Top BGG Games Without the Heavies?

BGG / Board Game Geek, is the de facto website for all things board games. Most people in the hobby log their plays there, rank games there, and post in forums to discuss games. Anyone who’s googled a rule for a board game has probably come across the website.

Every game on the website has a average rating and an average weight. Rating is how good people think the game is on a scale from 1 to 10, and weight is how complex the game is from 1 to 5. The website gathers all of people’s ratings and gives an average “score” for the game.

Rating:

• 10 – Outstanding. Always want to play and expect this will never change.
• 9 – Excellent game. Always want to play it.
• 8 – Very good game. I like to play. Probably I’ll suggest it and will never turn down a game.
• 7 – Good game, usually willing to play.
• 6 – OK game, some fun or challenge at least, will play sporadically if in the right mood.
• 5 – Average game, slightly boring, take it or leave it.
• 4 – Not so good, it doesn’t get me but could be talked into it on occasion.
• 3 – Likely won’t play this again although could be convinced. Bad.
• 2 – Extremely annoying game, won’t play this ever again.
• 1 – Defies description of a game. You won’t catch me dead playing this. Clearly broken.

Weight:

• 1 – Light
• 2 – Medium Light
• 3 – Medium
• 4 – Medium Heavy
• 5 – Heavy

Once you’re familiar with the website and it’s rankings, you come to realize that the community skews heavy. What I mean by that is that heavier games have a better rating, and lighter games score lower. To me this makes a lot of sense. The people in the hobby that take time to rate and weigh board games are much more likely to be in to the heavy stuff than casual people that love games but don’t delve deep in to the hobby.

When me and my gaming group got in to board games, and had discovered BGG, we started looking at the top 100 games on the site. They do a little magic with it, something to do with the average rating, and the number of ratings posted gives you the BGG rank for the game. The website makes it fairly easy to get to, and easy to consume.

Our attitude was, that these must be the best games, so let’s try to buy or try them all! Which worked fine for us, since we didn’t mind beefier games, but this might not work for others who are looking for more of a Ticket to Ride experience, and not so much a Madeira one.

People get recommended games all the time. From that person you know at work, from the helpful youth at the friendly local game shop, or from the internet. When you get that recommendation, you have to understand the source, and using BGG is no different. BGG’s top games assumes you’re in to the heavy stuff, but maybe that’s not your bag.

If you are indeed looking to find out what the top games are according to BGG, while skipping the beefy boys, there’s a simple method you can employ to get there. If you’re not interested in the how, and just want the list, feel free to jump ahead.

Start with going to boardgamegeek,com, once there, click on the search bar on the upper left. Once you click you will see a drop down for advanced search. Give that fella a click.

Once you’re on the page, to limit the range of weights to be displayed, enter the range you want in the “Average Gamplay Weight Range” area of the form. I chose 1 to 3 for the purposes of this article. If you want to tweak it up or down that works pretty well. For my gaming group I might go as high as 3.75, but for my extended family I might go down to 2.5 or so. Feel free to fiddle with the numbers here

Hit the submit button on the bottom and you’ll get a list of all the games BGG has in its database that have a weight between what you’ve put in. This list will be unordered to start with. That is to say it won’t be sorted in any way that is useful, but fret not, we can fix that by simply clicking on Board Game Rank on the left and it will sort the list by BGG ranking.

And there you have it. A curated list based on your own weight preference. Keep in mind that both the rating and the weight are subjective, and every user that enters one has their own ideas on what the numbers mean.

So how does that shake out? What does the top 50 games look like if we only look at games weighted 1 to 3? Here’s the top 50 as of August 2021. You can always click here if you want a easy click to get to the current list on BGG.

A couple of things after looking at this revised list:

• 68 of the top 100 games are of a weight higher than 3, I didn’t think it was THAT many
• I’m surprised at some of the games that are under 3, they feel beefier than what people on BGG have rated it
• I own 23 (used to be 24) of these 50 games, as opposed to 17 of the overall top 50
• I’ve played 30 of the 50 as opposed to 24 of the overall top 50

What do you think about this list? Where would you set the line for complexity? What games should or should not be in this list? Write in the comments!