We’re creeping towards the 1 year anniversary of The Game
Shelf blog, so at this point we’ve played a lot of titles, as I particularly
enjoy trying new games, but sometimes it feels like we’re not actually getting
the value out of some of our favourite titles on the shelf. When we recently
finished playing Pandemic Legacy we were prompted to look at our logged plays
on BoardGameGeek to see how it rated amongst our top played games – it was
definitely high, but not the highest.
We started logging plays on BGG about 3 months after we
started playing board games, so some of the games we started playing early are
probably a little low in the rankings, for example Dominion, Settlers of Catan,
Carcassone, X-Wing Miniatures and Ticket-to-Ride
Europe. But, as of 10th March 2016 these are our top 10 most
played games.
1.
Forbidden Desert (20) – Forbidden Desert as an early upgrade for
us from Forbidden Island. We love
co-operative games and this one plays in less than 30 minutes and works
perfectly for the two of us. We often get on a good winning streak which keeps
us coming back for more, but we’re still not brave enough for Legendary.
2.
Star Realms (16) – Sixteen is the
number of times we’ve played Star Realms
at the table, but I imagine I’ve played it on the (very addictive) app in
excess of 200 times. Deck building is one of our favourite mechanics ad Star Realms is super compact and perfect
for a couple (since it is for only two players without weird variants). Again
this one is short at 15-30 minutes so it hits the table often when we don’t
have a lot of time to spare.
3.
Pandemic Legacy (15) – Pandemic Legacy is forever destined to
drop down this list because we are finished. We saved the world in 15 games and
now the box will gather dust. However those 15 games were awesome and I can’t
knock the value for money since, as you can see, this is one of the games we’ve
played the most from our collection. Pandemic
Legacy was a great experience for a couple and is one I’ll never forget.
4.
Marvel Dice Masters (15) – Another deck-building
style game here, which is no surprise and the super hero theme is definitely
Amy’s domain. Dice Masters is another
two player only game and one that we’ve got into very quickly, having only
owned it for about 2-3 months. Part of the reason we’ve played this so much is
the booster packs – we allow ourselves to open one booster back after each
game. We also recently found our first super rare, so now we’re even more eager
to open packs!
5.
Flash Point: Fire Rescue (14) – I’m
sure you’re starting to see some themes as here is another puzzly co-operative
game. Flash Point has so much variety in the maps from just the base game and
the extreme danger expansion, it has really good co-operative play and really
gets you into the fire fighting theme. Again we play this a lot with two but we
also enjoy it at higher player counts with friends.
6.
Tides of Time (14) – Tides of Time is within the theme of
two-player only games, but this time it’s a drafting mechanic. The game is so
simple and small with just 18 cards that I thought we’d get bored of it, but we
still want to play more. It only takes 10-15 minutes and we seem to be very
evenly matched. I think some of the addictiveness of this one is also in trying
to beat your high score.
7.
Dominion (13) – Dominion was one of the original games in our collection. We played
this a lot in early 2015, before we started logging our plays so it should
probably be very near the top of this list. Yes, we play it less frequently now
because there are so many more games in our collection, but I still love the
variety in the deck building and the smoothness of the mechanics which allows
us to play this one pretty quickly. We have expanded it to add more variety,
but I would probably be happy with just the base game and Prosperity to last me forever.
8.
Mysterium (12) – Mysterium is quite an unusual one to be
on this top ten list. We don’t own the game and I don’t believe it’s intended
as a game for two players, however it is co-operative and two of our groups of
gaming friends love the game. I have to admit I’m actually quite bored of the
concept at this point – it can create a good game when there is humour and
people don’t sped forever over-thinking it, but it can also definitely out stay
its welcome at the table.
9.
Hanabi (11) – Surprise, it’s another
co-operative game! I’ve heard some reviewers say that Hanabi is not good for two, but we love it and it comes with us on
most trips on planes/trains and holidays because of its small box and also
small footprint on the table. It can be a bit intense, but there’s always an
incentive to try and do better next time. Last time we played we got our first
perfect 25, but the incentive is still there to try and do it again.
10.
Imperial Assualt (11) – Amy has
played the main campaign from the base game of Imperial Assault and so has clocked a pretty high number of plays.
She found it enjoyable enough to buy the game although I think it was a little frustrating
at times. I’m looking forward to trying the two-player skirmish now that we own
the game and maybe Amy will play the Imperials for another campaign with a
different group.
These games aren't necessarily our favourites – 6 of them
appeared on Amy’s Top Ten Games list and I’m yet to make my list, but perhaps
half of these will feature – but I think they represent the games that are easy
to get to the table or are really popular with either us as a couples game or
with the groups of people we play with.
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