Looking for new games? 16 New Releases & Restocks - Monthly Board Game Buyer's Guide

0:01 Each month, dozens of new board game releases and restocks reach store shelves. It can be overwhelming, which is why we've compiled our top picks, some games that are back with a new twist, and more. If you're looking for some new titles to try out, well, you've come to the right place because this is our board game buyer's guide. I'm Chazz, and I want to thank you for joining my co-writer Matthew and I to discuss some new games, starting with some honorable mentions. Like the first one that's been sliding on the game tables this month, and very mysteriously, I might add, Tuliko. Tuliko is a legendary firefox that lives in the depths of the far northern forests of Scandinavia. In the game, players race to be the first to place all their tokens by smartly matching and mismatching tiles in their forests. But the game tiles, those must be slid into and out of a central board, a board that also partially obscures them from view.

1:01 Various specialty tiles, like goals and auroras, bend the rules and grant special abilities, helping create each player's dream-like scenes. A game that is having a giant vowel movement is the one known as Vanity Plates, which yes, it has a name that took me about 20 minutes to decipher the very first time I saw it. But to be to be fair, the game's title does succinctly demonstrate its premise, which is also summed up by its tagline of if you can read the title, well, then you are already playing the game. So, congratulations, you're already winning. Now, Vanity Plates is a party game for three to eight players who receive owner and requirement cards, and then use those stipulations and characteristics to guide their creation of a personalized license plate, which the other players will then, hopefully, be able to guess, driving the team towards high gear and high scores. And also raising the bar on strange game names is Blorp, which is a tile placement game where players compete to build the biggest Blorps, of course. And they do this by combining colors and by matching sides of their tiles. Now, succeed and you will have created a bigger and bigger Blorp. And what is a Blorp, you ask? Well, we won't be taking questions at this time. But, we can confirm that only Blorps that have been enclosed will count towards scoring.

2:29 However, they can still be chained via trumpets, because that is exactly what one would expect uh to to to be a rule in this game. Look, you want to build big Blorps. I I really don't know what else to tell you other than Blorp's publisher has compared the game to the tile-laying classic Carcassonne, but then again, they they also were the ones who wrote the press release that has resulted in this description of the game that I've been trying trying to give you. So,

3:02 [sighs]

3:02 so well played, Blorp publisher. You uh you have won this round, I believe. But, even cuddlier than a big clump of Blorp is a litter of charming kittens, especially if those little cats are expertly trained and well armed, which brings us to the wonderful game Kittens of Mont Saint Michel, a cooperative adventure card game where, over the course of three chapters, kitty cat conquerors explore the town and castle of Mont Saint Michel in hopes of learning heroic virtues as they travel their path to becoming true warriors. Also, they're kittens, which is which is just cute. Also, also, uh note that the Kittens of Mont Saint Michel is a different game than the Cats of Mont Saint Michel, which yes, it is a real game by the same publisher. That one takes the players on a deeper and darker journey. Now, in the Cats of Mont Saint Michel, the feisty felines return and are back and they're stronger than ever, much like this selection of games that are going to be featured in our next segment, which is coming right up. We'll be right back.

4:18 Next up are several games that have returned with a new twist, such as Laylines, a magical reimagining or re-imaginicaling, which Matthew insisted on making sure that I said out loud. Laylines is an update of the 1987 Spiel des Jahres winning two to six player game about long-haul trucking off ush off ush another word that Matthew made sure I would have to say out loud. Regardless, the previous versions had roads and depots, which have now been transformed into Laylines and Fey Markets, where the race is on to collect and deliver mystical goods, then to fulfill contracts and eventually earn some gold.

5:03 And to be clear, the fairies in Laylines are not driving long-haul semi-trucks as much as I may want that to be the case. Instead, dice placement fuels decisions and special items and friendly familiars are available to boost each player's contract-fulfilling abilities. Now, throughout the game, new contracts become available to bid on, though gold is both money and points. So, bidding carefully is crucial as players travel the Laylines as quickly as they can. Now, also fairly fairy friendly is the new game Devious, which is based on 2019's fairy-filled Fickle. Now, this is an anti set collection card game where the goal is to build the strongest fairy alliance over five rounds in order to claim the fairy kingdom's crown. And to do so, players must collect a single fairy from each of the various tribes, ideally obtaining the highest ranked ones that are available. But, in doing so, be wary because collecting a second fairy of a given tribe negates your score, which we all know is the first law of fairy electrodynamics. But, even trickier is that ending up with more than two fairies of a familiar family plunges your score into the negative.

6:23 So, watch out for that cuz no one wants that to happen, especially not someone who is actively playing the game. Each fairy tribe has a unique power and can manipulate characters around the table. As a result, gaining the upper hand will be both chaotic and just a little bit devious. And if devious wasn't enough of a match for your mental matter, well, then another game where you must use your brain is one that is simply called The Brain. Now, this is a one-to-four player game of limited communication between the players, which I think would give you a distinct advantage when playing a single player. But, even so, the goal remains simple. Get rid of all the cards in your hand as well as all the cards in the draw deck.

7:09 Now, on their turn, players must select a card and then perform the corresponding action, which will hopefully make it easier for the next cards to be played and actions to be taken. But, as mentioned, players aren't allowed to communicate with each other while the game's being played. So, they'll have to clear all the cards with logic, deduction, counting, and a little bit of luck. Even the most in-sync game group will find that's going to probably take several tries to reach the end of this game successfully. And reaching the end of a perilous journey also awaits players in Escape from the Lost Temple. Now, you may be thinking to yourself that the best strategy would be just to not go into a lost temple in the first place, but no, that's crazy talk. No, because then how would one to 99 players ever meet Dr. Idaho Bones, the danger-loving and legally distinct adventuring archaeologist who joins them to locate and safeguard the lost treasures of an ancient temple, which you then must escape from because Dr. Bones is going to inevitably accidentally trigger a booby trap and seal you all inside the dest- death- the temple, not death trap, temple. It's just a temple that has been turned into a death trap. It's now up to everyone else to solve the temple's fiendish puzzles, secure the treasure, and escape. In this game, there are a

8:42 dozen different puzzles to solve through logic and deduction, plus a bunch of other games in this series are also available, just waiting to be discovered. If puzzle solving and tolerating puns are your ideas of a good time. And speaking of puns, some fan-tastic news is the re-release of Sensu, a game all about Japanese folding fans. Sensu is a one-to-five player hand management folding fan creating game where cards are collected to create sets of various values. But playing a card is not the end of the story here because players hope to retain specific cards from the ones that they played in order to create very specific fans, achieving color bonuses along the way. It's a race to be the first to complete three fans.

9:34 This new version of Sensu also includes an advanced not advanced, but advanced version. I swear, Matthew. This fancier version of the game adds in power tokens, power bonus markers, and new great fans. And if you're a great fan of the cardboard classic Catan, well, then Matthew, who wrote this portion of the script as well, thinks that you may enjoy Catan on the road, which actually is not the game that we're supposed to be talking about next, but Matthew declares that it is, quote, blooming ace. And he also says, quote, hello. Oh, Matthew also, he wrote a lot here.

10:19 He also mentions that the new Catan Zip, which brings us back to the game that I intended us to be talking about, is that Catan Zip is a new portable edition of Catan. Catan Zip, which is what we are supposed to be talking about, thank you, sir, replaces the peg boards in the aforementioned travel editions with colored markers. Additionally, the game's modular board is now a paper pad featuring 50 unique maps. So, on closer inspection, this new version of the game may actually be more different than we thought. We here be key there, because my thoughts actually aren't currently on this game. They are instead being consumed not only with new rules that I will be instituting during Matthew and I's next writers meeting, but also with this month's best bets, which we're going to dive right into next.

11:19 And now for this month's best bets. If you're in the market for a new hobby board game, well, then, at least in my opinion, any one of the following is worth looking into, such as another feline themed Cat in the Tower. This is a cooperative dexterity game with noticeably crooked pieces that that you're going to have to manipulate. In the game, players help the courageous cat Toto reach the top floor of the tower by well, first building it, and then hopefully placing other cats on the tower to help balance it. Along the way, action cards are played to add floors, add cats, propel Toto further and further up the tower, and in perhaps the most challenging action, pet all the cats on the tower by gently touching them one by one without knocking the whole thing down.

12:10 And there's more structures waiting to be built in the Pyrenees game, Pyradice. A two-player pyramid building duel where opponents compete to complete a pyramid using dice from a shared quarry. The quarry is made of three levels of stacked dice. And as players draft those dice, they not only reveal new dice for their opponent to draft, but also build up their personal pyramid, gaining bonuses along the way. There's a bunch of different scoring objectives and opportunities to adjust any imperfect placements along the way, all in a competition to build your pyramid to the top while also reaching a monumental top score in the process.

12:56 Now, construction continues in Flip Pic Towers, which bills itself as a flip and draw game with a goal of building a charming castle that meets the fussy demands of the nobles who wish to inhabit them. These nobles have learned the important lesson that being fussy will get you a palace, but still they have not realized how much of their food has been spit upon. There is a huge number of scoring objectives in this game to go for. There are banners, there are flags, there are bridges and gold and beanstalks, as well as the oblivious nobles who want to be housed in just the right places. A plus, there are fantastical creatures available, which provide bonuses and can halt your opponents from making their most magnificent magical mansion masterpiece.

13:44 Then, from a tower full of nobles to a city full of angels, now we dive into the perpetually dark underbelly of LA 1, a story-driven cooperative cyberpunk noir detective game. From stakeouts to interrogations, the detectives at Mason Doyle Agency, they don't mind getting their hands a little dirty to solve crime in the post-apocalyptic city that was once LA. Moving from location to location, from the beautiful LA Heights to its dark alleyways, each case can be played individually or as part of a larger campaign. They can even be played more than once, but either way, every case that players are presented with must be solved before darkness closes in as the investigators scour the streets for evidence and interrogate fussy nobles about all the important clues that they can recall. And coincidentally, I recall that the game Recall is our penultimate pick, because this is a deep strategy game from the designers of 2022's massively popular network building game Revive. Now, Recall focuses on engine building and exploration as various tribes explore the lands and discover traces of ancient civilizations. Along the way, keycards and abilities are used to populate the lands, move followers, explore new regions, and build structures. Then, at

15:16 three different points during the game, players must choose one of two paths, with the chosen path providing an immediate bonus as well as boosting one of the end-game scoring options. And just like those players, we have reached our end game with this month's bestest bet, which is the super puzzly two-player maze deduction game Layers. Now, I know that we talked about Layers in another recent video, but it also found its way onto this one as well, and for good reason. Layers is full of both dungeon building and simultaneous dungeon exploration. In it, players begin with a set of walls, traps, treasures, and monsters, which they then must use to create the most challenging catacomb that they can for their opponent to explore, while at the same time, they attempt to navigate the devious dungeon that their opponent has created. It's a game that tests players to build a dungeon dangerous enough to confuse their competitor, while deftly defying a dungeon of their own. And if you'd like to find even more great games to discover, well, then continue on to our latest episodes of our High Rollers or Hot Picks and Cool Recommendations videos. There are a lots more games that are ready for you to enjoy as your next game night pick. Until then, thanks for joining us, and take care.