TCbH's Top 10 Board Games of 2023

hey everyone it's Jack from the cardboard heral 2023 is rolling to a close so it's time to do the thing you know rund down my personal picks for the top 10 greatest games of 2023 with a couple little caveats here bear in mind I haven't played all the games I have not managed to play even half the games that have come out this year so if your list differs from my list that's okay we can have our own list but this is mine Jax from the cardboard Herald so the second caveat which I needed to come back to once I started editing is that I have a couple games that are honorable mentions in waiting for Christmas I ended up getting undaunted Battle of Britain which you know I'm a huge fan of the undaunted series you'll hear a little bit more about the designers for that later on in the video but I have since played it once and it's really good I'm thinking that if I had more time for it to marinate it would likely displace something else on this list the other thing is I have a couple honorable mentions of games that I particularly want to get to this year I mean yeah I want to play a ton of them but heat and sleeping Gods distant SK which sleeping Gods distance guys is on the Shelf over there I just need to work some more on our Frost Haven campaign before I'm going to get over to that one and I'm a huge fan of flam Rouge so I suspect that all the hype for heat is going to pan out for me too but you know they couldn't be on the list because I haven't played them yet now let's get back to the rest of the video all right number 10 is a very recent game on this list but one that I've been anticipating for a long time and that is the fox experiment designed by Elizabeth hardgrave and coming in from pandasaurus games it was recently delivered I was so ecstatic to get my hands on it and it's really good I have a lot of fun with this this is one of the best outings by pandasaurus as far as like a a deeper game a deeper experience it's the first time that one is really gripped me and I I really love the nuanced decisions that you have in trying to you know breed these foxes so that way subsequent Generations have deeper pools I think there's a lot of thematic resonance that happens in conveying this complex biological idea but also there's enough game in there to really kind of latch on to some core ideas and the integration of the dry erase markers and naming your foxes gives it such a cute feel without interfering with the overall operations of the game number nine is a word game which if you had told me at the beginning of the year that I'd be putting a word game on this list I wouldn't have believed you because these are really hit or miss with me but nonetheless fiction is our number nine pick yeah this is essentially a cordian adaptation of Wordle with a couple unique interesting twists there's a a social element in which you're lying about a particular letter when you're giving the feedback to the players so there is more of a a competition a contention between you as the clue giver and the people at the table nonetheless I'd like how close it is to such an established and widely loved game like whle that was a complete phenomenon throughout the pandemic and now I can have something for people who aren't necessarily deep uh board gamers uh give them something to latch on to this is a new access point it's a really lovely concise game it's one of the best allplay games to come out this year though not the best as we'll see shortly and it just has such broad accessibility applicability and playability that makes it perfect for the holidays which hey we just had those and yeah it's still held up from the time of release to now and I enjoyed it quite a bit number eight is Dune Imperium Uprising the subsequent the the sequel the the secondary box of Dune Imperium which was oh so much of a hit not too long ago and I think a lot of people are going to want this higher on the list which it is a really good game Dune Imperium is a very good game Dune Imperium Uprising is even better as a standalone box than Dune Imperium was though if you went to my review you'd notice that there were some feelings I was having about just the existence of these two parallel products and what it really means for the Imperium sort of retinue and thus I I just couldn't put it higher up on the list which these are all arbitrary lists based off his subjected decision so I guess my reasoning is just as good of any but it is a game that I really enjoyed I really like playing I really love the universe and this is a great immersive adaptation of some of the core conceits of Dune which I love so it had to hit the list but because of some of the murkiness surrounding it it didn't manage to itch higher on the whole you know Echelon of the greatest games of 2023 at number seven we have general orders the new game by ospry publishing and the famed collaborators Trevor Benjamin and David Jack Thompson that's a beautiful evolution of a lot of the things that they've been working on up until this point it's a small box really concise worker placement uh area control game set in World War II it's so easy to teach but has a ton of tactical nuance and is such a great introduction to war gaming that I think this is one that is going to be pointed at as a a like Mainstay for a lot of people's collections going forward I'm a big fan of these designers working together and working individually and I think they knocked it out of the park with yet another soon to be classic number six is Freelancers one of if not the best Crossroads game to days in fact I'll just go ahead and say this is my favorite Crossroads game eclipsing my love of the very original dead of winter this is an evolution of the concepts that were really cemented in forgotten Waters but Freelancers is tighter more accessible a little bit shorter of a play time and just gets right to the meat of the sort of Mad Libs meets RPG stick it's wild and ambitious which really is the territory that plaid hat likes to to play in but at the same time it's a lot more elegant than some of their prior outings and has thise heart to it that just feels like they've struck the right tonal balance that they've been working on up until this point well worth checking out if you want an accessible story based RPG while still having some mechanical meat number five is Earth a game that absolutely pulls on all the the idosing CTIC strings that I love in a great Euro game there's engine building there's action selection derived from a minimalistic input that just has chains of reactions and outputs and it also plays on this naturalistic beautiful Earth setting now the game is kind of clinical which is something that I did comment on in the original review a suspicion I have of over equivalency that prohibits really bizarre Buck Wild changes in the different engines that you can possibly have but nonetheless I've continued to love playing this game there's a lot of momentum that you build up there's a Beautiful Exchange as you watch the ecosystem develop and your resources convert from one into another hopefully for more impactful and victory Point Laden resources it's a type of game that we've seen a lot of recently in the last five six seven years with games like terraforming Mars with wingspan with Ark Nova and this is another really good one of those that has its own thing going for it but draws on some of the Masters number four is earthborne Rangers if we're talking about a cool beautiful naturalistic setting well earthborne Rangers is a completely different approach because it is not going for any sort of realism to where we live right now but is an extrapolation of what the world could be after cataclysmic cataclysmic apocalyptic events of one sort or another in which the humanity has rebuilt they've regrown out of the setting that you might have seen in say Freelancers which on the whole is collaborative and supportive and dare I say even using the recent buzzword cozy very nice but with an ed of danger the game play is such a smooth interesting implementation of an open world Adventure that mechanically isn't too unlike something like Arkham Horror but at the same time gives you the complete freedom and flexibility to Define when you start and end your sessions where you go where you navigate what things you investigate the game has such a beautiful presentation the company's commitment to sustainable packaging and presentation and components and the killer gameplay that brings a lot of interesting innovative ideas to a campaign-based uh game setting is something that really uh captured my heart and just kind of blew my expectations of what this game was going to be it's one of the best Cooperative games of the year and it's just one of the best games of the year period number three is another game that kind of feels out of time that has call backs to the past without having specific spe ific lineage linking to any one particular company or anything and that is Beast a game that feels like it could have been made 10 years ago by Fantasy Flight but is now being released in 2023 while at the same time has a lot of modernization it is a dense onev all hidden movement game in which one player is one of several different beasts that is going to level up as they play trying to achieve some sort of goal and having their own unique play style and the other players are the hunters with the same leveling up and different play style and trying to navigate to and ultimately confront and fight the Beast the most obvious parallel to this type of more tactical hidden movement game is furi of Dracula but this doesn't take the Epic 4our slog that furi of Dracula could often amount to and has a lot more levers to pull to make the game more interesting and Tactical and fascinating to play this is the first time in which one of these really rich and heavy confrontational hidden movement games where it's not just solely about identifying where the person is but actually confronting them and doing some sort of combat that actually paid off for me in a big way I'm a huge fan of Beast and I'm really looking forward to seeing what this studio ends up doing in the future number two on the list list is that aforementioned other allplay game that was going to be on here and it is sale yo this tiny little box has captured my heart I mean let let's just think about how there are all these other amazing games that came out in 2023 big small that are Innovative twists on all kinds of things but nonetheless sale is the game that's the one that I wanted to latch on to and come back to over and over and over again and it's a freaking trick-taking game trick taking is not my thing because I'm typically very bad at it but the Cooperative Twist on this just taking such a simple nice clean idea and changing trick-taking into a Cooperative navigation of a boat that gives you all the anticipation all the apprehension of trick taking where you're trying to decide is this going to be the right card to play what might they have in their hand what do I know about what's in the deck and then using that to facilitate the forward momentum the steering of the ship through these treacherous Waters is wonderful I love the presentation the greens the blues the yellows all working together the illustrations of all the characters the presentation the components just everything about sale just speaks to me it it's grabbed my heart it's one of the games that I have wanted to get to the table most this year it's one of the games that I have the best time when it gets to the table this year I do a lot of two-player gaming I do a lot of Cooperative gaming and this is one of my alltime favorite in either of those categories sale is beautiful number one is a recent acquisition and if you've been following this channel you might know that this was going to be the game because I kind of talked about it in the title of my freaking review for this game and that is ders divers ders ders the White Castle a elegant beautiful scrumptious extremely tight Euro that just pulls on all of the things that I love about gaming it's a very reserved minimalistic presentation that just feels elegant and the gam playay mirrors that exact thing you only have three actions over three rounds amounting to nine total actions in the game to weave through all of the different mechanisms that are in it to impress the Dao the Shogun the the the head of the White Castle there are so many different Avenues through which you can approach the the point scoring in the game but they come down to really Core Concepts that as soon as you start to play in the game are really intuitive it capitalizes on opportunity cost every dice pulled from The Three core Bridges is one fewer resource that you're going to have access to and you always feel a contention between two if not more varying actions that you could be taking it's concise it's constrained in the best ways it is beautiful and it is absolutely my favorite game of the year and that is our list but that's not the only list there are tons of lists going around but I'm interested in what are your favorite games of the year what do you think should have made my list and what are the games that you are most looking forward to in 2024 I have another list that's going to be going up shortly after this video which touches on that very topic but put it in the comments below as always thanks for watching thanks for supporting thanks for being such an awesome community and have a safe new year you know I've been Jack for the cardboard Al

Channel: The Cardboard Herald

Views: 6,316

Keywords: board, game, tabletop, games, gamer, gaming, the fox experiment, fiction, dune imperium, uprising, general orders, world war, freelancers, earth, beast, sail, white castle

Id: Pj7-ugmFeiM

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 28 2023