Like Revenant? You may love these Board Game recommendations...

0:00 This episode is made possible in part by Game Topper's upcoming GameMat bazaar. Looking for a good game suggestion or perhaps to find one that you didn't know about yet? Then join us to recap the month's most popular board games along with some recommendations that have a similar vibe which you may also enjoy. I'm Chaz and me and my coowriter Matthew are going to combine the latest hot picks with some cool recommendations. And as always, we encourage you to let us know which games you would recommend as well as we start off with a hot new release that has been racking up the plays. The one to four player high octane sci-fi worker placement game Revenant, where captains work together to help their besieged fleet escape from the non-stop pursuit of the relentless void. I use the phrase players work together because ultimately everyone does have the same goal here, but that's about as far as it goes.

1:00 Players are also very much not working together. In fact, they'd be happy if the ships of the other captains all just blew up. And since it's space, it is debatable apparently whether or not ships blowing up would result in a giant fireball. I myself say yes. But Matthew disagreed and threw a slice of untoasted bread at me. Now, Revenant is a big box mind clash game, which means that this is going to be an expansive, involved, and deep Euro game. There is frankly a lot of different stuff that's going on. But in short, the void want to destroy you. You want to escape and the captains need to make that escape to a new sector of space by using helpful ship abilities. Constructing new ships, shoring up their defenses, attacking the void outright, and gathering all the various little resources that they're going to need in order to do it all. As ships are destroyed and new ones are built, action spaces that are available to everybody evolve with different abilities. And at the end of the game, the courageous captions gain points based on how far they have moved up multiple tracks, multiplied by the amount of ships that they have left. So yeah, I'm I'm already seeing an incentive here to not necessarily save everyone else's ships. And in many ways, the beauty of a game like Revenant is that they're really isn't anything quite like it, other than perhaps the TV show Battlestar Galactica. and of course the

2:30 board game that's based on the TV show and all of its expansions and its spin-offs. But other than that, there you go. There is nothing else, is there? Except maybe another game that may also be worth looking into if you want to experience that same race for survival. And our recommendation for that is something slightly lighter while still being a big game, slightly shorter while still being a big game, and with some of the same feel as Revenant, Tyanzia, which was published in 2025 from Board and Dice. Tyanzia is a big Euro style worker placement game that supports one to four players. And once again, those players are working together. This time defending the seven kingdoms of ancient China from the threat of invaders. And once again, again, while players do have a common goal, they're not really all that chummy about it. Now, there's also a lot of other similarities in Tyanzia.

3:30 Workers advance off various tracks, and just like how the void destroy worker placement spots in Revenant, the invaders in Tyanzia will also start destroying spaces. And once again, again, again, if those spaces just happen to be the ones that are controlled by your opponents, well, then maybe you don't actually want to work quite so hard to protect those spaces after all, do you? And you're actually kind of okay with them just being completely obliterated. I don't know. You do you. Either way, if you love Revenant or you're excited to try it out or you just want something that's similar because you can't find it or the guy who does own it that you know keeps throwing untoasted slices of bread at you when you enter his office. Well, then I highly recommend that you take a look at Tyanzia. Pronounce it correctly too if you want. Tyanzia, we feel went a little bit under the radar last year, but still I have what you're looking for.

4:28 It's no secret that I love a high quality board game component upgrade. But even if it was a secret, doesn't matter. Secrets out because this episode is made possible in part by a beneficial component upgrade for every single game. Wow. How did that happen? How did that happen? What's happening? What's happening? Mat upgrade being a high quality game mat to host your game upon. Especially when it's one of my favorite kinds of mats, these guys right here, which are about to take center stage in a special sale kicking off next week from Game Toppers. September 22nd through October 24th, over 40 different styles of mats, including new designs and returning favorites are going to become available in a variety of different sizes along with add-ons, storage solutions, and discount bundles.

5:26 And yeah, while a good old game topper mat is specially made to fit super snugly in their modular table toppers, these mats can also be used on any table as well. It's totally loud. I double checked.

5:40 Any table can host Game Topper's awesome 3.6 mm thick stain resistant mats with double stitched edges and highfidelity printing. We can follow the link in this video's description or scan the QR code to get notified when Game Toppers GameMat bizarre sale kicks off, which we will discover right after I find out what black arcane mysticism is indeed going on here. Here's another top trending title. This one being Honeypot. The ice stack you choose game for one to six delightfully deceitful secret agents who are also bears because theme. Now, Honeypot is a light set collection game, but the decisions that need to be made each round can be amusingly agonizing anyway as players compete to gather the spy supplies and intel that they'll need without getting stung. I mean, literally stung by bees. There are bees, swarms of disgruntled bees throughout the course of this game that you will have to contend with. And each round, our brave bears will organize and reveal cards, deciding whether to collect the revealed cards for an advantage or to discard them in order to dig for better options.

6:57 The result is a delicious game of setting traps for your opponents while not falling for the traps that are set for you. Do you put your best cards right on top of the stack? Or do you bury the best intel at the bottom? Or do you do neither of those things because you're too busy picking up bread off the floor? Each of the various types of cards scores in different ways. and obtaining the right combos while hoping to also push cards onto others is the way to score sweet sweet victory. Now, if Honeypot sticks with you, then a quote unquote recent classic that you may also want to get your paws on is Sushi Go. Now, Sushi Go is built on a very streamlined drafting system. And of course, Honeypot, we all know by this point, technically is not a drafting game, and we will never forgive it for that. But nevertheless, it does share some similarities to Sushi Go's drafting fundamentals.

7:53 Pair that with Honeypot's lovely artwork and the choice of which cards to keep and which to pass on each turn, and there may, just maybe, there might be more crossover between Honeypot and Sushi Go than First Meets the Eye. Sushi Go has a similar level of whimsy and is laser focused on card drafting. Players pick a card representing a Japanese culinary treat from their hand to keep and then pass their hand to the next player who in turn picks a card from it to keep and so on and so forth until everyone wins. Except there's actually only one winner now that I think about it which directly contradicts what I just said. Being mindful of what the other players are collecting is as crucial as what you decide to keep for yourself. Plus, the newer additions of the game, such as Sushi Go Party and Sushi Go Party Chef Special, both provide a bunch more cards and a bunch more variety and a bunch more replay-ability. And now that I think about it, yes, we have indeed called Sushi Go a modern classic for a reason, making this a game that the players of Honeypot may also like to take a bite out of. And something else that might be worth chewing on is a new upcoming project that I've been working on with several other keen content creators called Shelf Life. Now, if you enjoy our episodes of Lost in the Shuffle, well, then I think that you'll also like this.

9:18 It's still a ways away, but if you'd like to receive updates as progress progresses, then I have started a simple little mailing list that you can sign up for at shelflife.tv. And right now, the best way to support this project is to join that mailing list if you're interested. Just help us make some noise about it. And a game that's making some noise over on the digital gaming grounds of Board Game Arena right now is Zombicide Second Edition. Now, back in 2021, the second edition of this cult classic Zombicide was released, where a band of survivors must cooperate in order to survive as different varieties of zombies chase them down. Living to see another day requires collecting items and weapons while exploring the map to unlock special abilities. There's 25 different scenarios scattered across an infected city linked through a branching story line that I'm certain ends really well for everybody involved. Now, the game's second edition refineses and streamlines the rules in a whole bunch of different ways. It also introduces several completely new aspects such as a new dark zone feature, new plastic dashboards, or virtually plastic dashboards in the case of the version on board Game Marina and several new survivors to control. And as you stumble your way haphazardly through Zombicide, if you find yourself still hungering for more campaign-based dungeon crawlers

10:50 with wild abilities, tricky puzzles, slightly wacky characters, and heaps of powers, skills, and beer, well, then 2023's Tales from the Red Dragon in by Slugfest Games may just fit your bill. Now, the loaf lobbing Matthew has mentioned his affinity for Tales from the Red Dragon ends several times before in videos. And in his opinion, this is a game that doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. And I think that's important because in my opinion, games that Matthew feels don't get as much attention as they deserve don't get as much attention as they deserve. Because in this particular game, an unlikely band of up to four red dragon patrons put down their flags long enough to strap on their swords and delve their way through some dungeons for fame and the treasure of shared experiences with friends and perhaps just treasure. This is a multi-senario campaign which pits the would-be heroes against game-controlled enemies tailorade for each illustrated foldout game map. Yes, that's right, sir. Each scenario has its own map with new foes and new puzzles to solve incorporated right there into it.

12:03 And this means that the players will need to use both their brain meats as well as their brawn in order to survive. Much like in the aforementioned zombicide and also just like in the aforementioned zombicide, each scenario has specific objectives varying wildly from session to session. There are secrets to uncover and different ways for characters to level up while also exploring the game's strategic and thematic settings. Therefore, semicolon, if you not only enjoy Zombide, but also still yearn for something in the same vein, which doesn't take itself too seriously, well, then Tales from the Red Dragon Inn is a campaign that Matthew and I both recommend diving into to explore. And there's even more games out there waiting to be explored in our other recent videos, including our board game buyers guide and our high rollers series, which tracks primo performers in a variety of different categories each and every month. This month's High Rollers episode includes the game of vertically stacking drinkware that was all the rage in the 1990s. Is this game making a comeback? No, not really.

13:14 Probably not. Unlike No, it's unlikely. not is not even so we want to say thank you for joining us and take