Top 10 Hottest Board Games: August 2021 - The Best of BGG

this background is different are we we're not in the same room anymore are we in a different place yeah it's scary and new but they're still the same bits of bgg baby [Music] what's up everybody i'm mike i'm nick we are the brother smart fans yet again time to talk about the best things going on on board games yeah the last 30 days or so let's talk about the hotness we're gonna talk about some murph picks some things that we found that were cool a little bit of news just you know going a little over all the month yeah absolutely so let's go ahead and jump into real quick some news going on with board game geek so the first bit of board game geek news is that bgg at c got announced i agree such good branding it's a cruise sea i overexplained the joke bgg at sea in 2022 is happening from july 17th through the 24th going from texas going to four different cities and then returning ideally back to texas uh afterwards it's gonna be a super great time where you're gonna be able to cruise with all your favorite board game friends playing games checking out new cities and things and that's gonna be super exciting to know that like hey things are looking up for next year you can put deposits down right now four rooms and things and they have on the post on the right there on the hero the main part of the board game geek page all sorts of information about room rates and things so do check that out today for next summer next thing we have there's always new games in the geek game shop be sure to check that out and there's also in the board game geek store uh sneak peeks for new bits coming for games including realistic buttons for calico that will replace the cardboard bits these are nice different unique shapes that match the shapes in the game actually have holes in them and i imagine you could really sell them into a shirt if you were in a pinch and that thing is gonna be super cool so i can't wait to see those become fully realized and be available for us to use in our games a bit of news is that candice harris has come out with her latest cardboard creations which is where she interviews different designers in the board gaming hobby and has these really cool in-depth interviews the latest one was for andy and abyss and these interview series are just amazing if you don't know candace watch herself she's incredible she's just the coolest funnest person to talk to about board games she's so enthusiastic about board games and so knowledgeable that it's just so it's just infectious to talk to her she just it really the the love of board games just pours out of her and it comes through in her interview series because she's just so enthusiastic about talking to people about board games it's really really wonderful she's done a bunch of other ones with elizabeth hargrave for wingspan john declared with mystic veil and root as well so there's a whole bunch of these now and please check them out because i really think they're some of the best board game videos out there certainly some of the best interviews out there they're really really wonderful and that's it for the news let's pop down to the table which is right here right now and let's go over the hottest games of the month [Music] wait are we in a different room all of a sudden are we in different clothes is this completely a different day yeah sometimes construction projects don't go as planned yeah your jump cuts don't really work very well but either way number 10 on the hotness is the lost ruins of arnold it is on here it's it's pretty much always on here beyond this list it it's like doing pyramid due parents showed up to this and doing here i feel like show up on the list they're probably on the list for a minute now just because expansions are planned everyone's playing them and they're just great great you know dunes got the movie coming out and things which we'll talk about again chanel but the point is is the last runes of arnock is a really great blend of worker placement deck building there's a lot to explore it's really about being efficient with your resources uh and that's why i think it just keeps satisfying and even mary likes it so that's number 10. so number nine is excavation earth which was excavation earth which is um an interesting kind of uruguay this actually won best euro game of the year at uk games expo which is pretty cool yeah just recently and it's a cool thing where like the earth is like gone but you're from like a different solar system you're different alien races from that solar system basically coming back to earth to excavate and try to find like artifacts yeah which you can like sell the bizarre like put on your ship and it's like this game i hadn't really heard of until i saw it on the hotness a bunch and also i was just like that seems a really i like that these are kind of realistic like we dig down and find like ancient civilizations here and someday you gotta imagine some space faring people might could be like oh it's a hundred percent gonna happen over these primitive creatures they're gonna find cockroaches and um shania twain cds just a bunch of tupperware that's number nine excavation earth is number nine number eight is a game that just started hitting people's hands as cascadia yes from uh flat out games games and aeg it's kind of in the same vein a lot of these games like keystone north america and calico where they're pretty simple games but they're kind of abstracting kind of very puzzly and we actually got a chance to play this because one of our friends backed it it hit his hands he brought it over and i really liked it yeah it's a really cool thing where you're playing down hexes each turn and they have they'll have between like one and three different land types you can put them anywhere and arrange them however you like you ultimately want to make big areas of light yeah kind of like dominant in that way yeah water or whatever it might be and then you're always gonna put a token down this can be paired with this uh with this hex that'll show a different type of animal that animal can go on to any hex that shows that animal on it saying like they they would salmon belong in the water they don't yeah yeah stuff like that so you can kind of uh you're trying to ultimately different types of animals want to be arranged in a certain way they might all want to be in a big group or in a big line or they might not want to be next to each other they might want to there's all these different ways and different versions for each animal there's like four or five different cards so they can all have different rules you play yeah but it's a simple thing of like place your tile place your token that's done that's the entire game and then it leaves the spatial puzzle which is like to you right like calico made by the same folks and stuff where it's like mechanically you can explain in two seconds but it can start to get really kind of gnarly with how more reliant the puzzle's not quite as brutal as calicos but i really liked cascadia a lot it's really good that's why it's number eight number seven showed up here last one that is imperium classic so this is a different standalone game uh in the imperium series uh not doing appearing in the different series but basically where you have uh someone clairvoyant i don't know what that is a standalone game in that series but um this is a game where you have different factions like the the romans or the gauls i think you're one of them and you basically you have completely asymmetric factions you're going head-to-head and this is a game again i haven't really seen i haven't really i don't think we know anybody who has it but i've been reading up on it because we've had to talk about it for the top 10 for the top 10 hotness a couple months now and i really do like these kinds of like each player gets like a faction or a character whether it's like dice thrown or unmatched or something like this and you're kind of going head-to-head i just i used to not like those games very much and i think i've started to come around to them a lot more so this game has become as you keep seeing it like i really want to try this out it looks really cool yeah it looks really nice and so um this game's been popping up and still in the hotness because people are still playing it and talking about it and it just seems really really cool and i really want to try it yeah that's number seven so number six is aliens fate of the nostromo which is a a game by robin's burger which uses the alien uh ivy league games a lot of aliens that ip must have opened up they must have been given out more because yeah you like this one a lot they're getting around but this one is is uh similar to a lot of robin's burger games recently where they're using kind of ips to make fairly approachable games yeah for kind of more of the mass market yeah it's that kind of crosstalk talking about soon yeah where like gamers can definitely get into it because there's enough game there to enjoy but it's definitely using an iep and making a game that's easy to get going into which are we are personally big fans of because they help make board gamers so they have a gargoyles game they have jaws and stuff they have a bunch of different stuff horrified with all the movie monsters all of these games that are showing up in targets and places like that are going to really help maybe hook people in with that ip like oh my gosh i love amazing yeah but they're all players they're all correct at least good games yeah and they make these cool games this one we haven't tried yet but what we've heard is that it's meant to be approachable easy to get into uh and kind of really fun using you know a familiar cast of characters and stuff which is a good move for creating boring gamers so says these two i've never seen alien god i've never seen anyone i'll say this alien's overrated boom don't find me chat don't fight me it's just one dude's opinion and it's probably wrong i've never seen it never had much interest but that's okay but that is aliens the fate of the nostromo we talked about it earlier number five is no i'm not mentioning it we're not talking about it dune imperium is over oh it's over now no it's not oh no it's not over at all it's still on here and it's still really high uh yeah dude imperium we've talked about every month now for a couple months now it's just it's just kind of like lost rooms that aren't these two every single time are just hitting the hitting the they have that deck building work replacement combination of people just they're the two games that everyone compares to so they're always mentioned together yeah they're not similar at all for whatever you can tell you play them both they're not they're i don't see the like the the complete overlap but there is worker placement deck building both kind of 50 50 important yeah which is great yeah i really still really want to play i mean it's still hot hot hot people are pumped both have been fueled by uh announcements of uh expansions already that are coming up like quickly i mean yeah this is one of those games that i mean really i think is going to be a hit for a while i think you know it's usually every every year there's always like you know tons of games come out sometimes they're kind of a flash in the pan sometimes they kind of live on some are like okay this game is going to be around for a while i really think dude and imperium and lost wings are narco ones are gonna be around for a while just because you can already see like a lot of times after a month or so some games kind of go off the radar so these two are just yes in the cycle these two are just continuing continue on doing appearance number five because it's it's probably gonna be your next month yeah just get ready so number four is uh the next in the series of horrifying talk about this earlier yeah another roster american i'm really excited because we both love horrifying and horrifying again talking about robinsburg are making really good approachable games it's like i win a horrified thing and i was like this game is not going to be good that was really super solid i like it a lot and and the american monsters so not to plug anything but i'm on a podcast that's about like cryptids you've talked about most of the almost every single one of the characters in this horrified game we've talked about in our podcast so i'm just like this is like perfect made for death by monsters because like it's just bigfoot chupacabra jersey devil also we've covered all these things so much like classics and like what a cool version of that game i'm sad you can't combine them i understand why it's a completely standalone version of horrified so it's cooperative still and i think it'll probably be similar to what you're doing but there will be different monsters monsters that you're fighting they'll have their own always very location specific yeah so you can't bring in bigfoot you can't take the jersey devil to like yeah hospital it's like why it didn't matter so i i get that it would be cool if they made them crossbow but i understand why they can't but i'm really excited for this version of horrified because i like horrified and i really like kind of like american cryptids like this yeah so i hope to see more you know expand on different regions in there yeah it's like man just go through more folklore like this it's super cool to pick from you have a bajillion episodes every podcast should check out the monsters check it out you can get some new people for your next uh standalone game there you go number three is gonna be announced by nick and it is punk yeah i felt like i couldn't remember who's doing that no i just took it this one's all loose um yeah so again hit people hand people's hands this is the last of the trilogy between blood rage rising sun and now ankh uh this one is based in like egypt i actually don't know much about this game because it's just it's not really our kind of game it's a game like all looks like the production oh of course the middies are are absolutely incredible and they had uh angel geraldes did all the painting for it for the historic campaign and if you like mini painting follow along over all this he's incredible um it they look really good but this is one of those kind of big eric lane games in that series and again it's hitting people's hands again people have boxes up to the ceiling a lot of pictures coming out a lot of pictures people are just talking about people are asking questions at the forum so yeah it's just up in the hotness right now because it's on people's minds because they're getting and playing it and it's nice because um you know people are able to get together a little bit more than they used to so it's just like people this is kind of a game where you probably want it's kind of the perfect time for you exactly so so it's really cool and i would like to try it kind of like rising sun i don't think i'll like very much but i do want to try it at least once of course same with ank i'd like to try it i don't know if we know anybody who has it but hopefully we do because i would enjoy it do you do we know you and you have it do we know you yeah hit us up in the meantime we'll go to number two so number two is aridia the past we dare tread so this is a big game on kickstarter now that people are super hyped about people this is a big cooperative like open world fantasy game and they consider it's a legacy game but they consider it like what they call a green legacy because what you can't say against legacy games is they're not very environmentally friendly because you play them and you just throw them away afterwards right you can't really reset them but this one you actually can reset them you're opening up boxes you're opening up envelopes all stuff but they have in a way where you can reset it so you can play through it again if you want to or you can then pass it to the next person and they can play through a totally playable game it's not it's it's in a way where you can reset the whole thing and play through again which i think is a really cool idea yeah i think it's a beautiful thing for the company themselves to say like hey rather than throw this away like i'd rather you just give this to someone else which makes them no more money yeah but it does kind of satisfy that initiative of like let's find a way to be a little bit make sure we're doing this yeah of course and the game itself means is a really big again like open world game i know people a lot of people like on our channel that are super super pumped about i know i know it's really expensive but i i've heard it's it seems really cool role playing elements in combat and all the kind of things you're expecting kind of like fantastical you know exploration adventure games yeah yeah it seems cool and so um yeah let us know down in the comments if you're interested let us know so number one is the game that is just i feel like a little controversial a little controversial but has been talked about autumn and his descent legends of the dark the new edition of descent yeah but it's gonna be addition it's confusing it doesn't really seem like a new idea the point is if it's a new edition or not the people are talking about it and that's why it's on the hotness so yeah so this is uh whether it's it's 3.0 or it's just in that 1.5 yeah something there but this is a descent game and uh it is very very much run by an app even much more so than a lot of like fantasy fight games like durian's middle earth which we really like this game is really really run by a map run by an app rather and then you have a physical map and then a bunch of three terrain i do say the 3d terrain is pretty darn cool but this game is oh it's got very very mixed reviews kind of all over the place and so it's been uh but it is being talked about a lot so it's at the top of the hotness because it has been at the top of the hotness for weeks and weeks and weeks so um it's it's an interesting we haven't played descent i've always been more interested in imperial assault than dissent personally yeah just so uh but yeah so it's like it's this this game and again it's it seems uh a very app heading which i'm not yeah it's just a big as a whole but yeah which is a big thing piece and i think like a big piece of uh the cost and stuff in this game has been from the app development which is which is fair i mean it's enormous so what we always do with the very end of the hottest is talk about the most played games on bg now this is people who have logged their plays you can actually check every month what games are most played this is a quick list we always do because a lot of the games are kind of the same because people play a lot of the same ones that are more likely there's someone that show up on here every single yeah winning at school is number 10 is fantasy realms which had four 4 566 weird way of saying that dang plays it was running that spiel nominee that spiel is on that shield momentum yeah next up we had splendor which had uh 4701 plays again quick game it's easy to get a bunch of those quick azul still infinitely plays it 5202 that's the one that you can definitely play multiple times for sure for a few years you think it wouldn't but it's still around that's what i was saying seven wonders duel was played uh uh 5268 times again said motors dual pops here a lot quicker game two players people can play it a lot right lost runes of arnock is on the list at 59.48 which is impressive because that's not the quickest game there's an even more impressive one coming up though magic the gathering has 6297 again probably a little more this is just our caveats always that magic's always probably the most but like the vlog plays here uh next one is terraforming mars at 7 000 three plays and i'm like that's a lot of terraforming yeah your thoughts about this i'm curious if any of those people are logging their digital plays of it because i don't mind logging digital plays personally and that's a personal thing for me sure because if you put on the app you can play it a lot quicker yeah even still within that it's long but it's impressive then we had wingspan which is 8068 wingspan's usually on here we have uh marvel champions of course at nine six and nine i will say and then the number one as always is the crew because people can play it a bunch of times in a row which is 13 506. now usually marvel champions and the crew are really really close and they're always like 5 000 above the rest but this time marvel champs is only 1600 above yeah third place and then the crew is where it usually is yeah so yeah i guess for whatever reason this month people weren't playing marvel champions they're spreading it around a little bit yeah you know spreading it around a little bit but that's the 10 most played games in terms of bgg and what folks log so of course it's not a perfect yeah of course but it's always interesting to look at right yeah things like fantasy realms pop up i'm like wow okay good for a fantasy realm guess the should be it's like the oscars you know yeah it's like those movies get some heat and get some heat going right there so let's go ahead and kick it back to definitely not a different day and talk about some murph picks my mr pick is something i feel like we can all relate to and that is trying to get out of a game that you do not want to play sometimes someone suggested gaming you're just like nope nope not doing that and this user l smear has a whole bunch of bad puns that they've used to get out of board games they say that they're super picky about board games a lot of times they don't want to have to say no so they come up with a bad pun to get out of a game and kind of soften that blow so we're going to go through a couple of them scrabble ugh it feels like i'm having a vowel movement in front of the elevators let me level with you man this game has too many ups and downs coffee roasters that game is a grind hive sorry that game bugs me arboretum no just leaf that on the shelf alchemists i have bad chemistry with that game seriously there's like 125 of these and i really should go through and they're all groan worthy in the best possible way that only puns can be you know if they're really really fun so my murph pick is just a funny interaction that someone related on board game geek where they talked about going to a post office to ship out a game overseas and it kind of led to that inevitable conversation when you're encountering someone in the wild a muggle as it were who doesn't quite know like how board games have evolved so i think it's really cool and it went a little bit something like this all right here it is uh what's inside oh it's a game like a video game no a board game what's that it's like a kids game it's like a toy no like a monopoly game oh okay i see why didn't you just say that in the beginning okay so those are some murph picks and now it is time to wrap it up so what i want to know from you is what's the ultimate murph what's the ultimate merc pick what's the best game you played last month new or old my favorite game that i played this month was a new game to us and that was for gardens by arcane wonders this is this really cool game where you're building out these panoramas these really pretty pictures and it's got this big old 3d pagoda that has resources on it and uh you're playing these cards and you're gathering resources from pagodas like stone grass water and wood and the different sizes of pagoda have different amounts of those resources and you can actually spin the pagoda which will then change how much how many of each resource are there and it's this really cool really thinky puzzle that's based it's kind of like that same a game that's kind of popular right now of like simple games but like really tough mental puzzles just because you have to like rotate things in the right way to get what you need getting the reason it's really really fun and i i was very surprised how much i liked it i left that game being like whoa i really want to play that again yeah my favorite was uh goonies never say you do love the goonies mike grew up in the background i grew up on the goonies i was like a couple years too late yeah and so like for me it was very central to my childhood uh wanting to be like an adventurous kid and like there's no parents around we're gonna discover a cave there are no caves in sacramento california no unfortunately just swamp land but in this game you're going through the ultimately the story of the goonies in different kind of chapters and we played it with nikki and lincoln from board game geek you can see uh we did it live and then i think they made it an episode uh right here on boardgamegeek's channel and uh it's really cool because it's kind of a one versus all in a way game where you have different people playing the the various goonie characters then you have someone who's kind of the the gm the yeah the goon docks master they call it and they kind of are representing the baddies that are moving around and they're revealing story elements as you kind of explore different rooms of these caves and things kind of story elements go so there's this whole narrative drive to it i thought was really fun and it's a familiar story because like a lot of people did grow up with the games this is another game that's like built off of the nostalgia but one of these kind of mass market games that actually is really fun and has some interesting choices to be made and really pushes you to be to work cooperatively um and so that's something i'm like this is great because this is probably going to make board gamers it was really fun for me on the gm side because the the booklet really helps carry you along you don't have to like role play necessarily you can kind of follow the prompts given so that's not it's not overwhelming as the kind of like the one that's versus all players so it was really cool it was really cool really great production so goonies never say die was my pick for this month so what was your favorite game of the month was the best game you played your favorite game most memorable experience put it down in the comments below and i think that's it for this month or so that is going to be that was the news a little bit of hotness that kind of stuff a little bit of everything like that we will see you next month and until then i've been mike i'm nick and we'll see you in the next one everybody bye everybody

Channel: BoardGameGeek

Views: 12,768

Keywords: linktousergallery, GeekUsername:heccubus, other, board game

Id: fKEnuKGR9q4

Length: 22min 35sec (1355 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021