BGG Top Games – 3601 – 3700

One reason I love doing these Boardgame Geek century posts about games that are ranked fairly far down is that I get to explore games that are kind of outside the mainstream.

And also, most likely, games that I haven’t played in quite a while.

But the other thing I like about these is that I get weekly content!

That’s why I write these almost a week ahead of time, which can become a problem (like last week, where two games I was talking about actually fell or rose out of the century I was actually talking about).

But I do enjoy them, and I also enjoy the conversations with some of my friends that these posts do trigger.

It’s also enlightening to find out what’s down here in the minor dregs (3600 out of the many many thousands of games is still fairly high) and see if there’s anything that would be cool!

That, and also since wargames are kind of a niche product, it’s neat to see what wargames might be cool to play.

One day I will reach a century where I haven’t played any of the games, and then maybe I’ll stop.

Don’t all cheer at once.

For now, let’s continue!

Here is the list this century is taken from.

Keep in mind that, if you are coming to this post sometime in the future (the way things have been going, that might even be next week!), the numbers will have changed.

A game I’m talking about may not be in this century anymore.

Here are my numbers for this week: 6 games played (thought one of them moved up to last week’s century!) and 1 game owned.

I’m almost over word-budget, so let’s begin!

(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up)

How about starting with a game that I really didn’t like at all?

Alibis (#3603, so watch it jump up into the next century by the time this posts, which it did, to #3565, a monumental leap!)

Alibis is that rare duck that I somehow missed when I first played it!

That’s because for some reason, I hadn’t put a location on my BG Stats entry for it, so it didn’t show up in my stats, which meant I didn’t talk about it in November 2025 when I first (and never again) played it.

It didn’t make that post and I don’t have any pictures of it uploaded to WordPress.

That changes now.

Alibis is a cooperative deduction game where there is a line of suspects for some crime that we’re not aware of.

Each player is given information on two innocent suspects, and they then try to associate those subjects using a one-word clue.

Players then try to figure out, using those clues, who has which suspects and, by process of elimination, figure out who the actual criminal is.

I’m not a huge word game fan, I don’t really do word association much, and this game was kind of painful to play for me.

It’s funny. I’m a writer, but for some reason word games and word association games just turn me off.

We all had a lot of laughs, but it’s not something I want to revisit.

The Dwarves (#3610) is a game I played at the very first Langley Boardgame Marathon back in 2018, and I haven’t had the chance to revisit it (Ryan, the person I played it with, hasn’t brought it out to subsequent marathons).

I remember almost nothing about this game, unfortunately.

I do know it’s a cooperative game based on the Die Zwerge series of novels by Markus Heitz.

You and your fellow players are trying to stop the forces of evil from taking over Girdlegard (that almost sounds like a woman’s clothing option).

There’s a scenario deck of cards with cards taken from an increasing difficulty level of cards, which means the game ramps up as you go along.

As you are trying to fulfill scenario quests, monsters are flooding onto the board.

I remember kind of liking this game. It was an enjoyable experience, though the colour palette of the dice and cards and stuff was a bit hard to parse.

I’d do it again.

Much better, though, and a game that I shouldn’t enjoy but for some reason I do, is Minigolf Designer (#3613), a tile-laying game where you have to picture future connections, which is usually my downfall!

But for some reason, I really like this one.

Players are designing their minigolf courses to try and attract the most customer.

You’re drafting tiles in a similar fashion to Kingdomino, in that you can draft a tile from the market (or you can pass, which ensures that you will be the first draft next round).

Which one you draft will determine when you draft the next round.

You will then place that tile into your minigolf course.

You will be choosing a basic overall design at the beginning of the game, and if you go outside of it during the game, that will cost you points.

There are also investor requirements that will give you points and you are trying to keep an overall Par level of 36 (if you don’t know golf, well, I can’t help you) throughout your course, so keep that in mind as well.

If you have some Par 5 holes, you might need some Par 3 ones to make up for them.

Not to mention you are also trying to fulfill certain goals with your course, like so many

The scoring can be a little hard to parse during the game but you have a general idea of what you want to do.

You will ultimately have a finished 9-hole minigolf course that anybody would like to play on!

Or maybe not, if you suck at designing like I do.

This game is all about planning out things in the abstract with no concrete things to keep in mind.

Which is usually my kryptonite.

But for some reason, this game is awesome for me and I would definitely keep playing it.

On the other hand, there’s Cavern Tavern (#3647).

This game came out to our game day as a lark because it looked kind of cool.

In actually playing it, not so much.

But that’s only one play so maybe it is awesome with some hidden depth!

I haven’t played this one since 2018, so I don’t remember much about it.

I remember that it’s a dice placement game where players are waiters in a tavern, trying to make sure all of the adventurers’ drinks are served as expeditiously as possible.

You’re using your dice to gain ingredients, and each player has an asynchronous power that can be used twice per game (like Keishara above).

You start your round by rolling your dice.

I do like that the last place player gets an extra die to try and help them.

You can then take an order from the mess hall, place a die on a location to do something, complete a drink order, or play an item card.

If you can’t complete an order in that round, then the time track moves forward and you may get fewer points for completing it in a later round.

There are other penalties for not completing orders in a round, like your boss getting pissed off at you.

We only played this with the base game, and that play it a total luckfest.

There is not much in the way of dice mitigation in the base game.

The expansion might make this better, but as a game by itself, this was a total miss for me.

Crosstalk (#3674) is a party word game where you have teams and each team has a clue-giver in a round.

Each clue-giver is aware of what the word is, and they are trying to subtly convey that to their teammates without actually helping the opposing team.

Each clue-giver will first give their team a secret word clue.

Then, however, they give a public clue but the other team gets to try and guess the word.

You are clue-giving your opponent!

But you don’t want to be too obscure because your team gets to try and guess when the opponent clue-giver gives their clue.

At the end, you can give your team a hint by drawing on a card that might direct them to ignore Clue #2 or maybe combine two other clues.

You’re trying to link the public clues you give the other team to the private one you gave to your team.

Ultimately, the team that guesses the right word wins the round.

I’m not a huge word game fan (as I’ve mentioned before) and party games leave me a little cold.

This one was fine but we only had four players, so there was one clue-giver and one guesser per team.

Now that we have 6-8 people at our lunchtime games, this one might go over better.

Hint hint, we’ll see if Vicki is reading this…

The final game that I’ve played in this century I should have played enough to do a review, but sadly never did.

It’s an amazing game!

Red Flag Over Paris (#3687) is another in GMT Games lunchtime games series of Card-driven games.

It was the first successor to Fort Sumter and ancestor to the wonderful Bell of Treason.

This is a game about the rise and fall of the Paris commune after the Franco-Prussian war of 1869-70.

It’s another game where you are trying to have more influence cubes in certain areas, what are called “crisis dimensions,” which may let you score depending on what your round’s objective card is.

In a cool twist on Fort Sumter, the Commune (red) player can only have so many cubes in their reserve.

They can have as many as they want on the board, but if they ever have any removed and they don’t have room for them (based on the Revolutionary Momentum track), then those cubes are lost for good.

It has the same card-driven mechanic as Fort Sumter and other games of its ilk, where you play a card either for its event (if it’s your colour) or for the action points to do something.

There are asymmetric win conditions as well, as the Commune player needs to have more Political VP than the Versailles player has Military VP.

You’re not going for the same thing, though you are trying to deny the other player the VP that they would normally get.

Of course, each VP track is a one line thing, so “gaining” a VP if your opponent has more just brings it closer to the center.

I really like this game and I need to play it again if we ever get down to two players at a work lunch (so probably not, so maybe at a convention?)

How about games that are just interesting?

It wouldn’t be one of these century posts without me talking about a wargame that I wouldn’t mind playing.

In this case, it’s Salerno ’43 (#3614), a GMT wargame by Mark Simonitch that uses his patented ZOC Bond system (it’s probably not patented, but isn’t that a shorthand way of saying “he’s known for this?”).

This is a game about the Allied invasion of Salerno, Italy, in 1943, the initial Allied attempt to invade Italy (as opposed to the later landings at Anzio).

This system has many entries (like Normandy ’44), but all use the same basic system: not only do units exert a Zone of Control (ZOC) that inhibits units from moving and breaking through the lines, but also a ZOC Bond that inhibits units 2 hexes away (along hex spines).

Salerno ’43 is a smaller game than Normandy ’44, so it is probably easier to play.

It has an 8-turn scenario and full 24-turn campaign game, hence the 120-360 minute play time.

It looks really cool!

Skies Above the Reich (#3626) is the predecessor of Storm Above the Reich (which is way down in the 6000s and which is the one I have)

Just like in the game I have and reviewed, you’re running a German air unit with individual pilots, trying to fight back against the incessant Allied bombing of Germany.

Essentially Skies Above the Reich gives you Bf109 planes , while Storm Above the Reich gives you FW-190s (with cannons and all that cool stuff).

I’m not sure how much difference there is, really, especially because you can combine them into one campaign if you want.

So I’ll show Storm pictures and talk about the game. The board will look a bit different because you are fighting B-17s in Skies while you are fighting B-24s in Storm.

So keep that in mind.

I love the campaign style where you have a group of individual pilots who you are trying to keep alive while also trying to make bombing Germany a deadly task for the Americans.

While there is a bunch of dice-rolling for effects, the actual attacks and counterattacks in the game use a card deck instead, giving you results based on the situation you are in.

I love that too.

I played Storm Above the Reich a lot, but just don’t have the space for it anymore.

I had Skies Above the Reich on my P500 order for the reprint, but the whole US shitshow and me not being able to have them shipped to our US post box anymore caused me to cancel all of those.

Which in this case is probably just as well.

Do I need both?

Not really.

But it’s a great game system to play!

Finally, I’ll mention the brand new edition of Container (#3668), not necessarily because I want to play it again (sorry, this game is just not for me), but to note that it’s up here already and was just shipped to backers recently.

Will it jump up and out of this century in less than a week (I’m writing this on Friday)?

Let’s find out.

(Yes it did! It’s now at #3295 and climbing)

I have to say that the components look really nice!

Finally, some honourable mentions that I’m not going to talk about, but there are so many wargames in this century!

All Bridges Burning (#3633), a 3-player COIN game. Having really enjoyed People Power, I think another 3-player COIN game would be great!

Basically any COIN game, but this one happens to be the only one in this century.

Panzergruppe Guderian (#3623), mainly for nostalgia’s sake. I actually owned this when I was a kid! I don’t remember if we ever played it. It’s an operational game about one segment of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II.

Lincoln (#3659) is a Martin Wallace wargame about the American Civil War that has always intrigued me.

I just knew that, being a semi-lengthy 2-player wargame, it would never get played.

But I’d love to try!

There you go for this century.

Interesting that so many wargames are in this one, I think more than any I’ve done so far.

I could be wrong, though.

What have you played in this century?

What might you want to play?

Anything to avoid?

Let me know in the comments.