Top 10 Board Games of All-Time (2023)

[Music] how's it going everyone I am Dylan this is Braden that's my cousin Carlo we are all you can board and we are here with our top 10 board games of all time this is our third year doing this since we started our Channel back in 2020 it's also four years our four year anniversary will be coming up in about a month's time um this year brains for the first time otherwise it's always just been myself and Carlo br's first year so we have our top 10 games we'll be telling you where they've kind of shifted from last year so if you didn't watch that video if this is your first introduction you can kind of see where some of these games have moved or if they're new to the list entirely um and if this year is your first time coming to the channel if you just found this video and you're watching this one welcome this is this is our crew we're great we're nice and friendly we want everyone in to come into the hobby hit the Subscribe button anyways this is uh we're really excited to be here we I think we're all really curious about each other's lists a lot too I want to see where certain things have moved we did have put some predictions up on patreon so if you haven't watched it and you want to see cuz some of the predictions were were top 10 specific feel feel free to go watch that and last thing I will mention is that we did for the first three videos uh put a pretty hard one minute timer in for every game so we can kind of keep this into a a watchable time limit because there's three of us on camera uh we we've kept the one minute timer Loosely since then so the last video we had it just to kind of keep us in check we're going to do the same thing here but if a game warrants to more discussion we're not going to like hard stop anyone but you're not going to hear us talk like six minutes about a single pick here so we're going to kick things off I am going to kick things off with my number 10 and to kick it off it's like game that wasn't on my top 50 in either of the previous years and is squeezed into my top 10 at number 10 and that is from Riner Kenia Mia F number 10 just squeezes in uh I love this game uh it is so good it's also an interesting game to slot in here because if I was just going by the two-player game it wouldn't have been in my top 10 I I would only want to play this with three and four and four specifically it was just such a good time it I maybe this is a game that after you know 10 12 15 plays maybe it doesn't hold up longevity wise and maybe it starts to slip but as of right now with the plays I've had and the experience I had with with four that four player game specifically it was just so much fun the comboing of of placing your tiles down and also having to kind of see what your opponents are placing for their their diamonds and kind of uh working off of where they're taking certain spots or where they're trying to block you or that one track that kind of goes around and is more advantageous when certain spots are opened up there's just always something exciting to do on your turn you're thinking ahead it's exciting to watch other people's turns because it will in some way probably affect what you're doing especially when you're playing with four players that the way that the the way the fact that I have a French version of the game and it doesn't matter because everything is iconography based so as long as you know the rules it's very accessible and the iconography is easy to kind of wrap your head around it is just it's an one of those it's that great combination of pretty easy to learn for a first time but the more plays you have the more it's going to become a really competitive uh uh like Strat iic and Cutthroat game I think especially if you're playing with people who have all sort of played it that you know that that amount of times around the table love this game uh squeez into the top 10 I don't know I can't remember I'm trying to remember in previous years if I ever had a game I guess last year a game debut in the top 10 that had never been in before Oh I did I did last year I had won but uh this is the first time that a brand new game has made it on fist so yeah top 10 number 10 m f I did not expect this to crack top 10 this was number 22 for me I think one thing that neither of us mentioned that I want to add real quick is the cards and the fact that you're kind of drafting them too is cool and right and CU then you don't sometimes you pick one cuz you know if I let so and so get this card they're going to get so many points so even though this is only getting me like one point this turn I have to take this cuz I can't possibly let Dylan get it it's grueling but it gives you that Rolland right feel of like you're accomplishing something every turn it just rewards rewards rewards like endorphin rush yeah yeah so satisfying yeah you're picking up something here which gets you another card onto there yeah yeah yeah I love it little ship track at the bottom yeah yeah yeah it is it's really really really good I am also surprised though it landed in your top 10 but I mean it deserves it it's it's amazing yeah my number 10 is one that was on my top 10 list last year but has fallen three spots this is the party game uh monikers uh which I like to equate it to charades on steroids um three rounds you're doing different things first round is just say anything but the clue that's on the card you have a deck of cards that build up your Clues you're trying to get your team to guess what's on the card second round it is just one word about the clue and then third round is straight up charades and you're using the same deck throughout all three rounds an absolute hit come it it it brings so many great memories uh to the Forefront for me and I think it just gives you so up such ridiculous plays especially that second round where you're naming just one thing and you make one one connection with m one person on your team that remembers you just say like Duck and they're like oh yeah of course uh you know Scrooge but it's like that has nothing to do with it but you you know you have that connection uh that you've gone through and that repetition of the deck works so so well um the different types of cards I've talked about this on the gift guide I it's just a great party game um for a massive amount of players that you can play up to hilarious you're building the deck you're putting them into um you're crafting it specifically having that choice into their two so that everyone knows what's going through the deck monikers is a winner that's my number 10 moving down three play this I plan to buy it uh very soon I'm our favorite local board game store Victory Pines if you're in wi to Pig but yeah I plan to go pick this up because I I want a game like this in my collection to play but with like just that kind of there's certain settings where this is the type of game that is perfect and I I a gap my collection and monikers I think is just sounds like a ride it sounds like something everyone's going to enjoy so and Dave just set aside a copy for you yeah well maybe by the time you're watching this I've already bought it so set aside another copy number 10 is a game that is new to my top 50 roaring right into the top 10 just barely getting in there is a game that bradden spoke about I think two or three videos ago the Estates oh yes yes yes yes um replacing Arboretum as the meanest game in my top 10 no question and if you had asked me about 2 3 weeks ago this would have probably been in the 30 to 20 or something like that it would have been way lower down in the list but I played it twice um the past weekend uh with the same group and it was such a hit and that's what kind of cemented it as like no doubt a top 10 game for me um for those who don't know the long and short of it is that it's a game about kind of um building out this development this this part of the city there's three streets in the game and the kind of there's a building requirement of building four properties on each of these streets in order to complete them um and there's and it's an auction game where on your turn you just pick one of the available pieces you put it up for auction and then everyone has one potential bid to bid on the piece and at the end when it gets back to the auctioneer they can either uh let that person have it and that person pays the auctioneer that amount of money or the auctioneer can pay that person the amount that they bid to take that piece themselves but the variety of the pieces you can take the floor cubes which are like being added to the board to build up these kind of like apartment Towers you can take a rooftop that's going to actually cap the the the tower you can get this mayor token where you place it on one of the three streets and there's only one of those in the whole game and it's going to double the value of every building in that street whether the points are positive or negative and one of the two ways the game can end is when two of the streets are completed the game ends and those um streets will score positive points for the people who own those buildings and then the Third Street the incomplete one will score negative points but there's other ways the game can end where sometimes two or three of the streets are incomplete so a lot of the time players all around the table have negative points there's so many things to consider every turn nothing is um like uh set in stone Until the End Everything feels like it's kind of this fluid system throughout the game where you're like certain things AR aren't going well for me and maybe I can shift the dynamic of the game and maybe I try to just tank the economy and make these streets have longer and longer requirements so they don't get completed you can draw things out you're embezzling money every turn to stash away for points there's so many things one of the most unique games I've ever played and is now something that I just want to play almost all the time that uh I can't say I agree with your placement but I also think that it's one of those games that even though I didn't land for me I so many mechanics I think are so cool like the the way that you actually have to pick those um tiles like in the three by whatever grid and it's only available like if you take one out the next one showing or whatever I actually really like that was the thing when we were explaining the rules I was like oh that's really cool and I really love the idea that like two score positive points one scores negative points I think that just adds a really cool Dynamic to the game but for some reason in practice everything about it was just felt and I've only played it once but it just felt too mean for me and it didn't it kind of scratched the right itch for me but I'm willing to play it again and be proven wrong because you guys speak so highly of it oh yeah and the one thing I really like to is maybe you're what you're choosing to go on auction is something that you don't even want but you want to shift the dynamic in power from like you want to take cash away from someone else and you know that's super valuable to them so you you bu bid up that price that you can help yourself down the line too yeah or you have no you only have1 or $2,000 so you put out a piece knowing that everyone else is going to make high bids just cuz you need money that turn there's so much exactly amazing game it won't say anything else that's enough to talk about this game I'm just kidding uh my number nine I'm pretty sure so it's up three spots I'm pretty sure it's back in the top 10 I think it was in the top 10 then out of the top 10 now back in the top 10 uh a game that you know what I think it's one of my most nostalgic and not like that's like I haven't played it for that long but just the memories of it are really strong for me and I'll never say no to a game of it I enjoy every game of it number nine is Santorini uh it is so solid it is uh a two-player chess like abstract game or I don't even know if that's called I don't even know what an abstract game is I'm being okay it is absolutely I know what an abstract game is it's sanini and it is heightened so much by the god powers that I still haven't experienced every God power I still haven't obviously had every God power play against specific other God power it adds so much uniqueness I played it I think like three or four times this year I think all with people that I've never played it with before and I real I have also discovered it's not necessarily the best first date game a little bit too competitive especially when I played so much it oh my God uh but it's just so fun and there's so many uh just Stellar moments in it that as like you're kind of like getting to the completion you know the game's wrapping up and you have all the towers the kind of building and the space is getting more confined that there's just so so many moments where you just like I'm looking and I kind of look up my opponent and there's like this coleta smile between us because it's like one person knows that they are about to win or they have you in like Checkmate or whatever and then all of a they find out they don't because you pull off a movie you're like you can do that it's like my God power you're like oh that's right like you you never really feel like you're out of it there's just so much to discover in the game it's a game best played in like by best doing best of Threes best of fives because one game of Sentry never seems to be enough love this game uh it's just one that I think will not only always St my collection I can't imagine it ever really dropping out of my top 20 unless a game comes that replaces it for me like like Ragnarok I don't think will be that game but if if they more games like that come out and I find one that just kind of like makes Sentry kind of seem obsolete then sure but otherwise it's the my favorite type of like you know that chest leg game I think in my collection I mean uh let's just jump into it right now because guess what wow another moving any spaces from last year is Santorini amazing um to add on to that too I I'm interested um I Echo everything that you say about it to the abstractness the way the game builds up I think it maybe starts a little slow if I had to give criticism over it but I mean once you start building and making those decisions and that has to be a part of so making those where you're building your initial blocks and placing everything you you know doesn't really make too much of a difference but later down the line those decisions are so critical really what makes the game sing um I've got a couple abstract games that I'd be interested to see how they uh compare to it that I haven't played yet that collection so but Santorini has been an Allstar for it the god Powers the Simplicity of the rules at two player it's pretty much unbeatable yes I mean Sentry I mean there's even some God Powers give you alternate Wing conditions and some of them are really fun to go after and put your so much pressure on your opponent that they can have such a good power that but suddenly they feel like they're spending so much time trying to stop you from this alternate win condition that it adds this extra level of like fun Ang anxiety in a way I just yeah I love it so good great game that was at my number 30 for the year I said enough about it then so I'll leave it at that but yeah amazing game my number nine is another new game to my top 50 just getting right up there into Ninth Place if you watched my 2022 uh tier list and video recently you'll know that this was my game of the year for 2022 you guys know exactly what this is Caesar's Empire what this game okay so when I I'm did my no buy thing for 2023 in 2022 I pre-ordered a few games I pre-ordered like four or five games and this was one of the ones that I pre-ordered knowing I was going to like it quite a bit but it's still like vastly exceeded my expectations this is one of the most um sort of streamlined games in terms of the design and the rule set it's only like a few pages of rules the turns fly by like lightning the game can be played in like 30 to 45 minutes kind of thing and every turn is just like this excruciating decision where you can only do one one thing and you're always going to be getting something you're always getting some type of reward you're getting points in some way whether it's immediate points or long-term points um but it's such an interactive game where you're kind of connecting these roots um basically Rome is in the middle of the board and on your turn you're just using your little pieces to connect a city to Rome that is not yet connected to Rome and you can connect there's all kinds of flexibility in how you connect cities but you're always going to score points or every player you're going to score the route that is the shortest route from that City back to Rome so you're going to have to use even if you just created a route that uses let's say four or five of your own pieces if there was a different route that uses two of yours and one of another players then now you have to use that shorter route and that player is going to get a point so it's about trying to figure out do you want to go spread out on the map and go somewhere that you want to go do you want to get in other people's way so that you're scoring these passive points on their turns and forcing them to keep like piggybacking Off The Roots you've connected um and the variable setup gives you so much to consider right before you even take your first turn cuz you look at the map and if there's let's say four of the same resource or on one half of the map you might think that that's going to be highly contested or you might Branch off in a different direction just based on surveying what's there and I love games where you have that Dynamic of just looking what's out there coming up with a plan and then every turn there's this brutal tactical decision of do I stick to what I wanted to do or do I have to change plans um I love love love love love this game and as I said when I did my 2022 videos Mata pudvan where have you been all my life please design more games this is brilliant and yeah for anyone who wrote this off just give this a try it's an incredible game have we just discovered that car you know how we like slowly uncovered or I mean not slowly but I uncovered that I love auction games with like like playing Modern Art have we discovered that Carlo just love games that have Empire in the title time of Empire season Empire just like both of them roaring into your top 50 this year yeah absolutely yeah this one sounds so good I think if I play this a few more times it's making my top 50 as well very easily I I time we play this absolute I couldn't believe it I was like immediately withdrawn to it please bring this to the C oh AB it goes up to five players and I think if you play four or five you only get either 10 or eight turns like you don't get many turns but like oh so so good Cesar Empire my number eight up one spot from last year uh stays relatively in the same spot that is I'm not even put the time around cuz I'm not going to talk a lot about it it's been spoken about it that is a Zool uh I love this game it is a classic for me and by that just mean that like I my my love of it never going to diminish even if I have bad plays at this point because I love that it's such an entry level game for some people even though there's some barriers of some of the rules it's beautiful enough and it is once you understand those little kind of like uh hiccups and the rules to kind of like wrap your head around it is easy to kind of understand but it can also be played as this really Cutthroat game at two players at three players at four players everything about it I really love out of every version of aul they've released this is still my favorite and kind of like persever years even with all the new mechanics that have been brought in I love it it's a classic for me that's zul what do you think about minul so minul is my number seven name no I don't I don't even know if I knew there was a minul like travel travel Edition that's the only one I see people often say is better than the original zul just because it's travel size okay maybe I'll have to get that next year it'll be travel isul in the top 10 Iz games uh number eight for me is moving up two spaces my highest Riner cania on the list this is modern art one of the best auction games I mean also because I haven't played raw yet sounds good from you guys on your list uh but Modern Art uh I think hits so many different spaces that I didn't know that I really enjoyed I think it really brought auction games to the Forefront um for me and just the Dynamics that we've had uh so much fun playing it the different types of auctions how the paintings work and how the Dynamics of how previous rounds have gone will influence how uh how much paintings are worth in the future too I think that push and pull between everything is so good the different like where money is going and like who's winning options how much they're spending you know choosing when to end the round all of that combined together makes it such a great package uh for me and like it's just I love it couldn't agree more Yep more to say on it later to say really won't say anything more just yet number eight on my list up four I was number eight on my list up four spots crack in the top 10 for the first time for me is also a rer kit game that is Babylonia so this is one that I don't play as often as I really should and of all the games in my collection it's one of the best in terms of I mentioned this about glass Road like back in the 40s that it's so good at all player counts the first time we played it dlan we played it at two players and even though we sensed that it would be better with three or four it was still like an incredible first play I've shown it since to other people at two players they've loved it um I this one always stays a little bit ahead of Blue Lagoon for me when I do these top 50s because of the fact that it gives you a lot more flexibility the fact that there's no restriction on where you place your tiles you can go anywhere you want on your turn and depending which tiles you're placing you can either place two tiles what is it two tiles of the same type if they're the merchants or whatever or you can go three or more farmers and the way that you can place tiles face down in the river and you can kind of go for these ziggurats because you want to get the majority or go for the abilities or you can connect roots to get across kind of blue lagoon style and you feel this pressure to get in other people's way cuz you know like if I don't place this tile right here on bradden's turn he's going to connect and then that's going to be such a big chain of points but like I don't want to do this like it doesn't do enough for me it's there's so much to consider and the game just flies by it plays so quickly um yeah after rer kit had already designed so many tile Lane games previously it's surprising that he kind of like stumbled upon this or or came up with something that feels so brilliant um and this only came out a few years ago but yeah I'll leave it at that I just love Babylonia yeah I I haven't played it since we we played at that time and I think I for me to consider my top 50 I just need to like play it more because I'm the more time passes the more I forget about it even as you're describing I'm like oh right you can do that oh yeah right you can do that like I need to play it again but it was really fun I remember that first game being like really surprised by it yeah and I uh for me to consider it I would have to play it oh okay I forgot that you haven't and when you say like put just you mentioned like putting a a token face down in the river I just imagine like going I have no my number seven uh is a new to the list but I'm gonna have some uh I'm G to have to talk about this one for a little bit uh so new to the list this year um it is a large game and it's one that is ongoing and that is Frost Haven uh so Frost Haven for me what what I've done here is I've taken Gloom Haven off the list kind of you can consider this Gloom Haven Frost Haven position um for me the game like frost Haven is Gloom Haven just improved on expanded larger I felt weird putting them both in the list in the same way that I'd felt weird putting code names and code names still on the list so me personally I just decided to kind of combine this so if you're wondering why GL is on let's consider it number seven if you want Frost hav is seven for now I think this is like the ongoing ranking for me at seven when I've played the whole campaign you'll kind of know my definitive ranking and it it's game that Gloom Haven used to be number one maybe Frost saing becomes number one I'm loving it so far it's so good it expands on Gloom Haven in all the ways I wanted Gloom Haven to be expanded on it's not perfect by any means and Gloom Heaven Wasn't either but I just have so much fun with it I love having a game to continue to come back to with uh either the same group or an Ever Changing group and I just love that there's still all the unlockable classes the way you unlock them is more exciting and different now you have unlockable buildings and things you can do in town the story is a little bit more engaging because of that cuz the story can kind of come into play with the town whether it's being attacked different things going on there you're breing Potions you're crafting your own items now so much to love here if you like Campaign games if you love Gloom Haven I think you'll like frost Haven I'm certainly enjoying it and we're actually playing it tomorrow as we're filming this and I'm super excited I'm really excited too I spoke about this this game already I uh I think I had it somewhere in the 20s is or 30s around there this is one that I'm probably going to wait for the digital version to come out and play it on PC the same way that I've gotten Gloom Haven digital just because I liked a lot of things about Gloom Haven but the kind of time commitment and the admin and stuff like that was what prevented me from wanting to play it more but uh yeah I'd love to play the digital version when it eventually inevitably comes out one day yeah so good storming on to my list the first appear appearance of this in my top 10 also another F game is at number seven for sale oh nice at number yes uh man every time I have played this game I am terrible at this game I I think I've lost I think every single time I've played it I've never won a game before it sailed but I love it so much just I again the two phases of uh bidding on spending your money on either you know I have I have the uh a uh car version of this uh right aama yes thank you um version which has like the nicer money token um but I I don't even I put away the secondary powers that come added in this box just play it for how as originally the vanilla base is just already so good doesn't need to be improved on is great the quality of the cards is amazing um but just yeah the gameplay is so good like just just bidding getting those things and then using them to to resell them for different checks and depending on which come up like that Dynamic of getting the most for your money and seeing the reveal of like oh no you beat me by what oh it's so excruciating so good but so good yeah for sale very nice on all of our lists I was going to say this is the third triple crossover so far maybe in the in the countdown I can't remember I think there's I think there's even more than that s for very nice very pleasantly surprised he's crack and I'll say well you considering how good I think you are at board games in general it's surprising that you haven't won this considering how many times You' played it I say there's a compliment like it's you should he the first time you win with us we're going to have to make it a big celebration or just make sure he never wins yeah also true all right coming in at number six on my list uh sorry seven seven seven uh down one spot from last year is renat so this is still one of my favorite uh tiing games it's a domino based uh tiing game where you kind of are building out on this board every player has three dominoes in their possession that have these different combination of animals on them and on your turn you're picking one of your three dominoes and you're placing it on one of the available spots on the board and you kind of have these starting spaces at the top and there's this kind of trickle down effect where you're building to from these kind of like low value sort of enclosure spots and you're going down towards these bigger sort of juicier more tempting positions but every time you extend yourself toward one of those spots you're creating another opportunity for one of your opponents to latch on and get closer and closer to those spots so it's sort of a game of chicken because nobody really wants to set up their opponent but if Nobody Does it then you just get things get congested it's a game almost similar to arbm in the sense that it has that kind of like the the very inviting artwork like the tree like oh this is a beautiful familyfriendly game and then you play and it's just brutal and Patchwork too like these some of these games are hidden grueling games it looks beautiful right it's a game of all all the games in my top 10 it might be the one that requires the highest degree of patience and really picking your moments because there's just so many little things to consider about when to use these these Cloud tokens that really open up the game in terms of taking these extra actions or doing little things manipulating the wild suit um and the last thing I'll say that is brilliant about this game is the neutral player having everyone has access to these neutral player tokens that you can use to swing the majorities in one fa uh player's favor or another and the fact that you can use them to kind of make it a tie in these majority battles to kind of neutralize both players and then you get all the points like there's so much room for these like super clever like mindboggling plays I just love it and the reason it dropped a spot is unfortunately I did not play it this past year but I got to Make a Better Effort to insist that this gets played more often yeah reat is great and your guys game on the live stream uh was really good I like say another one again where Braden got taught for the first time and absolutely wrecked me it was late though for then like yeah just take the credit this guy wrecked me it was fun number six on my list up one spot from last year um love it just the same just rejigging some things um it's my favorite two-player only game I believe yes my favorite two-player only game seven wonders duel um this is so good it just it it continues to persevere every year even doesn't matter how much I've played it or how little I played it every year it's a game that I have now permanently ingrained what the rules are in my head which doesn't always happen for a lot of games I have to look back rules way more than maybe you'd expect even for games I love I've had to do it for face Roden for certain things because I go gaps between you know plays Seven Wonders duel I've played it so much on BGA I've played it so much in person it's one of the most play one of the oldest games in my collection one of the most played games in my collection and it's just so much fun there's something so satisfying about that the well I was going to say the pyramid structure but it's different each round the way it's kind of laid out and where the cards are going to be placed which ones are going to be revealed the expansions are actually both great for this game I played each expansion on its own I've played both expansions together I I love it like every and I love the vanilla version of the game like I it's the expansions aren't good enough that it's like oh now the original is obsolete the original by itself is still so satisfying the alternate Wing conditions where you can do Science Victory military Victory or the points Victory makes the game so tense and it makes it so that even if I'm falling behind in one regard I can start putting pressure somewhere else and make my opponent stop what they're doing try to stop me which might create an opening somewhere else for me I love that push and pull and that kind of like sneaking in to get a victory that they didn't expect cuz they're like oh I'm so far ahead and point suddenly you just like burst ahead on Military you force them to have to go for military cards so good love Seven Wonders duel number six yeah it's crazy that you got a tattoo of the rules on your back yeah just so I can remember yeah on my back I don't know why I chose the back cuz I have to like look in the mirror just to remember the rules each time and it's and it's back well no no no I I got it backwards on the tattoo momento Styles Next Level stuff right here that'll be a patreon inclusive video revealing my 7 rules tattoo if there's anyone who's gotten board game rules tattooed on themselves please tell us in the comments anything board game related really yeah honestly yeah love to hear two quick questions for you one which expansion do you like more and two how do you feel about the fact that this is so much better on BGA than in person because it autoc calculates the cost of all the stuff with I don't mind I don't mind that the calculation so much in it but yeah it is it is more efficient I like uh the pantheon expansion more than Agora um but to be fair I played the pantheon expansion more than I have Agora but I love that Agora adds in another win condition cuz I just win multiple win conditions in the game is something I just love I really like it's almost like it creates a Sandbox feel where you can kind of choose which way you're going to go to to to Victory and I I like that a lot this has probably been the most played app board game app on my phone actually oh yeah doesn't surprise me so good uh line number six uh again a new appearance on this list uh has been mentioned before uh this is Kingdom Builder oo uh and again BGA I got to give big credit there because this is one that was not on my radar whatsoever from before I played so much of this last year and continued into this year I so much so that I had to acquire I think it's your copy that you gave that that I bought from you or you gave me only because I upgraded to the better Kingdom game that's right check out previous videos for what game that is uh but Tina Builder the the variability in the scoring the maps uh as well as what tiles come out you know those first few games you start to learn how the game is played right um not exposing yourself to multiple terrain tows keeping it limited so you can spread out where you need to be and then start planning with again and also like what powers are on the map too that helps play into the scoring yeah all of that variability leading into like the decisions that you make are are so good leading you into you know I'm going to jump over to here and then I'm going to also do something that adds me onto there that lets me to score here it's only satisfying when you do it's it's impressive to watch other people like utilize their powers in a way to get creative I'm always just I think I've seen it all and then someone ding I'm like wow that's an I thought you were trapped and now you're not did they just break the rules that should be illegal yeah yeah it's not too complex I think it fits in a nice Niche for me uh Kingdom Builder very happy to see this in your top 10 yeah yeah and it's one of those games I think Dylan and I would both agree that the first like 50 plays of it that we had the first few years it was probably a top 10 game for the longest time and has only slipped down because of how much we've played it or in my case a different game kind of replacing it but amazing amazing it is good yeah number six on my list down one spot from last year is keyflower this is the first time that this game since we I guess the three years we've done the top 50 is the first that it's outside of my top five and it's a real shame because I just I didn't play it again this past year and last year I think we only played it like once it's played this once in the last two years which is like I should be locked up for this it's a crime against board games I I am I'm not only bringing to the cabin I'm insisting we play it at the cabin even if it's with five we're playing this at the cabin abely yeah no no disagreements for me there key flower is the second greatest work replacement game of all time um it has auctions and bidding kind of built in the way you bid with your meeples is something I've never seen in other games before because you're bidding mid round while people can still use the tiles that are being bid on and whether people are bidding on them or not can kind of determine sort of how much you want to invest in a tile or not because whoever wins that tile is going to take the tile and any mles that were used on that tile into their own kind of estate and then for the rest of the game you can use tiles in other people's Estates but then they're going to keep those meeples but then you're also going to drive up the requirements for them to have to place more meeples to kind of use the same action there's so many things to consider plays over multiple rounds so there's different tiles coming out the the variability from which tiles come out every game which goals you start it with at the beginning that may or may not end up as available Tiles at the end of the game who has which meeples behind their screen there's so much to consider so much trash talking like it's such an interactive game I absolutely love it and again it's a shame I bought my own copy almost 3 years ago now and I don't think I've ever played my own copy of the game but I just knew that I needed to own it you bring your copy to the cabin cuz my box is is torn whever and this way you can say you've played we've played your copy ofer it just I think it's maybe the the rules teacher the fact that it's not super friendly to new players that prevents it from getting to the table as much but again it's it's a shame because it's incredible yeah so good I'll uh I got to play I might have more to say later we'll see I got to play and if I don't I'll just start talking about it later I got to play it you have to play it we're playing at the Gavin uh into the top five yeah number five for me debuting the top 10 up nine spots from last year I love this game so much it's one of the games that gives you the most fun out of any game I play that's libertalia wins a g I love this game and honestly it's it's uh the best representation case of just the fun I have with the Border game kind of trumping everything else that's going on in the game like I love the mechanics I love the fact that abilities trigger One Way left to right then trigger another way right to left so that you can kind of be strategic on where you're going to try to plan for your cards to end up I love that everyone starts with the same cards of their hand and so you're building your strategy knowing that everyone has these abilities too but then that sort of Alters as you go and you it's harder and harder to keep track of have you played The Brute have you played this card yet and then that then you're like I don't think they have you play like oh they haven't and like there's so many moments in liver tal that make me just want to get out of my chair and be like I'm having and just tell tell everyone I am having so much fun like I just I have fun playing this game and I leave every session of it um just radiating I I love this game it's I'm also going toist play this is the cabin uh I want to play this more I want to get it to the table more I think if I had gotten to the table more it could have even have been higher than number five I'm so happy it's finally in the top 10 I think it'll sit here for a bit love this game I'm surprised I never played the original version but in many ways I'm glad too because I think this from what I've heard in other people have talked about the things they changed this is kind of the definitive version of the game now even if you're not completely on board with the artwork changes mechanically yeah I love it so good at this point we're going to need one of those hyperbolic time Chambers from Dragon Ball Z to play all the games we've talked about at the going to extend the booking cuz but yeah I'm down I I hate this game in the best way though I think it did it's so good so good y my number five has moving down one spot and this is from scorpion mque this is D crypto um de crypto has been as I lose my voice D crypto has been a uh really solid party game for me one that I don't know why it's so not hard to teach but like to wrap your mind around it it's like maybe it's because they talk about like the different colors of teams you get tokens and like how that interacts and you're writing down clues for the other team as well but once you get past that like you like you were giving out clues of trying to be you're subverting um how uh so let's just start right from the beginning how how does this game get you've got secret code words that you're trying to get your team to guess those secret code words are also heard by the other team and the other team is going to have to try and guess out of 1 2 3 4 which code word they're you're trying to refer to and guess what code you're trying to give so you'll have a code of like three two and then four uh and then that sequence you'll give Clues to give to your team which knows what the words are but the other team doesn't know but you'll give Clues so that they try and the other team's going to try and figure out one what your words are what they reference so you can't be too obvious of what they are so you're finding that balance of being clever so that your team knows what they are what the other team does and that goes back and forth and you're like looking at things going why did you pick Apple for this like this there's like all these groupings of like fruits and stuff here but this one was a different number like I don't oh they were referring to the technology company oh I understand okay so double meanings all these different things the word play in it so sharp so great the crypto one of the games that sat on my shelf unplayed for the longest really I hav I haven't played at 6 perfect at really okay so don't bring it to the cabin then I won I I'm really I yeah I'm really excited to play this game it's been I I bored it from Carlo one time because I thought it was going to get played and it didn't and I remember reading the rules and thinking like the way you said it's kind of a hard teacher hard to WRA your head around I remember reading the rules and being like I don't know if I understand I feel like I want to play it now with you so you can explain it to me and I can have a proper experience going in and the the reason I like it at six six in particular is because one person's giv me the clues and then you're conferring with another person out like trying to figure out like talking about like is it like this like Le just being you talking about having that just that one other person you could play with eight for sure I see that working but that one other person it really I think is definitely best at six okay I'm glad I haven't tried it at four for the first time then now I want to try with six for the first time cool all right number five on my list dropping two spots the lowest that's ever been in my top 50 that is carcasson so this is a game that is I'll say right now it's specifically in here because of the two-player version 3 to five it's still good whatever but the two-player game is where this is I still think like a masterpiece uh it's been out for like 23 years now um I know that a lot of people will sometimes give me Flack for this saying like oh it's a Gateway game this and that but the Brilliance of it is that it can be used as a Gateway game but there is layer after layer after layer to uncover as a two-player game the more you play this I'm so happy that so many people in our Discord recently seem to be appreciating this as a very like brutal Cutthroat two-player game and are starting to see a little bit of that advanced strategy and how like just to give you an idea of the variety of skill or the kind of skill cealing that this game has if I play against new players and I don't I see again this is one of my most played games of all time so this isn't a brag I've played this like 500 plus times like I will crush a new player almost every time but but then I go online and play sign up for a BGA tournament and I get matched up against high level players and I like they're like doubling my score and I'm like I thought I was pretty good at this game and yet there's people who I have no chance to beat them and it just that's what kind of blows my mind about this game is like you start thinking that you're near the top of the skill ceiling of this game and then there's layer after layer still of how you're building out the map and sort of choking people out and and I think the thing that gets uh Miss underappreciated the most is you only have seven meeples and part of the game at the high level is trying to strand other people's mles and make it so that they can't get them back because you're all going to each going to play what is like 37 tiles but you only have seven meeples and you only get them back when you complete objectives so when to place them where to place them how to use them there's so much more to consider and I think it just yeah people people should give this a chance a little bit more at two players and see the depth that it has if you really want to get an appreciation of the depth which is how I got an appreciation of it um I watched a competitive game of two-player uh man who you when you you talked about the depth but seeing it in play like I was like oh my God I did not fully realize like how crazy and cut Thro this game right and some of the moves you see are like that makes no sense and then like eight moves later you're like wow that's why they did that how how did they see that coming like yeah I I wonder if this was going to be the year dropped out of your top five so it stayed into your it stay at number five but yeah I knew it was going to drop I felt like it was going to be drop a little bit but I knew it was going to be in your top 10 cuz I know you have so many like fun memories you play it so much and yeah I think it was three and four the last two years yeah yeah nice uh my number four was number four last year and it debuted last year in on my list and it's now holding its spot this year that is modern art uh I love this game so much there's not much more I can say about it it is my favorite auction game it is an amazing auction game we played it again this year at a um at a local Brewery for their board game night and had a blast playing it um there's so many different auction types in this game it causes so much conversation and hilarity around the table um every game feels like it has its own unique flavor its own unique meta its own uh unique uh just situations and discussions around the table I want to play this and introduce more people to it I want people to I I I I I don't know the modern art will ever go higher than this for me because I think that there I shouldn't say that maybe maybe I'll have a one game that just really shines I think it's kind of hit its peak but I wouldn't be surprised if it just kind of holds the spot for me the same way that like you know carcasson kind of holds this little spot for you because it's just so good that it's it's one of it's rare that a game that you know I've owned for so or not I don't even own my own copy but like I've played for so long or we've got to the table for so many years now that I I will still kind of like Advocate if we are going like sit down with a bunch of new games I never played before to be like but we could also just play Modern Art and I'll always be satisfied cuz it's just so good we played this on the live stream too if you haven't uh kind of seen it in action you can check out that game cuz it was a really good one love Modern Art number four very nice you already spoke about this one I have already yeah Carlo doesn't like it it's on his four pages of rules for just oh it's so Goods yeah uh number four for me has been mentioned already it's dropping down one spot on my list this is the party game called so Clover yeah so Clover you know man I was just I so excited to get this game and I'm so glad that I did um so well what's that copies cop I cly own three copies of it um but this game is so good for a good group like six like playing with six I think he plays what three to six or something like this um boy uh the clues that you have to give the the cleverness that you have to come up combining the clues the different techniques that people use to combine the clues some people like try to use the words like together in one way or just relating them into a category in some other way like you start to feel out that kind of style of like which way oh BR answers it like this so he probably means it this orientation and like flipping those around seeing your group have to manipulate and them really royally screwing it up uh you sitting there going well I can't do anything about this and then they go is it right you go take off the thing take off the go it's like I can't believe that so yeah yeah and you can increase the difficulty by adding cards we've talked about this so Clover you got to try it so Clover is so good really is yep number four on my list up four spots debuted last year at number eight a game that bradden spoke about two or three videos ago this is hanza Tonica um where do even start about this game you get what is it two actions on your turn and there's a couple different things you can do you're basically connecting these routes across Europe trying to create these little trading routes setting up trading posts in certain cities um you can set up trading posts to get points or some of these cities if you instead of setting up a trading post you can uh pass on that and instead take an ability which is going to upgrade something on your personal player board so you have these kind of five different sections on your player board that correspond to some of the different actions you can do or one of them corresponds to an endgame condition and every single turn every single action is just like you have so many options there's very few restrictions on where you can go in the game you can start new routes you can build in different areas you can bump other players out but it's going to cost you and it's going to give them a reward you can put something just to get in someone's way even though it might not do anything for you right now but if someone then bumps you then you're going to get the reward but now they might avoid going there because they don't want to give you the reward for you trying to get in their way there's different ways to score points at the end of the game there's there's so many things to consider we've still only played the base map we haven't even tried any of the variants um I played this I think two or three times in the past year and and it's one that I could see potentially climbing higher than number four in the future but it's I don't think this is going to leave my top 10 ever I think it's just uh yeah incredible game and gives me all those Crunchy just brutal decisions that I love so much um hanza Tona and and if it moves up a couple spaces you know you're really putting the two in Tonica oh this guy this guy the twoa yeah I think if this is one I I think I said to you one time if I thought if you had played it like a couple dozen times 50 times 100 times if you had played it lots I think this could have been a number one game for you yeah that's fair I played with a couple people on our Discord we played it at three players which is not the ideal player count but was still very very good and kind of yeah yeah such a good game my number three top three game was number three last year and that is one that continues to persevere I love it so much castles of burgundy um I what are you looking at I thought that was two last year no it wasn't two last year different game was to mind sorry Castle burgundy uh is a game I played a lot physical version I played it a ton online I've played it competitively online and learned Lots about castles of bir and the depth it has in kind of the same way maybe not the same way but I mean like the same way you're talking about depth to carass on playing it competitively makes you understand that there's even more layers to castles of burgundy than I thought there was so yeah I I love playing this game like it's one that and this another game that I now kind of permanently know the rules for I don't have to remind myself of cuz I played it so much my scores have gotten to a point where like they fluctuate now between like 170 to like the best game I've ever had which was like 240 or something like that but it's just so good there's so much that I enjoy about being able to like combo tiles together especially using things like the castle to give you another die to be able to get other actions then change different things I love the the game of having to like see if you can collect um all the unique buildings to fill up a space that might require like seven unique buildings or then but specifically knowing you're not be able to do that so getting the yellow ability tile that allows you to place same buildings in the same area I've played enough that I go for specific yellow ability tiles if I see them and it can kind of change my strategy those aspects of cast burgy took us to the next level for me it was already a game I loved and then seeing all of a sudden my like recognition of certain yellow abilities or what I do with certain tiles in the game or if I do get a mine early compared to if I don't get a mine early it just it's taking the next level for me I don't know that this game will ever leave my top 10 and it certainly will it'll take a lot for it to even leave my top five Love cast bergy one of the best dice based games ever designed for sure yeah so fantastic yeah really really good uh my number three is also moving down one spot here this has been mentioned before this is Marvel Champions Marvel Champions a game that I've played almost exclusively solo like and true solo as well yep um yeah what more can I say that you haven't already said about Marvel Champions Dylan it's um I obviously a big Marvel fan the theme plays really well well I've actually really loved deck building building my own decks and a lot of this has felt very thematic to me too like different you know um having to thwart threat off of a scheme you know or also deal damage to the villains and the different scenarios and how much just pure variability they have across the multitudes and mountains of content across the Multiverse oh uh I I just I just found it incredibly enjoyable and I will continue I still have so much to get through uh myself to see where things go never mind combining and changing things um I I've Loved pretty much everything they put out for this game yeah uh there's still so much to explore for this game for me sitting at number three only moving down one spot um it's been good it's been all all out for sure so I'm I'm always excited to play this and usually it's sitting ready to go yeah next set up on my game table so that I can just jump in and play anytime the only thing I'll add cuz I don't have anything to say about the game anymore I've already talked about it is go to our Channel hit the live button go to our live stream and watch M bradden's uh game of Marvel Champions it's one of the best games of Marvel Champions I've played and maybe that's because I don't off I I often play solo so I appreciate more when I played with someone else but it was a really fun game of Quicksilver and Venom and uh so so much fun that was a riot it was yeah and maybe we just regained a small portion of the subscribers we lost from the last video when it dropped down D's list dramatically number three on my list up one spot from last year is modern art so another triple crossover across all three of our lists uh currently my favorite Riner Kenia game and my favorite auction game um a game that I think Dylan said well in terms of like it's it's just a very safe reliable game in the sense that like anytime you're undecided with the game just just play Modern Art it's always going to be like an absolute riot um whether you win or lose the puzzle of kind of like the hand management aspect of looking at your hand of cards and trying to decide which cards do you want to play in round one when the values aren't super high yet but you can kind of start steering the market in a certain direction which ones do you want to hold hoping that maybe it'll be worth more in a future round or maybe you'll get the times two auction card that goes with this other auction card so that you can play these as a big big big thing later um you start to make these plans and then as the game goes on you kind of have to like also say goodbye to some of those plans because you run out of turns and sometimes people are rushing the ending the rounds early or the Market's steering in a direction that you didn't expect it to go and just every individual auction you pick a card play it an auction starts and the different auctions that happen and the different types of bidding it just leads to so much like trash talking and interesting interaction I love playing this with every single person I've ever played it with I've played this with probably upwards of 10 different people now over the years and I've never had someone even just think it was good everyone has been like this game is amazing uh love Modern Art yeah we all love Modern Art here it's so good I just I want to find a copy with like with the shield and everything version yeah I want it proper so good I have a feeling we'll all eventually one day own the dice tree version that's like well over $100 that comes with the little easel and everything if I ever see that on sale I'll just buy a copy for all of us cuz we all need that agre amazing my number two game of all time is one of the games I have the most fun playing it's an amazing worker placement game down one spot from last year A Feast for Odin had its time at number one down one spot it's still one of my most beloved games my highest duve Rosenberg game I love a feast Roden I just love I just realized that when I did I'll I'll talk about this I'll talk about the reasons why more in the next uh pick but I will just say Feast broen my thoughts of it haven't really changed it isn't it like a Sandbox U Rosen experience that I love playing I love it specifically at three players if anyone's curious that's my favorite player count to play F BR I love I love two as well four is a little bit much for me even though it's one of my favorite games I just love that every time I play it even when I pick a bad strategy even when I lose I love the aspect that I can go in and have so many different directions I'm going and it never feels like I have to make those decisions early sometimes it's like Midway through the game and I'm saying you know what I'm going to go grab this island board because I think I can I can handle it or I'm going to like grab some sheep because then I can try to like turn into wool in this way whatever there's just so things in a feast Ren that I appreciate and love and it's down one spot but it had its time at number one and uh so number one last or the first year we did was Gloom Haven and I think Feast thr was number two last year Feast thr got its first uh number one spot down one spot this year different different number one every year know but they're all just kind of shifting a little bit it's fine W I knew there was going to be some I knew there was going to be some W I'm Shell Shocked who was it you that predicted the to see on Pat I guess that's true yeah there's so much more I want to say but I'm going to wait till you reveal your number one yeah triple crossover right too triple crossover it do a little bit lower on us yeah a little bit uh wow yeah I I know let's give the people at home some time to recover I know uh my my number two uh game of all time I've flipped and flopped between these my two and one probably several different times uh this is also moving down one spot what this is just one yeah just one uh I struggled with this decision but I I feel good about it the more I thought about it I mean just one again a phenomenal game um a a party game again I I emphasized in my list really ease of getting to the table getting new players playing with anybody that you can and having consistent amazing time day in day out that I play this um new gamer season Gamers you know uh this has just been an absolute hit one that you can bring to anybody show to anybody is incredibly easy to teach one that uh one were the rules that I've ingrained myself yeah I don't have a tattoo of it though uh yeah exactly um and thank God because it's my number two no but um I I've just had a blast playing this uh I'm still chasing that perfect game uh uh in person I it's just I it didn't seem like it could get better than just one but it being number two is still high high praise just two that's right just one is now just what I want to ask you is when we filmed our holiday gift guide about a month ago you very you you inserted into that video the fact that just one was your number one game were you a playing us or B has that actually changed just since that video uh I think it's changed since that video it I know your one is now yeah like I said it flipped and flopped but yeah wow yeah all right lots of lots of shocks going on here this is how are we going I need to I'm going to be all over the place I got to gather myself here is this going to be a huge shocker for us number two game of all time staying at the same spot as last year sorry guys sorry guys staying at the same spot as last year is race for the Galaxy um what an incredible game the probably shortest playing time quickest game of any game in my top 10 and if you include digital plays on the app um this is definitely my most played game of all time uh what it does in that amount of time there's no game that matches that in terms of the decisions and the level of involvement and the kind of addictive factor of wanting to just set it up and play again and try to build a different Tableau and um what really keeps it at this spot on my list is that after again like over a thousand plays on the digital version alone it makes no sense to me how I'm still finding new ways to use specific cards or to combo them with other cards um it's a game that's still like even just base game no expansions I'm nowhere near feeling like I've mastered it um I feel and it's I will say right now it is still the most impressive like deck of cards in any board game you know we've played games like Arc NOA and what you know all these different games that have all these crazy different types of cards in them and to me race for the Galaxy is still the epitome of like I think it's like 96 or 100 cards and it's the perfect deck in terms of the variety everything it offers uh simultaneous action selection so much going on I've talked about this enough in the past so I'll leave it there but uh yeah race for the Galaxy one that I think in future Years it'll probably slide down to like five or six to make room for certain other games that I think are kind of climbing but for now it's it's still rightfully earns number two on my list well it'll probably slide down when you uh play role for the Galaxy and then you realize it's a better game and it goes up there cuz you haven't played it and every it's aad I rooll for the Galaxy not better not better or I mean it'll either be it'll either be rooll for the Galaxy they replace there or magic maze one one of the two I thought you were going to say h Tuton maybe that one might actually replace it if you're wondering what this is all about you got to check our collection room for sure what we're talking about yeah I've enjoyed the scam I I actually really like race for the Galaxy um I just I hasn't landed as obviously as much but I still really do enjoy it a lot of respect there for sure it took me a lot of plays to love it as much as I do I used to just like like it for a while but once you get over this certain level it's just yeah so play it more please no car it's time for our number one I'm ditching the time for this we can talk as much as we want or as little as we want now the same thing I've been doing for the last draw it out again now it's number one board game of all time for all of us we all are going to have a different board game I'm pretty sure as this number one so you're going to learn a lot about us here if you're watching this for the first time my number one board game all time moved up one spot from last year that is keylow key flow man so what came I went into making this list thinking that my number one to four is probably going to stay roughly the same and when the matchup came that was Feast Roo and versus key flower I hesitate for a minute and I that's the one the only one that I thought about for such a grilly amount of time I stepped away from it to think about it because as much as I have so much love for a feast BR and I mean number two says obviously a whole lot because it's only one spot behind this I I just key flower is so unique it's so it combines work replacement and this uh bidding mechanic and the bidding mechanic is just implemented so well and it's so much fun there's so much so many laughs so many um standout Moments by people getting the green meele and the way they incorporate it or not knowing which color meele someone has be on the screen are they willing to spend that much to bid you the fact that then that phase transition transitions into this phase of placing those towels into your city and then slowly being able to over the SE Seasons use the not only the ones you've collected but start using other people's and the fact that you have to keep that in mind like well I own this but now if I really want to use it someone else can jump in and yes I'm going to get their meeples but sometimes that's not enough of an incentive to be like I should have used that quicker had times that I've like had someone take my movement tile even when I've already upgraded it and then I realize now if I need to movement I have to try to use someone else's or if there is none I can't start moving resources around it's just such a I I put it here specifically because not only do I have so much fun with it I just really think it deserves this kind of attention this kind of spot I need to start playing this more even more than I like I'm advocating for free Broden and there's player accounts I still haven't played key flower at like I'm curious as a Max six player game is that too much or do that just make it so chaotic that it's it just so much fun at that player account right I love this game so much if you haven't checked it out you should check it out for yourself it is my new number one game of all time key flower I'll take that advice I need chcken it's coming to the cabin yeah I said enough about it when I talk talk about at number five but I I want to highlight something about yours is I think is this a case of absence makes the heart grow fonder because in the past year since we did our last top 50 I don't think you've played key flower and we did play A Feast for Rodin for the first time with Norwegians which is like it's definitely better with Norwegians and we didn't play keylow and yet they've swapped so is it that you've you're you've cooled a bit on a feast or that your like thoughts of wanting to play keylow have gone up so much that it's put it ahead keylow has moved my list every year so far I think I think the year was like four or five or something then it moved up to two last year and it moved up to one I think it's a case of yeah sure uh like maybe heart hard gopa being away from because I so excited to play it but also it just I did reframe how I looked at the picks this year and I really tried to ask myself like at all the different possible player accounts and different experiences I've had what if I sat down which game and played them both back toback which game do I truly think is more fun and if I took out like our competing AG gria versus a fe Broden type of debates we've had in the past and even just the the fact that I have so many fun memories of feast if I really thought about it I was like you know what I truly think I have more fun playing keyflower than a feast and so there it is love it I mean I'm happy because I obviously think keow is better I just yeah I'm happy to see this but very shocked yeah number one all right my number one out of the 154 games that I ranked this one is brand new to the list across the board it is blood on the clock tower the social deduction game yep boy um I I can't say I'm surprised but it was it was tough to put this at number one right off the bat but I recently played it again and I played this game now probably definitely easily over 50 times just this past year wow what what's your ratio of Storyteller to player I would say definitely more player because I mostly played it all online where I only play player but I actually love playing this as Storyteller I've been a person who has watched you know I've watched shut up and sit Downs content way back when they did the Resistance playthrough I've watched tons of different social deduction playthrough games and I love that aspect so being the Storyteller in this game I like I get that but I'm also involved in crafting the story on top of that and that is just like the butter on top of my toast and to coin a phrase if you will and I I just I can't get enough of that and I love seeing how people interact and seeing someone lie straight out and being like trying to figure out would Braden do that as a Storyteller for this game and like me hiding my face cuz they like you know I played this with five players which is the base count and it still worked really really well very quick games similar to One Night Ultimate Werewolf um you know I had a game last like it was like 10 minutes it was like back D where compared to when playing with big much bigger groups where it scales up you know it's going to last a lot longer it's more intricate there's more information and misinformation going around and if you're not familiar with this game this is a social deduction game very akin to werewolf Mafia except that everyone has a role and the goal for the good team is to get rid of uh a demon and devote them out from town and the goal for the the demon is to kill basically the rest of the place ERS and you've got it's a very simplistic way to look at it but you've got henchmen that help out the evil team they have their own powers that affect the game the logic and the storytellers there to help kind of create this balanced narrative as much as they can giving out information and choosing when to do so oh man even just me thinking about this game right now I want to go back online and play it again's a really good at being the Storyteller so if you are wanting to hire him for your parties he charges $50 an hour he will story tell hon under underselling this guy's like don't reveal my rate I I will do it for free I love storytelling this game and running for groups man you'll do it for free but they have to subscribe to all you can board that's right that is true you have to prove it yeah this feels like a game that was designed specifically for you like the design team sat down with you and said what do you want in a game and they went and designed it and then you talked about it and they went back and like it feels like the most Braiden game I know and yeah amazing Storyteller I've only played this once uh big group with a bunch of people we had met for the first time and I couldn't believe how much this exceeded my expectations and that is I think like 90% credit to your storytelling ability and the teach you got everyone involved it was such an incredible experience that's a big deal coming from YouTube because social deduction games aren't your like they're not even your top five favorite types of games it's the best social deduction experience I've ever had of any of those games I've ever played and it's one I'm very eager to play again and I mentioned in my 2022 tier list when I talked about it that I was so surprised with the I love the decision of like um that you're still involved in the game when you're like killed off yes but that you only have that one vote I think like it's limited you're you're you're yeah diminished but you're still in the game yeah that's right and it it still plays a big factor into the game honestly too and I have a question for you about it because I suspect that the variability in terms of your worst play of Blood on the clock tower to best play for for a lot of groups can vary obviously your best plays have been 10 out of 10 what's the lowest on a 10-point scale that your worst like have you had a play that's like a six out of 10 or is it always like eight n or higher I would say I've had plays that are six out of 10 but they are more like they're like the very small games that like I've played online with just random like they're called scripts so which is just like sets of characters and like that's the other thing I didn't even mention like we like I've played mostly just with like the first set of characters never mind the extra two that come in there and never mind combining extra sets together like I so I it was it was fine it was just very random and chaotic which wasn't what I was looking for in that game but it was again just so quick it was just like okay rack and let's go again kind of thing um but like it was still enjoyable it was just like all these things are happening at once and like someone's yelling something and like uh someone else dies is like a part of like there's just a like it's it's chaos and they keep uh coming out with new characters for the online version and I'm hoping that maybe they even release like a new I don't even need another set though that's the thing but you want it I do I do I do I'm so glad that I own it like it's just yeah I'm so I'm not surprised but like man I love it so good and this is like yeah the amount of time you spent watching people played online is amazing too I cannot tell you how much how many hours I've invested just in this game that's why it makes you such a good Storyteller you just have such an understanding for now you're 100% right I pretty much watched from the pandemonium Institute which the um is the publisher of this game uh I from their YouTube channel I've watched almost I would say almost all of their playthroughs which and these are like hours and hours per game so like that's a lot it's a lifestyle game awesome awesome Choice very nice y okay number one on my list new no I'm just kidding Dylan unfortunately Dylan's name dropped this game like three times in this video so you all know what it is still my number one that is of course agria um one of the first games that I ever bought for my own collection back in like 2008 after it first came out one of those games where before I was going on board game Beek I just went to a board game store here and I was looking at it and it caught my eye right away and then I started researching it online and then I went back and immediately bought it and for a few years there it was pretty much the only game I played um still has the toughest decisions I think in any board game I play I have always minimum two to three asynchronous games of this going at the same time on board game arena because I don't get my fix enough for it playing in real life because not enough enough people looking at these guys when we're here uh aren't eager to play it in person so I have to find more people to teach this game to um but yeah the the difficulty of again you have such limited actions and limited capabilities of what you feel like you can do and I will say I think the biggest hurdle to why I think a lot of people don't enjoy this game as much um I mean it's very divided there's people who love there's a lot of people who have this as their number one game there's a lot of people who hate it and say they refus to play it I think this is one of those games I fully acknowledge until you reach a certain level of like proficiency or doing well it is pretty unsatisfying and pretty unenjoyable sometimes to end the game with like 14 points and feel like you didn't accomplish any of your goals I get that and I've said this about a few games you there's a common Trend in some of my favorite games where getting over that hump and seeing like getting that taste of like hey that felt really good to do well and kind of like unlock that portion of the game and the better you get and when you get some of those high scores and you look at your farm that you've completed and the cards that you've played and you realize I got like you know how many extra points because that card that I played in the second round that I took advantage of at these key moments timing them with the harvests to make sure that I didn't have to like spend animals as much to feed my food so I could instead breed those animals and I instead got food somewhere else you can play the game so differently in terms of where you get your points and um there's a common kind of I think misconception that you have to do everything in the game and I've I've talked about this before where like uve has put this trick into the game this kind of like mind trick this Jedi mind trick where he makes you think that you have to get one of everything because negative points is the the end of the world it's not I've won many games where I have negative one in three or four categories because to to get out of the negative category you take one sheep yeah you get one point instead of negative one but that's only a two point difference there's a lot of other things you can do to specialize and get massive Point swings by building a giant house with a lot of stone rooms or leaning into a car that has these bonus conditions um and what keeps this at number one above all else like I love the accumulating action spaces all these kind of different things but what keeps it number one is the cardpool and the fact that the community has been given sort of free license from U Rosenberg the designer and from the publishing team to just say absolutely there's so many people who have this as their number one game of all time who are designing right here who are designing their own cards and testing these cards on BGA and on other websites play Agricola decom there's this massive community of people who just keep like pouring time and effort into testing these cards and diversifying the card pool and there's still new card expansions coming out 15 years later there's to me there's nothing like it and I know it started this kind of wave of worker placement games um around that time and I I've tried so many of them and none of them have come close to agrica yet so this is going to be a really tough one to ever dislodge from the number one slot for me I I would have loved to make it exciting and and have a different number one like you guys but I just couldn't justify it there there's no way but now if it ever does get dislodged it's going to be the biggest deal out of any of our number on table flip the table for sure last thing I'll say real quick is that it's the mo it's not the most uh number of plays of any game but in terms of the hours that I've played it it's no question there's no game that I've spent more time playing than agrica similar to you with blood on the clock tower I have one question for you and this is more cuz like i' I've wondered often if it's just the meanness of a Gula makes it not L for me or what it is cuz I love uve games I love big box U games if you I know this is hard to like know for sure but let's say you hadn't picked up a Gira when you did but just last year you you in the same way that there's game you haven't played if you just played it for the first time last year I'm I'm certain it would be on your top 50 in the same way that like the is now but do you think it would be a game that you're like oh this will be a number one for me or do you think that because it was like the first board game you poured your heart and soul into as a board game do you think that in some ways that is what locks it into number one it's a very good question so I'll say this um hanza duton came out in 2009 I discovered it a year or two ago is my number four Modern Art came out in '92 I think played it for the first time two or three years ago it was my number three um you know there there's a lot of these old games that I've come to the party way late and it's just that first or second play or whatever I think it's hard to say because it might not have gotten the amount of like it wasn't my number one game the first or second time I played it so similar to race for the Galaxy it took a few plays to kind of again have it click and have that interaction with the other players and it become like a regular game in our group so you might be on to something I think it'd be high up it's hard to say if it would be number one if I had played it just last year for the first time but you bring up a good point which I think is also a cool way to kind of like get to the round out the video too is that there are so many board games out there that and so there's so much uh incentive or or feeling of like you know the fomo and so I got to get the new board game got to get the new board game play all these games and so you almost often even I do this too I'll get like two plays of a board game two plays of a board game two plays of a board game and I and we we love them and or we hate them we rank them on that but there is something to be said that like sometimes it might take 10 20 30 plays for you to like not like a game but for you to really realize how much you like a game and layers like that's what it took for C castle of bergundy for patchwork for me and stuff and I just feel like if you love a board game there's this there's this feeling that you have to play all the new ones you can also just keep playing the board games you love and realize you love them even more and get way more mileage out of them you don't always have to get the new board games even when we tell you to get the new board games right there's a lot of really great games there that probably deserve like 50 to 100 plays well and with how many games are released every year and how competitive it is I think Publishers often go for that first impression being really strong rather than just believing in like I have to trust that someone's going to play this five or 10 times and uncover that depth and instead sometimes games are a little more shallow to have a bigger first impression yeah so great great pick one thing I want to say just about quickly about a r too is I think I would appreciate it more um if you let me play no uh uh if if I learn more about the cards so I think that's where the the biggest depth is and like 100 there's such a big scene of like competitive agrica not big scene but like U enthusiastic scene and fig out the dep in those they inter and then how thats into your strategy going forward into the game I think that again much like Innovation that we kind of discovered if I played it I played a gria you know a bunch more times like you were saying like I would gain just miles of arishi yeah for sure if you took the cards out of it it wouldn't even be a top 50 game straight up like the cards are such a central part of the game that is our top 50 top 10 and top 50 board games of all time thank you guys so much for watching and spending this year with us happy New Year I I have one to I can flip better than the last time I did it uh if you don't re don't know we have a Discord Channel with a a great community of people talking on there the links in the description head on over and join the conversation if you want to support us you can support us on patreon not necessarily by any means but if you want you'll get some exclusive content there we have a patreon exclusive Discord Chan you can communicate if you just if you're not subscribed hit the Subscribe button join the fun that we have here if you're meeting us for the first time what were you going to add patreon on uh where we're going to be doing our analysis yeah yeah yeah right right right an analysis of all these games that Carlo did one last year that was really well received with like getting into the data and the specifics of some of the games you've seen here so if you want to know more about like just the intricate details of some of the pcks we did check out uh I don't think we fully decided who's going to be in the video but Carlo will 100% because he's spearheaded this his idea um and one maybe both of us will be on camera as well otherwise I just want to take a moment because we don't often speak about our patreon and where those funds go so just a quick thing is like we've used a lot of the money that we've received from patreon so far to do things like buy better equipment whether it's stuff relating to the camera better audio gear for better quality audio you know buying hard drives to store and back up our Mass amounts of b-roll footage that accumulate over the years buying online subscriptions for things like Google Drive so we can send files back and forth and buying a Doby Premiere subscription so we can edit videos like there's so many thing buying games to review on the channel that we can't justify buying with our own money you know for the first few years Dylan you and I together combined like we poured a few thousand of our own personal income into a ycb we've never paid ourselves a single penny so just so you have some idea again if you're if it like we never want anyone to extend themselves if money is tight then don't don't do that just support us spread the word do something else watch our videos whatever um but if you're looking to support the channel in a way that will help us actually improve the quality of the channel and improve hopefully your enjoyment of the channel then supporting us on patreon is the best way but again only if it's within your means and it makes sense for you yeah really good point to to bring up that we yeah that we don't take any of the funds and use them for like personal things like we're not paying ourselves and we haven't in the four years I don't know I don't know when when or if we ever will it all goes back into the channel one way or another and it's funny because the even like it going into games games isn't the thing that by even even the top five that we spent most of the money on like we rarely do that it's it's been like all the other things that we normally have to use our own funds for but then now we can save ourselves that financial burden to able to still better the channel and get things and we're close to getting another camera so that we can maybe start doing playthroughs and all kinds of cool creative stuff so yeah those who have supported us on patreon um thank you so so much it it means the world to us yeah and I wanted to extend just a thank you for tuning in watching like being sharing our content sharing our opinions has been I mean this is my first year doing this has been super enlightening and really fulfilling for me and it's all because of you guys out there so thank you thank you so much Happy New Year see you next time

Channel: All You Can Board

Views: 54,781

Keywords: top board games all time, best board games ever, best board games all time, best board games 2023, best 2023 board games, top 10 board games, top 10 card games, best games all time, best games ever, top 10 games, board games

Id: T-kBBwCrMK4

Length: 77min 28sec (4648 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 30 2023