Top 100: #47 Coloretto (& Zooleretto)

Not every game needs to have tons of pieces, miniatures, or dice to make them great. Sometimes you just need a really great mechanic and a deck of cards. That slot is right where Coloretto slips in. It is extremely portable but you will have tons of hard choices to make as you play the game. At its heart Coloretto is a set collection game. From all of the colors of the game you will score your three best positively but the rest negatively so you want to focus on a few colors and try desperately to not get the others.

While you are trying to get those color sets during the game your opponents are definitely going to make sure you get some colors that you don’t want. Each round you are going to get a group of between one to three cards. If you can find three cards that match your desires that is a great round if you can manage to grab it before your opponents do.

On your turn you can either take a group of cards (there needs to be at least one card) or you can draw a card and add it to one of the stacks. This is how you will make a set great for you or horrible for an opponent. If your opponent is trying to collect brown and green and one of the stacks already has a brown and you draw a green - certainly don’t put those two together as that would be far too helpful.

Near the bottom of the deck there is a end game card that will signify the end of the game so you are never completely certain when the game will conclude. Throughout the game there are always lots of fun hard decisions to make. A group of cards might have two great cards for you; should you take this good set of cards or hope the third card will make it greater? It's those decisions that make us love this game.

If you want to try a simple but deep card game you should definitely give Coloretto a try. If you find yourself liking it or just want something a little more involved you might look for its bigger brother Zooloretto which uses the same choice mechanics as you build up a zoo. Both are deserving of being on this Top 100 so we are combining them a little to be #47!

Top 100: #48 Doctor Panic

When we have a group of people and want to have a silly time is when we break out our #48 - Doctor Panic! Everyone is simulating being a doctor in some very abstracted procedures. You need to get all of the jobs done within the time frame to save the patient. There will be a lot of interruptions and difficult tasks but it is always a hectic mess as you try to work together to make it work!

There are lots of different tasks for each group to complete in this cooperative game. One has you mimicking stitching with a board with holes in it. Another is collecting the instruments you will need by using different ways of grabbing them and giving them to the team leader. Some of the other tasks are injections, MRIs, x-rays, pill dosages, and placing heart monitors. Most of these are different each time you play because they are based on the character you are trying to treat that game. And even then the cards that are not patient based have a tall stack of cards so you aren’t likely to get repeats for a lot of different plays.

But if those tasks under a time constraint doesn’t already sound like a ton of fun there are some amusing interruptions that happen during the game. Sometimes there are heart issues and you need to charge the paddles and give them a shock to bring them back so you can continue treatment. In order to do that you need to grab the charge cards to make the required number and say clear - all while another player is doing compressions on a heart shaped whoopee cushion!

On top of all those things occasionally management will call and interrupt you further and make you do silly things to mimic something in theme. Sometimes you need to mime putting on latex gloves. Others will you need to sing happy birthday to another player because supposedly it is his birthday in the game. Hopefully if I am on an operating table the doctors won’t take a pause for that reason! All of these issues are brought through the app integration if you are using that or from a deck of interruption cards if not.

Probably the silliest game on our list Doctor Panic is unique in the kind of game it is on the Top 100. Because of how strange and hectic it is we don’t break this one out to play very often. But when we do we have a blast so it snuck its way onto the list. Likely the last silly game on the list but still a hectic crazy game that you should give a try at your next large gathering!

Top 100: #49 Dimension

Finding this game on our Top 100 shouldn’t be surprising to people who have been lucky enough to join us at Platypus-Con! It has been a regular standard tournament we run because of how much we enjoy the game and the fact the player count is essentially limitless (assuming you have multiple sets of the game that is). It is also a deduction game which has been shown in the previous fifty games to be one of our favorite types of games.

In Dimension you are trying to build a tower of spheres that meet the rules of the six cards of the round. Sometimes the rules will contradict each other but you are trying to do the best that you can in the time you are allotted. You will be getting a point for every sphere in your structure but it can be occasionally more useful to not fully build up your structure to make it so you follow the rules.

Once the timer is over all of the players are judged individually for their structure getting the earlier mentioned one point per sphere in the structure. However, you also lose points if you break any of the rules. There is also a special bonus chip that you will want to try to get whenever possible as it is usually enough points to swing you towards victory if you get it more than your closest rival. You are able to get that chip if you use all of the colors and follow all of the rules. Quite often that is an impressive feat but it something you should always keep in mind!

If you need some player interaction in your games you might want to look at some of the other games on our Top 100 list as this one is just seeing which of the players can follow the rules to their best ability. We love trying to figure out how to build our structures though And think everyone should at least give this game a try. It has a really short play time so if it's not your jam you aren’t out that much time. This game will definitely stay on future version of this list as we think it is a classic which definitely needs to stay on the list!

Top 100: #50 Le Fantome de l'Opera

The next step on our top one hundred list is a competitive deduction game, Phantom of the Opera. One played is the phantom attempting to scare away the star actress of the Opera while the other player is the manager trying to find out who is the Phantom before the production loses its star! Figuring out how to best use the characters available is the key to victory in this game.

At the start the game all of the characters start in different rooms randomly. After the characters take their actions there is a check for the phantom. One of the characters at the start was randomly selected to be the phantom as well. If at the end of the round that character is alone or in a dark room he will appear and be frightening getting a bonus towards the Phantom players victory! But this can also be quite revealing for the other played because they flip over any of the character discs that couldn’t possibly be the Phantom. So any disc that is together with other characters and in a lit room.

Each round a player will get to use two of the four characters being used in that half of the round. The other four will be used in the second half of the round. Some of the characters cause other ones to move either towards the character, away from the character, or even with the character! Some of the others can interact with the board in different ways - turn off the lights in a room, lock one, or move through secret hallways. The last character can reveal one of the suspect cards which are people that could be the phantom. If a character is drawn for the phantom they have protected that character from being revealed in that fashion but the manager player would get to flip that disk over.

The object of the game for the phantom player is to get the scared track to the end signalling the star leaving and closing down the show. The manager player only wins if they flip over all of the discs except the phantom character - even if they know which character it is from thinking about the options, they have to prove it! We’ve always enjoyed working against each other in a deductive tug of war makes it a great introduction to the Top 50 of our Top 100!

Top 100: #51 Battle Line

We used a comparison program to sort the games we love into this list. It was surprising when Battle Line just missed out on the Top 50. Maybe it is because it is only two-player that it can’t quite keep up with the competition. It is one of our favorite two player games with lots of strategy and a bit of luck mixed in. Players use cards values 1 - 10 (or 1 - 9 in some version) of different colors to try to claim flags on the battle line.

On your turn you only have one simple action, play a card. There are two types of cards. One are just the general colored number cards and others are called tactics cards which have special powers. The main goal is to either claim five of the nine flags along the line or three adjacent to each other. As all cards are played face up your opponents will definitely find hard to not let you have three in a row.

How you judge each flag is based on a system similar to poker. The best possible is all the same color in a number run. Other plays have value too though. Three of a kind if quite powerful as it a flush or a run. If neither player can make something like that on either side of a flag then it is judged simply on the total number value of the cards. With just those cards the game is quite simple but still a ton of fun but then  you add in tactics cards!

A lot of the tactics cards are wilds, or one of a group of numbers and other powerful abilities. Some steal cards or kill cards on your opponent's side and others remove the power of the moves i mentioned earlier and make ti based simply on the sum of the cards played. One of the important things to remember is that they cannot be played on a flag that is already claimed and they can be claimed before you’ve played all your cards. So don’t hold onto them too long! To balance out the power of those cards you can only play one more than your opponent has played. So don’t draw too many of those as you might get stuck with them if your opponent doesn’t play them!

There is quite a bit of randomness in the game as you are drawing randomly from the card deck. But as both players suffer from it we feel like it balances out in the end. Anyways it is more about how you use the resources you are given then drawing the perfect hand. If you have a friend and want to challenge them try your hand out with Battle line from our Top 100. We sometimes host tournaments at Platypus of this game - so get your practice in!

Top 100: #52 Betrayal at the House on the Hill

Next on the Top 100 list is Betrayal at House on the Hill. A silly game where everyone starts out by working together and then more likely than not it turns out one of you was a betrayer and had tricked your friends into a spooky  house for nefarious purposes! Betrayal (for short) has a little bit of fun for everyone. The game starts out as a cooperative exploration game before turning into a competitive one so it has a little bit of both of those flavors.

The story of the game is that you have found yourself looked in a creepy house on the hill. The front door locked behind you so you have no option to press forward into the house to try to find a way to escape or find out the reason you were brought there. Events will happen that are best read in a creepy voice. You will find items that will help you or perhaps hurt you. And then lastly  you will find omens that speak towards what your fate might be.

Your turn ends when you run out of movement or when you need to draw one of the three types of cards. Those are generally drawn when you go into a new room during your exploration. When you pick up an omen card that means you need to make an omen roll at the end of your turn. You roll six special dice (they only roll 0, 1, or 2) and if you get lower than the number of omens in play then the haunt begins and you find out the true purpose for your arrival!

To find out what evil event is going to happen to your group you compare the omen you just received to the room that you got it in and reference the chart included in the game. In the original game there are 50 different haunts and there are rules provided to switch which one you are doing if you wind up getting a repeat somehow! Once you find  your scenario the bottom of the page tells you who is the bad guy - sometimes it is the one that causes the haunt, or a person with a really high stat, or rarely no one at all and you must all survive a new horror!

Sometimes the scenarios don’t wind up being very balanced because the building out of the house is random every game. But as long as you don’t take the game that seriously and think of it more as a fun adventure then thinking too hard about winning being important I guarantee you will have a fun time! There is even an expansion to add 50 more scenarios to the base game as well as a new version themed in the D&D universe that made some great improvements to the base game! As one we have played many times and always enjoyed it takes its rightful place in the top 100!

Top 100: #53 Avenue

Not all games need to have direction confrontation and you have already seen that if you’ve been following the list. Sometimes it is about figuring out the best way to use what you are given. Avenue is a game like that where it rewards players who find the best use of the resources given. Players are attempting to link icons on the map to the cities drawn on the map. There are also some castle in the corner that can also get you some points.

Each turn one player will flip over a card that represents the road the players can draw that round. You can never use a spot twice or erase something already drawn. Each road is very specific so you can’t rotate the road either. Sometimes that road is not terribly useful to you in which case you need to find somewhere on your map to put it that is going to be the least damaging or maybe even helpful later in the game!

One of the tricks though is you don’t know which towns are going to score and in what order the ones that do score will come up. Instead of drawing a road, one per round you can look at what town is going to be next to score. This can assist you in figuring out how to plan for the future which is super important.

Challenges abound in Avenue, which is great seeing other people can’t bring challenges to you. One of the biggest issues you will run into the game is it is not good enough to do great in each round but you have to do better each round or you will take a hefty penalty. If your score in the current round isn’t better than the previous one than your score for that round turns into a -5 instead of what it was before which can be really damaging to your total end game score.

We have played Avenue a ton of times and now we have been playing Kokoro: Avenue of the Kodama which is a new version of the game that adds more variability. The game is quick and simple to teach and play. It is always a blast to talk amongst each other and see how others are using the roads we are given. At the end of the game all of the players will likely have very different maps. Definitely give our #53 a try!

Top 100: #54 Arkham Horror the Card Game

We’ve enjoyed the games that are themed with Lovecraft in mind but we generally shy away from the longer games like Arkham and Eldritch Horror. Little bit too much complication and time commitment for us personally. But then we heard that they were coming out with a card game based in the Arkham Horror universe and were super excited! We were hoping to get the same type of adventure and mystery in a smaller more compact game.

It didn’t disappoint! We still have only played a few missions but the way they have manipulated cards into doing many different tasks is rather impressive. They obviously learned some lessons from one of the other games on our list; Lord of the Rings the card game. As the same company created both games. Sometimes the environment cards can represent different rooms in a house and then on a later adventure mimic a train with the cars moving around.

On your turn you are using the cards in your hand and resources you’ve collected to do various abilities and skill checks to try to investigate the current mystery. Sometimes there will be traps that make your way more difficult or even worse some evil monsters could come out of the darkness and threaten your life! You can choose to fight them off or run as you try to outlast them and seal away evil.

Where some of the other cooperative games from the company were definitely one off adventures this game is designed to play as a campaign which adds even more depth to the system. Depending on what and how you did in an adventure you get a certain number of XP that you can use to improve the cards in your deck to better versions. Also story wise things can definitely be different each time you play through depending on the story choices you make. This creates choices that can be difficult to make as you know they might have lasting effects as you try to solve the greater mystery!

Overall Arkham Horror the Card Game is a grand adventure. Probably one of its few issues is it is mostly a one or possibly two player game. So it won’t really be able to encapsulate a large group like some of the other games from this mythos but if you want to have a grand adventure yourself or with a friend you should really give it a shot. There is quite a lot of enjoyment in just the base box alone with lots of expansions out there if you find yourself loving it. We keep looking forward to playing more so it had to be on the list!

Top 100: #55 Barenpark

Growing up we played a lot of Tetris always enjoying trying to figure out how to make those shapes work for you to get high score. Recently there has been a slew of games released that feel a little bit like lining up the blocks from Tetris. Barenpark is currently my favorite but if you enjoy Barenpark you should definitely try out Patchwork, Feast for Odin, and Cottage Garden. They all take the system to a different place but you are always trying to make piece fit on the board.

Barenpark is simple enough you simply place one of your pieces on the board each turn. You want to do so in a way that gets you the most points. The strategy comes from figuring out where to place those pieces on the board(s) that you have. Covering certain spaces will get new territory to build on or they might get you new and exciting buildings to place on future turns. Some of the best buildings are of course more oddly shaped than others.

One of the high point values you can get in the game is from completing a tile for all but the one space on each tile you can’t build on. Once you do that you grab the highest score tile remaining and place it on that board. Since they are in descending order there is a desire to get those boards filled up fast. But sometimes you can make up the points you lose from waiting by building some exciting buildings. So there are always choices!

Once you have played the game a few times you can break out the goal cards which add even more things to think about as you are building out your bear park. They will often give points to the person who builds the most of a certain type of tile. So then there is a race both to get those tiles but to also find a way to get them onto the board.

Barenpark is probably the simplest of the tile placement games that remind us of tetris. Although all of the games I mentioned earlier are tons of fun. This is just easily my first recommendation out of that set. It is easy to explain and play and has some wonderful art. It is so great it almost worked its way onto the top 50 of all of our games but #55 is nothing to be sad about either!

Top 100: #56 The Arrival

Based on Irish mythology, The Arrival is a unique area control game where the players claim territories and can also cause more and more enemies to spawn on the board taking corruption in the process. The game has two different ways to score at the end depending on who is most numerous at the end of the game - the players or the evil Fomori.

The most unique aspect of The Arrival, is the way players get resources over the course of the game. Each player will select four cards that only have vague hints on what is on the other side to decide what resource they will receive. Each card has three rows on it and players will have to select which of those rows they want to collect from before they have seen the flip side on all four cards.

Once everyone has gotten all of their resources, players go around the board taking actions. They can build up strongholds, place defense in their regions, fight off the Fomori, and finally place more Fomori on the board. When doing that you are able to have them attack other players destroying some of their strongholds. Although that is also giving them monsters that they are able to attack for points later!

The game ends when one player has become too corrupt from helping the Fomori, or after a certain number of rounds have passed. If the evil outnumber the strongholds on the board then they have overrun the players and the person with the least corruption wins the game. If there are more strongholds than evil, then players calculate who has the most valuable areas under their control making your path to victory an interesting balancing act.