The perfect 20 game collection

this video is brought to you by the three minute board game patrons keep us Independent by supporting us on patreon [Music] Kiara Koto welcome to this video about building a 20 game collection so why are we doing this well because recently my friend Ella did exactly that she decided to take a step back from doing board game content and decided to really trim down her collection because well like a lot of people she felt like she'd been sort of chasing games just for the sake of chasing them so she cut down to a collection of just 20 games and I thought to myself wow that's really something that is that is seriously making a step back from having you know a lot of games that you can't play so I thought if I was to do such a thing which let's just say I'm not actually planning on doing that right now because I feel in a comfortable space with the amount of games I've got but if I was to cut down to 20 games what would those 20 games be and that's what this list is about today while 20 games that I have in my perfect collection and of course because it's my own collection I'm gonna have to go through my own shelves and pick out the exact 20 games I want so let's start off with the most obvious thing my favorite game of all time and our first pick is of course Spirit Island my all-time favorite game Spirit island is a heavyweight Cooperative game and it's got a ton of replayability in it and that's because there is a really really good solid core game here and it's a cool game you can fuss about with a lot there are a bunch of different Spirits you can play there's different adversaries in different scenarios but the core gameplay itself is so very very strong it's also got a killer theme that I absolutely adore about nature Spirits uh whacking the crap out of colonizers absolutely wonderful and unique game and I don't feel any collection of mine would be complete without it foreign first pick didn't really eliminate any games but this one will we're going to pick a game that's both an engine builder something I absolutely love a game I've played a heck of a lot and one of my favorite of all time themes Mars here it is the big bad terraforming Mars a game I have spent way too much time playing especially on the app but also in person now I'm showing off the big box which is one of the very few big box indulgences I've ever picked up there's only like three or four of these in my collection and I got it because I play terraforming Mars that much and I love it that much so it's a game I really really really want to keep in my collection but it's also a great engine building game and I love engine building it's one of my favorite things to do in the game is to chain to give a whole bunch of combos to deliver a ridiculous result at the end of the game and very few games come close to delivering that experience as well as terraforming Mars so it is my pick for my solid engine building experience now the single picking games for any collection is you have to take into account who you're going to play with and my longest and most endearing group of players are an absolute pack of scumbags so in order to Pander to their very specific needs I need a game that brings out the pure scumbag in them and because my friends are awful scumbags they enjoy nothing more than a game of Battlestar Galactica whose original boxes sadly not survived to the present day Battlestar is our favorite backstabbing betrayal Intrigue and general plotting and scheming against each other game and we've played it a bunch it suits our group really well and unfortunately this one is out of print and is very difficult to get these days but you can pick up unfathomable uh which has been recently released and that is 95 the same game with a slightly different theme it's got an Arkham Horror theme uh Lovecraft theme but I think the original is still a tighter better experience or more interesting experience to me just because you know I like the Lovecraft theme but I don't necessarily love it for this anyway if you have a group of friends who are a bunch of backstabbing scumbags Battlestar Galactica or unfathomable absolutely go on to a perfect collection foreign island is a fantastic heavyweight Cooperative game but we need a second Cooperative game in this collection and one that's a lot easier to teach and if you're thinking pandemic you're damn close and of course whenever I'm talking about a pandemic game that's better than pandemic what I'm really talking about is Thunderbirds again another game that is sadly out of print which is a crime because I think it's the Matlock the designer of pandemic I think it's his very best game the reason I like this one so much is it's a perfect combination of accessibility complexity and intuitiveness in a Cooperative game and that's to say it's got a lot of depth to it but it's really easy to teach to people and once they get the basic workings of the game and you see the little lights go on and everything clicks it's a really rewarding experience to play and after Spirit Island it's my favorite Cooperative game and I like Cooperative gaming now I know there's some episode subtle hints on the channel That my background is from wargaming you know the dude who's the mascot of the channel being an oppression uniform for starters that's Calvin klassowitz if people aren't aware of that or the fact that I'm making a war game for GMT games Red Dust Rebellion so I really need something in the collection that's a war game of some sort something that's a two-player game that I can really get my teeth stuck into but it doesn't necessarily need to be a real world historic game in fact I have two candidates for this spot that are both really good games but they're both from fictional settings let's take a look at them oh this is a terrible choice because it's between War of the ring and rebellion and the thing is war of the ring and Rebellion are both excellent thematic games the both character-driven war games and they both have a similar sort of overall feel and vibe to them I would say War of the ring is a better game in terms of being an actual war game but Rebellion I think is a better game when it comes to storytelling and I think that's what's going to be the difference making here I think I'm going to go with Rebellion because it tells the Star Wars story in a little bit more fun way than uh War of the Rings tells the Lord of the Rings story they're both impeccable amazing top rape games that I absolutely love and would love just to get rid of one of them but as we're cutting down to 20 games in this perfect collection I have to say goodbye to war of the ring as much as it pains me and keep Rebellion which I think is as good as Star Wars games get and as good a sort of grand strategy games get especially character driven ones um fascinating neat game it's also a hidden movement game as well there's quite a bit of hidden movement a lot of cat and mouse it's a big poker game it's a war game and it's a storytelling game it does a lot and for that reason alone it stays in the collection plus it's a game I know people will play with me that was literally a case of picking between two of my favorite children an awful experience and so I have to bow to Nostalgia I have to look at a game but I might not necessarily be playing that much anymore but it is a game that is incredibly important to me for sentimental reasons it's another Cooperative game it's sort of in between complexity between Thunderbirds and spirit Island but it's a game that I know I can get to the table I know a lot of groups that I play with or want to play it and it's a game that has tons of replayability and well it's another Cooperative game it's Arkham Horror's second edition and for those of you who don't know Arkham Horror holds a special place of my heart quite literally because around about 15 years ago I was very very sick and that wasn't that long after Arkham Horror first came out and was one of the few games I owned and I spent a year um in and out of hospital and being unable to work and living in a really really terrible rundown boarding house and literally the entertainment I had there was a computer with no internet access and a copy of Arkham Horror so I can't get rid of Arkham Horror it got me through the dark times um as probably a big reason why I'm doing um board game youtubing right now is you know I was into board gaming back then but spending a year doing not much more than playing Arkham Horror really solidified it as my as my favorite hobby so Arkham Horror it's a great Co-op as well it's a game I know I'll play with a lot of people I have played this with a lot of people but also I have played it several hundred times by myself I was literally playing a game of it a day uh sometimes multiple games a day for nearly a year so there's a few games I would have played more than Arkham Horror second edition and there's no way I could say goodbye to it now I've been focusing on an idea called game Space where games take up a specific space and you don't necessarily need a lot of games that do the same thing when I decided between rebellion and War of the ring those are two games that occupied a similar space now this game appears to occupy a similar space to arcamore Second Edition but in many ways it's a very very different experience you might think that akamara's second edition would preclude me having Arkham Horror of the card game as well but you'd be absolutely damned wrong you see there are two real big differences between Arkham Horror the card game and Arkham Horror second edition the first is I've played second edition a hell of a lot Arkham Horror I haven't played remotely near as much as I want to you see in New Zealand the way they used to release this game where they'd put out like seven packs for each module uh that was an absolute nightmare like we just did not get the supply you'd miss out on a pack it was just super frustrating and I'd gone through that experience of Netrunner and absolutely hated it and it just it got too much it got too much to keep track of so I fell out of um collecting akamar of the card game until they decided to repackage the game into these big boxes now I can actually play the game and I've got a whole bunch of cycles and a whole bunch of content I want to get through and I want to play and I've actually been watching a lot of Arkham Horror strategy and stuff because the other thing about this game is it is a deck construction game so it takes a spot of Magic the Gathering or Android all those kind of debt construction games it scratches that itch because I'm one of those people who loves playing around with dick construction I'll sit there with a pool of cards look at them and go oh that's interesting I reckon I can make a deck around that and I want to do way more of that with Arkham Horror of the card game sometimes you put a game in the collection not only because it's a great game but because your loved one would absolutely murder you if you didn't include their favorite game in your personal collection Steph's favorite game is of course Obsession and she has impeccable taste obsession is a super rich thematic game that's also a really really tight Euro game and I don't necessarily think it gets enough cred for just how good a game designer is so not only is it the super thematic experience it's also a really good gameplay so this one probably would have made it an even if it wasn't Steph's favorite game but I'm adding it in there absolutely 100 extra because it is her favorite game but if you like the idea of running an English country house and you like the idea of servants and ceiling my arm assignments or you just want to play a really tight action selection game with every decision you make matters and you've only got a handful of decision points throughout the game uh obsession is a really good game [Music] so so far this has been a thematic heavy list and I love thematic games but there are some really good abstract games out here and we're gonna pick my absolute favorite one and add it into this collection and of course that abstract game is azul a game that Steph and I also both really like in fact we have this really weird record of azul where I can't beat her on a two-player game and she can't beat me in a four player game it's really really weird I'm not sure why it works out that way but every time we play four player I'll end up winning and every time we play two player she wins anyway as all is a beautiful looking abstract game it's super thinky it's got great decision points plus it's also quite easy to teach so it's a game that you can teach two family members and other people who aren't necessarily veteran gamers a show of winning against an experienced player but hey the tokens are pretty and maybe we'll have a good time as they're learning the game sometimes you pick a popular game to add your collection a because you know it's going to get lots of plays because people enjoy playing it and B just because it's so damn good and this is one of those games a game many people in the hobby would consider an obvious choice and of course that would be board game geek's number one game at the moment brass Birmingham now I know it's probably cool to go it's a popular game it's not very good pass is absolutely excellent this is a game because you know I'm not bigger to trains or industrialization or England or anything this game is about so I was kind of prepared to find it a bit ordinary but it absolutely bloody hooked me and the best thing about this one is it also hooked people who I wasn't expecting to get into it like the people I know who are into Euro games they like it as well but I have some people who don't like Euro games but they like this because of the opportunism of it now the fact that they can build something and then someone else uses up their resources and that's beneficial to them so you know suddenly the price of iron is high you go well better build an iron mine it's a really cool game and really interactive way more interactive than I was expecting I expected this to be like dry thoroughly German for want of a better term but it turned out to have a bunch of flair and because of that it's a keeper foreign [Music] thing we don't have at the moment is a Dungeon Crawler and that is a genre I do enjoy and it's a Target Rich environment there are a lot of good Dungeon Crawlers out here and I'm probably gonna pick one that's a little surprising and of course that Dungeon Crawler is Imperial assault not what you might have been expecting and this is another Star Wars game so I've got multiple Arkham games and multiple Star Wars games what's up with that I like those things I like Star Wars and I like the Lovecraft Universe those are two things I really like so it makes sense that I would consider including multiple games in that theme within my very small collection plus Imperial assault is a really good Dungeon Crawler now it's one where you need to have someone playing the dungeon master or game master or whatever you want to call it the bad guy but that's normally me and I have a lot of fun doing that plus I have just about all of it I didn't get absolutely everything because the way they sold it was completely bananas and we're like about 40 different expansions for it but I got the big box ones and I've only played through I think three of the full campaigns so there's quite a bit more plan here but I've replayed some of those campaigns as well so it is a game where we have played a lot of it but there's still a lot more to play uh plus I have painted it and that is a big deciding factor so what a Dungeon Crawl I picked Imperial assault foreign game and it's probably the simplest game on the list or at least it is the way we plan I know there's a whole bunch of extra rules for this game and there's even a co-op mode for it now but this is absolutely a game I'm picking just because of its core simple basic rules which is the only way we ever play it and that abstract game is of course Santorini a game that I hear is getting like a mega version and I just can't fathom why Santorini is at its best when you just play it with the basic core rules it doesn't need any more it's beautiful it's elegant Simplicity it is a great two-player game with really simple rules and a ton of depth it is absolutely chess or go like in that regard where absolutely simple basic rules that anyone can learn and a lifetime of gameplay it doesn't need buzz and whistles so I would keep this I wouldn't bother with the big Deluxe bells and whistle set because all you need is a core box in fact you don't even really need the funky special powers in this you just need the pieces uh Santorini wonderful game can't say enough good things about it [Music] foreign [Music] and I don't have an actual war war game and I feel like I should probably have an actual world war game and I've got a lot to pick from so I'm just gonna pick what I think is the best actual war game on the market and what I know I enjoy playing and that I'd love to play more and more and of course the war game I picked is a car driven game Paths of Glory from GMT games now path of Glory is a card driven game if you're familiar with Twilight Struggle it's a similar kind of idea to that so it's not one that's heavier Logistics it really is a grand strategy game but what a grand strategy game it's a game I've played through several times I absolutely love it and it's just got a real tense horror factor to it as well because as the Allies you need to make grinding awful attacks on the Western Front in order to win the game it's just the way the design works you have to play the attrition game and it's horrible and you'd much rather be doing other things you'd much rather be fighting on other fronts against the Germans but you have to keep engaging them there and I think that is an excellent part of this design and somebody keeps bringing me back to Paths of Glory is it's a game I almost feel bad playing I feel an element of this is a war game but it's also a horror of war game um a wonderful experience for two players really deep and you know it's a different experience to Rebellion or War of the ring uh it's a sort of elevated experience from that where those are very character driven and very much about telling a um fictional story this is a grounded game that tells a real story and you know any game about the first World War uh War I think for some unknown reason gets overlooked way too much not every game in the collection needs to be there because it's a serious challenge now this is a game I'm putting in solely because it's a Whimsical experience and one of those games you can play with absolutely anyone kids adults heck we played with Steph when she was eight months pregnant and now we're up to the wacky dexterity game junk art I can't say enough good things about this silly box of silly bits if you told me that one of my favorite games would be just a random block stacking game with weird shape pieces I would have said shut up you damned idiot you don't know me at all but it is this is just joy in a box the number of times I've put this on the table and people have been yeah I don't know about this I'm a bit cagey and then within five minutes they're like I'm trying to balance things or getting all excited hooting around the table and acting like a back of Gibbons fantastic game fantastic party game fantastic game for any group of people unless you're absolute killjoy awful awful human beings in which case might not be a good fit for your collection but if you have a soul and a good sense of humor and like absolutely brilliant now one of your first thoughts about getting a perfect small collection would be to get games that you know are going to get played over and over again but there's a little bit of majesty you lose in that so I'm going to pick an event game a game I know I'm not going to get to play that often still even with a 20 game collection but it's a game that I want to play and I want to invite a big group of people around and make a day of it and I think just about every collection could benefit from at least one event game something you play once in a blue moon but it's a special occasion when you do there were a bunch of games that could have fit in this spot but the one I went for in the end was June the original game for this spot and June is also a diplomatic game so it's not just a dice chucker in fact there are no dice in June all of the decisions in the game come down to play a decision and it's a game where you can be absolutely screwed over and destroyed miserably through the course of the game but that's part of the fun and part of the experience but I think the main reason this fits in the collection is because it's a negotiation game it's a game where you spend hours debating and planning and plotting and ultimately scheming your way to Victory plus I really like the June theme especially with the new films that have come out that have breathed a bunch of life into this IP it's a Neato game and one that I definitely think would be perfect for my event Game Spot and on the flip side to an event game are games that you can play with absolutely anyone no collection is complete without something like this and that is of course a silly little game Sushi go party and what can I say about sushi go party it's light it's fun it's silly it's a drafting game um the reason I picked Sushi go party over Sushi girl itself is this does have a bunch of fiddling you can do to make the game a little bit different in case you get bored of the original gameplay but you can still set it up exactly as you would Sushi go so you know it's a fine fine game but it's so casual friendly it is so family friendly you can play this with absolutely anyone this is one of those games and I'm like oh you don't do board gamings and in fact you can't turn your nose up at the idea of board gaming but you kind of still want to give it a go well let's try sushi go and see where you go from there um a lot of fun uh it's also a good fill a game like if you've got 15 20 minutes uh time to kill in a session it's still a great little filler game there as well so I like sushi go I think it's a great part of my collection specifically Sushi go party only four spots left and it's getting a bit tricky now and I'm gonna do a bit of a reach pick and pick something as a very specific interest to me something that I feel my collection would be incomplete without because it's a game I really enjoy playing and it's a theme I really dig space exploration so next up is leaving Earth and you're probably not familiar with this box because this is a custom made box that my friend Thomas built for me and that I airbrushed uh lovingly which is why it looks like a high school art project uh leaving Earth is a pretty tricky game to get these days uh for various reasons but if you can track it down it is a wonderful space race game really quite heavy in mathie but that's part of the charm of it for me it's a game about taking risks it's a game about building a space program and just flinging people to Mars and seeing what Mars is going to be like and sometimes Mars is terrible and you shouldn't have sent those people there and what were you thinking wonderful game um and one of those games we played it recently and a friend of mine hadn't played before and we played for four and a half hours and he was like what what do you mean we played for four and a half what what but I was supposed to go like an hour and a half ago he completely lost track of time it's so engrossing uh such an engaging game and if you are into the idea of Space Racers which I am and you're into the idea of space exploration which again I am leaving Earth is my favorite in that genre um and it's it's a really neat game and you know I made a box for it look at my picture of Jupiter isn't it Grand don't give up my day job yeah now we've got quite a few Cooperative games in the list and that's great I really enjoy Cooperative games but what we've got so far are skewing from the medium to high end of complexity what we really need is a lightweight Cooperative game and of course under the sea is the crew mission deep sea not the crew one the crew two uh make sure that it is the crew too not there's anything wrong with the crew one the crew one was my game uh small box game of the year a few years back but the crew too Mission deep sea does everything the crew does just a little bit better uh it's a really it's amazing how they took an excellent game and just you know knocked all the little rough edges off to make it a much better regain uh so why is The Crew 2 really good for a collection because it is a lightweight Cooperative game it's a trick taking game so people who have experience playing things like 500 and other bridge and other trick taking games they might be able to get into uh this even though it is quite a different experience being a Cooperative game uh to bridge or other trick taking games but it's also just a really fun fun experience and you can dial up the difficulty to whatever level is comfortable for you and your group and you can just keep playing this game over and over a great lunchtime game great Thriller game um great game just to just to kill time with and yeah it's hard for me to say much more about the crew uh it's just a really neat game and I think a very important part of my very special collection only two picks to go so I'm gonna pick games that cover a whole bunch of bases and the first one is worker placement and adorable animals worker placement and animals well it really it had to be in adult didn't it I mean I really like Evadale I like playing it with just the pillbrook expansion that's the only one I've got I've looked at the other expansions and I'm like yeah I'm really happy with it as it is and I didn't go all in on the big collectors box um maybe I might pick that up later but at the moment I'm really happy with everdel plus one expansion and uh this is just a neat game I really like Evadale um it's a worker placement game in part it's a sort of set collection game as well a drafting game there's a lot going on plus it's got cute animals in it and Squishy berries plus you know there is a three minute board games card for it which didn't really influence the decision that much but it is a nice thing to go yeah I'll keep the game that's got me in it because that's kind of cool anyway Emmerdale uh great sort of mid-tier game it's not a casual friendly game it's not a family-friendly game at all I don't think it's just that little step above but really enjoy this every time a plant it's really well put together as well and just a solid game experience and yeah I really like this version of it as well so I've got the collector's edition plus pillbrook and I've got no real desire to get more than that foreign [Music] desperately trying to bring in as many experiences as I can to close off this collection I'm gonna go for a dick building game that's also a dudes on a map game and yep that last game is tyrants of the underdark a game that I really only discovered in the last uh 18 months or so but it's a really neat combination of deck building and area control it has been an absolute hit with every group I played it with so if you want to play dudes on a map game or I want to play a deck building game this kind of scratches both itches a really neat game and this is the new version which has cardboard tokens now I know there's a version with Miniatures but I don't see the point it just seems like it would crowd the board and make it really cumbersome I think it's one of those few games where I'm like yeah I think the streamlined version is the way to go so yeah tyrants of the underdark the last game going into my really tiny 20 game collection well that's my list and of course it's a flawed list and there's a whole bunch of games I really would like to have put in there on top of that especially like my own game where it does rebellion when that comes out like if I was to have a 20 game list I wouldn't be able to have my own game house think would that be anyway let me know in the comments what your 20 game list would be honestly 20 games is still a lot a lot of a lot of bases and can appeal to a lot of people I'd be I'd be I am excessive have many many more games but I'd be quite okay with just having 20 games of those with the 20 games I got to keep what would your 20 games be let me know and if you enjoyed this video hit the notification button like share and subscribe to the channel and please come support us on patreon

Channel: 3 Minute Board Games

Views: 134,833

Keywords: Board games, Board game, Board Game review, Short Board games, summary, terraforming mars, best games ever, best boardgames, top 100 board games, battlestar, best board games, hot board games, best ever board games, top board games of all time, top board games 2021, greatest board games, best card games, spirit island, star wars rebellion, nemesis, top 100 games, best games of all time, best board games ever, board game collecting, board game collections

Id: 75QuD2hl418

Length: 29min 53sec (1793 seconds)

Published: Fri May 05 2023