My Top 50 Games - 2025

The last time I did a Top 50 list for myself was 2019. I thought it would be fun to do this exercise again. This list is not at all scientific, nor is it authoritative. It is just a reflection of what games I like and what games are important in my journey as a boardgamer. Even for me, this is not strictly a "best games" list. Some games are here because they are a big part of my journey. I hope this is interesting to you and you discover something unexpected. 

1. Innovation - This was #7 back in 2019 and it has moved up to the top spot partly because I have been having much fun playing it with younger daughter Chen Rui. I now own the latest edition, Innovation Ultimate. Innovation is full of possibilities and unexpected twists of fate. There are many clever things you can do with the cards you get. One valid complaint I have heard of is that the winning player has fun, but the losing players feel helpless. Now that I have thought more about this, I don't think it is a problem. Indeed by the time you are near game end, there isn't much you can do to turn things around, but before you get to that stage, there are still all sorts of fancy stuff you can tinker with. With Innovation, you do have to accept that there is some luck. Don't take it too seriously. Sometimes you lose simply because of bad luck. I always enjoy the excitement of drawing a card to see whether it will be my next killer move or whether it will be my saviour. At any point in time, you don't really know whether your luck is going to turn. 





2. Race for the Galaxy - This was my previous #1 game. I now mainly play it against bots on the iPad. The bots are decent. Well, either that or I'm still not a very good player after 2000+ plays. Playing on the iPad is very fast. Yet still enjoyable. 





3. Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization - Vlaada Chvatil's magnum opus. I don't play this often now, but I have many fond memories playing this with my wife Michelle. We used to play this a lot. I still find this the best implementation of a civilisation game. 


4. Carcassonne - I have many expansions, big and small. I have Carcassonne Maps too. I cheat a little by using one entry to represent the whole series. I'm doing the same for several other game families. Carcassonne was one of my gateway games when I entered the hobby, and till now I still find it lovely. 





5. Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan - A genius piece of game design. This is a game which gives me goosebumps. You don't use dice for battle resolution. You have some luck in the card draws. Before a battle, whether you can win is already decided by the cards you have in hand and the pieces you have on the board. The tricky part is you don't know what your opponent has. So are you going to attack or not? Sometimes it is about bluffing. 





6. Attika - I think this is an underrated gem. You win by constructing all your buildings, or by connecting two temples. Often this is an efficiency game about optimising resource usage. It is hard to win by connecting temples, but it is a threat you can use to force your opponent's hand. This is a game in which you don't score victory points. 





7. The Lord of the Rings - This cooperative game is challenging to learn. Not that it is complex, just that it is a little unusual. However once you grasp the rules, it is highly satisfying to play.  





8. Love Letter - I will always be grateful to the gamer who created a fan-made Adventure Times version of the game. It was because of the cute art that I hand-made a copy of the game to try out. I instantly fell in love with it. So minimalistic yet clever. It was my inspiration and model for Dancing Queen. 





9. Indonesia - Splotter Games has a special place in my heart. So many of their games amaze me. They are complex, strategic, and unforgiving. They keep making hit after hit. The only complaint I have about Indonesia is one particular part of the map. My home state of Sabah looks completely wrong. 


10. Automobile - This is a complex game of few actions, but every action is important and you must choose carefully. I have the very first edition of the game and I much prefer the art in this edition to the later ones. 


11. Ra - This game is here for both the nostalgia and also for how wonderful it is as a game. My first copy was a fully self-made copy, because at the time it was out of print. My second copy was a gift from my friends who found a used copy on e-Bay Germany. This happened in an era without Google Translate, so it wasn't easy for them to get something from Germany. So this was a very meaningful gift. Since then, Ra has been reprinted, and it was reprinted several times. Now I own Priests of Ra as well. This was one of my earliest games when I got into the hobby. I spent many hours playing it with my friends in Taiwan. 





12. Agricola - This is another game I have played a lot with my wife Michelle. I actually like Le Havre more than Agricola. Agricola ranks higher because I've played so much of it. Yes, I make the rules. No, I don't apply them consistently. 
13. Brass: Lancashire - I have the original Brass, and I like the Peter Dennis art. 
14. A Few Acres of Snow - Hey, yet another Martin Wallace game. Also with art from Peter Dennis. I love how the deckbuilding mechanism is used to simulate the challenges of managing a war in the colonies back when emails and telegrams were not yet invented. 
15. Machi Koro - I have fond memories playing this with my daughters, who love the fishing boats. I always choose to play with the second edition rules with a random market. I don't like the original version in which all buildings are always available. 
16. Hansa Teutonica - This is a highly interactive Eurogame. You are always trying to pressure your opponents into helping you. 



17. Here I Stand - I'm not sure whether I still have the appetite for a 9-hour game. In the grand scheme of things, spending 9 hours to simulate an entire era in European history is pretty short. Even when you add the hours reading the rules beforehand. 
18. Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation - A very smart two-player game. Just don't expect many of the Fellowship of the Ring to survive. 
19. Regicide - This is a game I both admire and enjoy playing. You can play this with just a deck of regular playing cards. I love how difficult it is to win this cooperative game. It is what makes every victory a celebration. 
20. Axis & Allies - I cheat a little and this represents the whole series. I don't like every single game in the series. My favourites are the latest standard game and Guadalcanal. I don't enjoy the larger versions as much. The anniversary edition is okay. I've started to lose interest in the series though. I didn't get North Africa because I couldn't even finish reading the rules. It just felt tedious. Stalingrad is coming soon, and I can't muster much enthusiasm. So this is mostly a nostalgia entry. I did have much fun with the series, beginning with the 1984 edition. 
21. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 - This represents the Pandemic series. There are many in the series which I like. Rising Tides (Netherlands) is good. Pandemic Legacy Season 0 was fantastic. If only the basic Pandemic existed, it might not make this list. However I had a lot of fun with many of the spin-offs. 
22. Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper - I have almost forgotten about this game, which was my spouse game for quite some time. I have many other rummy games from Mike Fitzgerald, but this is still the one I like best. Whenever we played a victim card, we would declare in poor English pronunciation "weeg-teem". 



23. Civilization - Francis Tresham is a legend. This game from 1980 was waaaay ahead of its time. You see nations rise and fall. You experience disaster after disaster. It may seem to be much simpler than many other later civ games which are more similar to the computer game, but I find that it does the few things it sets out to do very well. There is constant pressure to advance in science. You have to pick what you learn carefully. Sciences you pick meaningfully affect your board play. 
24. Food Chain Magnate - The company organisation chart becomes a game, and the game works splendidly. 
25. In the Year of the Dragon - This game teaches you that life is suffering. But you can still survive well enough. Maybe. The Year of the Dragon is not a good year I tell you. You will have fun complaining about how tough life is. You get to laugh at others' misfortune. Or you entertain your friends with your own misfortune. 
26. Age of Steam - Martin Wallace's classic can be unforgiving. I have the older ugly version. The latest version is much prettier. 
27. Hammer of the Scots - This is Braveheart the boardgame. I loved the movie. I learned more about the history of Scotland after buying and playing this game. I learned that the movie was a highly dramatised version of history. The game itself is excellent. 
28. Maracaibo - This is a new entry. I enjoy how much you get to grow your abilities in this game. 
29. Antiquity - This is an older Splotter title, with lots and lots of pollution. It is complex and brutal. Things go downhill by default and you need to find a way to turn things around. This is not a game for the faint of heart.
30. The Princes of Florence - This Wolfgang Kramer design is one of the games from my early days in the hobby. 

31. Ticket to Ride Map Collection 7: Japan & Italy - This is the representative of the Ticket To Ride series. This is one of the spin-offs I enjoy more. 
32. China - Michael Schacht is a prolific designer and this is my favourite among his games. China was a reimplementation of Web of Power, and after China there were other reimplementations. I'm grateful that I happened to have bought China when it was in print. The publisher Uberplay is no longer in business, and I like this particular iteration of the game. 
33. Power Grid - This doesn't represent the spin-offs in the family, just the base game and the expansions. I don't like the spin-offs so much, but I do like the expansions. I have quite many different maps for Power Grid. 
34. Le Havre - This was the game that came after Agricola. I like how it tells the story of a growing port city, how businesses and industries sprout and then fade. 
35. Taluva - This is a game with a strong spatial element. This is an underappreciated gem. 





36. Faiyum - I like how the players' actions collectively shape how a game shakes out. How the map develops can be very different from game to game. 
37. Santa Maria - This is a bunch of unassuming mechanisms coming together to make an excellent game. The game uses dice in a clever way. It is a development game. The core idea is now implemented in a new game - Saltfjord. 
38. The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship - I don't categorise this as one of the Pandemic games, despite the core engine being from that series. There are many elements in the game which make it more a Lord of the Rings game than a Pandemic game.  
39. Quartermaster General - A World War 2 game which is almost a microgame. Minimalistic, but still has much character. The different nations all have unique abilities. 
40. Roads & Boats - A complex game about logistics. People can steal "your" goods, because goods don't belong to anyone. That's communism, my dear comrade! You need wagons and rafts to store goods because what you can carry is yours, at least as long as you are still carrying them. 
41. Merchants & Marauders - I love the freedom of sailing the seas going wherever I want and choosing my own adventure. 
42. 7 Wonders - I suspect if this were released today instead of in 2010, I would find it just okay. It's just multiple ways of doing set collection. But maybe that's not important. I did have much fun with it. It does work well. 
43. Seven! - This is a simple, silly game, and I find it hilarious. It may sound like a dumb game, but I think it is cleverer than it looks. The art is ugly. Not artsy. Just ugly. But that's okay. It's part of why it's funny. 





44. Endeavor - I have not tried the latest reimplementation, but I'm happy even with the first version of the game to be on this list. It's a clean design with simple actions, but everything hangs together well. 
45. Stupor Mundi - This is new to me in 2025. I had much fun with it. It is highly strategic and offers you many attractive options. You really have to think hard to maximise your actions. 
46. Darwin's Journey - This too is new to me this year. It is overwhelming in that there are many things you want to do, but you have limited resources and actions. This takes some effort to play even half decently. 
47. Azul - Beautifully straight-forward and accessible. This game fully deserves to be so popular. 
48. Heat: Pedal to the Metal - Race games are really not my thing, but this is just so much fun. 





49. Glory to Rome - I am starting to forget how this plays. I just remember it making me happy, and some combinations of buildings being very powerful. 
50. 300: Earth & Water - So much history and angst in such a small package. 

Two notable absences are Star Realms and Ascension: Deckbuilding Game. I have been playing them for more than 10 years, and I have logged more than 1500 plays for each of them. I am still playing them on my phone. I do like them enough, but I want to make space for mentioning other games. 

The highest ranked game from 2019 which has now dropped from the list is Die Macher. I still think it is a great game though. In 2019 it was ranked #27.  Any games here which you totally agree with? Or totally disagree with? Or have never heard of? 

Pagan: Fate of Roanoke

Pagan is a two player game about a witch hunt happening in a village in old America. An inspector is visiting because there is suspicion of witchcraft. One of the villagers is indeed a witch and he (or she) is secretly preparing for a ritual. The witch wins by successfully performing the ritual. The inspector needs to stop that by catching the witch, or killing the witch. 

There are 9 villagers in the game. One of them is the witch. At the start of the game, only the witch player knows who it is. One thing the players will do is to visit the villagers. You have three pawns, and when you visit a villager, you place your pawn on the person. This prevents your opponent from visiting them on his turn. When you visit a villager, you get to use his abilities. You will get to place your markers on villagers of a specific colour (suit). You may get to draw cards, play cards, or gain influence. Influence is the currency you spend when playing cards. 

Round markers placed by the witch are called secrets. When you have three secrets placed on a villager, you can trade them in for a square marker, and that's a favour. When you have three favours, and that villager with the three favours is the witch, you get to perform the ritual and win the game. So the inspector will be watching out for villagers accumulating many secrets and favours. Round markers placed by the inspector are called clues. If you are the inspector and you visit a villager with three clues, you collect a square marker, which is an evidence. You don't need to trade in the clues for it, and you hold the evidence in your hand. The evidence is not placed on the villager like the favours are. When you have three evidence, you can draw a card from the innocent deck. This lets you rule out one person for sure. If you can rule out eight, you win, but that's normally impossible. 

The inspector is more likely to win by executing the witch. If you have at least one clue on every villager, and three on the villager you think is the witch, you get to execute your prime suspect. If you are right, you win. However, if you are wrong, you lose the clues on all villagers. You will need to start building your case all over again. In case you kill an innocent person for the third time, the villagers will rise against you, chasing you out of the village. In this case you lose. 

The witch and the inspector have their respective player boards. You have slots for cards - equipment and allies. These cards have all sorts of abilities which help you. This above is the witch's player board. 

This is the inspector's player board. 

This is the mayor. If you visit him, you can place a secret or clue on a blue villager. Villagers come in three suits - blue, green and red. When visiting the mayor you also get to draw three cards then pick one. 

This game is a race. As the witch you must carefully build up clues and favours on villagers, to prepare for the ritual. You need to be careful not to let the inspector guess who the witch is. You want to trick the inspector into killing the wrong person. Or you need to manipulate the game situation so that it becomes impossible for the inspector to prevent the ritual from happening. 

The game is a little unusual. The premise is interesting. This is a game of psychology. As the inspector you will be wondering whether those clues and favours are a trap, or they are really preparation for the ritual. For the witch it seems prudent to place clues evenly, to make it hard for the inspector to guess your intentions, but then this will take much time and resources. You can't let the inspector keep drawing cards from the innocent deck. Every card drawn helps him narrow down the possibilities and get closer to identifying the witch. So, as the witch, you are under some time pressure. Playing as the witch and as the inspector offer very different experiences. 

I played this online at BoardGameArena.com, and the downside of that is I wasn't very patient in properly digesting all the rules, especially those related to the cards, the card types and the two pawn types. Instinctively I feel this part of the game should be simpler. I might be wrong about this. I do think the cards can be of great help. It's just that I find them tiresome. Players who have a bit more patience may get more fun out of this aspect and appreciate it better. 

I played two games with Han, and we swapped roles. In both games the witch won. Han applied a very clever technique. At precisely the right time, he placed his three pawns so that I wouldn't be able to stop him from performing the ritual, even if I could work out who the witch was. He picked the right time to make his move. For the witch it is important to manoeuvre the board situation so that you plan becomes unstoppable. Otherwise the inspector will always respond and try to slow you down. 

Cities

In Cities every player builds his own 3x3 tile city using components claimed from a central game board. There are four types of components, and every round you will take one in each type. The game is played for exactly 8 rounds. That is when everyone will finish his city. 

The most basic component you claim from the central board is a city tile, which consists of four spaces. They can be building, park or water spaces. You can take building blocks in four different colours to place or stack on building spaces. You can take feature tiles like trees, boats and dolphins to place on park or water spaces. Finally you can take scoring cards. They specify criteria you can fulfil to score points. 

You gradually build your own city

A scoring card

Players take turns claiming items. There is often some angst in which item to take first. When there are two things you want, the one you don’t take now just might get taken by someone else before your turn comes again. Another twist is one item in each type is unknown. It might turn out to be exactly what you need, or it might be completely useless to you. 

There are three public missions. They are similar to the personal scoring cards, but they tend to be hard to fulfil. If you manage to fulfil the conditions you score points. The earlier players score more points than the later. There is a race element. 

You will end the game with eight personal scoring cards. You want to build your city to fulfil as many of them as possible. When you pick them, you also try to pick those that work well with your city. 

Cities is a typical Eurogame. It is peaceful and gentle. You mostly focus on your own city. You don’t interfere much with others. The public missions drive players to build their cities in certain ways. It’s interesting to see how different the cities can be from game to game. This works well as a family game and an introductory game.

Note Flash

Note Flash is a simple card game designed by Malaysian students for a local fundraising event. This is certainly not a gamer’s game, which means this is not of interest to 99% of the readers of this blog. For me, it is interesting to see people who are not gamers design games because they will come up with ideas which are different. They have fresh eyes which I do not have.

Note Flash challenges you to identify musical notes accurately and quickly. This is a solo game which can also be played competitively between two players. You have a time limit of 4 minutes and a stack of 46 cards. The front side of a card shows a musical note, and the back shows what note it is, i.e. the answer. Before you start a game, you set up seven columns, C, D, E, F, G, A and B. Once the timer starts, you start assigning cards to the right column as quickly and correctly as you can. 

The game ends when you assign all cards, or when the timer runs out. You have a base of 50 points. You earn more points if you beat the clock. You lose points per card remaining if you run out of time. You also take a heavy penalty for each incorrectly identified note. To check whether you get all of the notes right, you simply flip them all over. Each card back is coloured based on what note it is, so you can quickly check correctness at a glance. 

If you want to do a two-player game, you use the other side of the column header cards. The time limit is shortened to 2 minutes, and each player gets 23 cards instead of 46. 

This game is a good exercise for music sight-reading. It serves an educational purpose. It is certainly something different from what gamers usually play. 

I have started work on one game design which is related to music. It is a real-time game about beats. I never got very far with it. I worry it might be too complicated for the average casual gamer who does not know music, yet too easy for anyone who knows music. It's certainly an interesting topic to get into - designing a game related to music. 

boardgaming on the iPad

I had almost forgotten about the various boardgame apps I had purchased on the iPad. Many were from a long time ago. I was bored one day and decided to pick up Le Havre again. Over the next several days I ended up revisiting several of these older games on the iPad. 

I have always liked Le Havre. The AI's on the iPad are not very strong and I tend to win most of the time. In the recent game I thought I did poorly. I was rusty and I saw the AI's constructing and buying buildings much more quickly than I could. Feeding time came frequently, usually after just two turns, and I felt under pressure to keep up with the food requirement. The AI's beat me to several buildings I liked. Thankfully in this game you can use other players' buildings. You just need to pay an entrance fee. When the game ended, I was a little surprised I managed to win, and by a comfortable margin. I guess the AI's only appeared smart because when they took their turns the animation was fast. 

I play Race for the Galaxy regularly and not only recently. Sometimes it is my bedtime game. I play a few games against AI's before sleeping. Even though I play with all three expansions of the first story arc, a game is still fast. I probably finish a game between 5 to 10 minutes. The iPad implementation is fantastic, and the AI's are good. Usability is amazing. 

It had been such a long time since I played Dominion, the pioneer of deckbuilding games. In the app the base game is free. You only need to pay if you want to buy the expansions. There are so many expansions now. I didn't do well against the AI's in Dominion. I was never good at it, and now I am rusty. 

I like how pretty the buildings are in Puerto Rico. The user interface is good in that you can see almost everything on one screen. However you need to open up a menu to see the building powers. 

I vaguely remember that the AI's are weak, but this time round I lost to them. I probably should pay a bit more attention to what they do and learn from how they play. I didn't do too bad. I was in second place. 

The last time I played San Juan I kept losing to the AI's. This time I did okay. I won some and lost some. They do put up a good challenge. 

It feels good to revisit some old titles. The sound effects, animation and user interface design of most of these apps feel dated, but the games are still decent. This was a nice stroll down memory lane. 

boardgaming in photos: online plays

I continue to play many boardgames online at BoardGameArena.com. In addition to my old friends Han and Allen, I am also playing with several other friends now. I'm playing with Jon and a few friends in his circle. I'm also playing with younger daughter Chen Rui. Chen Rui is studying overseas now, and we have a 7 hour time difference. Playing Innovation is a good way for father-daughter bonding. She video calls us regularly. Many years ago when I studied abroad, it was still the era of writing letters. I didn't even have email yet. No smart phone, and phone calls were expensive. 30 years later, communication technology has advanced so much. Now video calls are essentially free. 

I hadn't played Carnegie for a while and was rusty. I remember the game fondly. However this time I fumbled through the game. I should have read up the rulebook properly. This is a good game and I should have relearned it properly. 

I played Hanamikoji with Jon. What surprised me was our game ended after just one round. The stars really aligned for me. Hanamikoji is such a clever design. Minimalistic yet strategic. 

I have played the physical version of Imperial Settlers before. This time I was Japan and Han was Rome. He burnt many of my buildings, those flipped over at the top right corner. 

Han's Roman empire

This is one of the Japanese buildings, the daimyo's castle. It generates victory points (blue stars) every round. 

I have played a physical copy of New Frontiers too. This is the boardgame version of Race for the Galaxy. In this particular game I wanted to focus on novelty (blue) goods and on scoring victory point chips. 

At this point I had four worlds which could produce novelty goods. New Frontiers still doesn't work for me. It is not that it is a poor game. I absolutely adore Race for the Galaxy. I like Puerto Rico very much too. I just don't see the point in creating a fusion of these two games.  I don't feel that way about Roll for the Galaxy, because I find the dice mechanism different enough from Race for the Galaxy. One big difference between New Frontiers and Race for the Galaxy is that all developments are available for purchase right from the start. That allows you to plan much more precisely what to do with your space empire. This is like the buildings in Puerto Rico. It makes the game more strategic because you have more control. However I don't find it more fun, or important. I end up playing New Frontiers like I am playing Race for the Galaxy. Maybe that is my problem and not the game. I feel New Frontiers is a more tedious version of Race for the Galaxy. 

Han took the military path and eventually far outscored me, leaving me in the (space) dust. 

We did a 3-player game of Railways of the World - Han, Allen and I. We hadn't played this for some time. Allen made some mistakes in the early game, and got himself into a hole he never quite got out of. I (red) chose to operate in the northeast. The game board is huge, and I think too big for a 3-player game. We did not interfere much with one another. The northeast was good because cities were close to one another, so building tracks was cheaper. I was a little rusty too, and did not pay much attention to the special cards in the game. I should have utilised them better. 

Han was yellow and Allen blue. They both worked in the south. 

Han (yellow) eventually connected to a city I (red) connected to, but even then we didn't really interfere with each other. Later in the game I crossed the mountains to expand westwards, but I didn't go far. The game came with missions. I didn't pay much attention to them and never quite worked towards them. I guess I played this game like I was playing Age of Steam, its predecessor.  

One new appreciation I have now after playing Stupor Mundi more is that I need to get allies early. They score points every round, and this is an important source of points. 

The house I played this time (Di Romano) was new to me, and I found it interesting. I scored points for the progress of Frederick's Specialist. At this point of the game we were near game end. Our castles were almost completed. 

Frederick's castle was derelict by game end, and I realise this is absolutely normal. This aspect doesn't really jive with the theme. Frederick is supposed to be great and all. But the game is excellent, so this is forgivable. Frederick's castle is a tool for competition among the players. It is a battlefield. It is where players sabotage one another. 

I played two games of Zenith recently and greatly enjoyed them. In this particular game, we managed to get many cards in play. I have never had this many cards in play. Cards in play give you discounts the next time you play a card of the same colour. Many of my cards could be played for free. Zenith is a game I didn't expect to enjoy. I look at all the rules and don't find anything particularly interesting. This is just a tug of war on five different tracks. Yet when I sat down to play, it surprised me. There are some clever yet subtle aspects to the design. The ability to increase your hand size to 5 and to 6 doesn't seem like much, but since there are 5 colours in the game, this apparently slight advantage can actually be very helpful. Having cards of the right colour at the right time is crucial. Also with a bigger hand you are able to plan ahead better. It's great fun to be able to make good use of your cards and your techs. This game deserves more attention.