The Board Game Grow Shelf of Greatness

The Golden Era of Board Games. That phrase has been thrown around for a number of years now. Is it true? With literally thousands of board games being released each year, many with premium components, it’s hard to argue against it. So on the plus side, gamers are spoiled for choice. Want a worker placement game? You’ve got hundreds to choose from. What a city building game? You have so many choices you could literally build a fort out of all the boxes.

While it’s absolutely fantastic to have all these choices, new gamers can also be overwhelmed at their options. Thankfully, there are helpful reviewers to introduce new people to the next game that might capture their attention. With this goal in mind, we wanted to make it easier for gamers to find some of the best titles to play. Welcome to the Board Game Grow Shelf of Greatness. Call it a hall of fame, or a badge of honor if you like, but the principle remains the same. Our Shelf of Greatness is made of games we consider to be excellent titles that most gamers can enjoy.

Sure, a game may get 5 Stars from a reviewer, but opinions can still vary from gamer to gamer. So we figured this would be a great way to give you a list of games that have not only gotten excellent ratings, but the majority of our team of reviewers agree as well.

So how do we choose what gets into the Shelf of Greatness? Good question! A couple of times a year, the BGQ staff (currently 10 writers and editors) will come together to vote on which games we think should be admitted to the Shelf. Our rules are simple:

• The game must have already been reviewed here on BGQ and been given an initial rating of 4.5 or 5 Stars.
• Each staff member get’s one nomination per voting cycle.
• The game must then get at least 5 yes votes to be chosen for the Shelf of Greatness. Basically, at least half our team has to agree it deserves to be in.

Our hope is that we can create a place where gamers can easily stop and see titles that the majority of our team thinks are of premium quality (both in gameplay and components.) Unlike yearly awards, this will be a persistent, ever growing list that gamers can check out. You’ll be able to check out the full list of our Shelf of Greatness here as it continues to grow throughout the years.

The inaugural games for our Shelf of Greatness are:

7 Wonders

Date Released: 2010
Publisher: Repos Production
Designer: Antoine Bauza
Artists: Antoine Bauza, Miguel Coimbra
Original Review Score: 5 Stars
Date Added to Shelf of Greatness: Spring 2019
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Carcassonne

Date Released: 2000
Publisher: Z-Man Games
Designer: Klaus-Jürgen Wrede
Artists: Doris Matthäus, Anne Pätzke, Chris Quilliams, Klaus-Jürgen Wrede
Original Review Score: 5 Stars
Date Added to Shelf of Greatness: Spring 2019
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Clans of Caledonia

Date Released: 2017
Publisher: Karma Games
Designer: Juma Al-JouJou
Artist: Klemens Franz
Original Review Score: 5 Stars
Date Added to Shelf of Greatness: Spring 2019
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Great Western Trail

Date Released: 2016
Publisher: Stronghold Games
Designer: Alexander Pfister
Artist: Andreas Resch
Original Review Score: 5 Stars
Date Added to Shelf of Greatness: Spring 2019
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