Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part Two (98-96)

Continuing my board game top 100 of 2024, here are entries 98-96. (At this rate, this list is going to take forever. I will try to break things up with an occasional non-board-game post.)

#98 Mindspace

Mindspace is a roll-and-write game. Each player has a dry-erase board that has a square grid area divided into zones. The grid is supposed to represent the human brain, and each zone is a different area of the brain. There are 5 dice in 5 colors. Each round all 5 dice are rolled and then placed above a row of six cards. If a 1 is rolled, it is placed above the first card. A 2 is placed above the second card, and so on. The cards show different Tetris style shapes. When a die of a specific color is placed above a card showing a specific shape, players may draw that shape in that color on their board.

The game comes with dry-erase markers in the 5 different colors. You want to fill in as much of the board as you can, but you can't place shapes of the same color next to each other. Scoring cards give players points for filling in specific patterns or areas of the brain, and the scoring cards have neat thematic descriptions based on psychology. The theme is barely there, but what is there is cleverly applied. The game is fun and quick and provides a satisfying puzzle. This is a great one to bring to the table when we want to play something, but we don't want to think too hard. That is why Mindspace is my 98th favorite game of all time.

#97 Rallyman GT

Rallyman GT is a car racing game. In Rallyman, players place dice with ascending or descending values to plot their course on a race track. The dice are custom six-sided dice each showing only a single number. There's a 1 die with only 1's, a 2 die with only 2's, and so on. However, these are actually dice and not just cube shaped markers. On each die there are one or more hazard symbols in addition to the numbers. 

The 1 & 2 dice each have one hazard symbol. The 3 & 4 dice each have 2 hazard symbols, and the 5 & 6 dice each have 3 hazard symbols in addition to their numbers. Low value dice have a single hazard symbol, but higher valued dice have more symbols. After you plot your movement, you roll the dice to see if your plan has caused you any trouble. If you roll 3 or more hazards, you lose control of your car, which is bad.

After you plot your course it's time to roll. You can choose to play it safe and roll only one die at a time. If you do this, you can stop at any time. Or you can throw caution to the wind and roll all the dice at once, accepting whatever happens as a result. This is called going "flat-out" and if you go flat-out and don't lose control of your car, then you get a focus token for each black (gear) die, and each white (coast) die that you rolled. Focus tokens are a good thing. They help you to mitigate bad luck and help you to win the race.

Rallyman GT presents a great press-your-luck puzzle. The choice for when to go flat-out is important and provides interesting tension. Curves on the track must be entered at lower speeds that are marked on the curves, and if you are going too fast then you will have to use red (brake) dice which have three hazards on them. The track itself is modular. You have a bunch of hex tiles that you can use to build whatever sort of custom race track that you want. This track building element is one of my favorite features of the game. That combined with the intense press-your-luck element makes Rallyman GT my 97th favorite game of all time.

#96 Jekyll Vs. Hyde

Jekyll Vs. Hyde is a trick-taking card game for two players. Over the course of three rounds, if Hyde is able to achieve 10 points, he wins, otherwise Jekyll wins. For a trick taking game, Jekyll Vs. Hyde is surprisingly thematic. I love the idea that in order to win, Jekyll has to keep Hyde under control (preventing him from scoring 10 points.) Note that I said "points" and not "tricks." Another thematic part of this game is how it is scored. At the end of the round, Hyde scores based on the difference in tricks taken between himself and Jekyll. So Hyde wants to be as different from Jekyll as he can, while Jekyll needs to keep the number of tricks on both sides as close to equivalent as he can. Jekyll seeks balance while Hyde seeks discord … very thematic.

The deck is made up of 25 cards. There are 7 cards each of three suits numbered 1-7 and then four special potion cards numbered 2-5. Jekyll Vs. Hyde doesn't have so much as a trump suit as it does a suit hierarchy. The hierarchy is determined during play. The first card of a given suit that is played marks that suit as the weakest in the hierarchy. Then the next suit played becomes the middle powered suit in the hierarchy, making the remaining suit the strongest in the hierarchy. You must play in suit if you can, but if you can't you can play any card paying attention to suit hierarchy because when you don't follow suit, the number on the card doesn't matter and the strongest card in the suit hierarchy will take the trick.

The potion cards trigger one of three possible special powers. Which power is triggered depends on the card played by the other player. If you lead a potion card, you can demand that the other player play a specific suit, and they must play this suit if they have it. If they don't have it, they can play any other card they want, even another potion card, but when two potion cards are played at the same time, no special powers are activated.

Jekyll Vs. Hyde is a tense, interesting, trick-taking puzzle that works great for two players. There is a cooperative version called Jekyll & Hyde Vs. Scotland Yard that I really want to try, but until then I will have to be happy with my 96th most favorite game of all time, Jekyll Vs. Hyde.

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Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part One (100-99)

It's been four years since I blogged my Board Game Top 100. I did share a Top 23 last year, but given that I want to focus on writing everyday, I have decided now would be a good time to do the Top 100 thing again. There is an online Ranking Engine on a website called PubMeeple. Their engine was made for users of the BoardGameGeek website to rank their collections. All I have to do is input my BGG user name and the Ranking Engine loads in the games in my collection for me to rank one at a time. 

I compare game to game. Would I rather play this or that. The engine organizes the games into brackets and keeps prompting me until all the games in my collection have been sorted. It's not a perfect system. Some games just don't compare well against each other because they create such different experiences, but it works well enough. I am not sure how many games I will talk about within each post. I am not going to promise a specific number. I am just going to write as much as I feel like writing each day, and we will see where that gets us.

#100 - Sentient (2017)

Sentient is an awesome card placement, dice manipulation game. In the game players roll a set of dice and then organize them in a row by color on their player board. After this players take turns selecting cards from a central market and then placing those cards in order to score them at the end of the round.

Cards are placed between the dice that you have arranged on your player board. The cards score based on the values on the dice, but there's a catch. Each card also has a mathematical symbol in its upper left and right corners: +, - or =. The + requires the player to increase the die next to that symbol by 1. The - requires the player to decrease the die next to that symbol by 1, and the = leaves the die next to it unchanged.

You need to select cards for scoring based on the dice values that you have on your player board, but also plan ahead to not what those dice values are now, but rather what they will be after they have been changed by those same cards that you plan on scoring. It's tricky, and it's actually a pretty neat puzzle.

Players also have some workers that are used for an area control part of the game. The areas represent the different kinds of cards that you can place in your tableau and if you win an area for a particular type of card, then you score extra points for those cards. This adds a set collection element to the game. 

Using your workers for this creates some tough decision making, because you can also use those workers to place over the tops of those math symbols mentioned before, neutralizing them, so that you don't have to change your dice. This is great if you already have the perfect numbers for your scoring card.

The card art on Sentient is beautiful which is what first drew me to the game. The cards show different kinds of androids or robots that supposedly you are "programming" when you place them on your board between your dice. The theme isn't really there at all, but it looks gorgeous. At the end of the day, all that matters is that Sentient is a neat and engaging puzzle, and a really fun game. That's why it's my 100th favorite game of all time.

#99 - Mint Condition Comics (2019)

While my #100 game: Sentient, may have had some pretty involved mechanisms and no theme, my next game is the opposite. It has really light mechanics, but feels very thematic. In Mint Condition Comics players are collecting comic books and trying to create sets.

Mint Condition Comics is a card drafting, set collection game. The cards represent different comic books, and the art is awesome! The central market, aka the comic book shop has some comics on display and others in face down piles. This is just like comics that are on open display in the comic shop and issues that are in the back issue bins that you have to dig through to find what you want.

There are three face down piles that represent the back issue bins, and one master draw deck that represents other comics that will come into the shop from the outside. As you look through one of the three face down piles, you may take that pile or return it face down and look at the next one. However, each time that you "skip" a pile, you draw a card from the master deck without looking at it, and add it face down to the pile that you just rejected.

When you take a pile, you add all the cards from that pile face up in front of you. This is your comic book collection. If you skip all three available back issue piles, then you must take the top two cards from the master deck and add those to your collection. Your collection will score points at the end of the game based on the number of comics that you have in each set.

Once you have comics, you can trade for the face up comics (the comics on display) in the comic shop. If you have a comic with a high rarity, you can trade for two comics of a lesser rarity with the comic shop. Alternatively, you can trade any two comics from your collection for one comic from the shop. You can also trade with other players on a one for one basis. You must always give the other player a comic of equal or greater rarity, and you can only trade for their "loose" comics (that is: lone comics that are not yet part of a set of two or greater.)

Mint Condition Comics is so thematic! The comics are all original made up titles. They aren't based on existing comics, but they feel like they could be. Every card represents a comic. It has a title, an issue number, and a rarity. Each round a random title is selected as the "hot comic" which is worth more points. The player with the most points after three rounds is the winner.

I got Mint Condition Comics following a Kickstarter Campaign four years ago. I don't think it was ever sold outside of that Kickstarter. If you ever see a copy, snatch it up. It's awesome, especially if you are a comic collector, or know someone who is. Julie isn't and she still really enjoys the game, too! That's why Mint Condition Comics is my 99th favorite game of all time!

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Arborea Board Game Review

Julie and I played Arborea yesterday. In Arborea players move workers on action tracks. There are 8 sets of tracks covering different actions you can take in the game. These actions vary from collecting resources, attracting specific creatures, collecting creatures, adding terrain cards to your personal monster ranch, training specialized workers and giving gifts to powerful sages. 

Arborea is all about manipulating the action tracks, knowing where to commit your workers, and when. Some workers have to be retrained every time you use them while others can be used again right away after they complete their tasks. This is tricky because workers are placed out on these sort of conveyor belt things. Taking action will only happen after a conveyor belt moves. The longer a worker stays on the conveyor belt, the better actions they can take, but the longer they remain unavailable to perform other jobs.

The steps to game play in a turn are spelled out on the game board and the game play loop is reasonably intuitive. This makes the game feel simple, while at the same time, you know that it's not. You have to get resources to gain terrain and then place the terrain. You then need to attract some wild monsters and then capture those monsters and place them in the habitats that you create. The proper placement of your monsters is where you are going to score most of your points.

The board and the components are beautiful, but manipulating the actions of the game to get what you want is a real brain burner. I think Arborea is the heaviest board game we own. It's probably as heavy as I want to get. I do really enjoy it, but Julie and I have played twice now. There is a 100 point score track around the outside of the board. In our first game, Julie almost lapped me in points. In our second game, she did lap me. So, I seem to be missing something, but it's a testament to Arborea's gameplay that I really enjoy the game despite losing so badly.

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GeForce NOW First Impressions

I believe that I mentioned getting a new tablet in a previous post. I had owned a very inexpensive ten inch tablet exclusively for reading RPG PDF documents (and comic books.) A while back, I dropped the tablet and it broke. I was going to replace the tablet with an identical one, but the version that I had was no longer available. 

I decided to splurge a little and I picked out an affordable tablet from 2023. Not the newest, but much newer than, say, my laptop that I bought in 2015. I looked for a protective cover to purchase along with the tablet and found one with a built-in keyboard and touch-pad.

I really love the new tablet. With the physical keyboard I am able to do all the writing that I want to do, and I have pretty much abandoned my laptop. The only thing that I have missed is Steam. Steam being the computer gaming service that contains many years of computer game purchases. 

Steam has a service called Steam-Link that lets me stream game play of the games from my Steam Library to my tablet. In this instance the games are installed and being played by my 9 year-old laptop. I'm just controlling that play and seeing the results on my tablet. 

The performance of the Steam-Link is spotty. I'm sure that if I had a better laptop this wouldn't be an issue. But, I don't, and I was kind of imagining a world where my new tablet might replace my laptop altogether. With the Steam-Link my laptop is still required. Enter NVIDIA GeForce NOW.

This is a first impressions review of the NVIDIA GeForce NOW video game streaming service. This service and others like it provide the hardware to play the games that you want to play and then stream the output and the control of the game to you on whatever screen device you happen to be using. It's like having my laptop run the game, but instead it's being done by a super gaming rig that I could never afford. 

Many of these services cost a monthly fee and provide a whole library of current video and computer games that you can play for free as long as you're paying your monthly fee. NOW is a little different. You have to buy the games in order to play them, but the streaming service itself offers a free option. The best part here is that you can link NOW to your Steam Library and play many of those games that you already own.

This is exactly what I was looking for. It's not perfect. The free service is ad driven. You go into a queue to wait for an available rig, and you watch ads while you wait. Once you connect to your game, you're good to go. Not all of the games in my library exist on the NVIDIA GeForce servers, but many do. Fifty-five games to be exact are available from my Steam Library for me to play on my tablet. That's pretty cool. I've never had 50+ games installed at one time on my laptop. 

I've tested a few games and they work great. The performance is far better than I was getting with Steam-Link with my laptop. While I do lose access to much of my Steam Library, I still own those games. I can go back to them at any time should I decide to return to my laptop or replace it. For now, I think that I have replaced my laptop with this … my new tablet. Time will tell. These are just first impressions after all. In a few weeks we will be traveling and I will have the opportunity to really put NOW to the test. I'll let you know how that goes.

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Fit To Print Board Game Review

Julie and I just finished playing a few games of "Fit To Print."

Fit To Print is a tile laying board game about creating a newspaper. The tiles represent news articles of different types and sizes. There are sports articles, business articles, and human interest articles. There are also tiles that have advertising and tiles that are photos that you can add  to your layout.

Articles can't be next to other articles of the same type. Two sports articles can't be placed adjacent to each other for example. Also, photos can't be next to other photos, and ads can't be next to other ads. Finally, articles can be happy or sad, and you want to balance these elements. The difference between them counts against you, as does your largest section of unused empty space.

All the articles, ads, and photos are placed face down in a big messy pile in the center of the table. Each player has a little desk that they can put articles on before going to layout. A five minute timer is started and players begin grabbing articles from the center of the table, everyone acting at the same time.

If you want an article, you put it on your desk. If you don't you put it back out in the center of the table, but this time, face up. When you think that you have enough material to fill your paper, you call, "layout." Now you must start moving tiles from your desk to your paper. You can't grab anything else from the middle. You can fiddle around with the layout of your paper with whatever is left of your five minutes, but when the buzzer sounds, it's time to score.

The game is played over three rounds, with the paper getting larger after every round. Unused articles left on your desk count against your score, and you still have them on your desk going into future rounds until you use them. It's an interesting and frantic puzzle. I generally don't like feeling rushed during games, and while it isn't my favorite thing here, I didn't mind it too much. Other real time games are far more stressful.

Fit To Print creates a really interesting tile laying puzzle where the scoring and objectives match up nicely with the theme. Even that pressure to hurry to get your paper "fit to print" is suitably thematic. I like the puzzle and I appreciate the game play for what it is. I think this game would be even more fun at higher player counts and since everyone plays at the same time and with a timer, player count shouldn't affect game length at all.

Fit To Print is a solid addition to our board game collection. We don't have any "real time" games. So, it occupies a unique space on our game shelf. I like the puzzle the game presents and can see pulling this one out to play with company. All in all a great game to have.

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