JUN 15, 2026 · Board Games

Board Games

Crowd Scale Meets Elite Ratings

Ratings and popularity across thousands of titles find games that win both mass attention and esteem.

By Kyle McAuliffe · 2026-06-15 · 4 min

BoardGameGeek ratings are a public taste machine: tens of thousands of titles, each scored by the people willing to log plays. The TidyTuesday games extract used here holds 10,532 records with a median average rating of 6.39 and a high of 9.00 for Small World Designer Edition.

Wargame, World War II is the most common category label in the file. That already tilts the catalog toward conflict simulations — a hobby subculture with its own rating norms. The charts ask how ratings split by category, how leaders separate from the median, and whether crowdfunding-scale user counts track with elite scores.

The Catalog’s Median Rating Sits Near 6.39

The time view in this extract collapses to a median average rating of about 6.39 — the same calibration point as the fact box. In BoardGameGeek terms, that mid-6s band is ordinary: playable, not legendary. Everything that follows should be read against that baseline. A 9.00 specialty edition is not “a bit better than average”; it is a different prestige tier.

Designer Editions and Heavy Games Own the Peak

Small World Designer Edition leads at 9.00. Kingdom Death: Monster (~8.93), Terra Mystica: Big Box (~8.85), and a run of deep wargames — Last Chance for Victory, The Greatest Day, Last Blitzkrieg, Enemy Action: Ardennes — fill out the top dozen. The median among those leaders is about 8.78. These are not mass-market party games. They are hobby-complete objects — big boxes, campaign systems, hex-and-counter epics — rated by audiences selected for intensity.

Wargame Categories Rate Higher Than Card Games

Category boxes show Napoleonic wargames with a median near 7.04 (n=124) and World War II wargames near 6.89 (n=449). Card games sit lower, with a median near 6.03 (n=438). Abstract strategy lands near 6.28 (n=284). Volume and prestige diverge: card games are numerous but center closer to the catalog median; dedicated wargame labels clear a higher bar among the people who rate them.

Civil War and Napoleonic Titles Beat the Median Most

Gaps to the overall median are largest for American Civil War wargames (~+0.66) and Napoleonic wargames (~+0.65), with World War II wargames also positive. Dice and generic card-game labels sit below the median. The pattern is consistent: historical conflict simulations, as tagged in this file, are the categories that most reliably clear the 6.39 baseline.

Crowd Size and Rating Are Related — Loosely

Average rating versus users rated shows popular hits with tens of thousands of ratings landing across the mid-to-high 7s, while many high-rated titles still have modest user counts. Elite scores without crowd scale remain possible. The scatter’s lesson is citable: popularity predicts attention, not a precise quality score. A 9.00 designer edition and a 7.4 smash hit solve different problems in the hobby economy.

What to take away

Across 10,532 games, the median rating is 6.39; the top dozen lives near 8.8–9.0. Wargame categories clear the baseline more often than broad card-game labels.

Cite 6.39 as the catalog’s center of gravity, and treat 9.00 specialty editions as a separate prestige economy — not as proof that “games got better.”