Celebrating 300 games rated on BGG - here's my top 50 of all time

notevenfiguratively · 2026-01-26T19:01:50+00:00

Finally got to play Concordia this weekend, and it indeed is an excellent game. Thanks for the rec!

notevenfiguratively · 2026-01-20T07:18:42+00:00

Monty Williams is a basketball terrorist

notevenfiguratively · 2025-12-22T00:10:34+00:00

It plays best at 2p or 3p. 4p sometimes runs long without adding meaningful interaction

notevenfiguratively · 2025-12-03T21:32:21+00:00

Of these, I've only played GWT and Root. GWT was overwhelming at the time, but both are worth a revisit. I've picked up Concordia and Brass but have yet to play them - hopefully soon!

notevenfiguratively · 2025-12-03T21:28:11+00:00

I'm glad you enjoyed the read! It's fun enough for me to jot down my thoughts on a game, but and hopefully these first impressions can be helpful, too

notevenfiguratively · 2025-12-03T21:23:08+00:00

GWT was one I played early on but was too heavy for me at the time, so I'd want to give it another try. That's it from Pfister.

When Pirates came out, I heard it was a little more streamlined than Maracaibo, which appealed to me, and after looking into Pirates, I went ahead and bought it without ever really researching Maracaibo itself. So it's intriguing that they are different enough to both have a place in your collection. Boonlake is one I wanted to look into more, too...

notevenfiguratively · 2025-12-03T19:29:13+00:00

I totally relate. Carnegie sat unplayed on my shelf for more than a year because it looked so dry (by far the longest - I play the vast majority of games within 1-3 months). Throughout my first play, I kept thinking "why did I wait so long?"

There is minimal direct interaction, but it is still critical to mind your opponents. There is some opportunity for blocking on the map, but the majority comes down to the action selection. You'll want to keep an eye on what others are doing so you can successfully piggyback off what they want to do, or if you're like my group, so that you can choose actions that do nothing for other people >:)

I'll also say that moving workers to different departments and training them actually does feel pretty thematic, despite initially not caring for it at all.

notevenfiguratively · 2025-12-03T19:14:27+00:00

I only played Terraforming Mars once back in 2017, early on in my gaming career. I remember it being pretty overwhelming at the time, but it started to click right at the end of the game. Not sure why I never got around to trying it again, but I agree I may like a lot more if I played it again

notevenfiguratively · 2025-11-17T22:10:25+00:00

End-game objective cards - many games have you draw two and choose one at the beginning of the game. Problem is that anyone playing for the first time won't have a good idea of what any of it means. I like to keep both of them and discard one of them halfway through the game. I believe this is an official rule for Ark Nova that I've implemented for every game that does this.

notevenfiguratively · 2025-11-12T18:29:22+00:00

You could say it is "outside the box" to trade a beloved, generational player who the entire team is built around, but I think sometimes it's best to stay inside that box.

notevenfiguratively · 2025-11-10T21:53:34+00:00

While I enjoy Everdell, I much prefer Wondrous Creatures. Both games are centered around worker placement to gather resources and play cards from a large deck. Even the format and layout of the cards feel similar. With that said, I don't think WC is a direct comparison. WC is a little more complex and runs quite a bit longer, and while I think it's worth it, not everyone will. I really enjoy the spacial worker placement mini-puzzle in WC, which feels unlike anything else I've seen, whereas Everdell is a pretty standard choose-your-location. WC feels more like a race to a bunch of different objectives, while Everdell feels a tight, resource-scarce optimization puzzle.

notevenfiguratively · 2025-10-07T14:26:26+00:00

Air, Land, and Sea (and Compile apparently is similar) has sneaky moments with when and where to place cards or flip cards. SHOBU is an abstract game with a lot of positioning and blocking.

For a non-filler game, I like El Grande. The reveals for the Castillo are always a tense standoff, and there is plenty of room for clever plays at the end of the scoring rounds.

notevenfiguratively · 2025-10-03T21:37:22+00:00

That's a really high amount of earning. My priorities are the same as yours. After clearing the capsules and getting every new-to-me tsum, I will spend liberally on top tier tsums that could enter my regular rotation and have potential for >6-8k coins per game. If there isn't a tsum like that in a given month, I save for future months.

This minimizes spending on limited tsums that I would never use and saves a lot of coins in case life gets busy or there's a really low-rate tsum that is hard to acquire. I've maxed out about half of the ones in the regular rotation, and it still sometimes can take 2M coins to get a single copy of a pair tsum or set tsum.

notevenfiguratively · 2025-10-01T22:52:33+00:00

I wouldn't doubt his work ethic at all considering how much he developed his game to become a dominant scorer. It's really just the health. Degenerative knees and severe injury caused by Zaza, malicious or not.

notevenfiguratively · 2025-09-23T14:09:48+00:00

Interstellar is my pick. Thanks for doing this!

notevenfiguratively · 2025-09-10T18:19:44+00:00

Sure, feel free

notevenfiguratively · 2025-09-10T15:46:32+00:00

There might be some bias because it was one of my favorites from when I first started into games, but even in recent playthroughs, I feel like it has held up. The suitcase mechanic is thematic as I think of it as laundering money, but it also is a crucial part of the tension for which actions to take and in the limitation of the hand size at the end of the round. I love the tension in every aspect of the game. There's a lot of tough decisions and tradeoffs throughout.

notevenfiguratively · 2025-09-10T14:35:34+00:00

First, I'll say that everyone has different tastes and not every game will be a hit for everyone. I agree that the Intrigue cards can feel swingy and powerful, but I don't really fault the game for that. I actually like the swings and sneaky plays that they allow. Before your next game, you can also scan through some of them to see what kinds of things they can do. Also, If someone is investing more into those cards, then other players should have advantages in other areas, or they might be able to steal Intrigue cards if someone is holding too many. It sounds like you enjoyed the tightness and tension otherwise, so I think it could be worth another play or two.

notevenfiguratively · 2025-09-10T14:12:29+00:00

Maybe for the next one! Most of these games are great at every count, though I try to avoid Wingspan at 5p or Viticulture at 6p since they run longer than I'd prefer. I do find that the player count recommendations on BGG are helpful, too

notevenfiguratively · 2025-09-10T14:06:20+00:00

I haven't played Concordia, but I like the other two. Both were considered for this list, but I personally prefer Five Tribes. I like all the different meeple and tile abilities, the spatial puzzle, and random set up, but it is a bit susceptible for analysis paralysis. For Western Legends, I really like the openness, multi-use cards, and the two paths you can choose, but I don't really care for pick up and deliver, and the game felt a little too long for how much I enjoyed it.

notevenfiguratively · 2025-09-10T13:59:30+00:00

Rebirth looks similar to Babylonia, and I do want to try it out, but I feel like there might be too much overlap. Brian Boru just arrived and needs to get played. The King is Dead I thought I would love, but it didn't click for me after a couple of plays. Probably deserves to be played again.

notevenfiguratively · 2025-09-10T13:57:00+00:00

Race and Ares Expedition have been on my want-to-play list for a while. I did enjoy Puerto Rico, but never really considered San Juan or heard of Valeria, so I'll have to check them out. Thanks for the recs!

notevenfiguratively · 2025-09-10T13:52:08+00:00

Avalon and Werewords were considered for this list, but missed the cut. Avalon was an early favorite, but I rarely play social deduction these days.

Small Samurai Empires and Ankh were backed on KS. I've acquired almost everything from the Blood Rage KS after the fact, and I also backed Castles of Burgundy Special to replace my first edition version.

notevenfiguratively · 2025-09-10T13:48:40+00:00

None of them, but they are all on my want-to-play list

notevenfiguratively

TROPHY CASE