Update a year later:
(for all updates bold indicates a rise and italics denotes a fall)

Played Dragonland a couple times, it's no better than average. Still haven't played Minotaur Lords or the E&T Card Game.

Top three: unchanged

11 All-time Classics:
E&T, Ra, Lord of the Rings, Modern Art, Schotten Totten, LotR: The Confrontation, Taj Mahal, Lost Cities, Durch die Wüste, Titan: the Arena, and Traumfabrik.

22 Great Games:
above + Medici, Stephenson's Rocket, Quo Vadis, Blue Moon, Quandary, Amun-Re, Einfach Genial, Auf Heller und Pfennig, Money, Blue Moon City, and Carcassonne: The Castle.

31 Games Worth Owning:
above + Galaxy: The Dark Ages, High Society, Royal Turf, Katzenjammer Blues, King's Gate, Tutanchamun, Head-to-Head Poker, En Garde, and Members Only.

Dropped: Tower of Babel

Haven't played: Medici vs. Strozzi, Minotaur Lords, E&T Cardgame

Pueblo is decent, but the negative scoring (you get punished, low score wins, you can't do anything to help yourself, etc.) has made it less-than-a-barrel-of-monkeys on the "fun" scale.

Verflixxt is definitely skippable. Which is disappointing, as Kramer is quite possibly my favorite designer, too.

Maharaja definitely should be mentioned....one of his better games which I enjoy very much and play often. Australia has to be up there with one of his best game designs too.

Princes of Florence is okay, but doesn't excite me. I didn't list it as "worth owning" because it didn't make the cutoff of a rating of 7 or better - I have it at 6. I wouldn't deny that it's a good game, but it's not the game for me.

Maharaja, on the other hand, is actually a bad game IMO. After three or four games, I've found it to be worse each time. I would play again under duress, but would probably plead for something else. My chief complaints are that players' choices are too limited and stifling, there's no chance to catch the leaders if you fall off the pace, and planning is debilitated by the fact that you don't know what character you'll start with each turn. The plodding march toward building all your palaces combined with the huge income gap between the winners and losers in each city makes the game situation much too static for my taste. About 4/10 for me; I consider it to be a poorly-designed game. It's no coincidence that this one fell to Phalanx instead of one of the good German publishers.

Update: November 2005

I'm not sure why I've waited so long to try El Grande with the King & Intrigant expansion. El Grande in that format, among veteran players, is more like a 10 than a 9. This doesn't affect Kramer's ranking, but it does move him slightly closer to Knizia with a new average of 9.3 instead of 9.0.

I've also now played all three of the Kramer games I listed as unplayed. Australia is another Kramer game in the "worth owning" category. Maybe even better, but I'm cautious since I've just played it once so far. I've played the other two multiple times. Pueblo is okay, but doesn't reach the "own" threshold for me. Verflixxt has not impressed me at all.

Update October 2006
(for all updates bold indicates a rise and italics denotes a fall)

Wolfgang Kramer (9.2)

#1 El Grande w/ King & Intrigant expansion (9.5)
#2 Tikal (9)
#3 Expedition (9)

4 All-Time Classics (unchanged):
above + Daytona 500

10 Great Games:
above + El Caballero, Goldland, Tanz der Hornochsen, Java, Big Boss, Australia

17 Games Worth Owning:
above + Torres, Die Händler, Wildlife, Hornochsen, 6 nimmt!, Princes of Florence, and Gulo Gulo.

Dropped: hmm, with the addition of Australia and Princes of Florence, one game must have dropped off the list. I'm not sure what it was, since I didn't originally list all the games that filled out the "worth owning" category.

Do yourself a favor and give Andromeda a try. It looks like an El Grande, but it plays more like a Settlers, so be warned that it is a family game with a healthy dose of randomness. It is a ton of fun though.

Ticket to Ride and Andromeda are the two games that told me I was not a Moonie.

Update: November 2005

I've raised my rating of Ticket to Ride to 9.5. I'm still loving it, but I can't quite rate it a 10 because I think the ticket distribution (and corresponding imbalances) could be improved.

Also, I've finally gotten around to playing Capitol. Score one more for Moon at the "worth owning" level.

Moon's top-three average moves from 9.0 to 9.2. He still sits at #3 because Kramer's score has also crept upward (see above).

Update a year later:
(for all updates bold indicates a rise and italics denotes a fall)

Ticket to Ride has risen from 9 to 9.5 to 10 as it has held strong over dozens and dozens of plays. I also bumped my rating for Elfenland+gold up a point.

Alan Moon

#1 Ticket to Ride (10)
#2 Freight Train (9)
#3 Elfenland w/ Elfengold expansion (9)

4 All-Time Classics (unchanged):
above + Union Pacific

5 Great Games (unchanged):
above + Wongar

10 Games Worth Owning:
above + 10 Days in Africa (or whichever one you prefer), Santa Fe Rails (or Santa Fe or Clippers), Diamant, and San Marco. Additionally, I've decided it's worth owning a second Ticket to Ride game. All three games are good, but I would choose Ticket to Ride Märklin over Ticket to Ride Europe.

Dropped: Get the Goods hasn't aged well. Capitol didn't hold up to repeat play.

I still haven't played Das Amulett, Andromeda, Oasis or Clocktowers.

Moon's new score is:

Alan Moon (9.3)

This puts him ahead of Wolfgang Kramer by a nose. In this case, my simple ranking system has failed to reflect my actual opinion. Kramer's greater volume of games in the "great" and "worth owning" categories would place him ahead of Moon on a more free-form ranking of my favorite designers.

Just wait until Tempus... it's delightfully Euro.

Have you tried La Strada? It's a classic light-middle filler, I like it a lot. Byzantium looks like it will be very interesting as well.

Sorry you didn't like SoE, it was definitely more wargamy than some of his others.

Sounds like I should try Empires of the Ancient World!

I still haven't played either Tempus or Byzantium. I'm chomping at the bit for Tempus, but my excitement about Byzantium has cooled based on reports from a couple friends and further research. It looks like a further step in the Struggle of Empires beat-em-up direction, which is not the Martin Wallace I like.

And Richard Young, I'm not quite sure what to make of your "enough randomness to satisfy the Euro crowd" comment. Struggle of Empires actually had far too much randomness for me to like it - certainly more than Age of Steam and Princes of the Renaissance. Too few die rolls with too much riding on them.

That isn't the only reason I don't enjoy Struggle of Empires, but it's a big part of it. My other main complaint is, curiously, the other aspect of the game you singled out as exemplary. It's way too much of a "whack the leader" game for me. The alliance system is admittedly the coolest part of the game, but I don't think it does very much to curb the leader bashing. Okay, so a couple of the other players can't whack the leader in any given era. Now it's even more imperative to whack the leader, because there are maybe two or three of you to shoulder the entire burden. Even with the alliances, the game is too much of a punk-your-neighbor free-for-all for me to enjoy it.

Different strokes and all that . . . . I can see why many people adore the game.

Update October 2006

No changes to Wallace's list except that I would probably choose Pampas Railroads as his #3 game ahead of Princes of the Renaissance, which is proving to be hard to get to the table. That change doesn't affect his rating.

Forgot to mention that I've played Tempus since my last update. Horrible, horrible, hugely disappointing game. I'm not sure what people are enjoying there.

I haven't tried Byzantium due to lack of interest and poor reviews from friends.

And I still haven't had the opportunity to try Empires of the Ancient World.

Louis XIV is a great game. Plus it's a good deal at $20.

Don't forget Emerald, a much underrated game.

Update: November 2005

Jambo has fallen down a bit for me into the "worth owning" (roughly 7/10) category. A lot of neat-o diddling around, but not too much in the way of tough decisions once you've played several times and passed the initial exploration phase. I'm probably about done with it, but I've gotten 15 enjoyable plays out of it which is good by my measure.

So Dorn's "great games" count drops to 3, but his score and ranking are unchanged because Louis XIV is also an 8/10 for me, and can easily take Jambo's place in Dorn's top three. Deciding between the two was basically a coin flip when I composed the list, but now Louis XIV is my clear #3 here.

We also have a new Dorn game Raub Ritter. Initial reports are not exactly glowing, but I hope to try it myself soon.

Our group's current favourite game has to be Louis XIV. I'm very keen to try Goa, and can't wait to see what mr Dorn comes up with next

Dorn hits another winner with Die Baumeister von Arkadia!

Nice to see the Eon team recognized here for the truly innovative work they did back in the seventies. I believe that the whole Euro phenomina can trace its roots to the influence Eon had on the hobby. Dune would be a good candidate for a facelift that rumour has it Hasbro is considering (actually the rumor is that they are considering resurrecting an older AH "classic" which could mean almost anything). There are a couple of threads in the forums and lists that are enjoying the speculation on what Hasborg is up to...

Olotka, Eberle, and Kittredge also have design credits for Runes (aka Buzzle), originally published by Eon. They are probably also responsible for Darkover, which does not provide any credits.

Right. I'm not trying to mention every game for these designers, just the good ones. That's why I left out Runes and Darkover.

Prescient!

I'm not entirely sure how fair it is to list Wyatt Earp as Borg design. If I remember correctly I think it was almost entirely a Fitzgerald design with Borg only lending a couple rule changes.

Kevin, point taken. But without being privy to insider info, it's hard to adjudicate games that are credited to two designers. My simple solution is to give full credit to both designers unless I'm certain that the game belongs almost entirely to one of them.

If what you say is true (and I'm not saying it is or it isn't), then Borg's third game would be either Bluff/Liar's Dice or Battle Cry at 7/10. That would give Borg an 8.2 and drop him into the mid-teens in the rankings.

Borg is probably the single hardest guy to rank. His catalogue is filled with co-designs (Wongar, Wyatt Earp), multiple games based on the same system (Battle Cry, Memoir '44, more coming), and a rejiggering of a folk game (Liar's Dice). Although in the last case, Borg claims dollar poker as his inspiration, not knowing about the folk version of a bluffing game played with dice.

It would help if I could get a gauge on Hera & Zeus, but no one around here ever wants to play. I've owned a copy for years, but long ago stopped lugging it to any of our game events. I still hold to my hopes of one day actually playing the darn thing.

Update October 2006
(for all updates bold indicates a rise and italics denotes a fall)

Richard Borg (9.0)

#1 Commands & Colors: Ancients (10)
#2 Memoir '44 (9)
#3 Wongar (8)

2 All-Time Classics

4 Great Games:
above + Wyatt Earp

5 Games Worth Owning:
above + Liar's Dice

Dropped: Battle Cry has become redundant for me now that we have two superior games using a very similar system.

Borg's new rating of 9.0 places him just behind Martin Wallace all the way up at #5 on the list. I think this may be a bit generous, since he's scoring his points on two versions of the same basic system (C&C:Ancients and Memoir '44) as well as two collaborations (Wongar and Wyatt Earp).

Josh,

You knew you'd hear from me, didn't you?

I'll let others argue for Can't Stop, Bazaar and some of the other games. And I myself go back and forth on Buried Treasure: I think it is very ingenious for 2 players, but haven't convinced myself that it really works with 3 or 4.

But I really must protest the designation of Focus and Venture as no better than average. Venture is, IMHO, one of the most brilliant and elegant little games to have been published at any time, and if it were re-issued with a strong theme, I have little doubt it would be received as a classic.

Focus, in my view, requires no re-issuing to be appreciated. Pure abstracts are not my favorite area, but Focus blows away anything I've seen in recent years. I received Zertz and Focus at about the same time, and consequently Zertz gets no play at all in our house. For all the recent attention to the Gipf project, it's notable that Sackson put out a classic abstract decades ago that more than favorably compares for elegance and strategic and tactical depth.

I also want it entered for the record that Sackson has left beautiful nuggets buried all over the place, waiting for rediscovery. I recently recovered the "Beyond" books from my childhood home, and in leafing through "Beyond Words," I was struck by the overpowering sense that many of games inside were at least as good as BuyWord, which had received such favorable attention when posthumously published. All the Sackson games really need are re-presentation to the public to be appreciated for the classics that they are.

By the way, I have to say the real news is that 19 other BGG folks listed Venture! I'll have to start scouring the lists looking for fellow travelers. . .

I just played Venture last night. It is one of my favorite games, I had to go get it off e-bay so I could play it. I rate it an 8, but that's after 3 plays, it might change.

I think 4 is the magic number for the game, three wasn't as all around competetive as I had hoped, and 5 was bordering on random.

Anyways, Venture is a great game. I'm in the minority here, but I had to chime in.

Bless you, Dave.

Another thumb up for Venture here! I picked up a copy at a thrift store a while back and really like it a lot. Because of the breadth of our game fancy, it rarely gets played, but I certainly enjoy it every time it comes to the table.

Update: November 2005

As I mentioned above in the Wolfgang Kramer comments, I now think El Grande deserves a 10 after finally exploring the expansions with great results. That moves Ulrich to 8.7 and into my top 10. Sackson goes out, at least for now.

Any ranking for Ulrich of course comes with an asterisk attached because although we know a lot about the designer "Kramer and Ulrich" we don't know a lot about the designer Richard Ulrich.

Furthermore, my ratings for El Caballero and Die Händler seem to float around a lot. El Cab sometimes feels like a 9, other times not quite. Die Händler is often terrific, but sometimes it just doesn't go over well. Both of these games are so group-dependent that I'm never confident about my ratings.

I've now played some Marracash and some Amazonas.

Amazonas has been a lot of fun in two plays, but I don't think it will hold up over time. For me it barely misses the "worth owning" level.

Marracash, on the other hand, is definitely worth owning. My initial rating is 8/10, putting Marracash in the "great games" category and replacing Medina as Dorra's #3 game - at least for now.

Dorra takes a baby step from 8.2 to 8.3, enough to slip past Merkle and Sackson. All three sit at 8.3, but Dorra has more games I judge to be worth owning: Die Sieben Siegel, For Sale, Marracash, Medina, Linie 1, Hick Hack im Gackelwack, and Olympia 2000. A couple of these are little more than confections, but that's still an impressive total of seven shelf-worthy games, one more than Sackson's six.

The buzz on Kreta has been mostly positive and seems to be growing. Perhaps Kreta will push Dorra even higher, although a reading of the rules didn't excite me at all. I hope to try it at Gulf Games in February since I don't think anyone in my local group owns a copy.

Update: November 2005

Van Moorsel probably belongs behind Wrede, Kiesling, and Schmiel. I was a little giddy of Floriado, having just discovered it when I wrote the list. Let's call Floriado a 7/10, moving van Moorsel to 8.0.

Pompeji is better than Carcassonne IMO! Most people don't own Pompeji, and if they do, haven't played it enough to learn how subtle and great the tactics are in it.

A much richer game than Carcassonne, and played FAR FAR more in this family.

I've finally given Carcassonne its due and raised its rating to a 10. I still love it after all this time, and in spite of expansion and spinoff overload. And that's impressive.

That puts Wrede at 8.5, ahead of van Moorsel, Merkle, Schmiel, Dorra, and Sackson - currently in a dead heat with Borg.

I've played Pueblo, Australia, and Verflixxt. See my comment under the Kramer entry, above, for details. Kiesling's score is unchanged, but he now has four games I'd rate as worth owning with the addition of Australia.

After playing Was Sticht again after a bit of a break, I think it deserves a 9, not an 8. That puts Schmiel at 8.3, moving him ahead of Kiesling, van Moorsel, and Merkle.