With college basketball’s March Madness tournament underway, I’d like to announce a new experiment: The Tabletop Power Rankings.

I’ve always enjoyed subjective and objective rankings in sports (e.g., the weekly BCS rankings for college football and the Premier League standings in English football). I like checking in to see how different teams are moving up or down the rankings and to see how they are perceived.

I’ve also recently renewed my fascination with anticipation following last year’s article about the most-viewed tabletop YouTube videos. Since then, I’ve posted a monthly video showcasing my most anticipated games to play again.

The confluence of these two interests have now formed the Tabletop Power Rankings. The concept is a monthly reveal of the top 10 games (plus the top 5 Stonemaier games) that people are the most excited to play again after playing them at least once.

That last phrase is particularly important, as it places the emphasis on what we already have (and have firsthand experience with) instead of what we don’t have (and haven’t even played). As much as I enjoy the BGG Hotness, it’s typically filled with future releases.

I seeded the initial rankings based on a Stonemaier Ambassador survey, but now anyone can participate: here is the current 3-question voting and nomination link for the next month.

While the exact format might change, my plan is to post the overall top 10 each month along with a survey that replaces the 3 lowest voted games with the top 3 nominations from the previous month.

Overall Games (March 2026)

1. SETI
2. Galactic Cruise
3. Slay the Spire
4. Bomb Busters
5. Speakeasy

This will expand to a full top 10 starting in April. At that point I’ll add previous rankings and months on the rankings.

Stonemaier Games (March 2026)

1. Viticulture
2. Vantage
3. Wingspan
4. Scythe
5. Tapestry

Here’s what the initial ambassador survey looked like. I’ve since separated non-Stonemaier games from Stonemaier games and opened the survey to everyone.

I’ll reveal the new Tabletop Power Rankings the first Wednesday of each month on our website and on my anticipated games video.

I hope you choose to participate in this experiment (survey link)! If you have any ideas, suggestions, or questions, please let me know in the comments.

***

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.