Top 100 Board Games of All Time, 2024 Edition — Games 75-51

Welcome back to my Top 100 Board Games of All Time, 2024 Edition! If you missed my previous post, then be sure to check out games 100-76 here.

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75. Bus

Like Caylus 1303 (or rather the original design Caylus), Bus is one of the first worker placement games to ever be published… and it remains one of the best. Players are claiming actions that let them extend their bus routes and carry passengers to their destinations. Even just earning one point in this game feels like a monumental task because your rivals will do everything in their power to stop you. Bus lets you go so far as to disrupt the space-time continuum and keep the poor humans trapped in a time loop, but these drastic maneuvers come at a cost. 

Publisher Splotter Spellen is known for creating games with no guard rails and plenty of pitfalls. Bus is by far their most approachable game while still being downright nasty. It’s not one that I’m dying to revisit too frequently, but I always come away delighted by its wacky antics.

74. Wilmot’s Warehouse

Wilmot’s Warehouse is the latest release from publisher CMYK Games that continues their hot streak of bangers. This one is a cooperative story-telling memory game that ends up being more fun and magical than it has any right to be. The box is loaded with over 100 unique tiles with abstract images on them. Together, the table looks at one tile at a time and decides where to place it facedown on a huge game board grid. After placing down 35 different tiles, they then race through the matching deck of cards to recreate the exact arrangement of tiles all from memory. It’s a truly bonkers premise, but the magic of Wilmot’s Warehouse lies in the storytelling of the group (inspired by the abstract images) that helps everyone commit this mess of tiles to near perfect memory.

73. Carnegie

Carnegie has proven to be one of my favorite Eurogames of recent years with its competitive entrepreneurialsm. While it features a lot of strategic considerations, it manages to avoid the modern Eurogame pitfall of cramming too many components and mechanisms into the design for complexity and variety’s sake. The interaction between players feels meaningful as well as they take turns deciding which event and action to trigger for everyone. All of the displayed events and actions will be triggered eventually, but the key lies in the order they are triggered and whether you are prepared for them at the right time. It’s also a pleasure to add new worker departments to your personal board which grant unique actions and benefits that help you compete with players on the main board.

72. Witchcraft!

I don’t often play solo games, but I am a big fan of Witchcraft (and its older sibling, Resist). For those of us hobbyists who know way too much about board games, Witchcraft can be categorized as a “deck-deconstructor” — a deck building style of a game where you gradually lose cards from your deck rather than add to it. Each mission you’ll have to decide how to use the cards in your hand… either for their standard benefit or for their more powerful benefit which sacrifices the card forever. In the case of Witchcraft, you are playing as a coven of witches seeking to protect a town that isn’t always on your side. By revealing a witch’s true identity, you’ll be able to send them out with a powerful bang before they are imprisoned. Can you help the village enough to sway the jury in your favor?

71. Sea Salt & Paper

I’ve decided that the reason this game includes “Salt” in the title is because the loser always comes away salty after a tough loss. Yet somehow we continue to revisit this little card game that is especially good for 2-players. Sea Salt & Paper is all about collecting sets of cards in your hands and playing them out for bonuses and points. The most interesting twist is that once a player secretly reaches the 7-point threshold, they can decide to end the round immediately or gamble for better scoring and grant their opponents one last turn to surpass their score. Between the charming origami artwork and the addictively simple gameplay, it’s hard to resist another play of Sea Salt & Paper.

70. MicroMacro: Crime City

Speaking of being charmed by a game, I have a soft spot for refreshingly unique experiences in this hobby. The MicroMacro: Crime City series is wildly unique in how it combines a time-lapse version of Where’s Waldo with criminal investigations on a huge map. Each scenario you are presented with a crime and must follow the clues and trails to help you crack the case. One must take note of even the tiniest of details — facial expressions, surroundings, accessories, and more — to solve the crime. This has proven to be a delightful 2-player date night cooperative game for my wife and I. 

69. Einfach Genial 3D / Axio

Up until a few weeks ago, I was sure that Axio was the best title in the Ingenious line of games. That all changed when Einfach Genial 3D showed up on our doorstep from Amazon Germany. I didn’t expect much from this 2024 spin-off title, but it proved to be a pleasant surprise. But before we get to that, let’s take a step back and look at the Ingenious line in general.

Ingenious and Axio have worked incredibly well at our table for 2-players as a casual competition. Reiner Knizia delivers again on his trademark of dead simple rules with clever hidden depth. In this abstract domino game, players score color points for placing a tile next to matching colors. While it seems too plain to be interesting, the brilliant twist lies in the victory condition — your lowest point color is your final score. This wrinkle allows for players to be cutthroat and strategic in blocking each other from scoring their weakest color. 

The other major delight specific to Axio comes when an empty square is entirely surrounded — the player who enclosed this square places a pyramid and scores all the adjacent colors. In the 2-player Axio experience, one must be careful to not set their opponent up for a big pyramid turn. While Axio is fairly hard to track down these days, it’s much easier to acquire the very similar Ingenious which sadly lacks the pyramid rule but still has all of the other juicy goodness of Axio.

With Einfach Genial 3D, Reiner takes the ruleset and components of Ingenious and adds more layers (both literally and figuratively). Now players can stack one domino tile on top of others. The only restriction is that one tile cannot be flush with a tile beneath it (it has to stack on two different tiles) — the physical design of the domino tiles smartly prevents players from breaking this rule. After our first play, I was worried that this would make it harder to block your opponent from scoring their weakest colors. But that worry was quickly washed away as we discovered that you simply have to be more strategic and clever about your tile placements. It turns out that Einfach Genial 3D is by far the most strategic version of this system, making it one of our all-time favorite abstract strategy games.

68. Samurai

Samurai is the most tactical of Reiner Knizia’s original tile placement trilogy, but he embraces those tactics with the grace of a swinging katana. This game features a ton of small area majority battles across the island of Japan. As its theme implies, this design is all about redirecting your opponents efforts to your advantage. When a rival begins to surround a city, you’ll want to swoop in with the perfect tile to steal a caste right out from under their nose. I don’t play Samurai as much as I used to, but that’s only because so many games have taken inspiration from it and managed to scratch a similar itch. Regardless, Samurai remains a stone-cold classic.

67. Kemet: Blood & Sand

Kemet is a bit like the Cheesecake Factory of area control games. It provides you with an overwhelming menu of power tile options to feast on, keeps you at the table far longer than you expected, and offers up plenty of sweet cheesecake combat. It’s also pretty dang expensive, but that’s what you get with a big box of plastic.

66. Innovation

I can see why fans regard Innovation as a an all-time great. With a relatively simple ruleset and nothing more than a deck of cards, it manages to provide a deep and surprising civilization game. As I put it in my recent first impressions post: “Despite my partner’s distaste for the game, Innovation is unique and refreshing enough that I’ll happily go out of my way to show it to others who are interested. Just like the achievement rules themselves, nothing can take away from Innovation’s achievements as a robust and thrilling card game.”

65. The King’s Dilemma

It’s been over three years since my last play of The King’s Dilemma. That’s because this legacy game is a one-and-done campaign. But we did get 17 solid plays out of it, and its lingering memory keeps it among my Top 100 games of all time. This narrative-driven game was sustained by a great backbone of voting, negotiation, and bluffing to serve one’s selfish purposes. Our group had a great time with this one.

64. Whale Riders

Whale Riders has a certain charm to it that has buoyed it across my many plays. This 30-minute game is all about navigating the action economy to make the most of the coastline trade. It certainly falls into the category of comfort food gaming, thanks in no small part to the gorgeous art by Vincent Dutrait.

63. Watergate

Watergate pits the Nixon Administration against the press in a 2-player tug of war strategy game. While the battle happens on a central board, much of the decision space lies in how you use your hand of cards each round. Often your cards will grant two options: use it for its standard ability to retain the card, or use its more powerful ability and lose the card forever. Deciding when to pace yourself and when to pull out all the stops is consistently engaging.

62. Winner’s Circle

I love a good betting game, and Winner’s Circle is one that has stood the test of time at my table. Believe it or not, this is a roll and move game. Roll a die, move a horse. That’s basically all you are doing during each of the three races (after placing your bets). But the magic of this game lies in the simple choice it offers you: Which horse do you move with the die result you have rolled? Once a horse has been moved, it cannot be moved again until all horses have been moved. Their cards indicate how far they move with different die symbols, and these numbers can vary greatly across the deck.

Winner’s Circle is a riot with a group of 4-6 players. The best variant to play is to include the 0 bets (these are bluffs) and play all of your bets facedown so they are secret from the group. Then you can pretend to be loyal to a certain horse until the opportune moment arises for you to sabotage their movement and betray the people who care about that horse the most. Many great racing/betting games have been released since the birth of Winner’s Circle, but this one consistently brings the fun like no other.

61. Wavelength

I don’t play party games nearly as much as I used to (simply because our gaming groups are usually too small). But Wavelength remains one of my favorite party games thanks to its centerpiece component — the large wheel. Behind a screen hides a target somewhere along the spectrum, and each round one player peeks at the target and gives their team a clue to help them try and hit the bullseye with the pointer. But Wavelength isn’t just about finding a hidden target — the real enjoyment comes in the conversations that stem from each topic and clue. Whether it’s a simple spectrum like Cold vs Hot or a more nuanced one like Dictatorship vs Democracy, you’re bound to have some amusing discussions capped with a climactic reveal of the target.

60. Root

Root is the poster child for asymmetric board gaming… and deservedly so. Everything from your species’ ambitions down to your action options is wildly unique from any other player. In every regard, it should feel like you are all playing completely different games from each other. But the thread that ties it all together is a shared map of conflict and control. No doubt if this game was easier to get to the table, it would be much higher on my list. 

59. Age of Steam

Age of Steam has tumbled a long way from being in my Top 10 favorite games of all time. The main problem is that I don’t really have the regular group for this one either. The other problem is that Age of Steam tends to be a long game when it does hit the table. But while it does eat up a lot of playtime, it also consistently provides a feast of strategic challenges. There is nothing quite like the cyclical tension found here — deciding how many shares to issue, bidding for turn order advantage, claiming powerful actions, building track, and snatching up goods. When the board is tight and the goods are few, things can get cutthroat pretty quickly.

58. Ethnos / Archeos Society

Many fans of Ethnos will tell you that it is far and away the superior version of this design. Replacing the area majority battles with varied track advancement proved to be a divisive change for Archeos Society. On paper, I would normally be team Ethnos. But in practice, the revised design of Archeos Society doesn’t bother me nearly as much as I would expect. To me, the most interesting part of either game has always been in the card play. Deciding which card to take from the display, when to risk drawing from the deck, and when to play a set from your hand is simply wonderful thanks to one brilliant rule: you have to discard the rest of your hand to the display after playing a set. So players act like vultures who circle the table and wait for a hand to perish so they can swoop in and pick at the leftovers.

57. Skull

By my estimation, Skull remains one of the most brilliant bluffing games ever conceived. By combining an almost game-of-chicken bidding mechanism with a push-your-luck victory objective in a dead-simple ruleset, Skull makes for a thrilling filler game. Do you seed your stack of tiles with only roses and set yourself up for a winning play, or do you set a skull trap in your stack and hope an opponent falls victim? Many games make you regret bidding too high in an auction — but nowhere is such a mistake more funny than in Skull.

56. Royal Visit

Tug-of-war games seem to be a bit of polarizing genre in this hobby. I can see why — it is frustrating to have an opponent immediately undo your progress. And the epitome of this polarization seems to be encapsulated best within the experience of Royal Visit. Two players are competing to pull the king and his court in their own direction. This is done by playing a figure’s cards or using a figure’s special ability. Because each figure has a unique function, it becomes a challenge of deciding which figures to prioritize and which to let slip from your grasp. Hand management is key as well — sometimes it pays to build up a large hand of one card type and blow all those cards in a big surprise attack.

55. Splendor Duel

Bruno Cathala giving Splendor the “Duel” treatment proved to be exactly what this game needed to hit the sweet spot for me. The vanilla game has always felt a bit one-dimensional for me to really appreciate. But Splendor Duel introduces multiple paths to victory with interesting competitive considerations throughout the journey. Every turn feels meaningful and rewarding thanks to the various options to draft gems, refill the board, reserve a card and a gold, or spend gems on a card. It’s just all-around solid 2-player gaming.

54. Jaipur

Speaking of solid 2-player gaming, Jaipur is another classic that refuses to be left behind in my esteem. A bit like Ethnos / Archeos Society, you spend turns constructing a strong hand of cards until you decide when to pull the trigger with those cards and enjoy the fruits of your labor. There are pros and cons to either strategy of spending cards frequently or saving up a bigger hand. There’s a reason this tightly designed card game has remained a steady favorite in the industry over the past 15 years.

53. Strike

I remember the first time I took my very first game design to a public gaming meetup. It was a Yahtzee-style dice game inspired by King of Tokyo. One gentleman was kind enough to give it a try despite telling me up front “I don’t play dice games.” For some reason, that always stuck with me, haha. What does that even mean? You hate any and all games that involve dice???

The longer I’m in this hobby, the more I appreciate the versatility and drama of dice. Of course the most common use of dice is something like Yahtzee — roll and reroll them in hopes of getting a desired number. But there are so many other clever ways to utilize dice. They can represent the risky unpredictability of combat (Arcs). They can be used as workers that grow stronger over time (Teotihuacan, Apiary, our own Shuffle and Swing). They can be customized and upgraded (Dice Forge). Or they can be cast into a gladiator pit where players hope to knock around the other dice already there in a desperate struggle for survival. That last one is Strike. It’s a beautifully simple and wonderfully thrilling 10-minute dice game.

52. Tajuto

Tajuto might be one of Reiner Knizia’s most underrated designs, ever. That’s saying a lot for a designer who has over 800 published games and counting. I didn’t believe that after my first play or two. It has only been the later plays that have increasingly opened my eyes to Tajuto’s brilliance. After observing myself and others, I’ve never seen newcomers play it well. I don’t think it was until play three or four, when I suddenly found myself running circles around my opponents, that I began to realize the strategic depth here.

But Tajuto isn’t just brilliant because it has hidden depth that is satisfying to uncover. It also offers uniquely thrilling moments of push-your-luck drama, much like drawing tiles from the bag in Ra or taking risks in EGO. With Tajuto, you are frequently reaching your hand into a large bag, feeling around for your desired size of pagoda level, and hoping you pull out the right color. The smaller pieces are generally higher risk but higher reward. Pulling out the perfect piece feels like pulling a rabbit out of a hat — pure magic. I get that this kind of sensory gambling isn’t for everyone, and thus Tajuto is more of a niche game, but for me it only gets better with each play.

51. Great Plains

Great Plains is a 2-player Euro-abstract strategy game that just hits the spot for me. What do I mean by Euro-abstract? Well it’s an abstract game (themeless, no hidden information, simple rules, no randomness, alternating turns) combined with a Euro game (cumulative scoring, sometimes special abilities, at least dressed up in some kind of theme). While I sometimes struggle to get excited about a purely abstract game, there is something about giving this genre a Euro flavor that gets me pumped.

In the case of Great Plains, players are competing for area majorities by extending and branching their lines of figures outward. You can also gain and utilize powerful abilities to help block, push, or leap-frog your opponent. This game is elegant, fast, and satisfying. Great Plains is merely one of several reasons why I think that designers Trevor Benjamin and Brett J. Gilbert are two of the best Euro-abstract designers working in the industry.

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Now On Kickstarter: Reiner Knizia’s Secret Big Box Project

Surely you’ve seen Reiner Knizia’s shocking confession by now, right? If not, then I apologize for springing this on you. In truth, nothing could prepare you for such news. Once your eyes have been opened, then you may continue scrolling down…

It is true. Bitewing Games has just 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 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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Continue on to games 50-26 of my Top 100 Board Games of All Time!

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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.