10 Top Board Games in 10 Different Categories - High Rollers
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Transcript
If you are looking for this month's hottest board games, well then join us as we explore the top trending titles in a collection of captivating categories. The list of games we present may change each episode, cuz these are this month's high rollers. Hello once again. I am Chaz Marler, and this month's list of primo playable performers begins with a game that's doing some serious campaigning on BoardGameGeek's hotness list, De Won. In De Won, two to four competing tribes spread across a compact landscape where territory is tight, resources they are limited, and every camp that you establish blocks that space from everybody else. On your turn, you do just one simple thing. Either collect two adjacent terrain cards, or spend cards matching the different types of terrain that you cross to establish a new camp. Meanwhile, your story tiles provide objectives that reward you for reaching particular territories and collecting resources with berries and fire providing additional scoring opportunities as well. There are also four scenarios that alter the experience along with a two versus two team mode.
Now, the publisher, Space Cowboys, clocks the whole territorial tussle at around 40 minutes, meaning that De Won doesn't require an entire evening to build up some serious placement anxiety for yourself. And this month, this game also has managed to establish a pretty prominent camp on BGG's hotness list, earning it a spot on our list.
Also lighting up the landscape and the list of recently logged plays over on our gamenightpicks.com website is Tokaido, a fast-playing tile game that's inspired by the legend of a mystical firefox whose sparks create the aurora borealis. Now, here two to four players explore the northern wilderness by sliding forest tiles into a shared central board, which in turn pushes another tile out the other side. That tile is then added to your own personal wilderness map where its placement can help you collect animal or aurora tokens, complete objectives, and activate one-time aurora abilities. Now, the goal here is to be the first player to place all your tokens. And doesn't take long to do so because a full game takes roughly about 20 minutes. So, Telego packs a special puzzle that includes a little bit of shared board interference into a pretty compact play time, which may help explain why this game has been setting up camp on so many different game tables recently.
Meanwhile, one of the games that recently adventured onto my game table is Codenames: Critical Role Adventures, which goes considerably further than simply replacing Codenames' familiar words with a collection of Critical Role references, which is what actually I expected going into this game. But, nope. This is a fully cooperative spin on Codenames where one game master leads the rest of the group through missions by providing clues that help them identify the correct words on the board just like normal Codenames. But, the normality oh, it stops there. Because those missions each introduce their own goals and variations on the familiar formula.
And that is spread across three branching campaigns. And each player chooses from seven different characters from the Critical Role universe. And over the course of the games, those characters will gain experience and they'll level up, they'll unlock new abilities, and find equipment and items that they'll also add to give themselves new synergies and things that they could do to continue to bend the rules in interesting ways. I've only had a chance so far to just play one game session of this. So, I don't feel like I'm confident yet to know how much the character progression will influence how the game plays overall or actually for that matter whether or not I prefer this version of the game over Codenames Duet. But, even from my very first play of it, I am impressed at how the RPG concepts from Critical Role are being combined with Codenames, you know, main engine.
It's actually been really interesting to see. And also another thing that I hope will be interesting to see is a new really big video project that I've been working on for quite some time, uh which is a new series that we're calling Shelf Life. The idea behind Shelf Life is pretty simple. It's all about having fun and games with fun and games. If you have enjoyed Lost in the Shuffle, then I think you're also going to really like where this Shelf Life project is headed. In a lot of ways, it has felt like taking that idea of Lost in the Shuffle and being able to expand it into something a little bit bigger a little bit broader of scope. In addition to myself, there's around 10 other tabletop content creators who are currently involved in the project and the episodes that are being made are currently scheduled to start airing in early 2027. At least reasonably as early in 2027 as it turns out to be possible to have them ready ready to go. It It's still a ways away, but if you'd like to receive updates as Shelf Life progresses, well, I've started a simple little mailing list actually that you can sign up for at shelflife.tv. And actually, right now, the most supportive thing that anyone out there can do is to share that mailing list sign up with others who would also be interested in knowing more about this project when it launches. So, there we go. The first official public
announcement of the upcoming launch of Shelf Life. And, you know, another notable recent launch has been the Space King board game Kickstarter, which launched its campaign with all these subtle restraint of an orbital bombardment from space. This game is based on Flash Gitz's animated Space King universe, a universe that apparently is lacking lowercase letters, which might be actually what they're fighting over. So much fighting. This is a two to four player semi-cooperative action game that is stuffed with more than 30 miniatures, some combat, lots of loot, and perhaps most importantly for maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships, opportunities to betray your friends and your neighbors. And the response to its Kickstarter has been enormous as well.
As of this recording, the campaign has already blasted past $2 million from more than 5,000 different backers against an original goal of just 50,000 bucks. Oh, but the campaign is not done yet because it continues through September 25th, which means that there is still plenty of time for its earnings to climb even further, which in turn means that I, for once, I probably didn't pick a crowdfunding campaign to talk about that's going to be overshadowed by another crowdfunding campaign this month. Haha. Yes, maybe probably hopefully nah. Either way though, Space King currently is reigning over our crowdfunding category. Casting itself as one of this month's strongest retail performers is Flip Tunes season 2, the standalone sequel where you are assembling the next cast of animated superstars. In each round, you shuffle up your entire deck and flip two cards. Actually, not flip two. You flip flip two cards into a 3 by 2 audition grid. And where those cards land in that grid matters, because their abilities and interactions determine how much fame your collection generates. And you'll want that fame, because you will take it to market, where it can then be spent hiring promising new performers for your deck, or perhaps dismissing the ones who clearly need to discuss other career opportunities with their agents.
The first player then to generate at least 30 fame in a single flip of the old flip tunes earns the Critics' Choice Award and triggers one final flip to determine the winner of the game. Now, season 2 supports one to four players on its own, but can also be combined with the original Flip Tunes, season 1 I assume, to support up to eight players. And based on the retail sales that we've been tracking, there are definitely plenty of people out there who are tuning in for season 2. And flipping its way onto my game table this month is Gunsan: The Battle for Toshiro Ambo, which is set in the Legend of the Five Rings universe. Here, two to six of Rokugan's great clans battle and barter for control of the legendary fortress of Toshiro Ambo. Now, each clan brings its own unique abilities and secret agendas into an area control contest with multiple paths to victory. And central to all this maneuvering are the game's namesake Gunsan, war fans that track progress, complete objectives, and gradually reveal your intentions to your rivals. And reveal seven of them, and well, you just claimed yourself an immediate victory. And I like that, because most games Most games they give you a sword, an army, or a massive siege engine, but no. Guns'n says, "Here.
Here's a fan. Now, go threaten somebody."
Tapping into some growing momentum this month is Cap Four, a quick card game with a history that actually predates the latest edition from The Op. Originally known as Tapped Four, the Queen's English version of the game, I suppose, the game was independently published and reportedly sold thousands of copies before The Op picked it up and introduced it to a broader audience. Now, in this edition, two to six players are trying to unload their cards by playing ranks equal to or lower than the cards currently on the central stack. Complete a set of four matching cards and you clear the stack while special cards let you tap in to clear it immediately or tap somebody out to cost them their next turn. Cap Four has the comfortable familiarity of a card game that somebody teaches you from across the kitchen table, except now that kitchen table apparently has a marketing department at its disposal. And lately, Cap Four has been taking advantage of that marketing department that it has at its disposal by building enough buzz to earn this spot among this month's high roller.
Rolling its way through the trending games on Board Game Arena this month is PentaQuest, a compact card and dice game that turns five ordinary six-sided dice into a miniature fantasy adventure. Now, the basic challenge is simple. Roll those five dice and then try to create the combinations that are needed to defeat one of the creature cards that is confronting you. Defeat a creature and then its card joins your army where its special ability can later help manipulate your dice by adjusting your results, providing you with rerolls, and other amazing monster-based abilities as well. So, that means that success gradually provides you with additional tools to bend future roles more and more in your favor. Now, the game supports one to eight players, takes roughly 10 to 20 minutes, and requires practically no setup whatsoever, especially digitally on Board Game Arena, since you know, that's kind of it's kind of the whole point of Board Game Arena.
Regardless, though, with five dice in your hand, digitally or physically, some cards, see as the same as the dice, and 10 minutes of time, Pentacost offers its players a fantasy adventure where nobody has to spend 45 minutes deciding which spells they prepared before leaving the tavern. Magic missile, Carl. You're just going to end up using magic missile. You always use magic missile. Who in the world made you a warlock, Carl? Just Just let's go. Let's just go roll some dice.
Our next category, get this, isn't simply about how many times a game has had plays logged, but how much actual table time those plays have accumulated. And one game that has just been gobbling up a healthy helping of hours on Game Night Picks is Tsuroki Anime Studio Tycoon. Now, Tsuroki is a one to four player studio management game inspired by its creator's connections to the Japanese anime industry. Players are attempting to grow a successful anime studio by developing original stories, assembling the right creative staff, and analyzing shifting trends to determine what audiences really want. But, running the studio also means managing the less glamorous side of the business, including risk and debt and interest.
Someone's got to be handling that, and guess what, animation director? It is you. Because, apparently, following your artistic vision still requires
[sighs and gasps]
managing some spreadsheets. Now, the publisher lists a typical game session at around 60 to 90 minutes. So, all those recorded plays can turn into a sizable amount of accumulated playtime pretty darn quickly. And lately, enough players have indeed been putting in enough studio hours to make Tasogare another one of this month's high roller.
And finally, this. The research for these episodes does usually lead me to games that are selling, trending, crowdfunding, or just being played a whole bunch of times. But sometimes, sometimes the research sends me tumbling down a rabbit hole containing a 31-year-old box of plastic cups. Yes, that's right. A box of cups made over three decades ago. That is the game. Meet Cup Stacks. Released by Hasbro in 1995, Cup Stacks is a speed stacking dexterity game where competitors race to transform three stacks of cups into a pair of three-cup pyramids surrounding one six-cup pyramid. And then, you break all three pyramids back down into their original stacks. Did you follow all of that? Really, it doesn't matter. Fastest stacker wins. That's all I think we really need to know about this game.
Sure, there are rules for head-to-head competition and relay races for some reason. And the game even had a knock-off competitor in the form of the stacking game Crazy Cups. There was this much demand for cup stacking games in the '90. Crazy Cups. Crazy indeed. Now, I myself could not find a copy of Cup Stacks on Amazon. And believe you me, I did try. But, as of this recording at least, there is a used copy that you can find listed on eBay for $18 because I was outbid. Even so, there are even more stacks of games that are waiting to be discovered by continuing on to our board game buyers guide or our monthly video of hot picks and cool recommendations.
And also, hey, if there's a stat or a category that you'd like to see highlighted in a future high rollers episode, well, let me know down in the comments for next time. And until that next time, thanks for joining us. Keep a lookout for Cup Stacks and take care.