Top 10 Board Games According to No Pun Included [Part 2]

0:00 hey it's a top ten board games again Concordia it's a well-known fact that the king song Victoria was originally called conquered and just like the king song an extravagant goddess namesake Concordia is a game of harmony and village greens in Concordia you'll move your man or boat across the landscape of the Roman Empire buying or making Goods building stations and cashing those Goods in for victory points no it's not ashamed of its trading in the Mediterranean theme it's practically frolicking around in its Italian flag underwear do we have B roll of f curve running around in his underwear no probably for the best all the choices you had feel relevant you're not just ding dong e about not knowing what to do worried that lady Luck's not gonna be on your side and you're gonna draw the wrong thing because you get to choose what you're gonna play and they can't tell you exactly what to do there's nothing about this game that tries to trick you or be any cleverer than you but the real game comes from watching what everybody else is doing while still considering what you want to do yourself and remembering that at any point someone may still have their diplomat card and be able to copy the

1:30 action you just took and you might just be doing them a big favor so what's it this game apart why is this particular flavor pickled over on our top 10 Concordia is a benchmark it is the SWOT in its class you you play a game and you'll be like where it's good but was it Concordia good this game is tight strategic and surprising and is a great example of what a Euro can be unlock this is not a standing unlock not exit not Timescape not any other estai perlite game is our fourth best game I'm sure we don't need to explain the escape the room genre but just in case you missed out you're locked in a series of rooms and you need to escape using your wits and a menagerie of odd tools to explain why this genre of game is just so engrossing we contacted our resident psychology expert well the precise nature of the appeal is unknown but one popular theory is that escaping of the womb her presence I'll need to escape the trappings of the psyche and our inability to use simple tools is sated by blowing a rabid dog to a lightbulb and therefore escaping so whom unlocking the door and unlocking the full potential of the mind as that oh it's a metaphor for a penis or something wait I hear you shout what about the

3:02 clearly mechanically superior Inca and Marcus Brandt's exit the game series yes mechanically exodus superior but mechanisms isn't what makes unlock the best each set features a deck of colourful cards with a unique art style that paints not just whatever room you're escaping but the entire landscape of your adventure when it comes to board games escape the room games are the ultimate form of well escapism and you couple that with a rich thematic background and you've got yourself a formula that you want to come back to over and over again and when you consider the fact that these are perfectly replayable not by you but by your friends when you are done and you can introduce them to this wonderful world of puzzle making well it becomes hard to recommend any game other than this Sherlock Holmes consulting detective there have been a lot of Sherlock Holmes incarnations and like hair dries everybody has their favorite it's just something about it that is entwined in our psyche and if you're anything like me there are certain things in this world that just make you want to be part of them but I also enjoyed my washing machine and lack of smallpox so being able to join Holmes in solving a case whilst also enjoying the trappings of modernity seems like the best of both time zones reading a book isn't very interactive it's hard to share it and films and TV more so but even then you

4:32 don't want to be interrupting every five minutes to ask what's the guy wearing yellow or green well this is important if he has a moustache so this is what makes this game so appealing in Sherlock Holmes consulting detective you are presented with ten cases which between one and eight of you at any one time have to try to solve you get about London talking to people searching for clues and piecing the puzzle together to untangle the crime you're not actually Holmes you're just trying to live up to him so you won't Sully his name if you get it wrong like watching a quiz show on the telly if you don't get a single answer it doesn't matter but if you do it feels really really good like being challenged to balance jelly on your head whilst skipping you may not achieve it but you know you're gonna have blending fun trying it's not so much a puzzle game than a game of research so embrace the theme let your friend say elementary my dear Watson without correcting them let me shout the game is afoot without rolling your eyes take the game for what it is a chance to feel like one of the greatest detectives that never lived and you will have a fab time you

6:06 no no no no no I'm not doing that why not nobody's ever done that right before because despite both being space operas about galactic superpowers vying for dominance Star Wars and Twilight Imperium 4th edition are nothing alike Twilight Imperium is one of those games you hear about pretty quickly after getting into board games because it's the boogeyman of time and space and by time I mean it takes about a day to play it and buy spice I mean it doesn't even fit on our table seriously we managed to set up like a two and a half player game here which isn't even a thing it's a free player minimum I'm pretty sure there are people who never touch it because of how big long and stupendous it is and people who want to play it for that reason alone but let's not let that define it because Twilight Imperium is so much more than that probably the cheesiest thing a board game reviewer can do anything am very guilty of myself and more than one occasion is decrying this isn't just a board game this is art what is art though the Oxford English Dictionary defines art as the hollow area beneath the place where the arm and the shoulder meet apologies that seems to be armpit it's it's it's on the same page the truth is that art is anything you want it to be in twilight imperium you'll call nice planets build more ships move them to colonize more planets or to burn up in a blaze of glory and

7:37 become one with star stuff all in the name of proclaiming you the emperor of many heavenly bodies but that's still not what sets Twilight Imperium apart this game it'll change you you'll formulate plans such big plans such grandiose plans that you realize you cannot achieve them on your own and then you'll formulate alliances you'll connive you cajole you plead you'll fight you will betray your friends you will make new ones then you'll betray them again and you'll realize that you are just a speck and ambitious back but a speck nonetheless that dreams at night of big things in the Stars Twilight Imperium is so close to real world politics the more I think about it the more it actually unsettles and unnerves me as much as this game wants you to ponder about quantum engines and space lines all I can think of is real world history and politics you know that thing they say about the best that art can do is imitate life well I don't know any other game that does it better than this one wait a minute that's a bit peculiar because in our overview of gloom Haven we said we wouldn't give an opinion on gloom Haven because we felt like our relationship with designer and publisher Isaac Childress was too close because he was supporting us during both of our Kickstarter campaigns by now and now we're saying this is our number one game well yes and we put ourselves in an

9:07 impossible position by doing a top 10 because it is our favorite game and we can't not tell you that that is our favorite game otherwise we would be being dishonest so we thought we'll put in this disclaimer at the start by telling hey we felt biased enough to not review it but this our top 10 and it is our number 1 because it is our favorite game blue maven is less of a game and more of a pastime simulating a role-playing game experience but less of a Dungeons & Dragons thing and more of a Dungeons & Dragons baldur's gate kind of thing but

9:49 best work at nope included she does this bit where she definitely summarizes the game but goes into this illusion that goes into a surrealist sketch and then after that we have this like amazing b-roll and I'm really I mean I just realized I'm interrupting you go you go I didn't tell them what we you know like we'd like we talked about you go ahead do that I'm really sorry bloom Haven is a big role when the sketch is you know right she's gonna do this bit that kind of explains a deep critical analysis of the game but very briefly and then and then she sidesteps the obvious selling points of the game I mean they kind of in an instant tells you exactly why this is just the best game that we have ever played and then very very abruptly once upon a time F to introduce me to role-playing games and I honestly had no preconceptions but being hungry and being offered a floor Bendis tackle to eat I'm sorry what no exactly I had no idea of what it was and so to a bridge in anecdote so began a pastime this may be a form of role-playing game nostalgia talking but gloom Haven is excellent with the right group of people it's not perfect but that can be said of a lot of board games and everything in the box has a purpose and yes the box is about as big as some London apartments but if you buy the game and you don't like it well you can use the box to store the whole rest of your other board games

11:20 it's that big if you're expecting something that brings the Dungeons & Dragons experience to the table that liveliness of you and your friends improving of how your elf character swings off a chandelier and then throws a lute that dances like a skipping stone off of Orcs head something like that then this is not that game what this is is a game where you'll move plastic character miniatures or cardboard Sandi's for enemy monsters and then you'll like hearts that do damage to hexes this is a cunning tactical puzzle wrapped around in a fantasy world and yet when you play an RPG a really good GM will adapt the story to the place decisions they won't try and railroad into a certain direction and gloom head and somehow manages to achieve this with a story but that's already been written okay so choose your own adventures do this but Raymond does this exceptionally well making you care about your character your mates and the wider world around you and we love it and I mean sure BoardGameGeek loves it too it's their number one and wouldn't you love it well no not necessarily of course not every games for everyone if that's okay don't rush out to buy this do your research but for us we never felt like there was ever such game with such grandiose sculpt that we still can't believe it actually exists even though we played it so many times but at the same time just feel so rich and thematic and like not a beat was

12:53 skipped and that's why this is our numero uno this is the end of our top ten video goodbye that's no no I know it's hard to come up with these things if only was a way where you could like end a YouTube video we tell people they're not where to follow you and want to click and watch next and all that stuff well that's not very good ending I know if only there was an easy way to create a pastiche of YouTube video endings where you mock with common conventions that's not a very good ending actor what if we just have a giant food clash for us