Schotten Totten

Schotten Totten is an older game from Reiner Knizia, first published in 1999. There have been several versions of the game since then, including Battle Line, which is the version I own. This game is not new to me. I recently played it online, and it was an opportunity to appreciate this gem all over again. Now that I have learnt to look at games from a game design perspective, I sometimes gain new appreciation for games I have already played before. 

Schotten Totten uses cards numbered 1 to 9 in six suits. You play three card combos on opposing sides of nine stones. If your combo is stronger than your opponent's, you win the stone. You need five stones to win the game, or you can also win by claiming three adjacent stones. Combo strengths in descending order are: straight flush, three of a kind, flush, and straight. If both sides cannot make any combo, you determine strength by the sum of your three cards. 

This is a 2-player game. What this means is your chances of drawing any specific card in the game is 50%. It's either you will draw it, or your opponent will. You share the same draw deck. Every turn you must play a card. When you start playing a card next to a stone, you are committed and you know what are the possible combos you can eventually make. If there is only one card, the possibilities are still many. By the time you play the second card, the possibilities narrow. This is a simple game, but it presents you with many difficult decisions. Sometimes you just have to gamble and hope for the best. You can estimate your odds, but your information is incomplete, and you have to make decisions under uncertainty. That's life. 

For my second game we used tactic cards. These are special ability cards which can do various nifty things. That card on the eighth stone forces both players to ignore combos and only compare the sum of the cards. 

It is fun to revisit an old game and to have new appreciation of it. 

The Bloody Inn

We are the bad guys now. We run a small inn in a remote village, and we murder guests to take their money. Running an evil enterprise is no easy feat though. Sometimes policemen stop by to stay a night, and if we have dead bodies unburied, they will sniff them out and arrest us. So sometimes we need to work together to clean up the mess. For any such joint efforts we'd split the loot. Normally we mind our own crimes. In the end, there is only one winner - the richest murderer. 

Every night we welcome some guests. Possibly some will not leave in one piece by morning. The cards in the game are the guests. They have different values and suits. There is a certain process to our criminal enterprise. First, you need to have cards in hand. In the game this is called bribing. Some cards can be bribed for free. Cards numbered from 1 to 3 require spending the same number of cards. So this is why you need cards in hand. Most actions in the game need you to spend cards. Next, you kill. Depending on the card value of your victim, you need to spend a corresponding number of cards. You don't get the money immediately though. You can only take money when you bury the corpse. Burying a corpse is an action, which means you need to spend cards, again depending on the value of the corpse. You also need a place to bury it. You need to have built an annex to the inn so that you create space for burial. How do you build an annex? You need to have bribed a guest, and then you need to perform a build action. This means you need to spend cards again. Everything requires cards. It is a challenge to get enough cards to use, and they get used up so fast! 

Thankfully there are peasants in the village who work for peanuts. In gameplay terms they are free to bribe. As long as you see some of them drinking at the pub, you can go recruit them. One important thing to note is you pay wages every two rounds. Having accomplices under your employment is expensive. 

Characters in the game have various skills (i.e. suits). If you use them for tasks they are good at, you don't lose them. They return to your hand. This means you will save on recruitment (ahem bribery) efforts. When they return to your hand, it also means when pay day comes again, you do have to pay them. Else they will quit. Job satisfaction does not mean they will work for you for free. It's not easy running a business. 

Managing this whole operation is not easy. You will be busy bribing people (taking cards), killing people, building annexes and burying corpses. Every two turns you have to worry about paying wages. When you have a dead body (or dead bodies), you will have much anxiety because you don't know when a policeman will show up at the inn. If this happens and you can't manage to bury your corpses in time, you will be forced to engage the village undertaker to get rid of the bodies. You need to pay him, and you won't be able to take money from the corpses. This basically means you will have wasted a lot of effort and also you will be losing money. This is why sometimes it is important to collaborate with your fellow criminals. You can bury your corpses in other's annexes. If you do this, you split the loot with them. You have to do the burying yourself. They can't do it for you. So this is something you need to plan for using your own limited actions. When you decide to bury a corpse in someone else's annex, they cannot refuse. I guess this is some sort of unwritten code among outlaws. If you want to, you can keep busy building annexes and welcoming others to use them. You will take half the profit. Maybe that's a valid business model. 

On the guest cards you will find all sorts of special abilities. Most of them are activated if you build that card as your annex. I had a card which allowed me to pay $1 less at every wage cycle. Money is points, so this card which I built very early effectively gave me many points. 

The board tracks your cash in hand. This is yet another challenging aspect of the game. Since there is a limit of 40, if you want to score more than that, you need to perform an action to convert cash to cheques. A cheque is equivalent to $10. You can convert the other way round too if you are low on cash, but this is an action, and actions are precious in The Bloody Inn. You have pay day after every two actions, and that's you paying your accomplices and not you receiving pay. 

I played the game online. I think the game will work much better as a physical game, because of the collaborations and negotiations. To do well you will most likely need to collaborate with others at the right time. You want to cut deals because this will help you. There is always a sense of danger and urgency in the game. It is nerve-wracking to have a corpse (or corpses) in your living room. If you get caught by the police, you are going to lose money and also waste much effort. There are ways to get around that. You can bribe the policeman. This also means you will start paying him wages. Bribing him would have cost you cards too. Or you can kill the policeman. This too will cost you cards, and now you will have an additional corpse in your living room. You might be going into a downward spiral. If yet another policeman shows up, you might have to kill him too. This is a stressful game! 

Although you sometimes want to collaborate with your opponents, ultimately you are still competitors. There are ways you can sabotage your opponents. You can recruit all the cheap peasants when they need manpower, at the cost of you paying the peasants' wages. You can bury a cheap corpse in their annex, using up their space, and possibly forcing them to surrender their high value corpse to the undertaker. 

The tactic I used was bribing lots of policemen to become my hitmen. They were good at killing, and whenever they killed, they returned to my hand. I could do a lot of killing. After they killed, I used peasants to bury the bodies and not the policemen. I kept them for future murders. I built an annex in the early game, but I later relied on those built by others. I specialised in assassination. 

The Bloody Inn offers an interesting experience. There is tension and high player interaction. There is collaboration mixed in with the ruthless competition. The setting is a little violent, but it's nice to play the bad guys sometimes. It is challenging and fun to run an evil enterprise. 

set for Thailand Board Game Show 2025

It's happening at Union Mall, Bangkok, 7 - 9 Nov 2025 (Friday to Sunday). Several Malaysian designers and publishers will be there, and Cili Padi Games will be one of them. 

In addition to Pinocchio and Dancing Queen, Ali Baba and Snow White will be available too. Snow White has been doing well in Thailand, and I still have no idea why. I tried searching for reviews and recommendations made by local influencers, but could not find any. Maybe I need to ask a Thai friend to help me search. 

I also had a booth in 2024. It was my first time at a boardgame event in Thailand. It was an amazing experience. Boardgames is much bigger in Thailand than in Malaysia. 

Duel for Cardia

Duel for Cardia is a two player game which immediately makes me think - this is the kind of game I like to design. Players have the exact same deck of 16 cards, but a hand size of only 5. Every turn you each play a card simultaneously, and the higher number wins a ring. You need to win five rings to win a round, and you play best out of three rounds. Now the twist is in the unique card powers. Every card has a power. The higher card may win the ring, but its power will not activate. Only the losing card's power gets activated. It is the card powers which make this a strategic and very interesting game. 

Let’s talk about some of the card powers to get a better idea. The strongest card, 16, will win a match-up most of the time, so it will earn you a ring. However if you manage to lose a match-up with it, you will win the entire game, not just one ring or one round. To achieve this you may need to utilise one other card which weakens your next card. Or you take advantage of your opponent having played a card which strengthens his next card. So you see there are creative ways to use combinations of your cards and also to take advantage of your opponent’s cards. 

The low cards seem weak, but some have nifty powers. The 4 forces a tie, so you can use it to neutralise an opponent’s powerful card. The 1 discards both cards played. This is also great for wasting your opponent’s strong card. That is, if he does play one. 

One interesting aspect is past match-up outcomes within the same round are not permanent. For example your opponent has a power which lets him win all ties, and indeed he has won one tie because of this. Now if you have a new card which lets you disable the power of an existing card, and you choose his tiebreaker advantage card, the ring which he has previously won will need to be surrendered. That previously tied match-up no longer counts as a win for him. 

Cards come in four colours. There is one card power which forces your opponent to discard a card of a specific colour, or else give you a strength bonus of 7. If you can see he is out of a certain colour, or low on it, your card play can become very powerful. With the existence of this card, it means players will try to play their colours evenly. That’s another tactical consideration. There is another power which forces your opponent to discard cards of a colour you specify. If you can force him to discard cards, as the round progresses it comes easier or even entirely possible to work out what cards he has in hand. As more as more cards have been played in a round, the game becomes more strategic because you know what’s left in your opponent’s hand and deck. The board situation also gives you clues as to how your opponent might play. There is psychology and bluffing. 

This is a short game with a very simple core mechanism. It’s just playing cards at the same time and seeing who has the higher number. This probably won’t work as a game without the card powers. With the card powers it becomes a delicious mind game. You do need to spend some effort in understanding and remembering the card powers to fully enjoy the game. I can tell you it is very much worth the effort. 

Dancing Queen royalty

Photo from Matagot

The Matagot international edition of Dancing Queen was released in June 2025. I signed the game with them mid 2023. At the time the rough plan was to release the game by end 2024. I received my designer's advance shortly after signing the game. That was nice. Not all publishers do that for their designers. I am lucky. 

I get half yearly royalty reports from Matagot, to let me know how many copies have been sold, and how much royalty they will pay me. From the release date in June till the end of September, 1700+ copies have been sold. That's certainly much much much better than what I can achieve by myself as a tiny indie publisher. They have sold more in 3 months than I have sold in 3 years. That's the difference between an established publisher and indie publisher. 

I have no idea why there is one copy sold before the release date. Might be some administrative correction. Or pre-order? 

Caper: Europe and game reviews

 

I have written about Caper before. I played the physical game then. Caper: Europe is an updated version of Caper, and I played it online. It is mostly the same game with minor adjustments. The game seems to be doing well. It's getting a new edition after all. Had the first version not done well, the publisher wouldn't have started work on an updated version. 

Unfortunately for me, I didn't find the game interesting. It is certainly well produced and it looks great. The back-and-forth drafting means any card you don't use now will potentially be used against you by your opponent. Competition is not only around being stronger in the three locations. This is just one part of scoring. During the game there are several other ways to score points, and you need to consider them all. You want to collect sets of artifacts. You want to make use of specific cards which can score points for you. You must consider the unique powers and bonuses at each location. 

Another game which has a similar tug of war mechanism is Zenith, and that works much better for me. For me, I like that in Zenith you have a sense of building up something, e.g. choosing to advance in techs, and accumulating cards so that you get better discounts in future. In Caper: Europe, I feel I am reacting to the cards I draw trying to make good combos. My reason for a game not working for me is often the same - it doesn't offer me anything I haven't seen or experienced before. That is not a very good way of judging whether a game is good or not. It is only a measure of whether I have played something similar. I might like a game which many others don't like because they have played similar games and I have not. Let me diverge into a different topic. 

~~~~~

I am always a little uncomfortable thinking about my blog posts as game reviews. The first problem is I often play a game just once. This might not be sufficient for me to give a fair review. Most of what I write should probably be called first impressions than reviews. Some game reviews by other bloggers and vloggers regurgitate the rules, which is not something I like doing. I omit many rule details, but I do write about some specific rules which I find interesting. 

When I write a blog post about a game, it is more of sharing an experience and introducing a game which others may not have heard of. I share why I like or do not like the game. If I help someone discover a game they like and enjoy, that makes me happy. One thing I have now come to appreciate is that generally there are no bad games. I have this appreciation after going into game design and publishing myself. Games as a product are designed to be fun and to make people happy. Most of the time they will work for the people they are designed for. There certainly are many games which don't work for me, and I can explain why they don't, but now I can better appreciate who they will work for. I can see what they have which makes them fun for their intended audience. There are no bad games, only bad fit games. You can easily imagine how Brass: Birmingham will completely kill the joy of game night if you try to foist it on a group of non gamers.

One awkward situation as I transition from purely a gamer to also being a designer and publisher is how I write about other local Malaysian games. In the past I never thought highly of local games. Now that I am friends with many local designers and publishers, it would not be nice of me to write poor reviews of my friends' games. I don't want to hurt their feelings. I often have my own games criticised, and it doesn't feel good to hear people say that your game is bad. It is something I have to learn to handle. I know I can't please everyone. I just hope I do please someone. I have now come to appreciate that in most cases I am not the intended audience of local games. That's why they don't work for me. But I want to talk about them, because I want to help my friends reach their intended audience. It's about finding the right game for the right person. 

I still do what I do. I'll tell you I don't like this massive hit of a game. And I promise to do my best to articulate why. Perhaps the reason why I don't like a game will be exactly why you will like it. 

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves 2nd edition

It's a scary thing to browse the ratings and comments page of my own games on BoardGameGeek.com. It's not easy to take criticism. I try my best not to be defensive about my games. I try to understand why some don't like my games. I try to learn from feedback my games receive. The most important thing about rejection is what we learn from them. And then there are some comments which give me huge encouragement. 

I came across this comment from a gamer in the US about Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves: "Seems a luckfest at first, then you realize that you can share info to collude, then you realize that you can give false info for your own gain..."  It is such a wonderful feeling to feel understood. I know one of the weaknesses of my games is that the fun part is not immediately apparent. In an age of short attention spans and more new games than anyone can keep up with, this is a handicap. It was a very moving moment for me to read this comment. A fellow gamer from the other side of the world understands what I am trying to do with my design, and he appreciates it. 

I ran out of stock of my first print run of Ali Baba around mid of the year. In preparing for the second print run, I made few changes. The first batch of games has just landed. I was a little late in starting work on this, resulting in a tight timeline. I needed the games to be ready in time for the upcoming Thailand Boardgame Show in Bangkok 7 - 9 Nov 2025. To be safe, I had to arrange some of the games to be sent by air. The rest would be by sea. 

One thing I added in the second edition is Chinese language. Both Simplified and Traditional Chinese rules are added. I added Chinese text to the cover too. I am hoping to promote my game in the Chinese language world, not only the Chinese community in Malaysia, but also China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. One interesting point which Jon shared with me was adding Chinese to the cover might cheapen the look, and I realise I do agree with that. When I pick up a boardgame, if it is a Chinese edition, I automatically wonder whether this is a pirated copy. There is an association with inferiority. This is a problem with Malaysians. We still have this mindset, even though by now most of the boardgames from international brands that we buy and play are made in China. 

I also needed to do some standardisation. In the first edition, I had forgotten to put my logo on the box front. Yes, rookie mistake. The cover has not been designed to allow for the logo, and adding the logo now makes the whole thing look a little too busy. But I think I should have the brand up front.

I wanted the "2nd edition" to be prominent, because I wanted the cover to say "this game is so good  that they needed to print a 2nd edition". So yes. Marketing. 

For this printing I went through the formal CE testing. This is in preparation to be able to export the game with minimal hassle. 

Three rulebooks in different languages

I make use of the four sides of the bottom box piece to advertise my other games - Pinocchio, Snow White and Dancing Queen. 

1st and 2nd edition comparison - box front

1st and 2nd edition comparison - box back

I love taking shots like this

There is no change to the components or gameplay

Coinsides #4

 

The latest version of Coinside is on Kickstarter! This is a luxury accessory which works well with role playing games, because one Coinside works as multiple types of dice, from D2 to D20. And it looks amazing! 

Check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ex1stgames/cosmic-coinsides-14-dice-in-one-luxury-spinner 

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.