Top 100 Board Games of All Time: 80 - 71

welcome to allies or enemies i'm jess and i am sean this is part three of our favorite board games of all time and today we are counting down from 80 to 71. and picking our top 100 games i feel like was was really really hard and even now there's a few that i've got a sense that i i may have left out so i'm kind of making a note of those and and maybe afterwards we can see was there any any glaring errors or that i kind of look back on and think that should have made the cut yeah definitely there's been some on your list that i was like what no like how did i forget that so i think we will likely have an honorable mention or like a more like an oops we miss these uh but for now let's get into the 80s and i am kicking off this one so let's get it rolling with my number 80.

my number 80 is survive escape from atlantis and this is i'm pretty sure the oldest game on our list i'm shocked that this came out in 1982 because man does it hold up this is just like a super easy to teach but super mean game that you can play with your family where you all start on atlantis it's slowly sinking turn by turn and you gotta get off of atlantis onto one of the safe islands on either side but the water in between is filled with sharks and whales and sea monsters and they all want to crush your boat and eat you and the other players are trying to make that happen and it's just super fun chaos yeah and because you can share boats and things like that there are some times when you like self-sabotage um and the tricky bit is each of your meeples have a point value that's on the bottom but you can only look at it right at the start so very quickly you have no idea really which one of your your meeples are kind of worth more yeah you lose that very fast and then you like drive a boat into a sea monster to get rid of the other meeples and then realize it was a six i just i really like the role that you can look at their bums only once and then at the end it's just a big crazy surprise but really a great game that stands the test of time and that is my number 80.

my number 80 is tiny epic galaxies and what i like best about it is it's super small box as we've got more and more of a game collection we've got less and less space for them so i've really come to appreciate games that don't take up a lot of room and of the series i have been back and forwards as to which one is my favorite one but currently i think it is this one this one is the one we've had the longest it's the one that i've i've played the most and i still i find it super replayable it comes with this big deck of planet cards that come out so every game does feel a little bit different yeah and i i really like the uh the follow me i think this is probably my favorite two and it's gone i like dinosaurs like dungeons but i think this one has has kind of stayed there at the top of the list and i really like um the follow mechanic of whoever's turn it is rolls the dice but everyone else can do that thing if they spend this one resource and i just i like games where you're involved on everyone's turn yeah and this one definitely fits that bill and that is my number 80.

my number 79 is istanbul and istanbul is a really interesting kind of efficiency puzzle because you're moving around this market and you've got these assistants that you kind of leave behind you as you move but once you run out of assistance you got to go back to where they previously were so you get kind of caught in this back and forth and how you really win and what just does most times that we play this is you figure out kind of the circle that you need to do to be able to get the gems from one of the various gem markets because it's like as soon as you get six or seven gems or whatever it is you win the game so you really got to do that efficiency and i find that like it kind of if you can focus it works well which is a really interesting puzzle but a real challenge for me because i always want to do a little bit of everything it is really neat with dropping off the assistance because sometimes you can kind of go back and forwards between even just a couple spaces before continuing on your loop so um because each of the pieces are almost modular they all come out in a different order every game uh it really means that you each game is so different for what routes you want to take yeah the market totally changes every game and i highly recommend the big box because i think the game really shines once you throw all of the expansions into it and you've got the full i think it's five by five sized market which does change up some of those roots as well but that is my number 79.

my number 79 is brass birmingham and one of the things that i find interesting about this game is any time that you get resources it really goes on the central board and becomes available for all players to use so the premise is it's industrial revolution england and you are building out kind of first thick of the canal era and then the railway network and you're doing these these iron plants and these cool factories and these breweries but all of those things go go out on the board and either player can use it so sometimes you want to really make sure that you can use yours and other times you're kind of hoping the other player uses your stuff to be able to kind of flip your tiles which is an interesting mechanic yeah it is it's a really um it is a really interesting game but i always think i don't like it there's just something about this game that i have it in my head that like i don't think i like that that much and then every time just talks me into it and i really like it so i'm really trying to remember that that it honestly is an excellent game that i like way more than i think i do um it works great for two you kind of just use the bottom half of the board so i'm interested to try with more players at some point as well and that is my number 79 my number 78 is it's a wonderful world and it's a wonderful world is kind of a card tableau resource management game uh but a fairly tricky one because you've only got like four rounds i think is the whole game and you really think four rounds is gonna be done so fast especially in the first round but by the time you get to that fourth round you're making so many things and trying to combo those onto so many different cards and build up this big crazy system that you're like amazed by how many cards you managed to get out and how many points you managed to score and i really like the theme the like the dystopian um bankers versus warlord's theme is just for some reason that really resonates with me yeah and it has that amazing look by taking on that theme to it and i just also love the the drafting can kind of break your brain a little bit sometimes too because you have to pick which cards you're drafting to be able to build those and which ones you're you're drafting for the cubes and which ones you want to kind of hate draft a little bit as well so lots of kind of interplay with those decisions yeah it really is great and and the expansions have added a little bit to it as well um i think it's it's gotten a bit better especially with the one i don't remember what they're called but the one that's in the purple and yellow box adds some really interesting new cards but that is my 78 my number 78 is role player and what i like about role player is it's really a dice manipulation puzzle your goal is to build the kind of stats of a dnd character so you need to try and have each of the attributes and different different things add up to just the right numbers it's impossible basically to get them all but there's something that's super satisfying about every time you kind of place a dice that lets you do an action and you're kind of getting closer and closer to that perfect number that i i really enjoy about it i'm surprised by how much i like this game because i not like i haven't played much d at all not generally into dice but this game does work for me for some reason and it it actually gets a lot better once you add the monsters and minions because it's nice having like you build this guy but it's nice to be able to actually go fight something with it yeah having that extra element where it's not just the lead up of the character stats is an excellent addition so if you like role player definitely recommend the expansion too and that is my number uh 78 my number 77 is down force and this is one of my kind of go-to party games if you got a group of like four or five people this is so good and so fun and it's just it's a racing slash betting game where every time you've got a couple of cars one or two cars that are yours but every time you you play a card it moves a whole bunch of cars and usually well you'd like it to be one or two of yours but there's a good chance it's three or four of the other cars other people have so you're trying to move them as inefficiently as possible while moving yours as efficiently as possible or sometimes you're actually trying to help them win because you've bet on them to win because they got in the lead earlier so it's this really interesting kind of mix of you want to win but you also get plenty of points from just betting on the winner so you're again you're always involved i love games where you're always involved and this is another one that the expansions have added a lot to it just because it is a race track and so the expansions are different types of race tracks and so one of them has like live animals that go on the track so make it harder to navigate another one has has jumps where you're jumping over like shark infested waters um so having that variability is is great as well yeah i got a lot of shark games on my list this time uh and this is my second one and really just a terrific racing game and that is my 77.

my number 77 is nitivelir and this is one that we started playing on board game arena and then i'm almost immediately purchased uh it's a really fun drafting game you're drafting these the different types of dwarves and the different colored dwarfs kind of combo in different ways to give you your points so that trying to figure out what what combination you want given the selection can be quite a challenge but the physical version is great because the production value is amazing there's like this coin to display case that's like not even needed um and all of that makes it fun to bring out and play yeah it is it's it's really interesting because you you're just drafting from at least with two players from three cards um each section of each round you do three of these each round and then you add those to your tableau but you can kind of combo because if you get one of each kind of dwarf you get like a super character that you add that gives you different things and sometimes you can like combo on those combos so it's really interesting you want to like diversify but also specialize at the same time and those special ones uh add a nice variety of trying to make the right combinations work uh and so that is my number 77.

my number 76 is rolling realms and what i love about rolling realms is just how variable it is because in rolling realms you've got a whole bunch of different cards there's like 11 or 12 cards in the base game and then they've added a bunch of different ones as well and each one of those cards represents a different realm or generally they're kind of based on different stone meyer properties but these different realms all work differently and they all combo differently in each round you're using three of them so you got three totally different things that all combo in totally different ways for like 24 317 different combinations that math is definitely wrong but it always plays so differently and that's so cool and i also really like that you just write right on the cards which is the i saw that previously with silver and gold but it's such a good such a good way to use cards and part of the term of that as well as this makes it a great game to travel with because all you need is are the two kind of player decks of cards couple white erase markers um and then a couple of dice um and and then you're set and that's all you need so now we kind of just throw it in our travel bag time we're going away for like a long weekend yeah this is one of our key travel games and even at home as well i think this is like the game we've played the second most this year which actually kind of surprises me but that is my number 76.

my number 76 is civilization a new dawn and i never played the older version of this but i understand that this one does play a little bit faster which i appreciate quite a bit more streamlined so to get kind of a full civilization experience and maybe just over an hour for two players is is fantastic and the action system i really like and that is where you have your cards that you do your actions that get laid out but the longer they're in there the kind of higher up they go and the stronger they are and i believe arc nova probably borrowed from this because i this was the first place that i saw it and i it just works so well of when you need to do that action and how strong you need to build it up and i think good move on arc nopa's part because i do really like that system and this one i have played the original and i do like how this one streamlines it i like the other civilization board game and the civilization video game but it's nice to be able to do it it's such a short amount of time and still get like a decent amount out of it yeah and with the game ending being kind of when certain goals are accomplished i always find the ending always comes really quickly but in a good way that's always nice when you're kind of like oh that that went by so fast and so that's my number 76.

my number 75 is another civilization game but a very abstracted one and this is hadara and hadara is a tableau building card drafting game where you've got a bunch of piles of cards out in the middle and you take turns kind of around a circle of drafting the different cards you put them into your tableau and then they combo in different ways and you're visiting islands you're doing all sorts of fun stuff but it's super super abstract and like i could not tell you other than kind of looking at the box what the different colors are meant to represent right away but it doesn't matter because you still get at least a little bit of that sense and just the comboing is just really fun the drafting and comboing just works well together yes because one of the things for this is if you have uh more of a certain color that becomes cheaper to get that color so you kind of incentivized to specialize but they work intertwined enough that you do kind of also need that mix so trying to work that out in in the best way possible is a fun challenge but that is my number 75 my number 75 is kanban and this was our first vitella serta game that we got and i just really love how interconnected all of the systems are so it kind of every decision is really important and how what resources you get in one area is is definitely going to affect what you can do in each of the other areas and the fun thing for this is about an efficiency of like a car manufacturing thing and you have to kind of somehow set up like putting cars out there but then your opponent might come in and steal those cars um so that interplay works really well and uh this is still like my favorite laserta to date yeah i think it's my favorite as well and and we've seen the new one come out since we purchased this the kanban eevee and it looks great and you know i i love the artwork but i still i i like this one i like how colorful and busy it is and it just feels like it kind of fits um the theme of it so i i really do enjoy this and yeah and it's it's my favorite la sorda too and i like that this older one had a bit of a cheaper price tag as well yes that was also helpful and that is my number 75.

my number 74 is hive and this almost never happens with me but at some point we just threw away the box and stuck with the little bag because this has traveled around the world with us we've had this game and i don't know how many different countries and the great thing about it is you can just play it anywhere it doesn't need a board the pieces is these nice chunky like big light pieces that are waterproof and heavy enough for plenty heavy enough that they won't blow away and it's just a super simple two-player only abstract game where you've got these different insects all the different insects have different powers and you gotta surround the opponent's queen so it happens you know usually fairly quick although it is stinky and it's kind of insect chess and i just really dig it yeah when i we first started playing sean had already played it for years and then i our first game i lost like right away and it took a while i think for you to convince me to play again and then bit by bit as i've been getting better and better and we've been more equal opponents it has been really enjoyable to kind of figure out the strategies and kind of get yourself out of a tight spot and jess is like a master of the beatles she loves the put the beetle on top of my queen strategy and then just stepped down at the last second is the big thing so i'm always playing don't let her beetle get near my queen becomes the big game but just it's it's one that we just kind of keep playing and playing and will continue to travel with us and that is my 74.

my number 74 is imperial settlers empires of the north and this has a lot of kind of deceptive complexity given the the art i love the art style but there's a pretty kind of like deep game here and a key part of it is it's made up of uh for the base game six very different factions and all of them really do feel so different when you're playing your goal for it is you you are there's a little bit of work replacement as you put your tokens out but then you're also kind of collecting cards and doing a building your tableau but some are really aggressive and will really kind of go after uh other people's resources other ones will really be all about shipwrights and so exploring the the differences in the asymmetry has been a real fun part of getting into this game so much so we've picked up a few of the expansions yeah there's really there's a lot of like little kind of corners into this game and a lot of different things going on but with like surprisingly kind of simple rules not like so simple but certainly not as heavy as as there is um stuff going on under the hood and it is cool how how they've taken each of those little corners and then used it to really push out with each one of the different factions yeah i feel like i could play this uh so many more times than we've played i feel like we still only kind of scratch the surface of that and it is my number 74.

my number 73 is nemesis and alien is one of my ultimate favorite movie series and this is basically alien the board game there have been alien board games which are fine but i would still say this is the best alien the board game and really you're in a little ship and it's like it's tight quarters and you gotta go around and explore it and there's aliens and they are trying to kill you and it's interesting because it's a co-op game and it can if you want have a trader mechanic as well but it feels like it's hard enough that you don't really need that and for two players it doesn't make any sense because it's like well i'm pretty sure you're the traitor i'm not the traitor um so we never play with that i think we played with it once but even just the co-op with just the nicer cars and the nicer rolls there's oodles of tension in this game and it really is fun to to to explore that ship yeah and i think the part of the tension is the production value of of the aliens those miniatures as the longer the game goes on and the more you're kind of just like running away from the aliens and they're kind of starting to surround you it gets kind of scary and there's not a lot of resources so you quickly kind of run out of bullets and end up just kind of like trying to punch these giant aliens yeah they're not miniatures these are like bigatures they're like three or four times the size of your character especially like the queen alien who's trying to get you and you're trying to get into that escape pod before they get you um or just like set fire to the ship to the parts you're not in and it's uh it's it's really tense and that is my 73.

my number 73 is the crew specifically mission deep sea so this is kind of the second version of the crew and they they've tweaked it they've improved little things and and made it just that much better and i love playing the crew it's a cooperative trick taking game and on the box it's just listed as three to five players but so far we've only played it at two and they do a really clever way of doing that where the bot kind of has half its cards being visible so the captain is the one that has to choose their cards and i really like that element to it of having the shared information between the two of you and trying to like figure out which card really needs to get played yeah i think it might be a case of like we just don't know what we're missing so we don't know any better but having only played in a two it's great like i think i think it could easily just say two to five on the box i don't think people would be that disappointed because it's probably different but yeah it works well we've obviously we bought the second one played all the way through the first one so it's working for us yeah we've because the first one's about 50 missions we probably logged like over like 70 missions total between the two crews so that we do really like it and that is my number 73.

my number 72 is shakespeare and we've been tracking this bad boy down for years i was very excited to finally get it which probably bumps it up my list a little bit but honestly it's a great game and if you're into shakespeare it's even better because it's got all of the different character cards with the different characters from the plays and i like obsessed with shakespeare we go to all of the globe plays um every year that's one of the reasons we love living in london and it does kind of capture shakespeare to be totally fair but it does capture the idea of kind of running a theater and it's this really cool card tableau building game it's got a few different kind of extra twists within that um that i think really makes it worth playing and i have heard that the expansion adds a lot to it so if you do see the backstage expansion available anywhere please do let us know because we already like this a lot and we would love to track it down we really would uh that is my 72 my number 72 is first rat and in first rat you are moving up a one-way track which sounds really simple but there is a little bit of decision making along the way there's various like comic books you can collect and various other tokens that give you bonuses but your main goal is as you go along you're kind of collecting this junk to build your rocket ships and to race up the track to become kind of one of the the first astronauts and and fly into space and this is one we've been playing a lot of recently and i just love kind of that decision making of of what spaces to get and which bonuses and how it all works together yeah and it's interesting because the main decision you've got really is you just you move one rat or you move a bunch of rats and if you move a bunch of rats they all have to end up on the same spaces so that's how you do these big crazy combos is you just kind of time your little rat posse slowly moving up the track and jess has nailed this i will tell you we played this last weekend with some friends she got a higher score than all three of us put together because this is really just about being efficient and seeing the goal and you're terrific at that i don't think i could replicate that because um you can only if you land on a space as another player you have to pay them cheese so there is a little bit of kind of blocking of spaces but this one's been a lot of fun and that is my number 72.

my number 71 is king domino and i kind of went back and forth about whether to go with this one or to go with king domino origins which is the newest version but i decided you know what i'm just gonna keep it old-school and i got a bit of a an inkling that jess might go with the other one anyway but king domino is great because it's so simple basically you're just playing dominoes so you can explain to it like i've explained the game to you right there and you're just building a little five by five grid and then you gotta match different kinds of lands to same kinds of lands and it's nice because you actually see this little kind of kingdom that you build out and the different pieces have different things on them like sea monsters and dragons and all these different things you can kind of feel that as well while you try and kind of build the perfect 5x5 which is harder than it seems and get these nice little lands all matched up and it works great kind of at three to four players but i really like the two player version because with two players you get two people so how you draft uh you might be able to do kind of two tiles in a row but you're also able to kind of do the 7x7 grid for an extra challenge which is great yeah the 7x7 does feel like like a real kind of it's a much bigger game and it's generally the way that we go now we're kind of hardcore king not to brag um but we 7x7 and this is my number 71.

my number 71 is explorers of the north sea and i really like games that you're building up the board as you go so that every time you play it's always going to be a bit different and on this each turn you you play a tile that has water or land and so some of your islands end up being really big some games sometimes you just have lots of little islands and then you have different viking goals and so just the the element of building it out and then trying to pursue different routes it's just a really fun game yeah i love i love any game where you're building out the space um like we just talked about with king domino i like when you've got that nice thing that you've built at the end and this one's cool because you're building it together and i would i love i love shan phillips games just in general and i would say this is probably my favorite of the north sea trilogy as good as raiders is um i would i would still pick this one i think it's it's kind of kind of the underdog favorite for me yeah and the expansion for this one is yet again kind of upset in my books too it just makes things like bringing the animals back a little bit easier and a few extra elements um but that is my number 71.

and that is it that gets us pretty much to the end of the 70s next time we're gonna be starting at 70 and counting down 261 and we said off the top that we keep on missing games and you definitely had one or two in there that i'm thinking i don't know if i've got that and i should maybe have that so we're probably gonna have to have a little bit of a catch-all at the end of this but have you played any of the games that we talked about and what do you think do you also enjoy playing them but really commenting liking subscribing all of that really does help us out so thank you so much for watching and hopefully we'll see for the next one [Music]