Top 10 Games that Should be in the Board Game Geek Top 10
0:00 Intro
-10-
11:39 Chris
13:44 Camilla
16:07 Tom
-9-
17:58 Chris
19:56 Camilla
22:11 Tom
-8-
24:50 Chris
27:55 Camilla
30:31 Tom
-7-
32:57 Chris
35:16 Camilla
36:53 Tom
-6-
39:21 Chris
41:20 Camilla
44:52 Tom
-5-
46:24 Chris
48:08 Camilla
50:32 Tom
-4-
53:16 Chris
55:33 Camilla
58:05 Tom
-3-
1:00:28 Chris
1:03:23 Camilla
1:05:33 Tom
-2-
1:08:26 Chris
1:10:54 Camilla
1:12:43 Tom
-1-
1:14:21 Chris
1:17:10 Camilla
1:19:23 Tom
Support The Dice Tower at
Support the channel by becoming a member!
Subscribe to our newsletter, “The Dice Tower Digest”:
Buy great games at
Check out the friendliest conventions on Earth!
Dice Tower Cruise – (January 15-21, 2023)
Dice Tower West – (March 8 – 12, 2023)
Dice Tower East – (July 5-9, 2023)
Find more reviews and videos at
Get a great game table here!
BGG Link:
Camilla's number 6, The Quacks.
Tom: "You get more mainstream with every pic". And then his number one is Ticket To Ride 🙂
I'm happily surprised that all of your lists consist mostly out of comprehensive and family-friendly games.
I'm saying this because there is a subgroup within the boardgameworld who, in my opinion, are damaging the community: The pretentious, snobby boardgamer.
Those who give you the feeling that the games they are playing are a way to decipher their University-degree.
I love boardgames, but not those who have to stay on the shelf of shame because they take 2 hours to explain and thereafter nobody wants to play, except maybe your own snobby College-geek-group.
A great excample:
The Castles of Burgundy aka 'can you learn 75 symbols and icons on 300 way to small tiles were you need +2-glasses for?' Well, I could, but I won't. Give me some Quacks!!
That doesn't mean difficult games can't excist. There just to much hassle for me.
I just find myself very hasitant towards them because mostly they consist out of 300 pieces and 300+ rules.
Why make something overly difficult?
For excample, I have never played en will never play A Feast For Odin because I don't want to build up 3 hours before getting started. The idea alone feels pretentious.
I think it's laughable that, over here in Europe, Uwe Rosenberg his best selling game is still Boonanza, a card game that I can play with patiënts in the psychiatry where I work.
I think that if you want to invite more people into the hobby welcoming more easy, comprehensive games is a very important factor.
But I'm on a ramble…..
I salute Tom for his Codenames and Pandemic pics: great games, everybody can grasp them and they're a fun group-experience.
I salute Camilla for her complete list
And I salute and thank you Chris, for listing great albums from my vinyl-collection 🙂
(I've never played Azul but maybe I should give it a try)
Sorry for the mistakes in my text, I'm from Belgium (maybe some language-geek reads this) 🙂
I had to go listen to some great music after this list, enjoyed the analogies Chris Yi!
Can we have a top 10 comfort games? 😁
I wanted to make my own list but I struggle with it so it was not so easy… Will also rest of the team at least share their lists for this top 10? Was curious what others would pick and if there would be more crossovers… Also this top 10 list is especially good for newer gamers…
Great video!
RA is my fave game of Knizia, 10/10, a masterpiece ;).
re: Cornhole – I wonder if this is a North vs South thing. I'm with Tom. In Toronto, we just called it "bean bags" or something along those lines. I never heard the term Cornhole until I was in my late 30s and had no idea what people were talking about. I thought it meant your mouth, like a variation of "pie hole".
Ticket to Ride is not a great game. It's too random with far too little mitigation.
#1 Marching Order by Crumbling Keep.
Camilla clearly was making an entirely different list… should have been tipped off by her initial statement that she had no idea what rank they were currently on BGG. Top 10 games that deserve to be ranked in the BGG top 10… games that are objectively the best of the best, in her opinion – and she’s making a “recommendations for new gamers” list apparently… then picking mostly obscure games that are far from the best of their kind. Don’t get me wrong, I think she picked some good games – I’d agree with Quacks of Quedlinburg, and I suspect if I played Destinies I would also agree (Chronicles of Crime is up there). I do like Obscurio, but I’m not sure if it’s quite top 10.
To be fair, I haven’t played all the games, but of the others listed here, I definitely agree with Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, Azul, Root, Caverna, Viticulture, Wingspan, Codenames, the Crew, and probably even Magic the Gathering. I haven’t played Dominion, but we have been loving Thunderstone Quest, and that definitely deserves to be up there, so the classic deck-builder makes sense.
One of my favorite top 10 videos. Really cool to see the differing opinions 👍
Agree with another commenter, Camila basically made a list of games she likes that she feels are good intros to new(ish) gamers for different mechanics. Not a Top 10 of All Time list. Totally subjective though, so I'm not trying to bash that. Just seems like she went in a completely different direction than Chris and Tom. Best picks in my worthless opinion (from their lists) – Ticket to Ride, Wingspan, MTG, Azul, Root, Pandemic/Legacy, Agricola, Quacks, Dominion, Codenames.
Chris's list was awesome. Hard to argue with RA, Dominion, Blitzkrieg and Azul. All really accessible games.
I love Chris' musical references!
This is the best Top 10 since Sam left.
I'd like to see more games referenced to other popular things like music/movies/etc.
I'm 100% with Tom with his picks and I've never disagreed more than with Camilla :D.
Marvin Gaye / Viticulture – I Heard it Through the Grapevine is a perfect song for both the musician and the game!
I agree for the most part with Tom's list except number 2 which was like the most random thing to add, Chris's was good too made some good points, but Camilla's felt like randomly picking games from Bgg some very niche, made no sense, sorry.
Is no one mentioning Tom throwing a phone onto the floor in the middle of Chris’ #8?
Favorite moment: “My number eight is Caverna!” -Tom. Hahahaha! Also love that each member interprets the list differently. That’s the genius of this list, whether on purpose or not.
Agricola is more strategically demanding than Caverna, and that’s absolutely why it deserves to be in the top 10 and not Caverna. Caverna is an awesome game, but it’s a distilled, care bear version of a much more strategically rich game
The crew is so overrated to me
Wonderlands war over quacks any day
I have no problem with Chris' picks but the music references was an odd choice, such an obscure comparison haha. I even knew most of the albums and thought "why are we comparing the games to albums?" Haha.
I feel like Camilla was making a top 10 games that deserve more love, Tom was making a top 10 game changers, and Chris was actually making a list of games that should be mentioned at least once in the BGG top 10. Loved the conversation as always!
This video his hilarious – Tom seems so annoyed 😀
I was skeptical of the interest of this top 10 list, based solely on the title, but wow was I proven wrong! Kudos to Camilla, Chris and Tom for the insightful lists and fun banter.
I have to commend Camilla on the out-of-the-box thinking for her list. What I find interesting are not so much her specific choices (although totally agree about Quacks and Jamaica), but rather that Camilla approached the list as a way of filling in important blanks on the BGG 10. i.e. not each game needs to be a sprawling epic strategy game, so what would be a key party game, family-weight push your luck, drafting, racing, dexterity, etc? Totally turned the top 10 on its head and I was 100% on board for this. Especially since you had Tom and Chris covering the list from a more "traditional" stance.
Well, actually – I think Tom went a touch too meta with his list by the time he got to the top 5. Nothing wrong there, but I think to simplify things I would have stuck with the "spirit" of the BGG target arena: modern designer board games. So games like Monopoly, Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, Magic, Chess, Go, etc would all be out of consideration. Making a statement like that at the beginning would have acknowledged whatever subset of those you feel deserved mention, and would have made for perhaps a more focused list (as well as more designer board game choices, such as Dixit which you mentioned early on). Still a great list from Tom otherwise, and I thought Ticket to Ride at #1 was an inspired choice.
Kemet! Ra! With these two choices alone I have to give Chris the nod for the list that's the most near and dear to my heart, but I also think his list was consistently good throughout; my favourite type of album is one where you can hit play at the beginning and do something else without skipping a track because they'd all be hits. A few albums come to mind but for Chris, you are Guns 'n' Roses' Appetite for Destruction. 😉
I think the BGG top 10 is not bad as it currently stands, and I do agree with many of the Dice Tower's (and People's) choices. Other candidates I can think of would be Tigris & Euphrates and Kingdomino: Origins (OG is fine, but Origins is nearly identical and comes w/ built-in expansions for more play).
Honorable mention goes to X-Wing Miniatures (v 1.0, as a casual gamer). Leaving it out because the game now seems to be in a shambles unfortunately. I wouldn't even know how to advise someone to get into it nowadays.
Due to its wide appeal and ability to handle a very flexible number of players, I would have put 7 Wonders on the list.
These are all fun games. Orleans should have been there. It is the ultimate bag builder that started a mini genre. I would be interested in knowing how many of these were SDJ nominations.
I was really thinking … what would I like to see in the BGG top 10 because I always look at it when introducing people to the hobby because I know they will see Brass there and I really hope that's not the game you pick up first! I have two groups of people who like almost everything I put down before them BUT the first games they bought themselves where Twilight Imperium and Twilight Struggle …. I don't have to tell you those boxes haven't been opened yet :3
Someday maybe, but I was really sad when I heard what they bought and tried really hard to get them back in :p
My to go list would be : Concordia, Quacks, El Grande, Viticulture, Lords of Waterdeep (not if they are D&D fans! :p ), Finca, The Search for El Dorado, Rajas of the Ganges, Sushi GO. I would love to put obsession down but that's one for down the road 😉
I think Coup should get be in the top 10.
Other games:
100% Agree on Dominion and Dune Imperium
I'd also place Puerto Rico on the list.
Century Golem Edition
Smash Up
I'd put in Puerto Rico as well as Ticket to Ride, Wingspan, Azul, Codenames and Power Grid. For me, it's a classic to bring out on occasion.
Root is to big war games what Smash Bros is to fighting games. I won't play big war games, but I love Root. Ditto fighting games and Smash Bros. It makes the genre way more interesting and accessible. I do love Twilight Struggle, but I don't really see that as a war game persay.
Icecool
I haven't watched these top 10s in a bit but just wanna say that this one was really great. Really loved the discussion and the fact that everyone interpreted the prompt in very different ways hahaha.
I absolutely LOVE Chris' music analogies. My husband and I were wowwed by that!
Crokinole. ~150 years and still the best dexterity game out there.
Agree with Tom about Magic The Gathering – for the same reason as Dominion. In fact, I’d argue that there wouldn’t be Dominion without MTG. It single-handedly created several genres (CCG/TCG’s, LCG’s, lane battlers, deck-building games (initially pre-constructed but inspired the modern DBG genre), card drafting games, blind-buy model (for better or worse), etc.
Ticket to Ride should not only be in the Top 10, it should be #1 on BGG.
I get what Tom was trying to say about McDonald’s and Monopoly, just because you have the most exposure shouldn’t put you on the list of being the best because you’ve gotten eaten the most or played the most.
The album comparisons were great Chris! They really do represent the games you’re talking about quite well!
To be fair regarding Tom, I feel like getting a bit of scorn for liking Apples to Apples is more because of Apples to Apples itself, which feels really dated, repetitive, and entirely group dependant.
Of course people skip to the end… you make hour and a half videos on a top 10… Learn to cut these videos (WAYYYY) down and you’ll find people watching them in their entirety. No reason these videos need to take so long.
Agricola should 100% be in the top 10. The original version is ranked 42 AND the revised version is ranked 77.
Personally I just sold Caverna and got back Agricola for several reasons.
Typically love Camilla, but this was not the list for her. I could name 100 games that are more deserving of being in the top 10 than any on her list. Dixit over Obscurio, Mansions over Destinies, Sushi go over draftosaurus. Oh, other than pandemic season 1. I agree with her there, but it is already there. For party games alone, codenames, just one, taboo, wavelength. For gateway games, ticket to ride, Azul, lords of Waterdeep, Stone Age, forbidden island, villainous, one night ultimate werewolf. And I haven’t even started with medium to heavy games.
Tom: Camilla's picks are becoming more and more mainstream.
Also Tom: Wingspan, Root, Agricola. 😅
Chris, I loved your music analogy. I totally get it.
Nice Favorite Game Friday shout out! See ya there!
Poor Camilla 😂
Might try out Root just based on Chris' Lateralus comparison.
chris and camilla were great 🙂
CHRIS! Talking about "Master of Puppets" makes me happy. The first 4 Metallica albums WERE so good and still ARE so good. I was so happy when I heard the title track on Stranger Things because so many young people NEED to hear these albums. Anyway…thank you for that! You're game picks were also great (I wanted to make a joke about them being garbage, but they were great!)