On December 29, 2017, Isaac Childres’ Gloomhaven took over the number one spot on the Board Game Geek ranking of the greatest board games and would stay there for five years, one month and twenty days, one of the longest runs in the 21+ year history of that chart.
A few days ago, it was knocked from its perch by Martin Wallace, Gavan Brown and Matt Tollman’s Brass: Birmingham, a heavy economic Euro that was a revised edition of Wallace’s 2007 classic Brass. It was a hard fought battle with Brass: Birmingham first entering the top ten in October of 2019 and taking a little over three years to ascend the final positions.
Amazingly, Gloomhaven not only lost the top spot but also the number 2 position which is now Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, the game that had topped the chart for almost a year before the Childres’ masterpiece took the throne for its long run.
We’ll probably never know exactly how this all happened. The ratings on which the BGG list is based is a closely guarded secret using the input from tens of thousands of users and pumped through a formula to smooth the ratings over time.
What is known, is that there are regular campaigns behind the scenes among certain groups of users to taint these ratings by submitting blocks of high or low ratings which can nudge a game’s score by hundredths of a point, enough to make a difference in a close race. In fact, the number 2 and 3 games are only separated by .003. Pandemic Season 1 is, as of this writing, at 8.407 while Gloomhaven is at 8.404. Brass: Birmingham, which was just a few thousandths behind less than a week ago, is now at 8.433.
I’ll be honest, and I have no proof, but there is a certain air of ratings manipulation in the current scores. Brass: Birmingham has grown much faster than at any time over the last couple of months and a game that has been in second for years has also suddenly jumped over the almighty Gloomhaven. A combination of very high scores for Brass: Birmingham, paired with a block of very low scores for Gloomhaven is a very possible scenario.
That isn’t to say that Brass: Birmingham is not deserving of the top spot. It has been approaching it for some time and, from all reports, is a tremendous implementation of the original Brass title. It is too bad that its achievement is possibly tainted by some mass ratings manipulators.
Meanwhile, over on the What Couples Have Been Playing two-player Geek List, it is getting fairly obvious that a longtime stalwart for couples may have also fallen from the top.
Wingspan first appeared on a monthly chart for that group in January 2019 and was the most played game of 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. Through those four years, it was the top game played in 32 of the 48 months and was near the top in the rest.
Then, in July 2022, Cascadia ascended to the top for the first time and has been the number 1 monthly game in 6 of the 8 months, tying once with Wingspan.
Even the latest Wingspan expansion (Asia) was not enough to boost it above Cascadia in many of these months on the Geek List.
Of course, the gaming market can be fickle and another game release this year may sweep in and impress the members of the What Couples Have Been Playing list but, for the current time, it’s looking like Cascadia has finally unseated Wingspan after four years as the most played game.
