10 Board Games We Disagree On

hi my name is modi and i'm naveen from before you play and today we have another 10 list for you this time it is 10 games that we disagree on yes this is one that was voted on by our patreon supporters uh we put out a poll they decided on this particular topic so we have come together and looked at all our games in our collections also other games that we've played and we've come up with a list of about 10 games that we disagree on something that maybe i like that she doesn't like or vice versa yes it is specifically games that one of us might really enjoy and the other one dislikes maybe games that have been uh veering on the edge of leaving our collection for a few years now yep and so today this is a true ten list we are presenting five games each with one honorable mention so i guess without further ado let's just get started sure let's do it so our combined honorable mention is a card game that uh is designed by bruce glasgow in 2017 and published by wizkids and this is an honorable mention because we've mentioned it before in a few of our videos a couple times people know this yes and so it is fantasy realms so fantasy realms if you're not familiar with it is a card game and it's basically a filler type where you are drawing cards and you're trying to curate a hand up cards where everything synergizes well with each other so you'll have a lot of different types of factions you'll have weather with um beasts landscapes or something like that there's no lasting something like that yeah it's a terrain each card will have some sort of rule like you're gonna score 10 points if you combine it with you know the flood or something like that each car each card has a base value on it and then there's flavor text which enhance the the end game value if you can synergize it with the other cards in your hand right for me this game becomes very frustrating because a lot of times i'll start with like three or four of my seven cards that i have and i really like them and i'm trying to make them work but then i find contradictory cards start coming into my hand and then now i'm just kind of like i don't know which way to go that's the whole game i know i know that i guess that stress of it just doesn't excite me i guess something like that granted this is a filler game like we play this game in like 10 15 minutes and we played it recently actually starting on turn one naveen immediately was like well here we go again i don't know what to do so anyway that is the heart and soul of that is realms and that is why all the reasons why naveen dislikes it is why i really enjoy it i think it's fun and it's such a quick experience that is fair so anyway that is a that is our audible mention and that's a kind of a fun one that we like to bring up because of how much naveen gets frustrated when you play that game okay so moving on to our number 10.

this is one of the earliest games that i fell in love with when we first started getting into the hobby and um it's actually no longer in our collection because of somebody but it is a card game that was designed by two different designers robert doherty as was darwin castle in 2014 and it's published by a company that is now called wise wizard games they used to be called white wizard games and it is called star star realms yes the space opera i could not win this game at all against monique it's a deck building game yes uh it's a space battle deck building game yeah it's not a space opera it's not space opera no for me i went from dominion and then i experienced star almost which is such a fast deck builder you you are basically just trying to battle each other dueling it's like a dueling space game where you're trying to just get your opponent's health to zero you start with like 50 health and then right over time you're attacking each other with your ships and your everything that's in the deck yeah you're setting yourself up for defense as much anymore now that's been gone for so long you had like a bunch of expansion packs i don't know for me early in the hobby i was not a fan of deck building as i've now gotten deeper and deeper into the hobby i appreciate deck building more so this is a game that i'd be willing to try again and see exactly how i do because before i would always be the guy that's like why would i get rid of this one point or one card because it gives me one coin that i could then use i know i know he wants to keep the one coin cards i know they i knew also at the time that they clogged up space in my hand yeah but what if i needed a coin yeah so you've grown a lot i have grown and i'm willing to try it again but if you watch any of our videos that has deck building in it where we talk about how naveen is not a big fan of deck building it is because of this game yeah right star realms yeah start off i would lose 50 out of 50 times to money so it's a game that i really really enjoy i still enjoy it i had it on the app and i would play it on there it's just really addicting just cycling through your deck and knocking out those health points right but anyway that is our number 10 star realms okay moving on our number nine this is a fully cooperative card game it is designed by two different designers fabian rifaud and juan rodriguez and it's published by cool mini or not and this is the grizzled uh the grizzled is a fully cooperative uh card game like i said which takes place in the era of world war one i believe and your goal is to basically survive the war so it has kind of this interesting artwork uh and kind of a bleak and weird theme to it because if you lose it means i think you technically died it's so depressing it is a little depressing it's so depressing but the way you play is there is a set of i guess like triggers that can end your round and we all have cards that encompass different components of those triggers that could end the round and if you don't work cooperatively together in the right sequence you can lose and so as a team you're basically trying to play out your entire hand yes and on your on on these cards are these different symbols and so if you play several i forgot how many i think three if you're three of the same symbols then you lose a round and all the cards that you played go back in the deck that you're trying to deplete because essentially you're you're trying to play out this entire stack of cards and if you're able to before the time runs out then then you win then you win yeah and uh if not you lose you lose you know what happens yeah yeah so i'm not the biggest fan of it i will play it and uh i'll still have an okay time it's just it's there's also a lot of uh a lot of serendipity that's required in this or a lot of luck right yeah but then you have those uh you have those moments where like you have those different tokens that can allow you to to kind of mitigate some of that stuff yeah definitely like it's definitely not all luck based you can definitely there's a lot of strategy to it you're working together you're talking it through as a group you're talking it through you can't uh you can't tell each other obviously what cards you have in your hand and there are these things called hard knocks that make it even harder for you to win they they curse you essentially so it's just that it's just okay yeah yeah i think my favorite player account is three yeah so it's extremely difficult it is like when that game first came out everybody was like this you can't you can't win this game you can win so possible so that is our number nine the grizzle all right moving on to number eight and so this is a heavier strategy game designed by two designers and they are nuno bizarro and paulo soledad and they designed this in 2015 published by what's your game and it is called nippon so nippon is a well-loved game um naveen loves it i do i like that one a lot it kind of just it fell flat for me so if you're not familiar with nippon it is a game i believe you are industrialists in japan economic yeah economic industrialists in japan yes and you uh it starts as a as a economic game but there's a huge area control element of it on the different islands of japan that's right that's right and if you're not into the area control part of it you're kind of out of the game yeah and it's deceptive in that way when you read the rule book and you get into it the first time if you're not focused on that area control part you can find yourself way way behind in that game yeah yeah and i'm not a big fan of area control in general so that was a game that i really really thought i was supposed to love like these two designers designed panamax which is a game that i really enjoy as well as madeira which is also one that is heavier crunchy but i really enjoyed that one as well this game is very different because of it does rely so much on that i wasn't also i don't know the just the whole presentation of the game also maybe kind of made it fall flat and everybody has a player board and if i remember correctly there's also like a train track there's a lot of different tracks yeah if you're moving like coal up a track uh yeah and you have to manage all your resources and things like that yeah and so that one just kind of fell flat it's still in our collection i believe um it is yep i every now and then try to return to the topic of calling that one i think you gotta i think you have to try it one more time yeah it's just one conversation that we have every time one more time but he's right i definitely i definitely agree i'm gonna try it one more time before we decide whether or not to call it yeah but i think we're in that category of people that if we try it twice and we realize after the second time we don't like it then then okay you officially don't like it yes it's true yeah so that one lives to see another day for now yeah anyway that is our number eight nippon okay moving on our number seven this is a game that we've actually played and featured on our channel we'll leave a link over here uh it's a little embarrassing because it's very early in our youtube channel so the quality isn't the best uh but it's bora bora designed by stephen feld and published by aleya and robinsburger and this is a game where you are doing quite a bit of things there's there's a it's kind of a hodgepodge of mechanisms um you are drafting tiles you are trying to set collect uh area control over different areas of the islands of vora bora and it's just a big point solid game and monique is not a fan of it i am a fan of it but i don't know why exactly you don't like it it's an earlier stuff on film design earlier yeah yeah so uh i actually forgot that we featured this on our channel and i think i've discussed this in our review of it back in the day this might have been like the second video might have been the second or third video our second playthrough ever we made but uh the two player game was fine it was the multiplayer so the way that you play this game is it's dice selection it's nice sorry actually it's nice placement displacement yes because you have your own set of three dice you roll them and then you have actions in front of you and you place your die on the action to take it but there is a restriction of when you can place the die i believe it's you can only place dice that are lower or lower i think it's a lower value that's right than the lowest die that was placed right and so if i am going third in the three player game and the first player puts a one right on one of the actions that i just can't take it that round and i think it's like six rounds yeah so it was it was really frustrating ah that might be my least favorite feld maybe maybe okay but uh but that one still stays it's still survivable in the collection yeah it survived the call [Laughter] the multiple calls yeah i don't know i like the stress of it um i do think at four players it that is definitely a little bit more stressful they add more action tiles uh with player count to try to mitigate that uh i could see the frustration there uh but for some reason for me it's kind of like fantasy realms where it's like i don't mind it i like that restrictive nature of it the first time we played it ever was a four-player game and i think i i just got shut out a little bit too much and i had to take like the fishing action which nobody takes yeah let's just gain one point yeah do points or something i think the reason why we keep it around is so that naveen can bring it to conventions and play it with other people other people yeah so we do have a collection of games that are in that territory and uh that one's that one's definitely there so that was our number seven bora bora so number six is also a game that that we first came across when we first started getting into the hobby and it is a an abstract strategy game we have the travel version it's designed by john yani and uh published by jen gen 42 games as well as my day i believe in 2000 and it's called hive yes so live hive is like it's almost it is definitely an abstract strategy game there are tiles and the tiles have different bugs on them that's why it's called hive or that's not inside part of the reason why it's called hive yeah and so what you're trying to do is you're trying to completely encircle your opponent's queen queen b i believe if i'm not mistaken it's been a while since we played it the different insects move in different ways and they're supposed to be thematic thematically tied to the type of insect yeah it's kind of like they move like in a chest pattern like where pawns only move one you know some something else moves you know the rooks move a certain way but in this game these are all different hex pieces and they kind of rotate and move around the board it's not immune to board it's actually just a collection of tiles but they all move amongst each other in different manners and so this is a game that monique likes i love this is the one that i'm not a big fan of i'm not the biggest fan of abstract strategy games and for some reason i don't know it's just it's not that exciting for me naveen has tried to call this game numerous times i have yeah but it's so we can't justify getting rid of it it's so small you know we have the travel edition it comes in a little pouch and we literally i bring it with us whenever we travel just for the hopes that naveen would say yes because it's so easy to get into you just pull out your tiles and you're ready to go yeah you set it up and then you just start taking moves yeah and it's it's so cute i think it's adorable and it's just so i don't know i think it's really fun i really like the thematic integration with the different types of insects and how they move and you can teach it to anybody um it doesn't take up that much space i think i struggle with thinking like three steps ahead in that game yeah like i'm only just like looking down at one moment and then being like well okay i'm just gonna move this around yeah and move the sand here and then okay oh it looks like i'm i'm done that is our number six and it is called hive we are halfway there halfway there yes our number five this is one that will probably be a little controversial uh this is designed by gord with an exclamation point uh and it is published by roxley games this is santorini uh santorini is a game that i'm not a big fan of for some reason i know why not it's it's weird it's like the rule set is good there's variable player powers which is cool but for some reason when i'm in it it's just not that exciting again like i keep going back to that if you're not familiar with santorini this is another abstract strategy game but it has such an interesting theme you are building buildings in greece yeah right in santorini and uh it's very very simple in rule set you each have if you're playing as two players you each have two two uh pawns or workers and on your turn you move and build and you do that the whole way through if at any time you can't do those two moves then you lose the game right a little bit more to it like there are different levels of buildings and by the end of the game you'll have a beautiful board and it does look nice yeah and each player also has a different god power you know it's just so you can have some kind of asymmetry and uh it's i think that it's mechanically very sound it's it's very tactical it is definitely chest-like right i agree with that like the the components are great the rule set is simple and easy to teach easy easy to learn and the actual mechanics are solid but for some reason it just when when i put the sum of all the parts together for me the experience is not exactly what i would want out of it for some reason that's fair yeah um but this is another one that uh whenever we whenever we go to our collection to see what we're gonna call naveen always pulls it out it says monique what's happening with this one what are you planning on doing with this one and i'm always like back give it to somebody who would really enjoy it i would really enjoy it naveen it's gay you can play with other people just like i could play bora bora yes that's true it is it is definitely a part of that collection as well and that is our number five santorini all right so moving on to number four this is another controversial one and it is a party game of sorts designed by vladish bottle which you probably already know what it is in 2015 published by cge and it is called code names so before we talk about who likes and dislikes this game if you do not know what code names is it is a hugely popular game you should probably try it if you've never heard of it before and uh it is a game where you're split up into two groups two teams uh two teams and uh it one person per team is the code master the game master and they're essentially trying to get their team to try to guess which cards belong to them in a grid of cards on these cards there's just one word or uh one is it one word or just it depends on the type of code name game you're playing there's standard code names has words then there's code names pictures it has like abstract right uh images and there's codenames duet there's a lot of different iterations of codenames but uh yeah there's one word today one word on on the phone and uh the code masters they each have a map that tells you which cards belong to them so that that's code names in a nutshell in a nutshell and so this is a game that you really enjoy i do like this one a lot yeah i don't i don't like this and to be fair we're speaking specifically of the original code base code because i actually really like the code names pictures edition as well as codenames duet but the reason why is because you know typically when you play a game of code names you're usually in a group setting because everybody wants to play and then you can play as many people as you'd like and so it's usually like three on three or so higher player counts sometimes like six on six oh that's too much and uh you know by the time it gets to your turn you're really you're waiting and you're excited for when it gets to your turn so you can guess your word and a lot of times because it's so hard to be the code master they'll give like balloons too and it's like okay well that's clown you know that's an obvious one that's party okay press them both and then your turn is over in in ten seconds you have to wait again so you want speed code names i just i just prefer if we're gonna play a game in that kind of setting a game where more people can be as equally involved okay i guess do you feel shut out sometimes i don't feel shut out but i feel more inclined when i'm in a group setting like that i'm more inclined to let other people who are a lot more excited about it to take the reins and i'll just like if they need my opinion then i'll be here eating and giving my opinion typically but code names pictures you're okay with coding's pictures i like because um it's not as obvious a lot of times the art is extremely abstract very abstract and typically the art will have multiple elements on them that make it super abstract so it's very interesting really requires the team to put their heads together and think like oh gosh what do they mean by that yeah and to be fair i think the game is good like i think that is this is a very well designed game and i i appreciate that so many people love it i just don't find joy when i play it that's fair so that is number four code names i apologize to everybody who really really loves this game all right our number three game that we disagree with this is a game designed by don eskridge and published by indie boards and cards this is the resistance it's another social deduction game uh it's kind of like hidden roles and you are basically going on missions and either helping the mission succeed sabotaging them or doing some sort of combination if you're trying to hide who exactly you are for some reason this game does not excite me i know i keep saying it but whenever we're in a group setting eight people or something it just i don't know there's there's those moments where people are left out and it's like well we never heard of what tom is but you like code names i like coding because everybody can just speak at once and but sometimes people don't get sent on a mission it's like i don't i don't i have nothing to say about this person but about tom so yeah this is a game that i really enjoy it's one of the more popular social deduction games that came out during an era when a lot of social deduction games were coming out right one night ultimate werewolf was was big and then the resistance resistance avalon and the resistance has a lot of different expansions so we're talking specifically about the resistance avalon because that is a copy that we have and the one that i really really enjoy it's just exciting it's so bare-bones social deduction it is right you're split up into two teams you have uh however many number of rounds no i don't remember you might be five and you're trying to a certain number of wins the majority of wins for your side um the resistance avalon also has expansions where if you play as specific characters you can lose but still enact your power to win if you are able to call out uh whoever the other people are i don't know that probably doesn't make any sense but just know that there are roles and uh depending on which role you play you can do a certain thing which is which i think is cool oh that is a game that i really that i really enjoy would you still play it though i would play it yeah yeah we did a good time i don't know so that is our number three that is avalon slash the resistance okay so we are coming up on our last two and so these might be slightly more controversial because a little bit more popular but uh our number two game that we disagree on is a game that has we're speaking specifically about the second edition that was designed by um nikki valens in 2016 published by fantasy flight games and this is mansions of madness second edition so i've never played the original manchester madness i believe that's designed by a different designer but i we both played the second edition the first time i ever played it and if you're not familiar with this game it is a uh kind of like a mystery where you're in a house you're exploring yeah yeah and the second edition is app based so it has a lot of different scenarios so you go through a scenario you pick the scenario in the app and then it'll lead you it'll tell you what shits to put out in the house and uh you're actually exploring the mansion finding monsters trying to solve the mystery solving mysteries yeah and battling monsters the first time i ever played it i was like mind blown i thought this is awesome it's like a big story and you're just you're working together to try to figure this out and it's you're trying to defeat these monsters you don't know if you're gonna escape and you're i just think it's really fun because there's a lot to explore and a lot to discover um and so that day i came home and i told naveen i mean this is an amazing game you should play it and then i brought him back to play it and yeah it just i don't know it just it wasn't that good for me i i i've only played it one time so i am always willing to play a game a second time i felt like it dragged for a while and there was a lot of like it can can i roll this dice to beat that thing no i can't and then it's just like okay we got to go back and try to try to defeat this this monster and so there's a bunch of different things plus there's a lot of text to read sometimes for me within games like when when you have to read just a bunch of text it just it bogs me down for some reason like i just want more snappy turns i think that's the bulk of it yeah anytime there's a game that's narrative based or and i think like chronicles of crime and time stories which are both games that we considered to be on this list but naveen decided that he likes them but i do like both of those those are borderline situations too because they require a lot of reading so i think that that is one of the big reasons why you weren't into it that and the length sometimes these these games can go long yeah that one dragged for some reason uh mentions madness and uh i don't know i'm willing to play it a second time though i don't know if you want i am willing to play it it was a sad day i we finished the game and i was like wasn't that great oh my god and he was like it was okay it was an experience so anyway that is our number two game manchester madness second edition all right so this is our last one our number one this is one that i think we both agree on is the number one game that we disagree on maybe maybe but this is a game that's designed by two different designers it's published by lookout games it's designed by virginio gigli and simone luciani and this is grand austria hotel uh i know monique is not a fan of grand austria hotel even though there might be a new reprint coming out which we actually know about a lot of people i know yeah so this one is a game in which you are running this hotel you're trying to entice customers by feeding them their favorite uh desserts and drinks and then trying to find a room for them to stay in that's essentially what you're trying to do so you yeah you entice them with your strudel and you send them to the red room so that they can take a nap so they can take a nap exactly this one is a dice drafting game uh and i think the reason why you don't like it is the way the dice drafting happens it happens in a snake fashion so if you're playing a four player game and you go first well you're going eighth now and what for me the player count that is the best is only two players because the snake fashion if you're going first you're going forth then then you know your actions are a little bit smoother in a larger player account it can take a long time i don't think i would ever play it at four oh yeah that's that's something i didn't even consider it could take a long time so the actual game itself and the the theme and the individual mechanics are fun but yeah gosh the dice selection is so restrictive and then some of the cards are like well because of naveen's turn order he's now able to get this fantastic guest that just showed up card that just showed up and i think there are also if i'm remembering correctly there are also cards that give you abilities that you start the game with and that's just kind of randomly yeah and i i guess you could draft them maybe you have to draft them i'm not remembering that now but i just remember that you also have a head of cards that give you special abilities if you're able to put them into play right i can't remember if there's like a certain starting deck of those starting ability cards or or if it's just all one big stack and so i think it's all a big one i think just one big stack right yeah so i think when we last played it we said there should be starting ones and then from there at that point you can get you know better more souped-up ones over the course of the game now i know that there is a dice mitigation aspect to it where you can skip your turn and then uh what if it comes around to you at the end you can get whatever is kind of whatever's left and you can choose to re-roll by removing a die right but that re-rolling is still it's still like that luck chance for taking actions is not something that i enjoy in games yeah specifically it's kind of like your thing with bora bora yeah it's kind of similar to that yeah yeah i i am okay with luck i appreciate luck like castles of burgundy has dice and you know depending on that you it determines what type of actions you take as well but it's not it's not completely action selection like being completely shut out of a really important action that i needed to take that round just because i wasn't able to take that die yeah to me is a little bit rough and for the length of the game i think that that's also a big part of it yeah that is grand austria hotel our number one our number our number one that we disagree on uh let us know in the comments down below which games that you disagree on with with any of your friends or if you agree or disagree with the choices that we made please let us know we would love to hear your thoughts on each and every one of these games and as usual thank you all so much for watching the video we hope you enjoyed it and also thank you to our patreon supporters who voted on this topic we had a lot of fun coming up with this list yeah and we look forward to doing more videos in the future take care bye [Music] you