10 Board Games Ranked - Episode 28

hey everybody and welcome to another ranking video so in this series I take a look at the last 10 new to be board games and I ranked them for my least favorite up to my most favorite now these 10 games are games that me and my games group acquired during the UK games Expo so they're all freshly uh played now before I get started on the 10 games I want to give a shout out to the show sponsor keyienda dot Co dot UK who are my go to online retailer and if you use the link in my show notes or the QR code then you can get five percent off your first order at number 10 I have radlands so this is a two player only got a head-to-head dueling Style game as you are building three columns in front of you of cards I'm starting off from a base and then essentially you are trying to eliminate all three of your opponent's bases if you do that you'll be the winner you're doing things by playing cards you can either kind of pay water which is quite a tight resource in order to play these cards out and use the abilities or you can and use the cards as a throwaway or discard the card straight away to get an instant ability now these starter games generally aren't for me um but this one did quite a good job of making it feel you know concise I suppose um you know resources were very tight in this game and it became quite a quite a Cutthroat game I suppose and it did do a good job of keeping the gameplay you feel like it's moving with a forward momentum because you play these event cards and every round they would just passively move forward and eventually something big would happen um as it reached a certain point in these columns or these rows I suppose um I do feel like the game felt a little bit stagnant at times as you would maybe attack your opponent by using all your resources and then they'd use theirs to heal it back up and so on it back and forth back and forth until an event would trigger so sometimes it did feel a little bit rigid and a little bit again stagnant but generally I can see why people like it the artwork is absolutely Stellar but not quite my style of game at number nine I have rescuing Robin Hood now this is a Cooperative deck building push your luck game as you are managing this hand of characters trying to total up these different skill points um basically the game has three different push-like mechanisms and you're trying to kind of fight through these rows of enemy characters in order to unlock better cards into your deck um the three different push-like mechanisms are very similar you've got ones where you are simply flipping over a card at a time trying to stay below the limit of this strength on your character cards one way you can claim an amount of character cards or enemy cards you can flip over at once and hopefully stay under or one where you can try and take on the whole row of cards and again if your limit is above that limit then you'll win so basically you've got three different levels of risk I suppose um in relation to what how these pushery luck mechanisms work um I thought the game was okay at best but I definitely feel this is a one-trick pony it feels like once you've beat this game you've really got no reason to go back to it anymore the decisions were very obvious you know if you've got a bunch of um certain type of symbol you probably just want to keep on adding to that one it did have a little bit of a Twist where you could kind of pass on skills to your opponent and help you boost their points and work together that way but some ultimately again the decision space was very small and again really much pretty much no incentive to come back to this one after you've played it the one or two times so yeah I thought for longevity this game really didn't cut the mustard um so um I can't really recommend it for that reason at number eight I have paper dungeons now this is a roll and right dungeon crawling game as you are trying to navigate your way through this maze trying to fight enemies and trying to discover treasure fight bosses um Etc you know all the stuff you'd expect from a a Dungeon Crawler I always find it quite fascinating how much of a game these designers can compact down into just a sheet of paper a pencil and a few dice so I definitely think in terms of the achievement of how much game is packed into this box is quite well done um it has a lot of the tropes you'd like you know getting better better equipment leveling up your characters all these different things so um not really much negative to say about this one I thought it did quite a good job maybe a little bit too long um but I would play it again a lot of the stuff in this game I've seen before but it's kind of repackaged in this well-fitted dungeon crawling theme um but yeah I suppose in the grand scheme of things it's another rolling right game that doesn't feel particularly special but it does a good job at what it does at number seven I have Treasure Island now this is a deduction Style game as you're trying to find where the treasure is secret secretly buried somewhere on this rather beautiful looking uh map one player is going to be the kind of games master who knows where the treasure is buried and they're going to be giving Clues to the players to try and help them narrow down where that treasure could possibly be and the action system is actually very simple you're either moving your character and doing a small search or you are and doing larger searches with a bigger radius I suppose and even using these special abilities to help you narrow it down further I think this game did a fantastic job of making it feel immersive because you are you know literally writing on the board where it could be you're scribbling off big portions as you're revealing more and more information and it does have a real kind of Gold Rush feel to it as you are kind of running around trying to dig places and search I mean if your opponent's looking somewhere it might make you feel a bit paranoid so you want to go search near where they are see I I was actually pleasantly surprised um with this one and I enjoyed the role of being the actual treasure hunter rather than the gates master style character and I think if I was to play it again I'd probably prefer to stay in that same um in that same position so um way better than I thought this was going to be some little bit of rules ambiguity of where the treasure could be because you know with deduction games you want them to be precise whereas this one because the map is so huge and there are so many different ways to discover information there can be a little bit of ambiguity of if that treasure could be in a certain location or not which could potentially mess up the game but that did not happen in this um in this game that I've played so maybe I'm maybe being a bit paralleled and thinking ahead but the gameplay itself was really fun and I would happily play this one again at number six I have almond Ray it's a quite rare that a conixia auction game is this far down on my rankings um but this is a strong episode to be fair um and I did like a lot about this game you know I like this idea of the bidding mechanism where if you are outbid on a location then you have to bid somewhere else which makes the weight of your bidding much more important and I love this mechanism where halfway through the game you kind of lose claim of these different regions meaning that you have to re-bid for them to reclaim them but that's going to come with a bit more of a premium because there's already a point infrastructure embedded on those locations now I actually really like that mechanism um the rest of it I thought was fine I didn't like the look of the car drawers because sometimes you'd get these kind of missions or end-game missions that don't really suit what you've got but sometimes those card draws can be really powerful and give you a ton of money which is obviously infinitely useful so I thought that bit was a little bit outdated I didn't quite sit right for me it's a solid gain I'd rate it a six and a half out of ten um but I don't think it quite holds up to the other konitzia bidding games such as high society ra at Medici and some others as well so I know this is well regarded I know it's kind of it's considered part of that um auction series of games by kanitzia but I think this is the weakest one for me personally at number five I have Manila which is kind of a betting and wagering Style game as you are rolling these Dice and moving up these kind of barges up this River if it gets to a certain point not the overall pass is a certain point I'm just going to finish essentially or some are going to be left behind and not finish and you're betting on these different things so you're betting on how many boats are going to finish how many are not going to finish but the particular boats are going to finish earlier in the game um you're going to have less information so if you build on a certain boat it means you're going to get more money if it finishes Etc so I think if you like games like camel up you'll probably like this one um there's some real moments of highs and lows as you know things or you know kind of wild bids will pay off what it won't and it just works quite well for what it does I think maybe it can go a little bit too long if um the game plays out a certain way but I enjoyed it quite a lot and um you know I'm quite excited to see it some more and play it at those Higher Play accounts because I played it at three players I think it might be better at the higher player account so um I like this one I'm quite excited to play it some more that is Manila at number five at number four I have Rome in a day so this is kind of brand new by Alley Cat games um kind of had a soft launch at the UK games Expo this is a um a kind of a simultaneous ice split you choose Style game as you are given these tiles drawing these tiles and sometimes buildings go on these tiles and the aim of the game is to try and get these buildings matching these locations surrounding them but the way you divide these buildings out is through that I split YouTube's mechanism where you are secretly kind of splitting these different tiles up in different groups and then offering them to your opponents and they can either choose the bigger group or the smaller group now of course you want to be quite clever as the player dividing them up to try and you know get the perfect bounce to not give your opponent what they want as well as keeping back what you want um for yourself or your own little Tableau I like the way that you are incentivized to take the lower group because you get these gems which can give you some pretty significant end game scoring and I really liked how rapid this game worked it's literally four rounds so you can get this played in around 20 minutes and there's quite a rare thing for me to say but I think this game did a great job of keeping it simple because the whole Crux of the game here is that I split YouTube's mechanism and not so much in the placement of the tiles there's a little bit of a puzzle there but nothing too taxing and I think if they made that too gamey I think that could have it could have actually hurt the game rather than help it so I definitely think they struck that perfect chord on the complexity level here to keep it accessible but still thinking about how you want to divide these tiles up so um this one is right on the cusp of a recommendation for me I have only paid it the once and it was at two players I think it would be better with more players so um you know my final judgment is up in the air at the moment I think if I play a few more times it could slip into that recommendation territory and this game it fits that perfect Niche on my shelf where this is again I play anytime anywhere um I can never really see anybody not enjoying this it's quick it has enough decisions to be interesting and yeah those kind of games for me are evergreens in my collection and will stay for the Long Haul so that is Rome in a day at number four at number three I have a thinker now this is another game that is right on the cusp of a commendation and you know with more plays it could very easily fall into accommodation and this is a pretty simple accessible Euro almost contract fulfillment game as you're collecting these fruits through this rondelle system and completing these contracts to get points essentially now the rundown mechanism for me is really interesting it is very tactical but I do like the way it works as you have your meeples on the rondelle and depending on how many meeples of any player it's on that particular blade of the rondelle we'll show how many spaces you can move so if two players will wanna on a particular spot then you'd move two two spaces um and additionally if you land on a space the amount of or the yield of the fruits you're getting depends on the amount of people there so if there's three players on the place you've just landed then um you're gonna get three fruit and then optionally when you cross these certain points on the um on the rondelle you'll get these donkey tokens which will let you cash in your fruit in order to complete these contracts this game has an amazing temperature it really does feel like boom boom boom you're taking your turns rapidly um always feels like you are achieving lots and getting loads of points and in kind of different ways because you can fulfill many orders at once so it's very satisfying when you can complete several orders in one turn um and it also had a few additional twists which took it above and beyond what I thought it was going to be the first of which is a little bit nasty at times where if you gain a certain amount of fruit and there's not enough in the supply then everybody is forced to discard that type of fruit that they're hoarding so you can actually use that against your opponent if you know that they've got a ton of fruit and that they're not spending you can force them to get rid of it and the second one is that when you finish a stack of these contracts then there's a remaining piece available there and if you have the most of that type of fruit collected then you'll also get these additional points and that meant that you have to pace yourself in different ways that you know what I could do that contract but if I do that one then my opponent is going to get me bonus reward because they have the most of that type of fruit so it does have some layers here amongst other things I've not even mentioned so I'm pretty sure this will probably end up being accommodation um because it is just a really Pleasant game despite having these little bits of um nastiness or a little bit of tastiness there um but yeah I liked it quite a lot so that is I thinker at number three okay so two commendations at this episode the first of which at number two is Alhambra Alhambra considered one of the great accessible Euros from 20 years or so ago this one is a simple tile placement game as you are spending these I think there's four different types of currency cards in order to acquire these tiles you're building out a tableau or a city in front of you with some restrictions so you have to always be able to trace the top you're placing back to this fountain piece and you have to match kind of Pavements with Pavements and walls with walls and these walls are useful because if you kind of um surround your location you're going to get some bonus points there so there are kind of layers to the puzzle here you know which type of tiles do you want because you're going to get majorities um at certain points in the game you're going to try and match these walls up you've got to make sure it fits your puzzle you've got to make sure you have the right currency cars which we're drafting at the start of each round and it just has a real Breezy fun but slightly stinky feel to it um again Fast Pace just picking up cards buying towels and so on um and good competition for these majorities as well so definitely a well-rounded um pure Style game that's definitely going to hold up well I have only played the base game and base game only and I know there is a ton of expansion material for this one so if you guys are familiar with Alhambra I'd be interested in hearing what you think um which expansions um are the best for this one because I don't want to make it too muddy and too complex to steer away from what this game or how this game thrives but I would be interested in maybe adding a little bit of spiciness into the game so that is Alhambra at number two and finally at number one I have World exchanges so this is a pretty simple economic Style game that feels very different to anything else out there as you are plotting at this graph essentially um to monitor your cash but as you are buying it and spending these different um location cards you have to you know reduce your cash line if you're buying or um you know increase it if you're selling and you as you're doing that you are hitting these different checkpoints on the grid to increase the value of these location cards at the end of the game but managing managing your cash flow is quite difficult because at certain times in the game locations are worth more or less sometimes they'll come with a quite a strong bonus where you can hit up other checkpoints um and you want to be making sure you're climbing this track to get some end game scoring as well and you're making sure that you're wasting money because if you ever say get a big profit but your cash line goes above the grid then that's essentially money you've thrown away so it's always trying to keep that perfect balance of cash with things you're buying things you're selling property you're definitely keeping and trying to Kate or tailor what you're collecting with the cards you've actually got so I'm really impressed by this one the more I'm playing this one the more I'm enjoying it has a real economic feel to it despite being boiled down into two simple mechanisms you know buy a property or sell a property um and this for me is just ticking out a lot of boxes me and I'm enjoying it thoroughly so um yeah this one's going from strength to strength and it feels so unlike anything else I have in my collection which is always um something I look for so that is World exchanges a well-deserved number one so there we have it that concludes uh the video I hope that you have enjoyed it if you have please be sure to hit like And subscribe to my channel I apologize if I sound a little bit different I have got braces in um which I'm going to have to get used to so my speech is a little bit strange at the moment and but I'm sure we'll fix that soon um as always and be sure to hit like And subscribe to my channel and check out my other content too a bit of everybody else I'll see you next time on chairman of the board bye