Top 100: #29 Mixtour

Next on the list is what is probably one of the last abstract games on the list. We do have a soft spot for theme and immersion in our games so it is harder for them to reach the top. So there definitely has to be something special about Mixtour to get it this high up on the list. While it looks very usual on the board the intricacies of how you move and play in this game is really where it shines.

Each player has the goal of creating a tower at least 5 pieces tall with their piece at the top. The game is played best 3 out of 5 so one bad move won’t sink the game for a player. Moving the pieces around on the game board is based on the height of the stack. There are lots of games where the movement is based on the moving stack, but in Mixtour it is based solely on the size of the stack you are moving too. So if you are trying to move some pieces onto a stack that already exists and is two pieces tall - you have to be moving pieces that are two spaces away.

We generally do pretty well against new players before they come from behind and beat us because of how mind bendy the game is because of that unique movement mechanic. It takes a while before players figure out how to twist the movement rules to their benefit or see ways to stop their opponent. One of the main ways to stop them is to put pieces in between some obvious moves. As the other movement rule is you can’t jump over other pieces in play.

The unique strategies and game play have definitely cemented Mixtour on the Top 100, while more thematic games might come out and force it to slide down the list it is too great to fall too far. If you are a fan of a pure abstract games you owe it to yourself to give our #29 a try to see if you can master this unique and exciting game.

Top 100: #30 Kingdomino

Our next game is Kingdomino, a great little tile placement game where you are trying to create your own little kingdom. The scoring, placement, and drafting are all quite simple and easy to grasp but there are lots of choices to be made that make this little game a lot of fun.

As the name would suggest the game has some of its roots in dominoes, that is mostly in the shape of the pieces and the placement rules. When you acquire a tile you have to place it in such a way that that one of the sides is adjacent to a side of another tile are identical. Generally you want to do this anyways as it will help you score the most points.

The way you get points in the game are the number of crowns in a region times the number of squares in the region. So if you have 4 crowns in a region that is 8 squares big then for that section along you got 32 points. Pretty respectable. This simplicity makes the game very approachable for even our youngest gamers.

While we prefer Kingdomino because it has won the Spiel de Jahres it also has a decent number of expansions. There is also another version called Queendomino which is quite similar but they have adds lots of new bits and bobs to make the game have even more choices and scoring opportunities. That game is fun as well but part of the draw of Kingdomino for us is the simplicity.

We might be bias towards games that have a giant version like this one does but either way this game is tons of fun! If you are looking for a game that is fun and relaxing to play or if you are trying to introduce new/young people to our great hobby this one is a bright and colorful entrance to the board gaming hobby. Such a great introduction that it is our Top 30 games of all time!

Top 100: #31 Hanamakoji

Next on the list as we start to get to the real cream of our crop is a great two player card game, Hanamakoji. It plays quite quickly but has lots of tense decisions that need to be made. Almost every turn you will be helping your opponent in some way so the struggle is find a way to help them the least while helping yourself the most.

The actions available to you make it difficult to make sure you get the upper hand because most involve your opponent getting first dibs on the selection of cards. There are only 4 actions you get each round. The two that don’t directly involve your opponent let you secretly score a card and the other lets you secretly discard two cards from the round. The remaining two actions however let your opponent make choices with your selections. One of them you make two stacks of two cards and you get to score one, but first your opponent chooses one to score. The other action lets you pick three cards and you get to score two of them but your opponent first gets to score their choice.

By getting cards you are trying to have the most cards on your side of the table at the end of the round. When that happens you move the scoring marker to your side and you are considered to both have the control of that geisha plus the points she provides. At the end of the round if you control 4 geisha or have 11 points in your control then you win the game. Most games you will play 2 or 3 rounds as you push and pull control of the cards to try to reach the victory conditions.

Overall the game causes lots of hard choices to make, mostly because of how much your opponent gets first dibs in most cases. You try to give them impossible choices or ones too good to pass up and let you have what you really wanted. Because of the quick game play with super tough decisions this is one of our favorites. If we have two people looking for a game this is one of the first we will grab as you can get playing in minutes but have tons of fun round after round. Definitely deserving of the #31 spot on the Top 100!

Top 100: #32 Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Based on King who liked to build lots of unique castles in Bavaria might seem like a bit of an odd theme for a game but in the end it made a for a great game. Players will each be building their own unique castle. There isn’t much in the way of construction rules, although there are some benefits to building in certain ways, so players can wind up having funny stories about their castles once they are complete.

The game element that makes Castles of Mad King Ludwig really shine is how it does the auction cycle. Whoever is the master builder that round (it rotates) sets the price for all of the available rooms available at the moment. There is a number of slots with prices above them so it isn’t completely freely pricing. If a player buys a room they pay the master builder and it is one of the few ways to get more money.

So when you are the master builder you really want to price rooms your opponents want at high prices, but not so high that don’t want to or can’t afford the room at all. On the flipside you want to price rooms you want (you pay directly to the bank) as cheaply as you can but not so cheaply your opponents will buy it out from under you.

Once everyone has bought stairs, hallway, a room, or passed players place their purchases in their great castles. They want to place them close to rooms that give bonuses but not touching rooms that give them negatives. They can also get some special abilities if they connect all of the exits of a movie so that is a sub-goal as well!

This game is moving into one of the classics - as they have made a few games themed in the same universe to get interest from this title. The great auction mechanic is definitely what makes this game shine above others. So if you enjoy auction games you owe it to yourself to see if this new and not yet repeated auction mechanic is as great as we think it is!

Top 100: #33 Rhino Hero

Not all dexterity games are created equal and this is likely the last one on the list because they are almost never the kind of game we lean towards. But Rhino Hero, our number 33, has always been a blast. It is sort of a combination of Uno and Jenga in how its played. You are trying to stack up the cards to run out and win, but you can also win by having the tower fall on someone else’s turn and you having the fewest cards remaining.

Each player starts with a hand of five cards and there is a communal pile of wall cards. On your turn the newest roof tile will have marking for where you need to put some wall cards - sometimes there will be two and other times one. How they are arranged changes as well. Most of the roof tiles also have other indicators showing off their special powers which is what makes the game a bit like Uno.

Some of the roofs will skip the next player in turn order, change the order of play, or make the next player draw a card. But the one that is the most fun is the one with the Rhino icon. That means in addition the normal things that must be placed on the next turn they must also move the Super Rhino! It can’t hit the table after it enter the tower it has to move from roof to roof. Just this tiny little meeple figure can greatly throw off the balance of the tower adding to the tension of the game!

Rhino Hero, or Super Rhino, is a great little dexterity game that doesn’t take much time and is not overly difficult or speed based like other dexterity games. We’ve enjoyed it so much we got a giant version that can easily get to 8’ tall if the tower doesn’t fall during the game. To further prove how much it deserves to be on our list it is also our first tournament of every Platypus-Con as it is a fun and easy way to start up the competitive corner of the event! Make sure to give it a try or even join in the tournament at Platypus-Con to give our number 33 a try!

Top 100: #34 Century: Spice Road

While we do love some of the classic games we've played for years - newer games are generally the ones we play most often. When a new game can get lots of plays in that means it is likely destined to be one of those games we are still playing a decade from now. The next game on our list Century: Spice Road is one of those games. A compact game of building a trading empire is a ton of fun.

Century is also ridiculously easy to teach. While you might not become a master of the game or know all of the strategy of the game the first time through you will know how to play within minutes. On your turn you can only do one of four things; get a merchant card, get a victory point card, play a card, or recover all the cards in your discard pile. Now just by reading this you could almost play the game!

The strategy of the game is getting the best cards to match the ones you’ve previously acquired. If you have a strong ability to make green cubes then it would be best to get cards that use those green cubes in interesting ways. Each of the victory point cards need a different set of cubes in order to purchase it so you always want to be able to make any color of cube. Including the base yellow cubes - we’ve had a hard time getting those once.

Depending on the number of players the game ends after a certain number of victory point cards has been purchased by a single individual. Some of the cards also come with coins that increase the value of those cards. The sum of the cards, coins, and non-yellow cubes winds up being your score. Once everyone know how to play the game just sings along with very little down time between turns and a quick game play time.

We feel this game is likely to be a modern classic especially as it is part of a series so they keep adding on to it or making improvements. Its first sequel has already been released, Century: Eastern Wonders, which adds a map element to the game it didn’t have before. You can either play each game independently or even combine them to make a third game. We look forward to getting the third tile and see what kind of game they are when you put all three together! No matter how you play it we strongly suggest you give our number 34 a try!

Top 100: #35 Valley of the Kings

Ever since Dominion started the deck building genre there have been lots of new twists on the mechanic. Valley of the Kings and its sequels are a quick and easy deck building game with a fun thematic twist that we haven’t seen used anywhere else. In lots of deck building games you have the ability to banish cards. In Valley of the Kings the only ones that you score at the end of the games are the one you banish.

The action that allows you to banish cards for points in Valley of the Kings is called entombing. You can always do it once per turn but certain cards give you more chances to do it throughout the game. Some of the cards just give a set number of points when they have been entombed. Others you want to build sets of cards in order to get the most bang for your buck.

How you acquire cards is also quite ingenious in Valley of the Kings. Instead of just having a center row like a lot of other deck builders you make a pyramid of the cards and using the purchasing power of your hand you are only allowed to buy the ones on the bottom row. As you do the cards shift downward and become available. When there are multiple choices you even get to pick how they fall adding just a little bit more strategy.

While you need to entomb cards in order to score them at all once they are entombed you don’t get to use them for the rest of the game. Some of the highest scoring cards are those that are the most powerful to play from your hand. So it is a constant decision making conundrum as you try to get the most uses out of a card before you entomb it in the hopes you won’t run out of time to entomb things when the endgame is triggered.

While Valley of the Kings doesn’t expand the deck building mechanic into other types of boards games like some games do it is a great refinement of the mechanic itself. Keeping true to the roots of making a great deck and managing it well without making it too overly complex. If you find that you enjoy deck builders at all you should give Valley of the Kings a try!

Top 100: #36 The Oracle of Delphi

Oracle of Delphi is the next game on our Top 100. While we enjoy Stefan Feld’s game most are a little bit too point salad to make it too high on the this list. But the Oracle of Delphi has a much different victory mechanic - instead of trying to get the most points you are trying to win a race to complete objectives first.

Each player has a set of three dice that will have a chance to change colors each round and you can manipulate in other ways to make the colors you want. A lot of the actions you want to need to take depend on having the right color for a task. Movement, exploration, fighting, and building all need to be the correct color.

Players can also shorten the length of the game by playing a fewer number of objectives. But even when players have fewer objectives you make sure that they are all the same. This makes the game balanced as some objectives might prove harder than others with the variable map. The board is built from a group of tiles each game so how hard or easy it is to satisfy some objectives can change.

There is also a good track that you can use your dice to manipulate and on your turn you can use the power of the god that is highest on the track that all players share. Some of the actions make it easier to move your ship around or to explore islands. Another recovers some of your injuries that you gain throughout game play. If you are too injured you have to skip your turn where if you are completely uninjured you get a bonus each turn that it true!

We really enjoy this game because it keeps the deep game play that Feld always brings along with not needing to keep track of a great multitude of ways you can score points. This is another game where it definitely is not for the uninitiated but if you like deep and complicated game play you should give our #36 a try.

Top 100: #37 Orleans

Next on our list is one of the first games to bring a new type of deck building to gaming - bag building! This allowed for some things that a deck of cards simply can’t do as easily. Over the course of the game you will be adding more and different workers to your bag and draw them out to do actions throughout the game.

Each player has their own action board that they are placing their workers on to in order to take actions. Some of the locations can only take certain workers in order to accomplish. Players can if they want place workers in one round before they have all the needed workers but that would mean that worker is tied up doing other activities and you won’t be able to use them until you finish that action by finding the other worker. Lots of hard choices on how to use your workers and build your bag as you decide what type of worker to add.

Not only are the players taking actions on their board some of them cause interactions with some of the general board for the game. One of the boards is a map and using actions players can maneuver around on that map claiming goods as they move around and build trading posts. Those goods are all worth points at the end of the game.

Trading posts and the citizens you acquire based on your development track are also worth points at the end of the game. So there are lots of chances and paths for players to take as they go. You could try to dominate the goods and get a ton of points that way or work to develop your house so that each trading post you’ve built are worth that much more!

Orleans as the first bag builder has always been a ton of fun - it even has inspired some games that follow similar models, like Altiplano. While they are based on deck builders that are often a little bit more complicated than them since the bag builder aspect allows them to do more with the game. So if you want to try a meaty game that will remind you of your favorite deck builders give our number 37 a try - Orleans!

Top 100: #38 Scythe

The top 100 continues with one of the most well known Stonemaier games and possibly one of the most well known among hobby gamers in general. Scythe is considered by many to be a masterpiece and has many expansions to bring even more fun to the game. Although we haven’t personally tried those yet - we are still enjoying the base game!

While hard to categorize Scythe has tons to offer almost any gamer. It is some area control with giant well produced mech units but there is less combat between those figures than you might think. At the heart of the game is a great action selection system with actions the evolve over time. Each player has a slightly different player board with actions paired with different secondary actions. When you take your turn you do the top and the bottom actions.

As you expand your territory and your populace you can take actions to get not only one time bonuses but when you remove the piece for that action you put it on one of the other spots on the board sometimes adding a constant bonus when you take an action or making other actions cheaper. While someone might be able to win without too much player interaction the game encourages such interaction by having a factory space on the board where players can get a fifth generally more powerful action to customize themselves even further!

Players will struggle to get stars which is how they can claim victory - once someone gets their 6th star the game ends immediately. Based on the popularity track players get different amount of points for the stars, territories, and resources they control. So the person who ended the game night not be the victor in the end.

Admittedly there is a chance this game is this high on the list because of the constant master crafted production value of the game. While other games would use cardboard chits - scythe uses resources that looks like the real things if you purchase them. The game is great with or without them though and has stood the test of time as it is no longer the new hotness. Not the first game I would introduce people to but if you are looking for a meaty game you should give the number 38 a try!