The Top 100 Board Games of All Time (#90 — #81)
…And Yes I Know At This Rate I’ll Be Done Writing This List In 2026
If this is the first encounter with this list! STOP! Go and read the first entry (#100 — #91) first before coming back to this. Or at least read the disclaimer in its introduction:
Bear in mind that this ranking is limited only to the games I’ve tried, and based chrpurely on my subjective opinions (I basically selected every game I rated 7.5 and higher on BGG and threw them into this ranking engine). So if you see a game here you despise with the passion of a thousand exploding suns please feel free to ignore it. Similarly if this list is missing a game you love so much you have its cover art tattooed right above your unmentionables please forgive its omission, and comment it below! Lastly, note that the main purpose of this article is for me to engage in some writing again after 10 years of “if/else/while/for” being 99% of my written words. Hence I will be spending approximately 3% of my effort giving proper, well-explained reviews and the remaining 97% spraying verbal diarrhea like a dictionary that just ate some Samyang double spicy noodles.
Having said that, onwards!
#90 — Star Realms / Star Realms: Frontiers
There’s something truly beautiful about a well designed small box game. The sleekness of it. The sheer spatial efficiency. The ability to stuff it into your pocket for mobile entertainment during the inevitable zombie apocalypse. In a world where board games are increasingly arriving in boxes large enough to act as temporary housing, there’s just something about a well designed small box game that pierces through my heart and exits out my left back pocket. Yet even among the flood of small box games on the market, Star Realms stands short amidst teacup pigs, baby Yoda and the word count of this article as a shining example that big isn’t always better.
Star Realms is, as you may have surmised, a small box game that comes in a box the size of a deck of cards (if that deck of cards had subsisted on a diet of pop tarts for the last 20 years). Here it is seated next to some Standard Sized Reference Objects™
It is also a deck building game, where two players race to pew pew and pow pow each other’s health to 0. For those unfamiliar with the term deck-building, here’s a brief primer:
Unlike card games like Magic: the Gathering where you play with a pre-selected set of cards, in a deck-building game you start the game with just a few “basic” cards. Some of these basic cards give you resources you can use to purchase more powerful cards, which you then add to your deck. The end result is that as the game progresses, each player’s deck evolves into its own unique smorgasbord of cards which, if you’ve made good decisions, combo together to give more powerful pows and more pewieful pews. This freedom to experiment, and create frankensteinish combinations of powers and abilities that work only 1% of the time (but oh how satisfying it is when they do) means I’m always down to play a good deck-builder. And sure you can do the same when crafting your “MTG”, “Pokemon” or “MyLittlePonyDeathWars — NeighOne will ReMane” decks too, but it will never feel quite as spontaneous or accessible as doing it in a deck-building game.
I realize now that I’ve spoken far too much about tiny boxes and big decks, and not enough about the actual game so I shall just conclude this spiel by saying that Star Realms is the microwave pizza of deck building games. Sure there are other deck-building games out there (and in my list) that give you more bells and whistles and infusions of truffle to play with, but if you’re looking for an accessible, easy to learn game you can throw on the table and always have a good time without fear of burning down your kitchen, Star Realms has to be my number one pick.
P.S. there are two versions of this game, but I highly recommend Star Realms: Frontiers as a first pick
#89— Whitehall Mystery
My introduction to the world of Hidden Movement games, where one (or more) parties move around on a map in secret, while the other players try to hunt them down. Basically, it’s hide-and-seek for the physically unmotivated. In Whitehall Mystery, one party plays Jack the Ripper who has just separated a bunch of lads and ladies from their limbs, and now has to visit four different locations on the map to dump said limbs in a campaign of terror. Like any good investor, ole Jack knows the important of diversifying his portfolio, so each limb has to be in a separate quadrant of the map. Meanwhile the other 1–3 players do their best to hunt down Jack’s trail and capture him before he finishes his macabre delivery order. The detectives are always visible at their exact location on the board, while Jack skulks in the shadows and tracks the locations he’s visiting behind a screen on a piece of paper. By examining a location they’re next to, an investigator can find out from Jack if he had ever visited this location.
Early plays of Whitehall Mystery tend to be relatively straightforward — Jack visits location. Jack drops arm. Jack makes a bee-line in the shortest path to the next location. After a game or two though, plays start to get… wilier. A clever Jack can deliberately pepper the map with tracks that seemingly point to one quadrant of the map, when his actual target is in the opposite direction. Or he might see that the investigators are hot on this trail, and then spend a couple of turns circling round the area while the investigators rush past him. To make matters more complicated for the investigators, Jack also has access to special powers he can use several times throughout the game. One lets him zip two locations in one turn, while another lets him slip through an alleyway to the other side of a neighborhood. The end result is trail across the map with enough loops, twists and double-backs to make an IKEA store designer weep.
I’ve played many games involving trickery and deceit, but few make me feel as devilishly cunning as playing Jack in a game of Whitehall Mystery does. Similarly when you’re playing the investigator and you make exactly the right prediction of where Jack is, when you tell your friends “Ignore all this bullshit, I think he’s actually right next to us lets spend a turn and catch him.” and it turns out you’re actually right — oooh you feel like a veritable GENIUS. One of my favorite board game memories is watching a friend’s smug smile dribble off his face after the following exchange:
Him: “You’re @#$@# slow dude, I’m super far away from you now”
Me: “Something about the way you just said that makes me feel you’re actually right next to me now”
Him: “…”
My hunch turned out correct and two hops and a capture action later, justice was done and the killer was no longer on the loose. Having caught the rat bastard, I spent the next few minutes going “BA BAP BADABAP BADABAP BADABAP BADBAP BADBABAAAA” in a mildly off-key rendition of the theme from the BBC Sherlock Holmes series while he buried his head in his hands and wept*.
Good times.
*Ok he may not have wept, but it definitely makes me feel happier imagining that he did.
#88 — Funkoverse
There are two kinds of people. The former sees the walls around different IP fictional universes as an inviolable barrier against chaos and darkness. Sure they might tolerate the Galaxy Rangers appearing in Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue (you’d think I’d be revealing my age here but you’d be surprised how old I was when I was still watching those shows), or maybe even tolerate an occasional Aliens vs. Predators movie, but anything past that is an affront to humanity. The second kind on the other hand sees these walls as prison cells, and dream of nothing more than seeing the Count from Sesame Street staked by Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a fight for the Iron Throne.
I belong to the second kind. And in the past I could only get my crossover fix by plumbing the murky depths of fanfiction for the occasional (ok, very frequent) appearance of a Harry Potter x Star Wars/Harry Potter x Avengers/My Little Pony x Saving Private Ryan crossover. But then I discovered this game, and suddenly seeing the Joker, Voldemort and the Night King fight an epic 3v3 battle with Aggretsuko, a T-Rex and Blanche from 80s sitcom the Golden Girls was no longer just something reserved for my wettest of dreams.
If however you’re more concerned about the gameplay aspect of Funkoverse, then I’m glad to tell you that beneath the Frankenstein mix of intellectual properties lies a good if not excellent miniature fighting game. It’s definitely a little on the light side, and families should have no problems playing this with their children, but the core engine of the game is a solid one. Character abilities are simple, yet unique and evocative of that character, and can combo in a multitude of fun ways. Of special interest is that way the game implements a cooldown system on the abilities and items in the game. Simple enough anyone could learn it in 30 seconds, yet giving rise to lots of interesting timing decision throughout the game.
Then again who cares. You can be the Kool-aid man. You can be the shark from Jaws. You can be darkwing duck.
DARKWING DUCK.
#87— Fugitive
Fugitive is, like Whitehall Mystery, a two player hidden movement game in which one player plays as a detective trying to track down the trail of a cunning fugitive as she escapes to her hideout. And while Whitehall Mystery is already the condensed essence of a hidden movement game, Fugitive takes that refinement even further. If a big beefy game like Fury of Dracula is the hidden movement equivalent of Moby Dick, then Whitehall Mystery would be its CliffsNotes, and Fugitive would be a post-it note with the words “Man hunts for big white Dick”.
Instead of running around from point to point on a map board, the fugitive instead has a much simpler job of laying down facedown numbered location cards representing their trail, starting with 0 (their start point) all the way up to 42 (her successful escape). Meanwhile, the detective is trying their best to figure out just what cards you’ve already laid down. Each time they manage to guess the number of one of your facedown location cards, you have to reveal it and they get one step closer to putting you behind bars for the crime of — well they don’t actually say. But just assume it’s something truly heinous. Like designing pants with no pockets. Or eating pizza with a knife and fork.
To make things difficult for the Fugitive, they are only allowed to lay down a card once per turn, AND each card they place has to be a maximum of 3 steps higher than the number they placed before. The fugitive can also put down extra facedown cards to boost her movement, but risks both emptying her hand and ending up with a turn where they can do absolutely nothing.
This simple set of rules gives rise to an open playing field chock full of deduction, bluffing and counter-bluffing. A location card with a stack of other cards discarded beneath it might be a sign that the thief is taking a big leap to the next location, and rushing to the end. Or it could be a complete fake-out and the thief has actually wasted all those cards just to increase their current location card by one step. In fact Fugitive is probably, if not my favorite, then definitely at least my most played game in what I like to call the “I know you know I know, but do you know if I know you know I know” genre of games. It’s small, it’s easy to teach, and if you know what I know you know I know you’ll know it’s definitely worth a buy.
Or steal. If you’re looking for the full thematic experience I mean.
#86 — Shards of Infinity
Shards of Infinity is, like Star Realms, a competitive deck builder where two parties try to whittle away at each other’s health until someone drops dead. It trades gold, starships and space bases for gems, sci-fi heroes and monsters, but it’s mostly the same concept. So pretty much everything I said about Star Realms applies to Shards of Infinity as well, with the exception that Shards comes in a slightly larger box. But in that slightly larger box comes a MUCH bigger boom. One that propels it all the way from Star Realm’s 90th placing to this much higher 86th place position.
What elevates Shards of Infinity over the other deck builders I’ve played, is an ingenious mechanic where each card can have increasingly powerful effects based on your “Mastery Level”. For example, a card that does 2 damage at Mastery Level 0 might instead do 6 damage, heal all your heroes, and remind you to call your mother on special occasions at Mastery Level 20.
Your Mastery Level can be increased once per turn by spending some of your gems, or through certain card effects. This immediately adds a new level to the decision making involved in spending your gems. Do you use them to buy a card you desperately need now? Or use it to boost your Mastery Level and rush to unlock the next level effect of one of your cards.
Another nice thing about this mechanic is that it reduces the problem some deck builders have where early game cards become relatively useless in the late game*. Here the cards can grow with you.
But by far my absolute favorite thing about Shards of Infinity is the “Infinity Shard” card (well named game this one). And before I get into what that card does, I first need to tell you a little something about myself. I am infinitely predisposed towards the “One Hit KO” style of combat. Sure some people enjoy the “death by a thousand cuts” style of gameplay, where you slowly wither away your opponent with a series of deft attacks. But those people are crazy. The only true way to play a game is to spend 99% of the game charging up an “attack” before hulk smashing your opponents so hard they vanish into the distance as a twinkling star. I don’t just want to win. I want to win big.
So what does that have to do with the Infinity Shard card? Well everyone starts with one, and just like the others it has increasingly powerful effects as you increase in Mastery Level. Initially, it does a paltry 2 damage. At Mastery Level 20, it does a still pretty paltry 5 damage instead. But at Mastery Level 30? It does infinity damage. Yes you read that right, infinity. Your opponent’s defenses might look more impenetrable than the skulls of your local flat earth society , but play that card at Mastery Level 30 and they’re toast.
So naturally 95% of my games of Shards of Infinity see me relentlessly increasing my Mastery Level at the expense of everything else. And usually I get crushed into oblivion long before I hit that mark. But once, just once, I hit Mastery 30 with the Infinity Shard card in hand while a single hit away from defeat. Barely believing it, I slowly tipped the card over the table and uttered with poise and dignity —
“TO INFINITY AND BEYOND FOO”**.
*Shards also deals with the issue of resource (gems) generating cards being relatively useful in the end game, by allowing you to spend those resources purchasing “Mercenary” cards for one-off effects without cluttering up your end-game deck. As this does not allow you to do more than 9999999999999999 damage in a turn it is relatively less important to me, but I thought it’s still a nice thing you should know about.
** My apologies to the Walt Disney Company
#85 — Sentinels of the Multiverse
Ahh Sentinels. The poster child for inner beauty. Probably my least favorite artwork in any of the games I’ve played. Which isn’t to say that the artwork is terrible. Instead, it’s something far worse — mediocrely decent. It is the average pun of board games — the pun that is neither witty enough for an appreciative chuckle nor terrible enough for a good natured groan. The kind that attracts looks of awkward derision normally reserved for internet catfishing, Martin Shkreli and people who hang the toilet roll in an under orientation.
As you might have surmised from the cover art, Sentinels of the Multiverse is a cooperative superhero game. Each player selects a deck of cards representing a single hero and work together to try and defeat an evil villain and their minions. There’s also an environment deck that introduces various hazards (and rarely some boosts) as you try to defeat your dastardly foe. Usually this is the part where I start waxing lyrical about why this game is amazing. Unfortunately, the art isn’t the only issue I have with this game.
For one thing, the game is fiddly as heck, with modifiers upon stacking modifiers applying to every conceivable factor in the game. How bad can it be you might be asking. Surely it’s just the usual modifiers for things like health and total damage. Well yes those exist. But how much damage you take from a certain elemental type? There’s a modifier for that. Modifiers from multiple sources cancelling each other out? Yeah you gotta keep track of those too. Modifiers that modify based on values modified by other modifiers?
Modified, modified, modified.
I haven’t yet seen a modifier that changes your damage based on the the current phase of the moon or how many times you’ve been to the toilet but I would not be surprised if one did.
Another issue is that some heroes seem a little underpowered, while others seem almost essential for every fight (though if you pick up one or two expansions this is probably not as big an issue).
So what’s a game like that doing in a list like this? Well for one thing it is, in my opinion, the best damn superhero game on the market. And it achieves this hallowed status by giving me exactly what I want in a superhero game — which is to feel like a superhero. The heroes in this game are a work of design genius with every hero not just playing differently, but playing in a manner that’s more evocative of their powers than most superhero video games.
To illustrate this, I’ll talk a little bit about two of the heroes in the base game — Tachyon and Bunker
Tachyon is a speedster hero like the Flash or Quicksilver. Each of her cards does a tiny, tiny bit of damage, but she’s able to draw and play a ton of them out every turn. Playing her feels exactly like how a speedster character should play, as you zoom around dealing multiple hits to every enemy on the board. You don’t just feel dangerous, you feel fast.
And now for Bunker, perhaps my favorite hero of the lot. Bunker is a giant robot/armored human that looks like Iron Man and Juggernaut got jiggy with it. He can shift between three modes — a recharge mode that lets you draw more cards, an upgrade mode that let’s you play more cards to increase his abilities, and a turret mode where you can’t draw or play cards, but you do extra damage. Isn’t that immediately beautifully thematic. To up the ante, he even has a card called “Omni-Cannon” that can be charged by discarding 3 cards beneath it each turn. When you decide to fire it, you destroy (remove from the game) every card beneath it and do 2 damage for each of those cards. Stack up enough cards, and you can potentially kill every enemy with a single blast.
I once spent an entire game just hunkering down in upgrade mode charging up my OMNI-CANNON. The land was in chaos. Volcanos erupted. Minions piled up so high the board looked like a Universal Studios souvenir stand. My team mates begged me do something, anything, besides charge my cannon, but my single-minded focus to One Punch Man the villain to death would not be shaken. Eventually, it became obvious that there was no way in hell we would ever win normally, and that my ridiculously stacked Omni-cannon card was our only Hail Mary chance of success. And so my teammates fell, one by one, doing everything in their power to ensure that I survived long enough to one-hit the boss. And finally, one turn away from death, I let loose my Omni-cannon with a resounding roar of “Alexa, play We Are the Champions” and —
“Wait. Wait. During the enemy phase did we account for the +1 modifier to each minion’s damage?”
So yeah, it turned out I was supposed to be long dead and we lost the game. But man oh man, those final moments. When my teammates dropped like flies throwing themselves in front of me while I charged my attack in a Dragonball Z episode come to life. When our resident math wizard’s answer to whether I would survive long enough to win was 3 minutes of scribbling on pen and paper followed by a resigned “F**k if I know”. Many years will go by before I forget how epic those final turns felt, or the look on everyone’s faces when we realized we’d been cheering on a hero that’d dropped dead two turns ago.
There are many games out there that do pretty well in every facet of their design. Games with decent art, decent gameplay, that tell decent stories.
Most of those games are not on this list.
Sentinels of the Multiverse is not one of those games. It’s fiddly, less streamlined than a decomposing blobfish, and about half as attractive. Yet the core experience of its hero play has led to some of my most memorable gaming moments. So I guess it’s pretty appropriate that a game about superheroes turns out to be just like one — mostly average, somewhat flawed, yet elevated to greatness by a singular strength.
P.S. I have just learned that there’s a companion app that you can use to keep track of the different modifiers and things like HP and Damage. I haven’t tried it, but if it is even remotely workable I HIGHLY recommend using it.
P.P.S. There’s also a second edition in the works with MUCH better art by the same, but very much improved artist.
#84 — Petrichor
Some board games take a while to get. Their first few plays start out average, and then you slowly dive deeper into their depths and discover little surprises that have you going from meh to ehh to ooooh-ba-beh. Others, you fall in love with two rounds in, or in the case of my all-time favorite game (no spoilers) — midway through reading the rules.
And then there’s Petrichor. Six simple words on the back of the box, and my heart went aflutter, my fingers swiped right and my credit card, well, also swiped right.
These 6 words go “In Petrichor, you are a cloud”.
A cloud.
I never knew I wanted to be a cloud and then I read those words and suddenly all I wanted to do was to quit my job and spend the rest of my days floating 5000km in the air while occasionally peeing on trees and shit.
This is normally the point where I go into a brief summary of how the game works, but I’m confident that by now no one is actually reading this because you’re all desperately trying to purchase this game so that you too, may be a cloud. Instead I’ll just say that Petrichor is a fun, area-control style game where you compete with other clouds to water plants and score them for points. Go forth my friends. Be clouds.
#83 — Modern Art
I’ll confess that I bought this game not from knowledge of its gameplay, or even a love for its theme, but solely because I thought some of my art classmates from school would get a kick out of playing it. Having gone through six years of art studies, you’d think I’d be at least mildly capable of appreciating the subtleties, emotions and meanings behind actual Modern Art. Unfortunately, my little engineer brain is incapable with dealing with anything more abstract than a stick figure.
So suffice to say that all I’ve taken away from six years of art classes is the ability to draw comics of little bowling pin shaped blob people, a thorough understanding of just how colorblind I am, and some of the most imaginative and riotous friends you can find this side of fiction. But more on that later.
Going back to the game — Modern Art is essentially an auction game by the great Reiner Knizia, where each player auctions off a painting in their supply for some ka-ching ka-ching. Each player starts with a set of paintings in their hand, each by one of five different artists, and auction them to the other players through different auction mechanics (e.g. simultaneous auctions, single-bid auctions, first person to accept your offer gets it isn’t-really-an-auction auction).
At the end of each round, the paintings you’ve successfully bid on are then sold once more for various sums of money (hopefully more than the amount you spent on them). The key thing about this second sell-off is that the amount of money you get for each of the paintings you’ve won depends purely on how popular that artist, or more specifically how many paintings of that artist have been auctioned off this round. Only the three most popular artists’ paintings are actually worth any money, while paintings by the bottom two are worth the grand sum of absolute jack shit. I would insert some cynical joke here about how that’s just like the real Art world but frankly my knowledge of economics is limited to knowing that my local canteen aunty’s prices rise and fall completely independent of supply and demand.
As with most other Reiner Knizia games (the man’s a genius), the implications of this simple ruleset aren’t obvious when read, but shine immediately upon your first play. Say it’s the first round and a Manuel Carvalho painting is being auctioned off. No one knows for sure whether Manuel will be a popular artist this round, so the painting gets auctioned off for half a pittance. But by the time it’s your turn to auction off a painting, three Manuel Carvalho paintings have already been auctioned off. Suddenly ole Manny is looking like the hottest artist in town. A veritable Picasso* of the modern art scene.
So maybe you shouldn’t auction off another Manuel painting. After all, it’ll just benefit everyone who got it cheaper earlier in the round by making their Manuel paintings even more valuable. Then again, money is money. If you do auction off a Manuel painting, surely those fools you call friends will drive up the bid so high you’ll double your cash just selling that one painting. Or maybe it might be more worth it trying to push the second most popular artist up? After all you already have one of their paintings…
Auction games naturally tend to be loud, noisy affairs. But by giving the players almost full control over all the market pricing forces, Modern Art takes this to the next level. The setting may bring to mind the environment of a high society art auction, but the reality of it is closer to what one might see at my local wet market.
Playing this with my art classmates is especially entertaining because you see them go from:
“The clean lines of this painting force order upon the inherent chaos of its wild colors. Order amidst chaos. Chaos amidst order. What a beautiful dichotomy.”
To:
“Wah lao what kind of stupid ass bid is that. Ok lor. Win liao lor. Win liao”
In the time it takes to make 1 overpriced bid.
It’s pretty hard to go wrong with any one of Reiner Knizia’s classics (and at this point he has more classics than the Penguin Books section of my local bookstore), but Modern Art remains steadily in my top 3. So if you’re looking for an auction style game to add to your collection you’d be pretty remiss not to give this one a go.
Although you might want to wait for when CMON hires me to do the art for a new version. I promise only 98 percent of the artworks will feature bowling pin shaped blobs in them. The other 2 percent will have peanut shaped blobs. Yes the difference is important.
*I can proudly say that 10 years after my A-Level art exams I can still remember how to spell the Picasso painting “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”. Mostly because my Art teacher set that as the password to our iMacs. Which goes to show that if you want a teenager to accomplish something just set it as a barrier between them and internet access.
#82 — The Resistance
The quintessential hidden traitor game. Just as Fugitive is the purest form of a hidden movement game, so is The Resistance the purest form of the hidden traitor game. It is the pearl milk tea of hidden traitor games — pure, simple and timeless. Sure other games may have come along that have changed up the formula in interesting ways. Ones with more unique themes or which integrate other game mechanics. But there comes a day when one goes to a boba tea store, sees a 20 syllable monstrosity like “Roasted Hojicha Cappucino Soda with Chicken Zucchini Pearls” on the menu, and longs for the simple comfort of some plain old pearl milk tea.
Now if you’re unfamiliar with what a hidden traitor game is, stop reading and go play it now! All you need to experience this decade old monolith of board gaming is two things:
- A copy of The Resistance (the Avalon version is recommended)
- 4 to 9 friends
Fake versions of this game are everywhere so do check that your game seems to be of good quality. It seems like generally good advice to check the quality of the friends as well, but frankly you’re probably going to lose them in a game or two anyway so just find someone expendable. Like a roommate you can’t stand. Or that one friend who keeps messaging you on Facebook to “join them in an exciting adventure towards financial independence”. If this sounds like a message you’ve received, please ignore it. The only way you’d have a greater chance of ending up in a pyramid scheme is by inventing a time machine and travelling back to 2600 BC. Damn it I went off track again.
Right, so what is hidden traitor game? Well as you might have surmised from the name, it’s a (mostly) cooperative game where one or more of your team members is secretly a traitor working for the other side. The non-traitors are usually working together to accomplish some kind of mission while rooting out the devious backstabbers amongst them, while the traitors are doing their best to sabotage the mission while remaining the picture of innocence. Or since it’s 2021, I can basically explain it by saying “Among Us”.
It’s not the kind of game I’d recommend to everyone. In fact, my hidden traitor games are the only games I hear being regular rejected by friends throughout my different gaming sessions. But maybe an afternoon of subverterge and schemes, deduction and deceit sounds like a grand ole time to you. In that case, you’d be hard pressed to find a better hidden traitor game than The Resistance*.
And now for a tale of woe and betrayal. One of my dear friends F* once looked me in the eye and went “Chin Yang, I promise you. I am on. Your. Team.” This is a friend who is, Y chromosome aside, as close to a carbon clone to me as seemed humanly possible. So of course I trusted her. And of course she betrayed me.
But I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, I would have done the same thing to her.
(Several games later I did)
*Well actually, there is one. Quite a bit higher up in this list in fact. But it also takes literally 10 times longer to play so I wouldn’t recommend it to most people.
**The friends I met through volunteering are some of the nicest, kindest, best people I know. They also love hidden traitor games and can lie so convincingly I’m pretty sure they could use a polygraph test as a ruler. Humans.
#81 — Arboretum
Me: “Oh heavens above what a wondrous small box I hath found. Looketh upon it’s gentle cover and its beautiful rainbow tree. Doth it not looketh like thine most gentlest and kindest of games. How delightful. How quaint. Come into my kallax bosom and let us explore the pastoral wonders of botany together.”
Arboretum: “f**k you”
The above is an (abridged) transcription of my experience chancing upon this game in a local board game shop and then actually playing it. For the uninitiated, tabling your first game of Arboretum is kind of like buying a CD named “My Little Care Bear’s Strawberry Shortcakes” and then discovering every track is just 25 minutes of heavy death metal screaming by someone in a unicorn onesie.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. To understand why, you need to know how the game works and the one spicy rule that turns Arboretum from a game about growing trees into a game about growing trees fertilized by the corpses of your enemies.
The gameplay is straightforward enough. Each person starts with 7 cards in hand, each a tree with a number ranging from 1 to 8, and takes turns drawing and placing cards into their little tree garden. At the end of the game, whoever has the nicest Arboretum wins! And how do we judge the nicest arboretum? Well, points are awarded for each tree type in your arboretum proportional to the longest ascending (remember the trees are numbered 1 to 8) line of trees that start and end with that tree type.
Yes, you’re right, exactly like in real life.
Here’s the rub though. Everyone ends the game with 7 cards in hand, and during point scoring only the person with the highest sum of that tree in their hand gets to score it. Right now some of you are either wincing in pain or have abandoned this article to immediately add this game to cart. But for those who don’t quite get the implications of this devilish rule yet, just imagine this:
So let’s say you end the game with a BEAUTIFUL line of willow trees. A veritable coniferous* conga line of deciduous delights. A towering lineage of trees standing proud across 7 generations. But alas you’ve thrown every willow you got into your garden, and so end the game with no willows in hand. Meanwhile your opponent has just ONE willow in hand. Just the one. Those strings of trees? That little willow plantation you’ve spent the entire game tenderly tending and gatherly gathering? They’re now worth NOTHING. Zilch nadda zip.
This beautiful rule that means you’re always wrestling with the tension of whether to play a card to your garden for more points, or keep it in your hand JUST IN CASE your opponent has decided that, rather than score more points, they’re gonna just try to invalidate the existence of half of your trees. It also means that the game is hella mean.
At the start of our first game, me and my friend J were still cooing over each other’s garden.
“Aww so cute! I love how the Jacaranda’s look”
“Ahh I see you’re going for Willows. You can have this one my good man, just pass me a Oak too”
By the end of the second game however, our conversations sounded more like this —
“Are you crying foo? Do it foo! Shed those tears. Water my trees with the salty remains of your botanic failures.”
And this —
“Please let this be a cherry blossom please let this be a cherry blossom please let this YES HAHA SUCK IT”
And on one occasion this-
“I swear to God if you so much as breathe on that Dogwood there’s going to be one more vegetable at this table”
On the flip side though, if you play cautiously it’s not difficult to ensure that you’ll definitely score a type of tree, e.g. by only playing trees when you already have their high value cards in hand. There’s a certain perverse joy in seeing your opponent clutter up half their hand trying to deny you, while knowing that their efforts are — like a tree without dentures — all bark and no bite.
In conclusion, there’s a lot going for Arboretum. It comes in a small box, it’s easy to teach, and you can bang a game out in half an hour or less. But as you can clearly see — this isn’t not a game for everyone. To put things in perspective, said friend J is the kinda board gamer whose idea of hell is playing any kind of cooperative board game. Whose idea of a fun game night is a viciously competitive game that ends with her bathing in the cardboard entrails of her fallen foes.
Arboretum is her all-time favorite game.
As for me? Well I’m not quite as competitive. But when I’m in the mood for a vicious slugger with beautiful art? When I want to see my friends go through the 5 stages of grief at the sight of a card flip? Then bring out Arboretum and come at me you son of a birch.
*One of my best friends works in a National History Museum and has wished upon me an uncomfortably warm pillow** if I don’t categorically state here that willow trees are not coniferous.
**These are her exact words
Congratulations! If you’ve made it thus far you either really love board games or you’re one of the friends I’ve guilt-tripped into proof reading the whole thing (admit it, you skimmed didn’t you).
At the end of the last article (#100 — #91) I said the following:
Tune in, well I’d like to say next week, but is just as likely to range from anywhere from this weekend to the eventual heat death of the universe, for the next installment of games #90 — #81.
Since this entry took only about 6 months to complete I’m keeping to that time range! How’s that for punctuality.
But fret not, I’m guessing that the next entry will come sooner rather than later. For recently my writings have been fueled by the greatest motivation factor known to man — the desire to do anything besides the actual tasks* I’m supposed to be doing.
*I apologize to all the YouTubers who diligently created exercise videos that I’ve been just as diligently flaking out on