50 - 41 :: My Favorite Board Games (2024 Edition)

what's everybody continuing on with my top 100 favorite board games um hopefully you've enjoyed the first half of this journey we went we've already gone through my 100 to 51 and more importantly I'm hoping that you're finding new games to check out that you might even purchase and play with your own friends and family like that to me is the biggest win Behind these lists is to get new exposure to things you didn't know existed or things that you haven't thought about in a long time so with that we're going to throw out our regular disclaimers uh first off if you want to talk about anything in the comment section be mindful of spoilers so try to instead reference the number in which that game appeared in this list versus actually calling out what the title of the game was that's my only thing that I really keep out for you and of course if you're looking if you're jumping in at the wrong point you want to start over from the beginning then there's links in the description for both uh to get started with that 191 video uh or to get into the playlist itself so with that let's jump into it everything you're saying here is done through tabletop Sim and we've been turning this into a game uh I've been having fun with this and I'm hoping you have been too the way this works is um it's very low stakes just have fun with it all I do is I I take one component element from every game on this in this particular list so this will be our number 50 to our 41 and these are te I'm going to show you what they all are so you know every game that's going to be in my list if you recognize the the token and maybe you do maybe you don't but we're going to break him down anyways so here we go this is night number 50 here's a component from that game my 49 my 48 I 47 46 44 43 42 I'm doing these all wrong this is not my 41 I don't know why I do that I do that every freaking time uh 41 actually I'm going to be I'm going to give you a little hint here I couldn't find a component for it uh because the mod's not quite available um inside of tabletop Sim so I I just did the best I could with what I've gotten so this is not an official component from the game but here we go 50 49 all the way to 41 okay I don't know why I always get those numbers wrong but I did all right so let's break them down so if you recognize this then you're going to know that my number 50 game is Roco I happen to have the uh the fancier version of this I don't have it with like it's so weird how they did this it's a deluxe edition but there's like versions of the deluxe edition so I don't have like one of the or two of the expansions I don't know it's weird I I'm not missing anything to be honest with you because the way that this game is as it is with the nice upgraded visuals and the components like it's a it's almost a perfect game for us it's a good um mix between uh well I'll just tell you what it is so imagine yourself back in the Roco era where you were your own competing brand right so if you think about the brands that we have today that walk through Red Carpet put yourself in a different time period same type of concept you want your garments worn and not just worn but at but displayed at the highest level right there's a giant Festival of fireworks and stuff A lot of people are checking out what people are wearing I want that to be my stuff right so that's the theme of this game now the way that you do that is so this is so fun you have it's it's a it uses deck building but I would not call this a deck building game you have a basic deck of cards of I think it's eight cards could be 10 anyways out of that entire deck you're going to pick all of those cards up and you're going to set aside uh I believe it's three of them okay and on your turn um excuse me sorry on your turn you're going to use one of those cards that you set aside and you're going to play it for its action now depending on its color of symol so you've got the I believe these are the assistants the journeyman the Masters don't quote me on that I don't exactly remember but those are bronze silver and gold gold can do the is can can do the most bronze can't okay so depending on on which worker that you have you can do certain things and they have different abilities on them as well and so these are it's kind of like worker placement with with uh as if your workers had powers so it's a mixture of using your deck your cards as workers as well as um having a deck building component in there anyways so you're going to be using uh your your cards to recruit better cards or to go and get um Fabric or to go ahead and have a design which is you know if for you to build this one you need to have two pink fabric you do it and you can give it to someone and eventually you're going to be um putting these out on the board and depending on where you put them uh will net you different types of points uh you're looking for area majorities in these different regions and uh there are some tiebreakers and other things going on there it is definitely in that heavier range of game um but it's just not one of those super complex games to teach surprisingly and I think what the other element that's really interesting and fun in here is um is that you've used those three cards so you may have used those cards uh to purchase new cards but on your next turn you can begin to use those those cards just not the ones that you just used so you're going to be constantly adding cards and then getting cards and then choosing a couple of those cards to use so that feels really good to um to pick and choose you know what workers going to do you're going to be thinking about what your opponents are doing where they've you know what you've seen them do where they're already had a majorities you're going to be thinking about all that kind of stuff to play into your turns and your strategy and it's very rewarding game just as much as it is uh attractive to look at and play with and that is roko my number 50 now let's move on to another classic game actually I don't know I wouldn't say classic I just feel like it's if it's in that 15E range it's probably classic and I think this one's at 10 or 12 years I don't remember anyways this one is Francis Drake it feels and looks classic to me um but actually I think it's not that all I think it came out in 2018 I don't know maybe 13 maybe 2013 anyways this game is a pirate game but man this has got some really cool interactive um inter interactive elements the first piece that's really interactive is this um um you know there was a game that uses this feature in in a that I mentioned in a game earlier in my series here and I didn't have a name for it it's like it was trekking for through history and I realized the name for this mechanic is the dragging leader so on your turn whoever's in first place will will go forward and take an action on the location but you can never go backward and uh and then you go and turn order and and you just start doing things right now this doesn't actually have a lagging trigger leader now that I think about it but whatever um the arrangement of these cards or these tiles is random there are some things that are printed but for the most part these are done uh randomly game to game so you're going to be go looking to get um food you're going to be looking to get cannons or whatever that I think it's cannons or gunpowder I think is what it is um you're not going to be able to do everything um and but you're going to be able to look for things that you want to specialize in uh throughout the turn but there are advantages to going last you get you're going to be um getting more going to be able to stop at more places uh there advantages to get to the spot first like here if you go first or second you're going to get more of that resource uh for example uh there's even more advantages for going back to the shipyard first you get to set sale first right so there's like other types of advantages uh depending on how you want to how you want to um toggle through the speed of which you're going to get through um getting the supplies that you need for your um your voyages after you've done that part of the game then in turn order based off of the uh the shipping here excuse me not sure why I'm yawning so much I'm not that tired um depending on how I believe it's how much food you have so depending on how much food you have determines how far out you can travel okay so there are there are regions where it's like 1 2 3 and four depending on how much of that you have limits the range in which of the actions that you can or the locations that you can interact with okay and when you do that you have these discs and um they all look the same on the back but there are a couple of special ships otherwise they're going to be a numbered value and so the first player you know may choose to go here and and then there's only one spot that's left open so who's going to go there and you're looking to compete for dibs on these resources and you get points at the end the game for sets think the game plays in exactly three rounds um but sometimes you know you may think okay well I'm going to go here first but they put like my lowest disc my worst disc on it but you don't know because it's all hidden information so everyone's going to take turns you know plotting out what their void is going to look like trying to you know intimidate that they're going hard for something but they might might be bluffing and then after we're all done placing all of our available discs we flip them all over oh my gosh I'm so sorry I don't know why I'm yawning so much it's because I'm talking probably um anyways you're going to be going them region to region unlocking them and doing them in turn order then getting surprised as to who who put what values where and how to the turn and tiebreakers work this whole thing is so piratey it's so piratey because because there is a little bit of a bluffing side of there you don't exactly want your opponents to know exactly what you're planning to do uh at all times or or you know the the the locations that you're trying to take Siege of or the resources that you're going after because again there's a lot of public information but man this the level of interactiveness within this game is so good and it really ties a social aspect uh with um a pretty simple e omic game um in a in about a 2-hour period I mean hour and a half 2 hours 90 minutes yeah it's a really good game and it actually plays really I think it kind of it might actually play better at five players I haven't played with five players but just kind of thinking through it I can imagine it would play pretty good at five anyways that is Francis Drake my number 48 that I spent a long time talking about I need to set okay my number number 48 now is a two-player only the game called jaur this has been around for a very long time I love playing this game I played on the app of my phone with my kid with a couple of my kids it's just like it's probably one of the best two-player games uh that's out there and it's a very simple game there's a market you either take all the camels or you take a card if you want to take more than one type of good from the market you have to make trades so you either have to trade back if I wanted to take these two cards I could probably give I can I mean not probably if I wanted to take these two cards I can give two camels or I can do a camel in one of my cards or I can give two cards away your max your max hand size I believe is seven and at no point can you ever go over so you can't draw eight or nine and then put back set put back to you can't do that and um and eventually you're going to spend your turn not Gathering cards but selling cards so if you sell let's say three purples then you're going to get the first three which happens to be worth the most points I think this is 5 two and two and it goes 2 two one um most of these are ones except for the last ones which were two three and four so selling three Browns early is is is pretty viable and if you can sell more than three I mean you can sell I think at minimum two but if you can do three or more three four or five you're going to get bonus ships and these are worth some pretty pretty serious points if you can pull it off the special Goods the silver the gold and the rubies uh you need at least two yeah I think you can sell even one actually now to think about it because here you need to have at least two and you and you get two so here you can even sell one you can just sell it I'm going to sell one purple Give Me Five Points anyways uh usually you play this in best of three uh best of yeah you play rounds in best of three cuz the scores can be tight they can be swingy and whoever has the most camels at the end of the round also gets points it's that simple of a game but there's so much depth here and it's such a good uh quick fast and and satisfying two-player game that's J poor my number 48 all right let's move on to my number 47 uh this game is a reprint of fantasy Realms fantasy Realms has a new version of it that's got a slightly different rule set but I happen to just like the Marvel version of it the most and that is Marvel MX this is a really good two-player game but again it can play it three and four no problem but I really like the head to-head side of this game so on this game every card you have will score for you but the minimum the minimum uh things that you need to have in your hand is at least one villain if you don't have a villain your score is zero and you lose so you got to have at least a villain and I think you also have to have an an ally or a hero one of those two so you have to have and when youever you start the game you will be Delta villain but you can always trade them out if you don't like them and so the the fun element of this game is you can um either draw from any of the decks the remix the you know the remix cards or the villain deck and then after you've drawn a card you have to put a card down okay so uh once that card is faed down I'm sorry not fa down but but fa uh played into the center of the table everyone has access to that card so instead of choosing blind from either the deck they can take what's on the table two things happen there one we're not progressing towards the end of the game because the game ends immediately once I believe there's 12 cards in the middle of the table so by swapping out what's on the table doesn't Advance the game and you might be actually helping out your opponents and this game is all about icon comboing so for here Ultron you know he's he's going to give you I forget what the name of this icon is but he's going to give you 14 points into the game but you'll lose -20 unless you have two or more cards that have that that symbol so looking at my hand here I have one right so if I can get one more of those symbols keeping or maybe trading for Ultron might be really good because I know I'm not going to lose the 20 points I'm going to get 14 instead for 14 for one card is really strong I mean you can see this one here for example says it's worth four by itself but I can get an additional four um if I play this card with any location which happens to be yellow so I play this card and play this card and this becomes an eight- pointer and then this one I would score and it's four points for each of these green things and so on so like the entire game you're constantly um drafting what's out there on the on the market or drawing blind from the decks and just kind of looking the combo all the best abilities you got and to play the game plays only 10 minutes that's the other part that's really fun especially with two players you can knock out a game in 10 or 15 minutes easy and play a couple of rounds of it I mean this if I were playing with my wife we would play uh three rounds or best of three you know cuz it's one two one two I think you have six on each sheet and every you know you're going to score all seven cards in your hand anyways this game is like 10 or 12 bucks I think everyone should own it uh you don't have to like or know anything about Marvel uh in order to have fun but if it is a turnoff you can check out fantasy Realms and see if maybe that's your Vibe as uh instead but either scenario fantasy Realms or Marvel remakes I think this game belongs in everyone's collection it's so good all right next is my 46 unfortunately this game is out of print and it's not coming back as it is Queen games picked it up and it's in one of stepan it's a stanfeld game but it's brought back in one of the Cities I don't even remember what it is but my version of it is Laisa they turned it into like a like a caper Style game I don't know what it is it's it's okay unfortunately this game's not pretty and the components are not great either but I'll tell you why I like this game so much first off this circular-shaped board is made up with these weird uh zigzaggy pieces right so this this is one piece right here you show you shuffle them up and you and you place them all out and you have this weird board and then all there you have these rare animals the toad and the whatever the pinku one and the moth and the dodo bird and so on okay now uh over the course of the game you're going to be putting out your your people on the board okay and for you to take the token that's on the that's in the space uh you have to be fully surrounding it so if I'm going after this dodo for example example I if I and I'm a red player I'm going to need a red one of my red to uh people here and here and that's what the number four means is that it's got to be four of your people surrounding it and that's kind of representing the U capturing um then you get to add the doo to your board um and you you're going to go up scoring tracks for each of the uh various types of animals that are in the game but what makes this game so special is is this piece here you're going to get uh you're going to have hand of these cards these small cards and the game plays in these four rounds or four phases the first phase is you have to you're going to take every card that you have and you're going to be uh looking at which ones you want to assign where okay so in Phase a so you're going to get three cards okay and so you're going to allocate one card for a one card for B and one card for D okay whichever card you put in slot a you have to take that card and put it in one any one of these three slots and every one of these is an ongoing ability so here these Brown cubes count as Wilds here um whenever I play a card with this green B at the bottom left of the card I get to go up this track excuse me I get to go up a track um over here if I want to if I have um if I want to play an adventurer if I have a backpack then I the backpack spaces cost one less one less Cube to go to so you're constantly every turn modifying what your ongoing abilities are so you can see this person's put a couple cards in a but not so much here so maybe depending on what this card is based on my current situation I might be thinking to myself all right I plan on going here I need two yellow cubes and I would like it if it didn't cost me as much so whatever card I put here I'm not going to cover this ability so maybe maybe I'm going to go here because I I kind of want my brown to still be wild for this turn so whatever this card is it goes here and then B you is you're you're going to get whatever resources are on the bottom of my track right well I'm not going to I don't want any green I don't need this card so that's how you're going to get cubes is based off whatever is inside of B uh you're going to flip over the card and whatever that card's bottom left corner is you get those resources then you can place one workout by paying two cubes and going to a location and then finally uh whatever card you put here you're going to look at the bottom right icon that's on that card and that's the track you're going up like it's that simple but this puzzle of like always managing what what abilities you have round around is so freaking cool it's so fun um I wish this game would was still around as it is because I can teach this game so fast and unfortunately again opponents are nothing to die for this is like a piece of paper um I just think they changed a little bit too much in the newer version of it but if you ever get a chance to pick one of these up secondhand I think you should do it uh and that's I love this game that's why it's so high on my list for it being such a weird obscure game but this I I have not seen this much in any other game and you might have notice that's a thing with my list is like really interesting and some sometimes even unique mechanisms this this this is everything that's cool about this game is you're constantly owning or you're constantly managing what your awesome powers are round to round all right enough of that that's my number 46 Lisa my number 44 uh 45 is one of those crazy games that only works at three players and that's dragon scales uh dragon scales actually it doesn't only play at three three to five is is what it plays but you need to have at least three but I really like it at three but I'm sure it's fine at four and five I've only played it with two my my two of my kids uh it's always only been the three of us playing it anyways this is a really busy board but I'll kind of give you the uh the quick version of it on your turn you roll some dice and you can uh after you roll the dice you can do a couple things uh eventually you're going to um be done with your dice and you're going to allocate over here all of the dice that match that symbol so for every Shield you're going to uh put your Shields over there when it's your turn you reveal it I mean okay now if you have let's say you had three Shields then you would go here and you would bump green here and purple to here pretty pretty easy stuff right and all of these do different have different abilities and and you're going to be once all of the dice are placed after you've rolled them and and repl them all then we just take the action so we'll start here and whatever if green was here we we'll do green we'll do purple and then nobody else then we'll go here we'll do yellow we'll do red then nobody else we kind of do this over and over again and these these uh actions are are different uh obviously they're different but they do different things that Advance the game in different ways some of these are going to uh have you attack the three-headed dragon again and so you're going to be take these cubes represent its total life points for either of the heads so uh depending on what it is you can choose to take a damage maybe one from each of these or maybe you'll take three blues whatever it is um there are Victory Point bonus victory points that gain at the end of the game if you've done the most damage to the dragon if you've done the most based off of the color of the of what you've done to the dragon so this person's done um one yellow one blue and two read so far another couple things you can do is you can move so there's a there's a cave here there's the entrance and here's the exit and you're kind of going through this whole line to get to the end every one of these locations that you end on has a a certain ability that interacts with other players and stuff um the game immediately ends once someone leaves the leaves it so the game will end if the dragon is dead or if someone exits the game and at first it looks like you can move through these things things really fast but more often than not you don't um at least you don't want to end it because if you end it and you don't you're not winning then obviously that's not a good place to be on top of that depending on which villain that you take you have a different ability so I think this is the one that poisons other players and stuff like that so this is a very interactive um f it says fight steel run and even betray uh because again because you're playing as villains uh you can really step into the uh the theme of this but if you also like dice placement like this is such a cool hybrid um you've got dragon skills which are a fancy looking component that let you you can use these resources to to um pay for the cost of these really powerful cards either as equipment or onetime abilities that again a lot of interaction here within this game but it's dice placement so it's usually um yeah it's usually just a easy playay uh game with other people it is a 14 plus because it is a more complex game than some of the other dming games I mentioned so far but uh yeah man dragon scales is such a is such a really cool fun game so I know every like it so that's why it is my number 45 let's move on to my number 44 this is an Uber popular game called everdale um what I love about everdale what i is uh is that so you're you're building your own little city and it you'll have civilians and you have construction buildings either unique or common you get a bunch of points along the way you're constantly it's constantly a worker placement Resource Management game but what makes this game so fun is that you can advance through the seasons at a different pace than the other players I've seen players purposefully try to get out of the first phase as fast as possible so that they get so that they can they actually might time it pretty well that they're in the next phase at um ahead uh where the other players are just kind of finishing their turn and whenever you switch from one season to the next you pull all your all your workers from the board so if you time that right you're pretty consistently um going to have a lot of options to choose CH from and these these spaces here are going to be randomly uh determined every game because you just there's a whole deck of cards and you only bringing out I think three or four of them um whereas these are always going to be the same and there's just so many different strategies to win um depending on the rate of the cards coming out the right time you can get and one time uh bonus objectives here where if you are the first to have built four of the green types of buildings and you spend a worker to go here then you've got this permanent three games at the end or three points for the end of the game and there's one of these for all different types of the or four of the different types of cards there's randomly set up combo cards usually between a location and a character type so if you happen to get those two together you can complete the objective and get some really cool uh special ability uh this whole game is so special in the way that you build that Tableau and like it says uh dynamically um really playing around with the seasons um and stuff like that it's fun I don't play a lot with the expansions CU I really like the base game as it is but I do understand why the base game can get stale because you do see a lot of the cards every time that you play but yeah give it a try everell is pretty special all right number 43 excuse me man I'm talking a lot today is eki a game of Elo Artisans so this is a game where you are I like to think of yourself as a uh family um and as a particular family you've got your um identity in the maybe like your identity as reputation in in the marketplace and so these this whole board represent present like uh a Market Square and these locations here represent the workers of a particular store kind of like a strip mall and um these action spaces is a is a looped rundale here it's a single track you can only move forward um I think it's one of the three spaces if I remember correctly and wherever you land you visit and you interact with you're not you're definitely not incentivized you I mean you are more incentivized to visit other players buildings um because of the actions they let you do there's different all different types of things that you're trying to get and for scoring purposes uh but every time um a location is visited uh the time of that person um advances like getting him closer to retirement so once they've kind of been worked too much they retire and then you get to claim that building for endgame points is this is actually one of those rare games it's actually really hard for me to explain in a short snippet but the core of the game is uh I've got some cards I I'm trying to figure out where best to put my people uh in order to get my opponents to visit so you're constantly um engaging with the rest of the players by literally trying to make a location super super sweet for them to go and visit uh but not too exp you know but not too not too sweet anyways um eki is a really cool game I highly recommend y'all check it out all right 42 is one of my favorite games to play during Halloween and that is abomination the era Frankenstein uh with of course the eigor variant which if they were to reprint the rules I'm sure would become their base game rule set um so uh it's a worker placement game you're going to have workers you send them out you get stuff but it's very morbid in the theme like there's a place that you go and you visit I think it's the morg anyway you're and you're you're just getting CA um not cathet um said catheters um what do they call them I can't think of the name it's escaping me um but you're getting dead people nope I can't think of the word um anyways you're getting dead people and you're using them for parts so you can get um um blood and organs and Bone right you're doing all this stuff because you as an heir to Frankenstein you're trying to create the monster your own Frankenstein's monster and in order to do that you've got to start building out you're going to need arms and legs and a torso and a head and eventually you're going to want to put skin on it um you've got these honor uh dials and other uh couple of other thing resources to keep in check and eventually you're going to be able to get close to close to like trying to see if your monster can come alive um it is very risky uh as you can imagine it would be to put together I mean put yourself in the setting here I know this has kind of been a a sore topic for players about how random it is to to make your your monster come alive cuz it is a dice roll um and you're trying to stack your all your resources together so you can get the most amount of dice to roll but it's kind of like that in in I would imagine in real life if you were to reanimate a dead cors based off of you putting all things together chances are when you flip that switch you only get one shot at it but if it works it's it's like the finding of a lifetime I know I'm going too deep in it but whatever this game it's so it I wouldn't say it's as fun of a worker placement that's out there but man do the mxs come across so well there's events uh there's like um you know managing what's going on with the um you know the uh I was going to say the the sheriff but there's a little bit of that uh tension between like going to certain places that are no longer available all that kind of stuff and and of course as you probably would expect the resources do Decay so you've only got a limited amount of time to use them before they're just no good uh anyways this game is so interesting and cool and I love it so much and it is abomination and I wish actually I played it more but uh it's it's a lot of fun I really enjoy it all right so we're gonna move on to the last game in this list my 41 again it didn't have a real piece for it so I don't expect you to get this one correctly but kudos to you if you did um I'm super surprised it is this high on the list but it is Santa's Workshop by elf creepe games this is a second revision to an older game but man is this game really fun to look at and unique again unique is is something I'm after I really appreciate that I wouldn't say everything that's unique is innovative and that's okay um but this game really pulls off two different audience as well the version that we're looking at right now is the advanced game I believe yes it's the advanced game the standard game I actually like playing more I mean I really like this Advanced game don't get me wrong it's good but the standard game is so insanely balanced that I've played it multiple times with my five and six year old as well as a mixture between my my well then 13 and 11year old and I have not won the game once so it is so balanced between ease of play and doing well in the game that uh my my six-year-old has won twice in like the six games that we've played my other kids I've not won this game and that's okay don't get me wrong I'm not a very competitive person I don't mind winning or losing but when I lose and I lose and and I know that I'm playing well like I'm playing the game the way I should be make trying to make the best moves that I can so when I when I get beat knowing that that's what I'm doing and I'm and I'm losing to like my five and six-year-old I know that it is such a well-designed game I would love to play the the the friendly basic version uh anytime and it's great I played it a couple times with my wife and um I think my in-laws would be able to play two with us if they wanted to it's that simple of the game the advanced version of this game is also no slouch you have cold to manage and you go to certain places to gain the cold to let you do the other things uh I like this game but I this game only shot up my list because of how how balanced and fun and accessible the lighter version is uh and of course the charm I mean come on you can see the the charm uh you can't really see it here let's see if I can find a card um no it doesn't show it oh here it yeah um let me see if I can turn this around for you so here is um some of the toys that you can make it's so cool uh so for example the cowboy hat is for this person here uh unfortunately I can't this looks like Loretta I don't know they've got names um maybe it's in a different language too so they have like little names that they throw on these as if you can imagine that it's on this kid's wish list wish list for Santa um and then after you score with Santa all of the cards get that get scored end up in the sleigh again this is a novelty thing there's no functional element to it but when explaining it it's like oh yeah that makes sense so yeah it's just a such a well produced game it's it's definitely a looker um these ornaments on the tree they have a like an aluminum um um I don't it's like an embossment I don't know what it is it's part of the way that design they're very shiny and reflective so they stand out on the board very well um yeah and uh I I can go on all day talking about this game uh I really enjoy both versions of it but I like the the lighter side more because I get to play with my kids we get to make some memories and it's always great so I'm glad I get to finish my list with that being my 41 H I did it we're almost we're more than halfway through but uh I hope you enjoyed that list I hope you discovered some games that you haven't uh seen before or uh yeah just like I said before in my my previous videos uh I might hope here with these lists is that you discover games and find new memories so we're going to leave it here and then and next time we're going to cover my 40 to 301 and we're getting really close to the top 25 here and it's going to get exciting real soon if not already so with that said I hope you also are participating in the teasers I hope you were able to get most of those guesses going uh and if not don't discouraged because it's pretty low stakes all right y'all thanks for the time and we'll catch you next time bye

Channel: Informal_Geek

Views: 622

Keywords: Geek32, Board Games, Top 100

Id: rj3INOTixN4

Length: 39min 39sec (2379 seconds)

Published: Mon May 27 2024