We Ranked The Best Board Games September 2026

0:00 I played the only war game that I think your gamers would enjoy. And I played the cheese game. And not only the cheese game, I also played the cheese game, too. And I played a game that is full of cheese. But not the literal kind. The kind with a lot of random serial killers and trying to survive the night.

0:20 So, where's the cheese? I'll tell you. As you walk through the campus, you do every day, you stumble on a body. You are not alone here. There's someone else. You run,

0:33 but will you survive?

0:36 Probably not. It's 1979 and it's another summer in the camp grizzly. Here are one of these fantastic consularors trying to take care of your kids and survive the night. First of all, you'll have to avoid the serial killer in a bear mask with a scary name of Otis. And then you'll have to run around the camp and collect these objective tokens. There are four possible finales you can attempt to win the game, and you will need those objective tokens to do that. The game is very simple. All you do on your turn is move your current movement elements, for example, one, two, and then you'll just draw a cabin card. A plot twist. The cabin deck is full of items, weapons, plot twists, which are usually bad, and of course, Otis attacks cards. If you've ever wondered how do the statistics of a serial kill look, here they are. This is how far he walks.

1:27 This is when he rolls to attack. And this is his damage. And as the game goes by, he gets stronger, faster, and deadlier. When Otis suddenly appears near you or just walks into your space, he will attack. You check his attack, roll that dice, and then see if you have any weapons. If you don't, you have to panic and run away and take a little bit of damage. The game can end in two possible ways. First one, if the body count reaches 13, there's a final showdown. Everybody is fighting Otis at the camp and you better hope you had any weapons. Otherwise, he'll just slaughter you. The other way is if all the players who have the objective tokens are in the same space, they can try to attempt the other finale and then something will happen. No spoilers. I really like this game. It's full of narrative experience, a lot of random, which might be its biggest downside. You might just spend 20 minutes running around the camp and not getting a single weapon. No weapons, can't fight Otis. But that's kind of charm of this game. So, I really love it. It's like final girl but co-op version with multiple players. All board games that are placed in mine collection will be candidates for game of the month which we will pick at the end of the video. Will Rome Fate of the Empire have this chance? Let's figure it out. In this game, you take control of Rome and try to make it into an empire. And generally, this is a card game. You use cards to buy, for example, new buildings and then place those next to your capital. And anything you build will give you ways to get resources, to get

2:59 new actions, and also victory points. And this is a solo only board game where you will move around your emperor, build new buildings, get new cards, and even fight a level. You will have two objectives in the game, and you will have to fulfill them to win. And the cool part there are bunch of objectives that you can try to fulfill. Unfortunately in Rome resources are not that easy to come by and all the cards and all the resources are very very tough to get. So using your cards you will try to squeeze out every single resource to build anything or do anything. And the really cool thing is that you can move around the map, make trade deals, fight for territories, or get bonuses for those territories and then build. And all of those give you so many options that it feels exciting.

3:50 And the cool thing about cards, well, you can do the basic action or you can pay resources, the very scarse ones, to do a much better action because you have to squeeze every single resource out of every single card. This game gets the award of the best freaking board game in the world that I do not enjoy. It's just not for me. I'd rather have bajillion resources and then figure out the most efficient way rather than having a game where you start out, do bad, and then realize I should really like restart everything. But there's hour or more of a gameplay there. So, you'd rather be chased by a crazy serial killer in a bear mask.

4:29 I think so. Weirdly, yes. Me definitely. We've always wanted to create a list of best sports board games. So, we're always looking out for new ones. And this one's about baseball. I don't know nothing about baseball. Never played it, never watched it. Well, this board game helped me understand. Here is your baseball team, which is just a little deck of cards. You will shuffle it up, place it here, draw a bunch of them, and you're ready to go. The game is super simple. All you do in your turn is play a single card. Then, you check if there are effects that cancel other players hits. If there aren't, he'll succeed hitting the ball and moving his runners. Then you will place your own right here. And then hope that the other player doesn't cancel yours. And you go back and forth this way. When you play your last card and resolve it, you see who has more runs scored. And that player wins that game. And if you win four games, you win game. Also, one last thing, in between the play games, you get to buy new players to put into your deck. That's it. So this game game can be played in multiple ways. You can play it solo, you can play it with two, you can play a tournament that can be played up to four. And I think this game is easier to understand if you know baseball and all the terms, which I didn't. So it's quite fiddly to get into it, right, Mr. Cy? Also, I might be a bad rules explainer, but the basic gameplay is super flowing, easy, and I would always play it if somebody suggested it. So I hope one of my friends gets this. This was a card game in a video game. Now it's a card game in not a video game.

6:00 So, okay. Is it good?

6:03 Well, let's play it. But before playing, you have to pick one of these decks. That one. All right. I'll pick this one. And from all of these, you will have to create a deck with just like 30 cards or so. So, you have created your awesome deck, right? Shuffle it. Draw 10 cards. No look, draw.

6:26 Yeah, exactly. These you can throw away and you can only play now with those 10 cards

6:30 like forever. Those that's gone. That's a legacy game.

6:33 No, you'll have to pick it up later. But from these you will play this round.

6:37 Video game enter is much more fun than this. And be careful because with these 10 cards, you have to win two different fights. So all you do is take one card, play it out, adjust your strength. Now you do the same. And we continue until one of us stops. And generally these numbers right here are your strength. The more strength you add, the stronger you are. And which side has more strength or is going to be the winner. And some cards will have their special effect or there will be these event cards that you play out and cancel all the cards in a single row. Want to know the good part?

7:20 Yes,

7:21 the deck building seems really fun. It's it's it's quite enjoyable.

7:24 I tried it picking up from the floor. No, that's all.

7:27 No, not that part. But you have to do what you have to do. And then figuring out when to stop because you will have to fight three fights with that toast and cards. That's also fun.

7:36 Okay. So, why would I do this here but not in the video game?

7:40 Well, do you want me to talk about the bad things? First of all, the component quality. Well, there is none. It's really bad.

7:49 Even the cards, they seem okay.

7:51 Cards, I guess, are fine, but the playmats and well, this excuse of a scoreboard. Uh, and as I said, the most fun part is the deck building. Unfortunately, all of these decks are almost the same. There are unique mechanisms and things in each of them, but those are just few cards. Most of it is exactly the same. So, you cannot build too many decks playing it. It's It's well fun. It's It's good. I was thinking about Friends Collection, but then the replay value.

8:24 Well, there's like ton of cards really. They're so similar that there's no replay value.

8:29 Yeah. I mean, I'm okay. I would play it if somebody would suggest it. So, maybe Friends Collection, but I would never ever recommend it to anyone.

8:38 Then it's probably other unless you really like looking at Witcher like pictures.

8:43 Well, Geralt is a strapping young lad. Well, he's not young, but you know who else is a strapping young lad? This guy right here. Dark Romance is a two-player deduction game. You heard me right. Two-player deduction game. You might get the role of a demon hunter or a vampire, but you have no idea who the other player is. To figure out who the other player is, you'll do different activities together. For example, love poem recitation. Go ahead. Violets are blue something. I love you. And then I'll decide which outcome to take. And then I will decide how much I love the poem. And based on my decision, I will move a token on the main board. Different activities will move different tokens around the board. And once one token gets to the middle, the game ends.

9:34 So if this is the endame trigger and I am the vampire, see magic symbol. I really hope the other player is the count because then I win. How do I know that? So, I'm the vampire and here are all possible outcomes versus all possible roles. So, if the other player is the count and I'm the vampire, I need this symbol. If the other player was the vampire, then I would need this love symbol. And then it's my turn. I will draw two possible activities we could do like accidentally consequence. Ouch. Your innocent touch, touch, innocent touch. And I will present it to the other player by saying, "Our hands accidentally touch and we feel tingles running through our spines." So, this game will fall apart if you play just mechanically, even though Giannis thinks it will still work. Do you?

10:23 I think so.

10:24 Yeah. But I think you need to narrate it. It's essentially a two-player role playing game. And if you don't do all the Hello, then it's just not going to be as fun. So, I'm kind of in the middle. I would always play it, but I don't have many friends who are ready to

10:39 wait. I feel a presence.

10:42 It's just the game. It's the game.

10:43 Okay. Sorry.

10:44 This is a fun one where there is a ghost.

10:46 Okay.

10:47 But you don't know which side he's taken.

10:49 And then you play out cards that have all steamy situations where you're trying to figure out

10:53 if the ghost wants you or the ghost doesn't want you. So, one team will be playing these investigators. Starting out in the great hall. They are locked in to a mansion and there are ghosts there and the other player will play a ghost character. Maybe a good guy, maybe a bad guy. For investigators to win the game, they have to unlock what is wrong with the ghost. What are some past memories they can dig up and maybe help the ghost? To do that, you have to travel through the mansion and find some clues. Once you have collected enough of these clues, you can try to make a guess what is wrong with the ghost. If you're correct, that's great. If not, you're going to lose some time. And if you run out of time, well, first of all, the ghost will get stronger. And second of all, you will die. And the ghost will have to fulfill their objective. But their objective will depend on the card they draw. For example, if you draw understand me, the ghost is a good guy.

11:57 Woo. But if not, well, the ghost will move around its presence throughout the house, make it stronger and play out cards using these dice to, well, maybe blow out those candles. And to avoid dying, the investigators will have three actions on their turn. And all of them mostly will use cards. To move around, whoop. To search something, whoop. To open or close a door, whoop. and do other things. Whoop. The best thing about the game is well the theme and how it's implemented. The candles that you bring with you and that a little gust of wind blew out. The clues that are all about theme and amnesia and everything seems to make sense thematically. For example, the ghost cards like Prisoner of Fate, Silent Scream, and Blinding Light. All of them mechanically really work well towards making a great thematic experience. Oh, this is my favorite inviting gesture. A ghost hand shows up and just invites you to another room. And the big premise of whichever ghost you're playing, he might be a good guy or the bad guy, works. It's really fun not knowing. It's intriguing. It's cool. So, the presence keeps its promise of just having a lot of intrigue. The bad thing, well, it has a campaign mode.

13:23 It has like learning guide that doesn't work. It has some cards that are ah not polished. And I feel like it's trying to do too many things and it's not streamlined enough. It could have been one of the best thematic games ever. I think it has the potential of being it. So, this one will definitely be hitting my board gaming table more. I wish it was cleaner. I wish it was easier to set up and do things. So I don't want to place it there because there's a lot of potential which is not reached. So I place it in France. I wish Mr. Jiannis would maybe buy a copy and then we can play together. You you learn the rules, set everything up and stuff.

14:05 No, no. Cuz I'll be busy setting this up and uh learning all the rules for this. In Company of Heroes, you will select a scenario, then set up a board, and then do everything you can to achieve a certain amount of victory points. See, it's almost like a hero game. Victory points cubes falling down. There are two ways you can collect victory points. By eliminating enemy units, or controlling these little objective hex's with stars. That means two victory points each round. Easy, right? First thing you do each round is give orders to units to move them around the board. I moved one unit. Now it's your turn. And we do this back and forth until all orders have been spent. That comes later. After all the units have been moved, you will assign. You heard me right. You don't roll. You just assign damage to each enemy unit. So you might think, what? No random. You just assign damage and that's what happens.

15:03 No, it's not that simple because once the damage has been assigned, depending on the unit and the terrain, you will get to roll some defense dice. So, for example, now I roll these dice and I've protected everything. Zero damage. But if I rolled a red, then I would lose some life points. And the dice have these face values. So, as you can see, only two are red. So, defending is very likely. And if you are sneaky enough and get to shoot at the unit where he has no armor at all or protection, you will just outright do the damage. No defense dice rolls. So, it's all about planning. At the end of the round, you will see how many areas you control with which resources and adjust your income. And then you will spend all of those resources to buy new units, upgrade your buildings so you can buy different units and upgrade the units themselves. And of course, the most important part, score victory points. Company Heroes is a war game unlike I've any played. There's a little bit of random, but a lot of tactical planning. You can build new units. It's just like the RTS that I used to play way back when. And you can play it one versus one, two versus two, which is actually very fun. Sometimes you're like, if you can play two versus two, it's just okay. But this is really, really, really good. So, I can't wait to get back to it. I know. Hianis is not the only cheesy thing here. There's also from Hash. Congratulations. You are a cheese maker in France. Now get to work.

16:33 At this point, ignore everything else. Just look at your slice. At your turn, you will have to send one worker up here doing this action. And the other one you have to send to make cheese like this. And when your turn is done, now concentrate on this slice of cheese. You'll have to do the same here. You will be able to upgrade your facilities to gain bonuses, get some cattle, and use it to get better cheese and also make some jam, which all essentially will make sure you get more and more victory points. And one of the coolest things about the game as well, you only will get back workers which are pointing at you once you flip the board. For example, I get back this one if I'm the yellow player. And you are a cheese maker, right? So, you want to make as much cheese as possible on these slices because each of them will give you victory points in different ways. Like this for example. And here you want cheese on multiple shelves. And here you want to control territories with cheese.

17:42 And here you want to set tables with cheese. And you have these sheets of paper that you can slide in these slices. And [clears throat] now the holes right here. See? VOP. They have changed value, meaning you will have very different plays. And the other thing is the simplicity of the actions that you have to do. For example, place here to get a cattle or place here to get points. Yet it feels like you have bunch of options and all players do their turns at the same time which means it's quick. So let's quickly also jump to the second part which I also played for Majio from Majio and they are the same game but the cool part is you have different slices and you can take slices from here and mix match with this game for example. So you have you can even double the replay value of old games. So both of these are cool. I would say this maybe is more balanced and so on and so forth, but I mean it doesn't really matter. This one is great and I really really liked it. So you have played this as well, right?

18:50 I have the original from Ash. Yes.

18:51 Yes. It's really good.

18:53 It is really good. It's a solid worker placement game with no downtime, simple rules, and pretty cool decisions.

19:00 Yep. So, I'm placing it at the top because just because of the balance.

19:05 And what about this one?

19:06 It's the same. It's the same game.

19:07 No, it says from Ain says from A.

19:09 Yeah. Yeah, it's the same game,

19:10 but

19:11 more content, more maybe balanced and so on, but it doesn't matter.

19:15 Last month game of the month was Ringo, but it's time for something else to take its place.

19:20 So, we have three games uh in the mine collection. Uh and we have to eliminate Mumbai one. Can I start?

19:26 Of course. Uh but what's next? Why mine? Why didn't you eliminate yours?

19:34 Cuz I mean obviously I think

19:36 No, no, that that is very decisive. I think this one is the most accessible.

19:40 Yes,

19:41 this one is the most unique. Not counting that one, but it's super random. So, this one's actually very strategic.

19:46 Yeah,

19:47 as war games usually aren't, you know, they're strategic. Just random dice. Uh, so it's very hard for me to say. As a gamer, this is a better this

20:00 with him saying it's hard to say. He's like, I know I like this better.

20:04 I like this so much better. It's just I I kind of expected it to be good, but it came out being fantastic. A musth have board game. If you like miniatures, if you like war games, if you've ever tried to play like tabletop miniature games like Warhammer, this is kind of like that, but so accessible and very strategic. Not a lot of random. Did I mention that it doesn't have a lot of random?

20:27 That's pretty cool. Yeah,

20:28 pretty cool. Just like pretty cool are you people supporting the channel. Thank you so much for doing that. If you haven't done that already, please consider supporting us so we can make more stuff around board games and play more board games. We love board games

20:42 and we hope you do as well. Yeah.

20:44 Anyway, I'm really excited for you to play that one. I think you love it.

20:47 Let's play it.

20:47 Yeah. Yeah. I I'll crush you.