Top 50 Board Games of All-Time: 30-21

hey everybody thank you for joining us for episode number 48 of the boardgame barrage podcasts and also episode number three of our top 50 YouTube's top 50 games of all time today we're going over games 32 21 and yeah that's it how you guys feeling so far about your lists I think it's fun like you mentioned in the last episode that it only gets better right yeah it is hard to be you know as mean as I can be when we're just sort of getting to the best of the best right right all right so it's it is squashing my potential maybe a little bit you can't be mean then what are you exactly exactly so let's dive right in yeah I'll start us off with number 30 my number 30 game is Grand Austria Hotel this is a dice dropping game of Hotel Management so you sort of have a yeah oh yeah classic mechanic poor game mechanic like yeah I mean it's my favorite hotel management game I played at least dishwashing right so everyone has a hotel and there are guests that sort of filter in on these cards and each of these guests have different requirements in terms of food that you need to procure to them while they're in this or the lobby the waiting area of your hotel so you roll a bunch of dice at the beginning of each round each of these dices allocates the certain actions and then you take a dive from an ass corresponding action and then that either produces food or you might be serving that foods to to one of your customers and then once that their food requirements are met then you need to find a room for them so you have to be opening rooms as well the there's also sort of a spatial component to like the rooms you open in certain rows over certain points as you move towards the top end of your hotel you're getting more and more points it's a really really fun game it's kind of unique like I don't know if there are many hotel management board games and the dice erupting is really fun I think it's it's one of those games that I think runs long at the full counts of players so this is another one I would probably do it works really really well the two players so two or three would be my optimal count for this yeah that's grand austria hotel not sure why i was making fun of the theme because that's actually why I want to try this right I've always just been strangely intrigued by it even though I think there's a pretty plain euro hidden underneath right right cool my number xxx best game of all time is startups this is a link filler card game that I just can't get enough of it starts with the incredible artwork I won't even begin to describe it because I wouldn't know what style it is but there's sort of a couple of different companies octo coffee bow games and they're basically different startup corporations that you're investing in but what's so intriguing about the game is that once you put a investment into one of the companies out on the board you get the anti-monopoly chip which none of this makes thematic sense but you are then not allowed to publicly take any face-up of those cards as you're drawing from the draw pile so you actually are prohibited from participating in that company unless you just blind draw it so you're trying to hide your cards that are part of a company so that you are sort of chasing someone else who is also investing in the same company because if they put one out they get that monopoly chip you put one out you don't you were no longer you're not restricted in the same way that they are and what's interesting is at the end of a round you payout only on the companies that you own some stocks in but aren't the majority leader so basically the two people who are competing over Bow Wow they know that one of the two of them is gonna pay to the other person and that's what's so funny and silly about this game it's very simple pick up a card play a card style game that just has more to it than you'd expect when you open the box it's beautiful I would take it anywhere with me that is startups by wonk games I really like startups a lot that whole thing about if you go into a battle with somebody the stakes are increased because one person's gonna be a big loser a big winner yeah so my number 30 so my number 31 was code names which is a light sort of party game my number 30 is quite the opposite this is axé Renaissance by Phil Eklund he of packs and BIOS games this is a incredibly dense card game all it is all amounts to is something like 80 cards there's a couple of pieces but not very many and the entire board is made up of cards but it's very very dense one of the sources of that density is the flavor text I'm usually I usually you know bypass flavor text don't really care but when it comes to PAX Renaissance the text is so dense I mean people have compared this to like like a college-level lesson on the Renaissance it's like there's so much in it I'm a big history buff so I just like you know people there's there's a lot of consideration in this game because it is so heavy and so again so sometimes there's a little bit of people taking time to take their turn which I don't mind this game because I'll just read my cards like it's just like learning about the history of these characters and these like events is just I love it so it's there's a lot to explain but basically what it is the core mechanic of the game is actually the same as like century sprites spice road where you're drafting cards but if you want cards down the row you have to pay more and more for them but what you're trying to do is you're trying to it's it's really considered like a simulation of the Renaissance although obviously like things take place in different ways but there are a number of ways to win there's like a military way to to to to win or to like achieve there's economic there's like even religious and trade there's just a lot going on and it just feels so epic it feels like you're it feels like you are like a big family in the Renaissance you're marrying you know people to gain alliances you're building trade routes you're like religions are coming into strengths and out of favor it's just so deep and rich and I guess rich is a big word just again how much these are standard cards how much is on there is is fantastic and actually you know there's a lot to a determined strategy but really the way the game plays is much more straightforward that it then it bites sound you only take me qox every turn and the actions are pretty pretty straightforward so if you're looking for just like a rich experience and just really if you just want something that if you get bored you can just pull them out and read the cards if your mystery fan packs Renaissance I would highly recommend it it's my number 30 game is this your favorite packs game yeah that's cool I've been wanting to try one of these so this seems like the one I should do yes I I think I think universally people would say it's the best very cool my number 29 game is Azul Azul I think sort of took the world by storm a little bit it's been doing extremely well for was there a plan B yeah it this is a game of sort of drafting mosaic tiles to sort of create like a grid on your board that will score points based on how many tiles you place in a corresponding row or column and at the end of the game if you get sets of the same color or any number of rows you fill the columns that will also get you additional points at the end of the game but the chief mechanic is there are these factories in the middle each of them has four tiles on them that sort of you know redistribute every round and you're gonna pick one of those factories and pick all of the tiles of the same color so you keep going until these factories they are emptying and then anything remaining on those factories goes towards is pulled in the middle so every round plays out until every single tile is drawn and you're always taking every tile of that color from that pool so you can get to a point towards the end of a round where you're forced to take six tiles of a color but you're limited in the places you can play them so you might end up with negative points if they spill over to the sort like the negative pool so there are these sort of there there's this element of sort of like playing the table and so we're trying to figure out well what's gonna if I take this now is am I gonna be the one that will have to take the bad pool at the end picking something before someone else gets it or very you know cursorily glancing at someone else's board though they desperately need this specific color so I want to make sure that they don't get it or get too many of it so it's a it's a pretty interactive for what is a you know a tile puzzle game and you have to play abstract yeah it may be for a pretty abstract game exactly I really like Azul I think maybe sort of my impression that we were extremely strong initially and all sort of maybe waiting a little bit but it's still a rich strong game that would recommend it's easy to teach yeah playing the scoring is maybe a little fiddly but it's it's good as I'm saying this I'm sort of reconsidering it but for some reason it feels like next to codenames the most like universally classic feeling game I don't know if that's correct or not I just feel like it's it's an abstract which lends itself to like I think like like you know yeah that sort of thing and and it's pretty straightforward to teach I don't know I feel like it's a game you can pull out with it with most people yeah I could certainly see myself taking this once the families in play like it it's it's maybe so beautiful yeah oh man yeah these these tiles are these little thick plastic tiles like if you imagine like so scrabble tile dimensions but like thick and glossy in there man it's it's such a cool-looking production now once again Nealon rolling those yeah roll the tiles to my folder yeah and they crack together so beautifully ah man as all that's my number 29 my number 29 Beth's best game of all time is Imperial 2030 this is a big one who designed this Mac Mac Kurtz so there's a rondelle in it that much I know I can make a rondelle joke but Imperial 2030 is sort of my risk replacement in my mind but what's so cool about imperial 2030 is that you only control a company or company you only control a country a / company until you don't so you sort of think when you start a game of imperial 2030 you're thinking in terms of okay this is my country this is my position and you can lose ownership of that country entirely and then it gets sent into the ground so you're actually playing an investor who is sort of just trying to make the most money amidst war it's a very cynical very very cynical outlook but you essentially can occasionally have multiple countries and then you're deliberately just using one to sort of pump money into your other country but at no point do you care about the people that are involved in these massive huge wars on the board extremely interactive we've had a ton of fun playing this one and one that I don't play enough but need to play more because there's a lot of depth to it really really cool game I love it yeah I would love to do this again yeah very unique that's Imperial 20:30 there is also a different themed non 2030 version I'm not sure when it's set in the past but maybe mark would prefer that's like a like a real Rhodey sort of thing called Imperial I know I forget you could look up Wikipedia articles like while the game's going to sort of write history right no that's like appreciate that's legitimate yeah that's completely legit got it that is Imperial 20:30 my number 29 was mentioned earlier by Nealon this is commits dudes on a map action selection game as he mentioned the thing I like the most about it I like confrontation in my games so she might do two on the map sort of games and I love the fact that you know this game goes up to like eight or ten points depending if you're playing short along and you get a victory point for initiating and winning a battle I love that I love that it takes away all like nearly like you mentioned earlier that hesitancy like I don't want to be the guy who attacks first you know and it's sort of disincentivizes turtling obviously because you know people are gonna come after you because that's the way to score points I really do like the tech tree I like the fact that the tech tree there's different flavors there's an attacking tech there's like a defensive one and there's an other and I like the fact that you can draft you know different ways to score or you can draft buffs or characters you can write like a squad yeah we didn't mention IV yeah a giant monster yeah you know these nice little minis so like the tech tree is not just a one flavor it's multiple it's like nuanced and interesting that way yeah I just love that you can get in everybody's face and you're encouraged you getting their ways from the beginning and yeah like he is like settled before you would never a turn or two away from just being right alright yeah you never feel safe yeah I feel like somebody's too far for you to get right so yeah it's been said but number 29 for me is commit okay my number 28 is deception murder in Hong Kong this is a fantastic social deduction game that I think veers lighter like I could see myself explaining this to most P and then again they'll always be that initial wonky round but you'll get over it and it'll be great from the second play on the way this works is every player has two sort of rows of four cards one which corresponds to a murder weapon one which corresponds to evidence left of the scene except for one player who is the forensic scientist so right yes forensic investigator perhaps and they are the sort of clue giver for the table they're trying to lead the other players towards one of the players who they secretly know is a murderer so the murderer will sort of once they've identified themselves as the murderer that everyone closes their eyes the murderer points to their murder weapon of their four cards and their evidence of their other four cards the forensic scientist knows this and is then trying to lead the other players to those two cards by these clue cards so it might be what is the time of day what is the location what was sort of the atmosphere at the time were there any witnesses that sort of thing and just by use these subtle clues you're trying to get them towards these certain cards the murderer is participating in all the discussion and obviously trying to lead people astray saying oh it's on me it's mark it's definitely it's I mean he's clearly trying to tell us it's the scissors and the poison right yeah so it's just it's a game that sort of revolves around pure discussion and just you know trying to rally people to your way of thinking trying to convince people that you're not the murderer and it gets especially good when you layer in some of these roles like someone that might be helping out the murderer so you suddenly have two people that are like pushing for something specific and you don't exactly know why cuz it doesn't quite make sense but they're the humanly arguing that does make sense it's a really clever game it's one I like a lot I liked playing it as on both sides being just a grunt police officer being the forensic scientist being the murderer all equally satisfying it's really really good that's deception murder in Hong Kong I've actually had a lot of success teaching this to non-gamers yeah we always run it back and have a good time the one issue I sort of had with this and what it reason had dropped a little bit of my list is I feel like you know when the murderer is selecting his weapon and clew it really even if he's trying to be as sort of opaque as possible it really only comes down to generally like two three possible options it it gets like the choice of who the murderer are it gets like thinned down quite early and it's like yeah it feels like sometimes you can just wholesale rule out something right yeah that's fair yeah but yeah great game for sure definitely cool my number 28 best game of all time is a fake artist goes to New York this is essentially almost a parlor game you know activity this is another game so I've linked games on the mind for this episode but in this game everyone knows a word but one player that word could be shark or swimming pool or any number of things and then every player is passing around a pad of paper and they can only add one line to the drawing so you put your pencil down you draw and then you lift up and that gets passed around the table two times so the funny part about this is one player doesn't know that they're trying to draw a swimming pool and then everyone else is trying to figure out who doesn't know so everyone has a different color pencil or depending on the version of the game you get there's a couple of different variations of this and then you're sitting there analyzing after the round and everyone is trying to figure out who the fake artist is this is hysterical because the first few rounds with a new group everyone will be way too obvious about what they're drawing with one line and then the fake artists will get away with it but as the game goes on people start getting sillier and sillier with what they're drawing to try to distract the fake artist so they're drawing just needs to be just good enough to convince the others like I clearly knew what I was doing look at that squiggly swoggle you know and so once again it devolves into a shouting match where everyone is sort of trying to prove that they aren't the bad guy super simple love of fake artists goes to New York I've never had a bad time playing this yeah I really like fake artists it's it's one my favorites especially of the Orient games but yeah again another game that you can bring to a party you know it yeah alright my number 28 gets a lot of grief all the negative stuff though I think comes from the whole form over function part of it I don't know it's but the negatives come down to it's a very drab board the pieces are not super high quality but for me it's the best it's the most points the best points allottee game from mr. points Alex just tell us fundamentals of Burgundy number 28 I think it's I think it's his well best game as far as the point salad part goes and I think it's his best game it's my favorite of the felt games the you know this is all about points out all about getting you know points in different places all about building your engines your various engines it's a very simple game in terms of the way you play basically rolling two dice the same way you do in Oracle's of Delphi and you you're you can take actions based on the dice you roll there's a way to mitigate it same as an Oracle Delphi it's got just like everything you sort of want from a feldene game the set collection bunch of different ways to score points yes the board is drab it's like various don't like shades of brown you might get a green sprinkled in if you're lucky but yeah I just think it's I think if you're looking for the prototypical points out the prototypical felled you go cast as a burgundy and it's it's ridiculous it's like 20 less than 25 bucks on Amazon it's hard to pass up if you're looking for that I don't know why exactly I just didn't do anything for me the couple of times I played it like I on paper it feels like it would be a game a lot I would like and I feel like a lot of people have recommend it to me as a game I would like I just I get I kept using get to the aesthetic part alone is enough to turn people off yeah I don't think it was that I mean that's certainly yes right it's not a good looking game but I don't think that would have been enough is this the one where everyone has a different numbered board that they're working off of or is everyone using the same number in each game you can use different boards you can use it you can use the same board or you can use different boards what's the most common way to play yeah I think probably different like gamers will probably play like the asymmetrical boards but yeah I just I I had this and got rid of it and I seem to remember sort of for something so tight euro II feeling like the boards didn't always have the same like point potential um I I don't know I haven't right waited nearly enough well certainly whereas the tiles are come out you're basically one of the things you can do is buy tiles or it's I guess it's the main action you're doing is buying tiles and putting them on your tableau or your board and sometimes you know especially if you're working on animal strategy or you're working on you know whatever strategy like a shipping strategy and the the way this house can come out they're always the same type of tiles that come out but sometimes the the look of the drawing the tiles can can be can go south for you but again there's so many ways to score yeah because this is a point salad that there's always a way to like mitigate so that's castles burgundy number 28 my number 27 game is color Etta a really simple card game easy to teach and always just really fun Kelly and I sort of spoke about this recently as just it's a game that you just compare every other small card game to you because it's just it's for like how simple it is and how satisfying the decisions are and it's just it's really good the way the way it works is there are its you have a deck of just a number of cards in different colors and that's all the cards are or just a color you're trying to collect groups of cards to score as many points as possible depending on other with the scoring system you work there are two different scoring systems you're either trying to hit a certain number or just get as many of that card as possible then one by one use of draw a card and choose one of a number of difference of hops to play it to and those sort of hops can only have three cards total each so you get to a point where you're either going to add it to be the third card and one Harpo starts and you hop or at any point instead of playing a card you can just take one of the hops so it's it's it's a very cool decision of like well I can sort of push my luck a little bit and so get a card that I might want to put some with it might be the card I need but then I'd might have to put it somewhere where it's suddenly very enticing for someone else to take immediately or just sort of cash in and just take the cards that are there on the table right now it's yeah like said for for a simple game it's just got such a it's a got a cool decision space that's really really fun so easy to teach yeah it's Colorado yeah I think one of the things you can look at is these games that have been expanded and sort of iterated on as zoo Loretto rock water aqua red oh and a few others and then we inevitably always end up back at the simplest version of that your version of what the game is and what's intriguing is just oh there's three hops here and you can either take one or add a card to one of those arrays and that's that's the that's the game yeah and interestingly I ice was soo Loretta was the first version of that that I played and then once I played Colorado I had the exact same reaction it's like wait this is the part I like yeah yeah cool we are moving on to my 27th best game of all time and I believe I can say with a surety that this is the last cooperative game on my list this is Hanaa be the granddaddy of them all this is no I meant of all board games and strange that you're 20 yeah interesting kanabi is a cooperative game where everyone is doesn't get to see their own cards so you're literally drawing from a deck and displaying them outwards towards everyone else at the table this alone makes it really really funny as people play for the first time and they sort of go what like this is how you play and you are playing cards onto ascending piles of fireworks trying to go from 1 to 5 and you're giving each other clues about your cards so on your turn you can either give a clue to a neighbor or play one of your cards and there's a lot of trust involved in this game because if no one if you're almost out of clues to give and no one has given you clues about your cards you have to sort of make a leap of faith and say well that means I have bad cards I can just discard these but that isn't always what it means sometimes people just aren't paying attention to what you have or you could see a big problem coming up you don't give a clue between the two of them you're gonna lose a card that you need in order to successfully complete the game this is a game where you just play 225 points there's a few ways to plus up the difficulty was sort of a rainbow suit the way in which you give clues is really simple it's you can either tell someone how many of a card they have you have three ones in your hand and here they are or you have three blue cards and here they are but you have to give all you can't give like a partial clue you either give clues and those two flavors this is a nabi it has always been a fantastic success I feel like I'm improving at it with different groups of people and then you start over and sort of a new meta develops with a new group which is fun yeah this great game packs a lot of punch in a deck of cards basically the granddaddy of them all I was like I like but when you're teaching new people and you know you're explaining you the cards are like reverse of how they know nobody and then there's always to the part where somebody acts like other so yeah they take the card the wrong way yeah I wish is the right way I guess all right my number 27 look who's back it's a doctor again this is his newest game and if decrypted was stripped of 2018 took up to 28 okay so this is the third of four 2018 games in my list this is his reworking of through the desert it is Blue Lagoon I love this game despite the fact that I am absolutely terrible at it I'm in it I oh it's so frustrating that I'm so bad at it but I love it so much I just always want to run it back immediately every time I lose but so what this is is again we're working up through the desert which was sort of loosely based on go you're drawing you're creating routes or networks and you're trying to in this game specifically you're creating routes you're trying to create routes that touch all islands it's one of the ways to score you're also trying to cut off your opponent's ability to create those routes blue looking differs from through the desert in that it's adds a little more gamer II a gamey mist to it a little more like ways to score points through the desert was much more of like a pure go ish type of game but I love I love Blue Lagoon I love what it adds it's got these it's got a it's got two halves which really basically amount to the same game twice there's a little bit of a difference between the first half and second half the game but I just love it I just again another game that's like simple in its rules there's a little more filius than most Kenichi games in terms of scoring because there's so many different ways to score but for me doesn't doesn't hurt at all I just absolutely love this game 27 Blue Lagoon I may have played this more than any other game in 2018 I don't have any 2018 games on my list maybe no de kryptos up there but that's it yeah Blue Lagoon is great I've played it a lot in quick succession yeah and I just am starting to wonder if if it has the legs for me oh really but still loving it still would recommend it to everybody I've played it a lot so yeah my number 26 game is spirit island this is I was trying to think like how many cooperative games are having my list but this is probably one of the highest ones spirit island is a a cooperative game where each player has one of a bunch of different asymmetric spirits there are there's an island whose natives you're trying to protect as spirits of this island and invaders come in and they represent by these plastic pieces these plastic components the invaders would have come in based on a deck of cards they were gonna move into the island build buildings and start spreading out and you as the spirit so try of trying to just repel them so you have these pans of powers some of which sort of act faster than the invaders do some would talk more about setting up for the subsequent round you're collecting energy and it's about sort of like managing that it's hand management gaming sort of managing the cards deciding the right time to play them because you know at some point needs to retrieve them all so you can play them for a future round you're trying to push invaders around the board move them off and they so just keep coming up back and back and so bigger and bigger numbers in this very pandemic way where it starts to sort of feel like it's growing out of control but one of the best things about this game is that has this this power curve over the course of its you're getting stronger and stronger because you're sort of drafting better and better power cards so eventually you get to this point where it feels overwhelming but you just have enough push we all do these big moves to sort of get enough of them off of the board and win the game I really really like this a lot it's a very heavy very thinkI cooperative game that seems to just by virtue of how heavy it is and sort of how hard it is to sort of think of anyone's board state outside of your own it's hard to sort of quarterback the table and you're sort of mostly focusing on what you're able to do but there is a pretty strong interaction and saying okay let's work together I don't know where you're gonna be able to do but can you help me out over here can you maybe help me out on this part of the board it's really really cool really satisfying and I've had a lot of really good games of this and also just because of that asymmetry every spirit feels pretty fundamentally different like the the rules are quite substantially different between you to the spirits so yeah that's yeah it's a strong game for like a Reaper for my replayability perspective I love yeah I love the asymmetry is great I also love the names of the gun yeah really cool um and uh one of the biggest problems for me when it comes to coops is that it's a quarterbacking thing you feel like basically one person or two people are really playing a game a lot of people are just by standards but this does a good job of mitigating that for sure I don't coop but I really understand why people like this and if I was looking for mid to heavy weight co-op experiences this is definitely like a premier title that you should consider my number 26 best game of all time is cockroach poker or otherwise known as Kakkar lacking steel oh we call it I don't know no Steel's probably just the only Packer lacking something yeah cockroach poker is a fantastic bluffing game where you hand a player a card and you say this is a cockroach and then they have to decide whether they believe you or not that is essentially the whole game only one player loses but what's funny is you can then hand that card to another player so this is a spider mark mark says I believe you picks it up I would never say that and then hands it to Nealon and says Callens a filthy liar it's a stink bug and then as that passes around you kind of get a vibe for who's lying and who's not lying and you kind of use the players as well to know well Christina doesn't usually lie and you're trying to discern who is good at lying and who is not what I love about the game too is that there's only one loser so essentially once you draw a card that you know will be bad for mark it's sort of a mission to how to get that card to mark so you don't want to pass it to him first because then he can just get rid of it needs to go to mark last and then he needs to hear a bunch of stuff about how it's not what do you think and then he's gonna get gosh and that is cockroach poker very fun and and this one you know I know the the game that it's always compared to his skull and over the years I now firmly prefer cockroach poker over skull personally would you so are all the suits I forget are all the suits in this game bugs yes now you know that a spiders a bug next game on the list my number 26 there are two sort of trunks to the train games two to sort of main ways you can go 18 x x or steam this is my number 26 age of steam designed by Martin Wallace so there are a lot of reasons I love steam the age of steam or steam games the the tightness of it's a very confrontational at least the vanilla steam is very confrontational the board is very tight what sets Steam games steam train games apart from 18 X X is the there's less of a stock market part of it so steam is more about building the routes and there's also a pick up and deliver aspect to steam games that you don't find in 18 X X Games another thing I really like about age of steam is the number of boards there are hundreds of different types of boards you can play you know like vanilla board is I think North America but you can play you know different parts of world there's a heaven in hell board there's like a zombie board and they all you know have the same structure but there they play a lot a lot differently but yeah just a vanilla steam very confrontational very tactical but strategic you know you want to make sure your routes don't get cut off but you need to adapt to when they do or you need to adapt when different Goods come on the board I it may not be it probably wouldn't be in the game I would recommend for people playing their first train game I think I would recommend some of the 18 XX introductory games but it's it's a really really good one that is age of steam my number 26 game and is this the simpler version I remember steam and age of steam steam is this is a more straightforward version Steve so this is the more complicated yeah system yeah but only a little bit only slightly so but yeah and I might I've played agency more than steam I might with more plays of steam prefer that but yeah the whole both both types of games are a good ones I think I played this once yeah I seem to remember liking it but I'm not a train baron right my number 25 game is Blue Lagoon this is like said well like you said rather 2018 game this is the second of three 2018 games on my list and yeah like it shot up through my list because it's that good yeah the my recollection of sort of discovering blue lagoons where when you bought it back from Gen Con dice was read through the rules cursory I'm like I don't get why this is going to be good at all it seems too little too abstract a little bit too simple but man it's satisfying like the number of different ways you can score like I sort of you know anyone tense like so pick the one or two that they're gonna not maybe focus on that round and then it seems like you can easily do well just by you know not necessarily focusing on everything right you can adjust that game to game based on sort of like what other players are doing I haven't played through the desert I'm sure I would enjoy it as well but Blue Lagoon is fantastic for a game that's as simple as is the so the two round structure is interesting because the first round sets up for the second one great game yeah absolutely Blue Lagoon just a note that we are now officially halfway through oh yeah little commemoration yeah trying to remember what I usually say is it woohoo or yippee some form yeah yeah alright jumping into my 25th best game of all time this is a second edition of a game and there is a first edition of the game that many people prefer but I've not played and this is a Martin Wallace game this is a study in Emerald second edition this is a deck building hidden teams Cthulhu game I hate I really I could not care any less about Cthulhu I think there might be one or two themes that I dislike more but barely but barely in this game there are 2 teams and those two teams you don't know who they are they could be 2v1 it could be 1v2 it's better to play where it could be 2 v 3 or 3 v 3 but as you're taking actions on the board you're either trying to help Cthulhu or not I don't even understand the mythos there you like a Thule where you want to get those are the only two things I know and as you score points for doing actions on the board your player piece moves up even if you're on the other team so people don't know even if you do something that's bad for Cthulhu and you're on cthulhu's team you move up in points and then at the end of the game those points are taken away from you so there's a lot of paranoia about the points that people are earning because they could be just sort of putting on a show for you to try to hide who they are you you'd never want your teammate to be too far behind you in points so if there's this a lot of hidden information hidden objectives the deck-building in this game is not great I would say you're sort of moving around in London I believe and I think this is based off one specific story and the first edition of a study in Emerald is much more complicated which I do not think would benefit the game but maybe for those who love Cthulhu I'm always on the lookout for games that deliver a unique experience that you can't get somewhere else and a study in Emerald feels like nothing else I really need to play this I really yes I but you played it once I remember really really liking it but weirdly enough I just don't remember so many of the specifics of what we were doing I just remember the hidden team and the sort of the hidden victory points thing and the bet I was really really cool you recommend the second I have not played the first edition but the second edition is a streamlined affair okay okay great but you're only gonna play it with me right sure so you wouldn't as long as there's no party boats in my future hey we're all set good my number 25 I know came out in 2017 because it was the board game Mirage game of 2017 that is satirical fluence trading and negotiation in the Elysium quadrant just rolls off the tongue this is as the title indicates so poorly I guess trading a negotiation game but also with a very euro aspect to it there is tons of cubes and you are definitely pushing cubes you pushing cubes not for area control or anything like that but for resource conversion the part that I love about this game is how much trading is encouraged you play one of a number of asymmetric races again asymmetry shows up a lot of my list and one of the you have different powers generally but one of the things that you also that also differentiates you from other races is the resources that you create versus the resources you need you generally have an abundance in one resource but you need one that you don't create and so that's where the trading is encouraged because it's the same for everybody the table they have a resource that they don't need and resources I do need and it's just this game there's no I feel like one of the biggest problems with negotiation games is you always feel like you're being hurt or you always feel like you could maximize things a little bit more and with pseudo confluence the trading is so free and encouraged and vital to the game that it's there's trading happening all the time a lot of times you feel like you're getting a little bit less than you need but the thing is it's generally for resources that you have no use for like you're just pumping out brown cubes which is great because you can trade them away but you otherwise have no reason to have them so you might as well trade them for something and that's just that's I think the core of this game and the thing I like so much about it it's also great that a place up to seven players we just had a sense player game and it doesn't because the action is simultaneous it's a constant trading thing playing seven players does nothing but I think add to the enjoyment doesn't lengthen the game at all it took us two hours which is as long as any other game yeah especially for some player game to our game feels fantastic so that's my number 25 the bgb game of 2017 satiereal confluence trading and negotiating sorry in the Elysian quadrants I really really like City real confidence I think I like a little bit more than either of you to some extent it'll come back better yeah but but the things I really like about it is like there is this idea of sort of mutual cooperation like it's in your interest to grow the tables economy yes so there is you're never incentivized to lie to another player in fact you're hurt you you specifically cannot go back on a promise you've made without getting hurt yeah pretty significantly so it just it ends up becoming a little it feels a little bit maybe a little bit friendlier than your average oh yeah trading for sure for sure yeah and I never considered that your that's true because you want if you're looking if you need white cube for example you want the white keep yeah news videos I never considered that yeah it's it's definitely feels like you're you want more of everything in a table because also then you know buy you need to help the person that's producing white cubes by helping the person that's provided anything they mean so it's just this big everything is just blossoming and going as the game progresses yeah very cool game I love that you can trade part of your engine to another player for a turn so it's sort of like hey I'm not going to use this but I'll trade you like part of my spaceship but you have to give it back next round right in exchange for like two Brown keys nothing says silly about that that's great my number 24 is Alhambra this kind of it's a fantastic game it also has a very special place to me because this is one of the earliest euro games I played this was when I was first coming to the hobby like before I play well I mean I played Catan like once back forever ago but Alhambra was one of the first games of like introduced me to that sort of space of the Hobby and I really polite so a lot I so it played it almost every time I could get a chance the way that this works is there are tiles of different sort of suits different colors and specific value and there get allocated to one of four markets lots of four different currency colors your collecting cards and specific currencies and then on it your turn you're either collecting cards to sort of add to your hand of currency or spending them to buy one of those tiles you then layout those tiles sort of in your city your Humber and you're trying to get groups of tiles there are also certain reasons you might want to depending on the expansions and variants you're playing with the arrangement of these might become significant you're trying to connect walls and sort of route so that they line up there's like a tile laying spatial component to this and there's just end up being a multiple different consideration so that you have more of a specific color of suit than other players of the table so there are three scoring rounds in the game there were sort of semi randomly determined and yeah it's it's a really satisfying game that I I keep coming back to I played it again recently a couple of times it's still as satisfying as it's always been it's a really really cool game it has a ton of expansions that sort of add on little variants and all sort of rules to it one of my favorite things about Humber is an unofficial variant that we play called speed Alhambra have you played this is what I have fun okay so our friend Dan invented this variant where you don't lay out your tiles as you get them you just accumulate them and then you have a timed phase where you're forced to lay them out all out in quick succession that's not really my preferred way to play the game but it's just a fun little twist in it that it's it's it tends to be the way we play it a lot these days yeah that's very cool it's that's Alhambra I love Alhambra I love I love vanilla Habra um I was like there there's some friends of mine who were not gamers and I'm I try to start getting them into a hobby and I remember very vividly introducing it to Alhambra it was the first like really euro game that we played like straight euro game and like again some of them who went on to be more into gamers like I remember that being a turning point was right that this is really nice really smooth and elegant and really well-designed I love this game I'm actually kind of shocked that you guys both like this so much I really this feels like one of the old euro ugly games that has been like replaced a hundred times over and and and all the expansions is like the worst way too much is where it's like you can use seven of 20 modules to be honest I just love even by the base game yeah I'd love to play it again I've only played it maybe two or three times I'm curious like what would you consider like the best replacement I mean I like I said I played it yeah but that was my my number 24 is my number 24 has been sort of mentioned earlier this is a insider insider oh it's another point game oops I thought that I wow I'm on the same I'm in England how high where words yeah where words is not on the fire that's better yeah yeah insider is the distillation of the idea of playing 20 questions with a pseudo hidden traitor you know as it as a twelve-year-old on long road trips where everyone's playing 20 questions and sometimes I question whether 20 questions by itself is even like really a fun game but we've played it a lot growing up insider is a small box version of this concept expand it's been expanded upon by where words Nealon and I will obviously disagree on what version of this game you should get but the premiere concept is quite interesting which is what kind of questions can you ask someone that subtly leads them towards the right path without being too obvious and sometimes you say a question and it's just so clear that that was way too obvious and and then everyone starts pointing fingers at you and that's that's the fun of where words and insider and these are both great games yeah there'll always be a time where I'll sort of like advocate for purity but I think inside this sort of rides this line of being a little too simple in the box and I think we're woods just gives it that little twist I like but you also can't explain how yeah yeah that's on tape the the thing I like about insider is how like part of the whole length thing the fact that you can take it it put in your pocket and doesn't take a big table presence either so you could play it anywhere which is not the case with where were that's true okay my number 24 this is the only spot or game on my list this is the Great Zimbabwe the biggest criticism I think of Great Zimbabwe like most water games is how opaque it is and how punishing splatter games can be I think the crazy Bob way is much less punishing then food chain and also the because it's like a pretty small operation splutter the component quality is lacking that said there's a lot that I really really love about Great Zimbabwe first of all the theme is really cool African tribes it's like a it's a not often used theme the artwork for a Sparsit is as it is I like it's and I think it's it's cool and evocative there's the auction mechanic or you're auctioning off first player come to think of it actually the Oxford mechanic is very similar to the first player mechanic and aegis team what you're doing is you're bidding on who goes who gets to be first player and it's basically the longer that you're willing to bid and stay in the auction the more that resources accumulate on the on the cards that represent the first the first player so basically you can trade off being first player but you'll get less resources to start the round it's a really nice way of doing it the game itself I love it because it's really unique actually although the I think the bones of the game were by Isaac Childress's founders of gloom Haven but before that it was quite unique in that you are trying to build a logistical Network the point of the game is that you're building you're trying to build these I think they're idols and you in order to build them you need to have you need to have your reach reach to different resources all along the board be it your own or others and you can sort of by other players resources but you need to be able to reach them it's just a very interesting spatial you know there's a lot of games that are spatial but this does it in a different unique way this whole like networking thing is unique but the reason I like this more than any is the asymmetric powers in this game they are crazy they're all over the place and they're of varying degrees or some that are much better than others but the way this game makes up for powers being much better than others is that when you draft or are so when you buy a power when you like to purchase a power it comes with a cost but also with an adjustment to how many victory points you need to win because this is a race game you're racing to a certain number of victory points at the beginning of the game everybody starts with the same number that is gonna be the winning score but when you elect to take a power that you know makes you a much stronger have much stronger abilities you are that that target for you specifically is moved up now instead of trying to get twenty points now you're at twenty six or something so it balances a very strong power with moving you up the victory point track or moving up your target on the victory point track but I love it because you sort of you know obviously that's a balance like is this power good enough to make it that I need to like now go score more victory points maybe it is maybe it's not but hey what if I add it to this power now I'm you know it's gonna cost me even more to more victory points to win but I think this combination more than makes up for it I just love that it's I don't I'm sure it's used in other games but just that moving target is a phantom I just love that part of it so for me number 20 for my favorites plotter the great zimbabwe I had a very bad first game you have the Great Zimbabwe which I think color my perception was a lot but interestingly I had a very bad first game of food chain magnet right I came out of that feeling really strongly about it right so I don't know what that says specifically I think I should try the great zimbabwe again yeah it's a it's it's fairly I mean I think our game went long but I think it generally can go fairly short okay yeah I would love to do it again if it's bones are in founders of gloom Haven I don't think that I should think I need not participate in this game night yeah my number 23 game is patchwork this is one of my favorite pure two-player games mark spoke earlier about the sort of the the tetris puzzle thing that's Liu Bei Rosenberg's games are now sort of I think mostly leaning towards that yeah he does a lot of those these days patchwork is the eye is this the first one that they use that yes patchwork the Patrick came out of him designing feasts rodents oh he was like that and he had this whole thing this Tetris thing and he decided to make a game very cool yeah so patchwork you just have a sort of a circle of you know Tetris puzzle pieces as where and each of them costs two different resources or buttons which you're collecting over the course and time so you're sort of your time tracker so slowly whittling down until the end of the game you choose how much time you want to spend and how many buttons you take that that tile you just try to place it on your grid you're trying to create a for one thing a 7x7 grid says get bonus points at some point the first person to do that get some bonus points and also any sore spots uncovered or like in fees very negative points at the end of the game so you're just trying to cover as much of you as possible before both players run out of time the sort of the time and button economy is quite good for a game this simple and the puzzle component is just so satisfying to me at least like if you if you like Tetris and those sort of style of games it is just so something so satisfying my filling that sort of spot perfectly on your board it's a very very simple game it's a game I've had a lot of success teaching anyone basically how to play yeah it's probably I'm trying to think of it maybe my favorite two-player game that's appealing to players that is patchwork just for me there's a little two-player thing oh it's like a negative but yeah otherwise yeah I obviously that they yeah that that makes it actually interesting Lee like I think it is later evolutions almost like cottage guard and expand the game make the slightly heavier and take it to four players but you lose the purity yeah even having played cottage garden I think the Peoria patchwork exactly keeps pulling me back I'd rather play with bears in parks then I will stay yeah I thought about bear in pot but I didn't make my list like patchwork is the the I don't I don't like the button economy part of it I like the fitting the piece on the board but in sort of math solving the other part of it is dull for me or in comparison cool my number 23 is a game that has already been mentioned that game is splendor splendor is a very simple efficiency game where you're buying cards that then improve your ability to buy other cards the theme makes no sense you have really cool poker chips if I'm waiting around with a group of euro minded players looking for something to do until something else happens splendor will always be the game that I go to there are other games like century spice road that sort of came in to claim this throne they did not they're not as good splendor is fantastic for what it is but it is relatively themelis and sort of you know what you're getting into when you play splendor but it's it's just always fun I've never had a bad game of splendor definitely okay for my number 23 this is by Reiner yeah this is Reiner Stockhausen it's mentioned earlier have you been planning this joke in your nose okay got it but so this is much earlier this is all the old bag bills are kneeling a spoke about it so I won't talk too much about it we do generally I think like pure forms of games and and you know we like that games when they're like they're vanilla the base being their ideal situation and and vanilla orleans is fine but I do love the expansion's and how crazy they are like when I when I heard there was a expansion that made early on co-op I just it was crazy to me but it works and the traded intrigue with the new main board I think is fantastic and the buildings that it offers and the other ways to play is fantastic but yeah this is my favorite bag builder the same Ryan Stockhausen also did altiplano I thought that went a little too long although I like some parts of it but no yeah 23 for me all the own okay my number 22 game is one we've already spoken about is Ryan if you dip Taj Mahal I love Taj Mahal like again like I remember back to when I was first getting into eurogames and Taj Mahal I think very early on as one I would have called my favorite year again at that point in time at least it really connects me really quickly I loved how you know they how interactive and felt and sort of how relatively simple it is but sort of how complex the decisions are and so just how again this is gonna be maybe recurring theme to how bad sometimes it feels when you're sort of close to thing and you may be come away from around with nothing it's it's it's can be harsh at times but it's it's a really really satisfying game yeah I think we covered Taj Mahal pretty comprehensively on the previous episodes I won't say too much more about it except to say again it's just been reprinted and that new version looks fantastic so yeah if you're looking for an action it's a game that's you know that's very well regarded and readily available right now Taj Mahal alright my number 22 best game of all time is decrypt Oh decrypt Oh is a fantastic word game we have gone over it it feels it doesn't feel like code names but it fits into the same genre but it's a little bit more advanced it is really hard to teach people I now I'm sort of pseudo famous for just basically refusing to teach it and or just we're gonna play around and you'll understand how to play by the end of the round players will be like but no explain this and I won't do it at all but it's super fun it makes you think in a different way than any other word game to this point has for me and it spreads out who's the leader of a round so in code names you're sort of the guy on the hot seat while the rest of your team so you can sort of lead them to destruction if you're bad your team will lose whereas in decrypt oh it's a little bit more spread out that the whole team is sort of working together and it changes who's giving the clues each round which is something that I like about decrypt oh it's great and that's their first triple crossover is that right maybe yeah I think so triple crossover like a high five or a sort of is it under the table yes not mention that um my number 22 is the last co-op game on my list my number my favorite co-op game of all time this is by Nikki Valens it is mansions of madness second edition I like kelan although not as vehemently as kelan I'm not a really a big fan of the Cthulhu eldritch horror Arkham Horror think it's fine but it doesn't really do anything too much for me specifically like the eldritch in Arkham Horror those games I think are a little too fiddly a little too long a little too dice Rolly and what's funny is like mansions of madness has all those has Cthulhu has dice rolling has FID leanness but it all works so well and again Callens gonna give me flack for this but it's because of the app the app integration with management of second edition is fantastic it's absolutely fantastic it's super intuitive all the fiddly bits are on the app you don't have to worry about where they are you just know intuitively where they're gonna be the narration is even great the stories in this game are great another hallmark of the horror games that is in this game that I just love is the whole idea of insanity so your character can die in one of two ways they can die because they've been hit and they lose their hit points or they can go insane if they lose too much men to Saturday which is again a lot in a lot of cthulhu games but when it comes to this game when you go insane you don't die you just dealt a card and that card you read this SEC secretly the game is co-op but it may not be co-op when somebody goes insane because now they have a difference maybe they have a different victory condition it might just say you're fine your victory condition is the same as other characters but you again you can't tell them so later they're always now looking at you suspiciously because they think you might do something crazy because you might do something crazy because your victory condition now could be to burn the place down or you rich a condition could be to kill another character this again like dungeon fighter which is my number 50 game this also has led to some of the best moments in gaming that I've ever had I was playing a game where it was a struggle the entire game we were we were just fighting till the end one of the characters had gone insane we were all starting to go insane or get near death but we got to the very end of this this campaign we were literally like we were about to beat the last person and we were getting all like near death and then aundrea still playing and he was like gonna be the next player to play but before him it was are insane character who again had been playing normal we thought probably she'd gotten something that was gonna be and then she just says I stabbed Andres it was like and that was her wind condition that if she'd killed somebody he was near death and it was just like everybody you know it was like it should have been a deflating moment because we had fought so much and only to lose on that turn but instead like everybody just like loved it it was like so fun and crazy and like such a twist but yeah man she's madness that condition is fantastic great a great like spooky Halloween sort of game my one of my favorite board games of all time is half-life 2 specifically the VR mode the narration and it is great the graphics are super good I love everything about this board game you should buy it that's half-life 2 oh my god so help me if you have any game that could possibly use a nap now but the VR and the narration don't forget that there is no VR but not not yet not yet right so we can only help Edition 3 ok my number 21 game is Android netrunner I feel like talking about collectible card games on a list like this is always a really complicated affair because you're not just buying into a standalone game you're sort of buying into like a lifestyle to some extent like if you're not keeping up with the meta you're almost not playing the game as intended you know the matters dad yeah it is it absolutely is dead and tragically to Android netrunner is a I think a I don't know what the right way to describe this it was originally designed by Richard Garfield but then fancy flights re-engineered it I think for these this new living card game release I don't know how different or similar it is to the original but the way this works is there are two asymmetric not factions but each player is a two-player game one player is playing the cooperation one player is playing the runner who's was like a hacker there are a bunch of different factions in either side but each side has completely different goals corporations also trying to sort of secretly install these agendas into their servers which are these rows of cards and the hackers are sort of trying to run on those servers and uncover them so they are sort of setting up firewalls as the corporation's of cards they'll block each of these columns and the runner is sort of using like sort of tools and gear cards to sort of like divert themselves around firewalls get to the servers and hopefully uncover the corporation's agendas with the first player to get to a certain number of points either by sort of escalating their agendas as the corporation or uncovering the agendas as the hacker the runner sorry wins the game that sort of intense asymmetry like how quick how differently each side plays is one of my favorite things about it because essentially in a tournament environment you would have your runner deck and you would have your corporation tech and you'd play games with with both of them it's a very strongly thematic game with beautiful arts it's like a you know cyberpunk bright colourful theme it's a game that I was with playing for like a I would say certainly not for the life of the thing I played it for a few cycles and I just fell off of it because it's even in the living car game format where you're getting every all of the cards every expansion it's a lot to keep up with it's a game that I definitely wanted to have my list because of how strongly I felt about when I was playing it I wish it was still around I know they just released a new core right before they killed the game entirely so that that feels tragic I hope it comes back in some form that's Android netrunner this is one I always like sort of wish I played because I sounds really thinking it sounds very rich yeah but that whole like needing to keep up is yeah I think one of the things I've sort of been leaning towards trying is just net deckings with too strong competitive starter decks as it were and just keeping those in my collection maybe getting rid of every other card and being like let's play netrunner with these sort of generic decks to give you a feel for what this is and just yeah do that the and just so you know the pedigree of this game is a richard garfield who's famous for having to designed key forge so that is something to be really excited about as good as my writer job well I also didn't write it before I came here the preparation of the audience both studio and appreciate preparation um my number 21 best game of all time is a Caryl chatty act design this is glory to Rome okay my number 21 game of all time is a Carl sheliak design it is differences and talk about the waiter oh well you have bullet points of course I got everything you want bullet points bullet points glory to Rome is a fantastic multi-use card game I agree it the the base engine of it feels really tight and and just the right amount of complicated and then the what the cards do once you build them goes off the deep end in terms of crazy wackiness which which I love because you you're playing this game where you're sort of trying to take actions and then benefit off of other people taking those actions and sort of building up this little Empire but then you get a card that just allows you to completely you know there's certain cards that are like if you build this you win the game right yeah and so it's just a race watching the game sort of unravel and yeah where is it going to break first and that's so fun and sort of typifies a Karl Chettiar design but sort of that base system he's actually tried to make other versions of this Matan I and then there's a impulse impulse has some similarities but there's other designers who've made like import and export is sort of grabbed cribbed part of this system which feels so great I really like glory to roam I have the sort of beautiful black box Edition which is one of the I think most famous board game Kickstarter snafus of all time right well you guys agree this with has a song one like from the card game based in Puerto Rico it has that sort of feeling sorry I just want to be part of the conversation I thought oh wait did you actually see yeah it's more complicated than that and it's um there's more chaos injected I would agree that that you have a good bullet point yeah I actually haven't played glory to him I really want to yeah I played mitai and I which is I believe similar yeah but everyone says glory to Rome is better yeah it's its roof mattina in comparison is shorter perhaps more refined and also just substantially more complicated because the theme doesn't make sense yeah where glory to Rome it's like okay you're building a stone building get some stone and enmity and I I don't know what the hell are you doing opening a shop whatever I really like oh you're talking about to click the game breaking cars I love when you get one of those gate breaking cars and you suddenly think to yourself like how can I get this on the table you know you start like moving your entire strategy to like this one game breaking situation yeah I echo at Callan said he'd hit everything on my bullets list so Gloria Rome is my number 21 as well I couldn't agree more so that is gonna do it for our lists and that's going to do it for this episode thanks for tuning in whether you were on YouTube or listening to the podcast we are going to come back next week with our 2211 if you're listening to us on the podcast why not go on YouTube and check out our the video version and you can see this back and forth in in true color yeah I'm trying my best not to like squint at you guys cuz usually when we're recording the podcast I can just sort of make faces at you or make my displeasure sorta yeah sometimes you don't even face us sometimes we just records looking away from us but ya know thank you so much for for listening and watching as always you can follow us on the various forms of social media Twitter Instagram Facebook wherever you're looking we'll be there we're on Reddit as well there's a lot of discussion on our guild which is at board game barrage calm /it slash having forbid back slash guilt so board game barrage com4 slash guild to find our guild on bgg and until next week when we get to the finest of the fine 22 and number 11 we will see you guys then bye bye bye I you

Channel: Board Game Barrage

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Id: O2z-do9cCnY

Length: 70min 5sec (4205 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 26 2018