Top 10 Board Games I'm Embarrassed I Haven't Played!

0:01 Are there any games that you're embarrassed to tell your game group that you have never played? Well, I've been making videos for over 12 years about board games. I have over 3,000 videos, and I've played roughly 2,000 different board games. And there's still some that I am embarrassed that I have not yet played. So, I'm going to give you my top 10 games that I am not only embarrassed to tell my friends and my my board game group, but you all, the entire world out there, I'm going to be mentioning this, what I'm embarrassed about. Now, what I try to do is find games that are tried and true for many different groups, but for one reason or another, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. And these are ones that I actively would like to play. If I had the opportunity to play, I would play it, but these aren't ones that I've actually like obviously gone out and purposely played. So, these are ones are sort of like under the radar. Uh there there some of them are fringe games, but as we get closer, there's some huge ones on here.

0:52 So, let's take a look. Before I get to the moment you've been waiting for, I wanted to tell you about finding your grill game at Noble Knight Games. Grill games are games that you've always wanted, but are no longer in print and very hard to find, hence finding the holy grail. Noble Knight buys and sells pre-owned games and developed a condition grading system from 30 years of experience from buying and selling games, so you know exactly what you're getting. Maybe it's the top 100 game Mechs Versus Minions and you don't want to wait a year for the next printing. Or maybe the slipcase version of the classic game Acquire from the 1960s. So go on your holy grail quest at Noble Knight Games by clicking the link in the description of this video or on the eye up there in the upper right.

1:41 Number 10. Number 10. Number 10. Number 10.

1:44 All right, we're starting this list off with the number one rated game on board for dexterity game called Crokenol. Uh, this is supposedly came out back in 1876. It's ranked as the 43rd highest ranked game on Board Game Geek. For a dexterity game, that's amazing. To get in the top 1,000 of Board Game Geek is amazing. But to get in the top 100 is ridiculous. And to have it be a dexterity game. Wow. That's that's crazy. It's got an 8.0 average rating for 21,000 ratings. It's amazing. How in the world, you know, it's just one of those things. So, in this it's it's it's one of those things where you're trying to shoot into the middle and get points. Uh if there's an opponent's uh piece on the board, you must hit theirs or it's an invalid hit. Like, it doesn't look like there's a lot of rules to this game. It just, you know, you're flicking these discs to the middle or you must hit the other players and you're trying to basically hit them out and you get in. It just seems super simple. It's just one of those things where like I've seen it and I've been like, "Okay, well, why is that better than any other flicking game?" Right? And I hope that you will tell me in the comments if you love Kroganol. Please tell me out of all the other flicking games are out there.

2:51 Why is this the best one? Why is this the highest rated one? I don't know. I've never played it. And for for that reason, I haven't played it. But there's a huge community around this game because if you look at the pictures online, there's all these custom crocodile boards that that just look really cool. That's one barrier of entry to this game is a good crocodile board cost, you know, close to a couple hundred. So, it's it's got a pretty big barrier entry price-wise. Um, and I don't know anybody that has it. Uh, otherwise I would love to give it a shot. So, Cro is one I've always wanted to try. Uh, if I come across someone that has a board, I'd love to give it a shot and see what is all the hoopla about. It seems super simple. It seems like there's other dexterity games out there that seem like they'd be more fun, but this one's tried and true, and I'm embarrassed I've never played it.

3:34 Number nine.

3:38 Now, the next one is a mass market game. Now, growing up, I played a ton of mass market games. I mean, that's pretty much all that was available when you were growing up in the 80s. You know, Part Cheezy and Milliborns and Fireball Island and Crossbolts and C Crossbows and Catapults, even many card games, even Rummy card games, but I've never played this board game, which is a spin-off that Rummy Cube. Now, this originally came out in 1950. Uh and actually in 1980 it was the Spiel Dejarus winner which is the game of the year in Germany which is has has become since then the most prevalent game award uh you know system in the world. Uh and I've just it's just kind of weird that this was one that for some reason or another. It's one of the few like mass market games I did not play as a as a kid. And you're you know you're doing things rummyish. You have tiles and you're trying to basically place tiles down. After you have a certain amount of points, you can start playing on other people's. But it seems to have a good twist where you can actually like put tiles down and split them uh split other people's groups around into your groups and make multiple groups. As long as you're leaving a group that's still active and and legitimate, you can do it. So, it seems like it's a rummy style game, but it seems like it has like a lot of little flexibility and a lot of little nuances to it that back in, you know, those days there weren't a lot of games that were doing that. And it is still a very popular game today. You still see it in stores. Still one I've never played. Rummy Cube.

5:00 Number eight.

5:01 Number eight.

5:03 Now, the next few are going to be ones, the reason why I haven't played these, uh, because these aren't the style of games that I typically like. Uh, and this the main reason why I haven't played any of these. The first one here is is Hero Quest. Uh, came out in 1989. Uh, they recently released one in 2025 called First Light. Avalon Hill released a new version of it. Um, you know, there was an old commercial about this. I remember seeing the commercial uh on TV in the late '8s when I was a kid. Um, and this essentially is like a Dungeons and Dragons style adventure game where, you know, one player acts as the game master, revealing the maze-like dungeon on the play as the players wander through it, and other players take on a character like a wizard, elf, dwarf, barbarian, and you're venturing both into the dungeons on on fantasy quests. uh during the hero's turns, they're basically moving on before performing some of the, you know, form some actions like attacking and casting spells and searching traps and secret doors and searching the treasure. Uh and the game ends when every player either is returned to the spiral staircase u or it or has been killed in that case, the evil wizard wins. Now, this has been one of those things where again it was it was just huge. Still, even until recent years, people were still like showing their painted versions of these things.

6:15 And then again, they came out with that new version of 2025 that people were going gaga over. It's just one of those things that I I I didn't play a lot of DED in the kid. Maybe play it once or twice. I wasn't into that adventure style fantasy thing back then. I'm actually still not, but I feel like I still should play this Hero Quest.

6:32 Number seven.

6:35 The next one is another sort of adventure style game called Betrayal at House on the Hill. Now, originally came out at 2004. It's been super popular. There's been more versions that have come out. A third edition has come out since. A Scooby-Doo version came out in 2020. Um, Betrayal Legacy came out in 2018, which I here is one of the best legacy games that has ever come out. This essentially is a cooperative uh trader turn game. Uh, it's a horror theme where players basically are exploring a modular, randomly generated haunted mansion room by room until a hidden event triggers one of the players to turn against the rest of them. Uh, you're essentially like laying out the haunted house. Um, and you're you're going through it. It's sort of like an adventure and it's again not necessarily D and D, but it has that sort of feeling of of like you're creating this experience, this adventure experience.

7:24 Um, you're going to be exploring the haunted house, gathering items, discovering secrets again until someone becomes the traitor. Um, there's like 50 possible hunts, which are essentially different scenarios, variable character powers. So, game has a lot of replayability. Um, I was probably most interested in playing the Scooby-Doo version uh that came out in 2020. Uh, the new third edition came out 2022. And again, it's just one of those adventure games. I do like social deduction games. I think it's a cool twist that someone eventually is going to play against everybody else. That sounds cool. I know that the people love this game. Absolutely love this game. It's one of the higher rated games of Board Game Geek. I still is a blind spot in my in my play my play area. Never played Betrayal: House on the Hill.

8:04 Number six.

8:05 Number six.

8:07 Number six is another one of these sort of adventure games. Again, I don't technically play a lot of these. And it's Mansions of Madness. Now, it originally came out in 2011. Second edition came out in 2016. I remember being at Gen Con the setup day before public could get in. And I'm watching them set this up and I'm watching them test out the demos cuz it was like an app. The app actually did a lot of the handholding that the old game used to need. You don't no longer need like sort of a master running the game. The app does it for you and tells you what's going on and gives you choices and tells you what happens. And I remember them going through the app. I remember watching this going, "Wow." People were so excited about it that Gem Con. It's rated the 79th highest game on Board Game Geek at the time this video comes out, which is huge. again, high, ridiculously high. It's a fully cooperative that app driven horror and mystery board game for one to five players set in the HP Lovecrafts Cthulhu mythos universe. Um, now again that the second edition, I don't think I'd ever go first edition because the second edition replaces that human keeper, you know, that that the companion the companion app, but players are working together as investigators. um the the app's going to be generating the map tiles, spawning monsters, tracking events, hiding clues, um and managing the in, you know, the in-game digital puzzles. So, it's one of those things that I've just heard a lot of people talk about this. My friends at the Secret Caball podcast, I know Tony loves this game. A lot of them love this game.

9:22 The leaders at the Secret Caball, Jamie, also loves this game. And they talk about how the experiences of this game, they talk about years later that these these crazy things just happen and they create memorable moments. and I like that in games, but I'm not huge into the theme and I'm not huge into that adventure thing, but it's still one that I would still like to play, but I am embarrassed that I have not yet.

9:43 Number five.

9:46 Now, we're going to get into some classic and older games. Uh, number five here is an older game that came out in 1997 called Bonanza. This is Uve Rosenberg's game, who is a prolific game designer. Um, and this was a spiel dearis. We talked about that earlier. It's a It was a recommended game back in the day. Now, in this game, you are basically planting and then harvesting bean cards in order to earn coins. Pretty simple. Each player starts the hand of random bean cards, and then each card has a number on it corresponding to the number of that type of beans in the deck. Now, unlike in most other card games, you can't rearrange the order of your cards in your hand. So, you must use them in the order that you've picked them up from the deck. Now, stop here for a minute. This has been a mechanism that has sort of seen a renaissance lately. you know, Scout did it, Jungo's done it. Like, there's a lot of games out there now that are doing this thing where, hey, when you pick up the cards, don't move them. And that that that does things. This was, as far as I know, the first game that sort of either did it or just or made that mechanism popular. Um, and so you're you're basically trading with others and you're trying to, you know, that's the heart of the game. Uh, Panosaurus is printing this uh this year, 2026. Uh, I actually bought one of the spin-offs of this game or the reprints of this game called Bonanza Dalia, which was like a flower version.

11:01 I bought it at Gen Con a few years ago. Still never played it. I think it's even gone. I don't I had to make room and hadn't played it yet. I was like, I don't know when I'm going to play this. I got to make room. I don't even think I have that anymore, but I want to play a new version. U So, Bonanza, it's one of those ones everyone talks about, everyone uses as a frame of reference. It's just one I've never played.

11:18 Number four. Four. Four. This next one uh is a big one for me because when I started getting back into, you know, hobby board games back, you know, in the the 2010sish around there, Twilight Struggle was number one on Board Game Geek. When I really started getting back into it, the game was on there and it felt like it was on there forever. This was back in the day where the number one game didn't move around too much on Board Game Geek. It was on number one uh from January 2011. It took over a Gricola, which was another Uve Rosenberg. we just talked about uh over Rosenberg all the way through December 2015. So for four years it was on there. I just remember seeing that being like wow nothing can supplant this thing and it was it was eventually overtaken by pandemic legacy. That was about when the boom started in board gaming and so there was a lot more people playing which drove up the rankings of some of the newer games of board game because it's heavily weighted by the number of rankings. That's what started like this was the pandemic legacy was the first one that like took over a number one and then it started to get taken over more more readily than it used to. But but I just remember Twilight Struggle having an absolute stronghold on the number one spot on board forever. It's still ranked number 16 like 16 ridiculously high. It's a two-player game simulating the 45-year dance of intrigue, prestige, and occasional flares of warfare between the Soviet Union and the United States. The game map is a world map of the period where players move units and exert influence to attempt to gain allies and control of their superpower and decision-makings and challenges to how

12:49 to best use the cards. Now, this had a is a very card- driven game. This has that thing where like if you play a card and it's kind of has the other players color on it, they get to enact a powerful event on that. Now, a game came out later called 1960 Making of the President, which I absolutely love, done by the same two designers. Uh it was sort of a shorter it's still a two-hour game. Uh a shorter version that that uses similar card driven aspects there. You actually have to have some currency called momentum to trigger that event. And I love 1960 making another president which is why I've always wanted to play Twilight Struggle cuz it's so highly regarded. Um and that's one reason why I've always wanted to play it but I haven't played it because I've also heard it's very unforgiving. Your first few games it's going to be like filling around the dark. You really have to know all the cards. It's very complicated.

13:34 It's 3 to 4 hours, you know. I'm like, for this long time, I'm like, you know what? I'm kind of good with 1960. 2 hours is long enough for me. It does some things that are similar. I can't imagine actually liking what's longer, but I almost bought the version that's coming out soon uh from GMT. They did a new version of it. The it's an anniversary edition coming out real soon. And I almost bought that, but I really want to play it first just because I think I'm going to play it and go I'm glad I played it. I don't need to own it because I have 1960. And that's the reason why I have not played this yet, which still makes me embarrassed. I haven't done it.

14:05 Number three.

14:08 My number three was also one of the juggernauts in the early days of Board Game Geek. Uh, as number one, and that's Puerto Rico, right? I've still never played Puerto Rico. You're like, what? Uh, it came out 2002, was the number one game on Board Game Geek from 2003 to August 2008. Um, and it took over uh took taken over by Agricola, but again, it got back from March 2010 to December 2010. So, it's one of the few back in those days that actually like got taken over but then took it over. Twilight Struggle ended up taking it over for that second time, the one I just talked about. But in Puerto Rico, you're essentially shipping goods to Europe or by constructing buildings. Um, and it made roll selection such as traders and builders a popular mechanism as well as the follow mechanism. So in this game was the first one to really make that popular where like you would select a role or you would select an action but everyone else gets to do that action but you get a better version of it and many games have done that since like Citadels is that was one that came out a little later that was big on that role thing but a lot of games use that follow mechanism now that just works really well allows a lot of players to play more than normal but you get a lot of stuff done. Um there's a special edition that has come out in 2025 from Awaken Realms that looks really cool. I've still never played it. One reason why I have never played it is Greg, who you've seen on my channel a bunch of times, I've always said, "Ah, I'll never play Puerto Rico again." I have San Juan.

15:31 It's sort of a card game version of it. It's better. It's more streamlined. I've still never played San Juan either. One of these days, I would love to play Puerto Rico and San Juan back toback and see what I think. But it's still a blind spot for me just for one reason or another. I think another reason why I haven't played it is all the versions that my friends have like Greg, it's like the old ugly version. And I knew the newer versions were coming out and I'm just like, h, do I really want to play an old outdated Euro that looks ugly? Like, yes, I should play it. Then I'm embarrassed that I haven't.

15:59 Number two, two.

16:03 Number two is a very old sort of standard card game. Uh, supposedly came out in the 1630, year 1630. Traditional card game called Cribage. Now, it's usually played by two people. Uh, we're basically already scoring points by forming specific number combinations using cards and then use this special sort of pegging board. That's how you that's how you think of cribage is always those wooden boards. Now, you lay down cards and turns adding up the faith values to reach a running total of 15 or 31. And then you score points for pairs, runs, or hitting the target number. Uh, players, you you count the point values in your hands using a shared turned up starter card. and you use that the the pegs is huge. Now, this game, if you look online, you'll see all these people making these crazy customized pegged boards. Um, and it's it's just has that look. Now, I watched my grandmother play this game as a kid a lot. Like, she would be playing it and and her friend would be playing against him and they would they were ruthless. They were talking trash to each other. They were I mean they every time I was over there they were playing Crimage and I never played it and I don't know why but I really want to even just to give an homage to my grandmother but also it's one I should play and I remember Alex from the Dukes of Dice podcast the the podcast that no longer runs but was one of my favorites for a long time. I remember he played it and was super fond of it and was playing it a lot and was like wow cribage is great. Uh it's just one of those classics that I've still

17:33 just never played. Number one.

17:38 Before I get to the moment you've been waiting for, I wanted to let you know that Game Toppers is known for their high quality game mats with over 38 styles and 12 sizes from some of the top artists in the industry like Vincent Dut and Ryan Lockett. They have the perfect storage solutions for all your mats like mat bags and mat racks. They just launched the mats game bazaar crowdfunding campaign which highlights the greatest mats on earth including the new Victorian steampunk mat and many others. Visit gametame topperslc.com or search kickstarter for gametoppers map bazaar to learn more. All right, the number one game I am so embarrassed I've never played. Um, now this game before I mention it, historians suggest an archaeologist suggests that it's estimated anywhere between 2500 and 4,000 years old. It is by far the oldest game on this. Um, and it's called Go. Okay. Yes, I have never played Go. Uh the first clear mention of this was found in historical texts from 548 B.CE. Uh and it's played with flat round stones where players take turns placing one stone on the intersections of the lines and stones have liberties which are essentially adjacent empty intersections. And if you completely surround an opponent's stone or group of stones, so they have zero liberties left, they're captured and removed from the board. Now, the game ends when both players pass their turn and the winners decided by counting the the the total surrounded territory plus the captured stones. Now, a few interesting things about this. This game from a rules perspective appears to be very simple, but it has a board gamegeeek weight rating of 3.91, which

19:10 if you don't know anything about the board game weight rating, it only goes to five. And anything three is considered medium, four is medium heavy, and five is heavy. super super super heavy games in my opinion are usually still around four or just above four and this is right around that. So it's like okay you've got this simple rule set but yet the weight is so high because of the cognitive overload of how like the strategies and the depth of this game it's been played for so long in fact there's a comparison of chess out there that that that uh you can see like how long it took AI to actually overtake a human player in goat. It took like many more years, like decades more than it took for chess to beat uh, you know, for for for for Deep Blue, I think there was to beat uh, a chess, a human chess player. It took like decades later for a Go to get, you know, Alph Go from Google beat it beat a human. And it's just, it's one of those games that just it looks simple, but I'm sure it's not, you know, strategy-wise. And I've always kind of wanted to play it. And I don't know why I haven't. I just I just haven't. I don't know anyone that plays it. It's one of those lifestyle games kind of like chess that people play chess, most of them play chess and nothing else. People that play go play go and nothing else. So there's not that like normal cross where like people play it casually. And it's probably it's the main reason why I have not played it, but definitely I'm embarrassed. I've never played Go.

20:32 I hope you enjoyed uh me fessing up to you with egg on my face saying which ones I have not played and I'm embarrassed about. Which which games are you embarrassed that you have not played? Let me know in the comments. This has been the game boy geek breaking down barriers growing relationship by helping you on the next one you love.