I'm an avid, avid player. Multiple times a week, helping run a local meetup, with a multiple-hundreds-games collection that has rapidly expanded to take over my

I'm an avid, avid player. Multiple times a week, helping run a local meetup, with a multiple-hundreds-games collection that has rapidly expanded to take over my whole living room. That said, there's seven games I've ranked a 10/10: * Cosmic Encounter -- a zany, crazy game of negociation and dynamic alliances where you can work with your best friend on one turn and find yourself forced to attack him the next. Some of the most hilarious moments of my gaming career have been induced by this game. * Sidereal Confluence -- a zany, crazy game of trading and engine building where the game is "just" building cubes according to equations on cards ("2 blue cubes and 1 green cube gives you 5 orange cubes") that can then be traded for other cubes with other players. Sounds dry and boring... but manages to turn even deep introverts into a mix of slick used car saleswoman and deep south auction runner. * Deception: Murder in Honk Kong -- a simple game of social deduction, with 5-12 people trying to find who amongst them is guilty of a horrible murder. Simple mechanics, simple game, another one that turns even introverts into, in this case, strongly opinionated detectives. * Yokohama -- a Japanese, thinky, planning game involving moving a president meeple on a randomly built map about trading resources in the city of Yokohama. Love the puzzle, the theme and the mechanics. * Teotihuacan -- a recent release, also thinky planning game involving moving dice instead of meeples, on a less randomly built map about using resources to build the great pyramids of Teotihuacan. Not entirely dissimilar to Yokohama, that one also hits on theme, mechanics and puzzle to solve. * Clash of Cultures -- the civ board game of connoisseurs. Sadly, requires a deeply out of print expansion to truly shine -- one of the rare civ games with a map, a tech tree, player conflict that can still be played in 2-3 hours and explained in 20 minutes. * The Colonists -- a city building game that can last 10-12 hours even at just 2. If you've played that way back, its theme is akin Colonization (the game by the Civ team based on colonization of the Americas). I'd also give honourable mentions to Hanabi, Power Grid, Android: Netrunner, Istanbul, Innovation, Chinatown, QE, Dune, The Mind and Trade on the Tigris.