The 2025 Awards - Board Of It

0:00 Hi everyone. I'm Tally. This is Farrell. And we're Board of It. And welcome to the Board of It Board Game Awards 2025. This is a bit of a sideways look at the games that we've been playing this year. So, not necessarily our best games. There's a separate video for that, but the ones that have made the most impact and deserve a little award.

0:20 Yeah, exactly. Or just to highlight some really fun moments we had board gaming this year. But we'll jump straight in with our first award, which is the biggest crowd-pleaser award.

0:33 Oh yeah.

0:39 First up, the biggest crowdleaser, and that goes to Flip 7.

0:45 Hey,

0:46 uh this is a game that we got later in the year, but it has hit the table uh an ungodly

0:53 numerous times. an ungodly amount of times, I was going to say,

0:56 and we've played it with groups of all shapes and sizes,

1:00 and it's it's just been such a crowd-pleaser. We've kind of we've recently gained a new gaming group and some of them, you know, kind of different levels of board gaming. Uh, so we've kind of been using it as a filler.

1:17 Mhm.

1:18 To

1:19 Well, it becomes the main It does actually stage of the night. We kind of started using as a warm up to like warm them up to Yeah. you know, before you get into something a bit more heavy. And yeah, like you said, one time we we kind of played um one game and we had a group of seven and then we we went to flip seven to kind of like fill the time between everyone went and we ended up playing about five games with seven people.

1:43 Five. Is that it?

1:44 Yeah.

1:44 See more. So, this is a game where essentially you get dealt a card and then you either just say, "I'm gonna stick and keep that card or I'm going to hit and get another one." And if you get two cards with the same number, you go bust.

1:59 You're out of here.

2:00 But basically, the number on the cards is also how many copies of that card there are in the deck. So, if you have a 12, that is also your points, the cards that you kind of end up with in front of you. But obviously, then you have a much higher chance of getting another 12 cuz it's more common. So, you're kind of just gambling and then you're getting out the round when you want. And there's some power up cards which really shake things up.

2:21 Yeah. And if you can make it to seven unique numerical cards, then you also get bonus points, hence the name Flip Seven. But that's very very tricky. But yeah, that's been

2:30 like you said the name the name of the award like uh is what it is. Big crowd-pleaser. Something that people are like requesting to play. Very simple but very addictive at the same time. And again, a game that's brought us a lot of laughs, I would say.

2:45 Yeah, exactly. I mean, because the way it works is it's first to 200, but then obviously you might have multiple players get over so then it's highest. And we've, you know, it can be, despite the simple premise, you can have a lot of fun and tension because we've had multiple games where it's basically been two players left in, both of them are kind of above 100. So, who

3:08 sorry, 200. So it's who gets the furthest and it'll be, you know, one person will hit and not bust. So then the next person has to hit or else they lose. Yeah.

3:18 So you get this drama and it goes around and around.

3:20 It's drama. It's tense even even not at the end because sometimes someone can really go ahead and get a lot of points in the beginning, but then they could just keep busting for the next round and then it's very easy to catch them up. So yeah, it's

3:33 high tension, high drama, high fun.

3:36 Yes. So, it's funny that you said high tension, high drama because we'll go to our next award now.

3:42 Okay.

3:43 And this is the uh most dramac-caused award. Our second award is the most dramac-caused award and that of course goes to a similar game in some ways but very different in others. Skull King. And this was also a defining game of our year.

4:10 Yes, very much so.

4:11 And this is a trick taker with uh it played very classically where you have the suits and the highest number of that suit wins and is a must follow. But there's a lot of suits that kind of trump each other. But the crux of it is that every round you gamble on how many tricks you'll win and you only get points if you win.

4:31 All that matters is the the bid, right? you

4:35 zero, I'm actually not going to win any tricks. And if you get that right, that's actually very valuable rather than winning the actual tricks. That's the Yeah. little twist.

4:42 So yeah, it's a gambling game. And this is a game that we we kind of picked up from the publisher on a whim and it was just we were going traveling. It was a good travel size. We thought, let's give it a go. And it just suddenly became like the fifth member of this whole day we went on where

5:03 everyone just loved it. You know, you had these late night games over drinks. You had these like games kind of while you're traveling around and it's continued and we've just had so many games in so many places of Skullking. I think it would be one of our most played of the year.

5:18 It's looking like super tatty already because of the copy is so rough. Yeah. But the fact is because it escalates. So the first round you'll only play one trick, the last round you play 10 tricks. So the points also exponentially increase. And what this means is that you can have huge swings. And um you also get negative points if your bid is wrong. So you can really have yo-yoing of players. So that's what makes it the most dramatic game we've played this year.

5:49 Yes. and people deliberately going after zero bids in like the 10th round, which is quite a feat to not win literally anything with 10 cards,

5:59 but it's worth 100 points.

6:00 Exactly. So, yeah. Very, very dramatic, very tense in that regard if you want to

6:05 threading the eye of a needle.

6:06 Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

6:08 Yeah. I mean, my sister and her boyfriend, they love doing the zero strategy. My sister actually still has out of all the games we've played the record for the most points

6:18 in a game where she bid zero eight times and got all of them correct.

6:23 Yeah, it was like 480 or something.

6:26 Insane. It's just and you kind of white knuckle it in that moment because big risk, big reward and

6:33 yeah,

6:34 it's just we just had so much fun playing this and the just the the drama is this yo-yoing and coming to the final round and anyone can be in it if they do good enough and

6:44 yeah so really recommend it. An absolute kind of cornerstone of our year. Skull King. Next up, we have a very special award and perhaps my favorite award. This is the biggest annoyance to tally award.

7:07 I don't like the sound of this award.

7:10 And that goes to Galactic Cruise, which was very high on Tally's end of year list.

7:19 Yeah. And the reason this is the biggest annoyance is because we made an in-house tradition that

7:26 Yeah. Now

7:27 that basically the the game came with like a lanyard.

7:32 I'm getting I'm getting irritated thinking about it.

7:34 It comes with like an like in game world lanyard for the company in Galactic Cruise. This heavy euro about creating space cruisers. And we made this house rule that the winner of the game gets to wear the lanyard for the next game. But Tally's number one Galactic Cruise. So every time we play, even though she loves it, she has to sit there looking at me with my lovely purple lanyard.

7:57 Sometimes we sit down to play Galactic Cruise and then you get up from the table and wander off somewhere and I think where's he going? Where's he going? He's going to get the lanyard and stick it around his neck. It's incredibly irritating.

8:10 But it is also some of my favorite moments of the year. gaming. I love that purple lanyard.

8:14 Yeah, you are a little bit obsessed with it. It's actually a little bit It's a little bit worrying how much power it gives you.

8:20 You just need to win Galactic Cruise and then it all goes away.

8:22 Uh I'm trying.

8:24 Yeah. So, if anyone has any um tips for Tally, then then write in. Put it in the comments below so she can finally wear the purple lanyard.

8:33 Don't even want to wear their lanyard.

8:34 You do want Everyone wants to wear the purple lanyard.

8:36 Whatever.

8:37 Yeah. So very simple, but we really do like playing Galactic Cruise, but this is your I think biggest gaming annoyance of the year.

8:46 So I think actually speaking of annoyances, we will go to the next award which is the a returning award from last year, the get out of my house award. This is a returning award, a yearly award now. And this is essentially you can say the game that or games that we enjoyed the least. Um, and I think uh I don't know you you don't have any particular one this year.

9:22 Well, it's not from this year, so I don't know if I can really count it, but we tried to give it another go this year.

9:29 Ah, yeah, that's fair. You can say it's not about the it's the year of gaming. So it doesn't have to be a game for this year.

9:35 Okay. So key Forge

9:38 that is your get out of my house game.

9:41 You know that I found that gaming annoying.

9:43 I thought you got like came around to it the last

9:46 Yeah, I came around to it a little bit but the annoyance I felt in those games. So I think we got it in 2023 actually but I think we played one game of it. So and then we just didn't come back to it. Right. So this year was the year that we were like, "Okay, let's just actually give this a go."

10:01 Very annoying. Very annoying. No, I did come around to it a little bit more in the end. But

10:06 I think that would have to be my get out of my house award. I mean, when you were saying, "Come on, let's have a game with Keyforge," my heart would like sink. So

10:14 yeah, to be fair, Key Forge is a little curse cuz we got it all those years ago. And part of the thing was it's only a little two-player head-to-head card game, but I remember I backed it on Kickstarter and then it was one of those things where I think the shipping came through incredibly expensive for like what it was. And then because of the tax on top, it became like really expensive for just like a deck of cards.

10:38 Yeah.

10:39 And then it got sent to some Yeah. some like post office about

10:44 2 miles away in the middle of nowhere. So, it was like an absolute pain to go get.

10:49 Yeah.

10:50 And it just And then it kind of Yeah. And then obviously you played it and it really annoyed you. So, it's a little bit of a cursed game in our household.

10:57 Um but that's fair. Yeah. I mean, we we mostly played it this year to like get it off the shelf of shame.

11:03 Exactly.

11:04 So, I think Yeah, I had a few in mind. I think the one I was most disappointed in

11:12 was uh Azul Juul.

11:16 Uh and this was because yeah, we got that as a review copy, but actually before we managed to play it, we went on holiday with some friends and they have the the base game and we played that and we really enjoyed it. Thought it was a really good game and that was the first time we'd played it. So then very excited and for me as all jewel just it personal thing but it just did not come together at all. I thought all the changes were really poor and convoluted and it just really didn't capture what was great about the base game was all

11:49 I didn't Yeah. I didn't find it as offensive as you I think.

11:52 Mhm.

11:53 So I'll stick with my key for the get out of the get out of my house award winner.

11:58 Yeah. So yeah, those are our get out of the house games. Our next award is the Lazarus award for raising from the dead. And this is to the games that were like over and done. Yeah.

12:22 And then they reemerged.

12:23 Yeah. So have two here and one's a runner up. That would be Oath.

12:31 Yeah.

12:32 The Carwwell game where we played it a lot when it came out and then yeah, we didn't really ever get a group for it. So, it got put in the basement but always for

12:41 literally years

12:42 always kind of wanted to hold on to it because obviously we're huge Cole Whley fans but just and then we managed to get a group together who wanted to play it and we actually had like two or three games. So, that was very unexpected but very fun to get it back out.

12:54 Yeah. very interesting to get it back out because I think when we first played it

12:59 and it is still a little bit like this but

13:02 very hard to like wrap your head around some of the implications but getting it out now I didn't find it as difficult and I think that's been interesting with some games that we played this year that we haven't played for a long time anacrony maybe one of them

13:16 it's going back years ago I found it so complicated but it's just maybe over time and experience it becomes less. So, so I think that was like very interesting part of getting

13:28 I agree. But really this award goes to Ark Nova.

13:33 So yeah, is the runner up, but Ark Nova is a game that I mean maybe I was a bit more off in it than you when we first played it. I liked it enough,

13:43 but kind of thought it was okay, bit overhyped, and we hadn't really played it since it first came out. And I was very much like, I'm not really sure if I want to keep it, if I'll ever want to play it.

13:55 So, this year we did play it a few times. And just when we got it back out, it was like a Sunday afternoon and we just had this really great session of it. It just was really fun. Had a really fun time playing it. Um, really enjoyed it. And so then we ended up actually getting the expansion and playing it more. So kind of went from almost being on the cell pile to being one of uh Yeah. my favorite gaming experiences this year.

14:22 Yeah. Okay. Very nice.

14:24 Yeah.

14:25 Yeah.

14:25 Yeah.

14:26 Nothing.

14:27 Anything else to add on Nova?

14:29 Um it was really good to get it back out again. I'm glad that you sort of came all around to it and it's not that I was loving it, let's say, when we first played it. So, it didn't make me upset or sad that you didn't really like it that much, let's say. I was like, "Okay, fair enough. I get it,

14:47 but I'm glad that you have come around to it because I do think it's

14:51 yeah, a really fun game to play and a way to definitely spend a good few hours." Basically, one thing I think it goes on maybe like a little bit too long.

15:01 That's true. Um, but apart from that, no, I find it very satisfying in the way that you're like, you know, yeah, building the zoo and trying to get different combos and yeah, I think it's really good. So, I'm glad that you came around.

15:16 Great.

15:23 This award is an award I never thought we'd do, but here we are.

15:28 Yeah. And that is the this is great for children awards because we played and I think I just want to highlight it because we have played a lot of it this year and I don't think we've ever talked about it anywhere else and this goes to cockroach poker.

15:46 Yes.

15:47 So yeah, I think we got cockroach poker basically at Christmas last year and we played it kind of throughout the year. Uh very simple game where you just put a card in front of another player and say this is insert an insect that's in the game.

16:04 This be a spider.

16:05 Yeah. And then they say yes or no. And uh you know if they're right then you have to take it. If they're wrong they take it uh at its core. And if you get four of the same insects you lose. So there's only one loser. And yeah it's basically we've played this a lot. I think we've had a lot of fun with it. It's a very silly game, but a lot of fun. And basically,

16:30 um, my mother fosters and we essentially, yeah, played with with the foster children

16:39 and I didn't really know how it would go, if they'd be able to pick it up and yeah, they absolutely loved it. Picked it up right away. Had a lot of fun playing. But equally, I took it away on a girls holiday with a bunch of like, you know, 35 and over. So, there you go. And they were like loving it as well. It's a definitely an all all age crowd-pleaser.

16:59 Yeah, exactly. So, I think it's uh yeah, terrific. And I've just had a lot of fun. We've played it a lot. It might be one of our most played games of the year. And just wanted to highlight it basically and say that it's it's great for all ages. If you want to teach your children to lie early, this is the best way.

17:18 Yeah, exactly. Let's say bluffing.

17:20 Bluffing.

17:20 Bluffing.

17:21 Yeah.

17:21 No, I agree. It's extremely fun little game. Super simple,

17:27 but just so it's just so funny to try and Yeah. bluff and then when people are getting it wrong and

17:35 Yeah. I I do think you could really play this with anyone. And like I said, took it away on a girls trip.

17:41 Yeah. and playing it in a like a rooftop bar as well. So, it's really versatile. Yeah. Looking over the amphitheater in Verona with an apparel. It's playing cockroach poker. So,

17:53 equally playing it here with a 9-year-old and a seven-year-old.

17:57 Exactly.

17:57 It's not It's anything if not versatile.

18:04 This next award is probably my favorite award. Uh, and it is titled the I thought his head might explode award. And this goes to potentially the weirdest game we've played this year, which is shuffle and swing.

18:23 Yeah.

18:24 From bywing games. And this award is kind of dedicated to it's such a weird little game. I'm gonna try and explain it now, but basically you are I don't even know. You're a mice who are making instruments for humans, but your workers are cats. Uh it's Yeah. Already such a weird little game.

18:52 Yeah. And you're essentially doing like this area control where you're building these instruments and you kind of like put your pieces as you build them and you kind of score like area majority in different areas of this instrument. But that's only half of it because on top of doing the work, you also need to brag about having done the work. So there's like a brag track where you put yourself in and be like, I did all this stuff. I'm so great. And then you kind of get points based on like where they both are and which is yeah like the lowest.

19:25 But even the the concept of the game and the theme is strange. But I just find even like the pace of it is is very strange because

19:33 you move your little mouse fella around on the different actions. So you're choosing like an instrument to work on, but then you can do different actions within that like build or there's like a cat inspector that comes as well.

19:49 I think it's a No, it's a mouse inspector.

19:50 Sorry, mouse inspector. And what's the other one?

19:53 The mice are in charge.

19:54 You rest because once you've used up, you have to like spend cats.

19:58 They get sleepy and they go on a big bed and then you you wake them up.

20:02 Is it Are we sure this is a real game? It's like a fever dream,

20:05 but even that you're like moving around, but then you do an action, but then you're using like dice which have pips on it,

20:13 but then you do it, but then the dice moves in the same area to the next action. Like the whole pacing of it is like extremely

20:20 weird. Not to say it's not a great game. It is a very good game. It's just so hard to describe and just such a It's just weird.

20:27 It's such a weird game. But the reason it's called I thought his head might explode is because we introduced to a friend a few weeks ago because it is a game that is I think it's one to four players and it's it is better with more because of this area control competition. Um and I was explaining it to him and he's like our most consistent gaming friend, you know, he's played everything. He's played all of the the Cole Whies. he's played, you know.

20:57 Y

20:58 So, it's not like it it's some like freshfaced I'm interested in board games person with Lord in

21:05 and I was just explaining the rules to him and being like, "Yeah, so the dice and the cats go to sleep and all this stuff." And his face, I honestly thought he might like be having like a stroke or something cuz his just little face was like he was like having frowny lines that I've never seen before.

21:24 Yeah. I could just almost see his head shaking from like the trying to like take it in.

21:29 His eyes were very wide.

21:31 So yeah, and I don't blame him because as hard as it is to teach, it must be harder to understand what's going on there.

21:37 Once you get going, it's actually not a hard game. Very strange thing about it.

21:41 We actually all came within I think like four points of each other and that was his first time playing it. So

21:46 it's a great game. It's not like super complex. It's just so hard to wrap your head around the meaning of it and Yeah.

21:53 Yeah. So anyway, shuffle and swing, the I thought his head might explode award. This is the new found respect award for a game that we had newfound respect for this year. And that game is an acacrony. So this is the heavy euro that is all about time travel. It's kind of multi-level worker placement. very kind of complex in in all the things you can do. And essentially, it was a game that we've had for a long time, but we'd kind of only played it like once here and then once there. And we'd never really I think we never really felt one way or the other about it.

22:37 No, it never like grabbed me. No.

22:41 But I didn't hate it either. Just Yeah.

22:44 Yeah. Basically. And then we had this period in the middle of the year where we kind of spent a lot of time going back to older games uh rather than yeah playing whatever was new. And Nackra is one of them we got out. We tried an expansion that we've had for like 3 years and never played. And I think we both got quite into it

23:05 and then we ended up uh we've collaborated with the publisher to create a buyers guide for an acrony. So we've been working on that. So, we've been playing through all of the expansions and all of the modules.

23:17 Played a lot of anacrony.

23:18 Yeah. So, I think we've gone from like having two games ever to about like 10 12 games, something like that, right?

23:26 Uh within the last couple months.

23:28 So, it's just that yeah, we always we never had one opinion, you know, an opinion one way or the other, but now we've we've really got to to grip. Well, we've played everything that anac anacrony has to offer. Yeah, again it was just interesting to get it back out after a number of years and again like being more experienced and

23:49 I think I just found that there was something that wasn't quite intuitive for me about it because it's like this whole time travel element where you get resources but then you have to go back in time and repay them back otherwise you get penalized essentially. I think I found it a little bit hard to wrap my head around when we first played it, which then meant I wasn't fully like engaging with everything the game had to offer because obviously that's such a big

24:13 part of it. I was almost like it's a bit too much for me. But then you're missing out on the crux of it essentially.

24:20 But then when we got it out this time, yeah, I just felt a lot more comfortable with it and it was much more intuitive and then I was engaging with everything. So then it was obviously getting for me at least, I was getting a lot more out of it this time.

24:32 Yeah. So yeah, just wanted to highlight Anacrony. We're going to have a bias guide coming out and we really enjoyed getting to grips with it. I think it's a game with a lot to offer, a lot of interesting expansions, and yeah, I think has a really cool theme with this time travel and the way you can play with that within the game.

24:49 Mhm.

24:50 Yeah. Anacrony. We come to our final award

24:59 which is the biggest surprise award of the year

25:04 and this is to highlight yeah the games that we didn't expect anything from but in one sense or another blew us away.

25:12 Uh and we yeah it's kind of similar to the Lazarus award where I think there's kind of runner up and uh first place. I'm just actually not sure which is which. Okay.

25:25 So, we can decide. I think it might be different for both of us,

25:28 but so I think the first game is the is Lost in the Shuffle,

25:34 which is a kind of puzzle game based around a 52 card deck. And each card has a puzzle on it. Or maybe a puzzle is made up of multiple cards. And literally, you just get given this deck and you just like kind of work your way through by looking at it and figuring out what even is a puzzle and then entering it

25:53 into kind of a website that saves your progress and it just blew us away. Right.

25:58 100%. Yeah. We would spend hours at a time like whing away the hours essentially not realizing how much time was being spent just sometimes I would get bit stuck on one puzzle

26:10 but it's really cool to work on together because you can kind of do a little bit your own thing cuz like you said you just

26:17 look at stuff

26:18 and see where you can make connections and see where that even is a puzzle work on it a little bit yourself and then you might also be working on something a little bit separately then we can like

26:26 work on a few things together I just think it is incredibly genius. Essentially, to make something like that, like you said, just from a deck of cards

26:36 is super smart, really fun, really satisfying to crack the puzzles. There is a little bit of uh support on the website where if you're really really stuck, then you can get hints to help move you along as well.

26:48 Yeah.

26:48 Yeah. I just found it

26:50 I've never seen or played anything like that before, so yeah, would highly highly recommend it. It was super fun. Yeah, I mean we yeah kind of accepted it from the publisher almost on a whim

27:05 and it just I didn't expect anything like I didn't think about it one way or the other and just we had such great times playing it.

27:14 It was such a fun puzzle to work out. It was

27:20 kind of so interesting and how varied it was and it was just a really really nice time.

27:24 Yeah, agree. So yeah, and then the other game would be Regside Legacy

27:30 where I mean I don't even think you'd heard of Regside

27:33 before it showed up. And

27:35 I knew a bit about Redside. I'd never played it. I didn't really know what to expect. I kind of really backed it very much on on a complete whim. And it it was very high on our end of year list.

27:49 Uh we both really really enjoyed it. I really enjoy the kind of yeah the kind of way they expand upon the core of Regside as a game and play around with the mechanisms and layer on more and how it keeps the decisions interesting.

28:05 Yeah, I think it is again very genius to make something so layered with something so simple.

28:15 So yeah, we've had a lot of fun playing that. And again, we're always saying that like cooperative is not so much our thing, but I'm starting to maybe come to the realization, it's not that I don't particularly like cooperatives, it's I like them when I have my own agency.

28:30 Yeah. And it's not just

28:33 that everything's available for everyone to see because then obviously you're very susceptible to quarterbacking and I'm susceptible to being like told what to do or like just asking like what should I do here and then obviously that just isn't that fun. So I think yeah I really like these cooperative games where you are making your own decisions and in this instance it's because you can't talk to your co-player essentially. You can give them like a stare like make sure that you play this but you can't talk. So you are completely acting with agency.

29:05 Yeah.

29:06 And yeah, I love the whole production of Reicside. I think the art is so nice and just the whole experience has been like incredibly fun. I would say

29:16 it has been a really fun experience. And I think what I also really like is um I think it comes with 12 or 13 missions, but obviously it is very rare that you'll beat it on your first try.

29:31 Yeah.

29:32 And it has a really good system of of giving you a leg up when you fail. And we are only on I think it will again probably end up being one of our most played games this year, but we're only just completed mission five out of that 13 because you do play them a few times. And it's kind of a really nice uh length of time where a a mission doesn't take that long. So, and it's very quick to reset. So when you go again and go again, it's not as frustrating as sometimes in in longer games. Uh and also it's kind of expected in a certain sense, right, until you you crack it a little bit.

30:14 Mhm.

30:15 Like the the the new bosses that you're trying to fight every mission.

30:19 But yeah, it's just it's it's basically just a really cool way that they've taken what was a game using a standard 52 card deck and expanded it out. And yeah, it was, I think, a really big surprise uh this year.

30:35 So, those were the Board of Vit awards for this year. That was a little glimpse into our 2025 of gaming and what stood out for us. We we hope it was enjoyable. If it was, please consider subscribing and we'll see you again for more of our kind of end of year content. And we appreciate you watching.