Friday Night Shots – A Quick & Dirty Top 50

Welcome back to the bar!

Last month, I mentioned how this is almost becoming a monthly thing instead of a weekly thing.

That was…one month ago.

I guess it is!

Welcome to the finest bar in the city, because it’s so clean.

It certainly is uncontaminated by customers.

So that gives us time to talk boardgames!

Don’t mind the jukebox. It was fixed, but for some reason it just started putting out loud white noise.

The workmen said that it was a glitch in the system, but I’m pretty sure they actually just put that in there because I wouldn’t pay them.

Anyway, since we have the bar to ourselves, how about we take another gander at our Top 50 board games?

Every two years, I do a Top 50 in January. This Top 50 (well, it was Top 25 until I actually had played enough games to make it a Top 50 in 2024) is based on every game I’ve played up to the end of the previous year.

The 2024 list had some surprising movement from the 2022 one!

As part of the Heavy Cardboard Patreon, Edward invited members to submit their own Top 50 in order to collate it into a Top 50 list from the herd.

(Speaking of which, I highly recommend joining if you like playthroughs of bunches of games!)

I decided to submit mine last night, and I basically just grabbed the Top 50 from 2024, added some games played in 2024 that weren’t on that list, and then used PubMeeple to rank them all (there were 63 games in total).

That’s why I call this a “quick and dirty” Top 50, as there was no chance for any other games that missed the cut in 2024 to be included.

My next one is scheduled for January 2026 so it could be quite different from this one! Some of those might have moved up, but I would be willing to bet that all of the games played in 2024 on this list will at least be up there next time, even if they don’t quite make the Top 50.

I’m going to list them here and then talk about a few of the surprises (and there were some big ones!).

1 Ark Nova
2 The Prodigals Club
3 Civolution
4 1960: The Making of the President
5 Combat Commander: Europe
6 Viscounts of the West Kingdom
7 Scholars of the South Tigris
8 The White Castle
9 Wayfarers of the South Tigris
10 Grand Austria Hotel
11 Shipyard 2nd Edition
12 Rock Hard 1977
13 Clank! In! Space!: A Deck-Building Adventure
14 Kanban: Driver’s Edition
15 Lorenzo il Magnifico
16 Tyrants of the Underdark
17 Underwater Cities
18 Ezra & Nehemiah
19 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil 235-284 AD
20 Revive
21 Inventors of the South Tigris
22 Obsession
23 Architects of the West Kingdom
24 Pirates of Maracaibo
25 Combat Commander: Pacific
26 Commands & Colors: Ancients
27 Dominant Species
28 Commands & Colors: Medieval
29 Terraforming Mars
30 Amalfi: Renaissance
31 Guild Academies of Valeria
32 Great Western Trail: New Zealand
33 Schadenfreude
34 Paladins of the West Kingdom
35 Earth
36 Dune: Imperium
37 On Mars
38 Great Western Trail: Argentina
39 Shadow Kingdoms of Valeria
40 The Vale of Eternity
41 SCOUT
42 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan
43 Space Base
44 Root
45 Radlands
46 Cape May
47 Pax Pamir: Second Edition
48 Teotihuacan: City of Gods
49 Harmonies
50 Kutna Hora: the-City-of-Silver

One surprise for me is how Prodigals Club moved all the way up to Number 2.

This is by Czech Games Edition.

I was not expecting that!

I haven’t even played it since I did the 2024 list (it was Number 4 then).

I guess this is a sign that I need to play it again!

The second surprise (though not as big) was that Civolution jumped up to Number 3 right off the bat.

This is by Pegasus Spiele.

That may have been helped by my play of it last weekend, because I truly do love this game.

Once again, on my third play, I didn’t feel like I was being very focused (like my first two games where I didn’t do well at all), and yet somehow I got 194 points and won!

It’s something that should be played more often than not just to keep the rules straight.

However, I did a pretty good job with them going 2 months between plays.

There’s just so much goodness in this game.

Two equal surprises were almost completely due to playing them online in the last few months.

Grand Austria Hotel is available on Yucata and I’ve been playing the hell out of it with two guys from the Pixelated Cardboard Discord group (you should join us!)

This is by Lookout Games.

I’m finally getting this game in my brain, enough that I can do well!

I have my share of terrible games, but I’ve won twice and haven’t embarrassed myself the other times (except once or twice).

The other one that’s much higher due to online play is Lorenzo il Magnifico, which is available on Boardgame Arena.

This is by Cranio Creations.

That game is magnificent (Editor: “I see what you did there”) and again, I’m starting to get it now that I’ve played it a fair bit.

I’m not lagging far behind everybody all the time!

In fact, our games have been very close and I’ve won a time or two.

Two other 2024 games jumped up into the top 15 right off the bat.

Of course, there’s Shipyard (Second Edition), from Delicious Games.

Wow, this game is brilliant. Read my review for why!

That was introduced to me by Edward at Heavy Cardboard (aka: The Bane of Dave’s Wallet) as was Civolution.

And finally, I can’t stop before mentioning Jackie Fox’s Rock Hard 1977 from Devir Games.

This game is just mesmerizing, pulling you into the theme so hard that even somebody who doesn’t like worker placement may find themselves enjoying themselves.

There were other surprises as well, but those are the noteworthy ones to me.

I can’t wait to do my 2026 Top 50, after playing many more new to me games this year, and see what other changes might be happening!

Any thoughts on the list, or the games therein?

Drink up and let me know in the comments.