legend of the five rings

Top 5 Tabletop Games from 1995

Published on July 19, 2025July 19, 2025 by Kyra2 Comments

1995 saw plenty of strong board game releases. It’s a shame we must limit this list to a Top 5, but debate is the benefit of a Top 5 versus a Top 10. A Top 10 could include many games of note from a calendar year. And 1995 had plenty of those. We also limited ourselves to one—just one—collectible card game. CCGs were going strong in 1995, too. One of our just-missed-the-list games is Marvel Overpower. I always liked Overpower’s straightforward gameplay and scalability. Star Wars Customizable Card Game is another CCG that just missed our list. Like its counterpart, the Star Trek Customizable Card Game on our previous list, it continues to be played. I’ve always liked its Dark and Light side of the Force; Star Wars Customizable Card Game is one of the rare collectible card games with a two-sided aspect.

Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. We’re back with another Top 5 Tabletop Games. We’ll talk about 1995’s board game list soon, but let’s recap the ground rules for which games make these lists before we start.

1: Cultural relevance plays as much of a factor as overall quality. A game might make a list that doesn’t hold up to others of its type, but you must admit the game is everywhere.

2: Only one game from a franchise makes the list. This will become more of an issue the closer we get to games with expansions.

3: Longevity plays a role, too. A game doesn’t have to fly off the shelves today, but it had to have some widespread appeal for a decent time.

**5: Legend of the Five Rings (1995)**

Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) collectible card game lasted for two decades, and even then, it was announced that the game would have a successor in Fantasy Flight Games’ Living Card Game line. So, in a sense, Legend of the Five Rings continues to this day. L5R shares similarities with Magic: The Gathering, but has game mechanisms with flavor and allows “passive” win conditions like the Enlightenment Victory. Games can be very long, with some matches lasting hours.

L5R features a storyline. New fiction pieces (short stories, novels, and comics) would advance the story of Rokugan (the fictional empire where Legend of the Five Rings takes place) every week. After Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) purchased the rights outright in 2000, they reintroduced an accompanying tabletop role-playing game of the same name. Frequently, AEG would adapt Rokugan’s timeline to reflect who won specific CCG tournaments. The Spider Clan would have its own Emperor take the throne after an L5R world champion won with a Spider Clan deck. This unique and living game element has yet to be duplicated in tabletop games, making Legend of the Five Rings a singular experience.

**4: Mystery of the Abbey (1995)**

Republished by Days of Wonder during their golden years almost a decade later, Mystery of the Abbey is a sign of what’s to come. Mystery of the Abbey is a clever update to the classic board game Cluedo (or Clue). Based on the novel The Name of the Rose, players assume the identity of a detective, trying to identify a murderer in a monastery by process of elimination, moving from room to room, and asking questions of other players to order them to reveal information that will disqualify potential suspects.

Unlike Cluedo, during their turn, a player can ask any question to any player provided the response wouldn’t include a suspect’s name. The person being asked the question may choose to answer or refuse by placing a finger to their lips (taking a vow of silence). This is so thematic and can be used strategically. All players will see the asked player’s refusal to answer. Why did they do that? If the player elects to answer the question, they then have the right to immediately ask a question of the active player. Mystery of the Abbey was one of the earliest publications for Days of Wonder, which started with interesting twists to classic games.

**3: Medici (1995)**

Dr. Reiner Knizia makes one of these lists again, and Knizia’s former employment as a quantitative analyst (one who manages and attempts to price risk for banks) comes in handy with Medici. Players take on the roles of the House of Medici, who were an Italian banking family and political dynasty. Medici is based on the pricing of risk. Each lot of commodities has an uncertain future based on how cards are drawn from the deck and what other players buy. To play Medici well, players must judge and price the risk attached to each lot of cards. Medici is a classic example of “buy low, sell high.”

I don’t play Medici particularly well, but I enjoy it every time I play. I downloaded it for my tablet and sneak in a few games against an AI opponent. The game takes place over three days (or rounds). Players draw random goods (units of different types and amounts) to make up lots, and then these lots are bid upon. The player who wins the bid then adds these goods to their ship. Each player’s ship can hold five goods. Once each ship has been filled, the round is over, and the ships score points in florins. The player with the most florins at the end of three days is the winner.

Medici is a simple auction game with a ton of open information. It’ll take a few playthroughs to figure out the true value of certain lots, but this clever design by Knizia is well worth the time.

**2: El Grande (1995)**

El Grande is Wolfang Kramer’s first entry on one of these lists. 1994’s 6 nimmit! is one of my favorite card games from this period and narrowly missed out on making our previous list, while Auf Achse won the Spiel des Jahres in 1987. It was only a matter of time before Kramer made one of these lists. El Grande combines several simple mechanisms. It’s the interlocking of these mechanisms and how they play off of each other that gives El Grande its depth.

Players begin the game with a hand of identical cards (numbered 1-13). Players bid for turn order using these cards. The person who played the highest card chooses their action card first, but each player may use each card only once during the game. Each turn, players take Caballeros and execute an action card, which includes two actions, a special action, and placing Caballeros. Scoring occurs in three of the nine rounds. Players must keep track of the many factors that determine the balance of power in the regions and the score track. If it wasn’t for another game on this list, El Grande would’ve been the runaway Spiel des Jahres winner this year.

**1: Catan (1995)**

Could it be any other game? Catan (originally Settlers of Catan) revitalized the board game industry. Catan shaped the modern board game. It opened doors and spawned numerous expansions and spin-offs. While many gamers have moved on from Catan, there are still plenty more who swear by Catan. The ideas this game presents are still used to this day.

The game board is composed of hexagonal tiles of different land types, which are laid out randomly at the start of each game. Players build settlements on a fictional island of Catan. They connect their settlements with roads placed on the edges of the hexes. Each hex has a number that needs to be rolled (on two standard six-sided dice) for the hex to generate resources. Any player with a settlement touching the hex gains the resource indicated. Players gain victory points as their settlements grow, and the first to reach a set number of victory points (usually 10) wins.

I’ve played countless games of Catan in the late 90s and early 2000s. While many of the mechanisms have been improved on in some way in newer games, I haven’t found a game that scratches the same itch of bartering. Some games get close, but nothing compares to Catan. It’s deserving of the 1995 Spiel des Jahres (German game of the year).

Did we get the list mostly correct? Let us know which games you’d add in the comments. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.

3 Lists of 3 Collectible Card Games

Published on January 7, 2019September 8, 2024 by KyraLeave a comment

And we’re back from our scheduled holiday break. Hope you had a great and geeky couple of weeks. Your uncle Geekly sure did. Let’s get this Monday started with a new 3 Lists of 3.

Ah. Collectible card games represented a very specific time in tabletop gaming history. When Magic: The Gathering came out in 1993, a deluge of similar games came out in its wake. Every gaming company wanted to throw their hat into the CCG ring. Several of these games were good, but few of them lasted.

Old Uncle Geekly has played several of these games, so get your booster packs ready.

Overlooked, Long-running CCGs

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle

Let’s start with Richard Garfield’s follow up to Magic, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. This game is deeper than people might first think. It’s based off White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade RPG, so there’s plenty of political intrigue as well as combat and hunting for food. You know, the stuff you’d think vampires would be up to at night.

The series may come and go, but fan support for Vampire: The Eternal Struggle persists, and it remains in production (as of this write-up). What truly separates Vampire from Magic is that Vampire insists on a higher player count. It’s best played with more players, so gamers can form alliances and potentially betray those alliances.

Battle Spirits

Battle Spirits is a Mike Elliot design—you’ll see Mike Elliot’s name again on this list—that never really took off in the States due to inaccurate translations from Japanese to English, but it has interesting resource management component. Like a simplified Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, Battle Spirits players use their core crystals (also their life) to summon creatures.

The push-pull of when to summon these creatures is magnified in Battle Spirits as there are fewer crystals with which to summon creatures. If you run out of core crystals, you lose. It’s a fun, brisk tight-rope walk. Battle Spirits was first released in 2009, and as of this write-up, it’s still in print.

Legend of the Five Rings

Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) makes this list on its character development and lore. It was in print from 1995-2015 and has since become a living card game, but while it was in print as a collectible card game, players affected the world in which they played.

If a certain faction won a tournament, that faction would assume power in the world of Rokugan. L5R’s actual card play centers on building one’s stronghold. Dynasty and fate cards may alter a stronghold’s future or the surrounding land. The personality cards are based on characters of L5R, and they change and grow during each match as well as the stories after major tournaments.

CCGs with Unique Game Mechanisms

Doomtown: Reloaded

Doomtown combines Poker with a collectible card game, and the Poker aspect to the game is the one that determines a player’s combat power. Each card has an ability but also a card suit and value. This leads to a very interesting push-pull. While most collectible card games require a gamer to think of only a card’s ability, one may choose one card over another because it works better for playing the Poker side of things.

It also doesn’t hurt that Doomtown is more of an area control game. Movement is just as important as combat as players go back and forth, building up the town and trying to control as much of the town as they can throughout the game. The currency may be called “victory points,” but it functions as money. One must consider the ebb and flow of their actions to be successful and that makes for an interesting puzzle.

Hecatomb

I never realized how many collectible games Mike Elliot has made in his career, but Hecatomb is another good one. It’s essentially Magic with pentagon cards that players can play on top of each other. The edges of the pentagram can hold extra play text and that’s how each player upgrades the creatures they summon.

It doesn’t surprise me that Hecatomb is no longer in print. The production value was through the roof and unsustainable, but it’s an excellent game and if you find it in a sale rack or garage sale, it’s worth a shot.

Dark Age: Feudal Lords

I hope Dark Age: Feudal Lords gets reprinted as a self-contained game or living card game because the combat system in it is unique. It borrows more from miniatures games and RPGs than it does from typical collectible card games. The characters have a range of numbers (on a die) that can hit your opponents and power up cards add to that range. It’s a simple, elegant combat system that’s a lot of fun.

I could take or leave the actual theme (dystopia) so a rebranding of this combat system would be welcome as well. Still, if you can find Dark Age on the cheap, I’d highly recommend it.

Collectible Card Games that Became Living Card Games

I’ll preface this section by clarifying what a living card game is. The term living card game (LCG) can only be used by Fantasy Flight Games because they trademarked the term, but many other card games qualify as LCGs.

LCGs work differently than CCGs. While CCGs have random packs that players may purchase, and players must purchase a lot of packs—and I mean a lot of packs—to gain a copy of each card in a set, LCGs have everything available from a set in one box or series of boxes. Both game types encourage—or better yet require—deck building.

Android: Netrunner

A lot of people’s favorite LCG Android: Netrunner started as a CCG, and it was a very good CCG, but it works just as well as an LCG. The two players have asymmetric decks. One side plays as a futuristic corporation while the other plays as a hacker trying to break into the corporation’s defenses.

I always liked the concept behind Netrunner, but it’s a game that has a lot of barriers for entry. While the two sides have similarities in the card types they play, the game renames these cards. It’s almost like learning two new games for each side, and there are plenty of Netrunner fans who know how to play your deck better than you if you’re a beginner.

Still, it’s a solid game that deserves its community. Each side feels different and thematic.

Star Wars: The Card Game

The Star Wars Customizable Card Game was fun to play, but the unruly card sets made it difficult to balance the game. It may have followed the movies a little closely too. If the rebel player built a deck centered around destroying the Death Star (and they’d win the game by blowing up the Death Star), the empire player would only have to not play the Death Star to prevent the rebel player from winning.

Star Wars: The Card Game LCG does a better job of balancing these discrepancies while still giving the players the flavor they want. The various objective cards a based on the specific decks each player constructs, so one side can’t play keep away. Players will want to use as many of the various expansions as each one invokes a sense of place. The Hoth expansion feels like Hoth.

Vs. System 2PCG

The Versus system was a relatively short-lived CCG from the early 2000s. It did a decent job of depicting all manner of comic book characters. You could even pit one comic book world against another—Marvel versus DC anyone?—and that wouldn’t happen again until Dice Masters.

Vs. System 2PCG takes elements from the popular Versus system and turns it into an LCG. Of course, it’s not named an LCG because it’s published by Upper Deck, but it functions the same way. Vs. System 2PCG streamlines the original gameplay and while that may turn off some Versus purists, the game had gotten bloated. The new LCG does a better job of introducing new players to the system. Marvel, Alien, and Predator have gotten their own LCG releases. We’re still waiting on DC.

That’s what I have for CCGs. I’m sure I didn’t collect them all. If you have any suggestions or complaints, leave a message with my answering service or just leave a comment.