July In Review - 14 Board Games Ranked

hi everyone today i'm talking about all the new to me board games i've played in the month of july in 2021 and ranking them from my least favorite to my most favorite i will say this probably is the biggest disparity or or range of games i've played uh doing these the series so far ranging from a three being my least favorite game of the month all the way up to about a nine with my most favorite game i will i also want to cover two expansions but i'll do that after i've done the board game so let's get started with my least favorite game of the month so at number 14 i have laser riders so laser riders is kind of a take on the ultron film series where you are playing these cardboard tiles down um which basically range in sizes so you've got ones that have kind of really tight small curves you've got one a long stretch of curves or long stretch of tiles where you're going straight forward and the idea is you're trying to play them in sequence trying to basically drive over these different tokens which are randomly allocated onto the board and flip them to your color obviously everybody's doing this at the same time so tiles are flipping from one color to the other you're constantly battling and jostling for position this game i struggle with games like this that don't have a an element of precision because this game actually doesn't have a board it's just played on your table uh when you flip out these um kind of pods that you're collecting you have to just flip them like a like a coin onto the table where they land them randomly land and again i don't i don't like things where you know you think oh is that one over or not let's just say it is or this again that's there's not that science there's not that precision to determine the rules and stuff that frustrates me i know this is a silly a bit of a fun game you know but just a bit of nonsense really and i suppose in that respect it worked okay as you're shifting up and down gears you know are you going to keep in the high gears and just keep going bolting forward or you're going to shift down and get those nice tight curves give you a lot more um a lot more flexibility and a lot more mitigation where you can actually go but the game itself was pretty standard i've seen a lot of stuff like this and it was pretty uh it felt a bit flat for me and i didn't really find it very satisfying and again that lack of precision is just what tipped it over the edge for me so my least favorite of the game of the month was laser riders my second least favorite number 13 is imperial classics now this is undoubtedly going to be a bit of a controversial one because i know this game is immensely popular at the moment certainly in the hotness people talking about this one and really enjoying it and that's fair enough you know i've got no complaints and no criticism this it was just a game that wasn't for me um i think i bought this one without doing my proper research that i normally do because i just saw that this was a kind of a civilization style game an element of deck building to it and i was kind of willing to try something like that especially when it got this level of hype and it's by a designer i i really enjoy i'm david turcy at least had a quite a big hand in this game and when i actually got this to the table um i was really struggling through this rubric rulebook the rulebook is pretty much just like a reference guide rather than giving examples and stuff how to play which which is fine i could normally get around that but it was a bit of an obstacle to overcome and when i got the game to the table i just thought this was a lot of fuss a lot of fiddliness for little payoff at least for me and my personal taste for example there was a bunch of decks all over the place that do very slightly different things you got a bunch of keywords on these cars that do really slightly different things and i felt there was a lot of work and going through these kind of systems on these different decks for very little payoff in return and i always find that stuff like that a bit i feel like i'm treading water a bit not getting anywhere and i know there's a big market for games like this and people who love that um that kind of satisfying enough i gameplay willing to pour more effort or time into this game to maybe find something that's not for me i think i'm experienced enough now to say you know this game i should have avoided i probably shouldn't have played in the first place because it's just not the kind of game i go for so you know fair play if you like it it's just not my not my cup of tea but unfortunately i didn't enjoy it and um hence why imperium classics is at number 13. so at number 12 i have island siege this is a game again nobody really talks about this one that's quite an unpopular game uh this is a game where you're basically playing these cards out and you're trying to fortify these um these these walls or forts and build stuff behind these walls to try and get victory points or victory condition by deploying all your colonists on these areas or gaining money for example um this kind of game i struggle with because it is a bit too in your face in terms of its um player interaction for example you spend a lot of effort building stuff and then somebody just attacks with one of their ships and smashes it down i find that kind of stuff really abrupt in a bit it rubs me the wrong way and i don't find it fun um you know call me what will on the back of that but it's just not the it's not the style of gameplay i enjoy and i find it a bit or very unsatisfying when somebody just has the ability to just roll a few dice and smash things down but um i like the theme and stuff you know but it just it just didn't work for me in terms of its gameplay and again another game that i wouldn't really choose to play so uh at number 12 i have island siege at number 11 i have a strange one this is a bit of a placeholder space because i've only played this game once and it's a bit of a placeholder this is michael strogoff so michael strogoff is kind of a racing style game it's pretty much multiplayer solitaire you're doing your own thing as you're trying to travel this mountain range and basically get to the end game goal before somebody else does or the the automated piece does and as you travel along this kind of passage you're gaining more cards with these different threats on and those threats if you have duplicate symbols on these threats then you're going to suffer penalties or or stalling kind of mechanisms that force you to kind of counteract them before you can get moving again um so it has that kind of element of pushy luck almost had a grizzled style vibe where you don't want to get matching symbols um and i like i liked it this a little bit i thought it has some promise there however i'm slightly concerned that there's some things in this game that don't need to be there and it tried a little bit too hard to add some superfluous things to up the complexity for the sake of it now there were some little additional things i did like for example you had these special characters you can come into play and you could use them for for benefits but a lot of it i just thought was a bit too much for what the core mechanism was and what the gameplay was trying to portray so maybe a little bit too convoluted and a little bit too much fiddliness for the whimsical silly light gameplay that it was but it was okay i'm willing to give this another go and perhaps try this one solo because i've heard that this is where this game shines so at number 11 i have michael strogoff at number 10 i have king of 12. so king of 12 is undoubtedly the lightest game i've played this month and this is a simultaneous and dice rolling style game that's pretty much appropriate for any age release so very little rules overhead so this game you are selecting a card from a predetermined deck so everyone's got the same cards and everyone's gonna reveal those cards at the same time and if there's a duplicate they're gonna cancel each other out but then they're gonna do different things to kind of mitigate the game state or change the game state such as i mean you can add seven to your dice so you could flip the dice to the other side or roll it again some might say you know if you've got the lowest value this round you're going to win so the idea is you're trying to have or generally have the highest value of dice roll by the by the end of the round and if you do you get a certain amount of points and if you get a certain amount of points you get a victory condition and if you have two victory conditions then you win so very light um you know probably family-friendly level there's next to no rules overhead here um nicely produced some gorgeous artwork but i think ultimately the gameplay doesn't leave you too much to be explored i think once you've played this a couple of times you've pretty much seen everything and i think it would have been nicer to accommodate a few more players because this game is actually capped at four players and when i normally see games this light i like to know that i can at least play with more players so if i'm waiting for you know the main event for example you can whip out a game like this and just just fill a bit of gap and this one does that fine for as i said up to that four player account but i think there's better games out there that do this kind of thing so ultimately just not the decision space there for me and um i'm probably not going to be in the collection too much longer that is king of 12. at number nine i have raiders of scythia now this is i believe a re-implementation of um the raiders of the north sea series so it's a garfield game i could be wrong with that i know it's one of the games they've done i get them mixed up this one beautifully produced gamer lovely artwork real popping characters i love the way the game looks um and this is a game where you are basically collecting this little warband of troops you're going to these different regions you're raiding the resources there by rolling these dice i'm potentially suffering wounds and losing crew members as you do and then it's got some kind of contract fulfillment under that as well so pretty standard stuff you know that kind of gateway plus euro level uh this one did have a bit of a twist where if you deploy a worker onto the board and you've got workers of different colors you can pull another worker off the board to get that action as well so you're getting two actions one to place on the board and one and one to remove one from the board which is kind of lead your next turn it was it was fine stuff it's stuff that i've seen a thousand times before um nothing really to separate this one from the pack i know this is a popular series of games but um and they are good they're well done there's certainly there's nothing to complain about about them they just didn't quite have that extra element of of specialness or uniqueness that make them stand out from me so a nice game for again that that more family weight that gateway plus style gamer but i normally like the kind of medium heavy style games of this genre and i find these a little bit lacking in terms of decision space and um and satisfaction so perfectly fine but um ultimately not one that i'll be looking to play too much more that is uh raiders of scythia at number nine at number eight i have inish so another immensely popular game and this is one that i'd had a lot of good things about and i was somewhat unsure if it was going to be to my tastes because this it kind of fits all kind of walked up tightrope between being more euro leaning or more amerithrash leaning because it does have some in your face confrontation but it doesn't have the dice rolling the victory conditions are a little bit different in terms of controlling different regions or being in areas where you have these shrines or sanctuaries or even just dominating other people's pieces so i quite liked the the victory conditions and the element that you have to basically reveal that you were in a winning winning state and other people had to try and stop you and if they could you would win but if they could the game would continue so had a slightly different vibe a slightly different tempo to a lot of these other dudes on the map style games and the artwork itself is spectacular it's one of my favorite styles of artwork i've seen and probably one of the most beautiful games i've ever seen um and i also like the fact that your actions are determined by the uh the card drafting system so there's only going to be a four cards per player in play at plus one and then you're gonna draft some cards pass them on keep going on and that's gonna show what actions you can take in the in the in the round um but i love the fact that the more you play this game you you can learn what those cards are you know you're giving to other players and you've got some good mitigation some good autonomy there knowing what other people can do um however there were some issues i had with this game number one being the combat system a bit like island siege i found this a bit too abrupt in terms of just smashing each bullet each player and taking turns removing pieces from the board until you kind of stop or until you've exhausted all your action cards because you can choose to get rid of your actions as instead of losing pieces and i just find that stuff a bit you know you can be as clever as you can by doing all the other stuff but when it comes to combat it's just a free-for-all and it gets a bit too a bit too in your face for me um additionally you had these uh these epic tale cards which were kind of like game breaking rules slightly more amped up versions of the standard drafting cards you take and i find them a bit too circumstantial at times and sometimes they're a bit too bit too swinging a bit too powerful with little to no opportunity for the other player to counteract that and i find that stuff that kind of got you kind of star mechanisms a bit again a bit unsatisfying and not to my taste but still a really well implemented game one that i i can perfectly understand why people would like this one but not quite to my taste so that is inish at number eight at number seven i have new york zoo so this is an uve rosenberg target placement style game you know the kind of uh polyamino uh tetromino style game so you're trying to fill up your map as quickly as you can this time it's a zoo and the kind of twist on this game is that when you when you play one of these tiles you can put animals on them and then these animals breed at certain points and they spread and spread and spread which means you can buy new towels to fill up your board quicker that's pretty much the gist of the game if you like games like patchwork this one is pretty much a multiplayer version of that and um you know i'm a big fan of patchwork i like these um these kind of puzzly style games and this is a good one i would say it's got nothing massively special about it and that kind of unique thing a slight different twist of the animals is it's minor but i suppose it differentiates differentiates itself just a little bit and you know this is the kind of game i play any time with anyone so yeah perfectly fine and perfectly pleasant that is new york zoo at number seven at number six i have a bit of a pleasant surprise actually this is dice minor uh another really light game actually probably the second lightest one on this list this month this is a dice drafting game as you're drafting these dice from this from this mountain scape and it's got a bit of a novelty as well where you can only draft the the dice on the pinnacles of these mountains and these dice are going to give you points in different ways they're going to give you the ability to convert negative points into positive points they can let you re-roll dice uh you've got to collect these pip values in order and you'll just get big bonuses as well and once that's done you kind of go into the next round but you keep all the dice you've had in the previous rounds the bigger and bigger scoring and that's what i liked about this game it did have a nice game arc to it where you know your turns become more and more satisfying you're getting more and more points and um yeah it's fun the dice drafting is clever as well and it has a functional and um really a nasty little system in terms of how you're drafting the dice in the first place so i like this one a nice family-friendly game that sadly i think is gonna fly a bit under the radar but i think i'm gonna i'm gonna try and spread this one a bit more and hopefully more people become aware of dice minor because i think it's a wonderful family game that i've enjoyed quite a bit uh at number five i'm going into my shields of quality now so these are the better games of the month of getting into the good stuff so my first game with a shield of quality this month is papua now this is a de vere title uh another worker placement style game but with a twist as when it comes to your turn you are rolling a cluster of dice and then you are allocating those dice to a certain spot on the board which will lock in the pit value needed to go to that spot for the other players and that can create some quite interesting decisions as you can i said lock other people out and they have to spend resources in order to manipulate the dice to go there you have to be careful about not to over invest on each term because you become exhausted and have to spend resources in in the form of fish in this game so you have to feed your workers or lose them basically um it has a nice little push and pull element of wanting to take actions but not want to take too much um knowing when to do things at the right time knowing when to take um resources when they're worth a lot and so on it's it's quite a clever little game with some uh layers there that aren't apparent at first i will say there are a few rules issues that should have been uh should have been more apparent in the rulebook and addressed um but i think the good stuff in this game is enough to overcome those small fiddly elements and this game had a lot going on you know you had that worker placement you had the dice rolling you had set collections you were collecting these different animals and they even had this kind of blind bidding system where you want to acquire these um these animals in the first place by building them behind your screen to decide which ones you're getting but of course if you have these workers available to you to bid for it means that you probably took less actions in the previous phase so it has a nice balancing act where you're spinning a lot of plates and um it worked for me i thought this one i wasn't expecting much from it i got this one really cheap on sale and um it impressed me and it certainly has a lot to uh a lot of interesting factors about papawa and number four i have air land and sea so this is a pretty small almost micro game a card driven game strictly for two players and it's a tug of war style game as well which you might be familiar with games such as battle line or hanumakoji uh shot on top and that kind of thing but this one is it kind of has a ramped up element of kind of sneakiness and cleverness as you're playing these different um cards into these different fields obviously you've got airland and c which are different theaters of war and the idea is you're trying to dominate kind of two out of three of those theaters in order to get the most victory points but this game had a cool system where when you play cards people could choose to retreat from the battle if they think that it's not going to go their own way and potentially suffer less points or fewer point penalties in terms of giving points to your opponent than if you were to stay in the fight to the end and potentially go for an all-or-nothing style strategy so that's really cool in itself but i also like the the nuances and the cleverness of how these cards interact with one another so some of them would be pure kind of strength and you know would just dominate that way some of them will you can kind of put face down and they can surprise you in different ways and they can make things boost other cards and manipulate cards and things and the fact that this game just i said it's just a i think it's 18 cards in the deck and um it just works so well it's just finely tuned you know like a well-oiled machine and i love games that work like that and a bit like inish i think the more you play this game with the same person the better it's going to get so i'm excited to see where this one goes but initial impressions are top-notch so that is air land and sea and number four and number three i have cocopeli so kokopelli uh by one of my favorite designers stephen feld recently fulfilled on kickstarter and this is a change of direction for failed this is not a a big heavy mechanism with a mechanism style game this is a simple card driven family weight gain as you're playing cards on your little tableau and when you play a card you are unlocking a special or a little minor little um very subtle special ability that you can have and you're basically trying to play cards at the same time and get victory points race other people to get those but i just loved the the little elements of what all the abilities could do i love how they interact with people with one another i liked how you could play cards on your opponent's side of things to stop them having their power but to actually get a reward in yourself and it really is a gamer playing the right card at the right time for maximum benefit and i like the fact that this wasn't a swingy game you know there's a lot of these games where you build up to something and you you swing from one player to the next and one minute you're winning one the next players winning this one is a game where the stream of points is subtle it's it's a slow trickle of points where you want to constantly be getting points into your system and into your into your pool rather than going for those big crabs and it's just i said another change of pace it looks nice it's produced well and i'm very excited to see where this simple elegant system is boiled down into just a few actions can go because all the flavor of this game is in those cards and that excites me so at number three i have coco peli at number two i definitely have the heaviest game on this list this is anno 1800 so i'm really getting into uh martin wallace games and starting to uh dig into his back catalogue um i know 1800 is his most recent design i've only just been released in the uk i know this one came out last year in the us this one is pretty grandiose there's a lot you can do in this game and it kind of is a an economic resource conversion style game as you are starting with pretty basic resources and then you're building up by getting kind of getting more different industries and getting more and more grandiose luxurious goods trying to fulfill the needs of your different kind of um your citizens i suppose and this game has quite an interesting pacing and uh maybe a frustrating pacing that could be it could be perceived that way to some players as you are acquiring more of these people cars and you're trying to constantly fight them off but when you when you feed them you get new ones into your system and you've got to keep on trying to get around it and sometimes it can feel like you're drowning in in things you've got to do and i i did feel that i felt that sting and it was i think is this right we playing this right and it turns out we were playing it right and eventually that curved swings and you start to get through these cars and fight to the end but i can see why some people might find this game a bit of a slog and a bit a bit tedious and a bit a bit of work really it does feel like work at times but that doesn't that for me doesn't take away from how clever these little tech trees are you know in terms of you know you want to build these ships so you can trade with other players but to build ships you're going to need wood you're going to need steel you're going to need sales you're going to need cannons and all this stuff is all in this network you need to build so to build cannons you of course need you need the steel you need the gunpowder and all this stuff and it all it's also intuitive and also logical and i think martin wallace just such a great game a great job of breaking down these kind of deep rich complex games into logical little solutions and logical trees of actions you have to take and um i'm really impressed by this game i think there's some improvements to be made on it and hopefully future expansions or or house rules or kind of uh kind of designer approved rules can fix those um but the system itself for me i'm so happy with it but it can get even better so um anno 1800 i don't want it to sound negative because it's a magnificent game i loved it and it was my number two of the month and finally at number one the best game of the month was key flower so key flower i know this is massively critically acclaimed people love this game and i finally got this one played and i feel exactly the same way this is wonderful so this is a bidding and a worker placement style game as you are bidding on these different tiles using workers but when you use these workers they get locked in on a certain color meaning that if other people didn't have those workers then they couldn't afford to go there it has this real cool economy as you can potentially end up giving your opponent's workers by using their towels it's just this game has everything that i love about board gaming it's so streamlined and the key mechanisms or the core mechanisms are just wonderfully elegant and simple in their own right but they mesh together wonderfully and i just i just so besotted by this game it's one of those games that instantly clicked for me and i thought this was this was wonderful and i can certainly see why this game has stood the test of time this is i think it's nine years old now and it still feels fresh and um not like it's a long long time ago but it feels it feels great you know it feels like a classic while still feeling um pure and exciting loads of different routes to go down lots of different things to consider the interaction between the players is is is just it's amazing so yeah i can't say enough good things about key flower this is going to be a mainstay in my collection for many many years to come and it's just a fantastic game that uh that is magnificent so that is key flower my number one so that concludes my board games up cover so i want to briefly touch on the two expansions that i played uh the first one being uh the first expansion to uh to cocopelli so obviously i said i like coca pellet it's my third best game of the month uh this one is simply more stuff so no rules blow whatsoever more tiles to play with new cars to play with and um i love that this is great these are all wonderfully um wonderfully injected into the game you can mix and match them with a base game with no confusion whatsoever so this is the kind of expansion i love and this one kind of this this expansion as a general gives you more mitigation and more control about getting the cards that you want into your hand so two thumbs up for me for the first expansion to coco pele and the second expansion more great stuff this is let's waltz which is the first and only expansion for grand austria hotel uh this is kind of a one-stop shop for um grand austria hotel tell content and probably a bit too much stuff here there's some stuff that i wouldn't play with often at all some stuff that i'll probably play with every game um but the fact that this is going to be the the kind of the curtain call for grandchildren hotel i welcome this content so this is going to be uh plenty of stuff here to last you forever so i'm you know always like to see more stuff from my one of my favorite games of all time so another very positive impression from me for let's waltz so that concludes this video i hope you enjoyed it if you have please hit like and subscribe my channel and check out my other videos too and for everyone else i'll see you next time on chairman of the board bye

Channel: Chairman of the Board

Views: 2,514

Rating: 4.9375 out of 5

Keywords: board, games, game, new, list, 2021, top, best, worst, Imperium, classics, deck, builder, keyflower, worker placement, euro, strategy, kokopelli, Stefan Feld, card, cards, anno 1800, Martin Wallace, dice Miner, family, gateway, new York Zoo, expansion, let's Waltz, geek, inis, Papua, raiders of Scythia, worker

Id: lPIrSzTA7Kw

Length: 25min 57sec (1557 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 01 2021