Revisiting My Top 10 Anticipated Board Games of Gen Con
/pic575079.jpg)
Transcript
Hey, I'm Grant with Grant's GameRex. Welcome to a particularly relaxed video. Uh, I have been trying to film this video for like a month. I've wanted to film it for like a month, but I just haven't had time because of getting ready for tour and going out on tour and all this sort of stuff. But in July, I made a video on the most top 10 most anticipated games of Gen Con. Gen Con being the largest board game convention in the United States and a place where a lot of publishers debut new games. You can see and play and check out a lot of new board games at Gen Con. And I made a video for my top 10 most anticipated games. Well, I've had a chance to play all of those 10. And so I wanted to do a video about like, hey, did they deserve to be on my top 10 most anticipated games? What do I think of these games?
So, you know, let's talk uh let's talk 10 games here. I'm just going to go down this list in the order I had them in the original video. So, originally I had number 10 was drillers. And I feel slightly guilty saying this, but it's great. And I feel guilty saying that because it's sold out all over the place. I do know that they are reprinting it. This is from CGE, and they are reprinting it and going to be bringing it back soon. So, if you can't get it right now, you know, it'll be back in a couple of months. But if you like mediumweight strategy games, which I do, that's kind of like my main wheelhouse of, you know, if I want to play a strategy game, I want to play like a mediumweight game where I can play it in 2 hours or less.
There's still a lot of interesting decisions. You know, it's one of those things where it's easy enough to teach to new people, but there's a lot of depth in what you do and and the choices that you make. And drillers is all of those things. There's a really good tension in the game. You are sort of drilling down levels and deeper and deeper levels have better resources, have ways to get more points, but you can't really use those resources or or get better cards for your deck until you get back to the surface. And so there's this tension of like how long do you want to stay down versus when do you want to go back and pop back up to the top to, you know, sell these gems and get new cards. And in the end, it is a deck building game and there's a lot of cards in the deck. And so it's very fun to I' I've played different games and really gone for different strategies based on the cards that I was adding to my deck. Um, you know, this is a game that I feel like every time I play it, I'm like, "Oo, I could have done that differently, or maybe next time I'll try this." And so, you know, you keep thinking about it after you've played it, which I think is a good sign. So, yeah, Drillers, if you like mediumweight strategy games, definitely check it out.
Number nine on my list before was One Round. And this is a party game, a cooperative party game, and I can guarantee that it will be on my top 10 party games of the year. I It's one of my favorite party games that I've played in uh 2026 so far. Um you start off with a few random words that represent the numbers 0, 33, and 66. Each turn, one player will draw a new card and it will have a number on it and you will give a clue that that where you're trying to get other people to guess the space that it is in the circle based on the number. So, if I got a 17, you know, I'm obviously trying to give a clue that makes you think between the words that are at zero and the words that that that are at 33. And the the thing that I really like about the game is it really ramps up in terms of strategy and and difficulty because as you get more and more words out there as the game goes on, it becomes tighter and tighter and harder and harder, you know, now I have to give a clue to get you to guess between 33 and 38. Well, that's a lot more difficult than between 33 and 66, you know. So, I just, you know, it's a word association clue giving game. So, if you're a fan of games like So, Clover or Just One or Code Names or things like that, I think One Round fits into that
very well. Uh, next up, we have Pirate King. Uh, and Pirate King is one that I've played with my roommates a lot. My roommates love to do this thing where, you know, we'll find a game that we really like and then we'll play it a bunch over, you know, several weeks rather than learning another game or something. They just want to play that one over and over. And we've played Pirate King a bunch. It is a small box push your luck deck building game. Um, it is, you know, it's very light, so know that going in. It's it's silly. It's funny, but you know, there is some real strategy to the deck building aspect of it. You will have a deck. We all have the same sort of starting week deck. And we're going to flip out cards, and you can stop at any point. And you are trying to get um swords and money, but avoid curses. If you get too many curses, you bust. Swords will help you, you know, defeat monsters. Monsters are really good for points, but they're also kind of bad for your deck. They are they're cards that make you do bad things, like you force you to flip over a couple more cards or or force you to flip down a previous card you already had that was good. Uh, and then gold will help you buy new cards for your deck. And there's there's going to be a bunch of different special abilities.
And so then we just reshuffle our our you know our decks and and flip them out again and keep uh pressing our luck trying to get the most stuff without busting. And you know plays in like 20 minutes and it's a that's a really good family game. Pirate King, you know, a small box card game. If you're looking for a family game, then check out Pirate King. Number seven on my original list was Skyward Republic. And I've only played this one once so far. I played it with sort of my regular strategy game group and they bounced off of it pretty hard. Uh they they did not enjoy the game. Uh I haven't given up on it yet. I I still want to try it more with different groups. You know, my strategy game group doesn't like games where there's a lot of reading on cards. They don't want to sit there and read cards and figure out. And Skyward Republic has a decent amount of like reading and special abilities and combo possibilities with other cards. And so, you know, if you're like, "Ah, I don't even want to read this," then you're going to then you probably won't enjoy the game as much because you really need to pay attention to that stuff in order to get cards to combo well together. And really, that's the heart of the game.
You're going to be building a tableau in front of you, and you want cards that, you know, synergize well with special abilities and synergize well with points and stuff like that. So, unfortunately, Skyward Republic didn't uh work for us uh the first game I've played, but I'm still going to try it again so I can report back what other groups think of it cuz I know people have really enjoyed it. I've talked to other people that have enjoyed it, so I want to try it again. Uh number six on my original list was Raindrops. I love the theme of this game. I continue to love the theme of this game. you are sitting at a window watching raindrops cascade down the window. Um, mechanically the way it works is you will have you're kind of tracing a path down this window of tiles and you need to follow from color to color, but you can never go sideways.
You can never go up because it's a raindrop falling down. So, you can only sort of move down. You can move down diagonal, but you're, you know, there there is a clever puzzle with this game of how you want to move stuff down. You have um some special abilities where you can manipulate tiles. You can swap two locations or you can move one to the top of a row or things like that. And so you can do that to set up some pretty epic turns. Uh that's my favorite part of the game, the puzzle of figuring out which tiles you're going to, you know, trace your raindrop down. And then every tile your raindrop hits, you get. And then it's really kind of a recipe fulfillment game where you're like trying to get the right tiles to finish cards and then those cards will get you points. And you know, all of that stuff, all of that aspect of the game feels fairly standard. You know, I don't know that that aspect of the game feels particularly different or anything, but that cascading raindrop, that's what makes it feel different. That's what makes it feel unique. Um, you know, I've played it a number of times. I think the game maybe goes on slightly longer than I want it to, you know. Um, but that's a small quibble and and you could play to less cards if you wanted to. You're supposed to play until like someone finishes 10 cards, but if you think the game's a little slightly too long, play till someone finishes eight cards or something like that. So, yeah, that is Raindrops. Five on my original list was
six-sided seas. This is a two-player only game. And I really like this one, too. I've brought it to multiple conventions. I've played it with a number of people. It's a great filler game at like a convention when you're like, "Oh, um, the two of us are waiting for that game to be done so that we can jump into new game with this group." Boom. You know, six-sided seas plays in like 15, 20 minutes, just the two of us. Uh there is a lot of luck involved because there's a lot of dice rolling and anytime you add dice there's an element of luck to it. But there are also three paths to victory and I think that keeps the game interesting. You know you could win by raising your coin level. You could win by controlling these islands. You can win by attacking your opponent. And so there ever have been games where I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to really try to attack my opponent this game." And then I just keep rolling the things I need to raise my coin level. And I'm like, "Oh, okay.
Well, I guess I'm going for that win condition now this game." And so every turn there is a you're it's a worker placement game with dice, but then there's also a push your luck element because you have a pip value that is your max and you can raise that throughout the game. But I'm rolling dice one at a time and then I can stop at any point and then assign those dice to various worker placement spots and get special abilities and attack my opponent. But if I ever roll higher value on all my dice than my current limit, I bust and I don't get to do anything. So there's a real tension of like you're like a five or a six bust me if I roll this dice. Do I want to take the chance? cuz I could really use it too right now. And so I like that tension in the game. It's a lot of fun. Number four was Oasis: New Life on a Distant World. Um, one, this game looks incredible. I love the art. I love the graphic design. I love the color scheme of it. If you like card comboing, then definitely check out Oasis New Life on a Distant World. So it is all about you know playing cards in front of you and then those cards will combo well those cards will also support cards above it. You have two rows. You have a subterranean row and a sort of terrestrial row. But to play guards on the terrestrial row on the top row you
need cards with the right symbols to support them up above. And that's a very interesting aspect of the game. There's also an interesting aspect where you don't you don't clear cards in front of you, but sometimes you want to clear cards. So, you can literally take an action to discard a card so that you free up space to play a new card. And there are a lot of times you want to do that. And so, you know, you're kind of cycling out cards all the time throughout the game. It is a fairly um solitary game. Like there are some majority stuff, so you're paying attention to sort of what creatures other people are playing, but mostly I'm just building my own tableau of cards and getting cool combos and unlocking special abilities on my own. So, you know, know that going in. Number three on my list was the Game Makers. Uh, the Game Makers is, you know, a big epic Kickstarter uh, you know, sort of deluxe version of the game. I hear some people saying like, "Oh, it's overproduced."
And I don't know what that means. They made the game they wanted to make. I don't think anything can be overproduced. It's just what it is. Um, but it is a big production. Uh, one of the things I love about the game makers though is it's it's a game that is, you know, it is very big and impressive, but it's actually not hard to teach and not really that hard to play. You know, everything in the game kind of has multi-use. You're like, do you want to use it for components or do you want to use it to build this card? And that's always a cool choice, an interesting choice of a choice filled with tension. Um, this is another one that is fairly solitary. There's not a ton of player interaction going on. And there's some weird things where like how you score the cooperative board games is very confusing in the game, but it really is a love letter to the board game hobby.
And it's one that I feel like every I've heard um people say like, "Oh, I've played suboptimally because I just really wanted to build this one board game that I love." And it's funny to see that um you know that that play out where it's like people are like I don't care if this loses me the game. I'm building this game because I love this game. It's my number one game of all time and I have to make it. So yeah, if you want, you know, it kind of feels like Foundations of Rome to me in that way where it's like big impressive production but actually not that hard to teach or play and I really like that aspect of it. Uh, number two was Honeypot. And this is a great game. Um, this is maybe a lighter game than I was expecting at first. Like, it's almost like a strategy party game, if you will.
Like, there's there's real strategy in it. Um, there's a lot of set collection, but it uses this split you choose mechanism, but in a unique way. They call it I stack you choose. you are putting cards in this folder in this dossier and then passing it to another player. They can open up that folder and then look at the top two cards and either keep them and forego looking at the other ones or they can pass on those top two and look at the next ones and then make the same decision. And so you're always constantly thinking about how can I stack cards to screw over my opponent so they don't get what they want. Do I think they're going to go all the way down to the bottom and so I'm going to put the worst cards on the bottom or do I think they're just going to take the top one and I make the top one, you know, one good card and one bad card so at least I stick them with one bad card. You know, you're just constantly thinking of that. And there's a lot of different cards that score you points in a lot of different ways. But, you know, I feel like the heart of the game, the fun of the game is that like trash talking, is that social moments where you're like, "Ah, I got you. I stuck you with that card." You know, that's where it really comes to life.
Uh, and then number one on my most anticipated games of Gen Con and a game that I stand by fully 100%, Flip Tunes Season 2. Um, this is the second version of Flip Tunes. There was a Flip Tunes season 1 and now we've got a season 2. And they play very similarly. They play basically the same way, just the different cards in the different games. The decks have new special abilities. So, in the game, it's a deck building game. You will be adding new cards to your deck. But each round, you are shuffling your deck and then flipping cards out into a 3x two grid. And it's, you know, certain cards are going to score you points based on where they come out in the grid. And I just love that aspect of I love a strategy game that also has big exciting moments. And Flip Tunes always has that. It's like, ooh, ah, oh yes, I got what I need. I got it exactly where I wanted. Oh, that's and it feels good and stuff. Um, people have asked me like, well, which one's better, Flip Tune season 1 or Flip Tune season 2? And I honestly don't have an opinion on which one is better. I would say the question if you're only going to buy one of them, if you're only going to play one of them, then the question to me is, do you like deck building games where it's more about thinning your deck or do you like deck building games where it's more about adding stuff to your deck and like increasing the powers of your deck? If
you like the thinning aspect of deck building games, then season one is probably better for you. And if you like the adding more cards to your deck and getting more special abilities, then season two is probably better for you. And you can combine them. I don't think I would combine them if I was playing four players or less. It would just be a hassle. But you can combine them if you're playing a five to eight player game and that does make it fun and you know um that is then worth it more worth it for sure. So yeah um so those are you know I've had a chance to play all those games. This is not just a theoretical list at this point and you know I think most of these were pretty were were hits for me and so I felt good about uh what I you know was anticipating. So yeah there you go. Thanks so much everybody.
Hey, you've had a chance to play some of these games. What were your top games of Gen Con that you've gotten a chance to play? You know, I'd love to hear that in the comments. Um, you know, we're a couple months past it now and so I hope people have had a chance to play a lot of the games that they got. All right, thanks so much everybody. I'm Grant with Grant's Game Rex.
[bell]