Let’s start from the beginning, I suppose.

My games that I rate at 10 stars are not connected to what we may term ‘game semi-objective quality’. In all fields of my analysis I separate the personal from the professional.

There is a professional, analytical lens I apply to what I consider endeavors that require me to offer observations about a game and discuss how well they’re integrated, how fresh they are in history, as well as historical and cultural importance, etcetera and so on.

Then there is the personal lens I apply, where “does this game spark joy in me” has a higher rating if it more commonly sparks joy in me than not.

These two lenses are, for me, entirely disconnected. If anything matches up it’s only coincidence.

A little tangent now on numerical ratings.

It may seem odd to some that for reviews I won’t use numerical ratings, but I will for my personal “thoughts” on a game. My reason is that I don’t want to perturb people’s thoughts on a game by offering an ultimately non-objective number rating. I want them to evaluate, for themselves, what they think based on what I write in my review. I have a real distaste to utter self-hatred of in any way trying to manipulate people, so I strive as much as I can to divorce myself from any such tendency.

I consider such implications that I so much as commit falsehoods, even in jest, to be at least a little bit insulting. I have paid a lot psychologically, politically, and in influence for basically saying what I feel on a topic (though I try not to cause harm nonetheless). Sometimes I’ve paid in safety and financial stability. I ultimately lost a career I loved because I would not bend when the engineering was bad but the management wanted me to just not make a fuss.

Also I was nearly murdered by my family over matters such as truth and lies multiple times. So you know. There’s a lot of trauma there, especially because one of those attempts succeeded when I was a child and I woke up the next day anyways. The fun part is that I did not lie, but I was punished as if I lied anyways.

Hmm. Yes. Lots of trauma there.

You can see why “haha, you aren’t telling the truth” in any way you slice hurts me. The fact I’m explaining it means that I’ve let people know exactly how to hurt me, and I’m doing it because I want people to know where I stand, even if it loses me friends, respect, whatever.

Anyways.

If you need any proof that I’m not doing my 10s for brownie points or manipulation or whatever else people think I’m doing this for, let’s consider what’s in my 10 as of this month (for it can change for me over time, and usually does).

In alphabetical order because I can’t be bothered trying to determine minute quantities of decimal joy, here’s my 10s and why they are 10s.

By the way, common to all of these, I do not ask for review copies and indeed when I could afford all the games I could, I wanted to be hit with the sticker shock so that I could also add that information to my reviews. Also review copies are an element that can add bias for me that I find unacceptable. Alas, these days I still do not ask for review copies thus I can only really provide old reviews and analysis; but that is my own overly strict ethos.

The farthest towards review copies I ever get is providing play testing (and to me, play testing is a form of work that I take pretty seriously). And I do it for no pay usually, for a variety of reasons, but also, because I want no bias even subconsciously.

Anyways.

Ashes Reborn (formerly Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn)

Magic is a big part of my early history of modern gaming, yet has a few idiosyncrasies I don’t like and no solo mode that I care for.

Then Plaid Hat came out with Ashes, which I love for giving me a Magic-like game that fixes opening card screw, mana screw, interminable turns, and provides a great solo system in the Chimaera and, apparently soon, Dragons? Also the preconstructed decks are decent enough for me to run a vast variety of Phoenixborn (read: Planeswalkers) with different strengths and weaknesses.

Plaid Hat’s folks have never known who I am. I have never exchanged any correspondence with them beyond “I love this or that game.”

Battlecrest

I love a good skirmish game. I love a hero fighting game where the heroes are highly asymmetrical. I love these because Level 99’s Battlecon created that love in me and it has never gone out.

Battlecrest gives me that without the bulk of most other games of this nature (for example, the Unmatched series).

It helps that, for whatever reason, I think because smol is a like-factor for me, I love most games in the Button Shy line. This has never been true for most other publishers. I dumped on a – I think? – coffee trading game directly while I played with Jay of Rio Grande umpteen years ago. (ETA: Or Kosmos? I am old and my brain is riddled with CPTSD.) I really do not care for favors from folks, nor do I care about being loveable, even if it sometimes happens for folks anyways.

(I mean, I also don’t care about being a curmudgeon either? If someone else provides a good point I’ll praise it, if someone else provides a point I disagree with I’ll outline my disagreement, but I don’t call people names or say games are broken unless they actually, literally have a printing error that keeps the game from reaching its goal.)

In contrast to Plaid Hat, the Button Shy folks do know who I am. This did not make a difference to me putting a blistering review on their own official Discord about my distaste for Wild Tales, nor my opinion that the solo mode for Perfect Moment was difficult to learn and cope with.

I am unfortunately no longer in good fortunes, so I do a lot of playtesting for Button Shy as a way to try to thank them for the joy they’ve brought into my life.

Does that make me biased?

Hmmm. Yeah, several designers very much think that it doesn’t, because if I think you need X feedback I will give it to you, even if I consider you a friend and even if there’s a chance you stop being my friend (for reasons I would understand).

Bullet

I love Falling Pieces games. Tetris, Hextris, Bejeweled, whatever, I love them. Bullet is this but with special powers and a huge variety of bosses and honestly this is catnip for me.

Level 99 has no idea who I am.

Cascadia

You know, for a very long time, I actively avoided nature games. I did not have good associations with nature for a very long time until I got to adequate safety where I didn’t have to worry as much anymore about being ambushed and murdered.

And then it turns out I love nature, even if it’s just from inside an enclosure with sturdy glass and locked doors and generally semi-impregnable.

Cascadia is my chill, as puzzly as I desire, tile layer. I like the theme. I like all the scoring variety stuff you can have per game. I like the nature. I love the expansion.

Chain Mail

This is where most people stop understanding my choices for 10s.

Chain Mail is, frankly speaking, a janky game. It has an element I love which is the huge variety of modular pieces to put a game together, as well as a very unique system of activating and prepping character powers. But the rules aren’t smooth, some of the PNP files are a little annoying to reformat properly, and the game is old and unsupported.

I love Chain Mail so much anyways. I love everything about it, even the jank, because I know the jank exists because this was an experiment and boy, what a wonderful, fresh thing to embrace as my adventuring game.

See also my notes on Button Shy above.

The Cursed Castle (2nd Edition)

Aka Solo Game of the Month edition.

Most people will not rank Cursed Castle as the best of the SGOTM series, ever. It’s a great game though, I really love it as my dungeon delver because it captures the parts I think are important, which actually isn’t really the map but adapting to monsters.

I’m told this is like a Darkest Dungeon style game. I frankly have no idea as I don’t really play most video games.

And even though I love The Cursed Castle, I am not gonna claim it is more unique or well-put-together or smooth or thinky or pleasingly complex than Rome: Fate of an Empire (also part of SGOTM).

I love Cursed Castle for myself anyways.

Gabe has no idea who I am apart from someone who finds typos in the PNPs and emails him about them.

Exobase

Of worker placement games I own, this is the most evocative of story. You would think more worker placement games might be this, but not really. Exobase has escalation that resembles, very strongly, the pacing of a good story; and also worker placement.

I also love that hard SFF, and I love the whole exo-thing, leaving our solar system behind and heading into the great unknown, and all the stuff we’d have to create to make it work, and the survival angle in space that is NOT ALIENS.

Like is Exobase “objectively” better than, say, Apiary? From many aspects, probably not.

I don’t really care. While Exobase is so smooth and without jank, and is a very good game on its own merits, there are things about it I love that don’t exist at all in almost all other worker placement games, including my beloved Rosenberg “harvest” games.

Mike knows who I am, and we are friends, and I like his games. I playtest for him and We Heart Games sometimes.

I think the games of his that I love are the ones that are simple-joy-aligned and/or hope-aligned.

Fields of Arle

Most people understand this one. Well, to be more precise, they think they understand why I rate this one a 10. It must be because I love Rosenberg’s harvest series, I love working out his game systems, I love the interaction of resources that go beyond construction and get into upgrades and multiple relationships, etc.

Yeah like I rate his harvest games a 9 for me except for Fields of Arle. Fields of Arle is here because it’s well-researched and that shows through the mechanics in beautiful ways, and I respect and admire agriculture (even if I’m not so much into animal husbandry). It gives me pastoral joy.

Otherwise it would sit in the 9s alongside Ora et Labora, which people also don’t understand why I rate a 9 for me personally.

Lookout Spiele has no idea who I am, and Rosenberg super has no idea who I am. I have never met him, talked to him, or even emailed him.

A Gentle Rain

This is the one that really stumps people.

It’s a chill game, it’s smol, and I just like it. Sometimes that happens. It sparks joy for me every time, even on really bad days, and so it’s a personal 10. Deal with it I guess.

Kevin Wilson has no idea who I am.

Imperium: Horizons et al

It’s Magic-like and has a great solo and is a deck builder that breaks several conventions of most deck builders, it’s well-researched, it’s about history. It has so much variety and richness.

So yeah, people kinda understand why I rate it a 10, and also do not understand why I rate it a 10.

Osprey has no idea who I am.

Pax Pamir 2nd Edition

I can’t afford Root and I don’t have a group to play it with and I do not want to fuss with the Clockwork solos personally.

Pax Pamir is so special in so many ways – and the solo mode by Ricky Royal is awesome in its simplicity and its ferocious nature. And it’s also a game with many cards that yet creates such different experiences for me each time.

Even Forest Shuffle and Terraforming Mars and other Big Deck games never do that for me.

There’s something about Wehrle’s designs… something special. One day I will figure out the words.

Wehrle has no idea who I am.

Ricky Royal on the other hand does know who I am, but I know him almost purely through being a play tester on Nature’s solo mode. I think mostly I was annoying.

Railroad Ink Challenge

Networking game, chonky dice, lots of interesting little expansions, different all the time.

It’s actually a tossup between RRI and Next Station for me. In a way this entry is kind of both, with a slight nod towards RRI because of the extreme variety it offers through the dice and also the different expansions, although Next Station also offers so much variety as well.

Though Next Station gets a slight, slight ding because I do not like one of the modules that comes with Next Station: Paris, and think it is way too many bonuses all the time. I’ll need to revisit to refine this opinion, and I could be playing it wrong, but ah well.

Horrible Guild only knows me as “customer who discovered gross mold in RRIC: Lush Green and needed a refund because good gods no”.

I am on the Postmark server and have exchanged email a little with Dunstan, but it was “help I was a silly goose and lost the dropbox links for stuff I promise I won’t just lose them again” (he helped and was so kind!).

And yet HG’s RRI is what I feature in my 10s box and not Dunstan’s Next Station. Nor are any Postmark games really part of this 10s list, even though I will be playtesting for them a little bit.

So it goes.

Spirit Island

This is one people understand a LOT. And they actually would understand my reasons for this, too. I won’t cover more on this because it’s not very distinctive and is just so very Expected to be on a rated-10 list.

Greater Than Games has no idea who I am.

Three Sisters

I have no idea why Three Sisters replaced Viticulture for me as a 10. I think it’s because I like the cascading actions a lot, and also I connect more to the theme maybe? I think Viticulture technically has more going for it, but it’s Three Sisters that brings me joy almost all the time.

That used to be Viticulture.

25th Century Games doesn’t know who I am. Stonemaier Games is the publisher I generally have better preferences for on a professional lens level.

Didn’t rate Viticulture as a personal 10.

Tides

This was my first Mike Berg game and I love it. I like the turn on set collecting that doesn’t require a zillion components, I love the solo AI, I love the very chill theme, I love its chill nature.

See above re Mike Berg and I, and also I play tested a bit the Buried Treasure expansion and the new Sunset solo mode (which is so, so chill and has no AI).

(worder)

Extra portable word game that is extremely flexible and small. It does so much with just 9 cards and allows me to make words the way I prefer: through my sheer chaos brain of associations where my keys are sometimes concepts and sometimes just that a word shares letters with another word.

Is it The Best Word Game? No, I kinda think of that as like either Paperback or Wordsy. BuyWord probably also gets a good nod.

But what is a 10 for me personally is (worder).

I know Gil Hova, the designer of Wordsy, and we have emailed a bit and discussed thingies.

I still did not choose Wordsy here.

Conclusion

TLDR I am weird-brained. Expect analysis but also strange personal quirks I keep out of my professional analysis.