Top 100 Games of all Time (50-41)

[Music] tom vassell's top 100 games of all time [Music] good afternoon everybody my name is tom vassell i'm roy kennedy i'm mike d'alessio i am z garcia all right we are now in the is it bottom or top i can never remember come on we just did this it's the top of the list top of the list of acceptable games i get that but if we're in the top of the list and something is let's say i talk about 50 compared to 80 is 80 ranked higher or lower lower and i tell you hey i'm going to lower the temperature if you're dragging it up on your reminders out there you know what that's why i don't ask questions hi folks we're going through our top 100 games of all time we are starting here at 50 and going to 41 so let's just jump right into it with a crossover i have with mr roy candiday wait and that is the number first the 50 number room 50 number playing in the meantime all right no uh this is sheriff of nottingham been on my this is the seventh straight year it's been on my list i love this game it is the pinnacle of all the games that was in the dice tower essential line although it is now produced by come on instead in a new edition which you can look at and see um yeah z said he likes playing it with us guys and i would say that most of the games that played a bit have involved z in some way although i played at conventions a decent amount too this one just tickles my fancy it had it gives you a little bit of role playing a lot of bluffing and just general silliness i think it's fun sheriff not again number 50. awesome my number 50 is a game that i know has already been s talked about uh i think it was with the people um but this is an app-assisted game called chronicles of crime i really enjoy chronicles of crime i love the way that everything comes together in this game and the way that like the app like makes the game like get out of the way mechanically so it's extremely easy to jump in and just start exploring you're it's super simple the app you just scan different qr codes you want to talk to this person about this item you scan the item and you scan the person you want to look around a room you're looking in the app you just pull out the different cards that match those then you can scan those with different people and see how people react you want to take this to the dog and have them go sniff i'm just saying the whole series of chronicles of crime for this even though i had the main game here i definitely liked the main game a whole lot just because that solid just straight original crime theme i really want to play the um basically the uh steampunk version not steampunk but cyberpunk version of this but of course that's not quite ready yet but um sci-fi like the futuristic one you mean right yeah it's like steampunk like technological ai sort of stuff going on so i'm really cyberpunk that's steampunk that would be i know i corrected myself a little bit but um i i'm actually most pumped about the 1920s version that one looks really cool oh nice they all look good would you play this solitaire or with other people i've actually played it with my wife the most so and she actually enjoys this game a lot too um it's just one of those games that you can just immediately jump into without doing rules and and that's pretty fun yeah that's something yeah for sure all right my number 50. hey z you know what animal is severely underrepresented in board games i do indeed why don't you tell them right last time my number 50 is takanoko this is a game that has been around for quite a while but boy i just think this is such a delightful family weight game uh the theme is really really cute it makes sense you've got these tiles that you're placing then you're moving the gardener around to grow bamboo these really cool wooden pieces i actually have the giant edition i like it so much but nobody owns that i do i may even i may even have the giant edition of the chibis expansion you do i do that's right baby bamboo is about as big as actual bamboo anyway it's just a really cute game you're moving a gardener around to grow bamboo pieces and then you're moving the uh panda around to eat those bamboo pieces that you're then using to fulfill contracts and you're it's a very simple game very lightweight game but it is just very cute very adorable and it's one that i've had a lot of luck playing with people that don't play a lot of modern board games it's it's simple enough but it still has some decision making there's a fair amount of luck in the game but doesn't bother me i really really still like takanoko quite a bit what made you get the big version of it because i i figured that this would be a game that if i actually had now since i bought it i was living in a big house when i bought it and i thought oh this will be a nice kind of showpiece game you can almost leave it out because it looks so pretty um and then i sense downsized quite a bit so now i have this gigantic box that barely gets used but um i just i don't know i figured this would be like one of those splurges so yeah i don't get a plate as much as i'd like to but maybe yeah maybe we need to uh bring it in for because that would look good on camera the big the big game yeah in the library yeah old news mike old news my number 50 uh is a crossover i think tom mentioned it forget because you or the people anyway my number 50 is dixit another party game on my list once that one that's been on my list for a long time and i just love the the beauty of this one the simplicity i this is the one that began for me those party games that verge on vague communication right it's now it's since i think become a thing and i wallet well i think dixit doesn't get nearly as much credit as say love letter does for micro games and you know obviously uh dominion for for um deck building i think dixit began something this idea of how to straddle the line between being too specific and too obtuse there are so many games like that now a lot of party games yet dixit the fact that the turns the the you know what you are doing what you are trying to get across is so clean and simple means i can bring it to the table with just about anybody there's been a bunch of expansions for it lots of artwork [Music] lots of beauty there if you want to you know collect something that is simply beautiful and so dixit is uh still on my list number 50 for me actually dixit was not on my list it is the it was the highest ranked game it was 37 last year that fell off my list and and and i still love it a lot the main reason is detective club yeah okay gives me a very similar feel um but i still like it it's probably well technically to my 101 position but i believe i've already used that excuse so 102 is what i meant yeah it was my 87. oh okay okay roy are you actually matching with roy all right i don't know that meant all right my number or the people's choice number 50 was actually 50 for them last year two two years in a row it's been on the list and that is welcome to so welcome to which has a lot of uh it's another flip and right game it has a lot of little maps for it they just had a sequel come out i think welcome to las vegas which is not seem to be getting too much love the the feelings i'm hearing from that is it's a little more convoluted than the base game it is it is that's what i would say but welcome to it's it's a it takes the idea of flipping cards and filling in a grid you know it's that similar style thing and actually adds i think the theme fits it to something you're trying to put the buildings in yeah i guess so yeah i thought it the whole fencing the different houses into groups it seems a little weird and uh i actually would say that the vegas theme is a better theme what's happening in that one i think is a better theme but yes there are a ton of little fiddly rules in it so you you know you win some you lose some yeah oh either way i'm pretty happy with welcome to as it is and like i said if i would get bored with it i believe there's six or five or six different maps with slightly different rules yeah there's a zombie one there's like different themes so plenty of stuff to do so welcome to your number 50. okay my number 49 this is the second year it's been on the list last year it was 94 huh i didn't realize that palindrome um but anyhow this is a game i i play with my favorite player in the world sprawpolis um oh you can play solo wow [Laughter] no that's not true i can't the other guy but uh sporopolis i it doesn't look that great it's okay it's in the in those pocket games which i've found that most of them i find okay at best but spiropolis is a little puzzle that i'll sit there and play over and over and over and over again and i'm really pumped about the the new one that's coming out what's it called yeah whatever and then combine opolis where you can combine the two of them and i'm gonna play that it's entertaining this is the only pure solo game on my list because i do tend to prefer to play with other people um but it's so good i stuck it on a list and uh you can give me grief about it well you did last year already so well i mean i'm i'm not going to give you grief i'm just shocked it's this high i think it's a really really good solo game i'm impressed that you like it enough to put it this high on your list to me it's all about those different scoring the fact there's so many different scoring combination makes it such a replayable game it's really solid thank you mike he said no it's a good choice my 49 is a area control game with all these crazy alien mutant bug things and you're fighting over and gaining crystals and spinning them to put more of those creatures out and that is nexus ops nexus obviously fun game that's just it seems extremely like streamlined and easy to get into and play as you're upgrading and rolling dice for different things and i really enjoy the way it works you're trying to fulfill different objectives to gain victory points or you can try to run to the middle and gain victory points by being there but of course everybody else is fighting over those spaces um i always had the um the the translucent plastic version of this um fancy flight also came out another version as well um but yeah this is an extremely enjoyable game that i feel like probably a lot of people haven't played as it's a little bit older now but i really enjoyed it just for how easy was in to get into and easy to get to the table and that is nexus ops my 49. isn't this a little mind-boggling that this is at a print i know it's unbelievable to me because it was out i mean this was what maybe early 2000s tom the original sure avalon hill did it something like that yeah reprinted it now it's just gone how is how is this not on kickstarter right now you know what i mean this is as it has kickstarter written all over it it's good oh yeah with more miniatures and here's the thing the game itself is a light you know monsters on a map fighting game there's almost none of those that and almost none are this simple this is definitely one every year i think about putting at my top 100 because i still really like it and it forces you to attack which is a good a good thing for these kind of games yeah that's good i have not played it sounds like i need to put it on the list nexus my number 49 is what i would consider to be a party game it's really a pure bluffing game the game is skull skull is it could not be any simpler basically you can if they're drink coasters and on one side on the backside they either have roses or you've got one skull and you hand the drink coasters to everybody you can teach the game in three minutes basically the idea is you're placing down one of these coasters in front of you face down either it's a rose or a skull and it keeps going around the table until somebody finally says all right i'm going to make a bid i say that i can turn over four roses without hitting a skull you have to start with your own someone could then outbid you and you keep going until somebody stops and says all right no i'm not going to say bigger than six you start with yours and then you can start picking other people flip it over flip it over it's really one of those games where you look around the table and there's a sense of paranoia it always always always ends up in laughter you don't have to think too much you can just have a good time with the people that you're sitting around the table with uh i like games that take a mechanism and distill it down to its purest essence i don't know if you can get bluffing maybe even simpler than liar's dicey i don't know they're both about that same level well this is much simpler than livestock yeah right so yeah so to me that's what i like about it is that it is the essence of bluffing there's almost nothing else to it so that's my number 49. this is so simple that it's one of those games that gives you absolutely no idea how it's going to go from just writing the rule right it's true right right i agree it sounds like a bad game you read the rules and you go there's no game like this they don't have enough rules for this to qualify as a game almost right and then you play it oh i get it it's just not on the paper yeah yeah yeah i like it mike but for me i i don't know that i would ever pick it over liar's dice or or or even i don't know if coyotes in the same category but flyers dice up i just i like the rolling of the dice in hiding him because yeah i like the idea that when liar's nice i'm bluffing and i just might have rolled four ones you can't be quite sure yeah yeah i get that i get that it's fine but yeah yeah you you are pretty sure but maybe not like take your cup and look under it i'm sure i'll be cheating liars dice is a fine game as well i've just had a lot of really good sessions of skull that's why it's on my list nice my number 49 is a game called detective city of angels a big sprawling whodunit style game with one player running the [Music] sort of the game really i mean it's all it's the closest to a a dm in a non-role-playing game than ever that i've ever seen you are each detectives you're out there trying to solve a mystery of murder and you travel around the city you question different people you then as you are questioning them as you take that action this player running the game will give you back a response on your query they might be giving you the most useful response they might not they might be holding something back and it's up to you to suss out whether you know you are getting the best you can you push them on it you force them using your you know your your tokens your strength to give you a better response back but you gotta be careful you better be sure because if you push them and you're already getting the best response they've got some leverage on you because you used unnecessary force kind of like when i took tom's cup and looked under it for those once it happens a lot it happens it does happen um i think again i haven't looked at my old list but i think this dropped a chunk for me tom it was a 17 last year yeah so it dropped to 49 i i'm fairly certain i can i can uh attribute that to the game being hard to get going this is much like robinson crusoe a game that if you put down for a while is going to take some time to sort of get back up to speed again and ready to play the positive to that z is only the chisel really has to put a lot of effort into that true everyone else does not have to remember the chisel will kind of be like you can do this or this you're like oh yeah true true but it is sort of a bit of heavy lifting before you get going in the chat mr dreadful paid to say it's detective hero quest it's detective gear request i'm not i'm not saying he's right i just said what he said all right let's jump to the the people's 49 this is the only one in the this chunk of 10 that's been on their list since the very beginning it debuted at three it's at 49 now but it is one of the few heavy euro games that z and many other people who don't like heavy euro games like and that's power grid uh i like that garbage no the garbage is one of the resources but uh and you do like the garbage it's a good because no one else does garbage that's right so i can buy it and hoard it yeah that's right i watch an episode of hoarders and i'm like they could power three power plants for that house if you if you bid on the 14 you could power that for two rounds uh this game is not new cult of the new obviously it's been out for well over 10 years but it's it's what we can call a classic design that no other game has really like we talk a lot about this game has replaced this game i can't think of anything that's replaced power grid the fact that the theme also is so unique like if anyone else tried to have a game about powering cities you'd be like power grid like it's two on the nose yeah you know yeah no one gets away with that you cannot get away with a game about powering cities i'm sorry you're gonna get compared to power grid the first minute so there's that also all right well there's your number 49 folks power grid all righty in this chunk of 10 this is the only one for me that's been on for 16 years straight in fact it's the only one that's been on the list for more than eight years but it's been there since the very beginning and it's jumped all over it's been as high as 39 i guess and as low as 89 so it's always floating in there anyway this is this is my game i championed that i would love to see reprint it and that is domain from uh claus toyber this is the is not his famous game that's katan but domain one of the things that this game does that almost i've never seen any other game do is you're playing a card or you're you know you're discounting a card to get money or you're paying money to play the cards but when you pick up a card you can pick up a card to someone else discard it and this is a straight up in your face interactive area control you are 100 trying to stab everybody else in this game you are growing your little kingdoms and it is a mean mean game there's even a card that lets you make peace with someone else and when that's played it feels super mean because what will happen is me and z will be battling back and forth i'll push into his land area and then i'll be like and now we're at peace right you know and you can never attack me again yeah yeah that's great i like this game and i really wish someone would reprint it it also if you saw it you would not think it came out in the it's either i think it's 2000 it came out because it looks really good good plastic pieces um back in the day it was the one game mayfair had and you're like this isn't your game this is some other company's game that's how good it looked oh man oh like mayfair is gone they're not going to get mad all right you're right so my 48 is also about uh combat and in this game there are five different armies that are battling even though it's normally a two-player game and as battle of the five armies but um this is a a basically a riff on the war of the ring system you're rolling dice and using those dice for actions to manipulate different stuff you can either be the forces of good and trying to like hold off and as different heroes come in you get different characters bilbo comes in and then you get the eagles and then bjorn comes in and once bjorn comes in it's it's over for all the orcs and goblins because they're just gonna run over everybody and trample them but they're trying to take out and and basically take um the mountain before before all that stuff happens um the combat in this is kind of interesting the way it works there's a whole lot of different like back and forth with like triggers on terrain types and things like that which i feel like in some ways makes it a little bit more harder to get into than wore the ring for me but i do really enjoy the way that this plays out and it's my all-time favorite theme which is lord of the rings i love that ip and it's just a a lot of fun to play with these characters in this battle of the five armies world and that is my 48. i like it better than war of the ring don't you all agree i agree roy do you have you played either of these [Laughter] all i know is as you were speaking i was like this game rings a bell come on now come on let's get things under control all right there's a dad quotient well yeah exactly my number 48 is about as heavy that i can take a euro but i love the theme and i this game even though it makes my head explode it's a really good game and that is tricarion uh tricharion is themed around being magicians and it's essentially a worker placement game and it is a really really tight design where you feel like every single decision you make matters one of the reasons why i think this game kind of makes my head melt is that it's much more strategic than it is tactical and i'm more of a tactical gamer but in tricarion you're having to plan three four five turns ahead and that just makes my brain melt but i love the process i love the mechanics of the game i like the idea of everything you're doing makes some thematic sense you're going to get uh materials to build your tricks because you're kind of building these elaborate magic tricks and your gate you're hiring assistants or or people to kind of help you behind the scenes and then finally you're doing all this so that you can go and put on a big performance and that's where you're gonna ultimately hopefully gain your points it looks gorgeous it's an amazing production but it's uh it's a brain burner at least for me i can speak for myself this is about as heavy as i can go uh but uh but boy is it a satisfying experience every time i do get a chance to play tricarion is not one i played i don't think i would lie you you you uh would remember having played it because yeah yeah one of the first times you fell asleep in the middle of a game i know i know i haven't played for sure but uh thomas real wrong here real wrong it's not boring i don't like that team you know i just don't like that magician theme really i love that because there's so many actual mage games the illusionist game is more interesting than me yeah i like me i love the theme i love the theme here hey uh mike what what animal would you say is particularly underrepresented in board games today uh platypus true but also sheep what is wrong with you yeah what is it why where are the sheep games where are the sheep games and especially when you couple them with thieves this game is called sheep and thief and uh mike in in much earlier in the top 100 year mentioned how um paper tales was his go-to sort of filler drafting game right mike well sheep and thief is my go-to filler drafting game partly because i think paper tales is a little bit more going on than that i would feel comfortable calling it filler you know what i mean but sheep and thief is just a lovely game now the original edition was interesting had an interesting production you know it's been since reprinted in a very very nice addition but the gameplay is so straightforward you are doing the the most obvious thing you can think of when it comes to drafting take a card pass the rest do that and then you play four or so of these on the table trying to create little paths from the opening city to a couple of corners that give you points for getting to those cities now yes along the way you're collecting little sheep you're avoiding a wolf prowling moving around trying to kind of take them but the game is just incredibly smooth it's a short it's punchy it's very cute the new edition especially is covered in this adorable app-esque artwork you know and i just always have a good time with this one every time i um you know if i'm at a loss for something to play with someone and i want to show them something new it's likely they haven't played it and it's likely they're going to enjoy it so what are you running into though with that problem give this big collection of games behind you they're like i've seen it show me something new come on like half the games behind you would work in that situation no i mean sheep and thief is definitely it i was saying the bucket of games most people haven't played then i but i would say that's a good chunk of your collection right you are a condescending jerk look i wasn't even trying to be jerky let me try it again try it again all right dork so far so good the original the original version of this game is this the one that had the little puff balls as the sheep that's correct yes for your farm or your you know your land yeah the new one is much better of course okay yeah i really like this if you have not played guys it's very light but it's on my left i wrote it down you'll like it alrighty well the next game for the people's choice 48 has only been on the list for nine years that's because this is the 10th year of it being out and if it does not get a 10 year anniversary edition this year then yellow is just not trying anymore and that is king of tokyo this was as high as two in fact it was two twice in a row then three it's dropped a little bit but it came out 2011. now it's 20 21. a big box edition with monsters that are 3d miniatures with three new monsters with new power cards come on i i could design the whole thing for you mr garfield uh it's it they they gotta announce it this year am i wrong is it gonna happen i feel like it's gotta happen i don't think it's gonna happen they just had the dark edition come out what a year ago it's not gonna happen ah it just seems like money on the table but anyway king of tokyo very popular game people love it we have we have a deluxe edition in the library we put in a side box that roy post pasted up the sides of it has every monster there's all these monsters that are out for it it has the king of new york stuff in it ah what about the iron rook tom what if someone wanted to get the iron rook i mean they'd be out of luck wouldn't they thanks thanks mr softball so you can get the iron brook a king of tokyo monster on the dice our kickstarter right now hey where would i go to find out about this uh kickstarter tom dice tacticstar.com now stop it you're making me look bad all right awesome all right 47 is brand new to my list this year and it is definitely the game that knocked tainted grail down the list a bit and that is ether fields ether fields from awaken realms i really enjoy this game uh now i said that sprawles is the only game unless it's purely solo but i would argue that ether fields i played more solo ether fields than almost any other game ever uh i played a bit with i played a bit with you three and then i played another game with mike and roy but the rest of time i played by myself now i like playing with other people but it plays so fast and here's where i'm gonna agree with mike and disagree with whoever was arguing mike either fields has an official variant coming out soon that's going to change the game at least the grinding part of the game right if that comes out i've actually delayed playing it till that variant comes out i think it could shoot up even higher on my list what are you talking about now but like an expansion no no no no on how to play the game so you go through these you were with us you went through these big dreams and then these dreams there's these little slumbers and these little slumbers after a while i'm like all right i've seen them i don't want to keep doing them over and over again i just want to do the big dreams where they're gonna have a way to fast track those slumbers and i'm all on this update you mean yeah basically yeah yeah but here's the thing i don't even care that's how much i like this game now when comparing with tainted grill and i think they're reasonable games to compare they're both big story cooperative adventures tenant grill has better writing and a very unique theme but ether fields has a theme i enjoy more because every time i go in a dream it's a different scenario and the mechanisms of the deck and playing cards and pushing your luck i really love it i think it's fantastic this one is extremely fun for me yeah i i agree with you on that tom i like the mechanisms better it has not gone you know on my list yet because i haven't played it as much as you and part of the reason why is that i am going to probably play it in that condensed you know cut out some of that grind um you know should it have been there beforehand maybe but i don't care i enjoy it yeah i don't really care you know you you could make the argument well that you know they they should have the right rules at the beginning and that's reasonable but they didn't and it isn't so i won't so i can and i will that's the only time you've ever called me reasonable i think my number 47 is a pressure luck game um with gold in it okay sorry i'm gonna stop that um it is ink and gold oh okay okay or dmont however you want to call it i've never played that version but i played the inking gold version and this is a game that's super simple where you have two choices are you keeping on going or are you going back to camp if you run into two different danger things and you have kept on going you lose all the stuff you found so far but if you go back to camp you split whatever's on the path behind and you get to keep your stuff but if you keep on going you split with and you find treasure you split it with whoever's still there that's like the entire game but this game is a blast to play because you just want to keep going like one step further one step further and there's that annoying other guy that's like no no leave me in here by myself so i can collect all the treasure i'm too scared to keep on going um and you just have you and that one other guy that are just like leaving so i can get the treasure it's like oh well now i'm gonna stop you go ahead and then he he he flips it over oh it's more treasure he's loaded and then he just keeps going one more time and then runs into a monster and that's tom vassell and he loses them it was tom that was definitely definitely everything you said is correct i i agree but yeah this is just a super simple game and super easy to play and i really enjoy ink and gold and uh it's a game that people should definitely try out yeah it's a lot of fun and it's one of those games where i always have to look at the deck afterwards and go there have to be more peril cards in here because every time you seem like there's like feels like there's 15 peril cards in there and there's not each time one hits you one comes out of the deck so it's less likely to come up and then you're like well i know there's only two of those now so that one's kind of safe and then no no that's not never the way it works out no never true true my 47 is an auction game by who is in my estimation the master of the auction games dr reiner kenicia this is the kind of the board game version the big version of a game i had earlier on my list this is raw to me i think this is maybe probably what i think is the best pure auction game but what makes it so great is that on top of having a really nice closed economy auction you've also got some set collection and it this is a game that feels like it should be a dry euro but it is never a dry euro experience it's always a game that has people kind of like throwing stuff down on the table they're wanting to chant raw it is just so it's a very dynamic game i guess that's that's the word i would use is it really ramps up tension as you're playing the game and as the raw marker gets closer you can just palpably feel it and so a game that looks like it should be kind of boring and dry and early it's not it's a lot of fun it is just i feel like this is streamlined down to the the core essence of what a good auction game is with some wonderful pusher luck in in in it as well so i just love i love raw love it love it love it you like the negative tiles in it i know some of the later versions or spins on it removed the negative tiles no i think you need to keep the negative tiles in there and pull you back kind of like they're bad if they're part of the pool if you win them they're bad for you yeah i think it adds another level of decision making i don't see why you take that decision making out i think it could be a few less of the negative times maybe sure i mean if you want to change the distribution i mean sure if you want to argue against you know a doctor of mathematics you go ahead and do that i argue against rhonda kenitsia all the time mike i know no in all seriousness yeah i don't know they don't bother me but if you wanted to take them out or remove it it's well didn't they do that because there have been rifts on this game like razia that i don't think had those yeah yeah they're right it doesn't have published this last i mean this has gone is it flying man have it no you remember that you remember the wind writer won the thing here yeah the fantasy flight where they reprinted blue moon city and raw and uh i think even tigers and you're fine well that guy folded into z man yeah okay it did not reprint blue moon city by the way down when ray raw uh come on come on replenish my number 47 is a game i was not sure i was going to like as much as i like i should say when i first played it but i think it's absolutely one of my favorite euro style games this is manhattan project energy empire energy empire is in my opinion the absolute best of the three uh manhattan project games technically there's four there's a card game in there too this one has all these sort of different things going on you're trying to protect your environment drilling for oil but maintaining a balance with that you are going to be drafting a dice or be given dice depending on what you do to generate energy you are deploying workers to do some action selections and work replacement but then you're also putting workers out in front of you to trigger your own specific buildings all of these things which are fairly typical except for maybe the dice energy thing but they come together into such a fun and engaging lively game a game that immediately you've got goals things you want to accomplish you've got tension no matter what player count you're going with you've got decisions as to kind of much much like power grid do i want to go with these nuclear dice do i want to go with these other dice that are a little more reliable you know they have a more even distribution of energy i love it man this is such a fun game uh it's engaging it's interesting cool theme and uh yeah i just always have a good time with energy empire so my 47 manhattan project energy empire yeah solid pick i like this game a lot see is this the first time it's been on your list i doubt it because it's not showing it here earlier gosh i really would doubt that yeah okay uh number 47 for the people was actually 56 last year 94 the year before that so it keeps moving up z showing it directly behind his head and that is dinosaur island actually mark me on the big board mark me on the big board yeah dinosaur island i mean we knew this was popular because you can you see that how well dinosaur world did which was the sequel to this and even their little game rar and right um but uh yeah it's just a very popular game this is one that i considered for my top 100 because i really do enjoy it um and i think they did a really good job at bringing the theme theme to life in it so this is a theme you like a lot tom too i know you do i do like dinosaurs and yeah we're definitely in a dinosaur heavy release now of board games and i'm okay with that i'm okay with that i'm still waiting for a game that combines gardening with dinosaurs there can be more than one there is one isn't that topiary topiary yeah okay my number 46 this is the fifth year it's been on the list this is one of the games that i champion all the time and uh whenever i go to convention i teach people that people say they like it but it's out of print so i don't think it'll ever come back in but it is the definitive of another mechanism i like and that's does a game have a grid that i'm on board and this is the grittiest of grids and that's adventureland from haba as opposed to the grittiest of grits yeah delicious is that the tagline yeah no it is should be all right now normally normally when a game comes with if if there's a multiple games in the same box i tend to think that's a bad idea but adventureland has three different games in the box and they all work although technically they're all just different ways to score the the main game with some also maybe some minor rules differences but they all give a very different feel and if you find the somewhat difficult to get expansion they even add a cooperative variant in there ah man i just i really like this game and i think it scales well too so adventureland i know that this is not a common pick you won't find us in the people's choice anywhere kramer and kiesling i like it a lot all right speaking of backstabbing and betrayal i don't think anybody was but this is a area control game called game of thrones this is a game where you're trying to yes second edition i haven't played the first edition version but i really enjoy this game you're basically trying to spread out your empire which is all different houses from the game of thrones books and show and you're trying to figure out how to gain different areas get power so you can win different bids on whether it be like the fiefdom or the actual iron throne and those break different things do tie breakers or let you um get do things first and it's very exciting as you're trying to figure out how to min max that all of that stuff the system in this is super interesting because you're placing down all of these disks and you're basically putting them face down on the board and then you can save the disks or whatever you want you can be like oh yeah yeah i'm defending over here and maybe i'm gonna help you with this combat here and and then over here i'm gonna do this and you can say whatever you want then everything is flipped face up and the truth comes out and you see exactly who's attacking you where what's going on maybe all of your plans are destroyed because you didn't realize they were going to attack over there that you were focused on something else because somebody straight up lied to you and stabbed you in the back um i really enjoy the the house cards in this game you have different characters um from the books that you can play out to help you in combat with to help you have like extra strength or win or lose or knock out units or defend units and they have different special abilities on them as well um and it's just a very intriguing interesting game that is full of backstabbing and betrayal which makes sense for this theme um i feel like it's a game that fits its theme very well and that is game of thrones the board game now i would never suggest this game in the past to z it's a fairly big game that has shades of diplomacy but now that you've seen the entirety of game of thrones including the highly critically praised and lauded publicly seventh season um eighth season i know it was the eighth season season i wasn't talking about that one anyhow um said it included the seventh season i didn't say finishing on the seventh season okay anyway what are you saying you think i would like it i think you might be slightly more interested in it it's one of those games that the more you know about the theme it's it makes the game better to some degree yeah i can't i mean isn't it kind of long though it's decently long yeah because it's all about trying to control enough of the capitals so i mean i would be willing to try it it's yeah yeah it's not it's not like yeah and for long and it's definitely not ti4 complex no no so yeah i would try yeah i didn't know the last time i played game of thrones was about five years ago and i took a pause on the second to last round i'm going to play that last round maybe next year i'm going to get to it eventually my number 46. was that it no i didn't get it i you didn't get it our jokes are just falling flat in the middle of this let's keep going it's a george rr martin takes a long time to write joke come on people work with me oh i get it man all right i got it my number 46 is a game that uh i learned about from tom and i'm pretty sure now i like it significantly more than he did you liked it but i really like it and that is master of respect this really silly quirky little game i think from hobby japan where generally the the idea is that you are a master of a dojo and you are bringing students into your dojo you're trying to have the best martial arts students and you're training them which is basically giving them some type of skill tiles and you are training them all for this end of round tournament and it's just a very very quick playing game i taught this to a number of people at uh the last dice tower west i think was in the hot games area and it went over really really well this is a game that i feel like if it were maybe reprinted in a more large scale edition would would be potentially pretty popular because i think it has a lot of wide scale appeal i really like master of respect a lot i plays like i said it's really quick it's i think three or four rounds and it's over uh but you still feel like you had a full game experience so yeah thank you tom for uh turning me on to that master of respect this is what i as soon as i played it i tried to get it for diced our essentials we couldn't oh really because of just pricing and stuff but man i like the artwork it just has a good theme it's a good game yeah yeah i remember i remember playing that with you tom too yeah that's a good one i hadn't thought of it in a long time that is a good one all right my number 46 is another stephen feld game and that is notre dame or notre dame i guess some people say uh either way this is a card drafting game that then once you've done that turns into a point salad game and the theme is a theme and the artwork is indeed hard work but the game the game is fun the game is engaging i like this idea of the more you do something on the board the more little cubes you put there the better you are at that thing of course by sacrificing doing something else right so the more you get victory points do the victory point action the more you generate them but you're probably going to be taking up a herd on some rats or maybe you're ignoring moving your carriage or whatever this one is i've always found it kind of breezy to play you know i think stefan fell games this one's this got some years on it now i think they've evolved to the point that like like many euro style games for you to differentiate between them it is required that you add complexity and systems and subsystems and you know that's sort of how you make them distinct notre dame is clean i find it to be straightforward and that's one of its biggest strengths for me well this one has grown for you somewhat because this is the highest it's ever been on your list last year was 72. oh wow there you go i like it is this one of the um is this one of the titles that's being kind of re-implemented in that queen line do we know i don't know i don't think so no you mean the were they renamed they renamed it yeah as far as i know it's not this one would be a tough one to retheme especially with it having been burned you know that would be kind of a slap in the face almost everything yeah yeah yeah for sure all right people's choice where are we at number 46 this is a game that you guys have never heard us talk about a living card game the arkham horror card game occasionally shows up on this channel um this was actually as dipped a bit it was 36 last year but it's still pretty high and this is i think the highest ranked living card game on the list this and actually i think it's only two just this one and um the marvel one but uh this is the reason i think you saw elder richard arkham horror and even manchester madness go down because this seems to be the most popular of all the cthulhu games that fantasy fight has right now which is pretty impressive because there's no miniatures and yet it's still very popular or thematic well that helps it yeah you know what i just what i just thought of as far as notre dame goes to dom i would love to see that being reprinted now that you mentioned that they had a fire reprinted with a modern theme and the theme of rebuilding notre dame think about that modern theme all the characters that you appeal to are modern professions you know what i mean like and yeah yeah that would work man then you know if they did it right they could donate a portion of the proceeds to helping rebuild the cathedral i mean yeah call me that's right interesting all right cool all right let's move on okay my 45 is the second year has been on the list last year was 80 it has gone up considerably and folks it's gonna stay there if the reprint i saw of it gets made because if there's one thing this game does not have going for it it does not look good it looks awful but it is an amazing two-player game called blitzkrieg blitzkrieg which is the super condensed twilight struggle i mean it's world war ii but it has that same kind of feel you're just pulling chits from a bag and placing them on a port that's all you're doing and yet it's so tense such a good game z this one is one you have to try i really think you would like it plus it's from cold woody it's cool and it's really good tom yeah i like it i like this one a lot i didn't think you know when i first saw it i was not i almost didn't play it because that box cover doesn't look good and it's like oh world war ii they're like world war ii in 15 minutes oh yeah whatever i've heard that before but it's but it's really well done i don't care about the the war theme is almost in the background it's just like a little area control game so yep i love this one blitzkrieg my 45 is a game that looks kind of like a survival game but then ends up with all sorts of weird curses and crazy stuff going on and that is seventh continent seventh continent i really enjoy the mechanics of the game where you're playing through this deck and building stuff out and you can do challenges and it's kind of like press your luck with those challenge how many how few cards can you draw because the more cards you draw you're gonna run out your supply and your food you need food to build that back up and build a campfire to build that back up but then like if you don't go far enough you won't get enough stars to put together to fulfill different things there's this huge sprawling map that you only see tiny little pieces of as you're going on different curses trying to explore and figure out exactly where you're supposed to be going and what you're supposed to be doing there's tons of challenges to overcome lots to explore in this game and it's it's a game that i really want to explore even more just because uh it's just so sprawling the way the game is there's tons and tons of hours you can put into it and that is seventh continent yep i've heard of this one i have to play it sometime yeah my number 45 is a game that i have a strong suspicion is going to rise in the coming years uh this is what's that channels rising and you guys are giving me grief about my game of thrones joke come on now my number much simpler it's true that's true my number 45 is mezzo and this is a area control troops on a map style game that is based around kind of the idea of you are trying to rise in the mesoamerican pantheon and you are gods that are are again trying to gain influence and what i like so much about mezzo is beyond the look of the game and the theme of the game which i think works really well is that it kind of throws some things on their head a little bit it's it's a game where you don't always want to win every combat but you are going to be involved in just about everyone and you can make some really clever manipulations of your opponents through using powers that are asymmetrical but it's also a very streamlined rule set i feel i feel like this is a game that doesn't get in its own way by getting bogged down in edge cases and this this thing happens here unless this happens it's clean it's a very streamlined rule set for the type of game it is so it's a game that i feel like the more you play it the more you're gonna like it because you'll get more and more familiar with the different powers that the gods have and the uh the the different kind of abilities that you can pull off so uh mezzo is a game that i really i can't continue to want to play and that's obviously a good sign so i think it's gonna i think in five years mike you're gonna be the only person talking about this i like the game too but yeah i i do know it has not gotten a lot of love i i think there's a few reasons for that that have nothing to fault you know to do with with the game being not good but yeah i do think you're right i don't think it's going to get a lot of love out there that happens sometimes z raven's burger master says i keep hearing points out game what are you referring to when you're comparing a game to point salad ah okay so they're thinking i might be comparing it to uh the game point salad perhaps that's what they're thinking but a point salad which the game point salad uses jokingly as its title a point salad would be a game in which every little action you do gives you some small amount of points i'm gonna flip over a card i get three points i advance my little guy on this track that's two points i draw a new hand of cards three points so you're sort of you know you're going to the salad bar and taking a little bit of everything that's the idea you get points from every little thing you do i miss salad bars salad bars are delicious what happened to uh what's that place that went under at the good saddle bar oh sweet tomatoes they went under oh it's a two [Laughter] not the one i was free of i like that place no i was thinking of uh like a chain kind of like a like a friday's type chain that went under ruby tuesdays ruby yeah i think ruby tuesdays i i kept wanting to say tuesday morning and that ain't it ruby tuesday's meant that a great salad bar all right anyway my 45 has nothing to do with salad but if you if you imagine salads being made in a factory and i suppose you could then maybe factory funner is my 45 uh this is a very puzzly game in which you are given a factory floor and factory funner it's this is made up of hexes okay just a bunch of hexes you're going to be drafting machines that take some kind of input and then spit out some kind of output and it's all nameless goops just color-coded goop and you're trying to put together this crazy machine in front of you trying to be the most efficient the most productive the game's got a hint of real-time snatching of a machine you know if you you're so you're meant to flip them all over and then look and go that one works for me and grab it as quickly as you can and then you can take your time sort of putting it together running pipes from one machine to another one paying for all these things and then making money from the things you built do that the most efficiently you win i love this stinking puzzle i just absolutely love putting together just sort of wrapping my head around how do i do this very efficiently i always have an absolute blast with this it's the kind of game that keeps me smiling while i'm thinking of what you know i'm sitting there going hmm ooh no wait if i spin this one i can do this with fewer pieces of pipe yes you know and i i just have a great time with it i know it's sort of a weird pick i know a lot of people don't like the way the game feels it can be punishing if it if it doesn't click with you it just doesn't click with you you know it's that kind of game but man i love it factory funner 45 for me tom loves it no i don't i have not played it see i don't i don't dislike factory put it on the list tom i don't want to put on a list though put it on the list i don't want to put it on the list i wouldn't mind playing it i think it looks interesting i like the idea i like the idea of trying to build a machine contraption and connecting with pipes that seems really cool and it has superheroes roy in space you can let you put all the things together and then after you dunk the superhero in it and they come out 4x all right oh number 44 for people uh second year on the list it was 70 last year jumped up 45 for people 45 glad you mentioned that 45 has been on the list for eight years seven years this is the lowest it's been but it's still higher than agricola and that's caverna it's interesting they've kind of they both moved together oh the second of the uva games yeah i think they're gonna be two that would be possibly the last possibly the last one if there's one more what do we have and now caverna caverna yeah i think there's one more there's one more you know it vassal you know it it should be two more in my opinion but anyhow oh all right stop trying to find clues from what i'm saying for things just one great party game we've talked about it's already been on like two or three people's lists uh this is the first one it could possibly be a five-way crossover but i don't know if it will be or not it's just happening um you know we haven't got close to that yet by the way all right playing 44 okay you're on 44 right now tom thank you i can't believe i just did that all right what's your 44 my 44. what's up roy's next that's it say the title say raccoon tycoon done right go all right my 44 i uh i am curious to see if the upcoming lizard wizard which seems like a very similar game but with maybe a bit more meat i don't know if that will replace this but raccoon tycoon is just it does the same thing it feels like almost emerson designed the game because it has a similar feeling to me as century take a quick action go go go go and then there's the only action it takes a little bit longer is a pause for a bidding and like the whole game is building up to that bidding moment where you're bidding for this stuff you finish the auction then just fast actions again i really like it solid game raccoon tycoon is lizard wizard like the same game with a new theme or or like it's got some new stuff going on it's i know there's more to it than raccoon tycoon but it's definitely built on the same system from what i could tell it's just a magical theme instead of stock market or whatever i think it's like an iteration of it but yeah i was surprised how much i liked raccoon tycoon lizards are better than raccoons that i disagree with what we have a raccoon diced our raccoon and we have diced our lizards which do you like better dice tower lizards you do not i like lizards okay my number 44 is a game that is all about storytelling and reading from a book it's basically a choose your own adventure game on a board tales of the arabian nights i love tailsy raymond knight stop at z this is my time um tells me arabian nights is an awesome game where you get to run around and do all sorts of different choices and figure out stuff it's really more of a activity than a game game but i've had so much fun playing this with friends and family like it's just fun to go on these adventures and see what happens to your characters you can try to get skills in different areas so you might be a little bit better at fighting or you might be a little bit better at this or that but it's all craziness just crazy stories happen in this game i love storytelling games and this one does it amazingly um and it's a game that i don't think i see as many people talking about nearly as much anymore and that's tales of the arabian nights i got your back roy good game i wish they would do an upgraded version of this oh for sure but it is what it is yeah this has been out of print for a while now hasn't it yeah i don't know who has the rights to it honestly yeah could be kickstarted yeah yeah that's true my number 44 is a game that at first time i played it i really didn't think i liked it because it has a pretty steep learning curve but then i finally took the time to really learn it and i played it a bunch last year it's too many bones this is a game that has a very lavish production it's made up of a lot of neoprene mats and poker chips that kind of stand in as your characters and as the baddie characters but it is a really really robust system and ultimately very satisfying if you put in the time to learn it and that is something that needs to be said is that each character plays so differently they have this huge huge array of different stats that can be upgraded and abilities that can be unlocked through using dice so if you kind of like the rpg element of building up a character this might really appeal to you because it definitely has that and it also has the little tactical battle thing that you can almost say would also be analogous to in some senses rpg gaming so it's a game that really will give you back what you put into it but you have to be willing to put some time into it because there is a bit of a learning curve but i'm glad that i've been able to do that because it's really given me some very very satisfying experiences through the last year and i'm looking forward to trying out many of the new characters that keep coming out with new characters and i really think too many bones is a solid solid game i'm glad you're putting the time in two because if i ever want to play this game i'm just playing with you and you're just going to tell me the rules you have to bring your character over the best way to learn this game would be to have somebody that knows it well teach it to you i agree 100 percent and it's mike and it is mike he's a beast at it all right my number 44 is again mike mentioned earlier in the top 100 and i like it even more i guess i really like it rising five runes of astros wow in fact the evening of the day that you mentioned it mike i pulled it out and i played solitaire wow and uh you you i remember you you have mike i remember you mentioning that it is very easy and i agreed with that so i thought let me kick up the difficulty here a little bit and i indeed got whooped guys uh so that felt good it was like the one loss where i was like yeah yeah this game's not too easy it's good it's good yeah yeah yeah i really like rising five it's uh it's nice like you said that you're not controlling a character but you are fluidly among all the players controlling five characters it's uh got a little you know dice rolling a little mastermind sort of puzzle solving and it's quick and pretty and just an easy breezy beautiful cover game the cover is nice anyway i really like rising five it's a good co-op 44 for me hey tom what's the people's 44 i wonder what it is all right here's 44 was 70 last year it's just one it's a great party game lots of people like it i feel very deja vush right now but just one you say yes you think maybe we'll have a five-way crossover it might be the first time we have a how many times are you gonna mention it though okay all right 43 was 49 for me last year and it was probably on my lists in the past uh somewhere along those lines because this is the second game which i think completely replaces the first one for me and that's marco polo two um the marco polo which is really funny because if you look them up alphabetically it's the voyages of marco polo is the first one and the second one is marco polo too so technically if you're putting them on a shelf alphabetically they don't even go near each other it's very annoying but i really like marco polo too i think it's slightly easier it's not as grueling as the first one uh but other than that it's pretty much the same game uh with just different maps and different things and i like them both a lot uh but i'm only gonna put one on the list so marco polo two is my number 43. all right yeah i really liked the character powers in marco polo too there were some really it's one of those games where you read off what the character powers are and you want to be every one of them they all sound amazing my 43 is an abstract game this is probably the highest abstract game on my list i really enjoy this game this is onitama this is a game which we've talked about before it's a crossover with tom vassell um i enjoy the card play back and forth of this you each player has two cards in front of them and there's one card in the middle each time you take an action moving your guys on the board um you put your card into the middle and you take the card that's there currently and then these cards just keep flopping back and forth sometimes you might want to hold on to a move because you might be like i could use this in the perfect situation and then other times you're like okay let's just try to rush through there get an advantage try to press it up knock out the opponent's um i think they're called the sensei um i think i'm not sure the terminology for everything because i mostly played with my kids and we just call them all sorts of crazy stuff um but yeah it's a lot of fun um i've also played the app for this a ton of times a lot of times when we go out to dinner as a family like at a restaurant i just put oni tom up and i'll play with the kids and they'll play against each other and it's a great game to play with your family and it's it's really easy to get into and um it's a lot of fun and very enjoyable i'm known as a solo gamer but you won't find a lot of solo only games on my list this however is one poser it's a fantastic fantastic bag building game coming right at you from sashi and sashi this is coffee roaster now chris might be showing you the the newer edition and that's fine it's also pretty but i have a soft spot in my heart for the original sashi and sashi version of this game essentially what you're doing is exactly what it says truth in advertising you're roasting some coffee you are trying to basically build your bag with these coffee beans of different strengths there might also be some aroma and flavor in there but what you're trying to do is build it all up so that you are pouring a coffee of just the right strength and you do that through kind of manipulating which beams are in your bag there's a bit of a push or luck element to it if you only play one cup which would be kind of like a round you're talking maybe 10 minutes the game is usually you do three in a row and you're still only talking about 30 minutes it's a really really charming game i like bag building games to begin with and this is one that i just can play over and over and over again it never gets old i love coffee roaster and uh you should try it even if you don't really like solo games you might like this one i i i like it although i don't know that i just looked at the original verse the new one i'm glad i played the new one oh man sashi knocking it out the park i love that artwork though hard work is just very beautiful it is and it all looks all their games have the same illustrator so yeah part of a little family and i just love the artwork yep all righty my number 43 hasn't been mentioned before i forget what list had it maybe the people's list and that is down force downforce is a game i did not know before the reprint from restoration games i did not play any of the original printings of this but i really enjoy it it is uh it's a racing game that plays quickly that's a must i enjoy that it is one that is not only about the racing itself and that's another thing that very much enjoys this idea of trying to do well with your vehicles trying to you come out in front but also it's sort of knowing what you're you know knowing how to keep your eyes open enough to watch everything that's going on that is also very engaging i love that you begin the game with by by acquiring a little special ability just something to make you just just a hair distinct from everybody else that's fun for me and then just carplay i mean on your turn play card manipulate the cars a little bit you're done it is so quick they've added extra tracks for variability fantastic and the game has a good look but a clean look as well nothing there's gonna be no visual occlusion of anything it's just so easy to figure out what's going on it's a great production man downforce is excellent try it out if you like racing games at all and somehow you haven't tried this one 43. i'm gonna play it just because you said occlusion oh thanks i got to try to keep up with you mike i was actually wrong earlier about arkham heart card game number 33 is mansions of madness second edition so it's still slightly liked more and it was indeed last year and the year before and the year before so never mind but they're really close um and i wonder if that will ever change but uh i'm definitely leaning on the manchester madness because i like the app integration which is still the king of that i think um it just does a really good job of it but this one is this is the fifth year it's been on the list it's pretty high and it's it stayed consistently like that yeah yeah they keep coming out with expansion so that helps playing for my number 42 is a game it's been on the list for three years and i considered briefly replacing it with its replacement game but i like the original one better and that's raiders of the north sea this year raiders of scythia came out or cynthia sorry came out and that is a there are some things it does better in fact it's better than the base game of raiders of the north sea but raiders of north sea with the expansions still wins although i'll play one or the other it doesn't really matter to me uh i love raiders of the north sea it is a great worker placement game putting a worker down pulling a worker off the board such a simple concept and yet i find it to be extremely enjoyable and the rating adds a little bit of luck you know just a bit rolling the dice but not too much and the game's very straightforward lots of fun for me raiders of the north sea what about hard work tom which one do you prefer as far as the artwork goes oh easily raiders um they're both called that oh sorry [Laughter] sorry north c actually i call raiders of the north sea raiders and i call the other one cythia exact same thing i do the same thing actually tom i really do all right in my game that's 42 um you can mine for gold you can take out bandits you can wrangle cattle you can do um basically poker hands this is western legends the crossover with tom basil i really enjoyed this western themed sandbox style game and it's just got a lot of things that's really enjoyable you can try to be lawful and like work with the sheriff and send the sheriff to get the other bad guys or you can try to be an outlaw and see how long you can make it up the little outlaw track getting points each turn before somebody throws you in the slammer um but yeah it's definitely an interesting game that lets you play the game kind of the way you want trying to be opportunistic and figure out how you want to play the game to min max your points and get ahead of all the other players it's a fun western sandbox game western legends i agree all right my number 42 is a big box cinematic game certainly not evocative of any particular movie this is nemesis oh man on youtube no one can hear you lie right legally legally distinct in nemesis you wake up in out of cryosleep and you don't know where you are on this ship you know you're on a ship and you know that there's some nasty business happening on that ship you've got xenomorphs that are coming out and this is just this is one of those games that is an experience game i guess that's what i would call it is that it really creates experiences it's more about the experience and even the mechanics because it has some nice card driven uh mechanical card play i really botched that some nice card play mechanics but it's mostly about this kind of attention and feeling this fear you feel that at any point you might have an encounter with a really really nasty xenomorph and also you can't necessarily trust the people on the ship with you might be a traitor they may be trying to blow the ship up you don't know what's going on they may be trying to set you on fire you know what i mean not good anyway nemesis is a lot of fun it's one of those games where you can have a so-so session of it and be like yeah that was all right but then you have an amazing session of it and it makes it so worth it so uh nemesis i think is a game that uh is is special i think it really is a special game semi co-op or like mostly co-op um you've played this game yes yes you have on tabletop simulator you yeah you could you played the lock the nemesis lockdown the the new version of it basically you've got everything without their own everyone's got their own objectives right so it's not really semi-co-op it just may be that you both are trying to get the same thing done you won't know that yep i recall that now uh-huh i've never actually personally played this game i feel like this game might actually make my list if i actually was able to play it i ran our live stream for the lockdown um game we did and i was just following behind the actions of everything watching everything on tabletop simulator and this game looks like a blast i really mike we need to get this to the table so we do and z you should watch the live play because you really enjoyed it you were totally stabbing tom or mike or somebody in the back the whole time i remember oh we actually if you remember that like i was trying to like mike was trying to kill z he was trying to kill him um yeah this is i i have three awakened realms games so far in my top 100 this is not one actually i like this fine it's a little too rules-heavy for me but i certainly understand the people who do like it it is definitely aliens for sure my number 42 is a game i remember playing i know i played i guarantee you i i have and that is istanbul i think it's showing up on some some list the people's list yeah people's list yeah i really like it i think it's a great euro style game i like the end game trigger in this one quite a bit i just i love mixing it up with a game where you just hit a certain point and it's boom i win we don't count points we don't worry about anything else there's no conversion table at the end i got to six gems first i win we're done love it so there's a lot of tension that builds as that's happening right as people as as someone at the table has a great two turns back to back and buy one gem now get another one next turn suddenly everybody's going whoa okay hold on i better calculate my actions here really carefully i'd like the the economy of actions that you are attempting to uh to establish on the table this idea of moving your stack of pieces and then when you arrive at a tile an action you want to take you drop off a worker a helper there and you take the action but if there was one already there you add them to the stack and you still take the action that's that's that's a game so if you can manage a way to sort of move around dropping them off and then picking them up again you never have to take a rest turn that's a position you want to be in so i really like that about it i think that's cool it's a nice production they've had a couple of nice expansions it's a good one you know if i want to play a mid to heavy kind of euro game this one gives me that istanbul 42 for me all right people's choice number 42 so there's very few brand new games to the list from this point onward there's a few and this is one of those and i suspect it will be on the list for a while and this one is isle of cats um the polyamino placing game about cats again for as popular as designers seem to think polyamino games are not that many of them make the top 100 list but this is one it's also mixed with drafting uh this is a really solid game and it's very pretty a lot of people like the game aisle all right number 41 for me last one for today is another series of games that's right how much this is straight cheating man if you make me pick one if you make me pick one and i don't know if that's the one that chris put in the slide it would be pandemic legacy season zero so what do you say the legacy games are all pandemic no not all pandemic no way um pandemic legacy series uh i like zero then one then two which is i mean i like them all a lot but pandemic season zero was so good so amazing um i people ask how i would play them i would play them one zero two actually uh when learning how to play them but man we that was easily one of the best playthroughs we did last year where we we played through this together and we took our time for once yeah you know we went through a couple games with like two games a week or yeah something like that or something like that and it was really fun and the the theming i'm a big fan of that cold war and are we the bad guys i don't know if we're the bad guys that sort of vibe that's not a sport because i'm not saying what you are not it's just that interesting you're making me think about it as a spoiler in fact this being on your list is a spoiler so i didn't know there was a pandemic legacy series thanks tom anyway my number 41 pandemic legacy series but if you make me pick one season zero great cross over with me um 41 for me is a game that is themed as a first person shooter but it's extremely mechanical as you're picking up different ammo and crates getting guns and trying to deliver the damage onto your opponent's health bar to min max points and that is adrenaline by cge i definitely really enjoy adrenaline um i love the fact that all the weapons have like different like attack patterns and shapes but it's all about like min maxing who you're doing the damage to and after a player is killed they're worth less points to kill again and you kind of want to be able to do the the final shot on somebody but if you overkill them then they kind of mark you back so the next time they hit you they're going to do extra damage it's like this whole like management game over trying to i'll kill you trying to figure out exactly how to like put the different damage on your opponents and who you're going to attack next and who's around the corner or maybe you have a gun that can straight up shoot through a wall there's all sorts of different weapons and all sorts of different ways to play this game which makes it super interesting to me and that is adrenaline you gave me some adrenaline by describing that roy that was yeah it came with some adrenaline right there you got to play the black rose game oh you really if you like adrenaline you'd like that one yes that's a good game much better than adrenaline what that's messed up uh no i think i'm serious i think i agree all right my41 oh hey look it's a game on my list nobody else seems to care about my number 41 is round i love this game i don't know why i mean it's an older game i get that and it's about the black plague i get that are you in yet it's a really good game look i like raddus i think raddas is a fine game i've cooled on it quite a bit but i like it yeah no i really like raddus especially when you add in a couple of the expansions pied piper i think is a fantastic expansion but essentially this is a very simple area control game but it has some unique character powers and kind of the hook to it is you can take any of these character powers you want like if there's six of them around the board you could take all six of them and now you've got all those powers but the issue is that when you're flipping over rats to find out if they trigger and kind of lose some of your caller's population they're all tied into one of these characters so the more characters you have the more likely your population is going to be removed and you can't discard those characters the only way you're getting rid of those characters is if other people choose to take them from you it's a really clever little system it's a very uh tight game i mean the map is really small uh it's uh but but elegant i like the game it feels like an old school euro game and it's one that i kind of fell in love with early in my gaming hobby career if you want to call it that and it still has a very strong soft spot in my heart this is a sentimental pick like roy's been talking about zee is loving the idea of me just laughing at tom being like you know you said in my gaming hobby career if you want to call it that and thomas is like you know what i'll tell you what mike i like this one i think it's a good game i also think it's due for radda's second edition yeah i agree 100 know what i mean this is a game where after playing 15 times i was like man the luck of the tile flip sure is starting to bother me i could try to be smart i could try to not have too many characters or just have some that have great synergy yeah but at the end of the day you flip over some tiles and you might get smacked or not smacked and the scores are so tight it felt like it came down to luck i also like the card game better i think well it's good it is good card game is good yeah but anyway it just seems like it's due for a second edition with some improvements you know maybe separate the tiles into like group one tile group two child these show up later you know things like that it could be cleaned up yeah yeah you're right they do have some starter tiles that that but but i do understand what you're saying and some of the later expansions that add in cards do mitigate that a bit but you are right there's a significant amount of luck to it and i would love a second edition because they're still supporting the game i mean it's still you know they're still making expansions it's all in print it's all in print right now oh overseas from white goblin though no one's printing it over here i don't think at all are you sure i think you can get it on okay i thought you can get it online like at amazon or what have you well that doesn't mean it's in print over here but like for reasonable prices though like regular prices that that just means no one likes it i already stipulated that tom my number is another game that i i know not a lot of people talk about and i again much like raddus this game that didn't uh this one's this one did less business than rattus for sure there's no expansion for deadline from wiz kids i think it's whiskey deadline is one of those like detective city of angels like other games that do this you know go down some rabbit hole and piece together a who done it working together it is co-op and then at the end the game will pose some questions you answer those you try to win okay there's a decent amount of those some sherlock holmes themed ones some just modern themed ones this is a sort of film noir gumshoe kind of vibe going on and what i like about it the most is the fact that the game play the mechanics wrapped around this discovery of information are so straightforward it plays kind of like the grizzle where you play cards to the table you sort of do a lineup of cards but then if you meet the requirement to strong-arm someone into giving you information then you can reveal that card and as a group read it and start building a picture of what happened who was this person why were they in the room so who who left the weapon there all that stuff it's fun it's engaging there's i think 12 cases in the box so you're going to get some replayability that way and i just really enjoy it deadline my 41. now when we change numbers for us so if we go from 75 to 35 or you know the other way i don't think it's that big of a deal it's one person the vagaries it doesn't matter in a big scheme of things but with the people's choice i find these more interesting because a lot of people change their mind as time goes by i mentioned that because this next game dropped 20 places from 24 to 41 and that seems somewhat significant not a huge amount but that's rising sun and i found it interesting uh because this game was the sequel to blood rage which was and is and possibly may show up later on in the people's choice um but rising sun i thought would stay pretty high and it hasn't and i wonder if for many people it was pretty and a flash in the pan but hasn't held its own i like it i like it more i said that already i think rising sun is more group dependent than blood rage yeah bingo and that's true that's not a lot of people probably played rising sun over 2020 also because that one you really need to i that one would be hard to play not in person i think for sure sure very difficult yeah blood rage does have a digital implementation as well i mean so all righty well well 40 to go top 40. this is last year this is where we let mike and roy join us for the first time so you've seen everything else before now apparently at this point nothing new here oh no maybe on my list trust me we got new stuff all right folks well we'll see you tomorrow uh but first we're doing board game breakfast at nine o'clock a somewhat shorter board game breakfast because at 10 we're doing 40 through 31 and then at 2 30 through 21 tomorrow so we'll see you then thanks so much for watching us until next time i'm tom vassell i'm roy canning i'm mike delecio and i'm z garcia and have fun uh feeding cats [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The Dice Tower

Views: 77,741

Keywords: board game, board, game, dice, card game, cards, catan, monopoly, tower, dice tower, vasel, review, tom vasel, vassel, settlers, gaming, GeekUsername: TomVasel, board game review, boardgame, uno, ticket to ride, apples to apples, educational games, educational, top 10

Id: vEMtT666mlQ

Length: 93min 35sec (5615 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021