Top Tier: Discussion

0:09 Some viewers may find the following video disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised. Hey everyone, welcome back to Board Games Unlocked and today I'm doing a discussion over top tier, which is a very interesting gimmicky party game uh where you are making tier lists. If you're not familiar with the concept of a tier list, they are extremely possible popular online. Tons of YouTube channels or Tik Toks or whatever. I love making tier list. I've actually done a few tier lists on the channel for various rankings. And there's a party game that is centered completely around that. And this one I'm actually I'm not torn on. I do really like this one, but it is a little odd. Not because it's a tier list. The concept of the game is extremely extremely um simple. So, you you pull out these, you know, S through D uh you know, cards, play them out, and then everyone is given a blank dry erase marker. And this game is one of those games that has a judge. And the judge is not given one of these. They're the one that that is going to be ranking it. But it's done in a weird order in that everyone just randomly puts in a name.

1:37 So, like for example, I could do uh here cuz there's what's also kind of bad is this game comes with uh two markers, but you know, I could put I could put Superman. I'm going shortand all this. Superman, Batman, um Morgan Freeman. There's Morgan Freeman. MF there is uh let's do professor Farnsworth so professor Farnsworth there is let's do Vlad Shiovado he don't know why he was the first board game designer I came up with um and so on and so forth and so everyone is writing whatever name that they can come up with and it has to be a person or like thing they do funny enough give contenders on here um and it has to be basically basically a living pronoun. Like they there's Pikachu on here, Dr. Seuss. I think one of them might have been like, okay, there's Tony the Tiger. Yeah. So, all living beings. And then the tier wizard is what they're called, has this list of tier cards and they draw a category. So, uh this category is who would have the most banging road trip playlist. And then the the tier wizard basically will take uh cuz on all of these has a uh number and they would

3:09 write okay I think that Morgan Freeman might have a banging road trip playlist but it's so weird in that in the thinking cuz these categories are all over the place. I had one because the players are writing all of these names down and they have no idea what the category is. It's not like they're trying to figure out what would be oh this this would be an S. I bet you like oh who would make the most banging road trip playlist. Okay, let me ooh this person. They have no idea. So, you have eight random names and then the tier wizard has to take those and rank them based off what they think is the who would be the most. And then what happens is you have these clue tokens and the tier wizard doesn't say obviously where anything is. Let's say out of all the ones I had, I think Morgan Freeman would be an S. Um, I already forgot. Oh, Batman. I was like BM Bam Margera. Um, Batman might be a C, uh, Superman might be a B, and then so on and so forth. So, he's taking these tokens and placing them on to show the other players how many are in that category. And then the players openly discuss on where they think uh, they would be ranked. And then your goal as a group is to get all of them correct, and that's how you win. the the strate I mean there's not

4:40 really a strategy but this game does offer again really awesome um sense of discussion but kind of after the fact um what's really what I find weird about this game is that you just have so like off-the-wall like names and just whatever like I mean if you had Pikachu in that case it's like okay well that's a D tier cuz it's a Pokemon and it can't play music. Um, but the one I had uh last time I played was um who would make, you know, an excellent night night of the round table. And I had things that range from Chris Farley to uh Prince to go, who else did I have on Larry the Cable Guy?

5:32 And I feel like this is going to be one of those games that I don't know might not be for everyone. And I can't really pinpoint why because again it gives that sense of of um of like discussion and all that and the freedom. I think it's the freedom. I think it's the fact that you as players might not have the sense of agency because in every other party game that's discussion based or like this, you know the category. You know what you're trying to gauge or rank or whatever, but in this you have no idea what that is until after. Once the tier wizard has like wrote down, okay, this is where one's going, this is where six is going, yada yada. only then does do they reveal the category and then now it's the player. So, it's almost like an inverse of itself of a lot of these types of discussion party games. I still think this is unique and my initial thought was, oh, it's going to be very gimmicky because it's a tier list and tier lists are going to die.

6:39 Well, clearly they haven't. They are as popular as ever. I actually just watched a video on uh of a tier list. And so this is actually I think a really cool implementation of that as a party game. But the other thing that's kind of weird is that there are eight cards. So you're So whenever you have not eight players, not everyone is able to pitch in a bunch of ideas. So it's kind of like, okay, how many, you know, do you want to write two? Do I want to write two? Uh, do I want to write three? Um, so that is a little odd. Not everyone is equally involved. I mean, they're equally involved in the tier list, but I feel like at least whenever we were playing, there was almost nothing. There was nothing to go off of except kind of like, okay, that's the category. I guess this is this would go in S. Well, he says there's three S's. Now, which of these eight do we think the three are based off who the judge might be or based off what how they're taking the category?

7:49 Um, so it it is one of those games where the judge you kind of can play off who the judge is or you can play off, you know, just how serious you want to be about the game. It's very flexible, which is cool. Um, but yeah, the the order of the way that the game goes is just kind of something a little bit odd to to wrap your head around, even though it's extremely simple of a game. So, if you're looking for a free flowing kind of party game, then I think top tier can be a lot of fun. But I can also see it being so wide open that I mean, I don't know. I don't know. This one whenever we were playing it, it didn't quite hit as uh as I was expecting. Like I'm going to keep it because these types of discussionbased party games are some of my favorites to absolutely play, but I think I think that this wouldn't be one that's going to be hitting the table all the time. And I can't really say why because there's nothing inherently wrong with it that I can immediately think of except that I I feel like I would just rather have a little bit more agency at the very beginning. I I think I'd like to know the category before trying to give a hint. Um and this kind of reverses that.

9:18 Not that it's bad. It completely works here. But that's just kind of how I was feeling whenever my group was playing it. So, um, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm going to give it I think I'm going to give it a seven. A seven feels like this is a good party game. I am going to keep it. It's not the mo It's not the best quality in the world, but it doesn't really need to be. I mean, hell, I mean, you can make this with a strip of paper. Like, you just rip up the paper into eight sheets. Everyone writes on it, and then you have a and then you just rank it, you know, then and there. Uh but yeah, I think I think this is one worth checking out, but for some reason just didn't quite wow us as much as uh other party games. So that said, everyone, that's my thoughts on top tier. Let me know what you think of the game in the comments below. Other than that, like, comment, share, and subscribe, and have a wonderful whatever day is for you. Hey everyone, thank you for watching, and I really hope that you enjoyed the video.

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