Top 100 Board Games of All Time (70 - 61)

[Music] welcome to allies or enemies I'm Jess and I am Sean and today we are continuing to count down our top 100 favorite board games of all time and this time we are going from 70 to 61 counting down the 60s and you started things off last time so it's over to me this time and I'm going to get right to it my number 70 is down forest and down forest is a racing and bedding game so in down forest you always have at least one car and you do want that car to win because you're going to get more points if it does but throughout the game you are going to be placing bets on who you think is going to win so it's leads to these really interesting interactions because you can bet on anybody's car so you may be forming like these like uneasy alliances wanting other people to win because you bet on them early but you can mess with everybody's cards because when you play a card you have to move all of the cars on that card in order but you don't have to move them optimally you can always you have to move them forward but you can move them in such a way that oh shcks they got stuck and they can't move forward anymore I wish they could keep moving but what are you going to do yeah and so because of the interaction and the chaos and like the uneasy alliances it makes it my number 70 my number 70 Is Res Rana and res Arana is this game where you start with a Mage and then eight cards and that's it that's that's what you have for the rest of the game it is just all about optimizing those eight cards how do I make those eight cards work together but the genius of this game is basically no matter what eight cards you get they can work together and so specific like every card has a different Power I it's magic how Tom lemon has managed to this it's the same designer as race for the Galaxy and another just incredibly well put together game but this one is even higher up for me because it it just it's a game about magic that feels a little bit like magic and with those cards you're trying to you're getting different resources you're buying you're buying these other cards that give you points and you are each time each turn you get like a little spell kind of thing that you get to cast that allows you to do a little bit extra and so all the time it's like you're just at the edge of being able to do what you want to do but you can find those paths to do what you wanted to and then it's just it's a race it's a race to points when someone breaks through that point barrier they win the game so it's really fast it's really tight and that just having eight cards and how well that fits it just it gives you all the like Joy I think of kind of a deck builder game but without any of the actual building and it's just like a deck figuring out game it's really cool really unique and it is my number 70 my number 69 is root and root is a very asymmetric combat game and this took a while for me to get one over two because I'm not usually a fan of combat games but what root does so well is each of the factions plays so differently so it's always interesting to try and figure out the different factions I think we've got all of them we went like all in on Route and then in particular once we got the Marauders expansion that allows it to work really well at two players because it has like these NPC characters that you get to control every now and then and so it fills out the map space and gives you these like temporary allies that you have to use strategically and so because of that now it's now it's actually made like a solid top 100 game for me way up in this position and I love that it has fooled you into playing coin games with me because that's basically what it is yeah yeah so each of the factions are are like real like fighting factions and I don't know if I have a favorite yet I I do like the Vagabond because that's the least fighty one but it it is fun to try them all and rout is my number 69 my number 69 is camel up and camel up is this is actually this is the second racing betting game that we have on this list and camel up is just a really goofy racing betting game so you're not really racing cuz no one owns any of the camels but you are deciding on your turn whether you want to bet on a camel either to do well or to do poorly or to take a take one of the dice and move one of the camels but the thing about taking dice is you are then giving other people information so you don't really want to take them oh you can also move this little thing that you've got um it's like I don't even know what it's meant to be like the crowd or something and you want the camels to go onto it uh so there's another thing you can do but that's not important the important thing is about this tension of when do I take a dice to actually move a camel thus giving other people information for their bets and when do I place bets but without enough information to really know those bets because I haven't seen the dice yet so every decision is interesting and everyone you don't need to know anything really about this game you just need to know I'm going to I'm going to move a camo or I'm going to play some bed so you can teach this to people in seconds and they're going to basically learn as they play and it's fun even if you like even in that first game where you don't know what you're doing it's just fun it's fun to watch the camels race it's fun to watch them climb on top of each other fun stack them it is just naturally fun to stack camels and when they get caught up in the reverse camels and taken backwards just great and it is my 69 my number 68 is a feast for Odin which is a uve Rosenberg Viking game and this game is another one of my games that took me a while to warm up to and I think that's cuz the first time you play it you see your board and it's filled with like this empty space and you're like okay I've got to try and figure out how to fill all of this space and you're doing this by like it's a worker placement game so you put your workers on and they're just like a whole ton of different spots that you can go on and you're getting these Goods that are represented by polyomino tiles and then using those goods to fill your boards but what you come to realize is as you're filling your boards and surrounding things you're getting bonuses and it's actually a lot easier to get those bonuses by getting like Island boards and other housing boards and so you kind of have to like do a little bit of those which at first seems like something you're supposed to do like after you fill your and so I was like how on Earth can you get positive points cuz first I got to fill this then I have to fill that and then you come to realize oh I can like more easily like get these bonuses on these other boards which will help me overall and it's just more fun too to make that engine that's going to help you to this goal instead of like I just got to work at this goal making that engine is so much more fun and it's made more fun by the Norwegians expansion because that has just like tweaked a few of the spots and let you play more of the cards that I think let you lean into some of the different strategies a bit more and so A Feast for Odin is my number 68 my 68 is sepa and sepa is a pretty new one to us and I can see this moving way up the list but sepa has got such a clever theme so in sepa you are a covet of witches and you trying to help out this town and you're trying to heal up these people but these people are jerks so if they find out that you are a witch then they're going to throw you into trial and there's going to be a whole Witch Hunt so you have to help them but like quietly so that you don't get found out and how you actually play Septima is this really solid card system so you're you're just picking cards and you're getting to do a power but if you pick the same card as someone else then you you get a benefit which is great but also you raise a whole bunch of Suspicion and you're going to get chased by witch Hunters and it's going to cause you trouble so there's this really interesting Push Pull where you want that benefit you want that extra stuff but you also don't want that extra stuff you only want it sometimes you got to be kind of clever with it and this has got uh kind of a full game and a half game I strongly suggest just play with the full game cuz the half game I was like it's okay when we played with the full game and your like the cards that you pick move you up this board so much more interesting it's just a really really cool full game and that is my 68 my number 67 is far away and far away is a small box card game and I think it's probably the game that we've been playing the most of in the last few months because we love small box card games so like there are times when we discover one and it's like all we play for a while and what's really interesting about far away is you have to play your cards in an order uh on your board but then at the very end of the game you flip all of your cards over and then you score them backwards so you flip your last one and you have to score based on the like the resources that are currently seen in your Tableau so it's just really tricky to try and set yourself up for probably ones that need a lot of resources to play early on and hope that you can get those Resources by the time it gets flipped but the like reverse scoring thing takes a couple of games to wrap your head around but makes it just really interesting and it is my number 67 my number 67 is Spirit Island and spirit island is one of the heavier co-op games that is out there and in spirit Island you're different asymmetric spirits and you're trying to chase out these Invaders and all these Spirits play Super different and we've got I don't know we got a couple of the expansions so we've got more Spirits than we're going to play with probably at this point and there's so many different things you can add to this game so this is already quite a quite a heavy game where you are you're trying to protect Villages and villagers and you're also trying to get rid of these Invaders before they build up their cities and their houses and everything else that they're trying to do and it is hard it feels that's like base game that's hard that's just the yeah and there's all these different levels that you can add in that you're going to make it harder than we've barely even touched cuz it's so hard right away and you build up and it just feels imposs possible and every time we talk about this game we say this but it's important to say because it's got such a weird game curve where it's like like we can't do this we can't do this we can't do oh my God we're doing it we're doing it we did it and every game feels like that and so it's like it's overwhelmingly difficult and then it feels you just get this huge sense of like Elation of we've done it I can't believe it we faced impossible odds and you feel like that every game and I don't know another game that does that so it is my 67 my number 66 is Tang garden and I love tile placement games and I love beautiful games and this is exactly that I love that it starts off with like a white canvas and then as you're adding the tiles you're adding the colors to the shared like tranquil Garden that you're building and all of the pieces look really great like it has these great pagodas and bridges but it's actually like pretty mean cuz you're always trying to make sure like you're restricting your opponent with what they can do cuz you never want to take like the second to last tile because then all of the tiles uh options get revealed and that gives your opponent the most like available options to choose from so you are like just adding to this tranquil garden and you're putting out your gardeners and you're adding these Landscapes but the whole time you're doing that you are making sure that like you're not giving your opponent points for the tiles you're making sure you're putting things that your the other person's gardeners don't want to look at in front of them and like it's a little bit sneaky but it's still like still really lovely despite that such a mean nice game yeah I would describe it as that and it's my number 66 my number 66 is Obsession and in Obsession you are super fancy people in like 1800's England and you are you you've got a a mansion a like small mansion definitely a mansion and you've got a staff of people and you are trying to invite other fancy people into your fancy home and impress them with the different rooms you have and throwing different parties and having the right weight staff to wait on them it's a game that I should hate it's like all of the things about the theme of this game are so uh completely opposite of what I'm usually into it was definitely a game for Jess yes it definitely it was a purchase for Jess and I ended up really liking it because mechanically it's really it's just a Super Sound game and how it works how getting the tiles work and getting your staff and everything is really smart but what I really like is thematically it's secretly it's just not even very secretly it's so tongue and cheek so it's so pointing it's so poking fun at all of at this whole world and I love poking fun at this world and all of the people have these hilarious little write ups and so it's great because I think it will win over the people who really like Des are really interested in that stuff where we're big Bridgerton fans but it's also going to Wi over people like me who really find that stuff ridiculous and want to make fun of that stuff and I think it just rides that line perfectly so it is my 66 my number 65 is Euphoria which is a worker placement game that takes place in a dystopian world and so you have these different dice that are your workers and the value of the dice determines what actions you can do but what's interesting is as you collect more dice the odds of like one of them being too smart increases and if they're too smart they realize like the dystopian world that they live in and you lose that worker dice so I I love the Thematic elements that have been like embedded in the game like the names of the markets as well and um I do like for the worker placement aspect you're racing to like achieve these goals with these stars that you're putting out but when you build a market it always takes at least one other person so there's like slightly Cooperative but definitely not like building of markets that are happening as well but I will say it does need the expansion ignorance is bliss because that fixes some of the markets and makes it a game that's playable for two players so with that it's my number 65 my number 65 is beyond the Sun and Beyond the sun is really it's a GI Tech Tree you've got all these cards laid out in a tech tree and you're gaining these abilities and then from that you're going to be able to gain other stuff as you move along this Tech Tree to try and get to the end of the tech tree to get the really cool stuff and I know that sounds boring and also if you look at it it also looks boring it it honestly it does it looks it just looks very plain but it is not boring it is terrific it is such a cool interesting space game it's this interesting race around this Tech Tree it also has this really neat kind of area control but like not mean area control bit where you're going on these different planets it's got this really cool engine where you're taking off bits and you're getting stronger as you go so you really feel a sense of progression both through your board and through the tech tree so it's it's just it's so much better than it looks like it is or sounds like it is on paper it's so worth playing and the dice are so cool and the dice are and how they use the dice are really cool too cuz your people move from like a suitcase to a person to a jet you know as we do and that is my 65 my number 64 is rolling Realms and rolling Realms is another ston meire game cuz Euphoria was a ston meire game and rolling Realms is a roll and right throughout a game you always use nine different cards and each card represents a different board game it started off originally with just stonem games but now it's expanded to include like a whole ton so many games yeah tons of other games and the way you mark the cards off and how they combo is all different and all tries to tie into like the Thematic or mechanical elements of the game it's trying to represent so I love the asymmetry and how different every game feels because of the different mix of Realms you get so that's my number 64 my number 64 is Trails of T so 64 is our roll and right number and trails of tucana is a just a terrific super light super simple roll and right where you are drawing on a map people love drawing I love drawing on a map and so you got you got this map in front of you and each time you're going to have it's not actually rolling right it's a flipping right so you're going to flip two cards well Jess specifically always is our card flipper she's going to flip two cards and it's going to tell you two different Landscapes you got to connect those anywhere at all on your map they don't have to connect to anything you've already done it doesn't matter you can just put them anywhere and feels like matte Bingo and you're putting these things you're putting out these lines and sometimes you're also getting the different special things on the map connected to one of the exits you're also trying to connect those exits together when you do that you get little combos sometimes you combo those combos and you put more lines on your map and that's really all there is to it but it's just it's really satisfying in that like awesome flip and right and bingo way and the cool thing is this game's got different maps on the front and the back so the front side or what I've decided is the front side has like kind of a short game the back has a longer game we always play both games we always play front SE back SE and we always enjoy both games and it is my 64 my number 63 is race for the Galaxy and this is the second Tom lemon game we've had on the list cuz you had Raz Arana and in race for the Galaxy you are getting different cards and you're trying to build out your Tableau of cards but anytime you want to play a card you have to pay for it with cards so it's always difficult decisions of which ones to keep and which ones to use as like the currency to pay for it but all your different cards have like different colors for the planets they represent and you're trying to find these synergies and build different engines on what cards might work together and I think it works just so well with the um action selection system CU it means you're always involved because you always select what action you want to do and two players you select two actions you want to do and then everybody gets to do all of those actions so it can be like I really like it when I choose not to do an action knowing that you're going to do that because I'm like oh I won't waste one of my actions for that I know Sean's going to play that and so race for the Galaxy is my number 64 my number 63 is fields of ARL and Fields of ARL is a two-player specific game and is by far the largest specifically for two players game that we own I don't know if it's the biggest one that's out there but it is Big this is a big old table hog of a game and it's uve Rosenberg farming game it's a full farming game so you've got you got your farm board you're doing all sorts of U Rosenberg things you're picking up you're collecting up Pete and clearing that off Fields you are you're doing animal husbandry of course you got a bunch of buildings you're putting out but how you're doing it is this cool action selection system that goes over the course of a bunch of years and it's through seasons in each season there's a ton of different possible actions that you can do you kind of have to like prioritize and race for those because only one person can do almost all of those actions and if someone else takes it they're all very very specific so you really have to change what you're doing so you really have to be adaptable you got to have a few different things going on you got a lot that you got to get done but it's it's just really like it's really fun the feeding system system isn't as punishing as some uve Rosenberg games and it's it's really rewarding even though I almost never win at this game because I love animal husbandry you do and it does not get you a lot of points it does not seem to pay off but I still love it and it is my 63 my number 62 is cartographers which is a flip and right game and in cartographers you are adding different terrains to your map and so we love using pencil crayons because we can really spend a lot of time to add our proper Villages our Rivers our field so much longer than it needs to but is more fun but that's part of the f is I've just really like drawing out the shapes and it also is just really interesting in how it scores because there are four like scoring conditions but each season only two of those will score so you always have to decide like usually when a card flips there's usually a couple different terrains you can choose from so you might be like wanting to make sure you're adding to ones that scoring now or investing in ones in later Seasons but I think really it's just like the drawing out with the pencil crayons that makes this so good and it's my number 62 my number 62 is distilled and in distilled you have inherited a Distillery and you are trying to make it bring it back to its past glory and how you're doing that is through card management as it happens in the real world and and so you are you're getting a bunch of cards you're buying cards each round and you've got this Market of cards you've also got like basic cards that you get and those cards are going to be the stuff that goes into whiskey which is the sugars and the water water and the Grain and alcohol we legitimately just did an actual Distillery tour yesterday so I should know this but you've got three different things you're putting in there those things are mixing together they're making alcohol and then you're taking off the top card and the bottom card you're putting those back and then you're recycling them which as we learned yesterday is exactly what they do and then you're seeing which of the spirits you have managed to make so in this you're not you are targeting a certain kind of spirit but sometimes you make something that you don't mean to make often that's going to be voder moonshine but you've got all these different spirits and you can switch those up each game as well and the cool thing about this is even though that core is so simple there are a lot of different paths and a lot of different bits to this game cuz you can do aged or not aged you can have all these different kind of helpers and upgrades you've got all different kinds of ingredients that you're mixing in together those different flights all those things make a surpr bottle collecting make a surprising amount of difference and this game was just a lot deeper than I expected it to be but still with simple rules and it is my 62 my number 61 is side and scy is it takes place in this beautiful world I love the art and inside you are these very different asymmetric factions and you are doing Resource Management you're doing a little bit of combat but at the heart you're also doing like action selection and I find that really interesting because you have four different possible actions and then the way your boards are set up are are different for each one so you can always do the top action and then if you have the resources you can do the bottom action so we're possible you're trying to do that as efficiently as possible to set yourself out to do both and it's also a race cuz you're trying to be able to achieve like your getting your six stars out for your six achievements first because that's who wins the game but I love the combination of figuring out your asymmetric faction with your board with what's happening on the shared board to like take advantage of the opportunities as everybody's moving about and I really like the expansion rise of fenis cuz it gives this whole like backstory and a really interesting campaign so sidee is my number 61 my number 61 is teot toan and I am not sure that I saying that right and I watched like five videos of how to pronounce this before we started none of them agreed with each other so I just I'm going to say it teot to hokan apologies if that's not correct but teot to hokan is this really cool it uses dice in this really interesting way where they're your workers they're going to be on the board in this kind of Temple and they're going to move around that Temple to different chunks of it and as they move they're going to get you a bunch of stuff or exchange stuff or everything you would kind of expect them to do but they're also going to move up in value each time they move and when they get all the way to their Top Value they die and they ascend and they move up this like Temple track and it's this really cool balance of wanting to have a bunch of workers because you can combo them and they can do stuff but also not because you got to feed them although they only eat C beans this is like everyone's so hopped up on coffee in this world and so you're moving them around you're feeding them these cocoa beans you're also getting cocoa beans by going to different spots and and you're killing them off and watching this ascendancy track kind of move up and all of it is just it's so clever and with the expansion as well it makes all of those different sections of the temple like movable it adds different chunks to it there's other expansions we haven't even played with yet cuz there's so much in this game one of the smartest ways I've seen dice used in any game at all and it is my 61 and that is it that brings us down to 61 so next time we're counting down the 50s I just love saying it like a radio show host counting down the 50s thank you so much for watching please let us know in the comments if you played any of the games we talked about and as usual please like subscribe and hopefully we'll see you next time for another game oh