2019 Top 100 Games I Want to Play - #100-91

What is maybe even more fun than ranking games I have played? Looking ahead at games I want to play and ranking how much I want to play them! From my year-end review, it is clear that there are a lot more games that I want to play than I have played, but for my own sanity I only ranked as many games as my Top Games of All-Time, which this year was 150. I did make a list in 2018, but never posted it, so there will be references to a game's previous position on that list if it is still on this list. There were a lot of games I played, a lot of new games released, and my discovery of older games, so this list is going to fluctuate much more than my Top Games of All-Time.

A bit of background on how I came up with the rankings - when I looked through all the titles in the Top 3800 Games of All-Time on BoardGameGeek during the last week of 2018 in making my own all-time list, I also noted the titles that I would like to play. Similarly, I used the Board Game Ranking Engine on Pub Meeple to compare all the games on this list. After the engine spat out its ranking, I reviewed it and re-ranked a few games as I saw fit. Anyway, onto #100-91!

#100 - Western Legends (New)

This was a Kickstarter project that I backed based on some of the early feedback that this was pretty much a Western sandbox. Maybe along with space, Western themes in general ranks near the top for me and there really hasn't been a Western game that has captured my attention too much, so I'm looking forward to playing this.

#99 - Empires of the Void II (New)

I don't know too much about this game other than it is a second edition of an already quite well-received space exploration game by Ryan Laukat. I haven't played any of his games, but have heard many good things and space is always a theme that catches my eye.

#98 - Snowdonia (New)

A few years ago, this train themed worker placement game was released and settled comfortably in the Top 400 on BoardGameGeek. In general it has always been well reviewed and has more of that Klemens Franz art that I like, but other than knowing the name and theme, I was never really interested in it. Well, the Deluxe Master Set for this game hit Kickstarter last year and that definitely caught my attention. Now I am really looking forward to playing this.

#97 - Fugitive (New)

Tim Fowers is one of my favorite designers these days. Although his games are not near the top of my rankings, in general most of his games are reliably fun and settle down in the middle somewhere. There is a certain style to his games, probably due to the artwork, that I appreciate. I backed this two-player deduction game and though I haven't played it yet, Shut Up & Sit Down did a review about a year ago that really hyped me up for the game, which is why it made my Top 100 this year.

#96 - Mombasa (New)

Alexander Pfister has finally got my attention, with games like Great Western Trail sitting much higher on my Want to Play list and Isle of Skye and Oh My Goods! hitting the table last year. I think Mombasa might have been his first big board game, just a year before Great Western Trail came out, but seems to have been lost in the shuffle even though it sits just outside the Top 50 on BoardGameGeek. Or maybe it just seems that way to me since I only noticed it this year.

#95 - Dice Hospital (New)

I was sucked into this Kickstarter campaign because of the unique theme of the game and was also curious about the mechanics behind the dice worker placement. It seems like there should be a lot more medical themed games out there! Anyway, this has been a steady climber on BoardGameGeek and also looks like a good entry level game, so I look forward to trying it out.

#94 - Vinhos (January 2018 - #24 --- ↓70)

Such a large drop for a Vital Lacerda game! What happened? I'm not exactly sure. This past year I played my first Vital Lacerda game, Kanban, and really liked it. Other games of his that I have yet to play will also rank higher on this list. But Vinhos dropped quite significantly. Maybe it is because I had a couple plays of Viticulture this year that made me not like the game as much as I once did, and in turn this affected my view on using wineries as a theme? I'm sure the game is great still, and it is still in my Top 100. I would have thought it would be in the Top 50 though.

#93 - Cryptid (New)

Slowly but surely this deduction game is climbing up my personal radar as I hear more and more fantastic things. It even won a couple game of the year awards! The mechanics behind the game look extremely interesting as players are striving to win the game themselves but need to rely on the other players to make sure they have all the information possible before deducing where the creature is.

#92 - New York 1901 (New)

I don't really know much about this game other than the attractive cover and that it is a gateway level game revolving around constructing buildings. As I write this, I'm surprised it has made it this high but it has always been on my radar and is in fact in my collection, so perhaps it is time I play this game!

#91 - Viral (New)

The theme of this game is what really hooked me in where each player is a virus that is trying to infect the human body. It sounds a bit gruesome, but supposedly it is a more humorous take on the subject matter and became part of the Dice Tower Essentials collection, which is a good sign. I'm actually surprised that after all this hype, it has not broken into the Top 1000 in BoardGameGeek. Still, it looks like a fun, maybe slightly heavier than gateway game that I really want to try.