10 Top Board Games in 10 Different Categories - High Rollers

0:00 You know, if you're looking for this month's hottest board games, well, we invite you to join us as we explore the top trending titles in a collection of captivating categories. Every game is a top performer. Well, nearly every game. Regardless, these are this month's high rollers. Hey there, I'm Chaz Marlor and this month's list of primo playable performers is going to begin with the coldest hot game that I have ever covered ever in my lifetime because it is the game 60 below. This is a brand new worker placement deck building and push your luck game that's co-designed by Alexander Feister and Peter Prince who are the men behind the great games Great Western Trail and Thieves. But in 60 below, it's 1971 and a meteor has just crashed into Antarctica. Now it's time to send research teams to uncover just what mysteriousness it's brought along with it to our planet. blending market and deck building mechanisms that are reminiscent of Great Western Trail along with push your luck and deck building aspects, plus some brand new ideas, such as how the workers you send out never come back, which does sound ominous, altogether means that there's not only a lot of Antarctica here to explore, but also a lot of new Eurogame goodness to delve right into as well.

1:25 Resources, they are scarce. Temperatures they are dropping and storms are coming in over the horizon. So in this game balancing risk along with your bravery both going to be vital to well not end up being left out in the cold. Now, among the games that are logging the most time being played over on our gamepicks.com website is 2022's Marrakesh, a place where influential families compete for the most honorable titles through the skillful use of assistance and resources. Some may say that assistants are a resource, and I would agree with them because I have no opinions of my own. But this I do know that each round players pick three of the 12 colored cylinders that they have available to them. Now, the colors determine the actions that their assistants have to take that round. And once all the cylinders have been revealed, they're all placed into a cube tower, which then mixes them all up and spits them back out, which are then drafted, determining the power of the actions. Now, this is a process that's that's actually way harder to explain than actually just do. kind of like tying your shoelaces or driving to Delaware. But the result supercharges action spaces to increase their effectiveness and their combo power as players go about earning points in many, many different ways as they work their way towards their ultimate goal of becoming the most influential family in

2:55 all of Marrakesh. Now, last episode, you may recall if you joined us, we indeed covered the game Joysi. And in the comments, viewer Rexology BG mentioned that they have really enjoyed Jizogi, and they just got the publishers's new game as well, Elder Tide: A Thousand Lights. They go on to say that this is an interesting pick up and deliver game with asymmetric player powers. Rexology mentions that they've gotten in a couple of plays at this point, and you know what? It seems like it's pretty good so far, which is enough to intrigue me. So, we dug a little bit deeper to discover that Elder Tide: A Thousand Lights is pitched as the first game of the Elder Tide trilogy. Oo, intriguing. And here, leaders of the nation's five once mighty seafaring families aim to reclaim their homeland from a devastating supernatural storm.

3:53 And so the players embark on their adventure to deal with that extreme weather event. Meanwhile, I don't even drive when it's raining out. Now, to retake their homeland, the families must rebuild a network of ancient technological lighouses scattered across the aisles, restoring balance and retaking the stormwary archipelago back from nature, just as nature intended. I tell you what, the next game capturing our hearts and selling lots and lots and lots of copies in the process is Queen Alice, a chesspowered engine building and miniame game. Here's the premise. In the land of Wonderland, Alice has long since stepped through the looking glass, and now she is set to become queen. But will she become the red queen or the white queen? The decision is important because the difference is more than just the color of her dress because the choices will drastically change how the game scores in the end. Now, Queen Alice is powered by chess moves with the space that each piece ends up on determining the actions to be taken on four miniame boards that are also in play. Meanwhile, a deck building mechanism powers their chess moves, and everything at your disposal can be upgraded to supercharge the game play as well. This seems to be a game that is just driven to combine multiple ideas from various different

5:23 game systems and present them in a cohesive way that keeps the players well keeps the players from going mad as a hatter themselves. Have you played Queen Ellis? If so, let us know down in the comments because I'm really interested to know what your experience has been with all of these different mechanisms all just smooshed together because honestly sounds pretty intriguing. [clears throat] Now for the part of the show where I usually discuss a top performing crowdfunding campaign. But no, this time I'm just going to talk about one that caught my eye because I have simply given up trying to cover specifically the topmost highest performing campaign because that has not ended well ever in any episode of this that we have done. There have been tears perhaps not mine thankfully, but a few of them sure were mine. And which is why the crowdfunding campaign that we're going to be discussing this month is going to be Tangled Yarns, which does sound like it might just be a simple dexterity game about untangling big knots of thread. I would buy that game, but no, I can't because that's not the game is about at all. No, instead, Tangled Yarns is a cooperative one to six player game where brave flocks of sheep unite to save their world from a terrifying cosmic horror. You know, the obvious theme that this game would be about now that now that I think about it. In the game, victory is going to be achieved by stopping the mysterious shepherd that's behind this cosmic upheaval by closing

6:55 various gates found around the city before something else terrible happens to everybody. Even more challenging is that wolves and cultists lurk around every corner, all while players must make use of arcane artifacts to rotate the walls of the city itself to their advantage. Working together, the chivalous sheep can block the paths of their foes and turn the tables by turning the walls, buying them time to untangle this big knot of thread, which we have already determined is metaphorical. In the case of this game, Tangled Yarns, which also may or may not have performed typically or above average on crowdfunding platforms, we really have no way to tell. And I request that everybody watching does not go and check my work. So, Tangled Yarns, a crowdfunding campaign that at least I can confirm exists.

7:54 A game making a name for itself and gaining significant momentum this month among players is Avalon the Vivvenvil Veil. And this is a game that liberally blends Arththeran and Irish mythologies in a historically ambiguous way that my oh so very British coowwriter Matthew Jude was honestly less than appreciative of. I, on the other hand, being a typical American buffoon, I'm barely able to differentiate Ireland and Scotland on a map. So, I think it balances out. And in Avalon: The Riven Veil, the game, two to four competing factions explore and wrestle for control of the aisle of Avalon. There's fighting and bluffing, areas to influence, and locations to explore along the way. And as [clears throat] players explore, they discover what lies beneath the misty mists. Be it legendary items of power, mythic beasts, or perhaps the legendary Holy Grail itself, which they can then repurpose in preparation for war. The various factions in the game are asymmetrically designed with different powers and abilities, creating numerous paths to victory. Even so, one potential path to victory is clear, and that is to be or not to be the last person standing when the mists of Avalon finally settle.

9:23 In the comments of a recent episode, viewer Denise Reader 3966 suggested that we cover the category of worker placement games that have been overlooked but still were kind of great, such as she gave the example Whistle Stop Mountain. And that is a fantastic suggestion, Denise. And we actually went and did some research and came up with one for you. A scorching hot but seemingly overlooked game that we think may fit the bill. And that is the second edition of Scoville. Back in 2014, the first edition of this game was released about growing chilies. And then in 2025, the game received a makeover and was re-released as its second edition. But if you ask me, it didn't quite generate the same fanfare that it might have deserved. As pepper farmers/scientists, the players are challenged with crossbreeding the hottest peppers that they can. From planting them to harvesting to fulfillment, it's on you, the players, to blend breeds and satiate the peppery demands of the people of Scoville. The game's new second edition has updated art and components to go along with it, and it's also now colorblind friendly, which is always really nice to see. It also comes with the labs expansion baked right into it.

10:45 This expansion also allows players to carry on their mad scientistlike pepper creation behind closed doors where the prying eyes and plucking hands of rivals are unable to thwart their pepper growing madness. But even if the immediate access that you would have to its expansion isn't enough to tempt you, the second edition also has a pepper party promo pack that's available on the secondary market at this point, which can be added to the recipes to choose from to increase the variety and provide brand new challenges. Now, to be fair, finding this promo pack at this point may be a challenge in and of itself, but locating it will still add even more heat to this game for Scofill afficionados, which we think deserves deserves to have this temperature. I didn't finish writing this sentence, and I was going to make a pun about turning up the heat, but I didn't.

11:43 But I do have another game we can talk about right after this bumper.

11:49 Now, a tabletop game that has a digital counterpart that's been dropping huge numbers over on the board game arena website is the aptly named game number drop. This is a one to six player Tetris inspired roll and write game that has players using four number dice and one shape die to create polyomino pieces to drop into their personal grid in order to create combinations of identical or sequential numbers which will then score them piles of plentiful points. When the pieces are dropped into the player's personal grid, they obey the logic of Tetris. So careful planning will be crucial to avoid creating gaps and from preventing the shapes from eatking ever closer and closer to the top of the grid where negative points lurk waiting to find you. Number Drop also has a physical pen and paper version which was published back in 2021 and actually appears to still be in print and available from various retailers as well. So, if number drop sounds like something you'd like to drop onto your table, you can find it both in physical form and online digitally.

13:06 Next, we're going to combine two categories into one. We dare because Seventh Seal is a game that not only is a new release, but also is a really hot solo game as well. Seventh Seal is a singleplayer dice management game that also features big beefy boss battles to boot. In the game, the end of the world is approaching, which actually technically speaking, I guess actually in reality, the end of the world is eventually approaching as well. So, I guess it's not actually that far-fetched of a concept. In the game, your goal is to open seals of a scroll and face the wrath of a supreme being who has unleashed an avalanche of furious beasts and demons that will attempt to wipe out all life on Earth.

13:56 You know, Mars and Venus, they're just they're sitting right there next door to us. But no, nope. These supernatural forces have always got to come straight for Earth. It's always Earth. probably for good reason now that I think about it. Regardless, to stop this unpleasantness from being unleashed upon us, the player must use their dice wisely to both defend themselves and attack waves of underlings and hosts of overlords that are coming to do them harm. There's a lot of dice manipulation, powers to find, abilities to use, and different underworld effects to tackle as you take your hero through the final showdown and seal the deal. Which also reminds me to mention that in Seventh Seal, neither your character in the game nor the supernatural enemy nor any of the furious beasts that you encounter are actual seals. It's It's actually could be a little bit disappointing if that's what you you were expecting, but doesn't matter because the game is still really fun despite despite the lack of actual seals.

15:05 And once again, I would like to conclude this episode by featuring a game that crossed my path while I was researching all the other games that we talked about this time. The real time party game from 2022, Telephono Decomp, which asks the question, can you there can you imagine combining great games together like Pictionary and Say It With Mime? Well, game no. I had never considered it, but sure, I'm willing to give it a try. After all, the game's marketing blurb promises players guaranteed laughs twice. Twice, actually. It states that twice, which I think changes the claim from an empty sales jargon phrase to an ironclad warranty, which is why Telephono decompto is a team game. That's not why, but it's just the fact is that Telephono decompto is a team game. And here's how it works. One player is secretly given a word and must draw it out. Meanwhile, another player may see that drawing and they act out that drawing without seeing the word. Then everybody else has to guess what's being acted out without seeing either the word or the drawing.

16:22 And they got to do it in 90 seconds or we throw your shoes out the window. Well, the actual rules don't actually include any shoe throwing that I I know of. Even so, it still sounds like a clever little amalgamation of familiar concepts with their own little twist. That yes, game, I agree, could quite possibly result in laughs. But would I go so far as to guarantee it? Game, that's where you and I differ because I just I just I don't know. I don't know if I could. But you know what? I could guarantee I could guarantee to you the viewer on oath that you can discover even more great tabletop treats by continuing on to our board game buyer guide video or our several cool recommendations based on hot games video series. You know what? While I'm at it, if there's a stat or category that you would like to see highlighted in a future High Rollers episode, well, you are welcome to let me know down in the comments for us to consider for next time. And until that next time, thanks for joining us. Take care.