Top 100 Games: 10-1
Here’s the next 10 of my Top 100. This list is numbers 10-1. If you missed the last 10 you can see them here, Top 100: 20-11.
10: Toy Battle
2025 Rank: New to the list
Designer: Paolo Mori, Alessandro Zucchini
Publisher: Repos Production
Player Count: 2
The highest new game on my list and I was pretty shocked when I saw that it cracked the top 10. I think the reason this shot up so high is because I really like the two games this was based on. This is a mashup of Blitzkrieg and General Orders, both by Paolo Mori. It takes the gameplay from General Orders, simplifies it, and adds the tile powers from Blitzkrieg to give it some flair. I can teach this game to pretty much anyone in about 5 minutes. You either place a tile on the map and perform its ability or you draw two tiles. You win by collecting enough stars according to the map you are playing or by placing tiles in a line connecting to your opponent's base. It's that simple. The amount of content that comes in this box is kind of crazy. Four double sided game boards for a total of eight maps that all play pretty differently from each other. They could have easily made those into expansions and the game would have still felt worth it.
9: The Quest for El Dorado
2025 Rank: 9
Designer: Reiner Knizia
Publisher: Ravensburger AG
Player Count: 2-4
This is my favorite deck building game. Probably because it is great for introducing the concept to new players and since I do a lot of teaching this is my go to. It's also a fantastic game. It is a race to find the lost city of El Dorado. The board is made up of several hexagonal boards with hexagonal spaces within them. These are arranged to form the "track" that ends with El Dorado. The first player to reach it wins. The cards represent the spaces on the board. In order to move into a space you must play the matching card. Most of the layouts have multiple paths to victory. Some of the shorter paths require more powerful cards and the longer paths can be traversed using more basic cards. I enjoy teaching this as an intro to deck building because it doesn't have the comboing that makes some other deck builders harder to grasp. If you can plan ahead and buy the correct cards for the path you want to take you are probably going to have a decent shot at winning.
8: Ethnos
2025 Rank: 10
Designer: Paolo Mori
Publisher: CMON Global Limited
Player Count: 1-6
Ethnos should be as popular as Ticket to Ride. It's a similar concept with just a tiny bit of extra complexity on top. If you can play Ticket to Ride you can play Ethnos and if you enjoy Ticket to Ride I think you will enjoy Ethnos. It has had a lot of factors holding it back from success, but I still love it. The turns are so fast that you don't have time to do anything else other than stay invested in the game. There's always someone at some point saying "my turn already?" I love all the special powers each of the factions give you. I love that you never play with all of them and the setup can have many different combinations that will make you play the game slightly differently. I think the new second edition is the best version of the game although I am in the minority. I do wish they kept the text for the abilities on the card, but I think once you play the game a few times you can decipher the icons well enough, plus there are player aids included. I have stopped recommending this one as much because it's harder to teach, but I still think it's a good entry level game.
7: Project: ELITE
2025 Rank: 49
Designer: Konstantinos Kokkinis, Marco Portugal, Sotirios Tsantilas
Publisher: CMON Global Limited
Player Count: 1-6
I mentioned in my Cthulhu Death May Die write up that it was my favorite cooperative game and I still think it is. I love Project: ELITE, but I think CDMD will probably take over this spot next year. One of my least favorite genres is real time games. Project: ELITE is a real time game and I love it. The game is played in a series of 2 minute rounds. In those two minutes players will be furiously rolling dice to move around the board, activate weapons to take out aliens, find items, and complete the scenario's objective. The task will seem impossible, but the more items your characters pick up the more powerful they become. It's so satisfying to get that perfect die roll and wipe out 6 aliens at once. It's equally as frustrating to need to move 1 more space or activate one more ability and continue to not roll the required result. We don't treat this game lightly when we play either. When you kill aliens you throw those things off the board as fast as possible and keep on rolling. There's no time to be delicate when the game is on the line.
6: 7 Wonders Duel
2025 Rank: 3
Designer: Antoine Bauza, Bruno Cathala
Publisher: Repos Production
Player Count: 2
One of the first two player only games we added to our collection. Kristina and I played this a ton early on. We played this before we even played the original 7 Wonders. It was our first introduction to card drafting and multiple victory conditions. In retrospect it was probably a bit more complicated than we should have been playing at the time, but we didn't have a large collection so we played it often enough that the rules just started to stick. I love that you can win in 3 different ways and each one is just as viable so you have to keep an eye on your opponent to make sure they don't sneak away with an early military or science victory. I enjoy puzzling out the way the draft could go depending on the cards that I take. Worrying about which cards I might reveal to my opponent while also drafting what's best for me. Or even trashing something I know my opponent could really use just to get a few extra coins for the next turn. I think the expansions add a little extra layer that shakes up the drafting just enough to make that puzzle less solvable. I think the new Lord of the Rings version is just as excellent and maybe a bit better for new players. This one will probably stay in my top 10 for a while.
5: Thunder Road: Vendetta
2025 Rank: 43
Designer: Dave Chalker, Brett Myers, Noah Cohen, Rob Daviau, Justin D. Jacobson, Jim Keifer, Brian Neff
Publisher: Restoration Games
Player Count: 2-4
Thunder Road: Vendetta reimplements a game called Thunder Road from 1986. Another racing game and not the last one on the list. This is more chaos than a race. If you are playing to finish the race as fast as possible you are playing it wrong. You don't play this game to win. You play this game to make cool stuff happen. You have 4 cars on your team and you will assign dice to each of them causing them to move. After moving, any number of things can happen depending on where your car ended up. You can shoot other cars with your car or a helicopter. You can push cars into walls, including your own. You can launch off ramps or spin through oil slicks, both also potentially ending in crashing into walls. When your car hits a wall or goes off the track it is out of the game. The game will end when there is only one player left or if someone finishes the race making it to the finish line. Although as I said in the beginning you are playing wrong if you win that way.
4: Fantastic Factories
2025 Rank: 8
Designer: Joseph Z. Chen, Justin Faulkner
Publisher: Metafactory Games
Player Count: 1-5
This is my favorite engine building game. In Fantastic Factories you must try to build the most efficient engine in the shortest amount of time. The cards in your engine represent factories that produce resources or ways to convert resources into goods. Those factories cost resources to build. Those resources primarily come from activating the dice you roll on your turn. Those dice can also be used to activate already built factories and trigger their special abilities. I love rolling my dice in this game and then putting my head down and activating all the things. Using one die to gather steel to pay for this card so I can activate that new card with this die to produce more energy to activate this other card to produce goods and then using this die to pick up more cards to pay for more factories to build next turn. The game ends when one player has produced 12 goods or built 10 buildings. At that point you find out who has the highest score. It is wonderful. The game also has this almost lego style look to it that I find appealing.
3: Fromage
2025 Rank: 1
Designer: Matthew O'Malley, Ben Rosset
Publisher: Road To Infamy Games (R2i Games)
Player Count: 1-4
My number one game last year, Fromage has dropped just slightly. Over time I don't think this one will drop too far, but who knows. I still enjoy how this game feels like a 1.5 or 2 hour game but only takes 30 minutes. I love how simple the turns are. Make cheese and/or get resources. I think drafting new building tiles makes the game so much better. They give each player a goal and some asymmetry. The lazy susan board is not a gimmick and actually makes the game play even faster. The scoring on each of the wedges of the board feels just different enough to make you really think about how you want to play each turn. I am looping Formaggio into this number too. They are basically the same game and can be played interchangeably. I will never turn down a game of either one of them. Plus I just like cheese.
2: Heat: Pedal to the Metal
2025 Rank: 2
Designer: Asger Aleksandrov Granerud, Daniel Skjold Pedersen
Publisher: Days of Wonder
Player Count: 1-6 (Up to 8 with expansions)
Heat stays at number 2 for two years in a row. This is mainly due to the fact that I can play it on BGA anytime I want. I don't have many opportunities to play the physical version of the game although it does play extremely well solo. In Heat you are racing to be the first player to complete 2 laps around the track. Each player has a deck of cards that represents their car's speed. In the basic version everyone has the same deck. On a player's turn they will choose a gear for their car. This will determine the number of cards you play for that turn. If you choose gear 3 you must play 3 cards. Those 3 cards will be added together to get your car's speed for that turn. Then you move your car on the board accordingly. The track will have turns with speed limits. This means your car must be going at or below the speed limit or else you will gain something called Heat. Heat cards clog up your hand and limit the number of useful cards in your deck. You can get heat out of your deck by cooling down during your turn. This is usually done in lower gears. Heat is a finite resource and if you ever run out and need to take more your car will spin out. This is bad. So you must balance your heat to go as fast as possible without crashing. There's more to it than just playing cards to go around the track. You also have to anticipate what the other players might do on their turn. This way you can use the slipstream effect to move even further. I'd love to get a giant version of Heat going at one of our game nights sometime.
1: Mindbug: First Contact
2025 Rank: 15
Designer: Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield, Marvin Hegen, Christian Kudahl
Publisher: Nerdlab Games
Player Count: 2
Mindbug jumps up to take the number one spot this year. I love this game and it all comes down to the simple Mindbug cards. This isn't that different from most other card battling games. You play cards in front of you and use those cards to attack or block your opponent until one of you is out of life. Tons of games do this same thing, but Mindbug has Mindbugs. These completely change the way you think about playing cards because whatever you play could be taken and played by your opponent instead. Each player gets to use this ability twice in the game so every card you play, you better have a counter for it. Also, when do you use your Mindbugs? Every card played by your opponent must be evaluated to determine if you should take it or not. And you can't run out of Mindbugs too early because that just gives your opponent the freedom to play whatever they want. Games only take 10-15 minutes and there are so many different decks that introduce small changes. All of them can be mixed together although I wouldn't recommend it. I wish Kristina enjoyed this one more because I would play it every time we sat down to play games. I hope they keep making content for it because I want more Mindbug.
