10 Easy to Learn Hard to Master Board Games

do you know what I love po games no I mean yes I love a game puppies that's easy to learn yeah but don't we all hard to master hard to master boom [Music] intro hello everyone welcome back to Foster the meele a Channel all about games g things exactly we are here today with another video big shocker for everybody but today's video topic is all about games that are easy to learn but hard to master indeed there's one game that we didn't put on this list but for me I just got to say it Dr fter good luck mastering this one right I'm not wrong I think maybe if you had small hands I do have small hands do you I don't know do I maybe not oh my God they look huge well they're smaller than yours I have monster hands though I have Monster lady hands ow big distraction anyways we are here today to talk about 10 games that we feel are easy to learn and hard to master now easy to learn is relatively subjective okay because keep in mind that I mean like you could objectively say that a game about bouncing a ball is easy objectively because you just that's it for some people that's for some people I guess I don't know anyways just keep in mind that Jeff and I have played so many games that generally we have an easier time learning games but I think that these ones are still yeah easy to to learn okay anyways here we go the first one on the list I think is like the epitome of easy to learn hard to master and that is AO pick your AO they're all kind of the same except some of them are a little bit harder well let's just talk about Bas aul because that's basically the only one that you've played you've played one other stained glass anyways throw me under the bus like that aul is an abstract game that doesn't have a ton of rules and when you're playing it you're like this is this is easy but then you start playing against people who are really good at Azo and you're like what is this new found game how do how do I do good at this game so the thing about isul is that you can be so good at it to the point where like you're blowing people out of the water Jeff knows somebody who's like got a million plays in my old boss yes I played with a couple at level up Stephanie and Jake right remember your name that Time Jake who play a so much and they literally crushed me they crushed me and I just like this game is so good because anybody can play it yep but not everybody can be good at it but if you work hard enough you could be just like the people who Crush other people like me in a Zool it's so good yeah so so good next one up on our list is a friendly little cat game you play on a blanket and it's called boop boop is a abstract chest likee game where you are moving kittens and cats around this Grid in order to ultimately get three cats in a row sounds simple however the placement rules of this game are very weird so cats if you place a cat will push all cats around it one space away cats will push other cats and kittens one space away so far that they can push each other off of the board so it's not like you can just place a cat and be like all right I got three in a row no they're going to move your cats and the other person's cats or kittens around on this board so it's really about where are these things going to be pushed so that I can optimize my line of three kittens cuz three kittens in a line will upgrade to three cats three cats in a line will win you the game obviously there's also Boop which adds ghosts to the game but it's really like you can get very good at this game and I think at this point I've gotten very good at this game just from having played 30 or more games with Joe back to back to back yeah um it is a game that again any of those chess likee games yeah you're gonna see a you're gonna see a uh easy to learn hard to master kind of uh scenario unfold Boop in and of itself is a very approachable game it does not have a huge rule set doesn't have a huge rule book but it is extremely difficult to get good at it in my opinion and if you play against somebody just like a if you play against somebody who's good at it they will crush you like instantly so yeah you can definitely I've had that unfold numerous times lately me too every time that I play the third game on this list is calico Cat theme yeah I mean why not every single one of these games you could throw a cat in there and honestly it just make it better sure in my opinion but Calico is another abstract game do you see a theme I think a lot of abstract games generally have can be a relatively easy rule set but hard to master Calico is one of those games that it is puzzly in a way that you want to be able to achieve everything and you just can't do it but if you do but if you do now the thing about calico is like essentially it's a puzzle you're building out a quilt for cats to sleep on but in within the quilt there are different objectives that you're trying to get so like in this section of the board you want two two the same two the same two the same or three the same two whatever and you have to try to you have to look at both color and pattern because cats care about these things and it's so like brain burning it's hard to see it's hard everything going on it's so hard to master this game in particular and like the reason I know it's hard to Masters because if you look at the solo challenges the scores that you could potentially score I don't think exist not when I play they're just fake they're just fake they're just throwing them in there for some sort of like expert level genius but anyways I think that this one is definitely on that list the more you play it the better you might get at it but even then like you need to be able ble to visualize in a way that is just difficult to do that's very very true all right next up is uh one game that's in a series of three abstract games that are all somewhat similar uh but we've chosen sagani yes so the other two games just for context are Nova Luna and framework uh framework I always say I always say pipeline it's an uve special they all play relatively the same uh but we chose sigani because it's my favorite it's my favorite uh sagani is a abstract game where you are placing out tiles and those tiles require different colors to be attached to them by lines of sight basically diagonal above side below and once you have those adjacent tiles next to it you get to flip that to score its points y uh I think there is a baked on theme here where it's almost like Genies in a in lamps or pots or something something like that yeah and when you uh flip the tile it's like you releasing the genie from its it could be anything whatever but ultimately what you're doing is placing out these tiles and it's really difficult to optimize this because when you place out a tile depending on how many colors it requires around it you're going to be placing your discs on those tiles so for example if I place a tile out that has a white green and red on it I need to place three tiles on that tile and as I or three discs on that tile as I attach those corresponding colors I then can place my disc on the colors if I get all three I flip the tile and get my discs back yeah so if you ever run out of discs you're going to start taking red discs and red discs are negative points and you're going to run out to discs real fast if you're not optimizing your turns yeah this is definitely a game that if you play with people that know what they're doing you're going to get crushed yeah um there is a lot of puzzling there's ideal tiles that come out at certain points that you want to place got be able to think you have to be able to think three or four steps ahead which is somewhat normal for these abstract games and why most of them are on this list but sagani is one that definitely fits the mold the next one on the list is both an older and a newer game riddle me that one Batman riddle me that that is ship rights of the North Sea but we're specifically talking about the Redux one because that's the one that we have played M this game Jeff taught it to me really quickly like basically all you're doing is you're drafting cards and then you are putting out those cards in order to optimize and score points so what you're doing is you're laying out ships that you eventually need to get resources in order to launch those ships you putting out huts and and then you're putting out people so that you can create more action spots here's the thing this is like an engine builder like extreme I think so engine builders I often find will fall into this category as well because like you need to look at your cards in a way that you know that it's okay for me to get rid of this card to get this resource because it's going to let me trigger this thing and if I can trigger this thing then I can launch this ship or build this ship and if I pick up this guy then he's going to let me do this and and then you know at the same time also maybe focusing a little bit on what the other player doing because you're drafting cards so I don't want to give Jeff a card that he's potentially needs there's just so much going on and in our first play at the end of it we were both like I can see that the more you play this game the better that you will possibly get at it because like you if you learn the cards and you learn how to better work your engine you could just just blow it out of the water but easy rule set but man like scoring a ton of points in that game we there's these tracks that you could go up these two dummies didn't go barely went up any tracks if we're like how do we get up these tracks like we're doing we're not doing this in the optimized way tight decision space with like not a lot of margin for error if you want to score optimally it do be facts though all right next up is another abstract e chess like game from IV Studios and that is Mythic Mischief um Mythic Mischief is a school themed chess likee game where you are ultimately trying to get the other team's students caught by depending on which one you're playing by like librarian librarian or uh grounds keeper um and you're doing that by playing like unique abilities so there's a ton of asymmetry each faction has some sort of asymmetrical ability but basic premise is you're moving around this board uh to optimally get put into positions where you can place the other team in front of the path of the librarian or groundskeeper how I know this game is easy to learn hard to master is because I learned this game very quickly and I started playing it on the app with people that had been playing it a lot longer than me and I got destroyed I'm so bad at this not even remotely close to winning um this is definitely a game that requires multiple plays in order to optimize strategy and understand factions and how they interact and knowing how the other factions work is yeah the asymmetry is but the game itself is very simple use an ability do the action and none of the abilities are overly complicated it might be like swap places with you and an enemy or move a wall or move the grounds keeper or move the librarian it's very easy to set up play very difficult to be good at oof I I'm so bad at that game ridiculous so the next one this list is a relatively new game to us that honestly the first time that I saw the box I was like this game is it's probably so heavy like it really like I hesitated to learn it because I was like oh my God it's GNA be a huge rules teach yeah but it wasn't and that is Oceans so oceans like Nick taught it to us and he taught to us pretty quickly everything just kind of makes sense it's really easy you play out cards uh that are going to trigger off other cards and then you're taking fish from here and then putting fish here and eating fish and doing stuff easy peasy lemon squeezy yeah very easy and then you play it and every card triggers off of another card every card has some kind of a special ability if you like every round basically like you're trying to fill up your species with fish food with food and every round some of that food is going to go away it's going to score you points get eaten score you points whatever if your species has no fish it goes extinct we don't really want that to happen because you're not scoring points correct so you're trying to like trigger things off but like some of the cards you're playing are triggering off the people around you and or you can trigger them off of your other fish based on where you place them this game melted my brain like Jeff and Nick were just doing stuff and I was like I have like one fish that's doing nothing all of my species kept dying and I was like my brain was blown and I was like wow like if you played this game a lot like I can just see how like you could be able to develop those like techniques and those strategies those combos combo city is combo City but I think that this game like Falls really well into this category and not not only that but I I wanted to mention it because it looks like a game that has a huge rule set and it just doesn't like it's not a complicated the bigger the bigger learn is knowing what all the card abilities are yeah yeah all right next up is one of my favorite games of all time if you haven't checked out our favorite games of all time you can go do that you should do that it's on my too it is res Arana yeah res Arana is a race to 10p point engine builder wherein you are going to be dealt a hand of cards in the way I play it anyway uh not the draft variant which I think is the weaker variant of the two you're going to be dealt a hand of cards and is up to you to figure out how to optimize that puzzle because those are the cards you're going to have for the entirety of the game in res Arana you're playing out cards to your engine you can discard cards for resources in order to build other cards to get places of power which are your main winning condition your main Factory for victory points um you're going to take one action on your turn pass to someone else they're going to take an action and this is is going to go back and forth until someone hits 10 points um this is a game that really requires multiple plays in order to optimize your skill set yes Jeff has like all the cards beened at this point I've played this game enough now where if I'm playing with someone that doesn't know how to play I basically will be like okay I'm going to try something I've never tried before um because I'm very confident I'm probably going to win that game that being said I've brought it to Mike over at the brothers murf and we've been playing back and forth recently and now now Mike is beating me probably more than I'm beating him this is definitely a game that can be taught I can teach this game in five minutes uh it is very very easy to play the iconography is probably the biggest hurdle but even then it's not overly complicated it's like tap a card and gain a resource it's very easy to learn very hard to master because you have to know how all of these things integrate to to each other how synchron each other this card's going to help you get these types of resources in order to get this type place of power there's also a little bit of interaction between player and player depending on if they use dragons and stuff but it's very in my opinion very simple to learn uh very very difficult to be uh good at okay the next one that I want to talk about is a solo only game by our good friend fredman freeze my BFF King hope I meet him someday and I hope I don't embarrass myself like I did with John decla okay that game is Friday so Friday is such an easy game to learn it's just some cards some tokens whatever you're just trying to help somebody survive but the cards are all like multi-use cards and the thing about like this game is notoriously difficult to win I've never won there's probably going to be so many people in the comments are like I always win that game well guess what I don't fraud is notoriously difficult it is and so like in this game the reason why it's so difficult is because sometimes you have to sacrifice certain cards to like lose the round because if you lose then you're going to be gaining cards and you could potentially get some like life or leaves back or whatever it is so difficult for me anyways to know when to do that like when do I want to win this hand and when don't I want to win and then you go through this whole thing and you're feeling so good if you're like building up your little deck and whatever then you have like an end boss battle essentially that's also very hard but there are some people out there who have figured it out okay there is going to be some luck that comes with Friday just based on like how the cards come up and everything so like you have to decide like do I want to fight this thing or do I want to fight this thing and then you go through like easy medium hard and then you go into the boss battle and like there are strategies that you can develop the more you play I just have not figured out what those are and I think like like the decisions between should I should I just lose this or should I not like it's going to take some experience before you get get up there but I feel like that one is just so like you the rule book is like nothing one page do you know what else just shout out to Freeman freeze fast loss cuz like how are you getting from one spot to another that game's super easy to learn I've mastered it what about you I'm the fastest you ever did see all right last up on our list is another engine builder surprise surprise and it is thematically an engine builder as well and that is furnace uh furnace is as straight an engine builder as you probably could play yes you are going to be playing out cards that produce resources that you turn into other resources in order to score victory points so you might have coal that turns into iron and that iron turns into gold or what have you that's the entire game you're going to be having and placing these cards out in your Tableau and you're going to be triggering those cards in order to score victory points there is a draft element uh auction EES it's not quite auction in the same way as like I'm going to bid two and I'm going to bid three it's basically you're putting out a token those tokens are valued from like one to can't remember like four uh and depending on who's the highest they will take that card but the thing is you can take that card and add it to your Tableau or uh if you lose you get to discard it for like the resources or whatever you get to take the resources so furnace has a ton of cards and a ton of different ways to score victory points maybe you built up a really good engine for coal in order to score coal as victory points for example there's so many paths to Victory and there's so many cards and they all combo off of each other that is very hard to understand and keep track of what the optimized strategy is but if you play against someone that has played this game a ton you're going to get completely creamed um just because of understanding what cards you want to add to your Tableau four victory points what cards you don't want to what cards you want to add for just straight resources when to tap what in which cards you want to draft over to the middle uh and spend your high value auction token for those cards it's a lot going on and it's very hard to master you can just literally see the wheels turning in people's heads when they play this are like well if I do this now I could get this and I could do this and I could and then I could do this and I could do that but if I didn't do that and then I yeah that's what goes on in your head when you play that game it's true so those are the 10 games I want to I just want to say that I do think dexterity games belong on this list we didn't put any on but think about it I did think about it cocol easy to learn extremely hard to master that's fair that's fair right ice cool ice cool like you need to develop that flicking strategy flick of Faith flip ships flip ships dexterity Rhino hero Etc okay I think these games that are most of them made many of them made for children can be the hardest one semas because I think as you get older you just get a little bit more off-kilter you have a shaky hand now you got a shaky hand anyways we' love to know in the comments below what are some games that you think fall into the category of easy to learn hard to master we'd love to know two thumbs up but that is everything that we have for today now if you're interested in buying board games like any of the many we mentioned today you should first start by checking your friendly local gaming store and for us that is the boardroom Game Cafe heck yeah it is you like snacks I do perfect where do you get snacks lunch pack yeah I just have it with me all the time you you don't just get hungry randomly car around cuz I do we have $5 off coupon if you're interested don't forget to sign up for foster the gameathon if you haven't already March 23rd to 24th we're playing games 24 hours we're not sleeping we're just eating snacks maybe for Munch pack even maybe thank you so much for watching if you like what you see sub we hope to see you again soon and now we say goodbye goodbye lat it [Music] is what those these yeah no I was talking about this oh those just taste like cinnamon toast crunch too thick I'd rather just eat cinnamon toast crunch okay escape from reality bite this and we'll go open your eyes and see I don't really like them next up ya I held it have you noticed I haven't been yawning as much yeah you're doing h

Channel: Foster the Meeple

Views: 14,875

Keywords: board game, board games, table top, table top gaming, table top games, couple, easy to learn, hard to master, best board games, find board games, top 10 board games, board games for couples, board games for 2, solo board games, board game couple, board game recommendations

Id: _54leoryXqE

Length: 24min 0sec (1440 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2024