My Top 10 Favorite Games (as of August 2021)

Every six months I update my top 10 favorite tabletop games list. For this list, I looked back at most of my top 10 videos over the last few years for games that were ranked 1 and 2 multiple times (for any type of list, most of which focus on a specific mechanism), and I ranked those games for this list.

There are many great games from other publishers that won’t make the list even though I’m fond of them, and Stonemaier Games products aren’t eligible due to extreme bias on my part.

The previous list is here. As for the new list, I revealed my selections and honorable mentions in a video earlier today (at the bottom of this post), so I’ll keep the written descriptions succinct. I tend to cycle through favorites, hence why I do this every 6 months, but that also means that there are previous favorites that may completely drop off the list for 6-12 months. Only two games from the previous list made my current top 10.

Honorable mentions: 7 Wonders Duel, Dice Miner, Architects of the West Kingdom, Just One, Clank, Glen More II, Lords of Waterdeep, Orleans, Russian Railroads, Shards of Infinity, and Terra Mystica

10. Space Base: I’ve come to really enjoy simultaneous-action games thanks to how they flow and reduce downtime, and Space Base excels at this. It’s a little bit like Catan without a map–one player rolls some dice, and they generally benefit all players in various ways. I love getting stuff when it’s not my turn, and there’s a delicious puzzle in Space Base regarding how you assemble your tableau of cards.

9. Fantasy Realms: For a 15-minute filler game, it feels amazing to build your hand of cards that combo together. This was the inspiration for a heavier game that I co-designed and released this year, Red Rising.

8. Mysterium Park: One of two cooperative games on my list, Mysterium Park is about solving a randomly generated mystery using weirdly illustrated cards as a communication device. The game is incredibly easy to set up and play, and it feels great when you’re able to give or receive a clue exactly as intended.

7. The Mind: Ironically, when I need a fairly mindless game–for playing and for teaching–I turn to The Mind. All you’re doing in this game is trying to cooperatively play cards in ascending order without communicating, but as the game ramps up to starting hands of 3, 4, 5, and beyond, every decision to play or not play becomes increasingly excruciating.

6. The Isle of Cats: The only polyomino game currently on this list, The Isle of Cats is a whimsically themed game about collecting cats on a boat using fish. I love the draft, and I love that you just get a big supply of fish for free each round. I enjoy this game at all player counts.

5. Ra: This is my favorite auction game and one of my favorite push-your-luck games. The tension in Ra is palpable, and I love the risk-reward of waiting to bid on a giant pool of tiles versus grabbing just a few tiles at a great price.

4. Roll Player: The entire point of this game is to build a compelling D&D-style character…and that’s it. I love that the story stops there. To get there, though, the game has players drafting dice to place on their mats in a fun stat-building puzzle and acquiring cards to better define your character’s special abilities.

3. The Quacks of Quedlinburg: This potion-brewing game combines so many things I love: bag building, push your luck, engine building, simultaneous actions…it’s an amazing elixir that’s fun whether I win or lose.

2. Magic the Gathering: I sometimes forget to include Magic in these lists because every set feels so fresh and new (and completely off the radar of most hobby game content creators I follow). But I continue to love the game, including drafts this year for Strixhaven and Forgotten Realms.

1. Dune Imperium: I knew nothing about Dune before playing this worker-placement, deckbuilding game, and it does such a great job at incorporating the world with the mechanisms that I read the first book after my first few plays of the game. I now own it, and I’m excited to play it at any time.

What are a few of your favorite games that you’ve consistently ranked among your favorite games?