List – P. R. O'Leary

I am an avid board gamer and have recently been watching Top 100 Game of All Time lists from a few of the hobbies most stalwart reviewers. This prompted me to come up with my own.

The exercise made me think a bit about what I like in board games. Yes, I love interesting mechanics. I love to be made to think. I love to be given the opportunity to try to out-think my opponents. I love to have fun, be creative, and try to think outside the box while doing all of that. But most of all, I love when a game becomes a story.

I’m not talking about story-telling games here (although there a few on my list), but when a session you played becomes something memorable. An event you keep coming back to or a talking point among your friends.

Like the time in Eclipse where one of my friends was in the lead, holing up in his corner of the galaxy, building monoliths with abandon, and another friend found a way to blast through some wormholes with his custom ships and took over his whole system in the last round.

Or the time I spent the whole game of Shogun outguessing a friend of mine. Attacking him before he attacked, taking over his provinces right before he taxed them, and razing his castles right after he built them.

Or the time in Twilight Imperium when I made a risky move to attack another player (which almost worked!) and then another player sneakily added long-distance travel to his spaceships and swooped in to take over my home world while my back was turned.

Or the time a good friend of mine wrote a string of curse-words as his fake definition in Balderdash just so he could see me read them out loud. (I have never cursed out loud.)

Or the time in Wrath of Ashardalon, where our whole group barely escaped a dungeon with our lives because this goddamn rolling boulder trap somehow kept rolling towards us no matter what direction we went!

Or that time in Battlestar Galactica where we were so paranoid that we were convinced our lone engineer was a Cylon. We voted him into the brig even though he pleaded with us not to, only to find out later that he was a loyal human and had been trying to help us all along. He won’t let us live that one down.

Or the first time I played Tales of Arabian Nights and won after my character turned into an ape, murdered the princess who was in love with him, and ended up becoming a sultan.

These are stories we create ourselves, with our friends, without even trying to. Board games are the medium that help us do that in ways we couldn’t have done otherwise.

I wrote a few words about some games I love, and I hope they will inspire you to go out and give these games a try. Below that you will find my Top 100 Games of All Time list.

#3 Battlestar Galactica – Everyone must work together to try to get your spaceship home without dying or starving to death. But one of you is secretly working for the enemy. Which one? MY GOD WHICH ONE????

#6 Galaxy Trucker – Step 1: Build a space ship faster and better than your friends. Step 2: Watch all your spaceships fall apart in spectacular fashion.

#8 Sentinals of the Multiverse – This is the one super-hero game where it feels like you are in a super-hero battle. Choose your heroes, choose your villain, and choose your location. Then proceed to have an intense and fun battle of epic proportions.

#12 Tales of Arabian Nights – This is a completely unique experience. You play a character travelling around looking for adventure. You encounter something: A rich princess, a raging storm, a mystical djinn. What do you do? Choose from your many options, consult the book of tales, read from one of the over 2500 things that could happen to you, and laugh with your friends as the story unfolds!

#17 Arkham Horror – Grab some friends and try to sastop an ancient god from awakening and destroying humanity. This is a lingering, atmospheric game. Give it a chance to grab you and you’ll have sessions you’ll never forget.

#90 Cards Against Humanity – Play this game with your parents.

Rank	Game
1	Shogun
2	Yggdrasil
3	Battlestar Galactica
4	Castles of Burgandy
5	Eclipse
6	Galaxy Trucker
7	Glen More
8	Sentinals of the Multiverse
9	Steampark
10	Alien Frontiers
11	Small World
12	Tales of Arabian Nights
13	Cyclades
14	Heroscape
15	Kingsburg
16	Agricola
17	Arkham Horror
18	Balderdash
19	King of Tokyo
20	Twitch
21	Dixit
22	Ticket to Ride
23	Legend of Drizzt
24	Wrath of Ashardalon
25	Castle Ravenloft
26	Catacombs
27	Jungle Speed
28	Mage Knight
29	Airlines Europe
30	Modern Art
31	Star Trek: Fleet Captains
32	Age of Conan
33	Word on the Street
34	Hanabi
35	Puerto Rico
36	Mansions of Madness
37	Pocket Battles
38	Forbidden Desert
39	Carcassone
40	Escape: Curse of the Temple
41	Stone Age
42	Carson City
43	Race For the Galaxy
44	Love Letter
45	Earth Reborn
46	Legendary
47	City of Remnants
48	Mage Wars
49	Mr. Jack Pocket
50	Space Alert
51	Quarantine
52	X-bugs
53	Long Shot
54	No Thanks
55	Civilization
56	10 Days in Europe
57	Gloom
58	Yedo
59	Lords of Waterdeep
60	10 Days in Africa
61	Zooloretto
62	Dynasties
63	Kemet
64	Elder Sign
65	Exodus: Proxima Centauri
66	Samurai Swords
67	Enigma
68	Merchants & Marauders
69	Star Trek: Deck Building Game
70	Pit
71	Martian Dice
72	Best Sellers
73	7 Wonders
74	Betrayal at House on the Hill
75	Twilight Imperium
76	Cineplexity
77	Guillotine
78	Forbidden Island
79	Dominion
80	Tsuro
81	Wits and Wagers
82	Runewars
83	Kill Dr. Lucky
84	Scrabble
85	Biblios
86	Cosmic Encounter
87	Power Struggle
88	Time’s Up
89	Game of Thrones
90	Cards Against Humanity
91	Letters From Whitechapel
92	Khet 2.0
93	Formula D
94	Flash Point
95	Settlers of Catan
96	Pandemic
97	Fresco
98	Shadows Over Camelot
99	Heroquest
100	Battle Masters

In Game of Thrones and the rest of the Song of Ice and Fire series we know that he is not kind to those that hold the title of King’s Hand, for sure. But I’m talking about actual hand injuries and arm injuries. Have you ever noticed how many injuries to those extremities are inflicted upon characters?

For some reason, I have. And for some further unknown reason, I have decided to make a list. And here they are, in no particular order: SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!

Jon Snow burns his hand on a lantern when fighting a white walker.
Caitlin Stark cuts her hands on a knife while defending herself from Bran’s assassin.
Theon Greyjoy has his finger flayed by a Bolton.
Sandor “the Dog” Clegene gets his arm burnt white fighting Beric Dondarrian.
Great John Umber gets his fingers bit off by Grey Wind.
Davos had parts of his fingers cut off by Stannis.
Jaime Lannister gets his hand cut off by Vargo Hoat.
Qhorin Halfhand, you guessed it, has half a hand due to a Wildling axe.
Victarion Greyjoy injures his hand in a duel. Then has a weird mage set it on fire to heal it.
Ghost finds a lone hand in the woods, leading the Night’s Watch to a two corpses.
Arya gets her hands scratched up pretty good while trying to catch cats.
Urrigon Greyjoy lost half a handplaying The Finger Dance, the axe game of the Iron Islands. (Countless hands and fingers have been lost by people playing that game…)
Lady Hornwood chews off her own fingers because her dear husband, Ramsey Bolton, locked her in a tower with no food.
Marillion the singer confesses to killing Lysa Arryn, and as punishment gets a few fingers cut off.
Narbo, a theif in Braavos, gets stabbed in the hand a prostitute, losing the use of three of his fingers. Poor guy can’t pickpocket anymore!
Tanselle had her finger broken by Prince Aerion in The Hedge Knight.
Way back when, some guy named Silver Denys tried to tame the wild dragon Sheepstealer, and got his arm bit off in the process.
Lancel Lannister obtains an arm injury in the Battle of Blackwater Bay. It turns him religious.
Nymeria bites Little Shit Joffrey’s arm, hopefully inflicting great pain.

There are probably many more! Maybe some day I’ll create a comprehensive list. It will be the most useless Game of Thrones list ever. If you would like to contribute any I missed, please leave your suggestions in the comments.

Also, I found an appropriate Q+A from Mr. Martin in this interview:

I have a question that’s been bothering me for six books now – what’s with hands? How come characters keep getting hand injuries?

GRRM: Well, actually hand injuries were very common in the Middle Ages. When you fight with swords and axes and do a lot of hand labour, you get a lot of hand injuries. In fact, even leaving out the swords and axes you get a lot of hand injuries. my father was a longshoreman, a stevedore, and I know they would always get hand injuries. They would wear protective gloves, but they would still get injuries. There are other touches of realism; my characters who fight in repeated battles in these books tend to get scars. They lose noses and ears and become disfigured, and that’s a consequence of those battles. That’s where the icon of the Scarred Warrior comes from. Every time you go into a fight you risk emerging a little less pretty than when you went in.