Top 10 Board Games of 2023

0:00 welcome to allies or enemies I'm Jess and I am Sean and today we are counting down our top 10 favorite games of 2023 and we played a lot of games this year and so we both ranked the games and then we smooshed the list together and they were similar enough that we decided we could present one combined list of our top 10 and we though we did play a lot of games this year we did not play all of the games so there are probably going to be some very big games that are missing from our list and you'll wonder why probably because we haven't played them yet we will get around to them hopefully at some point but for right now these are of the games we've played multiple times the games that we liked the absolute most and almost both of our full top 10 made it in there is one game that was number 11 for me but number nine for you that didn't make the combined list yeah so all of Jess's top 10 got in there but I had one that just squeaked out and that is Humanity so that is an honorary mention just so we can have both of our full top 10 in there but humanity is this game by bomix and bomix have been doing a lot of these really terrific small box card games but humanity is this big box game in which you are scientists exploring and you're Gathering resources and building up science labs and all that sort of thing and it's got some really cool mechanics especially this really cool draft mechanic where you're putting your your

1:31 science astronauts out and then there's this like arm that swings around and gathers them up from the planet and it's just beautiful especially like even the rule book which is this hard cover rule book that's got all this backstory and interesting actual science information it's fascinating yeah the book is great and I do really appreciate they obviously did a whole bunch of research to try and get the space exploration part pretty accurate but let's get right to our our official top 10 list number 10 is books of time and books of time uses these great books that are these two ring binders that take me like right way back all the way back to elementary school and how they use that is you are getting these pages that you pop open and you add them to the books and those pages represent your available actions so you're constantly changing what actions you can do and setting up your your book for your future actions as well as your goals yeah and those and those pages you're flipping them back and forth as well so you're using the books like books and it's such an interesting way to have this like emerging action selection system and there's a bunch of different stuff that you're doing as well at the same time like you've got these different goals and you've got these tract are moving up as well as the books and this is one that I feel like kind of flew under under the radar a little bit maybe it's cuz it came out really early

3:02 in the year as well I I feel I feel like games are a bit like movies it's like all the big ones are coming out kind of October November and the ones that come out January February kind of no one notices yeah and people maybe were like oh I bet the books is just a gimmick but it works you need that for it mechanically to function to allow the pages to flip so well yeah it's one of those mechanics that it's like I'm shocked no one has thought of this before and then when you see it you're like this is really clever and it does it works really well it does and that makes books of time our number 10 our number nine is Sky team and Sky team is specifically two-player although I believe there's also a solo mode it's a one or two player game and we have mostly played this online although we did also play it in person at Essen and what this is is one person's the pilot one person's the co-pilot you're rolling a bunch of dice you're hiding in behind the screen then you can't talk to each other at all and you got to put those dice out in specific spots and some are pilot spots some are co-pilot spots in between you you've got to slow down the plane land the plane keep the plane steady tell the other planes to get out of the way speed up slow down when you need to all that stuff and you've got to do it without crashing and boy have we we have killed so many people yeah we have crashed a lot of planes and it's stressful being either the co-pilot or the pilot every time you place a dice your hoping that it's helpful to your counterpart but it may not be the

4:34 information that they need and sometimes your dice too might just not be the numbers that you need as well and there are a few ways to mitigate that there's like one roll token that you can use or coffee that you can use but everything has to be done in such a precise order and so cooperatively yeah you can do a little bit of conversation before you roll the dice so you can be like I think we need to put High numbers the high numbers we get put them up here because they need to like even out and then I'll roll and I got all ones and twos and I'm like I don't know what to do now I don't know how to tell you I have ones and twos without telling you I have ones and twos and the levels like the first level we were like so easy this is so easy the second level was so hard and the third level was so hard they ramp up so fast and add all these different things like they add now you got to also have gas now there's going to be other random planes now this other thing um and I I really like that like every level so far we've been like oh no also this thing oh boy okay let's do it yeah it definitely gets harder and harder and I think there's way more that gets introduced that we haven't even seen yet and that makes sky team are number nine our number eight is cahora the city of silver and this is a market manipulation game so the cost of all of the resources are displayed on these two easel and each resource has this slider that can move up to change the cost and

6:04 various cards that might slide back and how the cost changes is at the very beginning of the game each player is given three resources that they control so only they can build those types of buildings and the number of buildings that exist will change the cost of all of the of the goods of that kind yeah it is it's really interesting because because those different buildings work super differently as well so if you if one of the buildings you're in charge with is Lumber that's one of the big ones and if you don't build any Lumber it means Lumber is going to be really expensive for everyone so now building is really expensive for everyone but if you build a lot of that that means buildings are going to be a lot cheaper and so you kind of are like you're in control of half of what's going on and well if you're working with with two players especially if there are more players there's going to be multiple players who can affect each of those but if it really is it's it's this like emergent Market manipulation game where every game plays so so differently and it's totally based on what the different players decisions are yeah and because you're in control of that as well it's in your benefit if the goods are more expensive CU When you get income you're going to get more money but it just might be easier to build those kind of buildings which will bring the cost down so you're constantly considering like what buildings you can afford to build where you might want to put them on the various building plots and how that will affect the different cost of that

7:35 resource yeah this is a game where you got to be okay with not being in control with some things and with some games just being a little bit weird because both of those things will happen you will not be in control of half of the things that are going on and sometimes that will really impact you but it's okay because everyone has that same kind of impact and or everyone's playing that same kind of weird game but you just you got to be the sort of player who's okay with that so this is one that's probably not for everyone but I've really liked it yeah because it makes each game feel so different and that makes cahora or number eight number seven is Nar and Nar is this Viking themed game from bombex and bomx just lately have been doing this really good job of making these different set collection games that all really have a Twist so there was sea salt and paper there was Ela and now there's Nar and Nar is kind of a racing game so in Nar you're hiring these different Vikings then you're sending those Vikings off to go to different lands that's basically what you're doing and then you're zipping around this track to try to get to 40 points yeah it is an engine builder as well because the Vikings that you play out will get you more rewards the more Vikings you have so it's tempting to leave them out but you do have to get rid of them to get a lot of the point scoring points but those also are building a little mini engine too so so it's really interesting this constant like building and dismantling of these various engines yeah this is really this is like engines

9:06 on engines cuz there's also this third engine you can do that's like the little you get these points at the beginning of every turn cuz it's one of kind of the resources you can build up but this is just it's such a quick such a clever game and this is one that you will not just play one time in a sitting this is one you're going to play two or three times because it's just so fast and so like addictive and that is our number seven our number six is Earth which is a nature theme Tableau Builder and in Earth you are putting out various trees and shrubs and you are doing this through a very interesting action selection mechanism where when someone picks an action everybody else also gets to do that action they just do it at a lesser amount so you are always involved which I like that you don't have to wait for your turn yeah I really I'm very impatient so I really like that in in a game and this it's very much like that race for the Galaxy kind of mechanism where yeah you pick a thing and then everyone else gets to do it but only kind of but the cool thing here is not only do you do that action but also whatever color of the action it is you do all of your cards that you've built that have that color so if you've built a bunch of Reds even though you get that weaker bit maybe you do more red than anyone else gets to do so you can build these kind of different engines and it goes from like the top to the bottom it

10:36 goes kind of in reading order so you can also set up these combo chains for your cards in those colors yeah how you build your Tableau is going to be considering not only those actions but also the different goals that come out because there's different animal cards that want your Tableau to be placed in a certain way and you will never be able to do it all perfectly so you have to be okay with letting some of those goals go than focusing on others because it is a bit of a race if you can build your full Tableau first you're are going to be more likely to win yeah and you've got as well like shared goals and your own goals at the end of the game too so you got like eight or nine different goals you're running for as well as some individual card scoring that's based on things so there's a lot to think about but at the same time it's a fairly like it keeps all of you got all that information to keep in your head but it's like almost a Gateway game it's like a little bit past that it's really impressive that it does all that at once yeah it is accessible considering how much is going on and even though you're building your own Tableau it still feels like there's interaction because of the race for those goals yeah this feels it's it's got that similar feeling to wingspan but I think I actually like Earth a little bit more than I like wingspan and a big part of that is that you're always involved too so it also has that so I feel like this is maybe even a little bit of a better Gateway game that has a lot of the same stuff that you love about wingspan yeah I agree if you if you like wingspan I

12:07 think you would really like Earth and Earth is our number six our number five is nucleum and nucleum is I think the heaviest game on this list and it's it's one I really really like so nucleum has got this genius action selection system where you've got these little tiles and each tile's got two actions on that tile and you can either play that tile for an action or play it out to the board cuz all of your tiles are also Railways and you want to build these connections and these networks around the board and you want to have those like line up because if you if you match the ends of your tiles you also get to do the actions but You' really got to use that like do I want to have the action now and be able to keep that action use it later or do I want to play it out as a railway and it's like a little bit more powerful in some ways but you lose that tile forever which is a big decision yeah having your action tiles shift constantly throughout the game keeps it really interesting and you very much have to be aware of what actions you currently have available they do have a tile that they're like you cannot get rid of this to make sure that you can always get more tiles a wild card tile yeah whatever you need to do it does allow you that but it is a very thinky game in terms of whether you're doing your AC by selecting it or placing it as a railway everything is incredibly tight and building out those networks are really important because

13:37 you have to be able to connect to the different coal plants to be able to use it or to the uranium to use it and all of that is done through like a shared network as well so it is a bit interactive of like oh good you have built there so now my place is connected but also maybe a little bit of ooh I need to play this tile now cuz I want to get to that City and make sure that you have to go the long way yeah because all of this is really in service of building out these buildings that you've got to place out and then you got to power up those buildings like it's got definitely shades of brass in there and I think that they've said that that was definitely an inspiration you can see seeds of it in there for sure but there's other ways to win there's other goals there's just a lot of different things going on and a lot of different paths you can follow yeah it definitely feels a lot heavier than brass right which is pretty heavy game which is an already pretty heavy game I remember when we read the rules it felt a lot more brass likee than it feels now and I think it's because of the action selection system but also everything else that you're considering with all of the different goals the contracts that you're fighting for and anytime you do like the income turn of being able to score for how many stars so timing when you might have that depending on what you're currently working towards there's so much to consider and you just it gets deeper and deeper the the more you play it which is why I really love this game and why it is our number five our number four is apiary which is all about space

15:08 bees so this is a worker placement game from ston Meer games and so first of all the components all look amazing all of stone Meer does a great job with the components and this is no exception and as your space be workers you are trying to do all kinds of different things so you might go and try and collect resources using this great Queens ship you might spend those resources to get tiles that add to your home area and those tiles will give you some storage spots or maybe some ongoing abilities but what makes it really interesting is the workers you put out all have different strengths and so when you bump a worker any worker that comes back increases in strength yeah I really like that that there's no like not only is there no blocking of spaces but if you go to a space that someone else already is you actually help them out so by bumping them you're leveling them up and they're getting more and more uh experienced until they get to level four and then they hibernate and then once all the hibernation spaces are filled the game's over so I also like that the pace of the game is really in the player's hands and the strength of the worker is really important because the higher strength ones let you do stronger actions and especially if it's a level four that's that's the top dog or the top B and you can do the strongest action that are at each of the different location yeah all of them have a little

16:38 bonus but also you don't want to do only a couple be's to hibernate really fast because there's another part of it where all of those tiles that you took and you added to your area which is actually your spaceship that you're building out um when you bring your bees back you can then trigger little like returning things on a bunch of those different tiles which can get you a lot of those resources move you up this queen track get you points all sorts of different stuff so you're also using that to combo yeah and this is one that has really grown on me with each play cuz the first play I thought oh this is interesting but it seems a little simple and then every time we've played we've realized just the different Avenues of of ways to get points and it's more than what you first might think there's more different paths I think than people realize from their first two or three games when people are like you need carvings you need c cards you don't you can win this all different ways yeah and it is one that is really easy to bring new players into and explain and then one that every game feels so different too and apiary is our number four number three is hemin and this is my number one is quite a bit higher up for Jess but she's been a really good sport and I'm winning you over to it a little bit but h is this is absolutely not for everyone this is a very Marite game and this is a very socioeconomic game and they worked with economics professors to kind of make

18:10 this as reflective as how the system is supposed to work this is not how the system does work but how the system is supposed to work as possible and in this game you've got four different groups and all the players are playing kind of an asymmetric game so someone's the working class someone's the capitalist the capitalists are building out all of the stores and they run the stores and run production the working class are working in the stores and they're striking and they're trying to get good wages the middle class is doing a little bit of both of that and the state it's this like utopian altruistic state that actually cares about all three classes and so they're trying to help support those classes and get the votes from all three classes at the same time and then all of this system is super super intertwined and on paper and your first game it seems really complex and there's like a lot of moving Parts but really it's this fairly clever card playing system where you just playing Five cards each round but those cards affect a lot of different things and it's just it's such a fascinating interesting game it is a really clever game and Incredibly asymmetric cuz you very much are doing different things so at two players though if you don't want to use any Bots then you're just playing the working class and the capitalist which is really interesting mashup but if you don't want to use Bots and you want to experience all of the different factions then it would shine at four players but it would also take a pretty long time to play but

19:43 it is amazing CU like you said you you are just playing a card and doing th those actions and it makes it not too bad to pick up and and feel what you're doing but it's doing it well that's difficult yeah and and you're right when you play this with four players this is like this is going to be your night like this I've heard of people taking five six hours to play this game we haven't experienced kind of that level of it but I can picture that because there are like when you are doing your taxes and I know I'm not selling this that you're doing taxes in this game it takes quite a while to do that step of it but it's really interesting I've never thought it would be this interesting to do my taxes in a board game and yeah it's just it's I could talk about this game all day long and it is our number three our number two is Forest Shuffle and I think this is the most played game we have on our list we have played this a ton and it is a nature themed Tableau Builder but in this one you are putting out trees that form the bases of each of these little mini ecosystems and then the rest of the cards are split so either like top and bottom or left and right and you slide them under the trees so each tree could have like a left a right a top and a bottom and then all of the scoring conditions for all the different types of like flora and fauna all score very differently and often

21:14 synergistically with the other cards so you trying to create all of these different like combos that work really well together yeah there's so many different paths that you can go down in this game and every time I play this it feels different because some games you've got like a whole bunch of trees and some games you're really you're just filling up a few of those little trees and then what you're filling it up with like sometimes you're focusing on butterflies sometimes it's birds and those both score a little bit differently and how they work sometimes you've got the deers or the other ulet that you're working with and those are and then the Wolves that are like eating those ulet and you've got like the different reptiles which can score really well if you get the right cards but it's all about what do you get early on what do you get later how do you like diverge those pads and you're doing like three or four of those paths at once too yeah so you are really dependent on the cards you get but you're also very aware of what cards you're making available because each card you play has a cost that you have to go into the meadow and that means the next person can then pick those up too so you do have to keep an eye on what everybody else is doing as well because you don't want to just like give them exactly what they're looking for yeah cuz you got to pay those cards out to that shared Market but also you want to pay those cards with specific things because a lot of cards will have extra bonuses if you play if you pay with the right color so it's like the synergies that are out the synergies in your hand

22:45 I've never used the word Synergy so many times I feel like I'm in a business meeting but this game has so many synergies and it is it's just such a cool totally different puzzle and it's like set collection with more set collection and more set collection and more different ways to score and it's like the section the set collectionist set collection game yeah it's been really fun to just try new strategies depending on what my starting cards might be and we have played it a lot it leads to tons of replayability and it is our number two number one is White Castle and this is from the pair of designers llama Dice and they came out with uh red Cathedral just recently as well and we loved red cathedral but I feel like White Castle Builds on what works there and does it even better and this is just pure combos like that's what this is about there are nine turns in total in this game and you look at that and think well I'm not going to do anything in nine turns especially because your first couple turns you're not going to do that much because resources are so so tight so you got to set up those combo chains perfectly as well well and what you're doing in it is you're getting different resources that are um all tracked on this little track on your board and then you are sending out these three kinds of people so you're sending out your Farmers to like the river to do little farmy things and those'll get you bonuses you're sending out your cortis in the court which also

24:16 get you cards which you can then add to your Tableau in two different ways and then you're sending up military guys who also of course get you different bonuses and Trigger different Combos and there's just so many it's like it's so tight and there's so few moving Parts but also there's so many ways to move those parts yeah it is incredibly tight and with only nine turns it really feels like oh I didn't do enough but in a really good way that's such a nice feeling for a game and you definitely have to keep your eye out to try and stretch each turn as much as possible and there's just so many different ways again that you can score in this game because there's also like a track that you can move up that like you might be able to get you a lot of points if you can go really far maybe if you don't have a lot of cortis then your warriors they're not going to score you a lot of points too so you might need to be mindful of that and each of the cards that come out in the castle presents different actions so every time one of those cards are taken away as well you have to relook and see what new actions are available yeah and it's it's one of those games where you're right where at the end you feel like I wish I had another turn but also in the middle you feel like how did I do that how did I pull that off like I don't feel like that was even possible I am so oh the cleverness of me like you have that wonderful feeling basically every game that you play this and Everyone likes to feel clever and this game makes you feel so clever when it really works it it definitely does and

25:48 it plays so quickly at two players it probably takes us it's a great two player game yeah at like 45 minutes probably just under and it feels like a very full game for a small boss I love the small box too I love a small box it's such a great box size and it is our number one and that is it that is our top 10 games of 2023 plus an honorable mention but there were a lot lot more that we really liked from this year and a lot that we just haven't had a chance to play yet so this may be one that we revisit next year once we've had more of a chance to play everything and maybe even do a larger extended list yeah cuz there were a lot that we didn't include that were expansions to existing games or almost like remakes of existing games so those might have to be a separate list but thank you so much for watching please let us know in the comments what your favorite 2023 game is and as usual please like subscribe and hopefully we'll see you next time for another game