Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part 7 (85-83)

#85 Fallout Shelter: The Board Game

Fallout Shelter is a worker placement game played with cards. Players are collectively contributing to the building of an underground shelter following a nuclear holocaust. This is the comic book type of holocaust which has left the earth covered with mutant monster things. 

Every player has their own level in the shelter and then there is a shared level at the top which begins pre-built to start the game. Players go to areas to collect resources and build rooms to add to their part of the shelter.

Monsters attack and their cards get placed over random rooms in the shelter making those areas unavailable until the monster is defeated. Defeating monsters is worth points and building onto the structure is worth points.

Players can buy gear to make their character more powerful for fighting monsters. They can also go search outside the shelter and sometimes bring back awesome stuff. Fallout Shelter is a worker placement game with adventure game elements. It's my 85th favorite game of all time.

#84 Akrotiri

Akrotiri is a pick up and deliver, sailing, tile laying, exploration game. Players travel from islands collecting goods and delivering them to other islands to sell for money and points. It's really fun, and it's my 84th favorite board game of all time. 

#83 Mandala

Mandala is a two player only card game, where players place cards out on a shared board, to collect sets and to score points. Cards are played to one of two regions, called Mandalas. Each of the two Mandalas is split into three areas. There are two fields. One is your field, and is the area of each of the two Mandalas that is directly in front of you. The other is your opponent's field, and is the area of each of the two Mandalas that is directly in front of them. Between the fields in each of the Mandalas is an area called the Mountain. The Mountains separate your fields from your opponent's fields.

These areas are all illustrated on a cloth game "board" that is kind of like a big handkerchief. This is an interesting choice. The cloth seems weird as a game board at first, but it is very attractive and surprisingly functional. The cloth surface makes picking up the cards much easier than it would be on a slick hard cardboard game board.

On your turn you can play cards to your field or to the mountain. Cards on the mountain will eventually be drafted for scoring. Cards in your field are not scored but make up a sort of area majority contest with your opponent, because the player with the most cards in their field gets first choice in the draft to take cards from the mountain, and this can be really important.

Players can place cards in either Mandala on their turn, but for each Mandala, each of the six card suits can be represented only once. If your opponent plays the yellow suit in the Mountain of the left Mandala for example, you cannot play yellow in your left field. You can only play yellow to the Mountain to add to the existing yellow that is there.

Once all six suits are represented in a Mandala, that Mandala is scored. To score a Mandala, players draft cards from the Mountain. As I mentioned, the player with the most cards in their field will get to draft first. When you draft, you take all the cards of a single suit. If there is a large number of cards in a given suit, this can be a very desirable choice, which is why choosing first can be so important.

One last feature of the cloth play mat is the row of seven card spaces directly in front of each player that spans their side of the "board." These spaces tell the player what the cards that they draft are worth. When you take a suit from the mountain, you must place the first card of that suit face up in the first open space in this row. Now all other cards of that suit are worth 1 point each. 

The first card from the next suit that you draft goes face up into the second space in the row. Now all cards of that suit are worth 2 points each. This continues until all six suits have been assigned values. Each of the first six rows only holds one card, and these must all be of a different suit. All other cards that were drafted, but weren't required to occupy a scoring designation spot in the row are placed face down in the seventh space of the row. These cards are the cards that you actually score.

Mandala feels like a classic card game. It's a puzzly little abstract game for 2 players. The cards are beautiful, the cloth "board" is beautiful. The gameplay is engaging, challenging, and fun. This makes Mandala my 83rd favorite board game of all time.

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Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part 6 (88-86)

#88 Marrying Mr. Darcy 

Marrying Mr. Darcy is a hard game to recommend. I absolutely love the game, but … let me see if I can explain. Based on the Jane Austen novel "Pride And Prejudice," Marrying Mr. Darcy sees players take the roles of female characters from the novel as each tries to earn the hand of their favored suitor.

On a player's turn, they draw a card from the Event Deck and they do what it says. This almost invariably involves drawing cards from a second deck of cards called the Character Deck. The Character Deck is mostly made up of favorable qualities like, Wit, Beauty, Reputation, and Friendliness. When you draw cards, you usually draw several but must choose to keep only one. This you add to your tableau to build up your character to make you more appealing to your chosen suitor.

Each character scores differently based on the fella she likes from the novel. So, players will be trying to win the hand of "their guy." Other factors to consider are Dowry and Cunning. Some suitors expect a dowry of a minimum level, and while most don't want a woman of high cunning (heaven forbid) the player with the highest cunning is able to roll for her marriage proposal first.

Ah, you saw that didn't you? "... roll for her marriage proposal … " So, yes. You draw random events in order to draw more random cards in order to roll the dice at the end of the game to hopefully win the hand of the suitor that you want. Marrying Mr. Darcy is very random. As a game, it is a little bit of a mess. As an experience, Marrying Mr. Darcy is amazing! It's so much fun. But, if you are a hyper competitive gamer looking to out strategize your opponents. You should probably turn around and walk the other way.

For me Marrying Mr. Darcy is amazeballs! It even has a zombie expansion! (You heard that right!!) Marrying Mr. Darcy is a great thematic experience that is super light and easy to table. The game is more about enjoying the experience than the game play. So, it's one for themers, not thinkers. For me, it's my 88th favorite game of all time. 

#87 Fabled Fruit

Fabled Fruit is a campaign card game about jungle (and other) animals making fruit juice. Cards on the table represent action spots and Fabled Fruit is a worker placement game. Each player has only one worker. You choose your spot and you take your action. Those actions put fruit cards in your hand. When you have the right combination of fruit cards you can make juice. The first player to make a certain number of juices (based on player count) wins the hand. 

The trick to the game is the worker placement spots. These are cards. At first you have six spots. These are each made up of six different cards. These different stacks are made up of four identical cards. So, worker spot one might be a stack of four identical cards and each of these cards instructs the player to draw three fruits into their hand. Worker spot two is a stack of four different cards that tells the player to do something else … and so on.

On the bottom of the cards is a formula consisting of different combinations of fruits. You can go to a location if you have the correct formula and make fruit juice. If you do this, you take the card from the top of the location showing the formula that you just completed, and you place it in front of you face down. The face down side of the location card shows a juice bottle. (It looks like a wine bottle. I think all of these animals are really making wine and getting drunk.) Tahdah! You have made juice. You are on your way to winning the game.

Don't worry, even though you have taken one of the location cards from the stack, there are still three left. So, the location is still there to be used on future turns. However, everytime a location card is removed, it is replaced with a new one from the location deck. Now there is something new that players can do on their turns. 

The location deck is numbered so the locations are in a specific order. Every location has four copies. When you add a location from the deck, if there is already a copy of that location in play, you put the new card on top of its matching location. If there isn't a copy of that location in play, you add a new location spot to the board. This gives Fabled Fruit its campaign quality.

You can play as many hands as you want, and then save your progress when you put Fabled Fruit away. So, that way the new locations come out to start your next game. The location deck is huge, and you will play many game sessions before you complete it. 

Julie and I have played all the way through Fabled Fruit once. I am not sure that we will play through the whole campaign again, but this one holds some really fond memories for us, and it's a lot of fun to just pull out and play every once in a while. That's why Fabled Fruit is my 87th favorite game of all time.

#86 CV

CV is a card drafting game where players roll dice to gain resources to buy cards that represent important events during different stages of a person's life. 

Cards will often provide permanent resources (like Splendor) that will improve your ability to get better cards later. Events on the cards are things like, getting a job, going out to dinner, buying a house, getting married, and having a baby. 

Like Marrying Mr. Darcy, the dice rolling in CV make this one feel pretty random, and a large part of the enjoyment of the game is in the experience as you watch this fictional life unfold in front of you. 

It is an experience that I really enjoy and the art on the cards is lovely and funny and it often tells its own story. All of this makes CV my 86th favorite game of all time.

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Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part 5 (90-89)

#90 Livingstone

In Livingstone, players are part of Livingstone's expedition, moving down the Zambezi River in Africa, collecting precious gems and meeting with indigenous peoples to gain the favor of the Queen.

Livingstone is a light dice drafting game. Each round you roll a number of dice equal to twice the number of players. Players then take one die on their turn to perform an action. The higher the die that you choose, the stronger the action, but there's a catch. When it comes around to your turn again, you can only take a die that is higher than any you have taken on a previous turn in that round. So, do you take a few weaker actions or one stronger action? Actions include pulling precious gems from a bag, placing a camp, drawing a card, or just getting money. 

Gems have different values, including several that are worth nothing. Gems pulled from the bag stay out (until the single white gem is pulled that puts all sold and worthless gems back in the bag) so it can be valuable to wait until several worthless gems are culled from the bag before pressing your luck with this action.

Each round a little boat moves down a river. When you place a camp you must place your camp in the column above the boat. The higher the die you have chosen, the higher up the column you can place your camp and the more points it is worth. However, at the end of the game points are also scored for having a majority of camps in each row, and here lower rows are more valuable.

When you draw a card, you always only get one regardless of the number on the die so this is a good option when you decide to take that 1 die. Cards can give awesome benefits. Some cards let you exchange gems for victory points. So, you might not want to sell your gems right away, but one of the cards in the deck is a "Mine Collapses" card, and if that is pulled, all gems go back in the bag, even those that were being saved. This creates yet another push your luck element.

Finally, you can just get a number of coins equal to the die face. Placing camps costs money and is the main way to gain victory points. So, everyone needs to get money in order to place their camps. In addition to this, every player has a little treasure chest in front of them. At any time during their turn, a player can put money in the chest. This is your offering to the Queen. In a multiplayer game, the person who gave the least amount of money is automatically eliminated from the game. In a two player game you roll 4 dice at the end, and any player that donated less than the value of the four dice is eliminated. It is possible for both players to lose the game.

I love this game. I have fond memories of playing this with Julie and our two kids. Livingstone is a light family game with dice drafting and press your luck. Which are two of my favorite things. That makes Livingstone my 90th favorite game of all time.

#89 The Quacks of Quedlinburg

In Quacks players are potion brewers concocting curative brews to sell to gullible patrons. Your player board is a big cauldron. You pull ingredients (tokens) from a bag and put them into your cauldron. Garlic is bad for your brew. If you get too much you bust. Quacks is a press your luck bag building game.

In your cauldron the spaces are numbered. The more stuff that you get onto the board (into your cauldron) the higher the numbered space you reach. This gives you resources to buy better ingredients and victory points. If you bust, you get either victory points or you can buy ingredients to add to your bag, but not both. 

You can also get gems at certain points along the track. If you end your turn on a space showing a gem, then you get one. Gems can be used to get certain things, probably the most valuable of which is moving your starting point in the cauldron. This allows you to begin further and further up the spiraling track that gives you points making future turns more and more powerful.

Ingredients have special powers when you play them. Some allow you to mitigate the garlic so that you won't bust so fast. Some give you points. Some push you further along the track in your cauldron. Stuff like that. Powers for the various ingredients are written on cards and these can change from game to game creating a lot of variability.

Quacks is a neat little push your luck game. I believe that this one lands somewhere in Julie's top 20. For me, for now, Quacks of Quedlinburg is my 89th favorite game.

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There and Hack Again RPG Review (LakeSide Games)

There and Hack Again is the second of two reviews for RPGs from LakeSide games. My hope is to put a really awesome RPG that you may not know about on your radar.

There and Hack Again is one of what are generally referred to as Old School Rules or OSR style games. It's based on another OSR work called "The Black Hack," which is what the "Hack" in the title refers to. OSR games are based on early versions of D&D. This game is no exception, but it makes substantial changes to the game. This is where the term "Hack" comes in. The rules have been "hacked." They've been changed, but the idea is to not increase the game's complexity or to make it unrecognizable for people who are comfortable with the old school D&D rules.

There and Hack Again, as the name implies is an RPG based on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien's the Hobbit (and other related works.) What concerns me about this choice of title is that players that are interested in a role-playing game based on the Lord of the Rings will likely ignore it and choose the officially licensed The One Ring RPG by Free League. While others who see the title will, because they don't want to play a game based in Tolkien's Middle Earth, also give There and Hack Again a miss.

I hope the title doesn't keep the fantasy RPG fandom at large away from this game, because it is awesome. There and Hack Again is inspired by Tolkien (among others) to tell heroic stories of high fantasy. There and Hack Again takes inspiration from The Lord of the Rings in the same way that Dungeons and Dragons does. It focuses more on the way these stories are told than D&D ever did, and that's a good thing. There and Hack Again is built to tell a hero's story in a high fantasy world, and while inspired by Tokien, this world is not Middle Earth. The world is yours to create.

T&HA uses the core six ability scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, but it doesn't use ability score modifiers. Instead the ability score itself becomes your basis for success. This means that every point of an ability score matters. However, this isn't a roll under system (as is used in the Black Hack and in Dragonbane.) It's a roll high system, which is what D&D players are more accustomed to. That's a smart move. This is accomplished by taking a higher number and subtracting your ability score from it to reach a target number. That "higher number" decreases as you level up making your target number smaller. So, the system has a sort of built in Proficiency Bonus … clever.

T&HA has race and class separation and includes the races of Men, Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings. While classes are divided by Archetype. There are three archetypes: The Brave, The Cunning, and The Wise. Each Archetype provides the core rules for the character, Hit Points, Weapons and Armor Allowances and some key abilities common for all members of that Archetype. Class then usually adds just one or two advantages and some flavor.

Under each Archetype are three character Classes.

Classes under the Brave Archetype are: Champion (an armored knight), Ranger (a warden of the wilds), and Warrior (a general man-at-arms.)

Classes under the Cunning Archetype are: Hunter (an archer of the woods), Rogue (a sneaky hero), and Swordmaster (a fencing swashbuckler.) 

Classes under the Wise are: Bard (Charisma based magicians of story and song), Druid (Wisdom based magicians of nature and healing), and Wizard (Intelligence based magicians of elements and illusions.)

The Wise are spellcasters and can cast each spell that they know up to three times a day. That's it. No complex charts or tables to reference. Casting spells requires a check, which determines the spell's overall effect. A failed check doesn't mean that a caster was not successful in casting their spell, it just means that the ultimate effect was not the one desired.

Spellcasting rolls and all other rolls are player facing, but enemies of levels higher than your own will make your chance of success more difficult. Conversely, weaker enemies will make your chance of success more likely. The same is true in combat (or for any opposed roll against a non-player element). Enemies don't roll to attack, the player rolls to defend.

Characters also have "Boons" These are special powers, abilities, feats or talents that players can use to fine tune their characters. Some Boons are tied to a character's class or race, but most are available to everyone. The race of man allows a player to start with three boons while the other races provide two. Players will gain additional boons as they level up their characters.

There are no experience points in the game. Players level up following milestones and a period of downtime. This downtime element is really interesting to me. It requires that characters take extended breaks between periods of adventure. The characters are people that live within the world. They have homes and families and places to be. This requirement grounds the characters in the world, and I love this.

Intertwined within the game's mechanics are: Faith and Despair. Faith is the good stuff that gives players hope and makes them heroes. Despair is the bad stuff that hurts players and gives the game a feeling of grandiose scope and its sense of good and evil without resorting to something as clumsy as an alignment system. Faith and Despair really mean something in the game. Faith can be used to mitigate bad die rolls, or cast an exhausted spell, or use an exhausted special ability. Despair can overwhelm a character giving them a penalty to all dice rolls until they are able to overcome it.

Faith and Despair are designed to focus game play on the heroic. There is also the fact that money in the game is abstracted. Players have no motivation to become murder hobos or to hoard gold (and in fact, doing so would increase their despair.) Finally, there is the Adversary. This is the "big bad" of your story or campaign. T&HA is meant to tell big stories of normal folk becoming heroes and taking on seemingly insurmountable odds. This is the good stuff folks.

There and Hack Again is my favorite OSR style game. It's awesome, and I think every gaming group should give it a try. It's a tragedy that Hasbro's D&D is played by millions while a game like this languishes largely unplayed or talked about. There and Hack Again is a masterpiece, and it's the high fantasy RPG that you should be playing.

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Black Star RPG Review (LakeSide Games)

Black Star is the first of two reviews for RPGs from LakeSide games. My goal is to put a really awesome RPG that you may not know about on your radar.

Black Star is a rules-lite sci-fi RPG. There's definitely a bit of a Star Wars vibe to this one, but any cinematic style space opera adventure game would be well served by these rules. The game uses 2d6 for tests. A 9+ is needed for success. You add an ability score to your role. Abilities range from 0-5, but new characters can't have a score greater than 3.

There are 10 abilities that cover pretty much all the standard sci-fi adventure RPG tropes: Blasting, Brawling, Diplomacy, Discipline, Instinct, Intellect, Speed, Strength, Tools, and Transports. This "10 Abilities to rule them all … " approach reminds me of Mike Pondsmith's Dreampark RPG, which is one of my favorite RPGs of all time. It looks great here!

To augment their abilities players have Archetypes which represent job experience from their past to help to focus what the character can do. There are 10 of these as well and players get to choose two of them. The Archetypes are: Diplomat, Expert, Fighter, Heavy, Mystic, Outlaw, Pilot, Scout, Soldier, and Tech. Each Archetype grants players access to a pool of Talents. Talents provide special benefits when taking certain actions.

In addition to Talents based on a character's Archetype, there are Innate Talents that a player can choose. Some of these are quite exotic ("Wings" for example) and would allow players and the GM to create custom alien races.

Resolve is the drive that keeps characters going. It's part hit-points and part hero-points. When a player fails an ability test they can spend a point of Resolve to roll again, or to automatically succeed but with some kind of negative consequence tied to the result. This presents some interesting opportunities for negotiation role-play that really appeals to me.

The rules have examples of futuristic equipment, spaceships, psionic powers, and several adventure ideas. All in all, Black Space is an awesome Sci-Fi RPG for players looking for something that would be easy to get to the table. It's just the kind of concise yet rich RPG system that I'm always on the lookout for.

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