Constraining it to games that I have played in person with a physical copy, I think my top five would look like this:
Railroad Ink. I have Lush Green, which is at 753, but Deep Blue is the highest at 543. I always have a great time with this game and the only time I feel a turn isn’t full of knotty decisions is the last one, and then only if things have gone very well.
Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game. Ranked 780. If this hadn’t come out just before FFG lost the GW licence, and therefore received the inevitable expansions, I’ve no doubt this would be rated higher. Co-operative games are my thing, and this one required plenty of player interaction to figure how to deal with the high difficulty. Also good solo.
Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game. Ranked 757. Nice little game that doesn’t take up much space and I enjoyed solo and multiplayer. Having played quite a bit of Space Hulk, it managed to capture the theme of the enclosed space and Genestealers being terrifyingly deadly if you let them get anywhere near you.
Evolution. Ranked 638. I’ve not played this often, so I don’t know if it held up to multiple plays, but I liked the variety of options it gave for what seemed like they would be viable ways to win. I haven’t played Oceans, but would happily do so given the chance.
Dark Moon. Ranked 1392. In my opinion sufficiently different to Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game, despite what BGG might say, I liked the replacement of the tiny cards for skill challenges with a dice pool. I do recall that it seemed harder to mess with people once you revealed as infected than being a Cylon in BSG, and it wasn’t thematically as strong.
Honorable Mentions
Star Trek: Ascendancy. Ranked 624. I really enjoyed the PbF games that RogerBW ran here, but I’ve never played it in person.
Pictomania. Ranked 941. I’ve never played it, but I like Pictionary and I’ve never found a Vlaada Chvátil game I didn’t like. Tash-Kalar could probably go here too.
A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game. Ranked 1292. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve almost bought this game, but I never quite pulled the trigger on it.
Talisman (3rd edition). Ranked 4152. In hindsight, I don’t think this a particularly good game, but I would be lying if I said that pre-teen/early teen me didn’t get a lot of entertainment out of playing this game with my brother.
One of many drivers. There’s also the random waves of hype, which are entirely unpredictable. Lowlands got rave reviews from SUSD and NPI, was available, and just no one got it. Flamme Rouge and Heat both got rave reviews but one is top 100 and one isn’t. Who knows?
The one I like to point to, though, is the “where does the game hit.” To become really popular, there’s that essen test where I have to love you before the first game ends. Games that pass this test do well. They also tend to play out after 5-10 games. Which kind of works, as most people play their games 0-5 times.
If you’re a game that wants sustained quality, to support 50-300 games, players are going to have to fall in love with it more slowly. Fewer people are going to see the 10/10 game there, then. Older games I think got more time and patience, different zeitgeist and fewer new games coming out 10 years ago. All to say, inefficiently, I think these titles we are listing are often games that grow on you rather than jump in your face, and are often better overall, but get that perfect score from fewer people.
I kind of disagree with the point about longevity and accessibility being mutually exclusive as a general rule. Without getting into my own particular tastes, I would like to point to games like TTR and Pandemic. That said, I am sure there is something to your theory that easy-to-grok games tend to become boring faster.
I agree that in the age of a deluge of new games all the time even when it is not Essen-month (otherwise known as October), people–and I quote my partner–“don’t want to waste a 2nd game on one they didn’t enjoy the first time around.” And even I who play a lot more games than him have to decide rather quickly how much time I want to give a game that didn’t convince me straight away–too many good games in my collection want to be played more.
But maybe there’s a difference between enjoying a game right from the start and grokking it. Because while I still can’t claim to have understood the full depth of Spirit Island, Terraforming Mars, Ark Nova or Terra Mystica, I knew about halfway through the teach of these games that I would love playing them.
I think BGG ratings are hugely influenced by so many other factors like marketing, hype, art, theme, publisher, timing, availability and uhm the “Algorithm” or whatever BGG does to the ratings. These all play a huge role in how well a game does (some of these only BGG). If you accidentally make a game about bees in the year that bees are popular… timing is on your side by sheer luck. If you more or less on purpose publish your game at the opposite end of the year from Essen-month well that’s your own fault. If you want to make a game that tempts people to use excel as a helper, well that’s so niche…
Frankly, the gameplay is SO different between Fury of Dracula 1st and 4th editions, that the only thing they share is hidden movement as a mechanic and overall theme. You can include it.
This was way easier than I predicted. Just ranked my bgg list by score and voila! Easily done.
In no particular order:
Battle for Rokugan: Probably of what I have played, my second favourite turn based strategy game after Root. Plus probably one of my favourite game cover art designs. Shame I don’t get to play this more, I think it is a great game, if a tad flawed. The flipping real size army tokens mechanic I think is genius.
Hero Quest: Advanced: I know it is flawed, I know it has not aged well, but for the countless hours I spent with this game in my teens, it should make the list.
Thurns and Taxis: Shame of avalability for this game, I think it s a great networking game. Still one of my most memorable games was playing this, and it was with me finishing second.
High Society: My first Knizia. Such an enjoyable little filler, great auction little game. Thank you Secret Santa.
Tales of Arabian Nights: I loved the Choose your own adventure books while growing up, so of course I love this. It should hit the table more often… even solo.
A few years ago I read an article on competitive barbecueing, which is apparently A Thing. Basically it’s not at all the same process as cooking a burger or a rib or whatever that you’d actually like to eat; it’s optimised for the judge who’ll only take a single bite, so the entire experience has to be in that bite and presented up front.
And I think some games are trying to do a similar thing—not just the Essen test but the harassed reviewer test… You can have a great time in your first game even with experienced players, but there’s not much depth of gameplay, so by your tenth game you’ve basically seen the whole thing and it’s time to move it on. Obviously not every game has the same amount of “goodness” to spread around, but I think developers can and sometimes do choose to emphasise the first bite at the expense of the whole plate. And if you know your buyers are only going to play it five times anyway, why not?
Well, read the above in the context of my loving Xia and Rallyman and Flash Point and Onitama, to pick some examples of games that maybe don’t have a whole lot of depth to them.
Basically people who like games with simple rules and lots of interaction rather than a “newro” of beating a system.
Most of the discussion reflects what @RogerBW said but it never ends. I don’t disagree, I think lots of games are now designed to be good on the first play and have a system that you beat rather than a player.
It’s tricky for me because I tend to be a game dilettante—I have a large collection, and certainly I play some more than others, but I spread my playing time over a bunch of different games. So someone who’s played a particular game a lot will generally do better at it.
I think my ideal game has enough depth that if it turns out to be one I love (like Rallyman GT, which to be fair also arrived at the exact right moment to get a lot of my BGA play in 2020) I’ll still enjoy it after 300+ games, but at the same time I don’t want it to be like chess or go where you need rating systems and handicaps just to have an enjoyable game in the first place. One way I do this is to look for games that are enjoyable when I’m losing.
(Games I’ve liked but later burned out on: original Pandemic, which Flash Point displaced for me, but particularly after PanLeg Season 1 I feel I’ve seen the tricks it has to offer; Letter Tycoon, where I realised that both I and regular opponents had got to a level of skill where how well we did depended mainly on when the B and J cards came out.)
I can’t say I’d necessarily recommend all of these to people, but it turns out we do have five games which we/I enjoy that are a very long way below the top 500. Some are well below the top 5000.
Madame Ching 3851
Bring Your Own Book 3853
Shephy 5195
Travel Blog 6658
The Romans 8654
Topical on repeatability. Space Biff jumps past the topic of whether games are becoming less repeatable to ponder how essential it even is as a criterion. Interesting.
Whitehall mystery (657) I prefer letters from Whitechapel, but still love playing this when I don’t have enough time for the larger experience.
Paint the Roses (1558) probably my most played game last year. Still comes out on a regular basis.
Caper: Europe (529) not played this nearly enough, still got one of the cities to try out. But it’s a fantastic game.
Sub Terra (730) Great, thematic co-op. Can’t believe it’s ranked so low for 2017 game.
Burgle Bros 2 (1634) ridiculously low ranking. Only negative is there’s quite a bit of setup, but it’s such a fun and thematic co-op. Lots of silly moments.
Cockroach poker, Rajas of the Ganges dice charmers and Mysterium Park narrowly missing out.
My biggest surprise sorting my collection by BGG ranking is that The Hobbit Card Game (2012) is the second-lowest ranked game that I own, which is insane because it’s a lovely little card game. I have no problem at all with it being outside the top 500, but its rating is super close to that of Cthulhu Dice (2010) which is something I bought purely as an object – a weird custom die which I occasionally use as a decision-maker in RPG sessions – and which does not even qualify as a game IMO. (The respective rankings are 25728 and 25792, which is a crazy juxtaposition.)
I don’t have to look outside my top twenty to find (more than) Five over 500.
KeyForge 700 / 1409 / 2058 / 2853 / 4166 / 6910 (set dependent)
My favourite game. A nutsy and original sci-fi fantasy world, unique decks with no need to deck build, and enjoyable gameplay with a lot of depth.
Werewords 922
One night ultimate werewolf with words. Always a hit.
Lady Richmond: Ein erzocktes Erbe A lowly 21,080
This came to me in an otherwise disappointing mystery box and, while not the flashiest looking title, causes much hilarity and has every group asking for just one more game.
Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig 691
I mostly play this solo with the Secrets & Soirees Expansion and find it nice and calming placing the colourful squares of entertaining rooms. Who wouldn’t want a castle with a Puppy Room, a Spy Room and a Hibernation Chamber?
Myrmes 734
Who knew programming ants could be so fun?
Honorable mention to Lovelace & Babbage 4514, a game that gets the brain firing and revives your maths skills.
