The Best and Worst of - Garphill Games

[Music] Hi there, I'm Duke Hector and this is the Broken Melee, the show where I devote my time to ranting and raving about board games, but usually more the latter. attempting to do this video in between everybody in the sunny, you know, sunny weather out there trying to mow their lawn or get kids playing football.

So hopefully I'll be able to squeeze this in and keep the noise levels down, such as the way when you live in suburbs, but you know, and you're secretly a vampire. But this is a list I wanted to resurrect actually because I've been doing top 10 lists recently and they're all going strong, but I haven't really got anything new to review.

I've got Wondrous Creatures, I've got Life of the Amazonia, and I've got Apex Legends, but I need to play them and give them the beans, and they're going to take a while. Particularly Apex Legends, it's going to take quite a long time to get that enough plays, but you know, I haven't got anything really to review right now.

So, I thought, let's resurrect the best and worst series cuz it was very popular and there are still some people that I could talk about, you know, both designers and publishers. And I realized I hadn't done one for Garfield Games. And I think the only reason I could think of was that I was waiting for the recent South Tigers trilogy to finish.

And once that was done, I could basically get on and do this one because there's definitely plenty of games to choose from. Now, of course, I've not played every single game from Garfield Games. Chances are I need a review. But, you know, most of their weird, obscure, unheard ones I probably have not really tried, you know.

But, out of all their major releases, I'm pretty confident I've played them all with the one exception of Legacy of You. I never got a chance to try that one. It was a solo only campaign game. I wasn't that desperate to try it. And I've heard mixed feelings about it. So, I'm kind of like, eh, I kind of skipped that one.

But it'd be interesting to know your thoughts in the comments as to whether you love it or not. But, I've definitely played all the others and I can definitely come up with my three best and three worst. I'm pretty positive the three worst are going to be heavily disagreed upon with a bunch of you out there.

But, uh, you know, there are some things I love about Garfield games. In fact, there's quite a lot of things I love about Garfield games. And there's a few things that I don't. You know, it's just I think there's there's definitely what feels like two separate lines, two separate styles of games going with this publisher.

And one side I like, one side I don't. And for some people, it might even be the opposite way round. So, be interesting to get your thoughts. But, yep, I'm going to talk about my three worst ones first. And by worst, I mean just not liked as much. I mean, I don't think anything from Garfield games that I've played I would consider to be terrible.

Like, oh my god, I hate this. This makes me mad. Oh, we'll get out. Nah, this is like, you know, we're talking about what I feel to be below average, average at best, those sort of games. And then when it comes to the three best, we're talking like top 50 material for me here. So, it's it's definitely more skewed on the positive end this list.

But, of course, you got to come up with three that you don't like, otherwise this list doesn't really work. So, that's just the way it is. So, without further ado, let's crack on. Now, it was kind of hard to rank these in order really to say what's my third worst, second worst, and not. So, these first two could interchange uh pretty much whenever you want.

I think my worst is definitely my worst, but these two kind of just depend what mood I'm in. And one of them is not outside the regions of being redeemed, but I've never had a chance to play the expansion that could potentially redeem it. So, perhaps that's the reason I'm going to say this one first.

And this is from their main line of games. So when they've done things in trilogies, they've done like, you know, the North Sea, the West Kingdom, and now the South Tigris, and now it's going to be the East something or I forget what it's going to be called, but you know, for that, this one is from the West Kingdom trilogy, and for some people, it's their favorite of the lot.

I don't understand why. I'm sorry, but Paladins of the West Kingdom just does not do it for me. You're so screwed. What do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? And this is one of the reviews that I really regret. I gave this an eight out of 10 when I first reviewed it. I clearly did not give it enough time and nowadays I think at best it's probably a six out of 10 and even then I think it's more closer to a five average above average at best.

It's just this one showed a lot of the kinks in the armor quite quickly after I did that review cuz at first I'm like oh this is a cool little puzzle and I get to do these sort of things and you know try out you know different you know this looks like to be a lot of different paths to victory but then you realize that when you play the game a it is super dry.

I mean none of these games are particularly overly but man is this one feel like Stephen failed levels of dryness. But also, each game basically boils down to you picking two actions that you spam and that's it. That's all the game is because it all bases on those three colors of meeples like the the black, blue, and the black, blue, and red.

I think it is those three like color actions. And the idea is is that typically each action requires one particular color but exports another type of color which you would then use for another action that requires that exported color to produce another color. So there is no reason why you would choose two actions that don't synergize in that way.

Which means in every single game, you're basically just deciding, well, if I do the uh pottery one, whatever it is, and combine that with the church one, then blue makes black, then black will go into that one, and that will produce red. Okay, they're the two actions I'm going to spam the whole game.

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam. Game ends. Is that it? Is that fun? Not overly. And I think I just got too harped up with the whole, "Oo, I can put these color meles around here and these paladin cards. You know, they're quite cool and I love the towns folk." You know, towns folk are still fun in this game.

I like the towns folk cards in every game they do. But very quickly after I did that review, I started realizing, uh, is this really all there is to it? I think maybe I just got to that review a bit too quickly. Like I didn't give it enough plays. Hence to say, I do regret that one. That is definitely one of my mistakes, but it was a while ago.

What the hell? But these days, yeah, I just have no in no desire to play Paladins. And this one could be redeemed. You know, the expansion I never played. I would try the game once more with the expansion included. I forget what it's called, but you know, with the expansion included to see if it improves the game for me, but if it's still just going to be a case of pick two expansions and spam them, then then that just doesn't sound fun to me, you And and yeah, there are other games where you might repeat one action quite a lot, you know, if it's the strategy you're going for.

But here, every action feels bone dry. Like none of the actions that you do, none of the paths to victory you do feel like cool, unique paths. It's like one of them puts a little piece on this bit of the board, one of them puts a piece on this bit of the board, and one of them puts a piece on this bit of the board, and uh one of them puts this card in front of you, and then you put a piece on that bit of the card.

It's yay, great. You know, and like I say, this one's not bad. It's just incredibly tedious. And for me, that just puts it on my worst list. You know, some people love it to bits, but clearly you're playing this solo, two players max, because there is subtle reason to play this with more than two. Hell, a subtle reason to play it with two.

This game has no interaction in it. It's just a solo puzzle. And I think maybe the solo players are the ones giving this a bit more freedom and a bit more leeway. But I can't imagine why anybody in their right frame of mind goes to this and says, "Yes, I want four of us to play Paladins of the West Kingdom because that just seems like So for my second worst one, as I say, this one could interfl with Paladins pretty well.

This is where we now go into their other line of games. And if you consider these to be the trilogy games that they've done, they've also done a side line, which I guess I would call them the historical games. I don't I mean, like I say, none of these games are fematic in any way, but they basically pick like a historical setting, particularly ones that you barely even heard of or know anything about, and they make a game out of these.

And again, solo players are going to decapitate me on site for putting this game on my worst section. That's putting it mildly 007. But I'm sorry. I just found this too convoluted, not interesting. A smorggas board of iconography in really tiny fashion shoved together on two sheets. Really needed to do a Twilight inscription and do it on four sheets to make it better.

Yeah, I know some people consider this to be the Bible of their range, but I don't get the appeal for Hrien's Wool. I really don't. I just want to talk to him. Why do you have a shotgun? Hun's Wool is a roll and right or flipping right, whatever. And that genre is dated and done by now. It's very difficult to make that genre, you know, interesting anymore.

And this one was just a cluttered mess for me. I didn't care what's about the setting for it. The setting meant nothing to me. But even when you're playing it, I don't really get much of theatic integration with it. But it's more the fact that it's just a convoluted mess. There's so many things going on with the, you know, the different things that, you know, if I cross off this, it crosses off into that and it crosses off into that and I get that roll and right fanatics like that sort of combo building and that combo chaining.

And Twilight Inscription does have some of that, but Twilight Inscription does a couple of things much better than this one. Firstly, there's actually a reason to play it with free players. You know, not to a massive extent. You've just got that warfare map that cares about your neighbors. Yeah, that's not a massive deal, but it's more interaction than this game has.

But on top of that, it's four sheets. So, you've got industry, exploration, planetary, landing, or whatever, and the warfare one. Each sheet is very different and very easy to see what's what on them. You know, I mean, maybe the industry one's a little bit clutter, but the other three pretty simple as to how they work, simple where stuff is, and you can still do all the chaining stuff, but you also only select one sheet per round.

So you decide, right, I'm going to do everything that I can on this expiration sheet, and that's the bit you look at. You know, you might have a little bonus here and there that you can peer at, but this is the bit I'm focused on. Hadron's Wall, I think, tries to squeeze far too much and only two sheets.

It really needed to be three, if not four, to space them out a bit and make it a little bit easier to read. But even if you get past that bit and you're not too fast, is this game really that exciting? I mean, I get to flip a card and then I'll say, well, I'll cross off this guardsman here on the wall and that will do this here.

And maybe if I get a priest here, I can fill up this track. That gets me a bunch of points. I mean, that's fine. Yeah, I just want to talk to him. And I'm just falling asleep while trying to play it. You know, at least with at least with that one, I can sort of go, well, I'm creating a space fleet and exploring space.

And it looks nicer. I mean, this one's at least like neon colors and, you know, and it like really bright and vibrant like sheets and that with the cool sort of, you know, pens and I pens. This is just basically a couple of massive fixed like score pad sheets and it is just grays and browns and that's about it.

You know, color is devoid in this game. It's just browns and grays. So, it's cluttered. It's messy and it looks ugly. Like really ugly. And I don't expect Roland rights or flipping rights to be particularly great looking. But come on, make a little bit of effort. And honestly, this is one thing that plagues a lot of this range of games.

These historical ones, they all in my opinion look ugly. It's just far too much in the region of browns and grays. And these two colors are not desirable colors. I'm sorry. There's not many things in the world I desperately want to have as brown, you know, and certainly fewer things in the world I want to have as gray.

So, you know, people get gray and silver cars. Why? It looks boring. But with this one, I don't get it. I mean, I much prefer Inscription. I'm not the biggest fan of this one. There's a bunch of people that are like, "Oh, yeah. I love Hrien's Wall, but I wasn't necessarily a fan of Inscription." They're different enough that I can see why you would like one and not the other.

You don't have to like both or hate both. But I just didn't get into this one. And I tried. I tried people. I bought it for myself just to try it out. And I just don't get it. I just want to talk to him. I just want to talk to him. I just want to talk to him. I just want to show them. But we got to get on to my worst one of the lot.

And I think for many this is probably going to be an agreeable one. And you're probably expecting me to say ship brights. No, because I never played the original ship brights of the North Sea. We now have the Redux version. And even though the Redux version is entirely a solo solitire game and who cares about having other players in it as a solo game, the Redux version is actually pretty good and it's still on my shelf.

So, that one's fine. That one's escaped, you know, from having a re redone version. This one never got a redone version, though. Still from the North Sea trilogy. And this one isn't necessarily bad, but it's below average. It's just fundamentally boring and long for what it is, and the expansion didn't do enough to solve it like some people claimed.

Explorers of the North Sea, I think it's their weakest title I've played. It just it's pick up and deliver. It doesn't look that interesting on the table. The expansion didn't really add anything of interest either. It's just I'll go over here and grab a few tokens and bring them back on my ship. And I'll go over there and find this fort, flip it open, and I get this bonus here.

And it'll take me a million years to get this uh boat to where I want to go. And it'll take me a million years to get it back unless I've upgraded my speed. But then if I do that, I can't carry anything. It's like the game just is everything takes a long time to do in the game. Like nothing feels quick or smooth.

Well, smoothish. I mean, it's a fairly light game, but nothing feels quick. It feels like you're like it's like a slow burn um TV series where the the TV series may get good eventually, but it takes so freaking long to get to that point that you're bored and you don't care by that stage, you know? Yeah, just at least let us do a bit more at the start, but it takes so long to build yourself up and then the payoff isn't really that worth it once you get built up.

So, it just becomes kind of boring. And as I say, I don't think it's bad, but yeah, I played it and I was just like, "Oh, oh, this was one of the uh first ones they ever did with it." Actually, it wasn't the first one cuz I think Ship Rights was first and then I think I think Raiders came out second and Explorers was the third one.

So, Raiders and North I think had already come out by this stage and Raiders is a much better game. But Explorers, yeah, I don't I mean, when was the last time you saw anybody play it? Okay, if you disagree with me, when was the last time you played this game or saw anyone else try it? This game has been long forgotten.

And will they ever do a redux version of this? I doubt it. They got enough on their plate. And honestly, what would you really do to redux this and make it that interesting? I think this one is just going to get forgotten. It's just like, yeah, that was a black sheep of the trilogy. Whatever. You're trying to be funny.

It's a very tedious, pretty boring pick up and deliver game that just doesn't really offer anything new. I mean I mean this was made a fair while ago so I guess offer anything new is not quite fair but it's just it's just there. It exists. That's about as much as you can say about it. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.

Okay, now that everybody already wants my head for doing those three worst games. Well, probably not for explorers. I'm pretty sure I'm safe with that one, but uh I mean certainly um the Paladins was definitely going to get some hate. I'm sure but not as much as Hun's Wool. That one is going to get me killed on site.

But come on, let's talk positively now. More games from Garfield Games have been great and fantastic versus the ones that have been not great or know fairly boring. And it wasn't difficult to pick out my three best. I think my three best that I have are pretty clear. Although, I don't know, my third favorite was maybe a little bit trickier to do.

And there are still some great ones that I can't fit on this list. So, we're going to get on with the third best one that I've ever played. And I got to keep these out of sight. And I really wish I'd put the third best on top of this pile. But here we go. I choose V counts of the West Kingdom to be my third favorite that they've ever done.

So I've got the collector's box for this. It has both expansions in it. I'm actually a little bit uh ashamed that I didn't put this on an honorable mention on the games spoiled by bloat list because I think this would have been a very good contender. Because as much as I love V counts of the West Kingdom, I think the base game of it is brilliant.

You know, I love the the rondelle moving your guy around, having to take the different paths, deciding, you know, which of those paths to victory you're going to follow. They're all very different. I've printed out rules sheet aids and stuff like that. You know, the game is great fun. I've got the folded space insert.

It's sleeved. It's it's a great fun game and I really like the conveyor belt card mechanic. I think that's what sells me on it. I love the town spoke card system in all of these games where you've got all these characters that give you abilities. That's always fun. And this one has the conveyor belt mechanic, which has been replicated to a lesser extent in the Baghdad game that Alley Cat games are doing, which is why as dry as that game is, I actually kind of enjoyed it.

Um, yeah, where the cards move along the conveyor belt and they have different effects for when you play them, when they're on your conveyor belt, when they fall off. So, there's a lot of tactical play to the deck building side of it, and that bit is just really enjoyed for me. But the problem with this one is that the expansions did add a little bit too much bloat.

Some aspects of the expansions I quite like. I like the leader cards that you can have. You know, they're unique and they're quite cool. Obviously, having more towns folk always really cool. They did try to rebalance the manuscripts in there and sort of deflate the castle uh filming because as much as I do like the game, I think the castle um one is a little bit overpowered if you focus on it.

But I think mainly it's the King's Favor stuff that's the part where I'm like, maybe that was a little bit too much. And I will still play with some of this expansion content. It's still good. Sadly, my reference sheets don't cater for the expansions, but I found it a little bit annoying that they released them as two separate boxes.

that just seemed like a bit of a cash grab. But, you know, that being said, for its little foables with the expansion content, even if you just ignored the expansion content and got the base game, the base game is still great fun and still really interesting. But, maybe there was just one too many things in here.

I mean, the chest tiles, not bad. Love the public buildings. Love that sort of stuff. But then, I think these outsider cards with the king's orders was a step too far. I think that I don't like throwing this in too much. it makes the game longer. It's like, no, no, no. Not as keen. So, you got to cherry pick what you want from these expansions.

But that being that being said, still really enjoy this one. We have great fun with the conveyor belt mechanic. It doesn't have a particularly long setup. It's still got, you know, great mechanics within and I think that card system just makes up for it. And it's it definitely fights for supremacy over Architects of the West Kingdom, which is also in the West Kingdom trilogy, but this one just slightly overtakes it, you know, in terms of my enjoyment, but it doesn't measure up to my two favorites.

There's quite a bit of a gap between this one and the next two that you're about to hear. So, uh, still really cool. Still really like it. Just has a little bit of issues with some of the expansions. Making it bigger doesn't make it clearer. Okay, for my number two, this is why I'm very glad that I decided to wait until this trilogy had finished before I did this best and worst list because otherwise this game would never have been able to make it onto this list.

You know, the Tigress trilogy, I think, is probably the best trilogy that they've done out of all of them. The North Sea, the West Kingdom, and the Tigris one. The Tigress one is definitely their most complex trilogy, and I hope they scale it back a bit for the East one. But in terms of the mechanics, it definitely comes up with the most interesting stuff.

This one, my number two, is definitely their most complex one they've ever done, and that is Inventors of the South Tigris. The most complex game they've done by far. 21. Don't make any more complex than this one, lads. That will not go down well. But, you know, well, I mean, maybe some of those side ones could be more complex.

and who knows what about the 2025 releases. But Inventors of South Tigers, I really enjoy this one. And theme wise, it even does a slightly better job at being good with the theme. Found some good reference aids on here. I can't remember if this is um Action Andy or or just somebody else on BG or yeah, I think it's just it's either Action Andy or somebody else on BG, but got some very good player aids here where they basically give you all the camel actions, all the worker stuff, and how research and ship movement does.

And this is great to give to individual players because there is quite a bit to deal with this. But yeah, it's a bit of a smorggas board to get it all in the box. I mean, I would have liked a collector set where it was nicely organized because it is a bit of a bit all over the shop. But I love the synergies that you can build up with this one because not only have you got your craft people leveling up that get you different bonuses when they do and that's a good way to get points, but you've also got, you know, the research tiles that you get with the ship.

You've got the workshop tiles, which you could ignore entirely and still do great with the game, or you could focus on it and build this ridiculous engine with a bunch of workshop actions, but it's really down to these tiles. These tiles where you, you know, place cards on them, you invent items, and then people can build the item, and then somebody else can test the item, and somebody else can publish the item.

You know, these make the core of the game, and I think they're a brilliant mechanic because this creates probably one of the most interactive games in any of the Garfield games lineup. You know, maybe to a I don't know. Raiders and OC's got some reasonable interaction on there, but I don't know. I'd say this one has more because this one has everybody influencing these.

It's a communal set of boards. So, just because I invented an item doesn't mean I ever get to build, test, or publish it. Some other players might do that for me. I might not care if they do. I just invented this item because I wanted a bonus over here and inventions is how I'm getting points this game.

But, you know, it may be that I invented this because it's got a scoring condition on it that I really want to use. And then somebody else comes and builds it and it's like, oh Christ, I better actually hurry up and publish this otherwise I'm losing out. Wordstrom. But you might want to invent something that other players won't use so you're interested in what they're doing.

But when players come along and start testing, building and publishing various stuff, you're interested. You know, somebody comes along and I'm going to invent the uh the folding horse, whatever. I don't know. There's some weird concoctions you can create out of here. Here you go. The folding horse.

And somebody invents it and the scoring condition is like, hm, collect a bunch of the gray dice. Well, u I've got a few of the gray dice. I am focusing a lot on building. You know, they probably want this as well, but yeah, if I just continue down this road, that could be a few extra points. You know what?

I'm going to build that for you. And you you start reacting tactically to what other players are doing. Even if you have a couple of strategies already in place, it's a very fluid, flexible game in how you play. And the the winners, the players that do well are going to be those that adapt better than others, you know, rather than just sticking to one thing throughout and not deviating.

And you certainly can't ignore these points scoring cards. They are kind of paramount to your score really, even though other stuff is still useful. But yeah, I mean, as much as this has got quite a lot in it, and it's a long setup, and it's quite a bit of a teach, you know, this is definitely not one for the new players to Garful Games lineup, for those people that like me that are used to this um style of thing with all their iconography and that, it's a wonderful game, and I'm looking forward to what the expansion does for this because they're basically suggesting that you'll get player powers, which could be cool.

You got to worry about balance, but still. But the idea with them is that if you use the player powers, you effectively play a shorter game you because you you've got the short game variant in here, but you only play three rounds. And if you only play three rounds, you don't quite get some of those long-term strategies working as well as if you did it with four rounds.

The problem is four rounds, particularly with four players, it's going to take you a freaking long time. Like too long a time really. So, the idea is that this expansion with the player powers is going to allow you to get kind of like a four round game experience, but in the amount of time that it might take you to do a free round game.

If that is the case and they pull that off, then fan freakingtastic. That expansion is going to be damn near essential for this game. But I look forward to see what they do. I mean, yes, I backed them on Kickstarter, you know. I mean, review copies from New Zealand are kind of uh not going to happen in today's world, but yeah, definitely back the expansions and I look forward to seeing what they do for this and you know, the other two in the Tigris lineup.

So, but yeah, this one really surprised me actually because you know the well, when I first heard about it, I thought, blam me that it's going to be quite complex, but you know, we'll jump into it and see. And yes, it took a little while to get used to it, but once I was into it, I was like, "Yeah, I'm really liking the way all these things gel together." And for them to actually make a game that feels sort of interactive with other players is quite a big thing given that a lot of their other games don't necessarily feel particularly interactive with other players.

I mean, Vic Counts doesn't have a huge amount of player interaction in it. You know, the Paladins, what player interaction? You can argue Architects had a bit of interaction. Fair enough. Wayf Farfarers. Not a ton of player interaction in that one. Scholars has a little bit of interaction. I mean, the Tigers trilogy has done a better job, but this one I think definitely has the most.

I don't know. Fight me. But there can be only one. And I think most people who have seen my top 50 already know which one this is. And even the way that I was kind of skirting the issue when I was talking about Inventors, it's not too difficult to figure out this one. And I did debate on which one of these two I actually like more.

But one thing to say about this trilogy is that the Tigress trilogy is the first trilogy that they have done which has all three of their games been great. You know the the West Kingdom one fell for me with Paladins. The North Sea one, the original ship rights and certainly explorers. Yep. Definitely fell me with that one.

But Tigris got all three of them right. We had Inventors I've just talked about. Brilliant game. We had scholars. Very good game. You know, not distinction level. I think the inventors, you know, eclipses it, but Scholars is still a very fun game and it's on my shelf and I still enjoy it. But you're going to have to work hard to beat Wayfarers.

Wayfarers. And I know some people don't like Wayfares, and I can see why. I can see why. But I played this only the other weekend actually at Shake Battle and Roll, you know, teaching two players it and it was just another great fun game. I love the sandbox feel that this one gives. Getting all those different cards with the tags.

I mean, this is certainly a common thing that we see now. All the tags on cards. Get those and, you know, create like, you know, engines and stuff. Um, I believe esoteric order of gamers have done the reference aids on this one. So, we've got very good icon guides and a rule setup sheet. Trust me, these are invaluable for this game.

Print them and laminate them. But man, the only thing that I'm not a huge fan of with this game is the insert because the insert sort of organizes stuff, but you dare try and store this on its side. It will not work. And you've still got these tiny little things for your fingers. It was basically an insert I don't think worked.

But I'd rather have the insert than nothing at all. Put it that way because of these tiles. But the the thing with this game, oh man, I just love the mechanic with these cards. These cards are just so much fun because I mean, you've got so many of these brick things. I've even I've even upgraded my copy.

Oh yeah, we I wondered where these came from. No, we played my friend's copy cuz he wanted to get it played and I thought I'm pretty certain I upgraded my um provisions with these funky like 3D ones or something. But I digress. Metal coins. Yep, I've definitely pimped this one up. But it's these cards.

I just love the way these work where you've got all the water cards, all these different cards with different abilities that you can grab that function differently from the land cards which give you more actions that you can use. But then you've got all the space cards that you can grab which give you point scoring opportunities depending on which ones you grab and then the inspiration cards which give you the opportunity to double those scoring if you get the condition on them.

It's it's just a big sandbox. You can play this game how you like. You can score points in a lot of ways, but it's up to you to come up with a strategy. And the time length of the game can be very varied as well because that journal track across the middle has you sort of deciding well am I gonna rush the game and go really fast along this track or am I going to take my time and you can win either way.

Rushing this track does not guarantee you a victory because you may not have got enough points from the stuff you're doing just because you're rushing along this track for bonuses. Some a lot of times I've seen people win this game without being the first to trigger the endgame. It does happen. But, you know, the guilds give you, you know, cool things to do with their abilities when you spend it, but the tiles give you the way to customize the dice so that your dice do different effects.

But for me, it's just those cards, you know, the cards give you so many cool abilities and engines to build. And on top of that, you've got the workers that you um use where the board basically says, "Right, so if you and this is where the sort of interaction bit comes into play, you know, you can do the actions on your board and on your cards for the dice, but then all the worker actions basically you place the worker on the card itself to do the action on the board." So there's all these actions to do, but then when somebody comes along and decides, I want that card.

The worker belongs to them. The worker ain't yours. As soon as I put it out on a card, it's now free-for-all for anybody to grab. And you may look at a card going, "Well, I don't desperately need that card, but I mean, it's got a blue worker on it. You know, I wouldn't say no." And you can mark cards as well, so that people have got to pay you silver if you think they're going to grab the card.

There is enough in the game to make you care enough about what the other players are doing, even though it's probably more solitire than some of their other games. You know, certainly more than Scholars and Inventors. It's the most solitire out of the three. I'll definitely grant you that. But I don't overly mind because I'm just having so much fun with the engine building in this.

The solo mode is a bit on the cheaty side, I do admit. I mean, I like playing it because I'm like playing all this car and engine building stuff, but the AI is basically just a cheating AI that gets a bunch of points in random ways, you know, which is not ideal, but oh man, I love bringing this one out, you know.

Give me a different like journal board, you know, would be nice. I mean, I'm curious to see what the expansion's going to offer. I probably haven't looked in as much detail into the expansion as I have this one. If they improve the solo mode, even better. But yeah, just give me more cards. Give me more variety.

I don't need extra rules in this because there is a reasonable amount of rules to teach. Mainly just because of the iconography overload. But then if you give people one of these guides, then all the iconography in the game is on here and it's easy to read. So trust me, this will make your life a breeze.

But, you know, when I played it, I just had so much fun playing it on the weekend, you know, with two other people. They enjoyed it as well. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, I didn't even win that easily. I was quite It was quite a close victory cuz somebody else I triggered the end of the game and I still nearly didn't win because of what I was doing.

But, oh man, I don't know. I can't really say enough praise. It's definitely my favorite. You know, Inventors is really good fun and I do really enjoy it. But Wayfares when it came out, I just went, I'm in love. And that was like after about 30 minutes of playing the game, I was like, I'm already loving this.

This is great. And then it just kept still being good, still being good. And then with subsequent plays, it's like I get to try something different each time, try different cards, try different engines, and it feels like a new game every single time. I like sandbox games, but not every sandbox game.

I mean, I love Fields of for example, a big sandbox Euro down there. don't like bku a sandbox point salad which basically just I don't know feels dry and dull to me you know so not every sandbox works this one though love it so there you have it three favorites and three worst and as I say it's not like they're not my worst ever games you know Garfield games frequently do games that I really enjoy but they have come up with a few that have just been kind of average for me and I've mentioned my three most average there.

But there are some other games that I really do enjoy. I really do enjoy Raiders of the North Sea. I do really enjoy Architects of the West Kingdom and I do really enjoy Scholars of the South Tigers. You know, those three are really good fun games. They just don't meet my top three criteria. And certainly there are some more average games that I'm not as big a fan of.

You know, I definitely, you know, Ship Rid of the North Sea is better now, but it's probably sort of in the middle range. I was kind of meh on Ezra and Nehemiah. I just found that kind of like it's another collection of Eurom mechanics. Didn't care about the setting. It was all right, but I think it gets a bit too much praise from some people.

I just think it exists. Uh Raiders of Cphier is decent, but I'd much rather play Raiders of the North Sea. I don't see why it needed the alternate version. I think the original did it better, especially with the me expansion. Um and the ones that are coming out this year, I mean, I haven't really got much interest in Anarchy.

Is that the one that's basically just Hadron's Wall but more complicated? I don't know. So, I'm not as desperate for that. I forget what the other one they're doing is, but we'll see. I'm really more interested in the expansions that are coming out for the Tigris trilogy this year and to see what starts off the East Trilogy.

I want to see how that starts off, how simple they're going to make those mechanics compared to what they've done before and how they're going to make it unique cuz we've already had the West Kingdom feature, you know, I mean, each one kind of has its own stick. Although the West Kingdom was mainly using like meeples and sort of work placement to do bits and bobs, you know, the South Tiger is definitely focused heavily on dice and, you know, and such and so forth.

So, I'd be really interested to know what the East version is going to bring to the table, but it'll probably be a little while before we see those come into play, cuz for now, we're just going to have to deal with the expansion. So, yeah, still plenty enough to do, still plenty enough to keep my going.

But Garfield Games, I think, takes up two shelves, two Cal shelves on in my other room there. So, yeah, I talk about them a lot. They do good games, and even the stuff that I'm not as big a fan of, I don't hate them. I just don't like them as much as the others. you know, they are generally very good at making games that I enjoy.

And when they make games that I really enjoy, they're like, "Oh, yeah. These are keepers for life. I'm never getting rid of these." I love to bring these out. And a lot of the times it's hard to pick which one I want to do. You know, it's like, "Right, I get to bring a I get to bring a Garfield game to the club night.

Oh, I don't know. Wayfavors, inventors, architects would be good." You know, which one? It's difficult to choose. You know, I could pretty much go to a convention and bring nothing but my like six or seven favorite Garfield games and that's my convention because it would probably take a whole convention to play those games religiously.

But yeah, I would happily do that and I'd still get a lot of fun out of it. They just seem to they just seem to work for me. But the question is, do they work for you a lot? Let me know your comments down below. Do you agree with my best? Do you agree with my worst? I am pretty confident most of you will not agree with my worst, but you know, got to hope that there's some of you out there that will.

But as I say, different strokes for folks, you know. I think, you know, for the most part, I think a lot of people like the games that this publisher makes. It's just a case of whether you prefer this line with that line. You know, we all like different things. So, that's it for me on this episode of The Broken People.

If you like what you see, then please thumb it up and consider subscribing to the channel. But also consider subscribing to the Patreon if you want to help keep this channel running because it's not a day job. It's just my hobby and there's always bills to pay. But on top of that, just as I say, let me know your comments down below.

And uh I'll see you on the next video regardless of whether that will be a top 10 or maybe another best and worst. We shall see. In terms of the reviews, probably expecting that Wondrous Creatures will be the first one that gets reviewed out of the three I mentioned before. Then probably Amazonia and then Apex Legends at some point in probably late April or so.

So, we shall see how things go. So, take care and remember, regardless of whether you want to head north, south, east, or west, or back in time with these Garfield games, there's still only games. So, take care. Bye for now. [Music]