How to Start a Board Game Collection in 2026 Part 3: Advanced

0:00 Hello and welcome to Board Studio. My name is Wayne and I'm Matt.

0:04 And if you want to build a board game collection in 2026, you're in the right room.

0:08 Right here, right now, we got episode three of our how to build a board game collection in 2026. Advance

0:17 the big A, the advanced section. This is probably one of my favorites, if not my favorite section in board gaming.

0:23 Oh yes. Well, that's our sweet spot.

0:25 This is our sweet spot, I think. I think for the pair of us, this is the sweet spot. There's so much great stuff in the advanced section.

0:31 Uh, and again, we've got five games for you in varied themes and areas that I think you'll enjoy,

0:36 plus few classics. But stay stay till the end. Before that, hit the subscribe button because uh you're going to find out when the next episode is going to come out, and it's going to be games

0:46 is the the chunky ones. And on top of that, go check out the beginner and intermediate if you haven't done yet. Link everywhere.

0:54 They're everywhere and

0:55 on the channel. But yeah, let's go.

1:05 Matt, quick recap of the rules. Very, very simple. We're saying that they must be in print.

1:11 Yeah, they must be newish in the last like five years. Yeah, five, six. Uh different types. So, we're going to have two players, cooperative, um all sorts of different things, different themes as well. So, not all sci-fi, not all fantasy, a little bit

1:27 little bit of everything. And like you said, lots of different mechanical genres, too.

1:32 Exactly. And classics at the end.

1:34 Classics at the end. Stay for those.

1:35 Let's go,

1:36 Matt. We do love a little bit of exploration, Indiana Jones type vibes. Uh, and so the first one is hitting

1:44 of Hana. Come on. What a great game.

1:46 Such a great game.

1:48 We recommend this to you because it's awesome.

1:50 It is awesome. Absolutely. It is one of those games where you really got to feel like Indiana in Indiana Jones going to the jungle opening going to new territories finding monster that is not really Dana Jones but this is but it's still cool. Uh but what the um um Lost Ruin of does absolutely beautiful is of course worker placement but on top of that you're going to have deck building and hand management and going up tracks.

2:19 Going up tracks. Everyone loves going up tracks. It's awesome. Uh yeah, this game blends those um different mechanisms together beautifully. Really, really cool with lots of, as you say, interactivity with the monsters. Um it's just a tremendous design, Matt. It's kind of it's uh CG's

2:38 uh flagship game. It is at this point. It is like it's that sweet spot of advance. It's not it's not a beginner. It's not too too complex. just like it plays in 90 minutes with four players and uh every time you play it's going to be different. There is a tons of expansions as well. So if you this is something that you like you can keep playing and playing and playing it

3:00 different maps and asymmetric characters and all sorts of stuff you can get for Lost Rings of

3:05 Exactly. So definitely recommend it.

3:08 Wayne, for the next one we must have a Lord of the Rings games cuz it just like is come on. It's one of the most beloved IP. really is. And if you want a great IP game, then you could go much worse than getting Lord of the Rings: The Fate of the Fellowship. This is the cooperative pick for this section. It is in the advanced section, rightly so, because as far as the pandemic system games go, this is one of the most complex ones. And if you're unfamiliar with that system of games, uh it is a crisis management game. Yes. where essentially you're going to be working together, in this case trying to get the ring to Mordor, uh, while also dealing with hordes of orcs and the Naz Ghoul and of course the eye of Sauron hunting you down.

3:51 Exactly. And each player will control two character. Each character will have like asymmetric powers so you can do all funky things around and of course all the on in the Lord of the Rings um theme. So very very well done as well. You got a tons of different character that you can choose from. Each each game is going to be different from the others. You of course moving on the map, moving the odds depending on which crisis card you're going to pull out. Uh trying to hit Frodo from Bernat School. Bring Frodo all the way to Montum and throw the ring in this very cinematic experience.

4:25 Such a cinematic experience. You're going to have different missions that you're going to need to achieve every game as well. You can deal those out randomly or do them based on the characters that you select. The game is a wonderful production tower. Like, hey, it's amazing.

4:39 Oh my god, it's just a stunning, stunning product that if you don't have a cooperative game of this sort of level of complexity in your collection,

4:47 this is

4:48 and I will say at this point in time is the pandemic game that I will recommend

4:53 100%.

4:55 So, Matt, of course, we need a two-player game for this section in the advanced uh advanced game. So, what do we recommend? We recommend Kelp, Shark, Vex versus Octopus.

5:04 This is so much fun.

5:05 One versus one hidden movement and asymmetric character. One player plays the kelp plays the the shark plays the shark and the other one plays the octopus.

5:18 The expansion.

5:19 Yeah. The third player plays the kelp.

5:21 No, it's shark versus octopus. So, one plays the shark, one plays the the octopus. Um, it's going to be completely as magic. We want to say that it's not just good because they're going to have different powers. They're going to play in two different completing mechanics. The shark is going to move around and use his um deck bag building to pull out dice that he's going to roll and then use it on the map while the um the octopus is going to build his desk. There's going to be a deck building and hand management system while he tried to hide his presence from the shark and moving around the the different um hidden locations. Uh the game is very much play the player is very much I think you there know I'm there and and do all those kind of like tricks that you can do. It's it's absolutely a fantastic game. This fantastic fantastic production.

6:14 Yeah. Yeah. It's absolutely beautiful. Great artwork by a fabulous artist called Webson Santiago. It is a stunning thing to look at. A super fun thing to play. Done in about an hour. Gives you a nice meaty experience. It's a tremendous advanced two-player game. Formula 1 lovers or cars lovers in general, this is your game.

6:36 Absolutely. We're talking about heat pedal to the metal. Absolutely. H get ready at the starting lights and get ready to go. Heat is awesome. It is a pretty much a full hand management game where you're going to be using your hand of cards to race. You've got this again a beautiful production

6:56 in this kind of golden era of 60s kind of 5060s kind of racing. Uh and this is uh just so much fun to play. You've got lots of variety straight out of the box. You've got lots of different tracks that you can use. You've got lots of different modules you can add in to add additional complexity as well. It is brilliant.

7:18 Yeah, I I love the hand management of the games. And uh you it's always like, oh, am I doing hand management and racing a car? Yes. And when you do it, you actually feel very much you are racing a car cuz each one of the cars will be how much movement you how much speeds/ how many spaces you're going to move. But you always you don't want to go too fast when you got like a big bend because otherwise you're gonna go out and and you're starting from the back. So it's uh it's this management of the speed of which gear you're going to you're going to be cuz basically you can go from from one to four and those are the number of cards that you're going to play. H but you don't want to go too slow as well otherwise everybody's going to pass you. Absolutely. This game has a great element of kind of riskreward as well.

8:06 you can push your engine to the limit. That's like, you know, obviously burning heat and like creating lots of heat. Uh but if you go too hard, you're gonna run out of those cards and you won't have any way to mitigate skidding around the corner and crashing. Exactly. And as you say, the game starts with four trucks in the box in the box.

8:21 And it starts with different module that you can add after your first few games. So you're going to have the garage model. fully recommended. By the way,

8:29 that is the that is the one where you're going to do a drafting at the start, adding some special cards that are just for you cuz everybody else is going to have the same deck, but you can add some specific ones. You can do a proper grand prize with the with a positioning and scoring throughout the throughout the like the weather condition. There are the journalist and photographer all in in such a good product. On top of that, there are multiple expansion that adds more more complex and uh all the tracks and all that stuff. But the box itself is a fantastic purchase. It got a lot in Hit.

9:05 Hit is the preeminent racing game you can buy. So, we must recommend it in love.

9:09 Yeah.

9:11 And finally, Matt, we have a really fabulous game. A big game in a small box.

9:17 Yes, it is the White Castle.

9:19 What a beautiful game.

9:20 One of our favorite at this point. worker placement with a twist.

9:26 Yes.

9:26 Uh at the start of each round, you will roll there's going to be some dice rolled and put it on the on the bridge and you can always when it's your turn, you can always play take one of those dice, the first or the last on the on the bridge and you're using them as a worker basically. But depending on the on the pip number on the on the die, you will have to you will have the chance to put it here or there depending on uh on how much space you got. And um the the the very cool things is that yeah it is worker placement but the placement are not going to stay the same. So the placements are cards that then eventually you can buy and remove and putting in your tableau and building a a tableau while you're doing resource management in all of these in nine moves.

10:11 Nine moves in the entire game.

10:14 And it sounds like I got done in a minute. No, you just say so intense that

10:19 straight for insane. This is a game that so finely tuned. It's tuned tight like a guitar string. This thing is like before you know it,

10:29 you're begging to have one more turn because you will not get done everything that you want to get done. And this is game is an entire exercise in getting the most out of those few amount of turn. Exactly. It really is such a good game. What I really love as as we said um the the placement where you can put your worker, your dice is going to be different every every game as well. So that means that how you going to score points that of course you want points is going to be different every game cuz sometimes it's going to be heavy on the on the samurai bits, sometimes it's going to be heavy on the on the horn points.

11:03 You never know. And and you need to react to what the board is changing and how the board is changing and everything.

11:11 Absolutely. It's uh it's a little bit more of a brain burner that's why it's in the in the advanced categories, but we love this game like deeply. It's one of it's definitely in my top five games of all time.

11:23 There you go. The White Castle

11:26 classic time.

11:28 Classics and popular games time. Matt,

11:30 these are the classic. These are like those classic rock song that we keep loving even.

11:35 They never go out of style.

11:37 Never. Never. Never. Never. First one, we've got a game called Concordia. Concordia. And you've got the Concordia Venus Edition, which is one that I own, and I also would recommend that, too. You've got lots of different maps in the box. And essentially, this is a resource management game, very heavy into that, but also utilizing this wonderful cardbased system where you're going to be getting new cards from the market, adding to them your to your hand in this again, stronger, heavy hand management piece. And the order in which you play those cards is going to be so important. They're going to be maybe copying other people's powers. They're going to be getting you different resources. They're going to be harvesting from the board. They're going to be moving your different um units around the board. You're going to be uh setting up little settlements in all the different places as well. It is just a tremendous classical design uh in that classic trading in the Mediterranean.

12:25 If I was going to say if you if you ever heard the the terms trading in the game,

12:30 this is the game Concordia and it's amazing. Uh, instead I'm going gun blazing and poker cards with Western Legends. Western Legends sandbox games where you're going to be a cowboy or a bandit or a sheriff or uh just a cowboy bringing cows around. You can do whatever you want in this game in the western world. everything utilizing this fantastic end and end management system where your cards are poker cards that you're going to use for, for example, going playing pokers or using them for their special powers or in in a dual you just like you basically play blackjack with the other person to see who should who. Um it's a fantastic game. It's um it's a very immersive and probably one of the best sandbox game. Sandbox are those games where you can do whatever you want to to achieve the victory. This one it does in very well because it's very coherent to to the game itself.

13:29 One of my favorite game of all time is just like lovely.

13:33 Awesome. And finally, we've got your area majority games favorite area majority game and that's El Grande. It is the grand papy of those types of games and it is still to this day plays like it was designed yesterday despite being from the mid '90s. It is fantastic. You have a little bit of bidding bidding for uh cards. Uh and the cards, these action cards are going to be doing lots of things like moving your troops around, moving the king around. There's just a tremendous amount within this beautiful design space with a lovely surprise element as well with the Castillo. El Grande is one of my favorites. Yeah, it did recently enter the ball stupid hall of fame if you watch the award video just going there and find out everything about because it's uh there is a reason why is in our hall all of fame

14:23 it's just amazing

14:25 so that was our trip into some advanced games that would like to build a collection

14:32 but I want to know from you your advanced games put it put it down there and uh I want to see because next episode is going to be the expert. So, I want to see what people put in the advance, what people put in in the expert. Let's see. Let's see the difference in there. But stay tuned definitely for that. So, hit the subscribe button so you're going to know when the next video is coming out. If you haven't done so far, check the beginner game um the beginner video, check the intermediate video, but also you can check the Patreon. Absolutely. If you want to see more from us, we've got some exclusive content just for patrons. We also have a monthly giveaway there and we have a secret WhatsApp group that we can add you to and we can have a chat all about gaming which is super super fun. Other than that, please check out the rest of our videos and we'll see you in the expert category.

15:20 Ciao. play.