Gloomhaven Loses Top Spot On BoardGameGeek’s Ratings Charts

While they don’t seem to be a laborious science, and ought to be considered with as a lot scepticism as (video) avid gamers would take a look at a website like Metacritic, it can’t be denied that the consumer rankings on BoardGameGeek play an enormous half in serving to folks select which board video games to purchase, play and/or argue about.

The website, a priceless asset that’s the whole lot from a group discussion board to a wiki to an property platform, permits anybody who has performed a recreation to provide it a ranking. The extra individuals who fee a recreation, the extra priceless that ranking turns into, and whereas it’s removed from an ideal system—this 2019 put up has an excellent information to the rankings’ execs and cons—most individuals, myself included, can’t assist however take a look at a recreation’s ranking and really feel that it has some form of impression.

You’d assume that, with the location being over 20 years previous, there would have been dozens, and even lots of of video games which have risen to occupy high spot on BGG’s rankings chart. But no! In the location’s existence—or extra precisely within the time that the rankings system has been in place—solely eight video games have ever clawed their method to the highest of the pile.

The first seven are:

• Paths of Glory
• Tigris and Euphrates
• Puerto Rico
• Agricola
• Twilight Struggle
• Pandemic Legacy Season 1
• Gloomhaven

Gloomhaven, the most important board recreation of the previous decade, had been #1 since December 2017, however this month was lastly dethroned, bringing its five-year reign to an finish. And not by a brand new recreation, both; it was as an alternative overhauled by Brass: Birmingham, a recreation first launched in 2018. While I’ve by no means bought round to reviewing the sport on the location, I did play it for a bit again in 2019 and thought it was fairly good! Not better of all time good, however then, that’s why evaluate aggregations are a difficult enterprise.

In lieu of a Kotaku write-up, then, right here’s SUSD’s evaluate of Brass: Birmingham as an alternative, in case you’re questioning what sort of recreation can discover itself collectively rated so extremely amongst board recreation nerds:

In case you’re questioning what recreation may subsequent obtain this feat, BGG say that the purpose differential between Gloomhaven and Brass: Birmingham is so minute that they “will likely swap spots for a while”, as will Pandemic Legacy (which can be proper up there), so contemporary blood might need to attend some time.

BGG’s put up asserting the shift additionally contains some very helpful recommendation for evaluate aggregation, whatever the medium:

It’s not like every of those rankings are fastened in time or {that a} recreation lands in its “proper” spot and by no means strikes once more. The rankings don’t point out absolute greatness, however slightly greatness for a great variety of people who find themselves followers of that individual recreation or recreation style.

Gloomhaven, for instance, isn’t a recreation that informal recreation gamers will choose up on a whim, however slightly an expertise that calls out to those that is perhaps taken with what it particularly affords. I don’t fall into that bucket, so I’m unlikely to ever play the sport, which implies I’ll by no means add my (seemingly low) ranking to the sport web page. You might get a “proper” ranking for a recreation provided that you pressured everybody on the planet to play it and fee it — and coerced rankings most likely aren’t a dependable measure both, so let’s not go there.

Rankings and rankings have which means solely insofar as your tastes match the tastes of others. Don’t assume that every one highly-ranked video games are really useful for you, and don’t keep away from that low-rated recreation that looks as if an ideal match on your tastes. You do you, boo.

Here’s the highest 10 because it stands immediately, in the event you’re taken with seeing the total record of video games that get BGG customers actually excited:

While I by no means bought round to reviewing Brass: Birmingham, I have reviewed a lot of different titles on this record—together with Pandemic Legacy, Terraforming Mars and Rebellion—and you’ll learn these right here.