Ranking Alexander Pfister's Board Games

hi everyone my name is moani and i'm naveen from before you play and today we are doing our final alexander fister series wrap up it's been quite some time it has yes it's uh we did this over the course of what four to five months yeah something like that it's almost half a year yeah you know we didn't know you never know how long these things are gonna take but uh they take quite some time to gather the games and then like learn them all and play them present them in a way that makes sense yeah exactly yeah and uh when we set out to do it uh he created two more games that's right that's true so if you have no idea what we're talking about over the past four to five months we played through as many of alexander fister who is a designer as many of his games as possible in chronological order with the exception of the two newest games that were released in the past year exactly and so um if you'd like to watch some of those videos we've made a playlist and you can find it up there and so today we're going to kind of debrief from the experience discuss what we learned and then do a final ranking just like we did with our vitala sorta series now we tried to chronicle all of his games uh but there were three titles that we were not able to cover unfortunately uh the mines of zavindar expedition new dale and uh what is the other one type of the builder yes that's right so uh those were three and you know part of the reason is because it's it's hard to just it's hard to get them yeah we we have to do these uh series designer series with what we have and so the ones that we were able to cover were the ones that were able to get a hold of expedition to new dale was one that a lot of people especially in the past a week ever since we released our final uh marichivo video we're inquiring about we had mentioned it briefly in one of our previous vlogs that we were just not going to cover that one anymore for a couple of reasons one of the reasons is because it was it's basically oh my goodness campaign style told yeah yeah from what we've been told and that was a game that we'd already covered and uh the next reason is because it's campaign style and you know his other games that have campaigns in them they have a really solid like standalone mode the base game yeah we weren't necessarily sure if that were the case with this one and it was also a little bit difficult for us to get a hold of and so long story short we weren't able to cover that one either but we hoped that the strong majority of the games we were able to cover uh were sufficient so before we get into our rankings we did want to discuss uh kind of how our experience went um and what we learned right so what do you think how'd it go you know it was it was good when we first started how many of them have we played before we started the series we had just played i love sky island sky great western trail we had played a game of maracaibo and that's it i think we played oh my goods once two player maybe you liked it like years ago when it first came out yeah yeah but i don't remember our first experience with it being the same as our last example you know what we did demo room service at a local convention and it was like a like a one round of it that's right like that so that one also i don't even count yes so going into it that was the experience that we've had with those games right also going into it i was not a big fan of great western trail and i had let that be known before we even decided to go on this uh designer series it was actually one of the reasons why we chose alexander fister because we had played a game america i bought really enjoyed it yes and i didn't i wasn't really a big fan of great western trail so we kind of wanted to see you know in doing this series was that gonna change our minds right this series is a little bit more of a challenge for us because they were all they're pretty much all new games and there were more games in this series than in the previous one that we did which was the vital assertive one yep it was also challenging in the sense of when we did the series and this is something that we're learning as content creators who are new to the scene new releases come out in the fall and uh that's kind of where our series kind of coincided with the new release schedule exactly yeah and so kind of like trying to juggle this series as well as like all the other games coming in exactly it was difficult yep so anyway that is how the experience went we learned a lot from it yeah we did in regards to his uh design style there were a few key takeaway points that we we learned from this the first one being he's a fan of pusher luck yeah he does it uh but he does it well um it's not it's not like overdone in his games yeah we are not fans necessarily a pusher luck but uh there were some uh games in there and some mechanisms even in the bigger games that we enjoyed yeah even his one of his first designs is port royal that was entirely pusher luck that is a pusher and you know as we were kind of going through the games we noticed that there was less and less of just like the standalone pusher look until this year yeah our monster expedition came out of nowhere yep that one right yeah that's just more of a dice chucking kind of pusher like kind of game like oh you know you can roll probabilities and things like that so uh that one is interesting that he ended up doing that yeah yeah he went the dice route he went the dice route even oh my goods has some pusha luck when you know there's the daytime with the two suns and then the night time yeah that's a significant amount that is yeah because then you have to see okay am i going to do this perfect or imperfect and then you're kind of betting on it and then however many goods you're going to get depending on if you push your luck correct right he's also incorporated the work replacement run bell style and now i don't necessarily know if he was the first one to do this but but definitely those designs are one of the first ones where we've seen it yeah and it's it's uh it's interesting though with all those even though you call it work replacement it's not like you're competing for spots technically in maricaibo you're competing if you want to be the first one to deliver a good to a location but you can still go there and take the main action uh but it is interesting how you know in maricaibo and great western jail you're basically going around the same exact board and speaking of the heavier designs we also noticed that he's very much so a almost like a point salad designer but in a different way you know you're earning points that are very much so face value like you can see the points that you're earning but they still kind of lead you down a path a specific path to victory yeah most of his games start with uh you're kind of you feel like you're almost in like a little box like you only have so much that you can do and then as you start leveling up uh it starts to expand and open up what you can actually do on your turn right so yeah and like in uh in maracaibo you have that extra board that you got to get those tokens off and during western trail you have that auxiliary board where you got to get again those tokens off uh so that when you go to certain areas you can take better actions and kind of curate it's like a secretly engine building or maybe not so secret but yeah there's a little bit of engine building in there same thing with black out hong kong where you're tailoring your deck you know you start the game with only these first few specialists and then over the course of the game suddenly have all these different ones exactly yeah and the last thing is he is is a crafter of multi-use cards and this is something that we kind of touched upon a little bit in our maricaibo video but uh it's it's something that we've seen throughout his designs you know starting with port royal yeah first two games were card games yeah the first two games for card games exactly yeah and then they have multi-purpose uh uses on them um oh my goods i think exemplifies that all my goods was the first one that was really like okay this is true maltese you can use it for the goods or you can use it for the building exactly right there are very similar cards that you use as assistants depending on the other cards yeah exactly the cards kind of filter into other cards so very very crafty in the way that uh he crafts these this card play in broome service there was that following mechanism where you can be the uh no i don't remember cowardly cowardly cowardly or brave yeah that's right and then you kind of go around the table depending on who else has played that card it was a very chaotic game you know but talk about that that's a little bit of pusher luck also oh yeah if you're like i'm gonna go brave i hope they didn't go and then in mombasa and blackout hong kong that very uh really really interesting card play where you're playing three cards and you can only pick them up at a certain time right in mombasa they go up to your used piles and then you can only pick up from one deck and in um blackout hong kong you have to have a certain criteria before you can pick up a stack and you are required to pick up your your biggest one yeah so that that like really puzzly card play i think is really interesting in those two games yeah see that's what i'm talking about like in it seems like he borrows from a couple of his games but he'll only do it a couple times so far you know i don't know what his next couple designs are going to be like but that's that card play in mombasa it feeds into the card play in blackout hong kong right the rondelle style and great western trail is what the rondelle style is in um america maracaibo and the card play the card comboing mechanism in maricaibo you see in cloud age in a much simpler degree right but it's definitely there like you're still kind of building up your tableau engine in cloud age exactly by by using those cards and then in great western trail we can't forget the cow deck building deck building deck building yeah that that's pretty that's pretty neat that was pretty neat yeah the fact that you and you have opportunity to get to the end to curate that hand so that's the most unique hand to get the most amount of money yes so very very interesting use of cards there you go many key takeaways from uh from his design style if you were to to think of what you'd like to see for the future what would you say based off of what you've already seen what would you like to see moving forward well i like his heavier games so i'd like to see another another meaty one um i like i actually like the rondelle style so i wouldn't mind a rondelle style card play game kind of like a combination of blackout hong kong and mombasa and great western trail you just want like all of them all of them just bring them all together put them all together but with an extra element that we've never seen that's a big ask to me well i would like to see a heavier game as well in the theme of cloud age like somewhere in that direction right away from the colonial themes and towards this like i really enjoyed the theme of cloud age and that kind of like art style and just that that way of thinking so you're asking for a cloud age expansion i'm asking for a yeah i guess so okay and so before we get into our final ranking by request we have a few superlatives okay so are you ready i think so yes all right best artwork uh monster expedition cards are for cloud age for the box and room service for the cards okay easiest to start with we're talking about card games i would say port royal if you're looking for board game then i would say cloudh yeah i'd agree with that heaviest design i would say america i kind of think it's great western trail the most unique isle of skye i would say broom service best theme blackout hong kong for sure i'll say cloud age best bet too i'll say oh my goods i would say great western trail and last but not least biggest surprise the biggest surprise for me was blackout hong kong hong kong yeah and so that's it those are our superlatives we kind of switched up the questions just from the last time just a little bit but uh without further ado we are going to now get into our rankings so there were 10 games that we covered and we're going to start with our number 10. okay now we have not shared our lists with each other so far but i have a strong feeling that at least the first few are going to be the same i mean we've talked about these games together so that's why so all right so starting with number 10. you want to go first sure i can go first this time all right go for it all right my number 10 it is a card game it is the first game that we played and it is port royal um i it's a it's a nice game it's number 10 for me because it's pure pusher luck uh and you're basically trying to push your luck and get points uh and you wanna it's erased a certain amount of points and so uh it's it's okay it's not my favorite game in the world but uh that's why it's number 10. yeah i would agree i think that this is why the beginning of our uh a ranking list is going to be very similar because we both know that we don't really like pushula exactly and that's a pure one in the moment when we played it and covered it uh we had fun right it was fun and we got a lot of really um nice comments from other people who really enjoy playing this game so much with their families because of that fun factor and just kind of like everybody yelling at the table like like keep going or like stop you know so it's really it's interestingly designed it is nice when you have those cards that are like you want somebody else to bust because you benefit off of it then it makes it more engaging yes that's exactly the interaction that people love about that game exactly uh but it's not a game that we would probably play that audience at home because of the style of game so that is also my number 10. okay all right number nine okay number nine even though i know i said the art was my favorite it is monsters expedition uh it is it's fun um i think it is best at its full complement of four players because now you're really rooting for other people to bust and kind of invested in their thing but again that's push your luck and for me pusher luck is not my favorite mechanism uh so my number nine is monster expedition that is also my number nine okay fair enough yeah yeah so we nailed it yeah but uh same reason but i will say that um between those two i really do quite enjoy monster expedition yeah quite a bit more right uh i like the rolling of the dice and i really like the artwork the art style as well but out of all the games on this list yes those two were at the bottom something has to be ten and something has to be nine and those were it those are yeah so that was easy monster expedition okay all right moving on to number eight okay my number eight is the newest release from alexander fister this is cloud age uh cloud age is a decent game um it is not my favorite amongst the list hence why it's number eight uh it is not as dense of a game as i had hoped it was obviously that's my hopes and my expectations of a game um it is nice to know that alexander fister is trying to make games on varying levels of complexity so you know going from a couple heavy games and then going back in terms of complexity for me it made it less exciting because you know when when you see a game you want to build and build and build uh this one kind of went back in complexity in terms of that so so for me cloud age is number eight uh just because it doesn't have as much going on in that particular game yeah how about yourself um so my number eight is also cloud age okay but it's for a slightly different reason so i do want to say a little bit about cloudage before we continue uh since our review we realized that we did have an oversight in playing the game so those overlay cards are not uh completely push your luck the ones with the clouds on them and so it's also part of the reason why we didn't mention it when we were talking about pushy like earlier because that you can kind of see through the clouds on the periphery of the clouds yeah the periphery of the cards you can kind of see how much of each resource is going to be there yep so and honestly when i found out about that that rule i kind of liked it better with the pusher luck just pure just not knowing yeah because it's almost kind of like what's the point what's almost like what's the point of covering it if that's the case but you know you also don't see the extra actions if you've played the game yeah well there's that like road that goes through it and so that's where it has like the the wrench and the other thing so that's also push your luck right yeah and so for me the reason why cloud age is so low on the list is not only because of the complexity factor and our expectations but also just because it was kind of long for what it was kind of long for what it was and the uh the decision making wasn't quite there because like for for some of the other games that are lighter on this list that are going to be higher uh the decision making is still quite interesting even though even if it's not like a heavy game it's still it still poses really interesting questions in your mind when you're playing yep and so for for some of the phases in cloud age i felt like well i don't really really have two choices and i'm gonna go for the choice that's a little bit better right like when i'm moving i'm probably gonna go to move this to the city the decision-making just wasn't as interesting as some of his other other designs yeah and i think that goes to kind of what i was talking about with the weight of the game so we're so used to games where you have so many different decisions in a decision tree this one was kind of like well i have three moves so i can go to this city or that city well that city has a lot of combat i don't have the combat to even deal with that so i'm going to choose this city over here yeah it's almost like there's always like an ideal answer yeah the area of cloud age where you're truly making decisions is during the actions right do i want to build cards do i want to build upgrades or do i want to gain resources that's really where the decision space is but that part of it can take really long because everybody's following actions and so that kind of goes to the other point of why it was lower on my list is because it was kind of long so anyway that is that is a cloud age but we do know that there are a lot of people who cloud age is like a perfect fit for and that's what makes me happy about the fact that the game exists because if you even if you go to the video that we made all in the comments section so many people were like this is a perfect game for me this is like the perfect this is look what i was looking for and it is a wonderful way to get people thinking in that alexander fister design style so that they can play cloud age and then you can get them to play great western trails well you even alexander fister been very supportive throughout our whole uh um endeavors of doing this he even was in the comments saying like like i set out to create a game that was a stepping stone so that it can bring people into the hobby who can then be ready to play great western trail maracaibo and those kind of heavier games yep so good job so that's where that's where that game fits so anyway that was my number eight as well okay my number seven it's the the other little card game and that is oh my goods i do appreciate a game when it has a lot of game in a tiny box and this one definitely does have that has those multi-purpose cards the cards can be a resource they can be a building you're trying to chain things to make better resources so you can then ultimately turn it in for money and then do more stuff build buildings um the game is neat uh it is something i wouldn't play all the time but it does it definitely has a space yeah yeah yeah and so that is my number seven that is oh my goodness i'm actually surprised that oh my goodness was your number seven because especially the very first time we played this game i was more of a fan of it than naveen was yeah i think the game unfolded a little bit more after we uh started using the rules the house rules the updated rules the update yes because that i think that's what it was the very first time we played it we played with the not updated rule set and it was very limiting and it also had way too much luck yeah well at the very end i think one of the biggest ones was all all chains go at the very very end of the game in in the new uh rule set in the past it was like okay i built all this up and the game ended yeah there were actually a couple other rules that were a part of the updated rule set that really made a big difference yeah and i think maybe that helped you i was moving that a little bit higher because that was a big one to me i thought that that would be a much lower on your list oh yeah so oh yeah that's me interesting oh my goodness so this is where we start to differ my number seven was broom service broom service was a fun one for us to play but it is not one that i can get myself to put to pull out often sure just because of how random it is it's so random like yeah it's it definitely if you're with a specific group of people who would be a lot of fun playing a game like that then that game would be probably a ton of fun but if you're like in it to win it or it's just two of you especially then it's it's not as it's not as strong as the other design i think the sweet spot for that one is three players um they're you know you're when you go brave to start you're not waiting for because that can play up to five people so if you're going brave to start and like you have to stomach four people like saying coward coward or not even play the cards uh yeah that's that's real tough so i think three is a sweet spot you have those two like forbidden cards or the penalty cards so it's like okay i'm willing to lose out a little bit so i can take that you know so i think it's best at three i think the experience is a little bit better so anyway that was my number seven broom service okay your number seven leaks into my number six that is proof service okay we just talked about it room service number six i do like that game uh i like it actually better than you hence why it's one step above yeah what put it above all my goods uh it's i think i'm having a better time playing room service than i am oh my goodness i think probably because it's a board game and i'm trying to like get to these different areas um i like the idea of like okay monique is probably going to play that so if i can play this in that order but i need to make sure that they don't mess up my chain of events because i need to go pick up that potion to then do this to do that uh so so you like the metagame that yes i do like the medium part of it yes the psychology of figuring out which card to play yeah exactly yeah so and in what order yeah yeah uh that game is it is interesting it's just very chaotic yeah that's my number six all right uh my number six we did the old switcheroo my number six film is oh my goodness it is a game that i really enjoy um but obviously it's one of the smallest games so it's hard to compare it to the rest of the totally totally so for me the reason why oh my goodness is number six is not because there's anything wrong with it but it's more because the games above it are just density yeah or so much i enjoy so much more yeah so all my goods was a very eye-opening design for me um i had never seen a game into that that small of a game that small of a footprint uh do all that right and make you think in that way in a small small card card deck right anyway that was my number six oh my goodness okay my number five is a game that we had overlooked for a while there um and for some reason uh we just had never played it and that is blackout hong kong so i actually really like this game this is a fantastic game um now now we're getting into the part of the list where it's like i like all these games not that i didn't like the one the previous ones but that's why i have two that's why it's in this in the top half brew i'm sorry blackout hong kong is very very uh interesting um it takes the card mechanic from mombasa and i think it's the better version of the card mechanics personally even though i like the card mechanics in mombasa this one is way way better the way it's done i love the theme of it uh it's my favorite theme out of all the games like i said it's interesting how you have to manage your resources but it's not like you have so many resources that you have to manage i like that way that that wheel works uh where you roll the dice so there's a little bit of pusher luck but you can kind of make educated guesses as to what kind of things are going to be available so and then you get you gather more cards with the crew um i i think it's a fantastic game and so you like the card play in this game more than mombasa but is clearly higher on the list i haven't said mombasa yet yes okay so we will hear about that i guess when we get there yes right okay your turn okay so that is number five okay my number five is mombasa tell me about it um i like mombasa a lot the very first time we played it i can't jive with the theme just doesn't play as well at two definitely does not play as well because it's a big stock market mechanic right you are mechanically you are putting out these buildings onto the board and trying to invest in these companies and the building terms of the companies and depending on how many of those uh shares of the companies you have at the end of the game the multiplayer how much how many points you're going to have because it's not multiplied by how many of the the buildings actually stay out onto the board that kind of push pull was is a little bit frustrating um and i think that it just doesn't play well at two as well yeah anytime you have a game where there's four different companies and there's only two people it kind of becomes like a well i'm gonna go for the black company you're gonna go for the red company and we'll see who does best so that's one of the main reasons why it's it's lower on the list than the other titles but the card play uh the card played mechanic in that game is excellent i thought that that when i when we first learned it i was like mind blown just symbols on cards and the way that you put them down it affects all this decision making yeah the way you collect your cards back and so you're setting up you're setting up your your future rounds by the way you know where you play them yeah yeah that part's really fun for me yeah so anyway that is my number five at mombasa okay all right my number four uh this is one that will probably be a surprise it is great western trail great western trail is a great game i really enjoy it i'm not very good at it but i really enjoy my time while i play it it's one of those games that there's no score track so i can't really tell where i where i stand if i'm getting clobbered or not but um i really enjoy it it is a interesting take on a rondelle deck builder um normally yeah what a combination yeah normally i'm not big on deck building but this one does it very well um you know and the theme for me is okay i'm not a big western cowboys kind of themed guy but uh you know it's assault it's a solid game and i really enjoy it uh but it is my number four because there's three other games that i think are slightly better i am so shocked that that was a trilogy number four four yeah you know going into the series naveen really liked great western trail i thought that surely great i was convinced that great control is gonna be a number one really yeah for a lot of people it is like that is i feel like that is a game that like really put him on the map yeah that's a it's a big one and i i really enjoy it that's why it's in the top half um it's just he has very good designs yeah yeah interesting okay um my number four is actually i love sky so and that was that's a little bit painful for me to put that not higher even though four is pretty high on a list of ten that's pretty high you know something's gotta go there that's true somebody's gotta go there yeah but um i love sky was the first alexander fister game that i'd ever played and when i played that game i had played carcassonne already before it which is a game that they compare isle of skye to a lot even though somebody had reached out after we covered it and explained to me why they're not the same and i now i agree and i you know we can go into detail about that but that's a longer conversation but um anyway the first time i played it i was so impressed by that design the board with the scoring piles that happen only on certain rounds yeah and you can see them ahead of time and not to mention there are a ton of these scoring tiles so every game that you play is going to be different because you're going to use a different combination of them but also just the auction mechanism and this is something that i want to see more of in the future more more auctions let's see more options yes i love the way the auction works yeah yeah you either buy it and give that opponent money or do you keep in the economy or keeping the economy you don't you sacrifice these tiles and you're still trying to figure out what configuration to put these tiles in it's really good yeah i like the part where um where there's you have three tiles but you're gonna axe one of them so there's almost like a tile out there that you're trying to plan how much money you should price your tiles but making sure you have enough money in reserve not knowing how much the tiles that are on your opponents that you're going to be able to buy but the one that you might be saving money for could be the one that they asked right exactly with these tiles and you can do a lot of table talk right like this can be as interactive as you make it very interactive yeah so um and we played it at two on our channel and i still really enjoyed it too i was surprised i thought like i thought it was for sure it was gonna kind of fall flat at two yeah we actually played the two player game with a a version that our friend of ours came up with and it actually plays fairly well um that way but obviously this game as an auction bidding game you want to see more tiles and more kind of table talk so i think four even five players is pretty good we actually had a viewer comment saying that they disagreed entirely and that they play the two-player game just as is and they love it that way okay so that i was reading that and i was pretty happy when i read that because yeah because it's always nice when you can just play the game as it's designed right you don't need any like house rules or like any other formats you just enjoy it the way it was meant to be played so anyway that is my number four an excellent excellent game i love sky okay my number three is the game we just talked about yeah i love sky uh like we said uh i love i love auction games i like bidding games in auction games and this one is exactly it it's kind of the game that uh you said you know you asked me what am i looking forward to i hope he can do another auction type of game i do like the fact that there's a couple expansions surprisingly we've actually never played either one of those two expansions but uh we do own the journeyman expansion and so i am interested in trying to get into that one so that's my number three all right my number three is uh this might come as a surprise maybe maybe not um but it's actually great western trail okay and the reason why i say it might come as a surprise is because for a lot of people great western trail is their number one and here we are naming naming it as our three and what was yours uh my uh four four okay going into the series i was not a big fan of great western trail first for a few reasons one of the reasons is a theme not because of the reasons why i don't like colonial themes but just because i'm not i don't really like western well it's a bee issue here like there's like western movies i don't like western movies just not a genre that intrigues me it's the same the color scheme all of it the dusty the dusty i guess i don't know but uh that game is very interesting to me it's it has all these mechanisms that you throw together that sounds like on paper it shouldn't work but it really works it does yeah the rondelle movement right coupled with the deck building of cows but the cows are just a currency like the deck building is just a currency but it's still deck building you can't ignore the fact that it has deck building mechanics that you can use at your disposal including um ditching cards that you no longer need right you want to ditch those lower numbered cards or you want to ditch one of each suit so that it can increase your chances of having unique suits by the time you get to kansas city it has some engine building in the form of your your player board it's it's very much so um point salad in the sense that you are gaining points where you can right like you pick up the hazards and they're going to be worth a certain number of points you there are points scattered everywhere a lot of paths to victory yeah you have to figure out the path that you're going to take it seems like you have to specialize though you can't just take a little bit of buildings a little bit of cows yes and that's what my next point was going to be you there is still a strategic path to victory that you must construct right and they come in the form of these employees employees right the employees that you hire and so i thought that that was really interesting because it's like you're grabbing for points but the same time you need to choose a path you need to find a path that works for you and you need to really run with it and you still have to react to what your opponents are doing you know i really appreciate the game because the the turns are real smooth they're quick for a heavy dense game uh you know it's i go here i do this or i don't do that i do the auxiliary action moving on that is probably one of my most favorite parts of the game yeah is the tempo yeah it's so beautiful the way that you just go for it for a game that crunchy it just flows like even merrick highbow doesn't have that sort of tempo you just you you go you take the action you drop your hand and next player and you keep on going until somebody hits kansas city but even that part is not that long yeah just one two three tokens get your money you know move on yeah it's a very very good design i think that is a very good design so anyway that was my number three great western trail um it was a surprise to me that is actually much higher so it yeah it grew on me quite a bit good yep very nice so last two last two one if i say what this is then you'll know my number one is but it's uh americaibo maracaibo is a fantastic game i think it edges out it for in terms of the heavy ones between that one and great western trail it definitely edges it out for me um i like the abundance of that card stack there's a there's a ton of cards that are there i like the nations uh so it is area control-ish with them but the thing i like about the nations is once a cube gets booted out it doesn't go back to the board so as long as you can get it off that board and you have enough of those banners then then you know you're good it doesn't matter if it still stays on there because area control the end is only worth two extra points but you can't put all of your eggs in the nation basket is what we learned from the play through right now it's definitely more about the cards and i vow to be better at getting those cards yeah it's tough but yeah but that one is fantastic i really love that game america that was your number two that's my number two yeah okay so now i know what your number one is and i'm a little bit less shocked but still a little bit shocked with your with your uh line up there okay so uh my number two is black out hong kong yeah i really took to that game i think we both did yeah when we played after the first time we played it we're like huh we smoothed on that one that was really good yeah i mean it took the card play that i really enjoyed from mombasa and it took it up a level because now the cards were a lot more functional it it it combined the card play from mombasa with the card comboing from the other games like loosely like etc where you where your cards actually do something for you it's not just like a symbol right like in mobasa you have uh specialists who are going to let you do a certain action when you play them the resource mechanic in that game is also really interesting you hold the dice the dice are different colors and so depending on where the dice are going to go on the resource uh rondelle is what you get if you play the card that gets you resources yes but at least you get to see what the resources are and then now you can make the educated decision do i want to play that card to get those resources and if it's not the resource that you need you can still spend those tokens to move over to the next spot on the rondelle that was very clever very good very clever i really like that i'd be curious to see i still have not seen in person what the second version looks like or the updated board i've seen pictures of it but for some reason yes it's it's easier to look at but i like the original look better even though it's super dark that's fair yeah anyway that is my number two uh blackout hong kong and so our final yes number one number one wait everybody already knows what number ones are at this point but go ahead and take it away okay my number one is a game that uh obviously the theme is controversial but it mechanically for me is very sound and this is mombasa mombasa is a economic stock game with some area control elements that card play that we were talking about um it is a fantastic game uh i the first time we played it i think we played it three player yeah and that was that was really really good i don't know if i would have this up there on my list if my very first taste of it was two player because i i agree with you in this game it does not play as as well as it should um at a lower player count i am very interested to see after covid if we can get a four player game of this going and really see what it's like because now everybody is manipulating these stocks uh these companies and i just want to experience the full compliment one day yeah so that's my number one awesome and if you did mention that that one does have a controversial theme but one of the things that we also did learn about ourselves is that we are a lot less about theme than we thought we were yeah it's more mechanics more mechanics so this whole list that we just ranked it was all purely mechanics totally um because we don't agree with a couple of the themes but once you get into the game it's like the theme doesn't exist yeah yeah you know and some people some people will disagree with that for some people theme is like a bigger deal but that's just how we are i guess for us it's mechanics we are mechanics people and so that leaves me with my number one which was mary kaiba kybo yeah i really love america is it's like it's funny because mark ibo is my number one i really loved it the most but i still have a love-hate relationship with it because we've played a couple games of it where some people some people just found like a broken combinations of those cards yeah stomped us to the ground the good thing about that game though is you never know what cards are going to truly be in it because there's one stack all the cards are in it and the other stack you only take 40 from that stack and you mix it all in so you can never truly plan on like oh i'm going to make sure i get that card and when i see this card i'm going to get that that's true which is good that also makes it highly replayable it's still debatable to me whether or not people should be allowed to just have so many of those cards that give you a discount when buying the master builder there's no yeah the master builder there's like no cap on that yeah especially if you start the game with the master builder just in your hand yeah that's possible that's that's kind of rough we got it we we personally house rule it so that neither of us can start the game with the master builders yeah exactly yeah so barring all those things the design is so it's so fun it's just fun to try to try to find all those card combinations and like am i going to rush the round is it time to leave naveen adventure that is the scariest thing naveen is going to think that he has so many more actions but i'm just going to book it to the end yeah that is a scary thing i'm always constantly on edge about like okay so she's only six away from the end so she can actually end this do i have another chance to take two more actions i don't know yeah that was my number one one i thought that was really really fun fun design i would love to see more games like that well apparently from what i hear from a lot of people is that there is uh an expansion coming out called uprising that's right we just heard about that oh i'm ready i'm ready yeah i don't know what that's gonna bring but uh i'm intrigued and there you have it that is uh where all the games all 10 games that we covered ranked on our list for us personally yes we are probably going to take a short break before we embark on our next long designer series which we've already uh chosen we have chosen probably it's going to be going to announce uh during our next vlog we have a couple of smaller series lined up yep literally two of them which we will see very soon but uh otherwise we would like to thank everybody who's followed along on our journey we'd like to thank alexander fister for for all of your support as well as all of your feedback and just um being there beside us throughout this whole thing we truly hope you enjoyed our study in alexander fister and we hope you will join us for the next one if there's any of these videos that we uh put out that you haven't seen we're going to leave a card right over here that's a link to the playlist and you can see all 10 of the different games that we did play let us know down below in the comments if what your ranking is we'd like to hear that yeah let us know what you agree with and what you disagree with us because obviously everybody's entitled to their own opinions and we would love to know what your opinions are thank you all so much for watching the video we hope you enjoyed it if you'd like to see more videos like this please consider subscribing thank you you

Channel: Before You Play

Views: 22,490

Rating: 4.9351621 out of 5

Keywords: Alexander Pfister, Alexander Pfister Games, Alexander Pfister board games, best alexander pfister, top alexander pfister, Mombasa board game, Maracaibo board game, blackout hong kong board game, oh my goods game, port royal game, broom service board game, isle of skye board game, great western trail, great wester trail board game, monster expedition board game, cloudage board game, cloud age board game, board game review, top 10 board games, best board games, pfister games

Id: XkDlAiaP9FA

Length: 38min 20sec (2300 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021