Tag Archives: Paths of Glory

Boardgames in the News: The Best Game EVAR?!?!

BoardGameGeek is the largest and most comprehensive website dedicated to board and card games, with a database comprising nearly a hundred and fifty thousand games.  These games have a ranking based on ratings submitted by account holders.  While these rankings are obviously skewed by the characteristics of the contributors, the number one ranking game clearly has significance.  In the twenty-two years that the rankings have been in place, there have been just ten games to achieve the top rank, but as of today, there is an eleventh, with Brass: Birmingham taking the top spot from Gloomhaven.

Brass: Birmingham
– Image from boardgamegeek.com

Of these now eleven games, three held the top rank briefly, for a day or two only.  The first of these was The Game of Life, and it’s top rank was the result of a software bug when on 25th February 2006, a User gave it a rating of sixty-five thousand five-hundred and thirty-five out of ten.  Just over a year later, as an April Fool, another User encouraged his friends to give Monkey Auto Races a rating of ten.  With just three hundred ratings, this game went from unranked to number one overnight, only to plummet back down the rankings just a day or so later.  Three years later, the site owner pulled his own April Fool stunt and set the ranking equal to the data base number, making Die Macher number one for a day.

The list of eight genuine Number One Games and the date they first achieved the top ranking are:

Brass: Birmingham
– Image by boardGOATS

Essen 2012

Essen is a small city in the industrial heartland on the River Ruhr.  One of the less well known German cities, people are often surprised that it features in so many games.

Pandemic

The reason for this is a sort of in-joke:  Essen is the home of the largest games fair in Europe and, arguably, the world, The Internationale Spieltage.  Known by gamers simply as “Essen”, it runs for four days in October every year (18th-21st October 2012) and everyone who is anyone goes.

As well as all the major (and most of the minor) publishers, game designers and game illustrators, there are also thousands of people from all over the world who simply like playing board games.  In 2012, there are nearly 750 exhibitors who will be selling and demonstrating their latest offerings to the nearly 147,000 visitors.

This year no-one from boardGOATS will be going, however, you can get a flavour of the event and an idea of some of the latest games by watching the live feed from the BoardGameGeek booth.

Here are some more games that feature Essen, can you recognise the games they are from?

Ticket to Ride: Europe

Railways of Europe

Paths of Glory