Chris' All-Time Top 20
Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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I decided "Top 10" was too limiting, so I am in the process of expandeding it to 20 - too many games I considered absolutely top flight got dropped on the top 10 due to a lack of space, so here is the Top 20. The first 10 are ranked in some kind of order, but 11-20 covers a wide range of genres, so the ordering is not so important.
People do often ask me for game recommendations, so here you go  You'll note I tend to favor the older games over the most recent, primarily because only time will establish whether a game is good or truly great, so some recent stuff (like Traders of Genoa) haven't made it yet but may still do so at a later time. You'll notice I have a preference for more substantial games; not necessarily complex ones, but ones that allow a lot of player strategy and choice. If complexity has a good payoff in terms of gameplay, I won't mind that much.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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El Grande for me combines a lot of great elements. For a meaty, substantial game it's actually surprisingly simple game which can be explained in 5 minutes or so to new players - it's incredibly elegant and clean, unlike the later alea titles like Taj Mahal or Amun-Re which are wonderful but a touch complex. It presents the players with lots of tactical (the choice and usage of each card) and strategic (court management) choices. The incredible intertwining of the fates of each player makes for a competitive game without the hose-the-leader or kingmaking problems of most similar games. Throw in two expansions, both of which are excellent and which make this almost 4 different games, and this is a huge winner.
When I think of great, elegant, streamlined games that get huge bang for their level of complexity, El Grande has topped the list for almost 10 years.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Settlers seems a bit past its prime in the eyes of most gamers, but to me this game is still a wonderful gem. It's simple enough that any semi-serious player can intuitively grasp it almost right away, yet it has subtlety that even players who have played many times can miss. It's skillful enough that good players win, yet so much less daunting to inexperienced players than heavier games like Taj Mahal or Tigris & Euphrates. Like El Grande, when I think Settlers, I think "streamlined elegance". There are really only two core ideas to settlers - the production dice rolls and the leveraging of the 2d6 probability curve, and the building chart. Yet the game achieves so much with so little, being subtle in effect, rich in flavor, and almost endlessly replayable.
The expansions are of varying utility. Seafarers is great. Cities and Knights is good for the occasional games, and has some great ideas (I love the new event cards), but on balance may make the luck factor too important. The 5-6 player expansions should probably be avoided as Settlers really wants to be a 4-player game. The 2nd Historical Scenarios set is qutie good; the first is OK. The Settlers of Nurnburg is the best of the standalones, and while it's good, it lacks the balance of the original. Starfarers is an awesome game, but I consider it an entirely seperate product.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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For the serious gamer, anyway, this is the top-of-the-line in CCG-land. OOP now, but the first three sets (METW, METD, and MEDM) are all you need for an excellent game. Also one of the games with the fewest distribution-related issues; you'll need a chunk of cards to really enjoy the game, but there is little reason to be a completist as rares are balanced by frequency-of-play and are not game-busters as they are in so many other games.
It is a common misconception that you need a ton of cards to enjoy this game. While this is true to some degree for any CCG, Middle-Earth is actually afflicted with this problem much less than most games, both because the rarities are far better balanced with respect to frequency of play, and because there are very few limitations on which cards can be used in which decks (unlike the colors, cultures, or whatever other games use).
The later Decipher Lord of the Rings TCG is but a shadow of ICE's game, despite borrowing some elements.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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This is a wonderfully facinating game, unique and engaging. I admit plenty of people can't get past the cooperative element, which is fair enough; but for those who can, this is an amazing game with a surprisingly high repeat draw. I've written a lot about this game; you can find my review here: http://homepage.mac.com/c_farrell/reviews/lotr.html
The first expansion adds some nice elements but not so strong as the original. The second expansion adds significantly to the complexity unfortunately, but having an actual Sauron player adds significant interest to the game.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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While the series of "card driven wargamaes" has mushroomed since GMT tackled the concept with Paths of Glory, none of the later follow-ups have come anywhere close to touching the incredible balance achieved by this game. Hannibal is one of the extraordinarily few wargames that manage to be top-flight games by any standard. What sets Hannibal apart is not just the tension in all the choices, from operational management (i.e., your strategy cards) to tactics (the playing of battle cards), but a Knizia-like level of balance between all the interacting game systems: the political control allows you to control provinces, which drives the military game both as an objective and because you get bonuses for fighting in regions in which you control a lot of provinces. This provincial control aspect is also tapped by many of the cards in the deck. Every element of the game seems to be in place, with no spurrious elements or excess chrome despite the low complexity (for a wargame - although Hannibal has only 9 pages or so of admittedly somewhat dense rules, that still makes it reasonably straightforward by most metrics). For its genre, it gets the highest possible recommendatation from me.
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6.
Board Game: Ra
[Average Rating:7.60 Overall Rank:48]
Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Ra seems to me to be very nearly the end-of-the-line for games whose sole mechanic is the auction. Ra's got every fundamental from every other auction game: every lot has different values for different players; the currency itself is not easily convertable; and the values of the items up for bid can be highly variable depending on future events. All it lacks is Modern Art's "personality" element, but you can't have everything.
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7.
Board Game: Genoa
[Average Rating:7.33 Overall Rank:149]
Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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This game has shot up in my opinion as I've continued to play it since it came out. This is a tremendous deal-making and risk management game, without quesiton in my mind the best I've played. The game has such a mindbogglingly large number of different ways to approach it that it's hard to imagine every playing the same way twice. The tremendous balance between all the different options is a hallmark of the alea line of games, and certainly a key reason why they feature rather prominently on my list of favorite games.
Where Traders of Genoa scores, interstingly, is in complexity. There are so many deals that can be made, and so many different ways the game can play out, you have to remain incredibly flexible. And it's a game that simply never lets up - it's an amazingly intense, 90-minute roller-coaster ride, and there is no point at which you can stop paying attention.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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This, along RA, are the top-of-the-line auction games in my opinion. If you want to play a game with a psycological element over and above the simple evaluation of what a set of cards are worth, Modern Art is it. Evaluation games are a dime a dozen; the subtelty and importance of the influence of the other players is what takes Modern Art over the top.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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In truth, Columbia's EastFront has a little more appeal to me. But, if you get past a rulebook that is a little problematic, Rommel in the Desert is a wonderfully accessible, playable game with great tension & strategy. Satisfying games take no more than 90 minutes, while the Campaign Game (which is highly recommended) is not that long. EastFront is a similar game, but the longer rules & much longer playing time means that Rommel in the Desert is the classic.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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The insanity of ASL may seem out of place on this list ... but, once you can learn to play this game, it has tremendous advantages. There are a lot of players out there, so finding players is no problem - somthing you can't say for virtually any other wargame these days, except maybe Paths of Glory. And, once you've learned the game, you have access to a tremendous richness of scenarios - literally thousands. While the start-up cost is high, compared to *any* other high-complexity wargame the payoff in terms of play value is enormous.
Although I still play a couple times a year on average just because ASL is so universal, I am by most counts a lapsed ASLer. As my frustration with finding opponents regularly for other higher-end wargames increases, though, each year I get closer to going back for my wargame fix.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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After the first 10 slots, the remainder of the games are in no particular order. Republic of Rome is an absolutely mind-blowing game, which can't take the top slot on this list due only to the complexity both of the rules and the gameplay; this is a "big" game which really takes a few games just to get to the point where you are enjoying it; it takes a commitment to a single game which is hard to find in this, the golden era of gaming. (Although it should be noted, that the rules as 11 pages are really not that bad - less than most modern wargames - and the real complexity is in the richly detailed play than in the raw rules volume.) Those that spend the time and effort, though, reap rich rewards: this is absolutely the political game, and is one of the best-themed games ever made. Intrigue, deal-making, backstabbing (although just a bit), money and power, the expansion of empire - Republic of Rome has it all, is is guarenteed to turn your friends into cynical, amoral political machines for 2-4 hours. Yes, that is fun
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Breakout: Normandy is another of the great wargames, with the emphasis on "game". While it does manage to do a great job conveying the realities of operations in Normandy, it does it in a way that makes a tremendously playable, accessible game. It's a little more "wargamey" than the *most* accessible wargames like Hammer of the Scots or Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage, at rules that weigh in at a fairly verbose 9 pages, it's not that far beyond the Euros in raw rules complexity. However, it has an amazing depth of play beyond simply understanding the rules, which is why the best wargames still have so much appeal to me - while it's true they are more complicated, the bang you get for your buck is tremendous. Breakout: Normandy is significantly the best of the area-impulse genre games (5 so far, including AH's Storm over Arnhem, Thunder at Cassino, Turning Point Stalingrad, and MiH's Royal Tank Corps), mainly due to the fact that both sides have significant strengths and can attack and counterattack, unlike previous games where one side is mostly just taking abuse (although RTC is similar in this way, and it had a chance at this list but for the length). Looking forward to MMP's upcoming Monty's Gamble: Market Garden, a campaign which should game quite well for some of the same reasons as Breakout: Normandy.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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While perhaps not an all-time great game in the same sense as the other games on this list, you can't judge a miniatures game by the rules alone The figures in the line range from very good to truly outstanding, GW provides great support in terms of tutorials, painting guides, and additional scenarios. Plus, the game captures the feel of the books & movies to a great degree. The plastic figures are cheap and if you're intruiged, it's worth checking out. This is a game that's provided me a tremendous amount of enjoyment both through the playing and the painting.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Starfarers is probably superior to Settlers of Catan in many ways, being both more subtle and textured due to the impact of the trade ships and encounters, and slightly less random due to the subsidies from earth, the more constrained setup, and the generally more middle-of-the-road production numbers. Still, one of Settlers' great strengths was its simplicity and accessibility, and Starfarers has just enough rules to make it tough to play the first time - almost an "Advanced" Settlers of Catan, a much more successful one than Cities and Knights. Another issue is that Starfarers is different enough from Settlers that experienced Settlers players will tend to under-value the trade ships the first few times out, which can result in unreasonably long games (Starfarers wants to be 90 minutes, but our first games took well in excess of 3 hours - but soon came down to 90 minutes).
All other things being equal, I actually like Starfarers a little better than Settlers, and it certainly gets more play today, as Settlers has slowed down a bit after so many games. But other things are rarely equal, and I do still rate Settlers higher for its incredible efficiency and elegance. But Starfarers is a great game too.
While all the 5/6 player Settlers expansions have some issues as I think Settlers really wants to be a 4-player game, the 5/6 player expansion to Starfarers is still the best 5-6 player game in the Settlers universe I think. It's still a bit too slow for my tastes, though.
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15.
Board Game: Burma
[Average Rating:7.92 Overall Rank:900]
Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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OCS is an awesome system, currently my favorite "high-end" wargame (although this may be a bit of a misnomer as OCS is not as complicated as many new games these days). It packs a huge amount of decision making and planning into a comparatively modest rules volume, as well as being tense and exciting. Although many entries into the OCS are quite good (and the upcoming Korea game is angling in there), Burma is my favorite. It has a wide variety of operations, with the Allies split between the US/Chinese drive in the north, the facinating Chindit campaign in the east, and of course the British battle in Imphal - Kohima. The Japanese are a facinating adversary as well, very different from the Germans, with their limited supply requirements and ability to infiltrate opening up many tactical options. The supply situation is always tight, and operations have to be carefully managed. The counter density is quite modest, not out of hand like in the East Front OCS games, the playing time even for the campaign game is reasonable (as these things go), and it has by far the best selection of scenarios in the OCS line. It also helps that once you've learned this, there are some 6-7 other games you can move on to without learning too many new rules.
OCS can be a bear to get your head around for wargamers as it is very non-traditional in a number of ways (very weak ZOCs, highly variable and rather defender-friendly CRT, variable turn order, and of course the emphasis on supply). However, this is an amazing system and actually in my judgement significantly the most realistic operational wargame, certainly the best tradeoff between playability and complexity (compared to some similar games such as the Piercing the Reich games, Barbarossa, etc., which often do far less with more), and well worth the effort to understand. This was brought home to me after reading Eric Bergerud's excellent Touched By Fire and Tropic Lightning, both of which cover jungle warfare - applying lessons learned from reading these books dramatically improved my play in this game.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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Europe Engulfed is the first new wargame since Paths of Glory that I am really quite taken with - and I have mostly played just the 1942 scenario! Even in that short game, the incredible depth of choices to be made comes through, with a fairly elegant system. This is the wargaming equivilent of Puerto Rico - a game that confronts you with constant, wrenching choices, yet one that sticks with the big picture and doesn't get bogged down in minutia like so many wargames. So you have to make tons of interesting decisions and, just as important, don't have to make many uninteresting ones. Yet, the game is not so unforgiving that it feels like one slip will lead to sudden death - bad decisions are punished, but not to an extreme degree.
In all, a great new wargame, and one I expect to stand the test of time.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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In general, the two-players euros (as typified by Kosmos' line) don't really inspire me. They can be fun, some of them are challenging, but they aren't the kind of games that keep drawing me back. The Settlers of Catan CG is the one exception, especially once you thrown in the expansions. The game is rather strategic, which is unusual for a euro of any description, and there are a very large number of routes to victory. The strategic richness of the game I think is demonstrated by the number of players who don't quite get it, because they are used to the traditional highly tactical euros and don't quite realize that you need a vision to play this game. I think part of the appeal of the Settlers franchise is it's more strategic nature; for example, in Starfarers of Catan, if you want to do well, by the time you get 7-8 VPs you need to know how you are going to win. This is even more true here, you need to have at least a general sense before you get to 5VP. Great game.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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With Traders of Genoa moving into the top 10 and taking the "negotiation game" slot, Quo Vadis moves into the second tier, albeit the top of the second tier (I'd put it at 11, but GeekLists are too hard to edit in that way ). I don't get to play negotiation games as much as I might like for a variety of reasons, but this, along with Traders of Genoa, is my favorite - because unlike a lot of these games (like Kohl, Kies, & Knete, or even Bohnanza), it's all about dealmaking with the extranneous clutter removed. It's also *not* about diplomacy and backstabbing, which is good too. You can always count on Knizia too to solve the traditional problems with these genres, so this is a game that is focussed on the deal and avoids kingmaking and the worst of "position-influenced" dealing. Great game.
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Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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If you're at all interested in wargames, even if you're not a Civil War geek, you're really missing a treat if you haven't played the Great Campaigns of the American Civil War series. It's a rare wargame that can combine modest complexity, tremendous playability, and solid historicity all it one package, and GCACW is one of those games. Grant Takes Command is probably the best entry in the series, with an awesome set of scenarios and campaign games that capture the grand sweep of the bigger games while still being quite playable (the larger campaign game should be doable in two long sessions, the smaller one in just one full day. The longer one is better though, I think). Grant Takes Command is a tremendous game and was my pick for best pre-20th C. wargame in 2001, but the slightly more accessible but rather less impressive Wilderness War swept the awards. The only knock on the GCACW games is that unlike many of the big operational/battle games (The Gamer's Operation Combat, Civil War Brigaide, and Regimental Sub-Series, GMT's East Front Series and Great Battles of the American Civil War), GCACW just doesn't scale at all beyond two players unfortunately. Not a drawback in my book, but it depends on what you like.
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20.
Board Game: GIPF
[Average Rating:7.16 Overall Rank:319]
Chris Farrell
United States
Cupertino
California
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[dropped] I still have a high opinion of the GIPF-series games, but for my top 20 list there is a bottom line: and that's whether or not it gets played. The GIPF series, somehow, just hasn't gotten as much play as its quality would seem to indicate. So, with regret, I must drop it off the list.
This entry is really a stand-in for all the games in this series (currenty GIPF, TAMSK, ZERTZ, and DVONN). This is a great series of games, one of the only abstracts to really grab me. All of them have a real subtelty and texture to them which is unusual to find even in the giants of abstract games, Chess and Go. I love how GIPF games go through different tactical phases, I love the amazing inventive use of time in TAMSK, and I love how ZERTZ and DVONN ride a dramatic accelleration curve in a short game to really ratchet up the tension. The potentials which allow you link the games are great too, although perhaps not practical to play regularly.
Of the games in the series, GIPF and TAMSK are my favorites, amazing games in my opinion. ZERTZ and DVONN are a little behind, but are both great games too and benefit from being a lot more accessible.
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