Top 100 Board Games of All Time, 2024 Edition — Games 25-1

Welcome back to my Top 100 Board Games of All Time, 2024 Edition! If you missed my previous posts, then be sure to check out games 100-76 here, games 75-51 here, and games 50-26 here. Today I’ll be capping off the list with games 25-1 and, as promised in part 1, sharing my personal rankings of our Bitewing Games publications.

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25. Heat: Pedal to the Metal

Heat is everything I want from a racing game: risky push-your-luck moments, possible comebacks, big maneuvers, impactful decisions, thrilling climaxes, map variety, vehicle customization, championship scenarios, gorgeous illustrations, the works. I’m a dozen plays in and still enjoying the huge amount of game crammed into this box. Heat has become a go-to option at our table any time we have roughly 5 or 6 players.

24. Trio / Nana

Trio (aka Nana) is a simple memory-based card game that just plain works. It works so well that it cracked my Top 25 favorite board games of all time! On your turn, you can either reveal a card from the middle or ask another player to reveal their highest or lowest card. The goal is to find a set of three cards of the same value: if you don’t then your turn is over and the cards go back to their hiding places, if you do then you keep them and take a big step closer to victory. Trio doesn’t sound all that interesting from such a description, but it successfully taps into the primal joy of lucky discoveries. You have to play it to believe it.

23. Tatari

I’m almost out of controversial picks, so I’ll have to savor this moment as best I can… For some reason, simple dice games like Tatari seem to be more divisive within our hobbyist community than any other genre. You get nut jobs such as myself who claim Tatari to be one of the greatest dice games ever conceived, and then perhaps more sane people who play it and think it’s fine at best.

Unlike many titles of this ilk, Tatari has an ebb and flow to its game state that keeps you on your toes. Here you are trying to get rid of your cursed dolls and start your turn with no dolls in order to win. This is mainly done by rolling up to an exact board number and then rolling enough dolls to drop some off there. The lower boards are easier to reach and dump your dolls onto… that is until they fill up with everybody’s dolls. Then you’ll need to roll higher to get to safer dumping grounds. But as soon as somebody busts, they take all the dolls from the board that has the most — thus clearing an opening for opponents to have an easier turn. It’s that perfect mix of decision space and dice drama that puts this game so high on my list.

22. Inis

Inis is the type of classic that puts nearly all other drafting games to shame. Because there are only 16 cards in the main deck, players quickly become familiar with all of the cards, and that familiarity is what greases the wheels of the area control tussle that takes place on the growing map. With 3 possible victory objectives, you’ll need to keep an eye on what your opponents are plotting and draft the right cards to beat them.

But the tension of Inis isn’t just found in the drafting. Each turn you can either play a card or pass. Passing grants you more action power in the tail end of the round, but playing cards earlier gains you momentum on the map. And if everyone passes consecutively, then the round will end prematurely (possibly before you were ready for it to end). It’s very easy to put a target on your own back if you act too openly or aggressively. Only the most cunning player will claim the crown in this Celtic island struggle which remains one of my favorite area control games.

21. SCOUT

Ladder-climbing games (and their cousin, trick-taking games) have been all the rage in recent years. When done well, these games encapsulate all the satisfaction of a clever casual card game. Deal out the deck, arrange your hands, watch turns whip around the table as players throw down one or more cards they’ve been waiting to unleash. That’s card games, baby. Except SCOUT doesn’t let you do all of those things. 

You are never allowed to rearrange the cards in your hand, and you can only play out cards that are adjacent to each other and part of a set or run. At the start of the hand, you only get to decide which direction to flip your entire hand to (each card displays a different number on each end). During the round, you’ll need to polish and trim your hand, from ugly duckling to beautiful swan, by picking up certain cards played by other players and hoping you have enough time to empty your hand. SCOUT is a game of patience, persistence, planning, timing, and risk-taking. It’s a pillar of modern card games.

20. Gang of Dice

Remember how I said that I’m almost out of controversial picks? Well, here we are: the end of the line. But it’s not just my own wacky gaming preferences that are to blame here. I also blame whoever thought it was a good idea to put Gang of Dice on Board Game Arena. Hey, let’s take an ego-driven, fist flaunting, one-upping dice chucker and let people play it asynchronously in digital form. Talk about taking the wind out of the sails of fun. I can’t say this enough: STOP PLAYING THIS GAME ON BGA. And while you’re at it, STOP PLAYING THIS GAME AT ONLY 2-PLAYERS.

Alright, my rant is over. Gang of Dice is all about rolling the highest sum without busting and wagering with the dice that you roll. Each round presents a new bomb card that dictates the threshold of busting. Sometimes you get three rolls to find the sweet spot, other times you’ll risk busting on the first or second roll if you wager too many dice. But perhaps the greatest custom face in the entire dice universe is the boss face which replaces the six on each die. The boss face has no value, meaning it never triggers a bust and it can even help you win ties (by rolling more dice than your opponent).

The magnificence that is this design doesn’t end there. It also plays in a succinct 12 rounds that escalates in rewards and risks during the final act. Dramatic moments: check. Allows for player expression: check. Doesn’t overstay its welcome: check. No two turns feel alike: check. In other words, it’s the perfect small-box Knizia dice game… FOR 3-4 HUMANS SITTING AT THE SAME PHYSICAL TABLE.

19. Azul

While all the cool gamers have long ago moved on to more trendy versions of Azul, I’m here to tell you that they are all worse than the OG. The spinoffs aren’t necessarily bad games, mind you, but they all lose sight of what made Azul so special to begin with. The thing that puts Azul head and shoulders above its successors is the clear and cutthroat drafting. All the later Azuls merely muddy the waters with more complicated or flexible player boards and scoring systems. Drafting tiles from a shared pool doesn’t have the same impact that it used to. Fortunately, vanilla Azul remains the highest-ranked Azul on BoardGameGeek, as is just and true. This family-weight abstract strategy game will continue to stand the test of time thanks to its vibrant colors, clackety tiles, and (most importantly) sharp drafting mechanism.

18. My City

While many designs have shoehorned polyominoes into their gameplay because it is trendy, it’s a rare treat to come across a game that understands how to maximize their potential. In My City, you’ll be aiming to cover some spaces while avoiding covering others. You’ll be wanting to build clusters of the matching colors while dealing with the constraints and borders of the map. You’ll be racing to connect certain landmarks and surround others. You’ll be carefully planning out the placement of your dwindling supply of tiles but dealing with the headache of placing them out in the wrong order. And you’ll be forced to decide between killing your hopes and dreams for your city or tossing a tile and swallowing the point penalty.

Across 24 episodes, Reiner Knizia takes your group on an addicting journey of gameplay surprises and rules twists. Just when you’ve found your strategic sweet spot at the end of chapter, he pulls the rug out from underneath you in the next chapter. My City continually forces you to re-evaluate your approach to the puzzle by introducing new priorities and threats. It’s a family-weight legacy game that takes a simple bingo-style concept (reveal a card, all players place the depicted tile on their board) and makes it both engrossing and agonizing.

17. Mille Fiori

I tend to find most salads to be bland, unfulfilling, and pointless. Perhaps that’s a result of my working at a pizza place where they considered iceberg lettuce and dressing to be an adequate salad. At any rate, I feel the same way about most point salad games. If everything you do rewards you with points, and players come away with very high but very close scores, then what is the point? But every once in a while, I’ll come across a salad that packs a huge punch. It’s loaded with the juicy protein of meaningful decisions, seasoned with spicy interaction that gives it a kick, and sprinkled with a satisfying crunch of big combos. One such feast is Mille Fiori, and it might just be the best point salad ever created.

Mille Fiori is a card-drafting tile-placement game that presents a variety of mini games on a shared board. In one area, you are competing to build large clusters of your tiles. In another, you are struggling to extend an unbroken line of your tiles. In another, you are working together to build up pyramid of tiles. In another, you are loading up rows and columns with tiles to increase their value. And finally, you are sailing your boats along a track of varying bonuses that must be stopped on to be gained. All of these regions offer tasty opportunities for splashy combos, putting pressure on what card you draft, when you draft it, and what cards you pass to your neighbor.

Personally, I prefer to play with the Mille Fiori: The Masterpieces expansion. Ironically, the titular masterpieces are the least interesting part of this expansion. Rather, it’s the doge cards (which allow players to compete for turn order) and dogressa cards (which allow players to store powerful alternate actions) that really make this system sing.

16. Pax Pamir: Second Edition

Pax Pamir 2e is a brilliant design and a delightfully tactical romp all wrapped in a stunning package, but it is not for everyone. It is brutal, opaque, chaotic, complex, and often prone to king making. In other words, it’s a Cole Wehrle game.

For those who are eager to dive into the deep end, they will be highly rewarded by one of the most satisfyingly tactical experiences to ever emerge from a cardboard box.  The gorgeous production and unique theme serve to enhance the layered interactions.  The emerging dominance cards, oscillating coalitions, closed economy, and unstable loyalties all combine into a supple, historical harmony between musical chairs loyalty and Tug-o-War gameplay.

15. Sidereal Confluence

If point mongering isn’t your jam, then perhaps cube mongering is. Sidereal Confluence is as cubey as board games get. It’s about collecting and trading cubes so you can convert them into more and bigger cubes. But all this cube pushing is merely a way for streamlining the systems at play and letting the real star of the game shine: the simultaneous negotiations. 

Sidereal Confluence is the kind of long, heavy, sprawling experience that makes Chinatown look like trading for babies. It offers way more layers to the wheeling and dealing that can take many plays to fully uncover. Sure, you can swap one color of resources for another. You can make more complex three-way or four-way trades so that everyone gets what they want. Or you can loan your converters to your neighbor for a round, or make yourself indebted to a rival for the rest of the game, or invest in the economies of other alien factions to earn a slice of their profits. All deals are binding, and almost nothing is off-limits to trade, so players can get insanely creative with their negotiations. What a trip, that Sidereal Confluence.

14. Undaunted: Stalingrad

I’ve largely enjoyed the Undaunted line of games, but here I’ll be featuring my favorite of the bunch: Undaunted: Stalingrad. Undaunted features a brilliantly smooth deck building system that generally works best at 2-players. Your deck is used to maneuver and activate your units on the map, and this map hosts a tactical combat skirmish or scenario between two warring factions. By adding more of the same unit to your deck, you’ll help keep them alive and useful for longer. By adding new types of units to your deck, you’ll open up more tactical opportunities yet slow down the efficiency of your entire platoon.

Deck crafting isn’t the only element with tough trade-offs. Each round you’ll start by picking a card in your hand to sacrifice to your discard pile for initiative. Of course the most powerful cards have the best initiative, and going first in a round can be critical to success, so you’ll often be forced to decide between advantageous initiative and valuable actions.

It’s this genius core system that makes every Undaunted title so dang good. But Stalingrad elevates this experience by introducing a legacy-like campaign where the events of one battle have ripple effects across the ensuing scenarios. Your forces will develop new skills and suffer permanent injuries over the course of the campaign, resulting in a deck of terrifying strengths and exploitable weaknesses. The outcome of one battle will determine the setup of the next, and there is nothing stopping you from reseting the campaign when it is over to follow a different path of branching scenarios. In many ways, Stalingrad is the culmination of David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin’s wealth of ideas and experience within this series they have carefully crafted.

13. El Grande

El Grande is The Big Grandaddy of area majority games that has stood strong for nearly 30 years now. Thankfully, it finally came back into print last year and in a much more reasonably sized box. El Grande has stood the test of time because it is clean, tense, and spicy.

The system at play here is just plain smart from top to bottom. Players contain a hand of cards ranking from 1-13. Higher cards grant you earlier priority for turn order but less caballeros (meeples) to replenish your supply. One at a time, players bid using a different card from each other to dictate turn order. Then players get to claim an action card via the turn order that they established in the bidding.

I love how the action cards change each round — some can be catastrophic to your strategy if you let rivals use them while others will be less worrisome and grant you a tiny moment to catch your breath. The challenge lies in knowing when to bid high, when to bid low, which action to select, and how to keep your opponents from dogpiling on you. Already I’ve described a killer design, and I haven’t even mentioned the towering castillo or the taboo king. I suppose you’ll just have to discover those treasures on your own.

12. MLEM: Space Agency

Man, Knizia is just so dang good at push-your-luck games. And if you haven’t noticed yet, that’s one of my soft spots. After many plays, MLEM has proven to be both a consistent delight for me and a crowd pleaser at our table.

The reason this is my favorite dice game out of the dozens upon dozens I have tried is because it keeps the entire group invested in each turn and each roll. In most other games like this, you are nothing more than a passive audience during other player’s turns. In MLEM, you are so much more than that. You are a passenger — a crew member to the cat commander who is piloting your ship with each roll of the dice. You get to decide what kind of catstronaut you are going to be — a good kitty, an evil kitty, or a selfish kitty — by what ability you strap in to the rocket ship. Then between each roll you get to decide whether you want to stay in or bail out on the nearby planet or moon. Sometimes you even get promoted to commander and handed the leftover dice if your commander loses their nerve.

The decisions of which dice to use, how far to travel, when to jump off, and when to take risks are often subtle yet impactful. On top of the engaging challenge that players must navigate, there is plenty of amusing table talk as you try to coax each other into stay or bailing, helping or sabotaging, advancing the ship far or advancing just a little. This is easily one of Knizia’s best designs in recent years.

11. The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

Where MLEM is about blasting your crew into outer space, The Crew is about plummeting them deep into the sea… sort of. It’s hard for any kind of theme to come through an abstract trick taking game like this. But it matters not. What matters is that The Crew: Mission Deep Sea is one of the finest trick taking games and finest cooperative games ever crafted. The original game — The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine — is excellent as well. But in many ways Mission Deep Sea feels like a refinement of that formula. 

The Crew is a quick-playing card game that restricts your communication and throws a new challenge at you each and every time. Maybe one player needs to win three pink cards. Maybe another play can win zero tricks. Perhaps you can never lead a trick with two specific suits. It feels like there are a bazillion different objective cards in the deck, and each scenario tends to randomly mix and match a few of them. In other words, The Crew offers virtually an infinite variety of scenarios that are challenging and addicting. It is one of the world’s best card games.

10. The Quest for El Dorado

On the topic of masterful card games, we’ve now reached my favorite deck builder in The Quest for El Dorado. Not only is this game more interactive than your standard deck builder (thanks to the blocking and racing on the map), it is also exceptionally intuitive. You can either use your cards to advance closer to the finish line (e.g., play a paddle card, advance through the river), or you can halt your progress to purchase a new card from the market.

This one is super easy to get anybody into. And once your group is ready, there are loads of expansions to plunge you all into the deep end. Half the fun is in crafting your own maps and markets by integrating boards, cards, and modules from the various expansions. Unfortunately, the different publishers and versions haven’t made it easy or cheap for many hobbyists to acquire everything. I’ve found the most reliable source to be purchasing from publisher lautapelit.fi (be warned — shipping to the US isn’t cheap). But for me, it’s absolutely been worth the hassle.

El Dorado is not only great with any group, but it’s great at any player count. At 3-4 players, there are plenty of opportunities to get in each other’s way. At 2-players, this crowded feeling is maintained by having each player control 2 pawns. Leave it to the Good Doctor to join the deck builder party late and cook up one of the very best in the genre on his first attempt.

9. Hansa Teutonica: Big Box

Hansa Teutonica is the bland-looking Eurogame that all other bland looking Eurogames wish they could be. It’s the belle of the ball… somehow feeling simultaneously like an old classic and a refreshing newcomer. Hansa — so hot right now.

In some ways, I feel bad for designer Andreas Steding. With his very first publication in Hansa Teutonica, he released perfection into the world. That’s a high bar to set for all of the creations that follow. On the bright side, nothing can diminish the experience of playing Hansa Teutonica. There’s the rush of completing a route and deciding whether to claim the trading post or upgrade your abilities. There’s the thrill of squatting your traders on the exact spots where your opponents don’t want them — forcing them to spend extra resources to boot you and gain you an extra free trader. There’s the joy of deciding which strategy to pursue both on the shared map and on your player board.

Unlike some “Big Box” editions (cough cough El Grande cough), Hansa Teutonic isn’t obnoxiously big at all. It simply has more maps crammed into a compact package. Never has plain old cubes on a beige board been more fun than Hansa Teutonica.

8. Through the Desert

Yes, my Top 20 Board Games are averaging a rate of 50% Knizias, but did you really expect anything different? How could I not put Through the Desert this high? Find me any other strategy game as elegant and pressurized as this… You can try, but no such match exists.

Perhaps more than any of his other 800 releases, Through the Desert epitomizes the strengths of Reiner Knizia. Simple rules. Tight interactions. Basic actions that are merely the tiny tip of a strategic iceberg. Place two camels of any colors to extend your lines, make connections, enclose areas, block rivals, and claim point tokens. Few things are as satisfying as placing a camel on a hex to further your plans and inflict pain on others.

7. Babylonia

Babylonia is a newer Knizia tile placement game that feels like a fusion of Samurai’s surrounding majorities and Through the Desert’s snaking connections… rounded out with a sprinkling of acquirable abilities. You’ll work to connect the symbols on your tiles to matching cities on the board, surround those cities with a majority of your tiles, and milk the ziggurats and farmer tiles for further points. As you travel down one of these strategic paths, you’ll constantly be tempted by the others. But more importantly, you’ll need to keep a careful watch on what your opponents are up to. If left unchecked, one player can run away with one of these snowballing strategies.

Not only are you working to further your own agenda while curbing your rivals’ plans, but you are also adapting to the types of tiles that enter your hand. You can either play any two tiles or play three or more farmer tiles. Those moments when you have a large stash of farmers sitting in front of you which you then unleash upon the map are absolutely electric. It’s this fusion of tactical tile management with strategic board dynamics that reaffirms Knizia’s overwhelming supremacy in this genre. Long live the king.

6. KLASK

What a glorious invention, that KLASK. Here we have miniature air-hockey with magnetic pawns, a rolling ball, dangerous biscuits, and a deadly goal. No other game gets me roaring and laughing as effortlessly as KLASK. The contents of its box exude playfulness. The secret sauce of this game is the fact that you can score a point in three ways:

• Get the ball into your opponent’s goal
• Two of the three magnetic biscuits stick to your opponent’s pawn
• Your opponent KLASKS themself (they accidentally sink their pawn into their goal)

My favorite moments are many: 

• When a player’s pawn gets cornered by the biscuits, causing the stakes to ratchet up. 
• The magnetic biscuits wobble with glee when your pawn passes too closely — threatening to leap on their prey.
• Amid a fierce battle, one player suddenly KLASKS their own pawn into their own goal because they got caught up in the heat of the moment.
• Striking the perfect shot that causes the ball to ricochet off the walls and into the goal.
• Executing a billiards-style attack by hitting the ball into a biscuit that lands squarely on your enemy’s pawn

5. Brass: Birmingham

Brass: Birmingham has been a perennial favorite at my table across the three different cities that I’ve lived in since acquiring it. For every group that I’ve played it with, these friends have requested repeat plays. So I guess it’s not too surprising that this popular title has claimed the top spot as BoardGameGeek’s #1 game of all time.

This legendary Martin Wallace design knows how to reel participants in with tough hand management and evolving economic conditions. The concept of a critical turn order being dictated by how much money the players spend each turn is also a fun challenge to tackle. Sometimes you’ll intentionally hold back your excess funds just to be first in turn order in the next round. Timing can make all the difference in this dynamic industrial age Eurogame of supply and demand.

4. Arcs

Part of the reason that my other Cole Wehrle favorites (Root, Oath, Pax Pamir, etc.) are so much lower on my latest list compared to previous lists is simply because Arcs has supplanted them in many ways. It’s impossible for me to get all of these games to the table as regularly as they require, so Arcs has become my Wehrle game of choice thanks to its slightly lower barriers to entry. 

The other reason Arcs is so high on my list is because it’s just a stinking good game in its own right. I’ve always enjoyed Cole’s style of political area control gaming, and Arcs combines that with fascinating trick-taking interactions. You’ll start each chapter figuring out what the heck you can possibly do with your new hand of cards and your current position on the map. Fortunately, there is a lot of flexibility within the rules where you can copy the suit of the lead player, pivot to your own suit, or even seize initiative by burning a card. This element is balanced beautifully against the ambitions system where only the lead player has the power to declare a scoring objective, but they give up their leading power in doing so. 

This solid core is supplemented with more tasty features including a thrilling combat dice system, a Leaders and Lore module of asymmetric abilities, and an epic 3-act campaign expansion.

3. Crokinole

Crokinole is the most expensive board game in my collection and yet the most priceless possession in my game room. This dexterity game of flicking and ricocheting disks transcends the medium of tabletop hobbyism and enters a realm of its own. It resides in a place of sport and suspense. Hubris and humiliation. Tension and tactility. Tournament and tradition.  

My memories of playing Crokinole with everyone from gamers to non-gamers, family to friends, and neighbors to nemeses will forever remain some of my most cherished memories in all of tabletop gaming.

2. Ra

At the time of this post, BoardGameGeek lists 5,092 published games that contain some form of auctions or bidding. That’s a lot of auction games. For comparison’s sake, there are only 3,600 worker placement games, 4,900 deck builders, 2,500 trick takers, and 391 singing games. 

Granted, many games that contain auctions only feature it as a small supplemental mechanism. It’s a great way for players to interact and collectively dictate the value of market items. But in terms of pure auction games, where bidding is the central action of the experience, Ra is a shining beacon of the genre (perhaps because Ra is the sun god).

This design is backed up by a smart set collection scoring system — one that’s so good that the designer himself has recycled it across many more creations. But that’s not what makes Ra so legendary. The reason Ra is my number 2 board game of all time (and my favorite auction game ever) is because of the inspired sun disk bidding system combined with the sizzling push-your-luck Ra timer.

Players only have 3 or 4 sun disks to bid with each era. Higher disks give you a better shot at claiming what you want, but lower disks can be used effectively by cunning players who trigger premature auctions at the right time. In addition to using your disks wisely, Ra often forces you to bid with your gut more than your brain due to the unpredictability of the Ra tiles triggering the era end. Despite the randomness of the era length and market options, skilled players can work the system and their opponents — seemingly bending Ra’s will to their favor. While it is true that anyone can invoke Ra, only the stout of heart can master it.

1. Tigris & Euphrates / Yellow & Yangtze

And here, finally, we land at my number 1 board game of all time… a design that continues to surprise, delight, and instruct me after many thrilling plays. What other game covers such a wide scope of theme and endless depth of strategy within such a simple ruleset? Civilizations rise, clash, and fall within the span of minutes while a deliciously satisfying feast of dramatic decisions is consumed in roughly an hour.

The mathematician-turned-designer, Reiner Knizia, somehow manages to produce a game of infinite possibilities from the equation of 2 actions times 4 options.  Here, players are given the opportunity to lay careful plans, concoct ambitious schemes, and watch with glee or despair as their dreams bear fruit or burn to cinders. 800+ published games aside, Tigris & Euphrates alone (alongside its 20 years younger sibling, Yellow & Yangtze) cements Dr. Knizia as one of the greatest game designers of all time.

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How Would Our Bitewing Titles Rank Among My Top 100?

One of the best parts about being a board game publisher is discovering a new favorite game and helping to bring it to life and share it with the world. That feeling when you encounter a refreshing experience and then inspiration strikes for how to produce it is what fuels my passion for these projects. 

It’s only natural that these titles would be strong contenders among my all-time favorite board games. So if you’re at all curious, here is how our publications would rank (roughly) if they were included on my list. You’ll notice that I tend to favor our heavier/meatier games over our more casual ones, but that’s just my personal tastes showing through:

Top 150:

Cascadito – My enthusiasm for roll and write games has waned over the years — partially due to it being overly trendy, but mostly because this genre just isn’t as interactive or innovative as others. So Cascadito, being a roll and write spinoff of Cascadero, was never going to become my favorite Bitewing title. That said, I still enjoy breaking this one out on occasion and exploring the variety of the four different maps. I also prefer the experience of rolling and drafting dice from a shared pool that Cascadito provides over the bingo-style roll and writes where everybody adds the same thing to their sheets.

Gussy Gorillas – This chaotic trading game is designed by yours truly. I still get a kick out of playing it, and the process of bringing my own design to publication was very rewarding. But I’ve found that I prefer to skip the infantile stage of game design (the grind of play testing and iteration) and adopt games when they are further along in development and already a blast to play. It’s tough to beat collaborating with talented designers like Reiner Knizia, Ryan Courtney, Robert Hovakimyan, and others on their next exciting project. That said, my undisputed greatest highlight of all time as a board game publisher is seeing the legendary Rodney Smith love Gussy Gorillas so much that he forced the one and only Martin Wallace to play it with him.

Did Martin Wallace love Gussy Gorillas? I’ll never know – I couldn’t hear him over all the shouting! We also broke out Decrypto XL and had a big group game of it. I’m always a bit intimidated to teach this one, but the whole gang was great while we got up to speed! pic.twitter.com/HEVv9t9IUk

— Watch It Played (@WatchItPlayed) June 25, 2023

Soda Smugglers – Soda Smugglers is our simplest title by far, which makes it a great option for casual or family groups. This distilled, Knizian take on Sheriff of Nottingham has never failed to be a hit as a quick party/filler game at my table. The bluffing and smuggling interactions definitely have a “the more the merrier” feel to them that make Soda Smugglers best with groups of 5-8 players.

Top 100:

Pumafiosi – Sometimes you’re just in the mood for a super casual card game with friends or family, and Pumafiosi is the perfect little box for such an occasion (especially with 3-4 players). The strategy isn’t secretly deep, and your luck can vary widely, but Pumafiosi is refreshingly unique with its core premise. The second highest card wins the trick, and that winning card is inserted into the Pumafia hierarchy where players are jockeying to claim points and avoid penalties. I was delighted to break this one out again very recently with a couple friends and find that it still hits the spot. 

Hot Lead – Confession time: We lied about Hot Lead. When we first launched this game, we called it a “20-minute game” like Pumafiosi and Soda Smugglers. In reality, Hot Lead is more like a 10-minute game, if that. This fast filler packs such a thrilling punch that it is easily my top choice for a 10 minute game. The simultaneous bids and push-your-luck set collection are a match made in heaven.

Cat Blues: The Big Gig – Cat Blues is a significant departure from our previous card games. Where the Criminal Capers Collection targets casual gamers, Cat Blues is built especially for hobbyist gamers. The difference is immediately apparent when you suddenly find yourself bidding with your hand of cards to try and build a better hand of cards. The freedom to use, save, or spend cards in different ways reveals way more strategic depth than anything you’ll find in our earlier small box games. This is one of my all-time favorite card games that I’m proud to have worked with Reiner to evolve and resurrect. 

ORBIT – Bitewing Games has mostly been dabbling in medium-weight games for nearly two years now, so it’s nice to mix things up a bit with this less complex racing game. ORBIT makes for an easy teaching/learning experience because all you do is play a card from your hand and activate its actions in any order you want. There is an inherent joy to be found in flying across the map and surfing the orbital paths of massive planets. Unlike our other recent releases like Cascadero, Bebop, or Shuffle and Swing, ORBIT is game you can bring to the table with basically anyone (Mom, Dad, Aunt Marge, Cousin Jeff, etc.) and have a riot with.

Top 50:

Shuffle and Swing – Those who follow my blog or podcast know that I often complain about modern Eurogames. In particular, I’m tired of the trend toward more complexity, more added fluff, and less player interaction. Thankfully, there are notable exceptions in this genre every now and then that still hit the spot for me. Shuffle and Swing is one such exception that provides a satisfying medium-weight economic challenge in a focused and streamlined design. The shared incentives of using each other’s rondel dice and building the instruments together are the standout moments for me.

Top 25:

Bebop – In case you missed it, I’m a sucker for strategic tile placement games on a shared board, and Bebop does it in a way that I’ve never seen before. The two layers — placing tiles and inserting dice — are paired beautifully with the three ways to score points. I love how the game provides a dynamic arc in a quick playtime. You are doing the same simple actions the entire session, but the focus and pressures shift dramatically from start to finish. Add in vibrant art from Weberson Santiago, clackety dice from a draw bag, and a variety of festival maps… and I’m a happy boy.

Iliad – An instant 2-player classic for me. The tough decisions, exciting effects, easy teach, sneaky depth, and brisk pace are all things I long for in a game like this. Iliad is one of those Knizia games that is so tightly designed and brilliantly executed that all I can do is do is clap and say, “Bravo, Reiner. Bravo.”

Spectral – Spectral is hands down my favorite logic deduction game thanks to everything that makes this design so unique within its genre: particularly the spicy interactive bidding, thrilling climactic reveal, and spooky thematic vibe. Somehow Ryan Courtney fit all of this into game that plays in under 30 minutes — making it far too enticing to run it back again after the first session.

Cascadero – Legendary, elegant, interactive Knizia tile placement gameplay meets addicting, combotastic, crunchy track considerations. A refreshing twist on the genre from the King of the Tiles. I’ve played Cascadero dozens of times now and still have a blast every time. The two maps and the advanced mode also add in a nice bit of strategic variety that is fun to cycle through.

Trailblazers – At this point, there are so many “Take & Make” or spatial puzzle games out there that one might understandably wonder what makes Trailblazers special. I tend to prefer games that feature dynamic player interaction on a shared board, but that doesn’t describe this genre at all. After dozens of plays, I’m still hungry for more Trailblazers thanks to two simple reasons: 1. Press-you-luck gameplay.  The press-your-luck nature of only scoring closed loops pits me against my wily ego in a burst of thrilling decisions across a pacey 30-minute session. How ambitious do I make my trails? The temptations are ever present. 2. Strategic Depth and Flexibility. The flexibility of card arrangement and overlapping combined with meaty challenges from the goal cards and solo modes means that the skill ceiling here feels sky-high.

Top 10:

Ichor – Ichor is a grower if ever there was any. The more you play it, the more you discover, and the deeper it sinks its hooks in you. I’m a few dozen plays into this one and still discovering new strategies, opportunities, and interactions. Ichor is a rare abstract strategy game that feels like there is always more to discover thanks to the asymmetric character abilities. That feeling keeps me excited and eager to revisit it again and again. I suppose this is what you get when a mastermind creator stews on a concept and polishes a design over the course of 30+ years.

SILOS – SILOS is freaking phenomenal. It’s the legendary Reiner Knizia’s response to the masterpiece that is El Grande by Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich. Yet it isn’t just El Grande with a twist… it’s El Grande completely turned on its head. This dynamic pursuit of area majority bonuses fuels the most delightfully stressful hour of fun that a game can possibly provide. The alien invasion theme, brought to life by Kwanchai Moriya’s captivating illustrations, is the cherry atop a gaming sundae that charms me to no end.

EGO – More than any other game we’ve published, EGO feels like a miracle. It’s as if Reiner Knizia reached into his magic hat, and instead of pulling out a rabbit he pulled out an alive and kicking Elvis Presley who then gave an epic encore performance. I can’t explain it, I can merely sit back in awe and enjoy the show. EGO takes so many of my favorite moments in board games — strategic hand management, tense game-of-chicken bidding, dramatic push-your-luck, expressive player decisions — and combines them into a perfect gaming symphony. What a freaking mic drop of a design.

Zoo Vadis – Zoo Vadis has quickly become one of my favorite games, ever. The ratio of game length to strategic depth is unmatched in the negotiation genre. And the opportunities for player interaction, cooperation, bartering, and betrayal are some of the most memorable in my hobbyist career. Dr. Knizia has brilliantly added an extra layer of fun with the asymmetric abilities that make for an exponentially more dynamic negotiation game. The neutral peacocks and second game board also broaden and enrich the experience — making for a game I’m eager to break out and explore from 3 all the way up to 7 players. For me personally, this is a game that sits right alongside Tigris & Euphrates, Ra, etc. as a top-tier Knizia that I can never get enough of.

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Now On Kickstarter: Three Epic Sci-fi Games from Reiner Knizia

Bitewing Games recently launched the biggest Reiner Knizia crowdfunding project ever with the Cosmic Silos Trilogy — SILOS, EGO, and ORBIT! It’s an Avengers-level event and board gaming celebration where we’ve recruited some of the biggest artists in the industry to help bring these huge games to life. But ambitious publications like this and in-depth posts such as my Top 100 Board Games of All Time are only made possible by the support of our Kickstarter backers. So please check out the Kickstarter project and support the games if they strike your fancy. We love creating and sharing so many amazing games — thanks for your support!

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Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.