The best Essen Spiel games I can vouch for!

Hey everybody. Today on Roto Runthrough, I am going to be counting down my top 25 most anticipated games for Essence Spiel 2025. And I'm very excited about these because for the first time in almost a decade, I'm going to be at Essen Spiel. And before we actually get to the countdown, in case you're going to be at Essence Spiel and want to swing by and say hi, I am going to be very easy to find, as will my wife, Jen.

Let me uh bring up the little map I made special. Okay. Every day from 3 to 3:30 p.m., that's 15 to 15:30, Jen and I are going to be in Hall 8, the same place that the daily math trade and um uh no ship auction things are being dealt with. So, there's going to be a huge crowd of people there every day around 3:00.

And we're going to be there over on the west side of the hall between the two hall 7 entrances, uh just hanging out, saying hi, and selling some of my wife Jen's gamer glass. uh this will be a rare opportunity to pick some of it up. And if you are one of the lucky people who can be there and can buy from her and you're one of the first 12 every day, I should have grabbed this beforehand.

Yeah, the first 12 buyers every day will be able to get this exclusive Roto Runs through Everddell card. It actually said Roto Runs. It's the uh messenger from one of the expansions, but the art has been changed to match my logo. And uh yeah, we've got a bunch of these and you'll be able to get them if you uh can find us every day, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday from 3 to 3:30 p.m.

in Hall 8. Let me put that map back up on screen one more time so you can emlazen it in your brain and okay, enough of that. So, man, there are a lot of games coming out at Spiel this year, as there are every year. And so, let me give a quick thanks to Eric Martin, the head news guy of Board GameGeeek, for um constantly keeping the Essence Spiel preview up to date.

I have gone through there and of the I mean, there's oversh I forget how many the, you know, well over a thousand games that are there. Is it 2,000? 65 of those games I have already played. And what I'm doing in this countdown today is I'm limiting myself just to the games I've played. I've already done a separate video and put it up on the channel.

Uh it includes my top 10 anticipated games that I have not played yet that I've just got high hopes for. And uh so it's a little speculative and actually uh there's a link for it down in the show notes. There's also a link for that map if you want to double check it again. Uh and a links for everything I'm talking about today down in the show notes.

Uh if you want to go check out that other top 10, it's actually more like it's over top 20 because I tell you my top 10 most anticipated, but Ruel, Chris, and Ray, uh my contributors on the RNR show are also going to talk about over 10 of their most anticipated games as well, but the theme of that video is we haven't played any of them.

The theme of this video is I've put all of them on my table. I know what they feel like and I'm going to count them down from my least favorite to my most favorite. Um, but even still, uh, I there are 65 games I could talk about that fall under this, and I'm only going to talk about 25 today. So, there's a few things I'm keeping off.

First of all, I'm only talking about games that are really making their debut now at SN205. Some of the games on the list, I mean, they came out years ago, some of them almost over a decade ago, and, you know, they're getting like uh fancy deluxe things. So, I'm really trying to focus on just the new stuff.

Um, and even still, that means there are 50 games that I could tell you about, and I'm only going to tell you about 25. So, here's the deal, folks. Let me see if this works. I made a little list of the other 25 new games of Essen Spiel that um I've played. I'm just going to flash them on screen right now and let's see.

I'll read them off to you in case you're listening because if you go to patreon.com/roto, you could listen to this as a podcast um for free instead of, you know, watching it on YouTube. But anyway, let me go on ahead and pull that list up. The 25. So, this is really numbers 50 to um 26. Uh in alphabetical order, not in countdown order.

They are uh Aquaria, AR, Critter Kitchen, Citrus, Echoes of Time, Fya Swamp, Firefighters on Duty, Fortunes of Scoundrel Bay, Garden Lake, Grand Central Sky Port, Great Evening Banquet, House of Fedo, Luier, Nature, um Norsewind, Oliver, Origin Story, Papyra, Pillars of Heracles, Point Galaxy, Propulolis, Rebirth, Reptile Tank, The By, and Tic Tac Trek.

Oh, I almost didn't make it. That was uh tough to do. Uh, but anyway, if you have any questions about any of those games, just let me know down in the comments and I'll tell you what I thought about them. Although, for almost all of those, I've got videos on the channel as well. So, anyway, um, so that's numbers 50 through 26.

Without any further ado, let's get uh to the the really good stuff. Not that those games weren't good, too. Let's the great stuff. Um, starting with let's see if I got this set up here. Number 25 on my list is um Antiques. And now this is one of a couple of new games coming uh this year from publisher uh Pythagoras.

Uh actually Oliver I mentioned uh you know in in that little list. That one seems to be getting more attention. I mean the Dice Tower raved about uh Oliva. Uh you know Tom Vassel gave it like an 8.5. That's a very high ranking for him. and I liked all of it, but for my money, Antiques is where it's at.

Um I I like this one. This is probably the second best game Pythagoras has ever put out after uh Cafe, which is, you know, one of their all-time greats. Now, this is a game where um we are drafting uh cool little wooden pieces that represent different pieces of art. Uh they're in a grid. You can see them there in the center of the screen.

And you pick an entire row and our entire column. Grab all of those pieces and you throw them into one of your three art warehouses. And the art warehouses are basically a little monala. If you put them in the leftmost uh warehouse, you get a really good bonus. If you put them in the middle warehouse, you get a a nice bonus.

If you put them in the rightmost warehouse, you don't get any bonus. And also, there's more storage in the leftmost and less storage in the rightmost. So anyway, you on your turn, you're usually going to grab a bunch of stuff and put them in one of the warehouses. Now, eventually once you've got the right combination of things to be able to put on a display, you know, in your own local gallery, you uh spend your turn instead of getting more art works of art from the auction block, you are going to grab a group of art and um move it out of the warehouse so that you can actually put them on display.

And that's what all those little cards in the top left are. And if you can get the right combination, you can grab multiple cards and have multiple collections on display. Here's the trick, though. If you want to grab stuff out of your leftmost warehouse, like I said, it's a Monala. One of the pieces has to get dropped into the middle warehouse.

One of the pieces gets dropped into the rightmost warehouse. So, if you've got eight pieces there, you're only going to bring six out. And the other two, you're going to be putting in the other warehouses. And that's where the puzzle comes in. This is a very cool new take on Monalas. I haven't quite seen them done like this in any other game.

Um, but you know, the idea of drafting to fill your Monala and your different Monala buckets have different bonuses associated with them. But then when you want to pull stuff out of the Monala, of course, you've got to do the Monala thing and, you know, drip feed stuff off and set yourself up for later combos.

But anyway, that's still only two-thirds of the game because you're trying to get all these collections. You can see I've got a bunch of collections over there on the far left side. The third thing you can choose to do on your turn is convert those collections into um um exhibitions you will put on in cities around the world.

And you're trying to combine the right collections to match those cities because that's where the big points are putting your art on display in Rome or um Cyprus or London or wherever it might be. And so there are basically three um parallel sets of set collection going on in this game. grabbing the original art pieces in a very cool um you know entwined drafting.

Then manipulating a Monala to turn those pieces into collections and then um combining those collections to match the sets of the different um worldwide exhibitions you can do. And then on top of all of that um you know each player has their own special secret objectives they're trying to do and you can collect more of those throughout the games.

That's one of the special powers. There are public objectives we're racing to be the best at. There's so much going on this game. The rules are very simple, but it is crunchy and a lot of fun and I like it quite a bit. And you know, again, all of it was nice, but Antiques is where it's at and it is my number 25 on the list.

Antiques. Now, let's move on to number 24. Uh, Phil Harmonics. This is a game I covered when I was crowdfunding a couple of years ago and it's finally going to be available. This is a game where we are trying to manage space symphonies um that have to jet around the galaxy to put on performances in planets all over the place.

As I said in my original runrough, it reminds me a lot of um you know the opera singer from the old movie the not that old the fifth element. Remember that? It's like a whole game based on space opera um and you know space symphonies because you've got to recruit the right singers, the right um orchestra.

You've got to um you know try to get them into the right place at the right time to put on performances in the galaxies where what they can do is really in demand. And it's all done through a very very clever worker placement. That's what's over on the right side of the board. the different worker placement spots that let you do things like recruit people um or compose new pieces of music or put on performances and all that kind of stuff.

Here's the trick, though. At the beginning of every round, the um the cost and value and strength of all the different worker placement spaces on the far right side of the board are going to get randomly shuffled up. So, sometimes it's a really good time to put on a performance. Um but that's not when you're ready to put on the performance, of course.

Other times, uh, it's going to be, oh, you know, I mean, now I could put on multiple performances this round, but can I get to the right place because it's going to be harder to move my symphony to get them all in the spaceship and jet around the galaxy? This is really what makes the game extra special.

I mean, there's a lot going on. It's a very rich, crunchy, you know, heavier end worker placement game, but the fact that the worker placement um sphere is constantly changing from round to round and um you've got to be ready to um zigg when you thought you were going to zag and stay one step ahead of it.

Very, very cool game with a really cool theme. Number 24 is Phil Harmonics. Then we go on to number 23 on the list. It is the Voinich puzzle. Um, now this is another game from one of my favorite designers of all time, Danny Garcia. Uh, and this one is a very, very cool thing where we are researchers trying to literally um, decipher the mysteries of the real world Voinich manuscript.

If you've never heard of it, well, go watch my run through. Links again for everything I'm talking about are down in the show notes. All my runthroughs, you can see these in more detail. But this manuscript has confounded scholars for centuries trying to get to the bottom of it. And that's what we're trying to do in this game.

Um, and what everybody has to makes choose what they're going to do every round is their own little book, which is a subsection of the Voinich manuscript. And every turn, you're going to have to change to a new page and then pick um of from the four different actions on the page you've turned to what action you're going to do.

And the more you do a given type of action on a given page, the more it levels up. but you're also leveling up other stuff. The trick is you always have to move to a new page every round. So string together multiple turns is a big part of the overall strategy knowing, okay, I want to do this again because it's been leveled up, but I got to go do something else first before I can come back to this page.

So that's a big part of the gameplay. But then on top of that, because the original Voinage manuscript has sections devoted to botney and astronomy and writings and the science of bathing actually um all those things are replicated in different little mini games. When you switch to the astronomy page of your own voish manuscript, you are you know however much you've leveled up, you're going to be working on that section of the board.

And each one of these different sections are b they're all basically kind of different takes on progress tracks. Some of them you kind of leaprog over the players. Some of them you um you know try to get majorities in different areas. They all work in unique ways and they all combo with other sections.

Usually when you're working on one section, you're majoring in that, but then you're also kind of upgrading other sections that are connected in the same way that it is hypothesized that the different sections of the Voinich manuscript are interconnected in ways that people still have not been able to figure out to this uh day.

It's a really cool game. It has a real old-fashioned feel um because it doesn't really give you unique player powers or um you know, unique objectives. It's just every time you play, you set up, there's a bunch of randomness. It kind of, you know, kind of gives me a vibe of a old school, you know, the game is going to evolve differently every time you play, but um, you know, always with the same core rules, kind of like how a power grid always surprises you in the new way that it expands and evolves.

Um, there's a lot to recommend here. The game looks really great. It's quite unlike anything else you've ever played. Uh, as is appropriate considering how weird and mysterious the Voinich manuscript is itself. That is number 23 on my list. the uh the Voinich puzzle. Then we have got number 22 on the list.

It is um Severton. Now this is exciting because it is a new cooperative game from Vlada Shabbat and we have not seen a new design from Vlada you know was one of the greatest designers of all time in like I think almost a decade. He's really been, you know, revisiting his greatest hits, just, you know, doing new code name stuff and really kind of, you know, doing a lot more development on other people's designs.

So, it's so great to see the man finally back and doing something he's never really done before, a pandemic uh style cooperative game where it's based on a very popular series of novels um uh you know called the I can't remember the name of them, the uh the Swift Arrow series, which unfortunately is only available in chess.

can't read it. I think you can read it in Hungarian as well. Um but uh it it you know it's inspired generations of of kids including Vlad when he grew up. He actually talked about this in a designer diary. So when they got to write to turn this collection of of modern classics um into a board game, he jumped right at the chance to do it.

Now like I said, it's a pandemic style um co-op game, which means players are moving around the board trying to, you know, deal with problems. And the problems here are a gang of older. We're a bunch of young kids. You know, think kind of Stranger Things, you know, kids on bikes having adventures. You know, there's no supernatural stuff necessarily here, but we are always running a foul of this older gang of bullies um who are moving from section to section.

And actually, it kind of gives me a vibe almost more of a Scooby-Doo thing where oh, you know, the gang, the five are out there. They're sneaking around trying to figure out what's going on, trying to stay hidden from the bad guys. Sometimes they split up. Sometimes they stick together because there's safety in numbers.

But that's what the real strategy of this game is. Um because if you move around together, we are stronger. If we run a foul of the bullies, well, maybe as a group we're strong enough to scare them off. Um but if we're sticking together and moving together, which means we get it becomes easier to move around because this is a multi-use card game.

You use your cards either to move from one section to another to interact with the world depending on where you're going and what objectives you got and what you run into um or uh explore and uncover hidden mysteries. Uh you know, most notably what are those bullies up to and what are their motivations.

So, every card has one of three uses and often one of the characters will desperately want to move from along a blue section um you know which represents I think going through alleys and they don't have a blue card um so they can't move where they need to go to be in the right place at the right time to complete an objective.

But if they're with somebody else who does have a blue card, the other player can move using their blue card and they can tag along using any card they want. So, like I said, that's a big part of the game, knowing when to stick together because it makes it easier for everybody to be in the right place at the right time.

But, um, the more we stick together, there's two problems. We're not getting stuff done as quick. We're going to be much more fast and efficient if we can split up and, you know, handle multiple things at once. Plus, the more we stick together, the more likely the bullies are to spot us and chase us down and um, you know, pursue and, you know, and maybe make us lose the game.

So, knowing when to split up, knowing when to move together, knowing when to coordinate, I mean, the coordination between players in this game goes so far above and beyond what you normally see in this style of co-op game. And um you'll have to check out my runthrough to see it in action. It's really clever, very evocative, very thematic, a lot of fun.

Um unfortunately, they don't do quite as much as I would have liked to um you know, scale it for two players. It works well, but you have to control multiple characters. And um you know, that's really my only complaint. Otherwise, it would have rated quite a bit higher. But I've just got to say it is so good seeing Vlad Shavado back in action with something completely new um that he has never done before and Jen and I both enjoyed quite a bit.

Number 22 on the list, Severton. Okay. Then we go on to um number 21. Is it Bohemians? I think it's Bohemians. Yes, it's Bohemians. So, this I was very excited about. Uh, this game probably uh has a stronger focus on storytelling of, you know, um, you know, evolving narrative than any other game I'm talking about today.

Not because the designers spend a lot of time writing up a lot of stories for you to explore, but because this um you know uh pattern matching deck building game where we are artists in um you know turn of the century Paris trying to live our lives, maybe spending time at work um trying to pursue our muses uh literally um there are muse cards who inspire you to create better art um but also trying to pay our bills, trying not to come down.

Actually, I should say one thing I should warn you. This sounds like it's a really family-friendly game, but there's some mature stuff. You can go to brothel. You can get syphilis. This game doesn't sugarcoat the life of a Bohemian artist at this time in history. Um, and the thing is, every round you're going to draw five cards from your deck.

You're going to play four of them from left to right, and those cards define what you're going to do in a given day. Are you going to work going to work? Are you going to, you know, skip work and, you know, go on a carriage ride in the countryside with your true love? Are you going to hang out at the tavern and talk with other artists and get inspiration that way?

Um, now those are thematically what you're doing. Um, mechanically, what you're doing is you're playing cards from left to right, trying to match symbols um on the cards, not only uh to to the cards that you play to the left and right of them, but also to the correct spots on the on your player board.

And also sometimes your cards will be actions you can do and other cards are muses that can come along and join you when you do those actions. So you are trying to lay out the right collection of cards to get the most inspiration matches you can. And you're also trying to coordinate them well with the special powers of your muses.

Um and if you can, you're trying to draw extra cards so you have more flexibility. Uh, sometimes you'll draw cards that start clogging up your deck cuz if you do not go to work, um, disasters befall you, like I said, like literally like syphilis or um, you know, uh, you you you you you starving because you haven't made enough food or debt collectors are coming from you.

And so you're trying to balance all these things. And the thing is after you've drawn your five cards and you've played four of them or more if you can build your deck smartly, um you've got a little story and the game actually encourages you to tell the story of what your day was. Not the entire day, but just pick one or two cards and how they combine.

And I found that to be so satisfying. You can see actually I did a solo runthrough of it for backers of my show. Did you know, folks, if you back the channel at patreon.com/roto, you can get exclusives like watching me play Bohemians. And I had so much fun playing the game, but also narrating the story of me falling in love slowly over time with one of my muses, but there was some jealousy between two of my muses, and I wasn't quite sure which way it was going to go.

And you know, the game, it really encourages you to tell stories of of of a bohemian lifestyle, you know, um, and it's wonderful for that. It also has phenomenal art. And, you know, really, it's it's kind of a shame that it doesn't shy away from those um, darker elements because otherwise, this could be a really great um, you know, it's a it's it's practically a gateway level game.

um you know in terms of complexity just trying to match the uh tokens um unlock more special powers over time and you'll build up your uh you know your inspiration so that you can eventually start getting your works of art seen by public and becoming more and more famous. Um you know I mean heck depending on you and yours it might work really great as a gateway style game and I'm I'm really it is a bit on the light side.

I would love to see an expansion that would make it even crunchier, but I cannot deny how incredibly charming and how incredibly fun number 21 is Bohemians. Okay, now let's move on to number 20, Under the Leaves, which was another exclusive video that Back to My Show got to see. Me and Jen playing uh this lovely little tile laying game.

Very simple rule set. On your turn, you're going to grab one of the tiles that's on offer. You know, rotate it around however you want. Flip it to mirror it and, you know, expand your own little forest forest full of bees, hummingbirds, and spirits of nature. And the thing is, you're trying, as you might imagine, to match um sets of colors uh because if you get enough of them, you'll start getting the bees and the hummingbirds to show up and the uh the what was it?

the the earth, the water, and the I forget what the red spirits were. Um, and over time, you're going to get more and more of them out there. And every time you grab a new tile, you are trying to um, you know, smartly expand all the different areas, but not only expand the areas to get the characters on the board, but also get the characters on the board in the correct places.

Because if you can fill up rows and columns of certain types of characters, that will make other characters show up and you can start getting these very cool combo chains of being able to get more characters on your board. And that's what it's all about because at the end of the game, this is not a high-scoring game.

And basically, you get points for whoever's got the most of this type and this type and this type. Um, now what makes it unique from game to game is the fact that the uh the earth, the water, and the uh forest spirits. Every time you play, you're going to draw another random card that means they're all going to score in unique ways.

So, you know, think uh you know that kind of tiny towns vibe, and it works really, really well here. This is a fun, very crunchy, puzzly little game from the design team behind Mandala if you ever played that. And and I would say this is a very, very good tile layer. They've done a really nice job. Um, you know, it's fun.

It's fast playing with a lot of replayability and really lovely bright colorful components. Uh, that is number 20 on the list, Under the Leaves. Then let's move on to number 19. Where are you? Oh, it is The Hanging Gardens. And here's another exclusive of uh that Jen and I filmed while we were um you know uh back home in Ireland because we're on the road now on the way to Essen.

This, if I recall correctly, is from the designers of last year's mega one of my top 10 of last year combo castle. So I was super excited to give it a go. This is a tile drafting and pyramid building because we're actually trying to make the the famous, you know, hanging gardens of Babylon. And we do that every round by putting one of our workers at the bottom of these three columns.

And the columns are full of different elements of the gardens. You know, um whether you're trying to get certain types of people or animals or decorations in different spots or um you know, different icons on the side of the cards that line up as you can you can start to see mine over there. I'm I'm lining them up appropriately.

But a lot of cards care about what am I underneath, what am I on top of, and whatnot. So, grabbing the right uh card to put in the right place to maximize their scoring potential. Like, if I recall correctly, lions want to be at the very very top of the pyramid or no, lions want to be at the bottom and peacocks want to be at the top.

You know, there's there's different rules like that for the way that the different things score. Um, but the trick is you can see there are very few worker placement spots at the bottom of the board. And if you're desperate to get something from the middle column because it's perfect for you, but you have to get something else first so you can put the foundation down to then put the stuff, you might find that you can't grab that tile because all the worker placement spots have been gobbled up very quick.

It is rare you see a game with such tight, tight, restrictive worker placement and that's what creates the um really challenging restrictions. Um, you know, and then on top of that, if you can't quite get what you want, you can get compass pieces that give you more control about being able to grab other stuff, including the really valuable stuff at the very very top.

Um, because not only do you have to set your worker up in the right the right column to get what you want, you have to be able to pay to skip the stuff at the lower levels to get to the things that are higher up. So, while you're trying to build and get the right stuff in the right place at the right time, you're also trying to maintain money so that you can grab pay to get the kind of cards you want to get or uh get those compasses that let you skip around.

Lots of fun stuff. A a really really sharp, fast playing little game. Um you know, Jen, I enjoyed it quite a bit. There's a lot of really good stuff, folks, that is going to be available this year at Essence Spiel, including number 19, The Hanging Gardens. Then we've got number 18 um which is Covenant.

This is the uh new hotness that's going to be coming out from Dvere. They've always got something and this one's extra special. So I think it's the first time uh super designer um uh Germaine Milan, sorry I have no idea, Germaine, how to pron I know I'm getting it wrong. I'm not pronouncing your name correctly because I heard I think um who was it?

The Cave uh channel. I heard them pronounce your name correctly. I or somebody pronounced your name correctly. I've been saying it wrong for years now, ever since you put out Bku and I apologize. But anyway, this is Germaine's or Jeron's latest. Um, and we are dwarves, and it's very Lord of the Rings inspired because this is basically the dwarves coming back and trying to rekindle the fires of industry in a cavern that they had to abandon long ago because it was overrun by monsters.

and they're trying to, you know, rebutify it and um, you know, get the, you know, stoke the fires of the forges and all that kind of stuff. Um, but dealing with the monsters cuz they're still lurking around. And as we dig and you'll uncover more of our old home, we also uncover monsters we have to deal with.

That's that's the theme. Um, the game play is worker placement. Each player has their own set of workers. And actually, I should say it's worker placement where you're going to your own board. That's my board over there on the right side of the screen. At the beginning of the game, you've got four worker placement spots.

One to dig, one to um build, one to Oh, shoot. I'm going to forget the four verbs. Oh, fight, one to fight, and one to craft. No, no, one to transport goods. Um because the main thing we're trying to do is dig up. You can see there in the center, that's the mine. And if we're playing a higher player count, I'm doing a solo run through right here, another exclusive for backers of the show.

Um, if you're playing at a higher player count, you flip the board over and it's a much bigger mine. All the red ones are still face down. The other ones are face up. If you're going to dig, you um, basically, first of all, depending on the strength of your action, you get a lot of resources you need for other stuff.

And then you flip one of those tiles face up and you get the benefit of whatever that tile was. And now there's more places that we can build. to build we have to spend those resource we have to transport the goods that we collected from digging to one of the build sites so that we can build arches or um towers um you know or buildings or what have you.

Uh so that's what the transport action is and that's a way to score points and you know trigger other bonuses. Then there's the actual building. Taking these columns and arches and buildings and forges and homes and putting them out on the board and trying to do kind of like area majority type stuff.

And then finally, the last thing is whenever we flip a new tile, bad guys are on there. And we don't have to deal with the bad guys, but if I build a token on a tile and there's bad guys on it, I'm going to lose a lot of points at the end of the game. So I got to clear all those bad guys out. And that's where the fighting comes in.

So those are the four actions we're doing. and we're doing them with our workers. And over time, our workers can get progressively p more powerful that we can level them up. They start out only doing level one actions, which is a level one of those four things. But you can ultimately get them up to doing level four, level five, level six.

So, they're doing super big powerful actions. But more importantly, I said we started with those four actions, right? One of the things we can do as a bonus side effect of a lot there's this game is comboastic crazy. One of the most common side bonus actions you get to do is forge new tools that give you additional worker placement spots on your own board.

And when you bu build those tools, you'll put them on your board, filling in the empty slots, which unlocks more bonuses that you get to combo chain things off of, but now you've got more places your workers can go to. And those tools not only can be built, they can be upgraded so that when you send your worker, not only do you do the core action, but you do more bonus actions.

Are you getting what I'm laying down here, folks? This game as it goes on, it just gets more and more and more comboastic. And um hey, no surprise. The guy who did last year Manfer and before that Sabria and you know years ago Boku and a few other games I'm forgetting here and there, all his games have been fantastic and this is another really good one.

I think this is the first time he's worked with Dvere and I'm pretty impressed with I have there's actually a thread on board game because there's one thing one of the things we can get is relics. I'm not quite sure how you can get all the relics. There's a little bit of vagory with the rules about that.

I'm still trying to figure that part out. Very frustrating. But so far, I have only played it solo. I'm looking forward to playing it with my wife. I've got it here in this caravan, but it's just hard finding the time to play all these things. But I can say as a solo game, it is very satisfying. It's got a very, very nice system um to compete against.

And uh overall, it's a sharp game. And I think fans of this designer are going to be very satisfied indeed. Um, and like I said, this is from Dve. Normally, D'Ve doesn't do stuff quite this heavy. This is quite a bit heavier than your red cathedrals or your white castle. So, know that going in. But if you're looking for a game with big crunch and huge combo chains, well, um, Covenant is my number 18.

Then we've got number 17. Another heavy crunchy game. It's Baghdad, the city of peace um from Alleycat Games. And one of the things I know the head honcho of Alleycat is actually personally from Baghdad. And so this game was very important to him um that you know he gets it right because this is you know the the golden age of Baghdad where you know it was it was the center of the world for learning and that's a big part of what this game is.

Well, actually this game we are, you know, rich patricians as we always are trying to um, you know, put everything we do in this game is not for personal glory, but for helping the, you know, creating the common good, building up places of learning, sponsoring students so they can push knowledge farther.

I love the storytelling and the theme of this game a lot, but I also love the gameplay. There's two really big things of it. First of all, the main board is kind of a monala where um your focus moves clockwise around the board giving you access to different things at different times and you know so that's one big part but another thing is grabbing these cards that represent the students um you know or the uh the the other important people merchants and whatnot of the time.

When you get those cards, you put them below your board. And over time, those cards are going to conveyor belt from left to right. As you know, we we build up a stronger and stronger deck of contacts and we get them in play. And we're trying to activate them while they're under my board or when they leave the board or when they first come on the board.

And the conveyor belt action in this game is fantastic. Combined with a really, really cool take on um did I say Monas? I meant Rondell's Rondell gameplay. This game is big. It's crunchy. Um it's and and it's and it has a really really wonderful story at the heart of it. I was a big big fan of it. Um I think this is probably the crunchiest game Alleycat has ever done.

I believe this is a beginning. You know, they've always usually done lighter stuff and midweight stuff, but this is their first of an ongoing series of big heavy crunchy games, and this is a great start, folks. I think a lot of people are going to love it. um you know um the heavy cardboard fans out there, this is going to be in their top 10 of the year.

It's number 17. It is Baghdad, the city of peace. Okay, then let's talk about number 16, Forestry. So, I am really, this is another game I'm a huge fan of because of the theme because it this is a game about running logging operations. Um, you know, which obviously deforestation is a real problem in the world, but this game is focusing on running um logging operations in an ecologically friendly way.

um focusing just as much on the reforestation as we do on the chopping down of and you know and transport of lumber. It's an action point game where every round if I recall correctly at the beginning of the game you're getting three action points but by the end of the game you might be getting five or six action points to spend and you have a laundry list of things.

Oh, it cost me this much to move my um digger from this zone to this zone or this much to move my office worker from this branch to this other branch to give me access to different special powers. So, every round it's going to be a puzzle of right, how do I use my three or four or five action points to get the most out of this.

Um, it's it's a sharp game. It plays smooth. While it is a big game with a lot of moving pieces, it's really elegant and easy to teach. I was really surprised. This is I'm going to have to call it a heavy game, but it doesn't feel as heavy as some of the other ones I've talked about today. Even though I mean I mean you just saw it briefly there on screen.

It can be a little overwhelming the first time you look at your player aid and see, look at all the actions I can do, and they cost one or two action points and all of that. Plus, there's all the free actions you can do as well. But again, everything's really thematically strong. And the theme is my favorite thing about this, telling a story of, you know, pushing, you know, human progress forward, but doing it in an ecologically sound way.

Another thing I really love is a lot of the projects we take on that we provide lumber for that requires different types of lumber um is telling stories about all the surprising ways that we actually use um wood in our real world. I mean more than just building you know scaffolding and um you know furniture and whatnot.

I mean you could actually um make a wooden satellite uh you know to launch into orbit or you know there's all kinds of of of fun stuff there too. A really really sharp game. My runthrough is up. Links down in the show notes if you want to see it in action. Um it's number 16. Uh what you call it? Uh forestry.

Nice. Nice stuff. Okay. Okay. And now we're moving on to number 15. Ada's Dream. This is another surprisingly heavy crunchy game from Alleycat Games. Like I said, they're kind of branching into new stuff this year and it's very exciting. Um, this is a game that basically posits what if Ada Love Lace, you know, the uh co-creator of the computer, the uh the world's first programmer.

Um, what if she hadn't died tragically young? What would she have gone on and accomplished with her life because she was such an amazing talent, such an incredible brain? Um well uh this game uh basically uh talks about how she goes on to make u you know calculation machines and all of that and we are her contemporaries and her understudies trying to push that same agenda.

Now I love the storytelling here but it's really the gameplay that what makes it stand out. This is a game with entire entwined dry drafting where what you want to do is every die you could grab its color matters, its number matters, and where it is on that little um that kind of clock face up in the center of the board that represents your laboratory.

You're going to grab one of those dice and whichever um die you grab to do actions later on, depending on its color and its number, whether it's traveling around England and giving speeches or working in the lab or um recruiting luminaries of the day, all kinds of actions, you're going to have to grab a die and then use it later on.

But the die you grab will also get you access to an immediate bonus depending on where it is on that rondelle. But here's the trick. If I want to grab that green three, I can't just grab it. I have to take a die from the previous depot on the rondelle, move it into that space, bump the green three out so I can get my hands on it cuz this kind of replicates the um you know the real way science works where oh you you come across a breakthrough when you're thinking about something completely different and that's just a fun little one of many ways that the theme of you know scientific invention and discovery comes through.

Um so this game's got a lot going on. every section of the board is its own little miniame. You know, it's one of those types of things. And then your own board, let's see, can I get to a spot where we kind of zoom in on my board is um where you're actually trying to make your calculation machines. Do I ever zoom in on those boards?

I must do it eventually. I have just scrolled. I guess I All right. All right. Well, anyway, you just have to see them over there to the side. Um we are over time getting uh tokens to put in our calculation machines um that actually become equations. We put like pluses and equals and minuses there because that's what the first C computers were.

They were um you know designed to do simple equations. So we actually have to make literal equation making machines as a byproduct of all the other actions we're doing. It is cool cool stuff. Thematically strong, you know, a striking presentation and um really fun gameplay mechanisms makes Ada's Dream uh one I think a lot of people are going to fall in love with.

Okay, I just had a whole bunch of crunchy ones right there back to back. But now, let's move on to number 14, which going to be a little different. It is horror on the Orient Express. And man, I've been excited about this ever since I played it with Jen in prototype form because I did not expect Jen was going to like this game at all.

We are on there's been a murder on the Orient Express or there's been a crime committed on the Orient Express and we are investigators moving around from train car to train car um investigating the crime, talking to the uh people on board, um using special powers, uh you know, all that kind of trying to solve the central mystery.

Um right, and that's what you would expect. But here's the deal, folks. The crime was not a murder. It was somebody on board opened a portal into the Nether Realms and now we're on a train that's barreling through um you know you know demonic hellscape and if we can't find out who did this and find out a way to get the train back to Earth, we're all going to die.

And so, wouldn't you know, while we're trying to do all of our Agatha Christie style um you know, investigations, we're also under assault from the um the uh you know, the the menaces of Cthulhuesque monsters and all the rest of it. It's super cool. Um such a really neat fusion of gameplay. Oh, and by the way, did I mention it's cooperative?

So, we're all working together trying to do this, trying not only to investigate the uh, you know, the, you know, and talk to all the people, just trying to keep them alive as they, you know, move from one car to another cuz they're running afraid from all the monsters. Um, you know, we can't stop the monsters.

All we can do is maybe trip them up a little bit so that the train can outrun them, but they always end up catching up. This game is so cool. And if you look at our player boards over the course of the game, we unlock more and more cool special powers. So, at the beginning, by the end of the game, we've got, you know, a half a, you know, almost a dozen different unique things that represent how our character has evolved over the course of the game.

It is really, really neat. Um, and honestly, the most surprising thing about it is Jen liked it, too. I thought I mean, she cannot handle Cthulhuesque, you know, grotesque monstery type business, but she really got um sucked into this just like I did. I think it's something really special, very, very unique.

Uh, and it's finally going to be available at the convention. Number 14 is um horror on the Orient Express. Watch for it, folks. It's super cool. Super cool. All righty, then. Let's move on to number 13. So many great games. Ants. Now, unfortunately, I have not gotten a chance to cover this, but I have gotten a chance to play it, and it's great.

It is the latest. Actually, there are two ant colony games that are coming out. We've had many can colony games over the years, but I think this might be the best one I have ever played because of conveyor belts, folks. I love conveyor belts. Here we are looking at our player boards. And over there on the left are the discs that represent the various ants who can either dig, scout, or I forget what the third thing was called, the third action, but there's basically three different core actions our ants are going to do as they spread around.

Um, oh, scavenge. scavenge as they spread around on the uh the backyard that we are trying to claim as our own. And unlike other games that have done this, even though players are running competing ant colonies, we are not at each other's throats at all. There is no direct player versus player stuff.

There are threats. There are big scary bugs and whatnot out there that are that we have to take down as we, you know, create pheromone trails to be able to get around and collect all the resources so we can bring them back to our ant colony so we can raise the next generation of grubs into ants who will continue to work stuff.

And that's where the conveyor belt comes in because at the end of every round, um, you know, if we've got enough of resources and we've invested enough, we're going to be able to, um, lay new eggs in one of the three types, um, or reprogram eggs. So, oh, I was going to have more diggers, but you know what?

I really want to move that over to a scavenger because I need more scavenging done right now. Or gathering, I think it was called, not scavenging, we called it scavenging, you know. So, you're constantly moving um you know the grubs and the eggs and the ants from one column to another, reprogramming what they do, but also just trying to get them born because at the end of the round um you know the eggs down at the bottom, they will slide up to become grubs and they've got to be fed or no, the the current grubs have to be fed before they can grow up to become ants.

And then the um the eggs that were just born slide up to become the grubs that we're going to have to feed by the end of the next round. And while we're doing all that, we're all also doing a polyomino tile laying game as we're digging out more chambers so we can get more rooms in our ant colony. Every room we build gives us new special powers, either instant ones or ongoing ones or in-game scoring ones.

And I mean, the game comes with a boatload of cards. This is one of those big, heavy, fat stacks of cards that you're only going to see a small percentage of them every time you play. And the combination of cards you get that represent the rooms you're building um are going to give you radically different ways you can go about, you know, trying to achieve success.

It is great. Like I said, I mean, it takes a lot to beat Murmurse, which was my former favorite ant colony game of all time. And Murmmes is going to be coming back, I think, next year. Fingers crossed. I can't wait to see it. But in the meantime, Ants is really special. I'm sorry I haven't done a run through, but what you're seeing on screen there is Paul Grogan of Gaming Rules doing a fantastic teach how to play and then play.

So, there's a link for his video down in the show notes. He does amazing job as always with number 13, Ants. Okay, then let's go on to number 12, Emberart. Okay, and this is a game I have covered on the channel. It's a very very sharp worker placement game where our job is going to an island populated by dragons but the dragons are under threat from poachers.

And so we are there doing worker placement to save the dragons from the threat. Um rehome them into new sanctuaries where they can never be bothered um helping them create life bonds with adventurers to give them special powers and whatnot. And we do all this through worker placement. It's very very cool because we have I mean at any given time we've got a big group of workers but we send them out in groups.

I might send out three um grunts and a scout. Four workers at once to be able to take the number four spot because the more workers we send out the quicker we get to do the actions and you know first come first serve. Um you know things get gobbled up really really quick. But if I send out a big group that means I don't have as much other stuff I get to do.

If I send out small groups, I'll get a lot more stuff done, but I'm not necessarily going to be able to get the stuff I really wanted. And that's the crux of how the worker placement works. Um, plus there's other stuff, too. The majority of workers you have are grunts. They can go to any spot, but once they've done it, they retire.

They leave. Um, you lose them. Whereas, if you can train them to become explorers and scouts and wardens, if I recall correctly, um, then they stick around from round. So, you don't lose them. But then they will only do certain actions. So you limit what you can do. And so you want those grunts to be able to go wherever you want, but you know you're going to lose them.

So um you know, employee turnover is a big part of your strategic thought process in this game as well. And if all that weren't enough, it's drop deadad gorgeous with art from Andrew Bosley. A ton of replayability with different objective cards that come out every time you play, different special powers you get from the adventurers who bond themselves to the dragons.

and um you know different ways whether you're going to the mountain to um you know um shepherd the dragons to a new safer spot or whether you're actually raiding the poachers camp to save ones that have already been captured and they have different way gameplay works for all these different motives.

The theme here is wonderful. The game presentation is stellar. The worker placement is super sharp. There is a lot to recommend for number 12 emberheart. Okay, then we go on to oh man so many great games folks. Number 11 is um oh what's it called? Mo uh movie tricks. Yes, movie tricks which is a trick taking game.

And just the fact it's a trick- taking game is saying something folks because Jen and I, we hate trick-T games. You know, I'm not indifferent. You're not going to take them or leave them. Actively hate them. And so it is very very rare to find a trick- taking game we actually enjoy, let alone enjoy enough to keep.

And Movie Tricks is a keeper for us. Now, I've not done a run through for it, but I did talk about this game in a recent Cave collaboration video, the best tricktaking games, where a whole bunch of channels, like 20 different channels got together to say what their favorite one is, and this was my favorite one.

So, I I go into detail about there, and do a little mini demo, which is what you're seeing on screen. There'll be a link for that down in the show notes. Suffice to say, you're trying to win tricks, you know, playing, you know, the high card in the lead suit, unless you can't play that, then you can play whatever you want.

if you can win with a trump suit, all the normal trick taking stuff you come to expect. But the thing that makes this different is once we win, whoever wins the trick gets first dibs on the cards that are the the cards played from the previous trick. So, if I play a card this round, I might not be caring about the trick I'm winning.

I'm just trying to get it available so I can win it in next rounds trick taking because we're doing a ton of set collection. These cards represent special effects and audio and scripts and all the different elements of movies. We're trying to build a tableau of cards. Um where if we make complete rows, we finish different um whatchamacallies that can score.

If we make complete columns, we are doing a lot of different skets collection where each different type of movie element is set collecting in different ways. It is clever. And the thing that makes me like it, where I hate most trick- taking games is you don't have to be good at trick taking. Uh, what you really need to be good at is at set collection and identifying what's important for you and knowing when you've got to try to win and knowing when, oh, I I I could take that or that.

You know what? I'm going to save my other cards or I'm going to set myself up for the next round and put a card into the future queue that I really care about. It's really sharp. And again, that's saying a lot because I do not like trick taking games, but neither does Jen. But we were both head over heels with number 11 on this countdown.

Movie tricks. Oh my goodness. And now folks, we're to the top 10. My 10 favorites. Although, man, there have been so many games already I fall in love with. But finally, people can get their hands on Popcorn, which I covered way back earlier. But there has been delay after delay after delay. So, finally, people are going to be able to get their hands on this bag building uh uh game, which is about us running a movie theater in the golden age of cinema, the 80s and 90s.

um you know before cinema was kind of destroyed by home um you know streaming and all of that and it is a glorious glorious ode to well you know something that brings out a lot of strong nostalgic feelings for me. I'll be honest, folks. This is a good game that is made great by its impeccable implementation of theme because we are trying to build up our theaters, make investments, trying to advertise to bring um more of the uh the right types of audience to the right types of movies, whether we're putting out comedies or action movies or dramas or award award-bait movies.

And at any given time, we can have three movies on the go. And we are also throughout the game building a bag of meeples that represent the different types of audience members who want to see these different types of movies we're showing. So I know what's in my bag. I know I've got a lot of action fans.

So hey, I'll book, you know, the equivalent of Rambo. Um, and I got to say all the the sly fun little references to real world movies are just chef's kiss brilliant. Go watch my run through and you can uh see for yourself just how wonderfully this game is put together. But anyway, every round after we make investments and put new movies out and and all, you know, and do all the business stuff, then we are going to draw from our bag a bunch of customers and hopefully get the right customers from our bag that match the movies we put in.

And sometimes they'll show up and sometimes they won't. And um you know, putting the right customers in the right seats in front of the right movies can trigger all kinds of bonus combos. And that's just like a fun little phew at the end of the round. Okay, we score. how well do we do based on who actually showed up to see the movie?

And then um you know those customers go away. They won't go back into the bag. So as it goes on, you have a better or better idea what's still in your bag. So you can target to get even better returns. Um the presentation is lovely. There's tons of replayability with all the, you know, objective cards that you know are available that you're going to get a unique one every time you play.

The order of theater upgrades and cards that come out. And then of course the unknowable. Um it's almost feels like kind of like a push your luck game as you're okay am I going to get the right stuff out? Am I going to keep this movie? I these action fans are going to show up. The movie's been in the theater too long.

It's really starting to you know I I should replace but these action fans are going to show up till I go for it. Okay, one more round before I replace it with, you know, the the the latest screw ball comedy or whatever it might be. It is fun. It is thematically sharp and again I I love it as much as anything else because it speaks to my own life experiences so much and just makes me think back to some of my favorite childhood memories of you know spending so much time in the cinema back when people used to go to the movies.

Remember that and have your popcorn? Well, that's what number 10 is all about and I love it. Popcorn. Okay, then we've got number nine. Shallow sea. And I think what did I write here? I said, "Finally, a crunchy game where we can relax." And yeah, that's what this is. This is a very simple entwined drafting game.

Um, you know, very much kind of in the vein of a what you call a Cascadia where you've got um colorful fish and um tiles that represent, you know, the uh the the coral seabed that you're trying to build out. You're you're trying to make the right environments, i.e. put um objective scoring tiles in different spots on your board and then you're also trying to grab the right fish to put in between these objective tiles to be able to score them.

So in that way it's kind of like a cross between Cascadia with the entwined drafting and calico where you put your the screws to yourself because okay I've laid these objective tiles out in this particular way and now I've got to find a way to make it work. um even if nothing is going my way because the stuff I can't get what I need and it's really really great.

It it it's very crunchy puzzle and yet it's just really breezy to play. Um you know it it's it's up there with the best of them up there with your Cascadias with your calos. If you like those types of games, trust me folks, you are going to fall in love with this one like we did. And not only is Shallow Sea going to be at the show, but its first expansion is going to be at the show as well.

And I'm very very excited about that. Although just the base game was good enough, it didn't need it. Man, what a sharp sharp game. Um, really best of class. Um, and no surprise, it's from a new publisher that has been putting out banger after banger. Um, you know, Life in Amazonia and Wondrous Creatures.

And this, man, I just cannot wait to see what they come up with next. Number nine on the list is Shallow Sea. Then we've got number eight, the latest game from Vladimir Sushi. Um, and for the last few years, Vladimir, you know, ever since he started up Delicious Games and put out um, Underwater Cities, he's been known for doing big crunchy games.

Year after year after year, he puts out a new one like Clockwork. This one, like I say here, he kind of is going back to his roots. Remember back when he used to make lighterweight games like um, like um, Last Will and whatnot. This is him making a much more simple, streamlined game where every round we're drafting cards and then laying them out in a grid to run um horse stables and fill them with either working horses or show sport horses.

Um and you know, hiring the right crew, getting the right equipment, um expanding our operations with more stables, trying to fulfill the objectives of our randomly drawn um uh manager, you know, the owner that we get to play as every round. And the interesting thing is there are two ways to play this.

By default, the way you're supposed to play is it is an ISL you choose game. Um Jen and I don't like split you choose. We have not played it that way. The alternative is every round um you know players are going to draft a bunch of cards that say um what they what cards they can draw from randomly instead of drawing from decks of cards that represent the different types of employees, the different investments you can make in your and then the different types of horses.

There are what um six different decks you could draw from. Um if you're playing the ice split you choose, it's always a set number of cards that are drawn. They become into a bundle and then it's one player's job to split them up and another player's job to pick first what they want. Classic I split you choose style.

Although one thing that's really smart is I split you choose can be a real pain because if you're the one having to do the um I split and you're playing for four players, you got to come up with four bundles. it can become an incredible analysis paralysis thing trying to figure out how to divi divide these all up.

Brilliant thing about this as um a game um at higher player counts here is um players pair off in pairs. So there's always just it's always like it's a two-player game. This round I'm doing I split you choose with you and next round I'm doing it with another player and whatnot. So that's really smart.

If you want to do eye split you choose this is the way to do it. But J and I didn't even do it because instead we can do a quick draft for cards that say that oh I can get a couple of working horses but no sport horses and two equipment cards and one card of my choice. Um and so I'm just going to draw a bunch of cards blind but then I can only but I but I can draw six cards but I can only play three of them or I can draw five cards and play four of them.

And um and that is an alternate way which is what I demoed uh doing the solo run through and it works great as is. absolutely loved it. Um, you know, it's got all that fun stuff of figuring out, right, I've got these cards. Where am I going to place them because they have, you know, um, requirements to be adjacent to other things or in the same rows or columns or, you know, I'm just getting them in this row because it fulfills another cards requirement so I can trigger that bonus objective that will, you know, um, get me, uh, you know, more resources I need to be able to buy cards in the future.

All that kind of stuff. This is a fun, compelling puzzle. It is strongly thematic and there's an interesting interplay between players too because hey, we're raising horses. One of the big things is we have to breed our horses. And one of the things you're heavily incentivized to do is not breed your horses just amongst your own stables.

But look across the table to see what horses, you know, if I've got a mayor uh who's ready to breed um and you've got a u uh what do you call it? Not a stud. No, yeah, stud, right? Stud token. Um I could breed my horses with yours. I get the fo, you get and we both get huge benefits and we pull ahead of other players.

Um, really sharp. Vladimiri never misses. Uh, and I just got to say it's so great to see him doing something more lightweight after years of big, heavy, crunchy stuff. Uh, Vladimir, give me more. Very, very sharp game will be at Essence Spiel. Look for it, folks. If you like the subject matter or you just like fun crunchy games and and also I should say if you like Iceplit you choose this is the one to get.

This is um uh you know really head and shoulders above most of them because it just does it so much smarter. Uh number eight is then we have got number seven on the list. What is it? Oh Kingdom Crossing. This folks I'm calling it. This is going to be one of those ones that like glides under the radar and everybody's saying, "Well, hey, what's the hidden gem of this show that nobody knows about?" It could be this one or this is going to be one of them.

Um, because this is a game that basically turns the classic seven bridges mathematics problem into a euro. Uh, every round I am going I've got um what is it? six cards and I'm going to play them in a specific order that says how I can move my little mele across bridges around this different this fantasy anthromorphized animal kingdom to go to different areas to grab cards that either let me collect resources which is the main thing we're trying to do or you know make deals with you know different characters and all kinds of stuff.

Um you know I might play choose a card that says hey I get to move across three bridges this round or I only get to move across one bridge. How many bridges you move across is important because you're going to play through multiple rounds. And once you've moved across a bridge, you put your little marker on it like uh Jen has right there to indicate that she cannot go across that bridge again.

Let's jump a little bit further ahead in this run through that Jen and I played again. Another exclusive for backers of the show. You get to see Jen sometimes play games with me, you know, play full through all of the games. So anyway, you are trying every single turn to map out right. I ultimately need to get over there and get that card.

I could just go get it right now. I could play this three-stepper and get over there right now. But one of the things you want to do, you want to cross as many bridges as possible because at the end of the round, you score more points if you cross more bridges. So, you need to puzzle this out because if I zip over to that really quick, I might cut off um you know, travel options that will really hurt me later and I can't get back to other islands and I'll have to stop short and not cross all the bridges I want to cross.

this turning this the famous seven bridges problem. You can go on Wikipedia and look it up into a really fun and compulsive fast playing Euro. Man, it's absolutely brilliant. And uh yeah, in a game I mean you've heard this list so far, folks. It's been nothing but heavy hitters, but this is one of the heaviest of heavy hitters.

And I I man, it's kind of hard to put into words just how satisfying it is. There's so much stuff going on. Um, you know, it's kind of an engine building thing because the more you collect these cards, you become stronger at certain types of actions. So, you want to do those particular actions. Um, you care about turn order because whoever goes first gets first access to the queen and every round a different queen power is going to come out, man.

Oh, and then on top of it, I I love the fact that they actually solve the un the unsolvable seven bridges problem. You can cross all seven bridges, but only because if you move to the correct spot, you can get on a hot air balloon and fly from one place to another. I love it. It's so clever. A little bit of math humor there.

Um, in number seven of this countdown, Kingdom Crossing. Okay, now let's talk about number six. Now, this one's not going to fly under the radar. This is going to sell out the first day and every day I bet from Dve. It is White Castle Duel. This is a two-player only, no solo mode, a two-player only version of White Castle, which uh is Deve's greatest game of all time.

is from the same designers, Ira uh and and or Isra and Sheila. Um you know, the married couple and it's still worker placement. It you you'd you you'd be forgiven if you looked at and said, "Wait, isn't this White Castle?" Um oh, but wait, where's the dice? This is not a dice worker placement game anymore.

Uh instead, it is a colored um worker, right? How would you say this? Right. You have workers that come in three colors. Uh orange, cream, and black. And on your turn, you're going to grab one of those workers from your own board shown here. Move it over to the board and stack it on top of an existing stack.

And here's the thing. If you're moving your orange, you cannot move it to a space where an orange worker is already on the top of a stack. So, the places you can send your workers is constantly shifting. Oh, I wanted to go there with my orange, but now I can't because you just went there with your orange.

Where am I going to send my orange instead or whatever? Or maybe I'll wait and you'll put a black on there and then I can put the orange on top afterwards or stuff like that. So, the worker placement puzzle is excellent and really positively interactive with players constantly making opportunities for each other or accidentally blocking each other or you building up opportunities for yourself.

It's really sharp. Plus, the worker placement is really great because wherever you go, you get to activate two things. The thing on the left and the thing on the right. But one of the actions you can do is you can reprogram. You can move the action tiles around to change what the actions are. Um, but then the other thing I didn't mention after, you know, so I take my orange and I put it on this black space over there.

I'm going to get to do those two actions there. But also, I look back at my main board and I get to activate all my black cards or Yeah, cuz I just covered a black space. And um so you can invest if you invest in a lot of black bonus income cards, then you want to seek I'm waiting for you to put your black worker on the board so that I can go over there with one of my orange or my cream so I can activate my big bonuses I get from doing all of that.

It is a super fun puzzle. Um, you know, again, it looks and has the vibes of White Castle, but it is a very different beast. Two-player only. Absolutely fantastic. I love that we're living in a renaissance now of two-player only games that are not battle line knockoffs, but instead are brilliant um Euroeconomic Sims that just would not work in any other player count and create something really special.

They've knocked it out of the park with one of my favorite worker placement games of all time. I'm not saying this beats it, but man, you know, um you know, this this is worthy. This is a worthy sequel to one of the greatest worker placement games of all time. It's um White Castle Duel at number six.

Oh my gosh, we're not done yet, folks. Number five is Sanctuary, an Arc Nova game. This is another example of taking a very, very popular, well-loved game and then streamlining it down, making an entirely new beast that stays true to the feel of the original, but really changes up the gameplay quite a bit.

This is basically Ark Nova if you stripped away everything except for the tile lang, but then really built up the tile lang. Uh, it's kind of like Arknova crossed with Suburbia, if you want to think of it that way. And it's awesome. It still has the same cool ArcNova action selection system of hey, when I do an action, say for my number three slot, it's a level three action, but then it slides over to become really weak and everything else slides um to replace it.

And so now my other action, so I want to do this action, but it's really weak. I need to do the other actions. Um so that the action I really want to do becomes strong. It's always been a brilliant system. It works really well here, even though it's simplified and streamlined down. And all the depth and breadth uh and richness of Arknova is still here, but it's all shrunken just onto the tiles.

There's no, oh, here's the way universities work and here's the way um oh, you know, um, you know, set, you know, creating the stuff and then moving the animals in. Everything is all about getting these big, beautiful looking tiles that are all inspired by real world stuff and trying to lay them out on your board.

so that they are properly aligned with everything else in this very very fast playing game while also trying to build up your animal sanctuary so that it achieves what is it five different objectives that were randomly chosen as fast as you can to score as many points as possible. Um and it's it's absolutely fantastic.

Um you know the uh the the action selection works the tile drafting and the tile laying. I love tile laying games. Um, you know, it's got nice comboy stuff because you've got all kinds of short-term and long-term objectives. The game looks great. And, um, yeah, I'm I'm not saying it replaces Arc Nova for me because it's it's really, like I said, like a White Castle Duel.

It's it's it's a very different in-game feeling thing that just, you know, it is an extension, you know, a spin-off of Arc Nova. But you're in rarified air if you make something that is worthy of Arc Nova. And this game definitely 100% is. Um, which is why it comes in at number five on the list. Sanctuary and Arc Nova game.

Okay, then let's go on to number four. Or uh the Prague Astronomical Clock I believe is its uh uh full title. And this is a new game from new publisher Perol Loco. Last year they really impressed with um oh I want to I can't remember the name of it now but it was in my top 10 of the year. Anyway, they really impressed last year with a game.

Folks, what was Paralo's really cool? Put it down in the comments. Help me out here. Oh, this is too many things to talk about. I'm losing my mind. But anyway, they're back with another really amazing game that is all about the restoration of the Prague astronomical clock known as the Oroy. This is a worker placement game and um it's entwined worker placement.

Instead of entwined drafting where you know, hey, these tiles are all together and I've got to grab these bundles. Instead, I'm going to send my worker out to the clock face. And I'm not showing it right here. I need to go some I need to go someplace where I actually rotate this clock face because it's so cool.

Um let's see. Can I find one? Oh, this is going to be hard to find. I Oh, wait. I think I just saw it. I think I just saw it move a little bit. Did it move? Are we going to move it? Come on. Oh, why didn't I cue this up? I thought I was gonna move it. Oh, wait. Okay, we just moved it. So, um, yeah. So, it's constantly moving around and wherever it's pointing, that's where you should send your worker.

And what it's pointing to is going to be a different combination of, uh, outer ring actions and inner ring actions. Um, but if you don't like the combination that's fallen in front of you this round to, you know, invest in sculptures or do painting or whatever that there's tons of different advance on different skill tracks so your artisans become better at doing stuff.

Um, you know, lay claim to the different fresco that we're trying to paint on the clock and all that stuff. If you don't like the combo that's in front of you after the clock rotated, well, you can pay to to break the clock or nudge the clock, I think they call it. So, you can push it further clockwise to get a different combo or you can pay to rotate the inner ring so that all the combos change.

It's super duper cool. Like I said, entwined worker placement selection and it is a blast. And if all that weren't enough, up, you can see up there at the top of the board, it's got um gears, you know, like uh Zulan the Mine Calendar or Windmill Valley where you know, those things are constantly changing and that's uh you know, modifying what's available to you.

And this is a big game. Tons of Phoenix New Horizon. That's what it was. Okay, you don't have to put it in the in the chat below. I finally remembered. Was there LA game from last year? Uh and this game is a great followup. very firmly cementing Peril Loco as a new publisher to watch uh with number four or the Prague Astronomical Clock.

All right, folks. It is getting dark out. I don't know if you can see um you know, the camera doesn't quite tell you, but you can see how choppy I'm getting. And Jen really wants dinner. So, there's only three more. Let's let's uh soldier on to number three, A Venture. And was I just saying how great it is to live in a time when two player only games don't have to be players punching each other in the face and trying to, you know, steal each other's mana or what or kill each other's creatures.

Oh, I love it. And this is another great game. Um, this is a very simple card tableau building game. You know, the whole, hey, discard some cards to be able to play other cards. And now I've got a bunch of cards in front of me, activate them, use their special powers to do a bunch of stuff. We've seen this in a million different ways in a million different games.

What makes this one stand out? Well, there's a few different things about it. Um, but I think the most important thing here, and you can watch this for yourself in my run through, links down in the show notes. Um, is once you put a new card out in play, you put these little coins on them, right? And, um, that tells you how many times that card will get to be used before is exhausted and goes into your score pile.

So, you want these cards out there. You want to use their special powers because they're really, really great. But you want to get them exhausted so they go into your score pile. But you have to be careful about what you put in your score pile because you're doing set collection of certain types of cards you want to go into your score pile.

That's really the overall flow of the game. But then what really mixes it up is a lot of the cards you put out there that have little coins that indicate when you do the action of that card. Um Oh, Jen's going to feed the dogs. They're starting to make a lot of noise. Don't worry, folks. If you hear any um hopping dogs in the background um or chomping and chewing, it's because um Gertrude is going cuckoo for kibble.

Anyway, um so you put these cards out. Hey, I put these cards out cuz I want to use this power. You know what? Anybody can use that power. And so if other players do um you know, or I should say if they do the action that that card references, then they end up taking the coin. So they've got more money that they can use on a future turn.

And I'm like, "No, those were coins I wanted to do those actions for." But here's the thing. They've they've taken something away from me, but they've helped me because that means that card is going to get scored that much faster. And so sometimes you're like, I don't want to do this action. I'm hoping you do the action.

Please, will you do this action? It's perfect for you because I just want to score this card because of the set collection thing. It's really sharp. And also, not for nothing, incredibly charming with its presentation. The art is absolutely adorable. This is going to be a real favorite. I think this is going to make top 10s of the year, folks.

It could very well make my number three a wild venture. We're almost done. Number two is Coming of Age. My second game on the list from design superstar Gany Garcia and my u my first game that I am very confident will be in my top 10 of the year. Um yeah. Yeah. I I can't see that not happening. This is a game.

It's a quality, you know, story of life game where I am playing a pre-teen, uh, you know, a 10-year-old to 8 years of a child's life going from 10 to 18. And if you look at the boards, you can see, oh, everything happens inside the brain of this kid. That is because um, we are helping them grow into the person that they are going to become.

And I love that story. um you know and there's lots of really interesting and psychological you know considerations that go into that. Uh most notably is the fact that this is a dice worker placement game where the dice say where they want to go because at the game every round I'm going to roll dice um that represent what my kid you know started at 10 maybe now he's 13 whatever as they grow older they get access to more and more stuff so they get more dice or better dice they get to roll and they roll the dieice that says oh I want to go to the movies I want to spend all my time this year hanging out at the movies or I want to spend all my time hanging out doing afterchool sports or I want to spend all my time you know at home I want to be a homebody that's what the die says they want to And that's fine.

That's what their heart tells them, right? Because they're trying to learn who they are. But here's the thing. I know better. I'm not their heart. I'm their head. And I know, you know what? You need to spend more time with your parents. You need to buckle down at school. You need to get more friends.

And so I might decide to override the dice that I rolled and say, "Oh, the dice want to go to these worker placement spots." But I say, "No, the dice is going to go to this other one. You're going to spend more time in school buckling down because that's going to get you the connections you need to be a better, more well-rounded, happier person.

But here's the problem. It's going to be frustration. You are going to, you know, my character that I'm playing that I don't have control over. I can only, you know, they become frustrated if I force them to go do something they don't want to do. And that becomes, you know, that that limits my options.

But then here's the most beautiful thing I love about this game more than anything else. If I can help my character, my child that I'm helping grow into a, you know, a healthy, responsible adult, if I can help them deal with their frustration, if I can help them learn from their frustration, then they become stronger than they ever would have been.

And it's an ode to good parenting. Um, although we don't play the parents, we are the kids. the although the parents uh have a strong element in this game and it's weird or it's beautiful actually how the story as a 10-year-old you know I always want to spend time with my parents they're super powerful they give me so much stuff but as I get older and older I find myself playing those parent cards a lot less because they're nowhere near as powerful as the other things I'm doing developing memories with my own friends this game is beautiful and the only thing that keeps it in the number two slot as opposed to the number one slot is they made one mistake the game is overflowing with objective ive tiles that determine, you know, who you're trying to grow into.

And all these tiles are based on real personalities like, you know, achievement focused or motivated or loyal or all kinds of things. And so it tell it could tell a really interesting story of the type of person I'm growing into. I thought I was going to be loyal, but instead I'm an extrovert or whatever, you know, and this is the kid I am.

But the thing is, they left all the text off the cards. And so they're trying to keep you at arms length from the story that the game is trying to tell. And it broke my heart. Rarely have I been more bummed out that um you know that they they they've neutered the theme. If they had kept it so that I'm feeling that story that oh I'm becoming more of an extrovert as opposed to oh I'm just fulfilling um requirements on a on a I go oh I just have to have these three tokens.

I have to have this track up. And you know what does that mean? Well, if I take the time to go look on page four, you know, 12 of the rule book, it says, "Oh, that means you're an extrovert." Like, "Oh, I guess that makes sense." But you just don't have time to do that. So, they hide the theme from you in what is the strongest thematic game of the year.

And I wish they hadn't done it. Again, I've said this before and I'm going to say it again. Board game industry, I understand it is important to your bottom line to have language independent games. I get it. Makes it a lot, you know, deals with logistics and all that. Kolka, a game from Poland, solved this problem a decade ago.

When you are figuring out, oh, these are the five languages we're going to ship with, and you're doing everything with icons and whatnot, uh, but you're making the five different language rule books, just put a little bit extra into your budget to also do in those five languages in addition to the rule books, five sticker sheets in the same language so that if a player wants to, they don't have to.

they can just use the icons on the cards or the tiles or whatever, but if they want to have that theme come through, they can take their French or their Japanese or their English or whatever languages you support and they could stick them on the cards. So then they have a truly and this is what Kolka did.

It was brilliant and to this day nobody's ever copied it. This is how you can have your cake and eat it too. Don't new to your theme. Don't do what happened to coming of age. I am only hoping somewhere down the line um you know some intrepid um you know super fan of this game comes up with printouts that we can then you know take down to a local copy shop so we can print them on sticker sheets and finish what this game should have done.

So it could be my game of the year. It could have been. It won't be because they neutered the theme. But the gameplay is still amazing and I love everything else about my number two anticipated that I've played coming of age. But now finally folks, what is the number one? Well, it would have been the number two.

Um but uh because of that um the developers of Recall got lucky. It is my most anticipated game. And now if this looks familiar, if you look it up and see who developed this, you might say, "Hey, this is Deja Vu. This is from the same publisher and group of designers that a couple of years ago gave us Revive, which is a still a huge favorite, a post-apocalypse world.

humanity coming out from frozen caves and trying to rebuild by exploring. And that had a very very cool action selection system where you played cards and slotted them in so that you did, you know, multiple actions, but then other people could copy the cards you did and a bunch of really cool stuff.

It was brilliant and I loved it a lot except that it could be a little cutthroat. Players could work really hard to achieve something and then I could zip right in and block you from doing what you want to do and do it yourself. And that was my only problem ever with revive. And so first of all I can say recall which is basically a spiritual sequel.

It's like basically I don't know 100 years after the events of revive something like that. Um recall um which is now we are trying to recall all the lost tribes that came before us. Um it gets rid of that players no longer mess with each other. If I'm trying to set up something you can come in but I can still do it too.

We don't block each other from doing stuff. I can create opportunities and you might want to piggyback off of them. Um, but I can still do my stuff and that instantly makes it better than revive for my taste. But there's a lot of other stuff, too. They've replaced the uh card system with a worker placement where we have these key workers.

Um, you can see a couple of them. Let me go on ahead and zoom in a little bit further in this video where I've got more of them. I've collected more of them. I think they showed up a little bit later where I mean, you grab one of these. They start out blank, but you can upgrade them. So, they've got powers on them.

And you we've got it 1 2 3 four five different actions we can choose from. And these actions are moving our people around the board, exploring and finding new stuff, building up in those areas, interacting with the uh the the the locations we've found in the world, creating new opportunities for scoring for everybody, um you know, opening treasure chests for lost relics.

Those are what all those actions are, right? But whichever action I'm going to do, I'm going to slot on my turn a key into one of them and also do the actions on the key as well. So, you've got this very, very, it starts out just doing those green actions, although those green actions can be upgraded as well.

As you score more points, you grab those green tiles from around the score track and you upgrade your scoring actions, which is awesome. But then, as you upgrade your keys, okay, I want to do this action, do I combine it with this key or these key? Which other combos? So, by the end of the game, you are constantly doing big, huge, super wonderful, satisfying combo chains of stuff as you explore a barren world and help rebuild it.

and um unlock access to more and more powers because everybody has their own special faction power they've got. Um as you level up on the progress tracks and you discover more of the ancients that we're trying to recall, we can learn their special tricks too and do their powers. And the thing is, one of the main elements you get are these skill tiles that you collect up in the top left of your corner.

Every turn you're always just going to do the green action plus the key action that you plugged in. But the more of these skill actions you can trigger three, four, five, six bonus free actions on your turn and just make super mega turns that you programmed yourself to perfection. It is so satisfying.

It is so much fun. People who fell in love with Revive are going to fall in love with this game. And some of them like me are going to say, "Do I still need Revive because I enjoy this one so much more?" Because I mean Revive was a very tactical game. Recall is a very strategic game and for me and Jen that makes it work so much better and that's why it comes in at my number one most anticipated game for Essence Peel.

Oh my goodness, I made it. But folks, I'm going to do you a solid. Oh my goodness. Remember how when I started this video a lifetime ago, I was actually lit up by the sun and now I'm only lit up by the bright yellow of this essence peel website. Oh my goodness. This just never ends. But I'm not done yet, folks, because after I'm done with this, I'm gonna probably spend another couple of hours filming my monthly Roto ramble, which is another exclusive video I do for backers of my show.

Um, where I'm going to talk probably about over a hundred games and expansions that are at the show. Man, I might do that tomorrow because I'm getting tired. But here's the deal. I already mentioned there's a bunch of like this list I just did, right? Um, was my top 25 that I played and there were there were um, you know, 60 I played, right?

Now, I mentioned 25 other ones. Here's the deal. I also talked about how I was only talking about new stuff. There are some amazing games that have come out either months or years ago that are going to be at the show. And I'm just going to do another I'm giving you another top 10, folks. A bonus top 10 because you made it this far and you stuck it out with me.

Um, but if you want to know more, head over to patreon.comrotto. For just two bucks, you can get hundreds of hours of my rambles, including me talking for probably hundreds of hours about hundreds of games at Essen Spiel because I've only just gotten started. But anyway, I'm going to tell you about my top 10 games that I have played that are at Ashen Spiel that are not new that have come out, you know, either they came out at Gen Con a few months ago or they came out earlier this year or it's a remake and they came out years ago.

But I'm just going to rapidfire it, folks, because all 10 of these games would have totally made it into the top 25 I just did. Some of them would have made it into the top 10 or the top five. One of them would have beaten my current number one as well. Um, you know, my my the number one of this is would be my number one of everything.

So, I'm just, you know, giving you a little bit more, but I'm just going to go through them really quick because I am hungry, Jen is hungry, and I am so tired. Um, right. So, let's just Nothing to it but to do it. Number 10 is ofrenda. Build an altar to celebrate your loved ones from a Mexican Day of the Dead.

A very, very clever. Grab cards and try to lay them out in your tableau, getting the right cards next to each other to score points. Beautiful, heartwarming, very abstract. Uh, for fans of Calico, uh, you might very much like this game. Number nine, Timbertown. Another twoplayeron uh economic game. Oops.

I need to tell that I'm okay with my privacy. Uh two-player economic game. Uh this one is a tile layer where the tiles are on a conveyor belt that represents a river and you've got to grab the tiles at the right moment. Uh you know, or they might get gobbled up by somebody else. I did a run through for this.

It's excellent. It's beautiful. Alleycat Games is having a banner year. And uh Timber uh Timbertown is one of the reasons. Okay. Um that was uh 98 is in route. A very very cool. You can't call it a roll and write. Uh you cannot call it a roll and write because um instead of rolling dice to see what we're going to draw, players actually go through this kind of democratic process of nominating and picking cards that represent what everybody gets to do in their own little role in right of um of uh you know trying to make the best city tour for your uh tourists.

It's really, really sharp, really unique, not quite anything like it. And also, as a bonus, you can get the regular end route, touring around regular real world cities, or there's a Cthulhu version instead where you're touring around trying not to get eaten by um, you know, shogs and stuff like that.

Okay. Then there is um, Knitting Circle. I mentioned earlier I mentioned Calico a few times in this video. This is the true sequel to Calico. It's got another little calico kitten on the thing. Um, this time we are um drafting tiles in a very very cool rondelle system. And as a bon and you know it's it's just as fun and puzzly as Calico ever was, but very very different drafting and um set collection gameplay.

And as a bonus, if you're a fan of Calico, I believe if you pick up Knitting Circle, it comes with a calico or somehow knitting circle can combine with Calico. I don't know how that works, but I'm going to find out. That's why it's on my other list. Uh then there's How to Save a World, a brilliant worker placement game um where we are scientists trying to save a planet that's going to get hit by a meteor.

There's three ways we can do it. We can blow up the meteor, we can deflect the meteor, or we can just get the the the flora and fauna to safety off the planet. And um there the one of those three solutions will work and the other two won't. And everybody's trying to pursue figuring out what is the best way to go.

Um really really clever. some very fun worker placement slashworker movement that makes How to Save a World lovely. Um, then there's the Peak team. Uh, when I covered this in a roundup a few months ago, I said this is literally there has never been a game that makes you cooperate more directly and smartly.

This is the most cooperative co-op game that has ever come out and I stand by it. This could be my number one game of the year. I love it so much. Oop, and I should put that off the screen because we're not do I'm not doing the countdown anymore. My only problem with it was, well, you can go back and listen to me in a roundup.

Oh, Jen's trying to shine a light on me. I guess I can shine this light on me because it's getting so dark. There we go. Hello. Um, anyway though, my only problem with it is the way they did difficulty scaling that kind of ruined it. You can go listen to a roundup I did a few months ago talking about it, but still, you owe it to yourself if you love pandemic style co-op games.

This is maybe the greatest one that has ever come out if you are willing to put up with some stuff, unfortunately. But I'll just leave it there. You can go listen to me in the roundup. Uh there'll be a link for that if you want to hear more. My roundup section talking about it down in the show notes like links for everything else.

Uh then we've got oh my goodness, The Hobbit there and back again. A wonderful I'm looking at my wife, she is smiling just thinking about it. A wonderful roll and write that tells all the chapters of The Hobbit from designer Riner Kenichia. Very fun dice drafting roll and write stuff. Eight different mini games to play that tell the story.

Charming, wonderful art, really solid gameplay. It shows why he is the doctor of design. Then we get down to Yokohama Duel. This is one of those games that came out years ago from Hashi Hiashi. A brilliant two-player only uh spin-off of Yokohama, which is another alltime great. And it's this one is coming back and it's got completely redone art.

Um because the game was never very pretty, but now it is. And you can go watch my run through to see the original because I'm running out of time. Number two, another two-player, although this one does have solo. This one actually came out last year, so I'm not sure why it's listed again. It's coming out this year.

It came out at last essence. Anyway, this is a one or two player game of farming in a post-apocalypse. Beautiful green. We live in harmony with nature type world um where you play cards. Uh the more you play cards of a particular type to activate that type of action, the stronger you get with that action.

Um, but it's got all kinds of really tough decisions of drafting the right cards to build up your engines in the most satisfying way. And uh, it kind of looks like a battleline game, but it's not. It's a brilliant engine builder for two players with gorgeous art. And the number one, the one that I said would be my game of the year, except it came out many, many years ago, is the new reimplementation of Manhattan Project Energy Empire with now has the Cold War expansion built in.

And the thing is, folks, I'm super excited about this because I covered it when it was crowdfunding. The new RI, it doesn't really change much other than, you know, a completely new art style that Jen and I loved. But when I finally got to play the Cold War expansion, I found that it didn't work very well for two players, and I was kind of bummed about it.

I made some suggestions. The developers have taken those suggestions on board, and now um the Cold War expansion is fixed for two-player gamers. So, I can't wait to try it. I've got nothing will stop me from getting a copy of this because Manhattan Project Energy Empire is another of the greatest worker placement games of all time.

It's maybe the greatest worker placement game of all time and it's even better now. And that's it, folks. We are done. Phew. Yeah, I can't do it. Tomorrow we're supposed to go play games with friends. Oh. Oh, it's hard to be me. Here's the world's smallest violin playing just for me, folks. But hopefully that gives you a few ideas about some really amazing stuff that's coming out at Essence Spiel.

And if you want more, remember um there's the uh RNR show. We did another 20 over 20 additional games. Um and if you want to go check out my ramble and support the show, I'm going to put a link on that somewhere as well or a placeholder link so you can uh go check that out. Um because I'll talk about over a hundred games.

Ah, but now I am going to take a breather for a little bit and reather my strength and hope to see some of you there. Folks, remember Hall 8 is where Jen and I are going to be every day from 3:00 to 3:30. And the first 12 people who um come and buy from her, you can't even see it now, uh, in the dark, can pick up this limited edition Everddale promo that you can't get anywhere else in the world.

And, um, >> every day. >> Every day, folks. All four days. Thanks for reminding me, honey pie. That's it. Uh, see you at the show. Um, thanks for watching. Talk to you later. So long. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bike.