Top 50 Board Games of All Time (30-21) | 2026 Edition

0:00 How we doing everybody? Welcome to another episode of Getting Jiggly with It. I'm Will and today we're going through the next 10 in my top 50 games of all time. This time we're doing what are we doing? We're doing number 30 to 21. So these are a little bit heavy hitters compared to the last ones, but they're not the crim like the later ones will be. So make sure you subscribe that way you can see the last 10 or I guess I should say the last 20, the next two videos. But if you're here, let's keep going. So, let's go ahead and start off with number 30. That is Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef. So, this is the first game, not the second one. I have the second one. Haven't played the second one. Might like it. It's a storybook dungeon crawl. I like storybook dungeon crawls. So, let me know if you guys want to see me play that on the channel. I would have to paint the minis first. Either way, I'll do it for you. But in Title Blades, Heroes of the Reef, you are a hero.

0:51 you're trying to become a hero and it has this nice dice upgrading capability. So, it is a worker placement. You're putting your characters around so you can do abilities, get resources, just like most worker placements, but the core mechanic is that dice upgrade. You're basically using all of that to get more dice, better dice. Why do you need them? So, you can try to be a boss at the very end. So, that's kind of the end goal, right? I want to roll these dice to accomplish tasks, accomplish missions, maybe my training grounds, or like I said, defeat the big boss at the end. Very unique. Vibrant production, of course, always by Skybound Games. I say Skybound Games, but actually it was Druid City Games with Skybound, but either way, Druid City Games now. Um, and you know, it's it's a good break from maybe a darker um thematic game.

1:43 And that's number 30, Title Blades. So, keeping with the nice, I guess, bright atmosphere of games, we're going to go with number 29, Flamecraft. So, this is probably one of the cutest ways you could describe capitalism. You are dragons trying to craft things and you're going around your town, around your city to through worker placement, right? And you have different enchantments and different things that you can do to accomplish whatever it is, whether it's uh getting bread or getting meat or, you know, leaf. I forget what the leaf is called. Um, but you are the flame keeper. You're going to visit the shops and you're going to help these different uh artisans complete whatever tasks they need to do. It is a worker placement. So, standard worker placement rules. You place your workers to accomplish tasks. You accomplish tasks to get the points. And well, whoever has the most reputation with all of the artisans wins the game. It's friendly.

2:41 It's easy to play. Played it with my uh sister and her family who again are not hobby gamers like me and Adri are. They enjoyed it quite a bit. Um so that is number 29, Flamecraft. Number 28 is a game I haven't heard many people talk about and maybe because it's a a simple two-player game, but that is Tether. So, this is a sci-fiish I don't know what to it's it's a card laying game um where you have a mirror deck. So, each person is trying to lay their cards and the way you lay your cards is different from you to your opponent. So, they can lay cards as well and they're upside down. So, like my 81 would become Odd's 18. So, it's different from each way. So basically, you're trying to lay out these cards and once you get a group of cards, then they're going to score. And then whoever, of course, has the most points at the end wins. Now, it can be played on teams where you're working together against these two teams. I think it works great as a basic two-player dueling type game to well build out your different tethered uh astronauts and see who wins. Number 27 is probably one of the pencil first games that I like the most. I I don't remember if I've got one further down on the list. You guys will have to watch and see. I'll have to see once I get to that point. Uh but this is Delicious. So Delicious is a flip and right game where you are well gardening. You're doing fruits and veggies and you're going to see what you can do. You flip the card

4:12 and then you have an option of what you want to do. Do I want to use which one of these ingredients or they're really not ingredients, but which one of these vegetables do I want to plant? Which one of these fruits do I want to plant? Do I want to use a tool which then allows me to unlock things like a wheelbarrow or a watering pot? And then once you once you get that done, over on the right side, there's a whole another area of scoring and objectives that you can complete by placing those different things into your garden. And then they're going to unlock more points based on the scoring mechanisms that you have defined on the left side of your garden. So, it all kind of plays together. Um, this one was really fun. We played it a lot. Probably one of the few rolling rights we played. Well, this is flipping right that we played. Again, we took this one down to Colombia and her family really enjoyed playing it with us. Um, Ody's family.

5:02 So, it's definitely one that you can bring to new uh gamers and it's very relaxing, pretty easy to get into and understand once you you see how the flow of the game works. And that's number 27, Delicious. Number 26 is probably the engine building game we like the most. Um, and it's kind of a mix for most people, right? Whether they like this or well, terraforming Mars or Wingspan. This isn't either of those. This is Earth. So, in Earth, you are doing tableau building. The nice thing about this is normally in a lot of games that are like this, when you take an action, nobody else is doing anything. They're just sitting there waiting for you to do your engine and make your engine fire off and everything. and and somebody could go on for, you know, a good two-minute turn and you're just kind of sitting there waiting. Well, in this one, you still get something anytime somebody else takes an action. So, you get a lesser action, but at least you get something that you can do. You're trying to plant trees or plant plants, build compost, add water, and then everything fires off in a very particular way in your in your tableau.

6:09 So, you want to make sure you line up your cards cuz maybe to get this card to fire off, I need some more compost. I want to make sure that up in the upper row I've I've got some compost being created so then I can use it down below when that card comes up so then it can fire off as well. So very thinky, very light, very easy to get into. Um I would say definitely compared to like terraforming Mars, much easier to get into this. And the theme is probably more appealing to to more people than just we're going to Mars and we're going to terraform it, right? But that is number 26, Earth. Number 25 is another game that I have a lovehate relationship with. If you watch the last video, there was one in that one. This is one too, and it made it a little bit higher, and that's Sky Tier Hordes. Um, specifically the later ones, monolith campaigns, and that's cuz they've smoothed out the rough edges in those, right? So, what it is, it is a tower defense type game. You basically have a tower or a portal that you are trying to defeat and then there could be a big boss and then you have your base, your castle or tower that they're trying to defeat. It can be played co-op, but I've played it solo and with campaigns you have a multi- multi- scenario uh game that you can play and you choose a deck. The decks are all different. There's tons of different decks you can do. You can also do some deck crafting or deck building.

7:34 It's not really deck building. I guess tech deck construction ahead of time using different uh characters from different uh within the within the same I don't know what they call them class. So you have like a green class or red class, I don't know what they're called. Um and you can kind of build your own deck so you can go up against them. That's kind of where my my lovehate relationship comes from is not all of the decks are good against all of the bosses. And if you don't do the deck construction, you may not be able to beat them cuz it is pretty hard. Again, maybe it's just me, but I played a couple times and I felt like this is just not winnable. What am I supposed to be doing before I just get overwhelmed with people in the enemies row or I run out of cards? And I'll tell you, decking out is probably one of the biggest ways I've lost because that is a loss condition. If you run out of cards, you're done. So, you have to kind of balance that act of like where when do I defeat somebody and draw a card and do I even draw the card cuz it's a do you want to draw the card or do you want to just defeat them and I've got a couple good cards in my hand. So, very thinky, very complex. Was a game I was going to bring to the channel, but it seems like you guys aren't interested.

8:50 But maybe maybe things have changed. Let me know down in the comments uh if you want me to play my number 25 game, Sky Tier Horde. Number 24 I think would be higher after my last stream. So number 24 is Astronauts. So Astronauts is Aon, but it's more streamlined, a little bit more approachable. Again, it has some complex moments and some balance moments where if you don't take the right heroes, and this can also be invincible, the card game. Forgot to mention that. You may not be able to defeat the boss, right? But the reason I say is like when I played it again on the live stream, it was just so much fun. And I this was all completely random, right? So I was doing random heroes, random bosses, and for the most part, I was having a lot of fun. Was I making rules mistakes? Maybe. Go check out the video and let me know. Um, but you're buying weapons. It's it's a deck builder, so you're buying weapons, you're upgrading your abilities, you're buying tech, you're buying more resources to allow you to buy more weapons. And when your deck runs out, instead of you shuffling it like most deck builders, you just flip it over, keep going. So you want to make sure that when you discard from your play area at the end of your turn, you put them in an order that hopefully will be the most advantageous, right? So maybe you have a card that says get a free weapon if you discard this weapon, right? But you have another card that says discard one card. Well, you definitely make sure those two are together so you can hopefully pull them at the same time to activate that ability. I made all that up. I

10:21 don't know if those are actual cards that do that. Probably not, but very similar, right? The game can be quick depending what level boss you play. Some bosses have multiple levels and stages. There is an expert mode and a nightmare mode for those massochists out there that want that kind of thing. For me, normal is completely difficult enough, but it is a very fun game. probably will be a lot higher next year on my top 50 games. So again, if you want to see some more playthrough, especially since a new campaign's coming out, let me know in the comments below. Number 23 kind of came out of nowhere. It's kind of a shocker to me, and that's Ruins. So Ruins is another one of those small box games by AllPlay. It is a shedding game. You're trying to get rid of the cards in your hand. You do this by playing the cards in sets. So the more you have of a particular number, the better because I can do three of that number.

11:14 Again, as long as you're starting or the rest of the people at the table that started started it with three cards. And that's kind of the point, right? When you start, I say I go I do two twos. And the next player's got to do at least two of the same number or higher. So they do two threes and so forth. Once somebody cannot do that, then that's the end of that. and then it moves on to the next phase. Right? The second thing that makes this very unique is the cards upgrade. So they have these transparent sleeves and in the middle of the table you're going to have cards that you can buy to upgrade them. And you can buy them before you play. So on my turn be like, "All right, I got one two. I need another two." So that way I can be higher than a one. So I can upgrade.

12:01 So there's a plus one. Add it to this sleeve. This card is permanently now one higher because I added that to it. I can add draw abilities. I can add different types of discard ability. All kinds of different things can be added to these cards. And the difference between this and its predecessor that it's based off of, which was a superhero themed game, which I may like better than just random ruins, is the ability to capture a card. So I can claim this card. So when we go into the next round, that card comes back to me, right? If somebody else gets it, that card comes back to me. It helps them because now they're one card less. But it also helps me because I have this really powerful card that I've built that nobody else can use. And so that's number 23, ruins. Number 22. This this this line of the this grouping seems to have the most of my controversial plays, but this is number 22. It's Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era.

12:57 This is Skyrim on a table. At least that's what they're trying to make it. It is a chip theory game. It's based on the Too Many Bones system. So, if you've played Too Many Bones, this is very similar to that. You are doing a dice building. You're trying to build up your character through adding better dice and better dice. And then, you know, you get to use those dice to battle. It is a little bit of dungeon crawl, a little bit of open world exploration. You're going through these delves to defeat the enemies to come out because you're trying to complete some type of quest that you're going on for the guild. you're working for. Um, and there's a little bit of story in it, too. And I think that's where the love hate comes from, right? It's two things. I didn't feel like it was overly thematic in terms of being Elder Scrolls. Then again, I haven't played Elder Scrolls the video game probably in 10 plus years. But even the story was just kind of like I got to it, I read it, I'm like, I just want to go back to rolling dice and beating up people. The second thing is more of a it's a nitpick and it's the entry level of the game. So, at the beginning of the game, it seems very hard, right?

14:06 And then it also seems like a race like you have to get things done. Um, if you don't get them done in time, you're going to start taking over fatigue, you're going to start taking damage. But at the beginning of the game, your refresh is maybe two dice, and a guy could take six hits to kill him. Well, how am I how am I going to do that? This guy that I randomly spawned has two armor. I have two dice. There's no way I'm ever getting through that armor, right? So, it does feel kind of punishing at the at the beginning, but then at the exact opposite of that, once you get powered up, you can basically blaze through most of the encounters without even thinking about it. The only thing that really holds some people up on the clock then are the longer deep dives that you do where you have to go through multiple levels and at that point, yeah, you might run out of time and have to start taking over fatigue. Um, but it is a very excellent game. I I went and backed the second part of the campaign that's got the expansions. definitely one that I'll want to bring to the channel, most likely a weekend when I have several hours available cuz it is a long game if you play all three campaigns.

15:15 And it's not a game that you want to pack up and try to bring back out cuz there's a lot of stuff in that box that you're having to bring out. So, it's like bring it out, leave it set up, play it till it's done, pack it all away. But that is number 22, The Elder Scrolls. Okay. And the last one on this grouping number 21 fell quite a bit I believe um compared to before and I think again that's just not playing it. Um we started it on the channel actually and we played it we were kind of enjoying it. We weren't probably doing some things right because again it was one of our first games we ever played. I like the story driven aspect of it and that is Aftermath. So, in this this is kind of like mice and mystics, right? Except for you're more in modern day, although I don't know if mice and mystics are modern day. It doesn't look like it. And you're these mice and you're trying to go around the world doing different tasks and trying to get resources to bring back to your population so they can eat. Um, it is an adventure book that you're going through. We love adventure book games.

16:18 And it is played with cards. So basically each card they they look like playing cards are used to try to accomplish different things you're needing to do. It's just really fun. It's it's a light adventure. Um I've heard there can be some complex sections. Maybe we haven't gotten to those that that are more difficult. You're upgrading getting items. You're upgrading your I don't I want to call it your clan's home, right? By building new buildings that'll give you extra things when you go back for your recovery. Uh, it's a very fun game, right? It's a very, uh, light-hearted game uh, because of the animal creatures. Always fun to play with cute little animal creatures. Um, and maybe it's something it's definitely going to get to the table again. But that is number 21, Aftermath. All right, guys. That was this group of 10. As always, if you want to watch the well, last 20 videos or the last 20 games, the next two videos, subscribe, bell notification. That way when you know they go live. If any of these games that I mentioned seem of interest to you to see played live, make sure you let me know in the comments. That way maybe I can bring it up on one of our live streams. If you think any of these games are incorrectly ranked, I put them in a bad spot. Also, let me know that down in the comments. Until next time, guys.

17:35 Peace.