100 Games Left My Collection. Here's Why.

in the last few years I've developed a taste for culling you wouldn't know it to look at me but I love to Cull in the last year I cul a 100 board games from my collection I went from 320 games to 220 games and it was partly to make space for my new baby although I've since learned they can't sleep in a cax but really I just wanted those games gone so in this video I'm going to tell you every game I got rid of why I didn't want it anymore and which games I'd rather play instead and for those substitutes I'll put links to my older videos and where you can buy them in the description these are all games that at some point I decided this is good I want to keep this game and some I've had for eight years or more and most of them are still good I still like them I just don't love them anymore I wouldn't write a song about them well not another one fun pever Sab Garden been an island in rbcv I split it up into categories first up is games with too much faf it could be rules setup admin I don't want to game to feel like work even though get your tiny violins ready for me they all are Robinson cruso Adventures on a cursed Island used to be in my top 50 games it's a deeply thematic Cooperative game about surviving on a deserted island and to achieve that theme it's full of rules intricacies and tokens to track a million different things and I used to almost love that that it could simulate its world so well by making every decision have thematic consequences but now I'm tired of it every time I go back to it I'm having to check the rule book to remember it all and I'm finally on board with everyone who says it's too punishing the game never gives you hope just misery and whilst it might be thematic it grinds you down it hurt to let this one go I've had it for 9 years but now if I want a co-op game that tells a story I turned to dead of winter because it manages to be tense but with less faf although it's not exactly faf free junka is a stunningly beautiful dexterity game with Gorgeous wooden pieces that Inspire creative stacking and it's divided into 10 mini games with cards and point tokens and all different rules and it's all very clever but I've realized it's more than I want from a stacking game this type of game doesn't need loads of variability I'd rather keep it simp and play catch the moon I love the theme of flasho fire rescue a house is on fire and you play as firefighters trying to save the victims but it's got so much admin at the end of every turn the work required to make the fire spread is just too much and there's not enough room for clever play you take the obvious move most turns which for me is what sets pandemic apart from this and most other co-op games kitchen rush and Rush MD are are both realtime Cooperative games one set in a restaurant and the other a hospital you have sand timers which act like your workers if you put some food in the oven you have to wait for it to cook before you can use that worker to do something else they're really frantic talkative games they do a great job of feeling like a stressful kitchen or hospital to deliver that feel there's a lot going on loads of components to lay out and rules to teach it's not that much but it's more than I want from a real time game a genre which I've fallen out of love with in recent years I'd love to play these games at someone else's house where they set it up and run it and I just sit there eating the boffi pie they made for us while listening to their playlist that has the occasional good song but just isn't as good as the kind of stuff I play at my place at home I'll stick to a much simpler Real Time game with sand timers called kites an irm is a solo or two-player card game that feels like solitire but with more control and like a million people have said about this game before you have to do way too much shuffling and after the honeymoon phase ends it doesn't feel worth the effort I'd rather play the app version but they didn't update it on Android so I can't I don't have anything like an irm anymore but it's not something I'm missing not a day goes by that I'm not taking turns of memoir 44 on board game arena it's my favorite game to play on there but I got rid of my hard copy long before I started playing it online because in real life it's a lot of work setting up those Maps is fun once putting out your toy soldiers but after that it's just admin and trying to remember all the terrain and unit rules is impossible and then in return for all that work you get a game that is just way too lucky for my taste the dice are one thing but not getting the cards you need is painful and on top of all of that I just don't have the opportunity Unity to play long two-player games so if I was in the mood for a war game I'd play 878 Vikings which is two versus two PCT to Mania is a party game in which everyone is drawing and guessing at the same time you secretly vote on what someone else is drawn and the earlier you vote the more points you get so everything's a rush it's chaotic fun and I still love playing it but it's annoying to run a game of it there's a few too many things to remember for a late night party game and since my friend Becky always brings it out she can run it instead top tip don't own a game if you can play someone else's copy in my collection I've kept Doodle Rush which is a much simpler and even more frenzy drawing game dungeon fighter is a very silly Cooperative dexterity game that has you throwing dice onto a Target to kill monsters it's like playing darts with dice and to make it hard you'll have to throw your dice with your eyes closed or while spinning around or blow them off your elbow and I like that silliness if I'm in the right mood but I think I might be in that mood less than I was eight years ago and the rest of the game is Just admin and even though they streamlined it in the new version which I've tried I'd rather get to the fun quicker with a simpler dexterity game but I actually no longer own any flicking or throwing games I've tried loads and none of them are worthy of my shelves you can put your favorite flicking game in the comments but I promise you I've tried them and I was disappointed with them and With You Bad Company is a dice game inspired by Katan and matchi Caro about gangs trying to complete Heist I much prefer it to matchi Coro even space base because it has more reason to care what the other players are doing but there's just so many pieces it feels fiddly to set up and to play and the luck of which gangsters you draw is disappointing instead I've kept my farm shop which is more streamlined and has this fun Supply demand Dynamic that makes it exciting these next games are great except for one fatal floor when I'm in the mood for culling I stand in front of my shelves like a farmer surveying their herd looking for imperfections one dodgy mechanism is enough to send them to the meat grinder cartographers is a flip and right game in which you're all drawing Maps trying to arrange your forests and towns in such a way to please the queen it's an engrossing personal puzzle as the objectives pull you in different directions and you try desperately to make it all work the thing that I've grown to hate about it are the monsters that spoil your perfect map and distract from an already hard enough challenge they're drawn onto a map by another player as an attempt to add interaction to a pretty solitary game but they're just annoying I love interaction in games but this feels so crowbar in for the sake of it that it's worse than having none of at all I'd rather be left alone in railroad Inc instead Watson and Holmes is a crime solving game with a Sherlock Holmes theme but the difference with this one is it's competitive you're racing against the other players to visit locations read the encounters and find the solution it's actually a really well-designed game you're bidding to drive faster to meet suspects before other players and blocking them from getting Vital Information and the cases are really well written but it just feels lonely you're making notes on your own never really talking because you don't want to share information i' just rather play a Crim solving game cooperatively and Sherlock Holmes Consulting detective is just that with the same theme paperback is a deck building word game you create Words which let you buy new letters to add to your deck so you can build longer better words in the future it's a brilliant game that I love playing on the app but in real life it feels like playing a solo game at the same time table I'm so fixated on my own hand and I want to take more time than is reasonable to craft the perfect word which is a flaw with all word games I love the challenge of coming up with long words but I get caught up by a naive arrogance that I can use all the letters when it's actually impossible perhaps the flaw is with me but paperback was the last word game to leave my collection because it was the best quadropolis is a citybuilding game that does many things right I like having to plan the layout of my city to get houses next to Parks I like having to balance the population and the energy needs of my city but there's not enough reason to care what the other players are doing instead I've kept Capital which has all that citybuilding goodness but with the added motivation of trying to do better than your Rivals to win special buildings each round one of my more ruthless cullings and must have been out for blood this day was long shot the dice game a game about betting on a horse race that packs a lot of game into a small box with one fatal flaw you can pull the horses back in the race to stop them from winning and it happens so often that it massively prolongs the length of the game and turns a photo finish into a photo fizzle when I got rid of it I was thinking that Camel up would take its place but I played that again recently and it might be du AAL itself there was a lot to like about on the Underground in which you build tube lines and try to track passengers to use them I love the theme I love the shared board that you're trying to steal custom from each other but what killed it for me in the end was the downtime trying to solve the puzzle each turn grinds the train to a hall it means the game doesn't flow nicely and that's enough to lose a spot on my shelves for train route building I've always got Ticket to Ride Europe instead Hannah makoi is a head-to-head two-player card game you're trying to win the favor of the gishes by having their favorite items which is a theme that does nothing for me but I kept it for the gaml which is full of tough decisions but I went off it because it goes around in circles it's a zero sum game you win what I've lost and I win what you've lost and it feels like no progress has been made everyone's just swapped seats I'd much rather play AirLand and sea where each round builds towards the Finish portal of Heroes is an underrated German card game that packs a lot into a Tiny Box you're trying to collect the right sets a bit like Ticket to Ride to unlock heroes which give you Powers building your engine as you race to finish first its fatal flaw is that it doesn't have any text on the card so you have to constantly check the rules leaflet to understand your powers I find that so annoying that I'd rather banish it from my collection than put up with it and then sulk because I don't have another game like it the next batch of games are what I'd call too fragile they're temperamental one day you might have a brilliant time another you could get a complete dud I used to keep loads of these sorts of games fixated on that one memory of when it was incredible or the dream of what you know the game can deliver but now I haven't got the patience there's too many consistently good games out there to wait for a fragile game to be in the right mood escape from Aliens in outter space is a hidden movement game with hidden roles half the players are humans trying to escape and the others are aliens trying to hunt them down and every time you move you announce your location but sometimes it's a lie and sometimes the truth the game can create tense chases where you don't know who is who but more often I've had people get eliminated far too quickly and confusion and mistakes mean players give their role Away by accident I'd rather just play a normal hidden movement game like Sniper Elite spyall is a clever social deduction game where all players are told which location they're in such as a circus but one player the Spy has no idea you then ask each other questions trying to find out who the Spy is while the Spy tries to work out which location they're in I love this game in theory but it's so hard to hint to your teammates that you know the location without giving it away or if the Spy gets asked a question early on they usually get caught because their clu it's also just really hard thinking up questions and answers on the spot and one tiny slip of the tongue can spoil the game I found myself playing round after round of this recently waiting for the perfect game and never quite having it I find this Dynamic of one person in the dark works better in werewords where it becomes a game of 20 questions and a fake artist goes to New York where you lie through your drawings I can't actually bring myself to get rid of battle Star Galactica but I'm including it because I know I should for a long time it was a 10 out of 10 game for me it's an epic hidden traitor game inspired by the TV show in which some players are secretly syons trying to sabotage the crew from within it's the perfect theme for a near perfect game but it's so fragile you can go half the game without a traitor and win with ease or have the same player be given both traitor cards so they have no chance and there's a lot of rules and a lot of admin especially when you use the expansions which I also have I've since played unfathomable which streamlined the game with a different theme but it still felt too fragile to me and BSG is out of print and hard to come by so if I sell it I'm never getting it back and I want so desperately to relive the great games I've had but it's been so long I question whether they were actually any good like looking back at a dodgy haircut cut you were convinced looked amazing at the time Villa PTI is a Shara winning dexterity game in which you collectively build a towering Villa with pillars and each turn you remove a pillar of your color from the lowest story and place it higher up you're trying to get your color as high up the tower as possible and not get trapped underneath it's a bit on the nose to call a stacking game fragile but I find that people are so desperate to win that they take out vital supports and the tower before it ever reaches the impressive Heights that you'd hope for it's a fun idea that I just don't think works in practice for an epic stacking game I'd rather Place cargo on a rocking pirate ship in Riff Raff instead these next games I got rid of because they were too long but I've kept games that last much longer than these it's just for the type of game The Experience I'm getting it doesn't warrant its length like a film that stretches out a 90minut story to 2 and 1/2 hours it spoils your enjoyment of even the good bits broom service is the game I feel I'm most likely to regret getting rid of it has this amazing bravery mechanism that I've not seen in another game when you reveal a card you decide whether to be brave or cowardly if you're brave you get more stuff but if someone else has picked that card after you and decides to go Brave you get nothing whereas being cowardly guarantees you'll get something it's full of big reveals and frustra when you make the wrong call but there's a few too many rounds of that same thing especially in a game where luck plays a pretty big role there is a shorter card game version but that's nowhere near as good in the end I'd rather play is of Sky which is another quirky interactive game from the same designer some games you look at on the shelf and the thought of playing them is exhausting and fury of dracular was one of those I've never played a game of it that lasted less than 4 hours it's a hidden movement game where one person is Dracula and everyone else is hunting them down and my overriding memory of it is having my head in the rule book I love that it exists I'm happy to have played it but I can't imagine ever going back to dra and if I want an overly long hidden movement game I've still got letters from White Chapel which doesn't keep throwing new mechanisms at me to understand lockup is set in a fantasy prison you're trying to outdo your Rivals by sending stronger gang members to locations to win resources you have to judge how to spread out your gang based on what you think your opponents will do because some are played face down and I love that challenge but I think it would work better in a shorter simpler game with a few less ideas going on there were times this game felt an hour too long which means it dominates a game night and I don't think it's worth that but sadly I don't have a good alternative to it either thunder and lightning is a two-player card game of Norse mythology Thor versus Loki you play cards that act like your Battlefield you're trying to use your powers to wipe out the other player or find their gold ring and I really like the way you play cards face down and lay traps for your opponent but the Arc of the game is too long there's a lot of buildup and repetition before you reach the climax and that length makes the luck of the draw feel more annoying I'd rather play a shorter head-to-head two-player card game like shot and hton zombie side black plague is a Cooperative game of Zombie Survival that in some ways is nice and streamlined the player boards help you track your character and your weapons and the game has a really nice teamwork feel with planning how to tackle the horde of zombies and get to your objectives but it's just so long and the admin of replenishing the zombies gets tiresome I'd love a tight streamline version of a game like this but the publisher temptation to make endless money on Kickstarter with additional content means it will never happen I love a hidden movement game and Spectre Ops used to be one of my favorites one player is moving in secret around a map trying to hit secret objectives while the other players work together to catch them and kill them which is the exact same description for Sniper Elite the board game that manages to do it in half the time and with a better approach to weapons and special powers speculation is a stock market game from 1992 which I'd originally like because of how streamlined it felt in that classic German St style you influence the market by picking a company card each round to move and then buy low and sell high but sadly the rounds become very repetitive it feels like you do the same thing about 50 times before getting to the end for a shorter more interesting stock market game I'd go for the rich and the good instead biblos is considered by many to be the ultimate filler game and I've always liked its signature drafting mechanism you take a card off the deck and decide where to assign it before you draw the next card so if you keep it you're banking on the next card not being even better it's always a fun decision but the rest of the game isn't as exciting to me and it drags with the unpredictable values of the colors and minuscule Point differences I've lost interest by the end I'd rather play a quicker auction game with more drama like High Society these next games are simply not my kind of thing it's taken me years to learn my own Tech and with these games I kept them for so long because I like the idea of them more than the experience itself like forcing myself to keep eating olives until I found what everyone else was enjoying but to betray anyone that was relating to me there I do actually like olives I just don't like these games this game as all is not in my board game collection but it is on the same bookcase as my board game collection let me explain as a reviewer I've granted myself special permission to keep games for professional purposes that I don't consider to be part of my collection for example to make my 10 reasons board games are better now video I needed copies of Monopoly and Game of Life which I couldn't possibly allow into my collection so are now part of the actual L historical archives same shelves different remit much in the same way that I'm exempt from having a shelf of shame because any games that I haven't played are simply research materials AOL is fine I don't get enough from it for it to be anywhere near my collection figuratively it is physically very near it's got the personal Board of something like Sagrada or Cascadia but without their fascinating puzzle and it's interactive but it's not nearly as interactive as people make out Brew Crafters is a worker placement game that I had because I love the theme of brewing beer you send out your workers to collect the ingredients you need and use them to brew alses and Stouts and porters there's loads of thematic details that you can build a brew pub to sell your beer quicker but Underneath It All it's a heavy Euro game and I played it for the last time recently and I won but it felt like doing admin I was totally focused on my own engine for 2 hours and that's just not the experience I play board games for I'd always go for something lighter like champions of midgard fog of Love is a two-player storytelling game where you play as a romantic couple I love romantic comedies and I love so many things that this game tries to do but I didn't enjoy the role playing it always feels forced in a board game like performing for your friends to prove that you're fun whereas in an actual role playing game it feels more natural because it is the game not a sideshow from it or maybe that's just a roundabout way to admit that I'm not fun I also worked for the company that made fog of Love Back in 2018 so it became a busman's holiday for me sleuth is a classic deduction game from the '70s you have to work out which is the missing gem by asking each other questions about the gems they have in their hand it's a solid design that really taxes the brain possibly the best deduction game I've ever played but I just don't find them fun it feels like doing school homework I'd much rather play any Crim solving game that rely on a different part of your brain like Chronicles of crime and it's the same story for Ms battery which is a familyfriendly deduction game set on a 3D cruise ship I love its Agatha chrisy vibes and light rules I prefer it to sleuth because it's less intense but it's still the same staring at a piece of paper that I can't get on with for a murder mystery that doesn't feel like homework I really like Paranormal detectives which is a Much sillier Game King Domino is a similar story to us all it's perfect for beginners but just not exciting enough for me I really respect the design you're adding Domino tiles to your personal map trying to score areas but there's not enough reason to care what anyone else is doing and as a minor complaint I hate that you can screw yourself over and arrange your grid so that you can't complete it that's just not newbie or in my case idiot friendly at all I'd much rather build a map together in carcasson the next category are games that are hard to hit the ground running with I want to have fun in the very first game and I'm always playing with different people so there's always someone new to the game and I hate watching them struggle to understand it especially if it's it's the kind of game that impacts everyone else if you're totally lost Hanabi is an iconic Cooperative card game in which you can see everyone else's cards but your own and you're limited in how you can communicate to each other to be good at Hanabi takes practice and benefits from playing with the same group which I never have plus my wife won't play it because she hates letting the team down if she forgets her cards and it falls apart if you play with anyone prone to some soft cheating which is quite a lot of people I found and whilst I enjoy it that's just too many hurdles to overcome to be worth keeping around so I'd rather play order overload Cafe which is a co-op memory game that is much easier to grasp and less embarrassing for the weaker players the crew quest for Planet 9 is a similar story this one is a Cooperative trick-taking game in which you can't communicate new players really have to learn from their mistakes in this game and I find it boring sitting through that with every new group plus players could be made to feel guilty for playing the wrong card which can be infantilizing and awkward to witness I'd rather play the Mind where your mistakes are much more forgivable I'll be honest the reason that I kept Hive was because you could take it and play it anywhere it's waterproof you can play it on Sand sort of and it would survive a fire probably and in a fantasy scenario where I'm some kind of board gaming Bear Grills that would be perfect but I spend my holidays in bars and restaurants which have even more dry not on fire tables than I have at home it's a two-player abstract game in which you use your insect pieces to try and Surround your opponent's queen bee it's the sort of chess-like game that needs to be practiced to be good at and in the 12 months between holidays we always feel like we're starting from square one with it for me and my wife we struggle to look past onama and it's a very similar story for TAC an abstract game that lured me in with its carved wooden pieces and cloth board so you can play it in a forest a top a tree stump which sounds magical but is actually an act of aggression to play with chopped up bits of wood on top of a dead tree and like Hive Tac takes a while to get going and the strategies are too opaque for my liking Vault Wars is a card game inspired by the TV show Storage Wars the idea is that when fantasy Heroes die you get to auction off the loot that they've left behind and I love the conceit of this game that you can see some of the stuff that you're bidding on but not all of it so you can end up with junk and cursed relics but for such a fluffy idea there's a few too many things going on that mean you can struggle in that first game it's also not as streamlined as I'd like and outstays its welcome for auction card games I'd play for sale instead cross talk is a wonderful word guessing party game that is a Twist on catchphrase both teams are trying to guess the same word and the clue givers must give vague Clues because the other team has the chance to guess first but the trouble is it's really hard to judge how vague you need to be in your first game or two so the whole group ends up with a dud experience until everyone gets it I love the challenge of this game but only after everyone has warmed up to it and that's just too demanding for a party game and sadly for cross talk the very similar Phantom ink came along and doesn't suffer from the same problems the grizzled is a Cooperative card game in the vein of Hanabi and the crew you play as World War I soldiers trying to survive the horrors of the trenches and keep morala you can't communicate so to be good you have to learn from failure by letting your team down and it would be fun to go through that journey together with the same people but for me it's like having to start watching the TV show from the first episode every time someone new joins and the game just isn't interesting enough to be worth that way Master word is a party game that combines words and the deduction game Mastermind The Seekers write Clues onto whiteboards and the guide tells them how many are on the right track but not which ones so it's a process of deduction trying to get to the answer and it's really hard to know what to write even after playing it 23 times I don't know which is a little disconcerting and as the guide it's fun watching them struggle but you don't have enough to do frankly it's too easily replaced by the master Cooperative word game just one these next games I realized are just a bit too hard hard I love games that frustrate me but these tip the balance into sapping my enjoyment because they frustrate more often than they reward on tour is a flip and right game about trying to plan a tour route for your band across the United States you're trying to place numbers in order so you can draw a line through them continuously but the dice constantly serve up chaos and your map becomes a graveyard to all the numbers that you couldn't put where you wanted on a good day it's a taxing puzzle with with a really clean rule set but other times it's just too painful to enjoy but in general I'd say I'm not the flip or roll and right lover I once was so that didn't work in its favor either but I do still enjoy Avenue for some route building that gets the fun stration balance right showoo is a two-player abstract game that won me over with its Timeless aesthetic as you try to push your opponent's Stones off the wooden boards rules-wise it's very simple but I struggle to wrap my head around around the consequences of my moves as I try to plan ahead you're playing across four boards and the moves you make on one board are copied on another it's a very cool idea that makes the game really special but makes it even harder to process your options now I'm not a chess player and I don't enjoy feeling the need to spend that much time over my turns to succeed so I'd rather play onitama where I find it much easier to see ahead in the game overbooked is a personal puzzle game about trying to fit passengers on to an aerplane it's effectively a Tetris game you take a card which gives you a layout of passengers to seat on your plane in that formation you're trying to sit them in a way that keeps everyone happy to score points love birds want to be in pairs and the rugby players want to be in a big group I love the theme of this one and the artwork is really cute as well it's just too hard the cards give you such complicated Arrangements that it's really hard to ever fit them in and feel good about what you've done it gives everyone analysis paralysis is because you're so desperate to make it work each card feels like a punishment that you have to accept you're never excited to find the perfect shape like in most Tetris games I'd rather play Spring Meadow which does let you feel good about yourself this next batch are games where their gimmick has worn off something stood out about them that initially pulled me in but over the years it's lost its charm which is why you should never marry a magician and because they're weird between two cities was the first game to use the mechanism of sharing with the players sitting to your left and right you are building two cities collaboratively by drafting tiles I've since played three other games that use this mechanism and I think that this game does it best and while in theory I love the idea of sharing your success is dependent on your neighbors so if you're sat next to the group's Dullard you won't win and besides the gimmick everything else is fairly dull including some drab artwork I'd sooner play a fully competitive citybuilding game like foundations of Rome One Night Ultimate Werewolf is a Twist on the classic hidden traitor game werewolf and this one plays in only 10 minutes an app takes you through the night phase where characters will wake up and look at other roles then you have this big discussion where you try to work out who is who and it's chaos because the only way to get information is for someone to tell the truth but no one wants to tell the truth because it could put them at risk and some roles have been swapped around so you don't even know who you are anymore it's a blast but it's fun because you're completely lost and after loads of games of it I feel like I've seen all it has to offer and nowadays I'd rather play a hidden traitor game with more to hold on to like the resistance there was a time that time stories was in my top 10 games of all time it's a Cooperative storytelling game that has you traveling back in time to explore a French insane asylum or an ancient Egyptian City when I first played it it felt so Innovative the way you explore the worlds that were rich with story the earlier scenarios were a lot more fun than the later ones there was too much focus on combat and fiddly dice rolling and they kept experimenting with new mechanisms when all I wanted was interesting storytelling I played eight scenarios and by the end I was done now I'd rather play a mystery game like the New Perspectives which also ask players to describe what they can see to their teammates something I loved about time stories Looney Quest is an unusual game that tests your spatial awareness by having you draw lines on a perspect sheet trying to navigate a map that you can see but you don't get to put your sheet over until you finished you're trying to avoid obstacles and grab points it's like playing a video game and it's a fun challenge a few times but that core gameplay hasn't kept me coming back to it and it's probably better suited to Kids First Contact is a really clever game about humans making contact with aliens and trying to learn their language the aliens have a language of symbols and the humans will offer up items like a horse and a car to learn the symbol for fast then the aliens will send a message in their language to ask for the items that they need to win I love the premise and the first few games I was in love with its Ingenuity but beneath the surface there's quite a lot of luck and the humans don't really have much interesting to do I'd rather play another team communication game like word slam masquerade survives some CS because it's small and it has the illusion of being more fun than it is it's chaos the card game you must declare what role you have to use its power except everyone is swapping cards so you can never be sure what card you have and even when someone swaps it could be a bluff they could have kept them the same but you don't know there's so much memory required that you really have to focus which just doesn't suit this kind of Light Social game and I guess you can just let it flow over you and give into the chaos but then at that point you may as well just be playing mouse trap for this kind of rooll guessing card game there's a reason that love letter has endured and masquerade has died off color brain is a trivia game where all the questions are about colors so which five colors are in the Olympic rings and then you have a hand of color cards and you have to pick your answers I like it because it's really approachable it's not too hard and you can still just guess if you're not sure but I don't find much room in my life for trivia games and this is very one note and that note doesn't tickle me quite enough and as one note trivia games go I enjoy guessing numbers in wits and wages a lot more I used be really excited to hunt down Niche games that do something unique and unusual but most of them are fun a few times and don't make you want to keep coming back to them like Igloo pop which is a kids game that challenges your hearing skills each of the plastic Igloo has a certain number of beads in it and you have to shake them up to your ear and guess how many beads are in that Igloo it survived longer than most quirky party games in my collection but I'd rather play something like shifty-eyed spies and spend my evening winking instead of listening which is also my dating technique Picasso is a drawing game and it seems like there was a mass Exodus of drawing games from my collection I don't play them as much as I used to my board gaming groups have changed but in this one you draw onto a whiteboard that is made of six sections then you Shuffle those sections around scrambling your drawing so it looks nothing like it was intended the guessers have to look at it and work out what it was I really like that challenge on its own but the game itself is a bit sedate and I get way more laughs at of a game of scroll the next games have too much luck for my taste and it's not that I hate luck in games I've got loads that are way luckier than these but there's too much luck for the style of game they're going for Mission red planet is an area control game where you send your astronauts up in Rockets to control regions of Mars it has a really fun mechanism of picking what action you'll do all at the same time so you're trying to anticipate what the other players will pick what I don't love is that at the end of the game there are cards that get revealed which create massive Point swings and it's very hard to anticipate them I'd rather Play liberalia Winds of Gail Crest which has a very similar action mechanism but feels less swingy Point salad is a really popular filler card game in which you collect vegetables and point cards which score off certain vegetables and those scoring conditions make you really want to consider every turn which is great but is it worth it when another player could get the perfect objective for their collection of carrots right at the end of the game and win by miles but the equivalent card for your Tomatoes isn't even in the deck in this game and you would have no idea for a filler drafting game I'd rather play Sushi go which doesn't trick you into thinking it's anything other than light and fluffy Sunset overwater is a pleasant little game about painting Landscapes you have to program your actions and hope that you'll get to locations that you want to paint so that you can sell your paint paintings before the other players I love the idea of trying to outthink your competitors but I don't think there's much room for clever play when so much of it comes down to luck I do still enjoy its sister game habous which is a less ambitious but more satisfying push your luck game spirits of the wild is a striking two-player game that has you collecting gems to try and complete sets you're trying to get the colors you need but without giving your opponent what they want it's got really tough decisions that are undercut by the luck of the draw and it can end really abruptly which is unsatisfying plus it's competing with too many great two-player options like sea salt and paper which I absolutely love the next games are ones that I just always rather play something else and that's true of all the games in this video but with these there's a very specific game in my collection that makes it redundant pandemic The Cure is the dice version of pandemic and my first impression of it was how well it translates that game into into something new but still familiar and fun you roll dice to try and get the actions you need to treat diseases and find cures and the way the disease is spread with the dice is really clever but it's not much shorter than pandemic it's not smaller than pandemic and ultimately despite being a brilliant game pandemic is just even better Chinatown is the only game that's being replaced by itself it's a brilliant game about setting up businesses in Chinatown and it's one of the purest most approachable negotiations games there is but the trouble with every negotiation game ever made is that they're too long because you talk too much and waterfall Park chinatown's scarily bright reincarnation is shorter and it's much easier to build successful businesses which makes it feel less punishing I don't love the new look but I do like the game playay and it will be easier to fit into game night code names is my favorite game of all time but code names pictures is its poor younger brother living in its shadow and I'm sure I'd have a great time hanging out with Luke Wilson but also spend it wishing I was hanging out with Owen Wilson instead still fun but not as fun so if I'd always rather play code names then I decided why not pass code names pictures onto one of those weirdos who pretends it's the better game mysterium Park is a spin-off of the Cooperative murder mystery game mysterium in which one player plays as the ghost communicating who killed them and where to the other players by handing them Dixit cards mysterium Park does a great job of streamlining and downsizing the game so it's quicker and easier to set up and I actually can't fo it but this is one instance where I prefer the spectacle and experience of the bigger game despite the extra faf and if I'm a ghost I'd rather be murdered in a Scottish Mansion than an amusement park it's just a higher class of death Muse is a team party game that also uses Dixit style cards the clue Giver is assigned a card that they have to get there teammates to guess and each round you give clues in a different way by making a noise or naming a city or humming a tune and I like that variety of challenges in the game but there's a lot of waiting around while the other team takes their turn and ultimately I had too many games with cards like this and realized I prefer to play Stella instead Ticket to Ride is a modern classic that everyone should play at least once and its sister game Ticket to Ride Europe was my first modern board game 12 years ago and I actually slightly prefer the original Ticket to Ride for its Simplicity but I decided I didn't need two versions of the same game because I don't play either of them that much and I had to keep Europe for sentimental reasons boulder dash is a classic party game from the 80s in which you write fake definitions for obscure words hoping others will pick your fake definition it's a format that works really well and has been copied loads of times I own two Games inspired by border Dash EX libus in which you write first and last lines to f famous novels and Famous Last lines which is the same but for movies and I'd rather play either of those than border Dash so it's wasted on my shelves wink is a brilliantly fun party game in which you must secretly wink at other players to win points and try to catch other players winking at each other and there's nothing especially wrong with wink but it was improved upon by shifty-eyed spies which runs a bit smoother and introduces two-way communication for an even tougher challenge hive mind is the first party game I owned in which you must think like the hive I.E write the same answers as other players to score points and that core gameplay is always fun finding out how your friend's minds work differently to yours but hive mind has a pointless board and all these extra rules that slowed it down it's since been replaced for me by her mentality which is a much smoother experience space cadet's dice suffers from one problem and that's that it's not Captain sonar both are team versus Team Real Time games where you pilot ships and try to kill the other team ship and Space Cadets did it first but Captain sonar Does It Better both are quirky games that I would hardly ever play so I can't keep them both and Space Cadets is on the more chaotic side it involves Relentless dice rolling it's harder to teach and to run whereas Captain sonar is more elegant plus it has this great hidden movement Vibe it's like the classic game Battleship but for people with a brain 13 days Cuban Missile Crisis is a two-player card driven game set in the cold war that pictures itself as a sh to take on Twilight Struggle it's push and pull as you try and control Battlegrounds at the right time and I'd much rather play it than Twilight Struggle but these days I'd rather play another tug of war two-player historically themed card game over 13 days and that's water game trap words is a really fun party game in which you're trying to get your teammates to guess certain words but without saying the Trap words so it's like taboo but the twist is that you don't know what the Trap words are and the other team wrote them so you're describing Jurassic Park but without ever saying dinosaur or film or Spielberg because you think that that's the type of trap word that they'd pick it's such a great challenge you're trying to talk but you're terrified of every word you say and I would still have that game but it was replaced for me by bandw which is very similar but easier to run trap words has some extra mechanisms that gives it more fa than a party game should really have the next category are games that I have no one to play them with either because it needs a massive group or it's just not the kind of game my friends are into but to be honest if I loved it that much I'd stubbornly keep it anyway against my own advice two rooms in a boom is the ultimate big group social deduction game you can play this game with anywhere from 8 to 30 players and it's played across two rooms and everyone has a secret role the blue team is trying to protect their Pres president and the red team is trying to get the bomber in the room with the president to assassinate them it's a game of discussion and bluffing and sending people between rooms and there's loads of different roles you can add in it's kind of a fragile game some go better than others but it's only 10 minutes per game and I haven't played it at home in years because it's best with huge groups so it's great for playing at conventions but I found that there's always someone else that brings it and runs it so I don't need to own it myself anymore magic maze and Magic maze on Mars are two realtime Cooperative games that you play in silence you're trying to move your characters around a shopping mall but to move them you have to work together because only one player can move them left another moves them right someone else controls up and another down so it really needs full concentration and great coordination to get it done in time it's really fun with the right group but it's hard to find the right group one stress head will ruin a game of magic maze and every time you lose there's this debrief where you can't help but blame each other for what went wrong which happens in most real-time co-ops and I'm just kind of over that it's a really brilliant game that I've had some amazing times with but it's time for me to let it go dead last is another big group social game and I like this one because it felt really different all the players are secretly voting to murder one of the other players and the majority wins so you were trying to create alliances and backstab people so that you you will survive until the end the game is really free form you can communicate to other players in any way you like you could play it standing up walking around a room and it's a very mean game it feels like being in a popularity contest trying to be in with the cool crowd and not get picked on and it works best with eight or more players so it's really hard to find that many people who also want to play such a mean game and if I did I just use that opportunity to play secret Hitler or the resistance instead this next batch has been acted for the simple reason that they're too big for what you get in the Box a game has to earn its space on my shelf and the more space it's taken up the more it needs to deliver tags is a party game which has you trying to think up things that fit a specific category and start with a specific letter so if you need fruits that begin with S you say strawberry and your team is trying to shout out as many answers as possible in 15 seconds I've played loads of games like this over the years and is one of the best but none of them have been addictive enough to keep coming back to like a really good party game it's good for a family at Christmas but it's a big box and it weighs a lot too if I want a party game of shouting words that begin with certain letters I'd go for nogin which is about 30 times smaller taple is a very similar game to tags but this one has a special plastic Contraption with a built-in timer every time you say a word you press that letter down eliminating it so that the options get smaller then you reset the timer in the middle passing the Hot Potato to the next player they have to shout an answer before the buzzer goes and it's really fun for 10 minutes but there's no depth there and it takes up way too much space for something so simple Terror and forner are trivia games that use a map of the world you're given a famous landmark or species of animal and you have to place cubes onto the board guessing where in the world it is or how big it is or what year it was built it's really adaptable in the sorts of questions it can ask and you get points for being close with your guesses which makes it feel not too hard but to achieve all of that there's a fair amount of admin with scoring and they come in a massive box and as much as I love a trivia game they're more suited to a laidback situation which this doesn't fit and something like timeline works a lot better uaro is a realtime puzzle game that ties your brain in knots each round the game gives you rules about how you can place the colored porn so green can't be next to white but white must be opposite orange and you have to process them all and then arrange them against the clock it's fun for a few rounds but it's a pretty one note experience that I could forgive from a card game but it doesn't warrant a ticket to ride siiz box timeline challenge takes the trivia game timeline about guessing famous historical dates and introduces four new Mini gamess to play with those cards turning it into like a bigger game show experience and they're fun but not enough to Warrant a massive box over timeline small tins so I'll stick to playing those instead the reason there's a lot of smaller lighter games on this list is because when I used to Cull my collection in the past I found it easier to forgive a game that takes up less space not anymore no game is too small for my sniper rifle they're clutter when I scroll through my collection on the board game geek cap looking for something to play they slow me down and get in my way and these next games are so slight so unassuming that they may as well not exist at all so now they don't simolo is a Cooperative party game that comes in many different decks of characters fairy tale Greek gods there's even a Harry Potter one one player must communicate which is their secret character by playing other characters and saying that they're either similar or not similar to the secret one it's impressively streamlined but doesn't leave much room for creativity and it results in quite syy clue for example eliminating based on gender I'd rather play unusual suspects which creates more interesting discussions circle the wagons is a tiny two-player card game that has one interesting mechanism the cards are in a circle and you can take further down the circle to get a card you want but then you have to give the cards that you skip over to your opponent the rest of the game is forgettable using the cards as tiles to create connected areas of icons I can't get excited for it over other two player games I own and I'd rather worry about what I'm giving my opponent in sobec two players instead I always wanted to like the card game the game more than I did it is the epitome of simple you're trying to cooperatively get rid of your cards by playing numbers in order onto four piles but it feels like it plays itself you make the safest decision each turn and occasionally enjoy the luck of being able to jump a stack back by 10 I'd much rather the drama of trying to read each other's mind in the mind these next games I've had for years but honestly I never needed to own them there are so many games released like ghost blits you flip a card and race to grab the right thing because let's be honest they're easy to design and ghost Blitz is probably the best of them all but that's like owning the best Hansen album and in both cases there's no reason to play them although Penny and me is a good song I always had rare Road ink red and raare Road ink blue but now I just have blue I don't need two versions of the same game even if they're expansion dice are different it's inefficient and also just annoying to have two separate entries on Board Game Geek things like that bug me Plus rarro in is so light it's not the sort of game I want to experiment with loads of variants for it's a nice filler some games shouldn't try to be more than that and that goes for all of you Rolland rights listening out there stop with your delusions of grand you're just some dice and a bit of paper you're not impressing anyone with those A4 spreadsheets and metallic whiteboard pens the only reason I had Ticket to Ride London is because I live in London it's a smaller shorter version of the original game which works but is not as good you need that longer Arc to create tension over whether you'll complete your objectives and get routs ahead of your Rivals the London version is like a tiny chocolate bar it gives you a good taste of the full experience but it leaves you wanting more and I'm not a collector I can't keep a game just because I like the theme this is a living collection it only stays if it gets plays I was delighted to find faces in a charity shop almost a decade ago now it's an early 2000's party game that Tom vassel used to Rave about you get a lineup of photographs and you have to pick which face matches the description card so who looks like they ate something sour it's mildly amusing for around but there way too many better games like this I'd rather play Stella which is much better at sparking conversation I kept faces for so long because it's hard to come by I'd never be able to buy it again but why would I want to a rare game isn't a good game get them gone stick them on eBay and sell them to some schmuck who thinks that out of print is a badge of honor but don't list them all at once let's not make it a buyer's market I kept ohanami for years because I felt that I should like it more than I did I was attracted by it packing a solid game into a tiny box it's a car drafting game with simple rules but tough decisions it's got more depth than something like sushi go but it feels drier there's no excitement with each card reveal and when I visited Amsterdam I was delighted to find that I could buy sushi go in the same sized box a game that I got rid of because of sushi go party but couldn't resist a super portable version of I used to think that it was useful to have an entry-level card game like cat lady in my collection it's a cute theme and it's good for teaching because all the options are out in the open but I've since realized I've got better Alternatives there's actually a few more intricacies to teach than I'd prefer and I'd rather play Truffle Shuffle which also has open drafting but a bit more excitement or bring out something bigger like sushi roll Aron is a solo or cooperative two-player game in the same universe as in irm it's a dice game in which you're trying to roll poker style sets like a full house or two pairs to win the cards you need it's really really tough in a good way but it just doesn't excite me I can tell you why it's a well-designed game but I can't tell you why I love it because I don't and I think that's how I feel about most little two-player co-ops because I haven't felt the need to keep any others either these next games I don't play anymore but I'd kept them because I could imagine playing them again one day yeah if I win the lottery I might be able to retire and pay people to play Twilight Imperium with me every day but it also might not happen because I don't play the lottery so instead of keeping games for a hypothetical future I'll pass them on to another collection where they will get played and maybe one day I'll buy them again if I need them or something better will come along between now and then and I'll get that instead coconut is a very silly dexterity game which involves flicking coconuts into plastic cups it's beer pong for children you each have a catapult and you win Cups by getting your coconut in them it's simple fun but I don't feel comp to play games like this as much anymore but I can imagine it' be great with kids when they're old enough to work the Catapult so like a lot of these I might buy it again when my daughter's old enough sticky chameleons is chaotic silliness in game form the table is covered in cardboard insects and you each have one of those stretchy sticky hands that you had as a kid where you fling it and it will stick to stuff you're trying to use it to pick up the right insect token before everyone else and it's brilliant how well it works because it's hard but not impossible and all the hands get tangled and you can even steal tokens off of each other everything goes everywhere so it's really easy to lose tokens and the hands pick up fluff and dirt but it's that sort of energetic burst of fun that can be great occasionally but for now I still have happy salmon for that ice cool is another family oriented dexterity game you're flicking Penguins around a school trying to catch each other and the thing that sets it apart are the weighted penguin pieces which you can flick to spin around corners and even make them jump over walls you can make some incredible moves which makes the game way more entertaining than your average flicking game it's one of the best I've played but it's hard to bring it out with adults because it looks so childish and the box is bigger than I'd like I'll definitely be buying this one again when my daughter's old enough and in a similar vein these are games that I once loved but I just don't need that energy in my life anymore like going back to a video game from your childhood you'd still have fun with it but it'll never be as good as it was back then and I'd rather move on to something new that suits who I am now Escape curse of the temple is a great realtime Cooperative game that has you all rolling dice at the same time trying to get the results you need to move your adventurers through a temple get the treasure and get out before you die it's stressful fun you're desperately rolling and rolling and I really like that your dice can get locked and your teammates will have to go back and save you to be honest talking about it now I might miss it but I just never feel in the mood for a hectic Real Time game anymore and it being so noisy means you can never play it in public ug is a ridiculous party game that involves bashing each other over the head with inflatable clubs and to Jon of 10 years ago that was music to his ears ears that were picking up frequencies I can only dream of now you play on teams and try to communicate how to build a wooden structure us only caveman Grunts and if you make a mistake your teammate hits you over the head and it's fun of course it's fun but it's also kind of intense you can't just whip it out after a dinner at your friend's house not least because it weighs a ton but not wanting to say goodbye to being hit by inflatable clubs forever poetry for neanderthals keeps the dream alive with a much simpler more approachable party game pandemic rapid response is another great real time Co-op set on an airplane you're trying to prepare and deliver Aid like water and Medicine across the world and I like that you're taking turns in this one because encourages more discussion as the other players help you decide what to do but as quickly as possible it's tense and hard but really streamlined it was the last Real Time game to leave my collection for what it's worth Jam Sumo is one of the best flicking games I've ever played but apparently I just don't care about flicking games because I didn't feel the need to keep this one I love the handmade wooden board it's exactly how I want dexterity games to look and it combines two games one in which you're trying to get your dice down the hole and the other in which you're trying to survive on the board while eliminating everyone else ultimately it's a skill game like playing pool and I've never been that fussed about playing pool if I need entertainment in a pub I'd play Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on the quiz machine stinker is a great alternative to Cards Against Humanity that puts you in the driving seat by letting you write your responses you write them with SC grabble tiles and I just don't feel the desire to play this kind of game anymore the limitation of the tiles can stifle the creativity a bit which is a pro and a con and the box was too big for a party game my favorite game like this was stipulations which I sadly lent to someone and never got back those were the 100 games that left my collection if you're interested in any of the Alternatives I've mentioned I've put links to my videos and where you can buy them in the description below if you like this video please subscribe to the channel or become a Paton to help me make more videos I'm John perus thanks for [Music] watching

Channel: Actualol

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Keywords: Board Games, Board Game, Family Board Games, 100 Games Left My Collection, 100 Games Culled, Culling My Collection, Collection Video, Leaving My Collection, My Board Game Collection, Board Game Reviews, 100 Board Games, Gateway Games, Actualol, Jon Purkis, 100 Games Reviewed, Here's Why, Don't Buy These, Out Of My Collection, 100 Games Gone

Id: 2-pVgFGiCwI

Length: 60min 43sec (3643 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2024