Why play anything else? - Top 10 Board Game Obsessions!

0:00 over the last 2 months I have been playing what some would label is an obsessive amount of Dune Imperium and dune Imperium Uprising and all of the related expansions to the point where my game group actually has started requesting we don't play Dune imperi at least some of them the ones that like things like terraforming Mars and other nonsense like that I have enjoyed getting back into gaming gaming as a bit more of a hobby gaming as something you do when you play focus and replay the same game multiple times with the same game group one of the biggest things that's changed in the last two to three months is that I started hosting a Tuesday night game night here at the quackalope studio every week now we just took off for peso but this Tuesday night here in Cleveland Ohio we're probably going to be playing more Dune Imperium I haven't told the group yet so don't send them any messages it's been nice to dive into a game and not just play it three four five times for the sake of recording or for videos or for review but instead I'm maybe 20 25 games deep in the last two months alone and still loving and obsessing over this title so I thought I'd make a video about the 10 games I want to obsess over it also lines up fairly well with where the direction of

1:30 quackalope is headed in the future pulling back a little bit farther from crowdfunding coverage from the kickstarter driven hype based Marketplace full of uh a lot of people getting burnt out myself included and back to what it was when I first got into the hobby a few games that I fell in love with Katon with the family root with a game group there at Labyrinth games and puzzles Kingdom Death monster which blew my mind and you know the remarkable thing over the last 5 years of creating content some of those favorites haven't changed yeah they've been set to the side because we don't have time to play them anymore we don't have the right game group set up but the classics The Evergreens the games that I just enjoyed playing are still largely the same so what has the crowdfunding marketplace done for us well it's given us a lot of things to keep on our Shelf and some remarkable games along the way of course but maybe a little bit more few and far between than uh I initially or would venture to guess or expect so clearly Dune Imperium is on this list as probably the game that I am currently obsessing over the most I absolutely adore Dune Imperium with the expansions included without the expansions as well but it's not quite as high in my list if you're just playing base game with nothing else mixed in I love deck

3:02 building games I like the integration of worker placement strategic uh positioning on the board along with a powerful deck building system that allows you in some ways to feel like you've broken the game right at the point you get to the end of that race to win mechanic of course you're seeking to score 10 points or cross that Victory Point threshold which brings the game to a screeching halt and depending on who you're playing with that could either be a long careful drawn out slog epic battles to the final final breath or a hectic race to get as many uh as many resources as possible so that you can buy as many of those the smice the spice must flow cards and score before anyone has even seen it coming with variable different Pathways to Victory tons of different factions to explore and the brand new Standalone Dune Imperium Uprising which is a little bit more Helter Skelter a little bit more quick on its feet has bigger swings and greater surprises due to the sandworm mechanic that doubles your victory points yeah I'm a little bit obsessed but we should continue let's continue diving down into the games that I want to obsess over and the games hopefully over the next season the next journey of quackalope you'll see appearing here more and more whether it's solo with strategy guides rules you might miss quick start guides and how to plays or hopefully I'll talk to some of the people in my game group B Shira my wife to sit down and play some of them

4:32 with me when making this list I asked myself the simple question what are the games we still play and what are the games I always wish I could be playing even though I might be testing something else out I'll see it seductively sitting on the shelf just whispering to me sweet memories of uh the past what it could be what it was at one point which brings up another very valuable game root a classic a game that we have as a channel built a pretty strong fan base around probably sold thousands of copies to you all who've watched all of our previous content and continue to get a lot of views on but we're not doing it for the views anymore quackalope is going back to what this was at the beginning and at the beginning this was a channel built around Kingdom Death and around root which of course Kingdom Kingdom Death the Black Knight expansion is sitting here to the side as well the two Titans of what we once were and the two games that haven't ever tried to leave my collection haven't ever been disparaged or gotten rid of now roote has moved its way off of our table over the last few years with changing game groups the Advent of a pandemic which made it harder to get larger groups of people together which route does cater towards those higher player counts and the new expansions not being my favorite out of

6:04 the bunch I tried to find greener pastures but I'll be honest there is something remarkably nostalgic charming and consistent about the experience that root provides this epic tactical war game this learning of the various different systems and mechanics that are available to you the players and a new experience every time you dive down into it I've played other games that I thought were competing with it but games like root just aren't root there's something Evergreen there's something classic there's something established about this game there's another game like this that got me into the hobby Katon this last week no last two weeks I've played two full games of Katon first time in maybe seven years and it was excellent it was great was surprisingly good which is a funny thing to reconcile because you'd think you'd move past some of those introductory family games but things like Ticket to Ride code names and katans still hold their position for a very good reason and roote is right there next to them Kingdom Death monster the game I fell in love with this hobby 4 that has released more and more content over the course of this last year with the gamblers chest arriving we are still working on the gamblers chess campaign I will be working on some solo content around the Black Knight expansion and my wife and I still consider this our number one game of all time so if we want to spend some

7:34 time obsessing over a large campaign-based game Kingdom Death seems to be high on the totem pool this epic Dark World dark fantasy kind of RPG anime mixture living in the Berserker or the uh not really Attack on Titan but that ethos that vibe that body horror and gruesome in the atmosphere you're the smallest the most vulnerable population of people searching out to explore the Horizon and fight giant beasts and monsters Harvest their body parts and return with whatever resources you're able to collect the object of the game survive and just this last year for the first time in some probably 3 or 400 hours of play we actually made it to the end of one of these campaigns we did not survive spoiler alert okay let's move on now let's talk about Classics a game that was at one point my wife's favorite that has moved off to the side but I've got it to the table maybe five times over the last few months again with that same gaming group that I've been forcing to play uh doing Imperium with me and terraforming Mars Just grows on you every play gets better and better again with the Strategic drafting the hand management the resource cycling I don't know that there's many Euro games that can hold a candle to just how good this game is I love drafting Mechanics for one I like the

9:04 ability to have systems that feel overpowered but everyone's doing it at the same time it allows you to create Combos and unlock certain special abilities that seem to trigger one after another and by the end of the game it is so remarkably satisfying when you have one engine where you can hit the button and everything just starts spiraling off of that along with that this is a game that pretty much anyone is with willing to play with me my wife Shir is always down for terraforming Mars one of my friends Corey here same thing ready to get it to the table he knows way more than me and I have yet to ever beat him but it's high on the list it's high on the list cuz it's excellent cuz it's classic and because we can actually get it tabled and we enjoy every single experience we have with it except that one where I just tried to smash meteorites into the planet thinking that playing only red cards was a good long-term strategy and it resulted in my uh unequivocal defeat to the uh humor and horror of everyone else around the table shall we continue the game that I think is probably at the top of my solo games list and a game I haven't covered so much here on quackalope even though I currently am up toate with every expansion pack that has been released we're talking Marvel ch Champions a classic little deck construction game which is different from deck builder in deck builder you're actually drafting

10:36 from the table in front of you so your deck is created while you play in drafting your drawing cards and passing them around the table so you are building your hand in some ways but everyone gets a say in what gets uh picked taken and revealed in debt construction you have a pile of cards in front of you all of which have the option to be incorporated into your deck and you're crafting the most powerful superhero based deck you can to go up against any number of Nefarious villains with the X-Men expansion now released as of like six or seven months ago I know it sounds recent to me it's not recent to you the audience at all and more content coming out in a unyielding unending spiral of content this is my go-to solo Play If I want to dive head first into a game spend some time really reading Drafting and figuring out cards not drafting like passing just constructing and Min maxing what my abilities will be for each unique specific scenario Marvel Champions is where I go now I haven't had so much time to do that over the last season of my life getting married becoming religious Jewish and uh of course balancing the EB and flow of this channel has been a bit of a journey but if I start bringing this to the table more and start doing coverage on it here I'll have a very good excuse to dive back into a game that has remained a favorite for a long long time let's swing to another solo

12:11 game but one that I play if I want a one-off random experience as opposed to a mindbending you know min max construction experience you probably you probably already know this one we're talking final girl we have everything for season one we have everything for season to I know season 3 is on the way we will end up having that as well this game is Just remarkable it is random and chaotic and you can absolutely lose because the game is cruel and luck is not on your side and yet at the same time final girl with the modularity the ability to mix different expansions and the storytelling incumbent in the horror genre and the horror narrative is a game that always gives me a picture of what's happening in front of of me whether it's a butcher taking a hatchet and slashing through a crowd of innocent bystanders or it's me taking a wheelbarrow and swishing two of them off to a exit close by I love the hand management of this I really enjoy the dice rolling and the ability to weigh the odds what might be the best thing to do here or there there are also some scenarios where if you twist the dials just the right way you feel like you've really uh got a hand up one step over you found that trigger that allows you to take advantage of the villain as opposed to being the victim and that's what the story of final girl is all about an excellent solo only experience that I enjoy playing two-player and an experience that always gives

13:42 me a story to tell by the end of the play very excited to dive back into this it is one that I have enjoyed playing on my own off to the side from time to time but one that I haven't honed in on as much as I wish I could have let's keep moving down we're going to grab a big old game called catharsis catharsis in my opinion is the best version of dice Thrones now my wife may or may not agree she's a big fan of dice Thrones but because I like catharsis from cyber from cyber wizard games a lot my wife is also willing to sit down and play this with me and enjoys it as well this is a Cooperative modular game where you have various different narrative decks you're going through for a boss that you're facing off against but the most unique part is the fact that every single character has a stack of different abilities that all mix and match depending on what you've drafted out onto the table and have their own unique mechanisms for how they operate and run this is one of those games you can play cooperatively and every time you sit down to play it you have a brand new puzzle in front of you to solve that yatsi style dice rolling it requires you to work together gives you power and abilities that allow you to interact with other players or just do super super damaging attacks into the center of the table and is often a challenge that I have yet to figure out how to beat this game is awesome it doesn't

15:14 hurt that we also have a very good relationship with the publisher and we do have some content scheduled to come out down the road on catharsis but that's not enough for me to say that I want to obsess over it I want to obsess over catharsis cuz I want want to figure out the puzzle incumbent in each and every one of the characters I want to challenge and see the story developed for each one of the various bosses and I want to continue mixing and matching they have this unique system where depending on who you're playing with and who your other allies are playing with you can create paired combinations based on their two unique core traits or abilities one might be a magic wielder the other is an Archer so if you're playing at the table together you place a card between you and you all suddenly have an ability that allows you to create magic arrows that the other person can then fire I like those combinations it feels like a giant jigsaw puzzle that's sorting itself out so after we get done filming a few more gameplay videos and talking about it we're going to continue filming videos and talking about it I have a hope a secret desire something that might take a long time to actually do I want to go through every single character profile learn the cards well enough that I can actually create little strategy guides for each and every one of them showing off the cards and talking about how the Mechanics Work because this game while big and ambitious and there are smaller box versions of it you don't have to have the beefy monstrosity sitting next to me this game really does do something special and it's coming from a Indie publisher who's put a lot of time and

16:45 energy into making something unique let's continue going a classic from my good friend West Todd a game that I got overwhelmed with because the amount of content we had and now I really want to Circle back too because I have enjoyed and have loved experiences of too many bones and yet when I got everything I have the Trove chest over there packed to the brim it became too much too unwieldy for me to manage yet I love the idea of how you build out these little RPG style characters the dice that you get to unlock and roll the way that your characters start progressing and growing I do wish there was a little bit more interaction on the battlefield and the story can be repetitive from time to time unless you change it with some of the narrative options that they give you and some of the other expansion content but now that we have unbreakable here I'm excited to continue diving in we we did open this up Sharon West got this to the table recently when we were hanging out but I haven't yet and I know I should have by now but now's the opportunity better late than never I think taking too many bones in in bite-sized chunks is the correct way for me to continue re-engaging with and re-exploring a game that just became a little bit too heavy for me to pick up if you like strategic puzzly style games that give you a little bit of a narrative Adventure without it being a

18:17 campaign or a dedicated sitdown type of game yeah it might be one you and many others would like to obsess over I am going to do Crimson scales Trail Of Ashes one of the only Campaign games that I haven't dove into yet that I've been meaning to more than almost anything the most ambitious fan-made expansion as far as I know in existence made by uh some close friends for of ours uh and and produced by a publisher who's putting out another game called Rose here soon uh West Todd hopefully should be up to talk about it and share some information on it but I've played the Crimson scales I've played the Bas big box game but the trail of Ashes is a side Adventure a spin-off a break it was the second wave of content that they put out for the second printing along with a series of some Miniatures and other cool upgraded items that they brought and I haven't actually got this part of the game to the table at all so I'm very excited to dive into this campaign to start exploring through the mechanics of Gloom Haven again but doing so through something that I uh think is a remarkable creation and invention of a lot of dedicated fans and really excellent designers okay Crimson scales and the last game on my list is still in shrink

19:49 because it just arrived now I did get a chance to play the Prototype of this we were one of the channels that were able to advertise this back in the day and I am very very hopeful immediately after this video I'm actually going to be doing an unboxing video of slay the Spire but I love the video game absolutely Head Over Heels adore had to delete from my phone because I would play it too much the video game it's that broken system of you know continuing going through the same series of dungeons the same series of challenges with upgradeable cards special powers and abilities tokens and modules that give you all of these superpowered attacks and the game runs it all for you so the big caveat the big question here is the board game going to be able to replicate that feeling of unlocking of exploration of powers and abilities and things you have to keep in mind when you're actually playing it on the table no this is a one to four player game honestly the multiplayer was fun I did enjoy it quite a lot it changed what the base game did but did so in a very satisfying way but I think the primary way I'm going to be exploring this at least initially is going to be just as a solo Adventure I'm a big fan of slay the Spire I don't know that this will be one that I want to obsess over forever but there's always one in our collection right that game that just arrived that Kickstarter you just backed and were hoping to see on your shelf you rip it open put sleeves on all the cards and then start playing and that's where you begin discovering if it really is as

21:20 good as you hoped and thought and dreamt it would be I do have a little bit of insight information I I mean I have played this before and I really enjoyed it back then question is through development and with the entire product in front of me now will my opinion shift or stay the same so the final game that I currently want to obsess over is slay the Spire now with any of these some of them might EB and flow come and go but really I'd say the first nine are games that have been around for long enough now that I know I always want to have them they haven't left the collection they've continued to get back to the table and during seasons of my life like through the pandemic or when we were bogged down with more and more channel coverage I always kind of just wished I was playing these games been really nice to play 20 plus games of Dune it's been cool to see how my strategies evolve and develop it was nice to Touchstone back down into a game like Katon that I grew up playing and and see how some of the mechanics stand the test of time I'm really excited about covering talking playing filming and going head first into some of these games that are around me I'd love to hear from you all what are your favorite games what are the games you wish or currently are obsessing over what are you hoping that we cover or how do you hope we cover the

22:52 games that are here on our list than the games that might be on yours whatever the case though whatever you do remember to do the important thing thing I'm trying to do more and more get out and play some games don't just look at them or Li them I mean the mouth feels lovely but it only lasts so long we'll see you later bye