25 August 2009

The 100 best hobby games

Matt Tarbit assembled pictures of the games from Hobby Games: The 100 Best. (Which is on my wish list.)

How many of them have you played?

I’ve scored a pitiful 15%.

  1. Axis & Allies
  2. Cosmic Wimpout
  3. Diplomacy
  4. Dungeons & Dragons
  5. Illuminati
  6. Kingmaker
  7. Lord of the Rings
  8. Magic: The Gathering
  9. Marvel Super Heroes
  10. Shadowrun
  11. Squad Leader
  12. Star Fleet Battles
  13. Talisman
  14. Toon
  15. Traveller

I may have played Champions. I’ve definitely played it’s offspring, Fantasy Hero. I have played Ark of the Covenant, which is a Carcassonne variant. I played a computer version of Ogre. I own Ars Magica and Pendragon though I haven’t played either.

I haven’t played Formula Dé, but I have a hard time believing it is better than Formula 1. It seems a shame that neither Magic Realm or Source of the Nile made the list.

4 comments:

clovis said...

totally unrelated to gaming
(I love ERB and old school)
but looks like I may be relocating to round rock/ north austin

any advice

you can mail me at

LOUISL2 at COX dot NET

Aaron E. Steele said...

Magic Realm is seriously under-rated. Chalk it up to some inscrutable rules, and the lack of follow-on expansions. Had the rules been 20 pages instead of 120, and Hamblen's expansions been developed and published, it might have possessed more traction.

Aaron E. Steele said...

I only scored 16.

I wonder how they came up with this list? I saw the book at my local FLGS and thought "who would think themselves qualified enough to narrow this down to the top 100?"

Robert said...

From what I gather, they just asked each designer to write an essay about their favorite game. (But they weren’t allowed to pick one they designed themselves.) So, Favorite Hobby Games of 100 Game Designers Who Agreed To Write Essays For This Book may have been a more accurate title. ^_^