outwitting your enemy, regretting mistakes and that's about everything I can think of at the moment.

Captain Sonar does all of it. There's not a single game that has ever made me feel more tense than when I surface for repairs; that has made me feel smarter than when I track down an enemy sub as the radioman; that has made me feel as stressed as when my engineer is telling me something at the same time as my radio operator at the same time as the enemy captain at the same time I try to plot a course; that makes me feel dumber than when I detonate a mine 20 dots away from my opponent; that brings a team together like a well executed torpedoing.

I love all of it.

Fun rating: 10
Gameplay rating: 10 for radio man, 10 for captain, 7 for engineer (leave it to a board game to remind me I sucked at engineering ever since my college days)