Jamie's Top 50 Tabletop Games: 20-11

0:03 all right everybody this is the penultimate list these are the runners up these are almost my favorite games of all time this is number 20 through 11 of my top 50 favorite games of all time black Orchestra I'm okay with Cooperative games I like them and I'll play them but I tend to like competitive games more but every now and then a game comes along that transcends my normal preferences and this one black Orchestra does it in Spades this game is just absolutely great the theme of the game is that you're trying to assassinate Hitler during World War II you have a team of guys it's based on real history a team of guys that really existed in history and you're trying to collaborate to create a plot that you're going to enact to assassinate Adolf Hitler and change history uh this game is chocked full of history that is absolutely awesome if you play with history Buffs who have read books or watch documentaries about this whole project Valkyrie business it's very accurate like a lot of the history of different things that happened in World War II the different places the different people went the the people who you're playing are the characters they get such a kick out of it seeing all of that actual history sort of playing out in a sort of alternate history kind of way uh what I love about it though the game play is great it has the some of the best collaboration amongst players it's like you're playing Mission Impossible you're a team of guys who have to go out and do

1:33 all these different things and put all the pieces all the Ducks need to be in a row perfectly you need to be in the right place at the right time with all the right uh items and enact your plot and assassinate Adolf Hitler with one standup dice roll at the end which normally I would hate but this game does such a great job of mitigating that dice roll the the whole idea of the game is making sure that you're mitigating the randomness of that final dice roll keeping all of the different tracks in the right place get all the right items so that you can make the randomness go from almost impossible down to very likely and you have to keep backup plans that's one thing I love like okay if this plan doesn't work this other guy's plan's going to go and this one might not be as shorefire as this one but at least we have something in our back pocket if this goes sideways this game is terrific the the visuals are beautiful it it's a vocative of the era I just absolutely love black Orchestra it's my favorite Cooper of game Twilight Imperium the word epic is so overused in everything in our lives board games video games movies just everything this cheeseburger I had was epic it's ridiculous I reserve that word for games like Twilight Imperium which is an epic board game to my taste I mean I'm sure there's plenty of games that people play for an entire weekend or an entire week or they've been playing for 6 months or whatever this is for my taste in board games this is epic it takes you almost all day to play this game and there's so

3:05 many different races that you can get that you can play with different abilities and all kinds of Technologies to upgrade and planets to to to capture and reap the benefits from those and there's politics and Alliance making and man I just love the scale of this game it is like a Space Opera Fleet combat politics game this is the one I I really struggled whether I wanted to put uh Star Trek ascendency in front of this one because I love Star Trek so much and it gives me such a great Star Trek feel but this one the game play is solid and right on and it gives you everything that you want in a large scale science fiction civilization Fleet combat War whatever you want to call it game Twilight Imperium is one of the best it is a classic it's a new classic really Twilight Imperium is tops age of Sigma when I started out in Miniatures gaming I was playing Warhammer fantasy that was my very first game that's the predecessor to age of Sigmar uh and I liked it I just don't really dig the block troops the rank and flank style of miniatur games it's not my jam so we moved on to like War Machine and some other games well Warhammer fantasy wasn't doing very well for games workshops so they decided to put it to bed and create a brand new miniatures game in the fantasy setting which is age of Sigmar now the entire Warhammer Community lost their minds

4:36 they they were crying and rolling on the floor throwing Tantrums because they had their game taken away from them which they didn't but it's the best thing that Games Workshop could ever have done because damn they made this game so much better and not only that it made their company explode it was one of the best decisions they could have ever made for their company but what's great about this game is it's a great game to get started in Miniatures gaming because like uh Warhammer 40K there's a lot of management of you know your units and picking the right models for your units and you can swap out guns and there's a lot of options and it gets very tedious for new players AJ Sigmar does not have that age of Sigmar has you buy a unit and it has its abilities and you put them on the field and it always has those abilities now the depth comes in with how you put those together and how you utilize those abilities on the battlefield when you're fighting your opponents what units do you pick to go up against different opponents and different units it's so it's easy to get into but it's very very very very difficult to master and that I think is one of the the Hallmarks of a great game like magic the Gathering in my last list it's dirty easy to play I mean there's no rules you just get in there and you learn these like 10 rules and you're G good to go same thing with AE of Sigmar so easy to get into but really really difficult to master and the models are gorgeous the gameplay is great they've done so many good things with taking a system that was kind of old and Antiquated and making it something new

6:07 and really really modern and Well Done AG of Sigmar great game onward to Venus again with Martin Wallace my favorite game designer of all time and this is one of his lesser known sort of under the radar games that I picked up solely because the theme was so interesting and it was Martin Wallace it's sort of a Renaissance era almost steampunk Style game where we have been we we have figured out how to go into the stars in that era so it's all this old timey pulp you know like turn of the century looking technology that we're going into space with the board is a whole bunch of planets that are lined up on your table and you can jump from planet to planet with spaceships and drop your infantry and your tanks down there you're trying to take control of factories and mines to control them so there's even big game on some of the planets that you can get victory points for killing it um and basically the control of the planets isn't military control it's economic control so you're trying to control as many factories on the planet as you can and there isn't much in the way of combat unless there's sort of the the a tension tile that's on the planet and I think that's really neat because you have to exploit the board State as best possible to make your moves you have like maybe two or three big military moves mov in the game otherwise you're just kind of trying to backo them by by coming in and putting down some factories and taking over this game is very thematic in the components

7:39 in the way it plays out it's just very very thematic and it's like almost a a war game that's an adventure game mixed in in a sense uh this game just there's something about it that I always want to play it it's just fun for me the way the mechanics operate the way the theme rolls out it's just a game that feels good to me it's one of my favorite Martin Wallace games A Touch of Evil similar to Fortune and Glory because they're published by the same publisher flying frog this game is not perfectly designed it feels a little old and outdated but the game is so much fun this is a terrific colonial era horror game for some reason I love colonial era horror I have no idea why but I do I love it and here's the The Perfect theme for me there's so many different monsters there's vampires werewolves banshees headless Horsemen's ghost ships all different stuff expansions coming out all over the place with different monsters and all of these monsters have different abilities and and change the way the game is played you're running around the countryside trying to kill the monsters and all the while you're visiting locations trying to gear up with muskets and horses and all sorts of different things and at each one of those locations there's a deck of cards that is tailored to that location to give you some small Adventure while you're there and so I I love that I love that each deck is tailored to every location it just feels so thematic uh the board is wonderful because it looks like an old timey map and you're moving

9:09 around this board and all of a sudden the headless horsemen pops up and tears through and tries to chop your head off it's such a great horror Adventure game it's one of those games where yeah it's got rolling move in it everybody hates Rolland move why would they ever put that in there in this day and age I mean it's not that new of a game but when they designed this game it was already a thing don't put rolling move in I I even house rule that out so one of my favorite games of all time I house rule a thing that I don't like in it but the fact of the matter is I just really enjoy this game it's such a fun adventure and adding all of the expansions just like makes the game bigger and richer and more fun with more content it's a really fun game despite the fact that it's weird with some of the mechanics I just enjoy it so much that I can't help but put it on my list Fury of Dracula this is another one that was one that I bought many many years ago and it's a game that we consistant played couple of times a year ever since I originally bought it we love hidden movement and this one is my favorite hidden movement game big map of Europe one person plays dracula trying to run away hide from the hunters van heling minaar or gaming all these different characters from the Dracula book and they're stalking him Dracula's is leaving traps behind in different cities he's trying to raise vampires to gain victory points and all this different stuff and all the while the players are hunting down where's he where they going to find him when they finally find him you go into a battle with him and he's

10:40 using all sorts of powers Claws and strength and you know turning into Mists and all different stuff this is an exciting game and the original Edition not original the second edition that I had there was a lot of clunkiness and a lot of bad stuff in it we had a house rule we took out some cards because we hated them but we still loved the game this new Third Edition came out from Fantasy Flight now Whiz Kids has the rights to do it they took everything I hated and got rid of it and made sort of the definitive version with all of the bad stuff out and all of the great stuff still there this new Third Edition is fantastic we have so much fun the deduction is Fun the exciting little story elements that happen as you you're watching Dracula run around and he goes to seea and everybody scrambles man this is such a fun game and length isn't too long it doesn't overstay it's welcome uh there's a lot of strategy when you're playing Dracula to try to misdirect this is such a wonderful mixture of a sort of a pure hidden movement game and sort of an AM Merit trashy combat game because you're going in a fighting Dracula then it melds those two together so wonderfully I love it so much brass now you might notice that there are two boxes down here that means that brass lankashire and Brass Birmingham I'm counting them as one thing in here because brass is fantastic and both additions both of these two different versions of the same game are wonderful

12:12 and they serve different purposes I want to play both sometimes I want to play the pure version brass sometimes I want to play this the crunchier version with more junk thrown in than I play Birmingham I jump back and forth between the two because they're both fantastic Martin Wallace this is Masterpiece this is Martin Wallace at his best I played the original Lancashire version back when it was was was God awful ugly and loved it then but now that roxley brought out this gorgeous version with the most beautiful artwork you've ever seen it is just such a treasure to have on the Shelf uh you're building railroads You're Building canals You're Building Industries you're delivering Goods all sorts of stuff it's such a deep game it's not really that terribly complicated but boy is the depth of strategy there this is one of the best Euro games ever designed classic Martin Wallace Master workor this is a Masterwork of Martin Wallace I love it to Pieces Gia project now notice there aren't two boxes down here teraa got the boot when Gaia project came along I love terysa in years past teram mystica would easily be in this spot on my top 50 but once guia project came out and I played guia project it got the boot I love that game but this one is better it plays almost the same only all the things I didn't really care too much about with teram

13:42 mystica got removed and they added cool stuff first off production is fantastic I love the the the you know little space buildings and the board and the modular board is beautiful and all the stuff all the components are great so they upgraded that immensely and the graphic design is terrific but the game play is where this game is at there's such a depth of strategy of trying to terraform all these different planets and and get there and build your buildings and the way that you remove the buildings from your player board and it uncovers what that uh that building yields you now it's such a clever way of managing that and some you have to there's a delicate balance right because you want to upgrade to a a trade house or whatever they call them in this version uh but do you so you have to put one back on your player board that covers up some resource so you're now generating a new resource it's such an interesting Dynamic and a balancing act of how best to do that and then you're looking at the the you know the turn goals that are up at the top and you're trying to make that happen while making your player board happen while trying to terraform there's just so much to this game it's such a crazy deep and complex game and I'm just in my element when I'm playing it I'm not very good at it but boy oh I love it when I'm playing it and all of the different races are so diverse even just a little bit of change in their player ability ities makes them play completely differently when you're into the game this game is near perfect I don't know that I could come up with anything I don't like about this game guia project is wonderful Through the

15:15 Ages now I mentioned that Civilization the board game was one of my favorite Civilization games of all time I even mentioned Through the Ages when I talked about it well the thing is civilization the board game is probably my favorite civilization game ancient history civilization game there ever was but Through the Ages is a better game it doesn't feel as much like Civilization cuz it's just a card game and that's the only knock I ever had against this game was like it's hard to get into into the theme because of it being so abstract but once you play it and then play it again and play it again you start to visualize all these things and the theme does start to come out of it so you have to push hard to get the theme out of it but the game is so fantastic it's another one of those games like laav where it takes forever like it's a long game but you can really sink your teeth into this this this the strategy the long-term strategies of this game and how your civilization develops over time sometimes you're you're you know going military and then you have to shift your your your focus over to something different like science or Technologies or whatever there's it's just so much fun to explore this game because there's so much in it I mean there's so many cards you could choke a donkey with the amount of cards that are in this game and the combinations you can make with those things it's such a a a it's it's a vast game a just a vast amount of content in this game you could buy this game and it would be the only game you buy for the next 10 years and

16:46 you probably would be fine because there's so much to this game man Through the Ages is a game that I don't play nearly enough and I certainly have mastered many of the strategies of the game but boy do I love it fantastic game blood bow I actually started off playing bloodb on Steam the digital version and then I got a copy of the old version of the Miniatures game and then a new addition just came out a few years ago and I was so delighted because blood bow is one of the best tactical games you're ever going to play and what I think is fantastic about this new version is they didn't change almost anything there might be like one tiny thing in there somewhere I don't even remember where but it's pretty much the same exact game that people have been playing for years because it didn't need to be changed because this game though it on the surface seems kind of outdated in the way that it does there's a lot of Randomness in the game but what you need to understand about bloodbowl being that it's a fantasy football game is that the randomness is the game it's all about risk management this game is risk management from beginning to end there are some very safe things that you can do that'll make progress in the game but there are some very risky things that you can do that will win you the game or at least get you m a little bit closer to winning the game but it's such a risky maneuver that you could spoil your

18:17 entire turn if you do that and that's what it's all about it's figuring out how to mitigate that Randomness how to exploit that Randomness and how to manage that Randomness risk management now a first-time player would come into this game and they would be all freaked out because you know you literally can go into the your turn you could try to run the ball you run past somebody they knock you down and your whole turn's over you didn't even get to move 10 out of your 11 guys because you fell down that's called a turnover that's that's disheartening for a new player but that's part of the game is you have to know not to do the things that make that happen or you have to know which order you have to do things to make sure that if that happens it happens last and I got all my easy stuff out of the way there's just so much to this game um when you get experience with the game you get much better with the game and Randomness still exists so it's fun because you could get you you could be the best player ever and you could still get screwed by the randomness but the better players are going to play better and it's great when you're playing leagues you could upgrade your characters give them new skills you can go game to game with different players in a league format uh there's so many different teams with the Orcs And The Dwarves and the humans and The Elves and the chaos and the nurgle and the Goblins so many different things that you can get in this game and they even have different pitches you can buy there's a snow pitch and a dwarf pitch and a scaven pitch and all different kinds so you can really customize this game like crazy it is such a wonderful game and I wish I really really wish that more people would try this game out

19:48 because boy it is it is one of the best games I've ever played I absolutely love blood bll all right everybody that is the runner up list come on back tomorrow where I'm going to give you the definitive my top 10 favorite games of all time we'll see you then thanks so much everybody if you've enjoyed this video please do us a giant favor by subscribing to the channel and clicking that whacky Bell icon if you're into board games Miniatures games role playing games we have a bunch of audio podcasts you might enjoy you can find those at the secret cal.com or on iTunes and Stitcher