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November 01, 2006
Essential German Games
At games last night, David & Melissa had just bought St Petersburg and I was surprised at David not having it already, given how complete his collection is. I noted that I thought it would probably make the top 10 of my list of Essential German Games and Melissa asked what else would be on my list.
So, today, I decided to actually make that list and see where it ended up and such. This list of course has some similarities to The One Hundred although I only went back and looked at that after I made my list. There is a pretty big difference in methodology of the two lists, however. That list was a composite of subjective preferences of a bunch of people really knowledgable about German games. This list is meant to be my as objective as I can opinion of the zeitgeist of the German games players. Also my list is meant to be more about starting assembling a "collection" of games and not about individually particularly liking game A or game B.
Anyway, here it is. The gaps indicate I think there is a bigger distance between the two games above and below than in instances without gaps. List ended up somewhat randomly being 23 games.
The Essential German Games to start a games collection
Settlers
Carcassonne
Ticket to Ride
Euphrat & Tigris
Puerto Rico
Lost Cities
St Petersburg
Ingenious
Bohnanza
Tichu
Caylus
Ra
Princes of Florence
El Grande
Power Grid
Battle Cry
Modern Art
Lord of the Rings
Acquire
Cosmic Encounter
Crokinole
Age of Steam
Magic: the Gathering
The ones I am least sure of on this list, for different reasons, are Tichu (hard to distance my subjective love of it), Caylus, and Ingenious (too new, particularly Caylus).
Posted by aarondf at November 1, 2006 05:21 PM
Comments
Matthew Lanagan of Bunbury, Western Australia sent me a note asking me to update this list. Here is the reply I sent him:
I think that list is still quite good. Lets see. In terms of new additions for certain Dominion and Race for the Galaxy should be added to the list. I'm not a fan of it but probably Agricola as well. Of the three I was unsure of, I think Tichu should actually move up the list and I think I'd leave Caylus and Ingenious but move Caylus down a ways. I don't think there are any games I would kick off the list although some like St Petersburg I'd probably move down somewhat.
Oh, I'd also add Time's Up to the list which is not new but the list is missing any party games and Times Up is pretty much regarded as the best.
So that adds 4 games in 3 years. For such a list, that is probably about the right rate.
Posted by: Aaron Fuegi ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scv.bu.edu/~aarondf/hearth/nav-commenters.gif)
at September 25, 2009 11:28 AM
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