The. Most. Beautiful. Games. – 5 Games with AMAZING Components

0:00 this is Carcassonne which you may already know as the subject of this game but did you also know that it was restored by a man named Eugene Violet an architect famous for medieval Restorations and considered by many to be the father of modern architecture he said a rationally designed structure may not necessarily be beautiful but no building can be beautiful it does not have a rationally designed structure that's cool and all but what does it have to do with board games this is a video about board game components after all but in a way aren't board game components kind of like the architecture of board games so if Eugene was alive today and if he played board games do you think he might say rationally designed board game components may not necessarily be beautiful but no board game can be beautiful but does not have rationally designed components so what exactly makes a board game beautiful and what does it mean to have rationally designed components that is what this video is all about

1:12 this is a video about board game components how to rate them and the board games with the best components it's also the fourth video in a series about how i rate board games on the perfectboard game.com if you haven't watched him already in the first one I talk about why a rating system like this is good for the hobby the second one is about games with an excellent implementation of theme and the third one is about excellent board game mechanics and of course I've left links to all of the videos in this description raiding board game components poses one question if we're not careful with how we define components it could easily be equated to Simply rating games that have the most expensive components commission is skilled enough artist and charge enough for the game and the sky is the limit you may as well launch a Kickstarter that's a deluxe version of Jenga where the pieces are luxury limousines and they're placed with a giant crane it might set the record for best components but it creates a new problem it's not a rational justification for the expense that would be a game that exists for the components and not the other way around now don't get me wrong I'm not here to bash overproduced games I myself get excited about them and I back them on Kickstarter I mean if you want to watch videos featuring beautiful board games all you have to do is a search for Kickstarter board game trailer and you'll very quickly find some of the most beautiful games that are either on the market today or arriving very soon but

2:43 to make a video about board game components I don't want it to just be about components that are beautiful for their own sake that's not what this hobby is about when I'm considering excellent components it's not just about how they look but something more which brings me back to the quote from earlier specifically I want to focus on the part that says no board game can be beautiful it does not have rationally designed components rationally designed components are those that beautifully support gameplay in a unique way in other words they are components that are designed in line with the philosophy that form follows function so what does that look like before I put this video together I did a lot of research watching other videos and going through several blogs about the best board game components and I found several that were recommended over and over again those games were parks wingspan Azul photosynthesis and I agree that those are all games with excellent components specifically because care is taken to design individual elements that support the gameplay whether that's the trays in Parks or The Dice Tower and wingspan or the satisfying tactile feel of the pieces in Azul or the beautiful colors and range of sizes in the game photosynthesis I also really like games that have two layer player mats so that the pieces fit inside little ridged

4:13 slots for each one or so that cards can slide under the mat with ease a whole other set of games that I could recommend would be games that like a Zuul have that enjoyable tactile nature to them games like Santorini or yak catapult Feud King Garden Sagrada bites deal with the devil or gizmos but what I want to do in this video is give you five just five so to do that I've only selected games that have some unique characteristic about their components that is very specific to that game unlike a game tray holder or beautiful artwork it's not some characteristic that you can just export and import into a different game rather it has to work for that game in that game only the first game on my list is a game that I would recommend specifically for families it's called wonderbook and in the game you are kids that get sucked into a book and you have to live through this adventure that takes place inside the book so this is all manifested in a pop-up book with several different features that are interactive as the game is played through now my honest assessment of the game as

5:45 a whole is that I really enjoy that it's story driven I like that you have characters that develop as the game goes on however it is very heavily driven by dice a little too much for me and so I would say that anybody who really wants to look into this game they look into another review to find out if this is really something you want to buy but here's what I can say about the components when I first saw the game I thought well this is really a gimmick it's just a pop-up book and the game takes place in the pop-up book but as we played through it I found that there are several surprises that are really quite Innovative for the medium that this game takes place in but I am not one for spoilers and while it would be tempting to give you examples about how the game can be used if you are looking for your own spoilers I'm sure you can find them if you do a search on other YouTube videos suffice it to say the game uses a pop-up book in a really creative and unique way the next game is a game that I personally don't own I do play it online and man is it incredible what they've put together here it's the game Sulkin and Sulkin is a work replacement game where uh actions that are taken become more powerful as time goes on and so the engine that runs the game of course are gears and as one gear rotates all of the sections of the board rotate at the same

7:15 time and that moves workers into a new location which is usually better than the one they were at before so it's a game that uses time as a mechanic and the way that that component supports that is just really just so it's it's a genius game now if you're looking at silken though and you're going like oh well you know yeah I might be Innovative but it's not that pretty I kind of agree I don't think it's the prettiest game but you might want to take a look at Hickory Dickory which is certainly very pretty and also uses time and uses a clock in its worker placement I think you might kind of enjoy that if you really just want pretty the next game is the spell The Spill is very similar to pandemic and what players are trying to do is work together to contain an oil spill but the way that oil spreads is by the use of a dice tower so in the spill this Dice Tower serves a few functions one it splits the dice up into four quadrants and then of course it also rolls the dice so you take the rolled dice in that quadrant and you place it on that space that represents the oil spreading out the mechanism for the oil spread is just stunning to me it's so intuitive and it leaves no very little work for the

8:47 players to do you know in pandemic you're flipping over a card you have to find the country and you're placing disease cubes in the spill the dice are the oil and all you've got to do really just place them into the matching number it's a quicker game than pandemic I really enjoyed it it's certainly more accessible to players of all ages and there are several different ways to play with different objectives and victory conditions so that is The Spill the next game reminds me of a cross between gizmos and quacks of quindenburg it's called potion explosion and in this game you're collecting ingredients in order to mix potions which will give you special abilities in the game but the mechanic of picking these ingredients is to pick up marbles from a slanted tray when you pick up these marbles it it causes the other marbles to slide down and if any two marbles clack together then that represents an explosion and you get to pick up those ingredients as well picking up those ingredients could create a chain reaction where more marbles clack together so really this game is about searching the uh the board you're interacting with this component moment trying to find a row of marbles that's going to give you a great chain reaction to collect a lot of ingredients and also give you the ingredients that you need I think it's very clever and it absolutely manifests what I'm looking for Innovative component design that is very

10:18 specific to the function of the game now the last game on this list and possibly my favorite recommendation is a game I've been talking about for a long time it's called diceforge and dice Forge is a game where on every turn players are going to be rolling their Dice and collecting the resources that come up on their dice but the big thing about this game is that every player is crafting their own dice by using the resources they collect to buy and replace dice faces so in this video Let's Take a closer look at the faces of these dice see each one is a very high quality plastic almost like a Lego so you can actually use the leverage of the face to remove the other die faces and snap it in there very firmly so all in all when assembled these dice are very high quality dice not only that but this storage solution they've designed for the game is just so well done it shows you where all of the pieces go and then it tucks into a sleeve with a band that wraps around it to hold it all in place now that doesn't mean that I recommend storing the game on its side but it certainly is excellent to you know get the game out and have everything be where it needs to be easy to find and then not only that I mean the dice are such high quality but the game also has cards with artwork on all of the cards as well and even that's well done the

11:50 artwork on the board like bleeds into the artwork on the box making the entire thing one cohesive unit it is just holistically a game with the best components that you can find anywhere dice Forge that is what I have to say about components the next video in this series is strategy but before you go be aware that you can actually rate the components of these games yourself when you go to the perfectboard game.com all you have to do is sign in using Google and after you've reviewed a single game you can go through any of the games that I've mentioned and you can upvote or downvote all of the attributes the reason I've built it to do that is because the website is not a place for me to express my own opinion but rather a place for the community at large so that we the hobbyists can rate these gains and take a look at what the community thinks rather than just one YouTuber so if you want to take a look at that there is additional links in the description thanks for watching this video and hopefully I will see you in the next one bye