From the Depths: The Best of the Bottom of BGG Rankings

Special thanks to Josh Look for hatching this idea and I hope we will see lists/ articles from everyone on low ranked games that deserve to be in your collection.

Well, since my series title was swiped ("From the Depths"), I suppose I have to participate, but I confess to not even knowing how to reorder one's BGG collection, outside of the normal alphabetical. Does that mean that you went through your entire collection manually to figure out what was residing at the bottom?

When you’re looking at the table that is your collection, there’s a ‘Columns’ option just above it. Click it, check the rank box, and then click the rank button on your new table.

Why did you choose the bottom of the top 1000? Was it because you didn't have anything ranked lower worth recommending? I perceive anything in the top 1000 as being highly regarded. With those games ranked 500-1000 being perhaps more niche than those ranked 1-500.

DarthJoJo wrote: When you’re looking at the table that is your collection, there’s a ‘Columns’ option just above it. Click it, check the rank box, and then click the rank button on your new table.

Yeah, sorry. Guess I'm still too dim. I check the "Rank" box under "General Info" and... nothing happens.

ubarose wrote: Why did you choose the bottom of the top 1000? Was it because you didn't have anything ranked lower worth recommending? I perceive anything in the top 1000 as being highly regarded. With those games ranked 500-1000 being perhaps more niche than those ranked 1-500.

Just because none of my Bottom/Top 10 broke the Top 1000 barrier. I have 8 more on my "bottom 10 i recommend" for future articles that didn't break 1000. Sort of the opposite of "honorable mention" since I'm working from the bottom.

Jackwraith wrote: Well, since my series title was swiped ("From the Depths"), I suppose I have to participate, but I confess to not even knowing how to reorder one's BGG collection, outside of the normal alphabetical. Does that mean that you went through your entire collection manually to figure out what was residing at the bottom?

I *knew* it had a nice ring to it, now I remember why! Sorry mate, this year has me all out of sorts. "From the profitable website that benefits from unpaid reviews being posted but still runs a fund raiser every year" would be better?

Okay, if I understand this correctly, I will be looking at the lowest ranked boardgames (per BGG ranking) in my collection, excluding any of the classic family boardgames. Starting from the bottom, here is my list, by BGG rank, with my rating in parentheses:

19,374: Gother Than Thou (7): A filler card game incorporating set collection and take-that gameplay. Once the local hipster board game group starts playing again, I should bring this because they will definitely like it.

19,305: Creatures & Cultists (5): IIRC, this was originally published as an insert to an issue of The Unspeakable Oath, a Call of Cthulhu magazine published by Pagan Publishing. My copy was a standalone edition that they distributed a year later due to enthusiastic reaction to the original. Each player is the leader of a mythos cult, and randomly generates 3 stats on 3d6. The rest of your character sheet is actually 3 ranks of cultists who defend you and attack other cults. Half of your cultists are thugs and the rest are conjurers. The deck of take-that cards were hilarious in the mid-'90s, but some of the references now seem apocryphal. The game starts out fun, but can run long, especially for players eliminated early on. I should probably change my rating to 6.5 or better.

18,368: Vampire: Dark Influences (no rating due to personal bias): This is embarrassing, as I am one of the two co-designers of this game. The finished game is but an echo of our original design, but is still a moderately fun multi-player game. Each player is a vampire who is struggling to climb a social pyramid to become the new Prince of the City in a nameless city in White Wolf's New World of Darkness. The five characters are not fairly balanced against each other, but a player count of 4 or 5 may balance things somewhat due to typical multiplayer social engineering. The take-that card deck adds to the fun. If I wasn't the designer, I might rate V:DI as a 6.5.

18,264: Hunter: Deadly Prey (no rating): Another White Wolf board game, and clearly inspired by the social pyramid of V:DI. Here, one player is some major threat to the City, while the rest of the players have a week to climb a challenge pyramid to engage in final battle with the threat. I have only played twice, and might rate it a 6.5 except that I feel the need to play it a couple more times before rating. The rulebook does a poor job of communicating the rules, and certain aspects of the game feel counter-intuitive, but the overall structure and setting seem appealing and offer a decent replay value.

17,771: Landyland (5): My copy was a free promo from Cheapass Games, but they later sold it in game shops for $1.00. All you get is an 11"x17" playmat, and you need to supply your own player tokens, plus 25 land cards from Magic: the Gathering. The game plays like a variant of Aggravation.

17,378: Frag: Deadlands (6.5): Like the name suggests, this is Frag re-themed for the Deadlands setting. So it's a simple combat game with a weird west setting, and it plays a lot like a multi-player shooter computer game.

17,186: Cyberpunk: the Collectible Cardgame (n/a): Set in the futuristic year of 2020, this CCG is based directly on the same cyberpunk setting as the classic rpg of the same name, as well as the original edition of Netrunner, and the upcoming PC game Cyberpunk 2077. I have never played this game and keep forgetting that I own it. I own a set of starter decks, and a brief skim through them indicated that this was a weak CCG design during the mid-'90s glut. No rating, because I still haven't played it.

16,934: Diskwars: Legend of the Five Rings (4): Diskwars is an okay game that I have played twice, and I am a big fan of the Five Rings setting, so it seemed like a great idea to pick up a load of this when it hit clearance. I think I only played once ever, back when I was running my big L5R campaign. Next time I run an L5R campaign, I will definitely get this on the table again. I rated it a 4 because it bothers me that there is a potential problem of keeping ownership of pieces straight, especially in a multi-player scenario, but the game is probably more like a 6.5 or 7 in terms of sheer gameplay.

16,383: The Roaring 20's (8): Right around 1980, a board game publisher called Yaquinto had the odd idea of publishing games that could easily be stored right next to your record collection. Vinyl went away and now sort of came back, but Yaquinto is long-gone. Anyway, this game is a multi-player game about competing crime bosses in the Prohibition Era. On a rotating basis, one player is the possibly corrupt police chief, while everybody else is a gangster. The police player decides which if any speakeasies are open for the turn, which is an ongoing potential source of cash for players. Then each gangster player picks a crime job to pull from a hand of three multi-purpose cards. The police player can play police events, then strategically places 10 cop cars on the board. Then the crime jobs are revealed, and each gangster player races to reach his hideout before getting caught by the police. I would rate this game a 9, except that the default gameplay tends to run an hour too long for modern players. Trim down the victory target to make the game shorter if you like. This is the best game on this list.

16,203: Pirate King (8): Take the Monopoly game and adorn it with great components and a map that support a Pirates in the Caribbean setting. Add in a Risk-like combat system, a pick-up-and-deliver aspect, and some other interesting ideas. The result is a significantly richer and better game than Monopoly, but it still runs a somewhat long.

I haven't played most of the games on your list, but I do concur that Black Fleet is an excellent game that we play frequently. It pretty much has made all other pirate games obsolete for us.

Where did Divinity Derby rank? That is another lessor known game that you reviewed that is really great.

Based on recent comments, I seem to have misunderstood the goal here. I will now post the ten lowest BGG-ranked games in my collection that are still in the BGG top 1,000. But I will skip comments because everybody here probably knows these games.

848: Sons of Anarchy (8)
800: Battle for Rokugan (8)
776: Netrunner (8)
601: Space Hulk: Death Angel (10)
519: Fury of Dracula 2nd (9)
511: Betrayal at House on the Hill (7)
446: A Game of Thrones 1st (8)
396: Citadels (7)
365: Mansions of Madness 1st (4.5)
350: Spartacus (10)

Jackwraith wrote:

DarthJoJo wrote: When you’re looking at the table that is your collection, there’s a ‘Columns’ option just above it. Click it, check the rank box, and then click the rank button on your new table.

Yeah, sorry. Guess I'm still too dim. I check the "Rank" box under "General Info" and... nothing happens.

Did you click the ‘Done’ button at the bottom of that table? That’ll get you back to the table with your new columns. The ‘Rank’ column will be on the far left even before the game title.

DarthJoJo wrote: Did you click the ‘Done’ button at the bottom of that table? That’ll get you back to the table with your new columns. The ‘Rank’ column will be on the far left even before the game title.

Ahhh. Much success. I hit the Done button but then didn't realize I needed to click Board Game Rank to reorganize it from there. Thanks!

WadeMonnig wrote:

Jackwraith wrote: Well, since my series title was swiped ("From the Depths"), I suppose I have to participate, but I confess to not even knowing how to reorder one's BGG collection, outside of the normal alphabetical. Does that mean that you went through your entire collection manually to figure out what was residing at the bottom?

I *knew* it had a nice ring to it, now I remember why! Sorry mate, this year has me all out of sorts. "From the profitable website that benefits from unpaid reviews being posted but still runs a fund raiser every year" would be better?

Don't worry about it for a second. It's a common phrase and I haven't written anything using it for some time now.

I haven't played anything on Wade's list except Black Fleet which, like uba, I am kind of surprised is ranked so low to end up on this kind of list. (In fact, I had an article idea about Black Fleet and M&M which I never quite finished... Would that qualify as a "From the Depths"? Probably not anymore. ) However, Yellow and Yangtze also doesn't conform, as it's at 1001 according to BGG. So, maybe we're aiming too high?

My lowest-ranked game is Metagaming's Holy War, which is kind of a brilliant SF concept but, yeah, didn't make for a great game. It's not only tiny, but it's also really fiddly, ruleswise. But, following the rules of Wade's post, I have:

945 Guildhall I know Charlie doesn't like it, but I love this game. It's perfectly weighted for what it should be and involves a lot of player interaction, as well as some thinking. I've also never lost a game of it.

940 Chimera Station I can see where this would come in low. It's the most Worker Placement of worker placement games and there are situations where one or more players can feel positively screwed by the tile results. But I still like it because it's a slugfest and you can do some wombo combos in the late game, if you're experienced.

893 For the People I think this is one of GMT's lesser efforts in their block game line. It's kind of 3.6 roentgen. Not great. Not terrible. But I'm a block game fan, so I've held on to it.

887 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil In contrast, I think this is one of GMT's better recent releases in the P500 program. However, I haven't played it often enough to stake a claim for it.

871 Jaws Have to nominally agree with the ranking here. I like Prospero Hall's stuff, but this still strikes me as close to half a game. The first phase is cool. The second phase, both thematically and mechanically, is a lot more iffy.

857 Runebound, Second Edition These people are clearly clueless... No, really. I think it's a great game, but I recognize its limitations.

847 Lovercraft Letter This is the only version of Love Letter that I've ever really liked. Like all of them, it's pretty simple but, like Guildhall, I think it's as complicated as it's supposed to be. Plus, points for including card sleeves in the box.

843 Ikusa My copy still says "Shogun" on it because that's what it originally said. Part of MB's Gamemaster line, it's still a really solid DoaM, even though it's lacking some level of chrome/depth that more recent competitors have.

800 Battle for Rokugan I think this was overlooked as part of FFG's Silver Line. It's a great alternative to regular DoaMs for those who may not be fans. It may be a bit too complicated for its size, though, unlike things like Guildhall.

790 Black Fleet Seriously, WTF?

ubarose wrote: I haven't played most of the games on your list, but I do concur that Black Fleet is an excellent game that we play frequently. It pretty much has made all other pirate games obsolete for us.

Where did Divinity Derby rank? That is another lessor known game that you reviewed that is really great.

Jeez Uba, spoilers! What did ya think I was hinting at when I mentioned a mythical racing game at the end of the article! (Ranked in the 3,900's)

I think the spirit of the list is what are your lowest ranked games that you rate highly/are personal favorites and would recommend to others. This reveals something about your own niche tastes, and, on Twitter at least, introduces other people to games they might never of heard of or considered. Especially people who are new to board gaming and are building their collection exclusively from BGG's top 100.

So you sort your games by rank lowest to highest and make a list of the the first 10 games that you rate highly/are personal favorites/would recommend. Wade's list just happened to fall within the top 1000.

My list was:

Ultra Marines
The Gothic Game
Freakface
Talisman: Kingdom Hearts
Liebe & Intrige
VOC! Founding of the Dutch East Indies Company
Circus Train
Yacht Race
SUTAKKU
Battue: Storm of the Horse Lords

I'm not sure where these rank as I am at work and BGG is blocked. Although I very much like these (and in a few cases absolutely love them), with the exception of Yacht Race, I would only recommend them cautiously, depending upon the other person's taste. Yacht Race is a game I would unilaterally recommend to any board gamer looking for race game.

WadeMonnig wrote:

ubarose wrote: I haven't played most of the games on your list, but I do concur that Black Fleet is an excellent game that we play frequently. It pretty much has made all other pirate games obsolete for us.

Where did Divinity Derby rank? That is another lessor known game that you reviewed that is really great.

Jeez Uba, spoilers! What did ya think I was hinting at when I mentioned a mythical racing game at the end of the article! (Ranked in the 3,900's)

I'm so sorry. I read your article days ago, and it totally slipped my mind that you had mentioned that.

Yacht Race is ranked 6,800 and I like it because you can be a complete dick to someone. It isn't even hard to do. So it's up there.

Valor & Victory is 4,200 but shouldn't be, because it a) isn't well know by non-chit pushers; and b) lives in ASL's shadow amongst chit pushers. But that's exactly where it is designed to be. A simple, clean Squad Leader game that doesn't require a hand-dolly to play.

Leaping Lemmings is ranked 2,754. See "dick" comment above.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2,106. My opinion is right, the rest of the world is wrong. There's no argument here.

Seal Team Flix ranked 3,412. See "world is wrong" above.

I had to get in on this as well. One of the fun adventure games we like to play is truly scraping the bottom.

13880. Exalted: Legacy of the Unconquered Sun
8881. Rukshuk
6675. Lords and Ladies
6017. Gentlemen Thieves
5665. Richthofen's War
5321. Nostra City
3627. Blood Royale
3055. Cadwallon City of Thieves
2957. Techo Bowl
2296. Man O' War


Exalted is a real gem punished by a terrible rulebook and zero marketing. I like all of the games on this bottom BGG layer.

ubarose wrote:

WadeMonnig wrote:

ubarose wrote: I haven't played most of the games on your list, but I do concur that Black Fleet is an excellent game that we play frequently. It pretty much has made all other pirate games obsolete for us.

Where did Divinity Derby rank? That is another lessor known game that you reviewed that is really great.

Jeez Uba, spoilers! What did ya think I was hinting at when I mentioned a mythical racing game at the end of the article! (Ranked in the 3,900's)

I'm so sorry. I read your article days ago, and it totally slipped my mind that you had mentioned that.

I am 100% kidding. The only reason I teased the rest of the my list was I would have wrote a 5,000 word article no one would read about recommended games that have low rankings.

VOC! always looked really neat to me, surprised to see it on your list Uba as I've never seen it talked about on here before.

ubarose wrote: So you sort your games by rank lowest to highest and make a list of the the first 10 games that you rate highly/are personal favorites/would recommend. Wade's list just happened to fall within the top 1000.

Oh! In that case, my list is:

16,383: The Roaring 20's (8)

16,203: Pirate King (8)

15,663: Slasher: the Final Cut (8) Lively take-that card game with a simple map and cardboard chits. Each player controls a victim at a small house party that gets crashed by a slasher. But one player might turn out to be the slasher. On your turn, you play a scene card and designate which character is the subject of this scene. Going around the table, each player may play a plot twist card, adding to the action or possibly swapping in different target characters, depending on who is in which room of the house. The player who played the scene gets to play the final plot twist. The game is great, but usually lasts one hour too long due to player elimination.

11,672: Kung Fu 2100 (8): This early Steve Jackson Game does a nice job of simulating kung fu fight scenes. One player is the evil Clonemaster, who is holed up in his fortress/villa and defended by inferior marital artists, servants, security guards, and scientists. The other players are heroic martial artists who break into the villa to execute the Clonemaster and destroy his clone tanks. The heart of the system involves opposing martial artists programming a short series of combat maneuvers in advance of each round of combat, then revealing and playing out the fights with some dice rolls.

10,443: The Gothic Game (9): Weird, dark and funny Clue, except that the player characters are trying to murder each other instead of solving a mystery.

9,400: Zimby Mojo (7.75): Magic, cannibalism, and betrayal in a unique and distinctive setting. The rules are a bit complex and fiddly and the game tends to run an hour too long, but otherwise it is great.

7.794: Asteroid (7): A dungeon crawl in space with robots. Too long and a little slow by modern standards, but a fine game if you can get it on the table.

6,883: Paranoia Mandatory Bonus Fun Cardgame (7): This is the best take-that card game in my collection, and it manages to distill an entire campaign of the Paranoia rpg into a single game. It tends to run too long, so I recommend subtracting clones from the game if you have more than 4 players, especially if you have 7 or 8.

6,333: The Hills Rise Wild (10): Two to four players. Each player controls a small (Cthulhu) mythos cult, and the cults are battling to take possession of the Necronomicon and summon their deity. The combat system is a great compromise between board game and rpg complexity, offering a nice tactical simulation. Every character has a special ability that can be used once per game. Nice modular map tiles. Movement uses a tiny tape measure. The cards and critical hit table offer some dark humor. Game is best with four, but runs long.

4,700: Psycho Raiders (9): If Steve Jackson and Rob Zombie teamed up to design a board game, you might get Psycho Raiders. Regulars here have probably read plenty about Psycho Raiders, so I will leave it at that.

ubarose wrote: I think the spirit of the list is what are your lowest ranked games that you rate highly/are personal favorites and would recommend to others.

Okay

I've got

Coin Rugby (unranked... maybe not in the spirit, but all you need is a coin and a table, my favourite kind of table dexterity coin kind of game, because there are a few different types of dextrous tricks you must perform aside from pushing). Introducing it to others is always awesome. I don't like rugby at all. I love this game.

City Blocks - 2 player tile placement/bidding (well sort of, in the style of Samurai)

Guerilla Checkers - Brian Train designs an abstract COIN game. Well. Not really. But sorta. It is realyl cool though; one side is the counter-insurgency, the other the insurgency; COIN player starts with 6 pieces and tries to keep them alive; insurgency player starts with none but has up to 66, and just keeps loading the board and trying to lure the COIN player's pieces away from the group to wipe them out. It's a pretty unreal total distillation of theme.

Bug - another 2 player abstract which is really quite good, you evolve little creatures and swallow up others as you go.

Candy Chaser - Heimlich and Co meets Cockroach Poker. Real quick with the best elements of both.

Montgolfiere - There's something about this one which can create some great moments if everybody gets on board. It's very simple - you play cards, highest card gets to move the players balloon up towards the moon - but there are some action cards (grappling hooks, engine bursts, that kind of thing). The BEST bit though is that if you are at the same height as another player, you can collude with them and show them the cards you *really are going to play you promise*. That's where the fun happens.

Chariots of Rome - I started out being disappointed - it doesn't capture the crazy shit that happens in Circus Maximus; no eyeballs hanging out or climbing up the wall etc etc. But it's so much easier to actually play (at least in my situation), AND the designer has released files for a "brutal" deck - I haven't tried them yet, but his aim was to recapture some of the zaniness of Circus Maximus with it.

King Chocolate - it's so dry, so, I still don't know. BUT it's really interesting; you create a totally abstract network of the stages of chocolate production. There are 6 stages but you can only own (from memory) 4 of them, meaning, you need to use other peoples concerns to get your shit done, which helps them to a degree.

Maskmen - climbing/trick taking kind of thing.

Magical Athlete - no need to describe this one I'm sure.

ubarose wrote: So you sort your games by rank lowest to highest and make a list of the the first 10 games that you rate highly/are personal favorites/would recommend.

Ohhhhhhh. That's different, then. Hm.

15961 Supremacy: The Game of the Superpowers This is one of the ultimate, all-day, DoaM/area control muthafukkas. We used to get 5 or 6 people together and play this, with most of the expansions, and play a game of Warlords (the video game) on the side. The graphic design is totally 80s "this is the new world of the computer!" and it has an expansion called Neutron Bombs and Killer Satellites.

14630 Grand Master An utterly simplistic, draw dependent "fighting" game. We played it as a filler for ages.

11404 Remnants Not just dice chuckin'. REAL TIME dice-chuckin. And post-apocalyptic dice-chuckin'!

9904 The Royal Game of Ur Created thousands of years before your so-called "messiah". Show some respect.

9400 Zimby Mojo Cooperative, followed by bloodbath. Covers both ends of the personality spectrum and plays 8(!) almost seamlessly. Lack of exposure is the only explanation for the ranking.

8828 Shenandoah: Jackson's Valley Campaign Actually does the block game "fog of war" thing better than many others. Also forces tough logistical decisions (i.e. the real choices of warfare) better than most.

7774 Senet See: Royal Game of Ur, above. Like backgammon. Depth. Respect for actual classics, you punks.

7129 Revolt on Antares The best of TSR's minigames. Has real storytelling value.

5224 The Hellgame Brilliant graphic design. Lots of good choices. Just fun.

4450 DRCongo A genuinely, excellent simulation game about a complicated situation. I'm honestly surprised it's this low.

Skipped a few, but mostly stuff that I'm trying to trade and, thus, wouldn't recommend or have recently traded for an haven't played enough of.

charlest wrote: VOC! always looked really neat to me, surprised to see it on your list Uba as I've never seen it talked about on here before.

It's an old game so when I was talking about it here I hadn't programmed any of the cross referencing for the blogs and articles, so it would be difficult to find now. I do remember that when it was going out of print and on sale for a ridiculously low price, I was encouraging folks to buy it.

It is a really great game, but it is one of those games that is played above the table so to speak. It's all about trust and ultimate betrayal - the scorpion and the frog. If you are playing it well, you will make at least one person at the table quite angry. The mechanism of drawing blindfolded makes it seem like a light hearted party game or children's game, which means "serious gamers" dismissed it out of hand without ever playing it. And those that did play went in with the expectation of light silliness, only to be shocked at it's viciousness. You also really need to play with the full compliment of players. So it is very hard to get to the table, as I need to convince several people to play it, and even if I do, after playing it they usually swear to never play again, as they are either emotionally exhausted by the tension level of the game, or are cross about the level of backstabbing and screwage.