Nassau, Tower Up, Fairy Ring, Inori, Arctic Ranked & Reviewed

hey everybody and welcome to another chairman of the board ranking review this is where I take a look at the last five new to me board games that I've played and I rank them and review them in order of preference so it's going to be a um a cult of the new chairman today as I talk about five games from 2024 but before I get started on these games I want to give a shout out to the show's sponsor k.c.

who are my go-to online retailer and if you use the link in the show notes or the QR code then you can get 5% off your first order additionally be sure to check out my new game Thalamus and send me an email if you want to secure yourself a copy at number five I have Arctic so this is a hand management card game where you are trying to create runs of these kind of polar animals you got your polar bears your walruses and so on um and again you're trying to create a sequence of the same type of animals to rack up more points now the game system is quite simple but it does have some kind of rough edges um so basically what you're doing is you're going to play a card and then in future rounds the card that you've played on top of the pile is going to show how many cards you need to play from your hand next turn but it'll also tell you how many cards you need to draw at the end of this turn but you do have a strict hand limit meaning that if you go beyond seven cards then you'll actually have to skim some cards off the top of the deck and end up playing them as negative cards so you do need to stay in those parameters of having enough cards to play when you're dictated to by your previously played cards but also staying low enough so that you have enough room to draw Cards into your hand so the trick on this game is basically trying to draft the obviously the same types of animals so that when you do end up playing runs um or having to play several cards at once you do have enough of the same type in your hand so that you can rack up those points and but additionally each of these cards come with two different animals on them like uh like a dominant one and a secondary one and that will relate to a separate kind of a commodity speculation track where you can move one token one way and the other one the other way and as you can imagine at the start of the game you are given a hidden objective which is one of those animals on that board and depending on where it lands at the end there going to be some extra points that you can gain um so I mean that's strategy is pretty simple you just want to push up your animal and if somebody else's animal becomes fairly obvious you might want to spend a bit of effort to try and shove them down so they're not getting huge amounts of points um that's pretty much what the game in tells it's it's straightforward I think maybe the rules are um not so intuitive at first because not only does the um the commodity speculation part of the game feel a little bit tacked on each of these animals you play and when you play them as a dominant card on top or the visible card that is going to give you a unique player power that you can have as long as you were the last player to play that animal type and the powers you can get range from quite significant to quite subtle some of them are a bit too too kind of laborious to look into because you think well I can't really be bothered to do that power but some of the more subtle ones can come in more useful um and yes some of them weren't the easiest to understand and you'd often find yourself forgetting what the animals actually do and forgetting to use their powers because you are so engrossed in making sure that you have the exact right amount of cards and you aren't taking any negative points so um I'm not saying this was a bad game it wasn't by any any stretch but I have so many good hair management games in my collection I think this one was a little bit easy to conquer I didn't really find myself struggling with being forced to play so many animals so it's a difficult kind of conundrum there in because the only way I could imagine making it better better is by adding more rules and to add more restrictions but at the same time there's enough kind of unintuitive things going on as it is so one that's slightly missed the mark for me you know I give it about five out of 10 that is Arctic at number five at number four I have Nassau so this is the reworking of Stephen feld's rum and Pirates you know a re a new game for the um Stephen Feld City collection um so if you're not aware of what Roman Pirates was it was one of Stephan feld's first games that came out a long long time ago didn't really get much traction and I think critically it was quite hit or miss with a lot of people now I never played the original Rin Bon so I didn't quite know what to expect so I went in with an open mind knowing that I love stepan Feld games and knowing that you know I like the pirate theme in general so this kind of segment is going to be a bit all over the place which I think is a good representation of the game itself because it's quite a disjointed game it's quite unintuitive I'm not to overuse that word but I'm probably going to use it a few more times in this segment so basically this is a game of two halves the first half you are going to be moving around this modular board which is kind of like a town of Nassau and you're going from spot to spot and placing workers on the roads between the action locations where you get certain resources which will basically stock you up and prepare you for the next phase of the game now to be honest this part the game I actually really liked and I saw a lot of potential in I like the idea of when you place your when you place your workers and move the um the pirate that will dictate which actions your opponent can have so you don't really want to lay too much on the plate for them and leave them great opportunities um and there are ways around that because you can spend these um run bottles in order to sit out for the turn and hopefully that the pirate lands on somewhere that's going to suit you better next time and you can even play coins to take a double turn but bearing in mind that you do have a very limited capacity of pirates to spend so this one although it was a little bit frustrating and sometimes you could find yourself blocked out of things you really wanted to get you kind of have to act a little bit more tactically to try and hopefully make do and um set yourself up for the next phase which is where you are using your pirate ship to sail around the islands to fight off different you know monsters Krakens um set up fortifications and all the piratey stuff that you'd expect with a a pirate game so the the way the game works after the original part is that again you're going to be saving your boat around the more sales the more crew you have the faster and more efficient you can sell you're collecting weapons to help you fight these monsters more efficiently uh the combat system in the game is a little bit weird you know I don't really associate Stephen Feld with having you know clean combat systems um because he is so eurom minded but this one was quite a strange one where you would match up your weapons with your crew that would show how many wound you do to an animal and then the um the creature will attack you back based on their strength um which will basically weaken your play aboard by removing weapons removing crew um you know cargo that kind of stuff um but then you're rolling dice to try and mitigate those threats so it's kind of a a mix of or hybrid of Euro mechanisms with some dice rolling and I must admit it didn't feel very intuitive it was quite a difficult C to portray and to verbalize to teach te it to others because again normally with combat systems you can see how they work out this one is different and definitely in a category of its own I'm not saying I didn't like it but it definitely doesn't flow too well and you have to think twice and maybe read the rules a few times over to really get a grasp of it um setting up the fortifications was quite cool because you could kick people off and that would start getting your ingame points or in-game points um you'd also try and collect these um these Goods which you can try and bury if you have enough money at the end of the round um so as you can imagine there's a lot going on here um very mechanically driven some rules that don't flow too naturally um in particular there are these animals that you collect and all the animals come with once per round powers and production wise it wasn't the best portrayed because there was no symbology on the animal tokens and some of the powers were quite strong but again you'd have to keep looking at the book to remember what those Powers were so it was quite disjointed in that respect too um sometimes there was a mismatch on how long the turns were because if per some person had a ton of Provisions that they could they could keep taking turns or loads of turns in order to keep fighting and setting up outposts and stuff while somebody else who wasn't fortunate enough to get Provisions would take a turn or two and then sit out until everybody else has caught up so there is potential for some downtime the game did go a little bit longer than I would have liked you know this took us around 2 hours and we're generally quite quick players yes it was the first game and um again there are some clunky mechanisms but still it did drag its heels at times um but saying that I did like the the mix of the in-game Play points you'll get as well as all the Strategic choices you're making because there are so many different ways to get points here again collecting crew and the Animals collecting different weapons setting up outposts um you know fighting monsters all of these are very viable uh paths to Victory so um all in all this is a weird one um it's definitely one of the lowest fael games that I've played in terms of my personal uh ratings I think it's just too cumbersome and a bit too it puts a bit too much um kind of onus on the teacher of the game to make sure everything is working as it should um again lots of unintuitive rules very disjointed and yeah basically I can't really see myself wanting to pull this one off the shelf to play it again um but despite me making it sound like it's very negative I still did enjoy the game I thought it was a lot of fun but again is it going to have that gravity effect to make me keep coming back to it and I'm pretty well in fact I'm confident that is not the case I cannot see myself um pick pulling this one off the shelf again because it's just too it's just too much for what the game is trying to do um still really Charming aesthetic some cool mechanisms again in terms of the um I like this idea of at the end of the the round essentially you are going to be trying to cash in these um these pirate cards which will all kind of link to different things you've done during the round so it could be have this animal or um you know kill two of these types of animals and so on um and that kind of represented your your Epic Pirate Tales you were telling and whoever told the coolest story would get some bonus points it kind of reminded me of Merlin if you're familiar with that game and the and the cars that you're getting in to achieve um but at the same time by the end of the game you have so many cards in front of you it does feel a little bit random so still I think this game could have done with a lot of tightening up the bolts um it could have done with streamlining a lot of the stuff could be shaved off in my opinion but hey that's just my opinion it's not exactly what I want with a failed game um so hey take that for what it's worth it's just not one that I'm going to go back to explore anymore so that is nassur at number four at number three I have Tower up so this is the polar opposite of a game like Nassau this is probably one of the most elegant games that I've played uh this year so this is a game where you are erecting the skyscrapers on this um Big Town board um trying to increase your kind of influence or your points in the different colors of buildings that you are you know building um the game system as simple as it gets you can either draw a resource card from a from a display of three which will show which bricks you're taking in into into your supply and you have a cap of um 10 braks that you can have at the end of the round and the other option is of course to build the buildings now when you build the buildings you actually have to start a new site on the board so using a a site that isn't hasn't been touched yet you can choose the color as long as it is not the same color of an adjacent building but the cost of that is that not only do you have to spend the Breck to start the the new building you also have to spend a brick of each adjacent building to it and increase their heights and after you've done that you can choose to put a roof of your color on one of the buildings that you've expanded that turn and climb that relevant track that is almost the whole game you know very um streamlined you know almost to the core um and not only are you getting points Again by climbing those tracks trying to keep your roofs on top of each of the buildings at the end of the game because you're going to get some bonus points that way too and but also you have some public objectives that you are racing towards and they're pretty simple you know have presence in each of the five different areas or have two roofs in a single building all these things you'd come to expect with a with a game like this um but the you know the race aspect does come through and of course those more lucrative areas to get to the higher towers and get those extra points does come with a premium of of paying more bricks to do so because of course that area is going to be more densely populated so as it stands again the game system I'm two thumbs up on I'm a little bit apprehensive on is the depth of strategy really there um are the choices a bit too obvious and transparent I'm starting to to lean a the needle is kind of leaning towards yes at this time but because I again I love the gameplay so much I want to explore more and see if those levels of the onion or the layers of the onion start to unravel this kind of reminds me of a game like kind of a hybrid of games actually games like um I think it's called Sky Towers now which was the uh the remaking of metropoles and it also reminds me of a game like Manhattan again very simple rules um but that again that cityscape constantly increasing in the dynamic state of the board does shine through nicely with this one so again this one has the potential to go either way um and we shall see with that but um yeah but in terms of Purity with a designer like um I think it's Sebastian pan who designed this one um at least had a part in that I think that is really transparent and I can see some of his other designs um kind of implanting its DNA on this one so that is Tower up at number three at number two I have fairy ring so this is a familyfriendly kind of Tableau building engine building Style game um with some closed drafting involved as you are choosing one of these cards from your hand all of these cards are different mushrooms and the mushrooms score points in different ways so after you've all simultaneously selected your mushroom you're going to put it on your display either putting the mushroom to the furthest to the left or the fpace to the right of all the mushrooms you've already played or you can even increase the height of the mushrooms as long as they are of the same type normally the more you expand a mushroom or increase the height of a mushroom the yield of points that you can potentially get increases so not only is the mushroom important because the way it scores but it'll also determine how many spaces um in a kind of clockwise order your fairy will move and basically your fairy is going to move across all the mushrooms that not only belong to you but also belong to other players and if the mush if the fairy lands on one of your mushrooms you'll simply score what the mushroom does but if it lands on somebody else's mushroom they will score the points of that mushroom but if you have a matching mushroom type then you will also score those points um you are racing to collect this Mana which is essentially your your sub point and if you get to 20 Mana you'll get a point an actual point um and then of course you only play two rounds of that and whoever's got the most point at the end will win I actually do like the the way that the mushrooms score because although they're all quite simple set collection methods they're actually fairly interesting so some of them for example will say or just score you face value points some of them will score you points based on these little kind of fireflies that you'll collect amongst all your cards some of them won't even need to land on the um on the mushrooms you just get kind of passive points as people pass those particular mushrooms um some of them will score points based on how tall they can get you know the the higher the better and so on so I do quite like the different methods you can take here you know do you want to make a super mushroom and you know hopefully you can force yourself to land on somebody else's and get loads of points each time you do that or do you want to try and spread yourself thin and create quite a wide catchment area so that when fairies starts come in your region you might get hit you know once or twice rather than people bypassing straight away and of course you can get points that way so yeah all in all very Charming very fast simple but kind of clever at the same time and some you know unique me mechanisms in terms of you know being forced to interact with the other players it could be a little bit frustrating at times as you know the movement is fairly rigid and you know if you're moving six spaces and um that six spot is something that you don't really want to land on then it's kind of tough um but you just have to make do with that and the game is so defensive and so fast that the luck Factor didn't really bother me at all and I think it's a a really nice Gateway entry level game that I think it's going to be a slow burner I think people will start to like this one and latch onto it so that is fairy ring a well-deserved number two and finally at number one I have Inori so this definitely a surprise for me now I had heard some good things about this one so I did want to check it out um but after reading the rule book I was thinking thinking oh have I made a mistake here this sounds extremely generic it's a worker placement game and generally speaking these lighter worker placement games I bounced pretty hard off of them because I've seen it all before they're all rinse and repeat but I thought you know let's give it a go and the Box only said 30 minutes so at least it's going to be quick if forgettable um but I was wrong this you know the more I was playing this game the more of the the cleverness started to come to the Forefront and I was enjoying it more and more so again this is a worker placement game where you are collecting resources of these different kind of element types but it's not a standard contract fulfillment Style game where you're collecting this that and then you know cashing them in against the card to get some points it kind of does away with that style of gameplay which definitely I think did this game a huge favor this one you are placing your workers to not only collect the resources but when you go to a worker placement spot that is going to somewhat populate one of these cards and if a card has all of the worker placement spots filled with workers whether that be yourself or other players as long as you are on that card you will score points based on certain resources that you've collected so as the game goes on the kind of disparity on how the resources are spread will start to get differentiate so what it means is that if you know that your opponent is trying to populate say A Fire card but they've got two more spots to fill but you know they've got a ton of fire cards you think think I'm going to avoid that card at all costs um and then hopefully it won't score at all and they've wasted their efforts and not and aren't going to score a point for every say fire token that they have or at least if they want to score it they're going to have to go all in and populate it themselves but there are some other worker placement spots involved where you can take kind of dummy workers and fill them up or do different things like that so that's the how much that's pretty much how the base of the game works you collecting resources trying to complete cards that match the resources that you've collected but there are some little twist on the side so these are the card worker placement spots but they're also inbuilt worker placement spots which will do things which I mentioned such as those um dummy workers they can give you straight up points they can let you convert resources into other resources and so on and what I really like about this part of the game is that when you use one of those inbuilt worker placement spots you will assign a certain color to it uh meaning that whenever you go there in the future you will either get one of those resources of that color or you'll to spend one for the more powerful actions and on top of that the kind of um the stronger actions that aren't necessarily tied to getting resources will actually um come with an area majority thing going on so if you have the most of a particular color you will score endgame points and you really need to try and pull yourself in two directions of you trying to save up your resources to score those endgame points as well as of course trying to do the in-game stuff now the game is only four rounds and it goes lightning fast I think the the forward momentum in this game is terrific um never feels like there's any real downtime very Punchy um it kind of ends before it really begins but it's still feels like extremely satisfying for a 30 minute game you know you do get a full worker placement game experience here for 30 minutes some unique twists um some good interaction again you're forced to sometimes act spitefully but at the same time you're doing things your own interest and just a wonderful harmonious package I can't really think of many games that offer this level of experience in a 30-minute game it is pretty much a full-blown Euro some lots of clever things going on um but still so succinct and it almost fits that filler at bracket which is very impressive now I think if anything this game could fall a bit short because it is so generic looking you know the name isn't exactly inspiring there's no theme Here is very abstracted I it looks pretty Bland it's still attractive but it does look quite Bland um so that could hurt it but again I think quality normally does rise to the top and I think this one could be another slow burner but right now um massively impressed me it's going to be a contender for surprise of the year that's for sure again very apprehensive at first but the more I played it the more it started to reveal itself to me and the more and more I enjoyed it so that is Nori at number one so there we have that concludes the video hopefully you've enjoyed it as much as as I've enjoyed talking about these games if you have please be sure to hit like And subscribe to the channel and check out my other content too um for everybody else I'll see you next time on chairman of the board bye-bye