There’s been a small explosion in adaptations of quality boardgames to the iOS platform since the last time I wrote up this ranking in September of 2011, enough that I could double the size of the rankings and still dump a few titles that no longer belonged. For these rankings I consider both the quality of the underlying game and the strength of the app, including graphics, stability, tutorials, online multiplayer mode, and quality of AI opponents.
Linked app titles go to my reviews here on the dish; linked prices go directly to iTunes for you to purchase the apps (and yes, I get a tiny commission on those sales). I’ve taken out some apps that appear to be abandoned or broken or that don’t work for iPad. None of those was really worth the money anyway.
1. Carcassonne. ($9.99) Still best of breed, featuring great graphics, a range of AI opponents (including good “hard” opponents, and “evil” ones too), online multiplayer, and three of the game’s real-world expansions available as in-app purchases.
2. Samurai. ($4.99) The best port of a Reiner Knizia game, which says something since you’re going to see his name quite a bit on this list. The AI players are very tough and there’s a thriving community of online players that has been active for years.
3. Agricola. ($6.99) The best example of an app where the developers chose to rethink the game for the tablet platform, taking advantage of the format to make a good but complex game work better on the iPad than it does on the tabletop. Two additional card decks just became available as IAPs, and the only complaint I’ve heard is that the toughest AI opponents aren’t tough enough – but they’re not easy unless you’re already a solid Agricola player.
4. Ticket to Ride. ($6.99) Days of Wonder has done its app development in-house, which doesn’t always work for publishers, but in DoW’s case it’s been a boon for players, as their apps look great, work extremely well, and are actively supported with in-app purchases (IAPs) and expansions, including Europe, Switzerland, Asia, and the 1910 card set. The family of Ticket to Ride games also Pocket versions of the US ($1.99) and Europe (also $1.99) games for the iPhone/iPod Touch. There’s a big online player base as well, and this is our favorite game for pass-and-play with my daughter, who also likes Carcassonne and Battle Line.
5. Caylus. ($4.99) Like Agricola, Caylus fares better on the iPad than it does on the tabletop, and the Caylus app would still get my award for the best graphics – their use of bright colors and clear icons makes it much easier to stare at the screen for the ten minutes or so it takes to play this complex strategy game. The AI opponents could be a little stronger.
6. Tigris and Euphrates. ($4.99) Always a favorite of mine, this adaptation of a Knizia classic improved substantially with a graphics update about two years ago, and works well with online multiplayer or with local AI opponents (they’re good, but could also be tougher).
7. Stone Age. ($6.99) One of the best family strategy games on the market came a little later to the iOS platform, but the developers did a great job of reimagining the game, which relies on a big board with a lot of elements, for the small screen, coming first to the iPhone and maintaining the same format for the iPad. The AI players are solid and there’s a large online community, including an organized league with rankings.
8. Small World. ($9.99) Days of Wonder boosted this last summer with the 2.0 update, which included online multiplayer and support for 3-5 players. It’s gorgeous and one of the best apps for two players to play face to face with the iPad between them.
9. Pandemic. ($6.99) The challenge in making a cooperative game for iOS is lower than that of any other game, since coop apps don’t need AI players and online multiplayer is not a critical feature. That aside, the Pandemic app is superb across the board – the graphics are great, gameplay is easy to follow, and it’s easy to customize the game however you’d like, just as you would with the physical version. The On the Brink expansion is now available as an IAP if you want to raise the stakes a little.
10. Battle Line. ($2.99) One of the best two-player games out there, Battle Line’s app has a simple, clean implementation, with basic and full modes (basic doesn’t use the ten event cards) and good enough AI opponents to keep the game interesting. I’ve noticed some minor bugginess here, especially on older iOS devices. It’s one of the best games for the smaller screens, since most of the top 7 either require an iPad or just play better on one. This is also a Reiner Knizia game.
11. Puerto Rico. ($4.99)Much, much improved after an update a few months ago to step up the graphics – it’s easier to follow what’s going on (not perfect, but better) and the screen isn’t as tough on the eyes now. The AI players are some of the best I’ve come across, as Puerto Rico has one very strong strategy (produce and ship) and the AI players will try it. I don’t like the representation of buildings by shapes on each island, without labels, so it’s hard to know at a glance who has built what.
12. Ingenious. ($2.99) Yet another Knizia game, this abstract two-player game is a natural for iOS because the scoring is a little tricky – and I think abstract games, which are often heavily math-based, translate very well to app versions with AI opponents. (All of Knizia’s games are math-based at heart anyway.) The app can be frustrating in a fun way, because the hard AI opponent is very good and because you need to look or think a few moves ahead to avoid getting trapped. The $1.99 iPhone version is a separate app.
13. Through the Desert. ($2.99) Oh, hey, more Knizia, this one a territory-claiming game where players compete to cordon off sections of the board and to reach specific landmarks. The AI players are fair, and it’s a little tough to play on the smaller screen because the board is shrunk to a level that even good eyes may have a hard time seeing (and even little fingers may have a hard time pressing accurately).
14. Le Havre. ($4.99) Like Caylus and Agricola, Le Havre is so complex that moving it to iOS makes it easier to play because you lose all the setup and cleanup time involved with playing the physical game. This implementation is very faithful to the board game, with pretty good AI players – they’ll make good use of the special point-accumulating buildings available late in the game – but there’s so much information crammed on the screen that it becomes hard to find what you need, and some players may find the smaller text hard to read even on the iPad, let alone on the iPhone.
15. Hey, That’s My Fish! ($2.99) The one game on this list that’s more aimed at kids than at adults, Hey, That’s My Fish! is one of my daughter’s favorite apps and also one of her favorites to play with me, even though she’s had it for about two years. The board is bright and colorful, and the penguins (your tokens) look great, with some animation twists that make the game more fun to play (such as when a penguin falls into the sea). Completing achievements unlocks a number of different boards, but since about half of those achievements are simple I’m not as bothered by the requirement.
16. San Juan. ($4.99) The card-game version of Puerto Rico got a better app treatment right out of the chute than the master game did, and still looks really good, with strong AI opponents and clear graphics and text, even on the iPhone.
17. Lost Cities. ($3.99) More Knizia, and another two-player game, this one a very simple card-collecting/arranging game that looks great on smaller devices with big, bright graphics, since it was designed specifically for the iPhone 5. The AI players aren’t very good, but I’ve played this a number of times online and gameplay through GameCenter is as smooth as it gets.
18. Scotland Yard. ($4.99) An old-school title gets the app treatment, benefiting from the translation because of how intricate the board is (unless you’re intimately familiar with streets and bus routes in London). The developers even accounted for the fact that, in pass-and-play mode, one player’s actions have to be hidden from the others. The soundtrack is a nice touch. The AI could be a lot stronger, however.
19. Rebuild. ($2.99) I’m bending my own rules here, as Rebuild is the one title on the list that isn’t based on an actual board game. It’s a solo title, but it’s a board game from start to finish, just one that takes advantage of what you can do on a tablet (or computer) that you can’t do, or can’t do as easily, on a tabletop. Build up your community to recapture City Hall before the zombie hordes take you out, but don’t let that fundamentalist group get too powerful.
20. Settlers of Catan. ($4.99) Just called “Catan” in the App Store, this adaptation has always disappointed me in several ways. The underlying game is the same as the classic that spawned the boom in better (German-style) boardgames, such as the Cones of Dunshire. The app is very limited, however – the AI players aren’t good, trading is very awkward, the graphics are bright but too ornate, and all you get is the very basic board. Everything else is an IAP, including Seafarers and Cities & Knights ($4.99 each), which also unlocks some campaign scenarios. The $4.99 iPhone version is a separate app.
21. Elder Sign. ($6.99) A cooperative title based in the Cthulu universe, this app would rate higher if you got the full game. Instead, you get the game without the end battle against the big foozle (if you don’t defeat him before that, in the app you just lose), and you only get four opponents, with each additional one costing another $2.99. A few other rules are cut out as well. It does look slick and it helped us understand a few of the rules in the physical game we didn’t grasp the first time.
22. Qin. ($4.99) This Knizia title came out in 2012 as a board game and as an app, the first simultaneous release by a major designer that I’d heard about. It’s an abstract tile-laying game where players try to claim control of several landmarks on the board while also building up their tile chains so they can’t be taken over by other players. I’ve seen it described as Acquire meets Tigris & Euphrates, which is pretty apt, but I think both of those are better games than Qin.
23. Hacienda. ($0.99) A solid implementation of a good-not-great tile-laying, territory-claiming game. I wish the maps were a little clearer – sometimes adapting the precise graphics of the board game works to the app’s disadvantage – and the AI players were easy to beat after a few plays. Through the Desert does the same kind of thing, but better.
24. The Battle for Hill 218. ($2.99) A simple-to-learn, hard-to-win two-player card game where you are fighting to take over your opponent’s home space on his side of the titular Hill. The game is currently out of print, so pick up the app while you wait for it to come back around, and, if you’re like me, prepare to get your clock cleaned.
25. Medici. ($1.99) Another Knizia game, one I’m probably a little light on because the mechanics didn’t grab me – you bid against other players for shipments of goods coming into a Renaissance Italian port, and try to get the most of certain good types to rack up points, with bonuses available for having the most valuable ship in each shipping round and for shipping certain numbers of goods over the course of each game. It’s a good implementation; I just don’t think the game is that exciting.
26. Lords of Waterdeep. ($6.99) A D&D-themed game where the theme seemed patched on to a poor adaptation of the physical version. The board is overdesigned for the iPad – in thise case, I think it’s just the physical game itself, with no adjustments – and it doesn’t do the resource-constraint mechanic as well as Agricola or Caylus. A UI overhaul would go a long way.
27. Suburbia. ($4.99) Great UI, bright graphics, awful AI players, and bugs. It just came out on December 12th, 2013, so I’ll give them some time to improve the app. I haven’t used the save game feature without a crash yet, either.
28. Tikal. ($2.99) Much better in an app than in a physical game – it’s the only game I’ve bought and later sold – and even in app form it can take a while because each player gets 10 action points per turn. A software upgrade about two or three years ago made this much more stable and easier to play.
29. Ra. ($2.99) The last Knizia app on the list, this is another auction-based game that never grabbed me, but remains a favorite over at boardgamegeek. The app looks clean and easy to use but the tutorial (when I first tried it in 2010) was terrible.
30. Dominant Species. ($4.99) I just reviewed this last week and was not impressed. The underlying game might be great, but it’s very complex and the app’s UI is terrible, as is the tutorial. The AI players are also kind of dumb; I shouldn’t be beating them by wide margins when I don’t even understand all of the rules. I recommend this only if you want to try the game out before spending $60-plus on the physical version.
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: I haven’t reviewed this one yet, as I just got it earlier this month and have only played it (and lost, as it turns out) three times. It’s a light two- to four-player game, relatively high in the luck department for this list, with more opportunities to screw your opponent in a two player game, whereas with four players you’re focusing more on your own strategy and less on others’. In the game, players compete to fill out their own boards of 16 spaces by drawing island tiles from a central 4×4 grid, where the available selections depend on the movement of a boat token that travels around that grid’s perimeter. Players must form completed islands to receive points, and lose points for open spaces. Currently out of print, but amazon has plenty of new copies through marketplace sellers. Complexity: Low.
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. I need to play this some more, but it does have promise as a 2-4 player game that actually works with two players. Each player competes to place meeples and buildings on a rectangular grid by playing cards that match the row and/or column in which he’s placing the pieces. Points increase when players form larger groups of farmers on adjacent squares, place buildings next to farmers already on the board, or accumulate coal and gold tokens by building mines. It’s pretty simple and quick to play, but not that deep strategically. Complexity: Low.
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. Monopoly for grown-ups, and one of the oldest games on the list. Build hotel chains up from scratch, gain a majority of the shares, merge them, and try to outearn all your opponents. The game hinges heavily on its one random element – the draw of tiles from the pool each turn – but the decisions on buying stock in existing chains and how to sell them after a merger give the player far more control over his fate than he’d have in Monopoly. There’s a two-player variant that works OK, but it’s best with at least three people. The game looks a lot nicer now; I have a copy from the mid-1980s that still has the 1960s artwork and color scheme. Complexity: Low.
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. Risk for grown-ups, with absolutely zero random chance – it’s all about negotiating. I wrote about the 
: The most complex game we’ve tried, with the steepest learning curve. Very well made aside from the square animal pegs, which we replaced (at the suggestion of one of you) with 
I bought via amazon. You’re a farmer trying to raise enough food to feed your family, but also trying to grow your family so you have more help on the farm. The core game play isn’t that complex, but huge decks of cards offering bonuses, shortcuts, or special skills make the game much more involved, and require some knowledge of the game to play it effectively. My wife felt this game felt way too much like work; I enjoyed it more than that but it is undeniably complex and you can easily spend the whole game freaking out about finding enough food, which about a billion or so people on the planet refer to as “life.” Complexity: High.
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: An outstanding game that’s long out of print; I’m lucky enough to still have the copy my father bought for me in the 1980s. It takes those logic puzzles where you try to figure out which of five people held which job and lived on which street and had what for breakfast and turns them into a murder mystery board game with a fixed time limit. When the Orient Express reaches its destination, the game ends, so you need to move fast and follow the clues. The publishers still sell the expansions, adding up to 30 more cases for you to solve. Complexity: Low.
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: I do feel somewhat odd about dropping this in the rankings for the second year in a row, but the truth is we don’t pull this game out as much as we did a few years ago, and I’ve still got it in the top ten largely because of its value as an introduction to Eurogames, one of the best “gateway games” on the market. Three or four players compete on a variable board of hexes to acquire different resource types, build roads and cities, and reach twelve victory points before any other player. Resources are parceled out in part according to rolls of the dice, and you can lose resources if the Robber shows up on a roll of seven and you’re not prepared for it. The 
expansion balances out the core game’s low value on the wool resource, but also makes the game take about 50% longer to play. It was, and is, a great starting point if you’ve never played anything on this list, and is also one of the few games here that has some traction outside of the boardgamer culture. You can even find this along with Ticket to Ride (higher up the list) at Target, which is about as mainstream as you can get. We’ve just got lots of other games we prefer after playing this one so often over the years. Complexity: Low.
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expansion, but several people (including my sister and her husband) rave about what it brings to the base game. If you’re looking for a cooperative game you can play with kids, try 
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game – includes money cards, action cards, and victory points cards. Each player begins with seven money cards and three victory cards and, shuffling and drawing five cards from his own deck each turn, must add cards to his deck to allow him to have the most victory points when the last six-point victory card is purchased. I don’t think we have a multi-player game with a smaller learning curve, and the fact that the original set alone comes with 25 action cards but each game you play only includes 10 means it offers unparalleled replayability even before you add an expansion set. We own 
(which is outstanding) and 
(which I find a little weird), plus a standalone expansion further up this list. I can also vouch for this as appropriate for a young player – my daughter (age 6) understands the base game well enough to play it without me deliberately throwing the game to keep it competitive. Complexity: Low.
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. Intrigue can be combined with the base game of Dominion, but unlike other Dominion expansions (of which there are now approximately 82, with a new one released every other week, or so it seems) Intrigue is a complete game right out of the box because it includes the money and point cards. And it’s better than the original game when both are viewed without any expansions because it’s more interactive – Intrigue lives up to its name in the sense that you should spend much of your time either plotting against your neighbors or trying to defend yourself, which makes the “Big Money” strategy in the base game much less effective. The changes make the game longer, but more even, and more fun. Complexity: Medium.
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, yet. Complexity: Medium.
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to anyone who gets the base Ticket to Ride game, as it has larger, easier-to-shuffle cards and offers more routes for greater replayability. We also own the Swiss and Nordic boards, which only play two to three players and involve more blocking than the U.S. and Europe games do, so I don’t recommend them. Complexity: Low.
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expansion, which I like mostly for the Builder, an extra token that allows you to take an extra turn when you add on to whatever the Builder is working on, meaning you never have to waste a turn when you draw a plain road tile if you sit your Builder on a road. We also have 
, which we’ve only used once; it adds some double-or-nothing tiles to roads and cities, a giant meeple that counts as two when fighting for control of a city/road/farm, as well as the added meeples needed to play with a sixth opponent. Complexity: Low/medium-low for the base game, medium with expansions.
, only because I chose to limit this list to strategy games. We do still like W&O.
.” I have ridiculed them for being too quiet and verging on boring, and I do stand by that – their Mercury Prize-winning debut album couldn’t hold my attention except for two songs, “Crystallized” and this one, which features 
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.” It does kind of figure that the only TV on the Radio song I like is far and away their most conventional song; their more typical, experimental stuff leaves me cold. Maybe I’d be a lousy music critic as a result, but this is the song I want on my iPod.
.” I am supposed to love these guys because I like Mumford and Sons, but the only tracks of theirs I’ve liked are this and “I And Love and You.” However, if you do like the Avett Brothers, let me again recommend 
.” If the Arctic Monkeys wrote an upbeat song with depressing lyrics about the archetype of the depressing band, you’d get this.
.” A good song about a great novel. Elefant lead singer Diego Garcia put out 
of Argentine-influenced music this spring.
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.” Named for a famous motorcycle, the VBS still exist but without the lead singer, Cassandra Snow, who made this song what it is with her double-time staccato delivery, telling the story in mock-comic tones of a mental breakdown over a punk-ska backdrop. 
.” Not their best effort, but the best of their efforts after 
, the album that put them on the map.
.” Yes, the theme to Veronica Mars, although I never did like that show (not for lack of trying it).
.” The lyrics struck me as mostly nonsense, but I love the menacing feel to the sparse music, especially the bass line that introduces the song.
.” Hook-laden as usual, with lines like “leave this academic factory,” how could you lose?
.” I’m not quite sure what to call Air – “Radio #1” was sort of alternative rock-ish, but “Girl” is this soft, ethereal ballad that might fit on adult contemporary radio. I give them credit for making 
.” Almost a grudging inclusion – I have never understood the critical fuss over these guys, although I understand their popularity given how watered-down their pop-rock is. Remember their (likely fake) feud with the Bravery? It was the alternative equivalent to the Backstreet Boys versus N*SYNC. Anyway, this was their first and biggest hit and, to my ears, the least saccharine.
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.” The decade saw plenty of output from these guys, nearly all of it disappointing, neither as original as Definitely Maybe and What’s the Story, Morning Glory nor as over-the-top as Be Here Now. This song was the closest to the formula of their first two albums as they have come since the century ended.
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.” Still the most dead-on Joy Division imitation I’ve ever heard – and I mean that in the best way possible. I’ve liked plenty of Interpol singles, but the competing guitar lines behind the bridge of leading into the driving, muted chorus give “PDA” a melancholy tone few other rock songs match.
.” The whole album – recorded between jail stints for Scott Weiland – was solid, including the heavy opening track “Down,” but the psychedelic “Glide” and the somber ballad “Atlanta” were the two that broke the group out of their narrow box of 70s-infused alternative rock.
.” The alternative rock equivalent of Johnny Damon or Javier Vazquez – a song without a peak (this was never something I was skipping through my iPod playlist to hear) but that has held its value for years after release.
.” Another ’70s-influenced band – that huge guitar riff just fills your ears, and I think the lack of a singable chorus hurt their chances on this side of the pond. “
” gets an honorable mention, but that flopped here as well, and they have possibly the least radio-friendly band name since Pussy Galore.
.” The triumphant return of Del tha Funkee Homosapien.
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.” Just barely qualifies, as it was released in the final weeks of 2009, and didn’t really come to my attention until it won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance this past February. (I still wonder if the song won because it deserved the award, or because it had the requisite old guy on board in John Paul Jones.) Them Crooked Vultures is what Masters of Reality were supposed to be when they brought Ginger Baker on board for their second album; the two groups are connected by M.O.R.’s singer, Chris Goss, who co-produced Queens of the Stone Age’s Era Vulgaris.
.” Talented, yes. Troubled, yes. But the fact that she died young shouldn’t affect anyone’s assessment of her music. I think her best work was likely ahead of her, if she’d stayed sober enough to produce it. What we’re left with is a Brien Taylor career and theories on what might have been.
.” Not sure if they’ll fully break out of the college-music niche where they’ve found so much success, as the looseness of their sound may not play well with the mass audience, but the singer’s lackadaisical storytelling vibe and the stoner-rock influences in the music offered us something different, at least for one album.
.” This was Reed Johnson’s walkup music from when he came up with Toronto at least until I left the club, which didn’t help him hit right-handed pitching but made it easier to watch him try.
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, as well as the song I thought most likely to find an audience on U.S. radio stations at the time. That didn’t work out as planned.
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.” Wikipedia, which is never wrong, says that this was the most-played track off Kid A, which is easy to believe as it’s the most accessible song on the album and one of the few with a hint of a guitar. I’m an early Radiohead fan, meaning the moment they switched off the guitars, I mostly switched off of them. I may be the only person on the Internet who didn’t lose his shit over 
(“Bodysnatchers” is solid, but didn’t make this list). They may remain critical darlings, but OK Computer was their peak.
.” The 
.” I’ll give it to Damon Albarn – he has pretty good taste in rappers, going for De la Soul here for the lead single off 
. As I type this, the album is on sale for just $5 on amazon.
.” And the first track on their next album, “
,” was great and much more uptempo, which deked me into buying the entire thing only to discover that it sucked. They seem to have drifted into critical and hipster revile; I don’t love this song the way I did when it first came out, mostly because the more you listen to the lyrics the more trite they seem, but it’s the rare piano-without-guitar song I do like and will find stuck in my head for hours.
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.” One of their goofier songs, but with the typical Jack White twist (“I don’t need any of your pity, I’ve got plenty of my own friends/They’re all above me”).
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.” One of the DJs on XMU loves these guys, which is how I came across this melodic, guitar-heavy track three or four years after it came out. The first time I watched 
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.” Great song, but overplayed to the point where I can still only take it in limited doses. One of the top intro bass lines in rock history … which is apparently not played on a bass guitar. Clever.
.” The 
” was recorded in the 1990s but wasn’t released until 2001, so it qualifies through the back door, although it’s a little too folky for me to put on this list.
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.” Done right, rock tinged with Irish folk music is among my favorite styles of music. Talk about an odd connection, though: a not-yet-famous Katy Perry stars in 
.” I admit it – hearing this for the first time, I went right back to ’87 and the first time I heard Appetite for Destruction. Of course, back in ’87 it blew my ears off, while in 2004 it was a little quaint. 
.” Too clever by half? Mute Math seems to have a reputation as a brilliant band, and the whole playing-backwards trick was pretty cool, but “I know there’s got to be another level/Somewhere closer to the other side” might as well be a Backstreet Boys lyric. Good thing the hook in the chorus is so catchy.
.” A slower, folkier song than most of their output, based on the cliched provincial cab driver met by the band – this one in San Francisco, as the story goes – but I’ll give Kelly Jones credit for a more detailed picture of the driver’s attitude and for putting such a unique stamp on the song with his raspy vocals. It’s mostly on this list for its hook, though.
.” So I really don’t get the distaste for these guys. Too popular? Too much ’70s soft-rock influence? Overreaction to the abysmal XY album? Antipathy towards Gwyneth? This song has faded for me the more I listened to it – and it was overplayed, big time, to the point where I needed an escape hatch – but it’s a well-written, ambitious pop song, on an ambitious and rather complete album; even NME, among the most sneering of hipster publications (and I admire them for it), gave the album an 
.” So last time around, I called these guys one-hit wonders, and a few readers responded by telling me where “Panic Switch” placed on the charts. Not only was that song just riding the coattails of “Lazy Eye,” I think now with more time since those songs were released, we can agree this is the one still receiving airplay, and this is the only one worth remembering. (Let’s not even talk about “The Royal We.”) Anyway, am I the only one who wasn’t sure if the lead singer was male or female? Great song in the single edit, but the outro to the album track is just late-60s wanking, and I doubt there’s been a bigger letdown for me when learning the actual lyrics to any song. “That same old decent lazy-eye?” Uh, okay.
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.” I understand that “Clocks” is The Hit for these guys, but I was burned out on that song within a year, even before the Jays used it in a video montage at the end of the 2003 season to pay tribute to Roy Halladay’s (presumed, at the time) Cy Young-winning performance. I heard this song at a Coldplay concert from their first tour, and that opening riff made it the most memorable song of the night, even though I’d never heard it before. A reader pointed out the similarity between this song and Ride’s “
.” The best White Stripes song not written or recorded by the White Stripes. The 
.” I’m not sure I would have even discovered this if it wasn’t by the former lead singer of the Stone Roses, since it garnered no airplay that I know of in the U.S. and is probably the most bizarre song on the list, with no percussion and an incongruous trumpet solo. Then again, Brown’s solo stuff has all been weird and compelling, so while this isn’t as good as “
,” it’s his best song of the decade.
.” The skinny ties and matching outfits were stupid, but they churned out a few memorable bone-crunchers, including this song and “Walk Idiot Walk.”
.” If you’re into old-school guitar rock at all, you had to like this song, right? The opening lick was hypnotic, and the producer tweaked every bit for maximum bombast. Sort of a guy’s guy song. I would have been surprised if they’d ever cooked up anything close to this good again.
.” I didn’t like this album (Neon Bible) save this one song, which will probably remind you a little of Eddie and the Cruisers but in a good way.
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. The whole album, Haughty Melodic (an anagram of “Michael Doughty”), was excellent, although this was clearly the best track. I still miss Soul Coughing.
.” Cee-Lo’s “
,” from his 2002 solo debut, gets an honorable mention here, too. He can sing, but I think subsequent events made it clear Danger Mouse was the real artistic force behind this collaboration, while Cee-Lo provides the voice and the charisma.
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.” And let me just state for the record that I was all over this song a year before Budweiser stuck it on their commercials. There really is no justification for using a song this good to advertise a beer that bad.
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album would cross over, but their sound was probably 25 years late and five years early, as ’70s guitar rock seemed to make a comeback at the end of the decade with songs like Wolfmother’s entry on the list. The lead singer does look rather like a hobbit, though.
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.” The 
.” I don’t generally get excited about politically-themed lyrics, but these were spot-on, in large part because Jack White picked a topic you could actually address in three minutes of words. Oh, and the song rocks.
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,” which also backs up Kool G Rap & DJ Polo’s “Streets of New York.”
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.” The best Prince song by an artist other than Prince – but not the top Prince homage on this list.
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.” Requires no explanation, I assume.
.” Not their usual straight-ahead rocker, but they manage to update a Motown-esque sound into their minimalist musical style with plenty of wordplay in the lyrics. I probably could have put another half-dozen White Stripes songs on this list without much of a stretch.
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.” Yet another Prince homage, reimagined through an alternative-rock lens. I liked Muse’s first album, Showbiz, released in 1999, but after that found them increasingly pop-oriented even as their music became more bloated with layers of instrumentation. But “Supermassive Black Hole” was such a departure from their usual material, a rare example where their over-the-top showmanship helped the song play up instead of down, with a funk-tinged groove behind the requisite falsetto vocal. This song is the most egregious omission from the first list; I simply hadn’t heard it, not when it came out, not until late in 2010. That period from late 2005 till the fall of 2006 was just a void for me, between changing jobs, becoming a father, and enduring probably the longest period of depression of my life; I shut down and missed out not just on art but on an incredibly important time for my family. And, worst of all, I wasn’t even aware I was depressed – my memories of the period are simply shrouded in fog. Um, anyway, this is a great song.
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came out in May of 2009.
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”) but the best on their newest album. The hint of brass brought me back to one of my favorite bands of the ’90s, Animals that Swim, who never quite found an audience for their albums of original tracks that sounded like drinking songs.
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yet again) is a marvel, from “Winter Winds” to “White Blank Page” to “Roll Away Your Stone,” but “Little Lion Man” had the strongest hook, and its crossover on to American radio and eventual gold certification was one of the biggest stories in music this year.
. One of the first games we purchased – on a trip to Vienna in 2003 – its star has dimmed over time as we’ve found better games in the genre. It’s a two-person game where each player is trying to build towers with cards representing five different civilizations, but each civilization has a special skill or power, including the power to knock down an opponent’s tower or make one of his groups of cards “wander off.” Those powerful attacks make the game much longer, and you can go a while without making much progress, which ultimately made the game a little frustrating for us.
, a copy of which is en route to me as I write. EDIT: 
. Almost comically simple, but highly replayable. Players compete to build the longest subway lines on a grid that represents the city of Paris. There are different types of tiles, some of which include straight tracks, while others include all manner of twists. You can extend your own tracks on your turn, or you can use a tile to screw someone else. The game ends when all tiles are played; the player with the longest total track lengths across all of his lines wins. The ability to play on (and prematurely end) someone else’s line is a major criticism of the game, although you can kind of do the same thing in Carcassonne and nobody complains about that. If it’s an issue for you, just play with a house rule that you must play on your own lines unless such a move is impossible.