80-71
80. Caylus
Caylus is the gripping classic eurogame in which you build up your path to victory by constructing buildings that you and your opponents will travel upon. Get ahead of the pack and your opponents will certainly send some trouble your way to shut you down. Build wisely and wait for your moment and victory is yours.
79. London (second edition)
Martin Wallace’s games are often full of abstracted maps, negative points, and loans. The second edition of London has all of these things (minus the map), but it streamlines it all to create a gripping card-driven tableau builder.
78. Aquasphere
Aquasphere is Stefan Feld brilliant and brightly colored programming eurogame that has everyone counting time and octopuses.
77. King of Tokyo
Richard Garfield’s King of Tokyo is such a simple, but brilliant idea, turning the dice collecting concepts of Yahtzee and creating an epic family game of battling monsters, fighting it out for the right to destroy Tokyo. With tons of extra monsters, gameplay easy enough for a four year old to pick up and expansions adding new mechanics, it’s a blast to play.
76. Amun-Re
My favorite Reiner Knizia game for so many reasons, but in particular for the fact that you are never left feeling safe and settle with your accomplishments as you have to uproot from your success in order to rebid for the future. A truly exciting game in which victory is always one bid away.
75. Diamonds
Diamonds captures the essence of trick taking and repackages it in an accessible and always fun system, without the wasted turns or poor draws the make up most trick taking games. Every action is a good one, and the inclusion of the clever diamond and vault system makes it a blast to play, win or lose.
74. Lorenzo il Magnifico
There really is nothing more fun in a eurogame than building up a tableau to churn out victory points, unless of course you add in manipulating dice a bit of luck to get the right card that turns your system into pure victory point gold. Lorenzo il Magnifico from CMON offers you numerous ways to victory, while making each step a whole lot of fun.
73. Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear! (second edition)
I’m not a war gamer (just look at this list), but Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear manages to capture the essence of war games and package them in such a way that the combat and mechanisms are accessible to even the most euro-centric gamers out there. Quick to learn but full of depth in systems, and massively expandable, the Conflict of Heroes system is a breath of fresh air for anyone interested in world war two gaming without the epic scope of the big ones.
72. San Juan
San Juan is the classic multi use card game that allows you the brilliance of Puerto Rico in a simple deck of cards. A solid game for both new gamers and hardcore gamers alike.
71. Arkwright
Stefan Risthaus’s expansive game about running factors in 18th century England is a beast of a game. It’s long (so long that the “short” version of the game is still almost 4 hours), it’s complex, and the scoring is incredibly tight as you rush to buy as much of your own stock as possible. It’s a symphony of interacting elements, though, building up to one of my favorite heavy-heavy euro out there.
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