Top 10 MUST-BUY Games at UKGE 2026!
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Transcript
Hello there. Welcome to board stupid. My name is L and I'm Matt and we are counting down the time and D to UKG 2026.
And Matt, this is a super exciting one because this is our top 10 games to buy
that you can buy a UKG. Yes,
absolutely. And there are thousands of games you can buy.
Yes, of course. Of course. But these are the 10 that we are we going to probably boot our money on it. So, we just want to tell you which one they are and why. And uh we got a a selection of smaller games, bigger game, something that is new, new new new something is slightly less new, but it's the first time that you're going to be able to actually buy at retail. Uh but to find out all of this and to be updated every time we got a new video for the the UKG um preview series, we got a lot of videos coming out. Uh well, hit the subscribe button. Hit the subscribe button, ding the bell, join us after the jump to find out the 10 new games that you can buy at UK GU.
Yeah. And stay till the end for the live giveaway.
News on the big giveaway. Yeah.
So, let's start off this list at number 10 with the smallest game you can buy.
Yeah, because it's really small. It comes in a little thin box like like this. And we're talking about the new games from Hikat Games is going to be released um at UKG and is bookshelf.
So this is part of a series of games that Alicat have released which are kind of dexterity games, you had tinder blocks, you had barbecubes cubes, and now you have bookshelf. Well, this is different from the others, Matt, cuz this is
it's comparative. So the the the ones before they were little they were like competitive. So each player each one on his own trying to stack cubes on the barbecues.
Um that they're not probably my things but I really see how they're really really fun to play and yeah I might have had fun with some dexterity games here and there and barbecues was one of them. So I'm really looking forward to bookshelf because this one is gonna be comparative. What you do is basically booking like building a bookshelf. You you draw in the cards, you're putting cards down, it's going to tell you which elements they need to go, which books and stuff. Once you put everything down, you can put the next card on top of it. And you need to balance up to eight stories, eight levels of of your shelf.
You're going to have a very annoying cat that you will need to move as well shelf by shelf that's going to ruin your plan. Uh but this has been a cooperative. uh it's slightly less uh punishing than you because I see like oh I'm not good at them but with being comparative I can always say that it was your fault there exactly that.
So if you like a little dexterity game something to stick in your bag to take with you maybe check out bookshelf.
Next one uh not a big box game again. So we going uh slightly bigger slightly bigger. Uh it's a games that we covered a few months ago during our height factor. We've been lucky to get a copy and uh and played it, but the UKG is where it's going to go like literally in massive retail and uh is a reimplementation of another game and we're talking about Las Vegas. So, Las Vegas is a very uh famous older game uh from the early 2000s, maybe even the '90s, uh where you are going to be rolling dice and you're having on this area majority thing competing to have the most majority at the different casinos around Las Vegas. Each casino will be dealt a certain amount of money and obviously you want to put your dice, your influence on the casinos with the most money. But there is so much cool emergent gameplay in this because basically if Addy players have the same amount of dice on that casino, they're gone.
They're gone.
Meaning they maybe a lucky third player to steal all of the cash. So there's some great play that can be had with here with deliberately placing your dice on places where your opponents are just to remove everybody's dice. There's some really, really cool stuff. Very simple emerging gameplay. This new version is even better. You can play with more players up to six this time. It's done in like half an hour. It is really fun.
Yeah, it's a it's a really fun uh party games as you say. You explained in minutes with basically what you do, you got a stack of dice, you roll you you roll all of them all together and then you pick one number. Uh for example, you got four ones and five twos and whatever. You decide, okay, I'm going to pick all my twos and putting them on these number two casinos. on the number two casino. So my majority my control of that casino is five. Um all the players going to do that and every time you go back you roll in the rest of the dice and so on and so on. Um but it's as you say it's a little bit mean cuz if I see that when is getting a lot of cash in there, you know what? I'm going to match the number of dices even if I'm not getting anything but I don't want him to take.
Exactly. I don't want you to take that cash. Really cool emerging gameplay. absolute classic from the past that's getting a reprint. Yeah. By Ravensburgger. So you can go pick that up at UKG.
Vivo.
Staying with these small boxes still. Uh we got um a game that came out. It had a weird publishing history. Um u it's a game from Old Play, now published by Old Play. It's a game from 2024. However, it went literally dark for the the entirety of 2024, off dark for 2025, and now all play um as Scott got them putting in the night box and then the smaller one that they they do and uh it's a game that came out just a few months ago like at at like a larger retail and we're talking about Torch Lit. Torch lit is really cool. I really am a fan of what All Player have been doing recently and this is another hit for them. It is a trick taking game that utilizes this sort of dungeon crawling theme where you're essentially really
betting on the number of tricks that you're going to win and that bet will basically encourage you to move your piece down the dungeon. Exactly. And it has this cool mechanisms where depending on if you're winning or losing tricks, you're going to be placing treasure i.e. certain cars from the tricks under some of the dungeon doors. So, you're trying to get your piece to the dungeon door with the most treasure underneath it. And that treasure, of course, is points math with the addition of dragons cuz dragons are cool.
Yeah, you left it. The dragons are the the but um it does um a few very interesting things. Again, you got these things. You're winning a trick. You're moving down the dungeon. at the start of the of each round, you need to kind of like bet on which door uh which level of the dungeon you you want to be. And um and so you win, you you go forwards. If you lose with the lowest card, what you're going to do is decide in which card in that trick you're going to put on under which
one's going to be treasure. Yeah.
So sometimes you want to be like, you know what, I'm going to stick to door number one. I'm not going to win anything. I'm gonna lose every every single trick and just chuck all the treasure under that door. Uh so that is very cool mechanism. Uh the production itself is really really cool. Uh you play like it plays wells as well in two player because you got like um AI um dudes that that just like move around. uh but they did a very like an incredible game such like fun and they push again this the trick taking trend to uh adding a different twist. So if you are out there looking for a trick taking with um that's different from the other with this DNes fantasy theme it torture is definitely your your things to go.
Okay, Matt, let's talk going from dungeons to whales.
There may well be dungeons in Wales. I'm
sure they are. I'm not sure what kind of dungeon, but
I'm sure there are.
I ain't here to judge, but in Wales, there's a lovely seaside town.
Yeah, it's TBI.
Tenbi. Now, Tenbi, as you may know, was almost impossible to get hold of last year, especially at Spiel. There was like 50 copies. They went in 5 minutes. now much wider.
No, there were at at UKG last year. They brought a lot of copies and they still all of them
in 5 minutes and this year um they bring in even more I guess.
So there's a much wider release, so more print, more 10b. So if you didn't get the chance to pick up that game, you can now go to the Mighty Board stand cuz Mighty Boards pick up 10B uh to go go and get it. And 10B is a lovely town building card game. It was one of our um uh like most like surprises at at UKG last year cuz it it was when the the game was still in the publish. Um uh and we we fell in love with this like um Tableau build tableau city building with this fantastic graphics and uh with this very interesting drafting system. Um, everything about the game is is nice and is very cool and we we've been playing it a lot since last year. So, we're really happy that it's getting this wider release and this is going to be the first time like UK like wide release and you can definitely get your hands on the copies of of Tambi the expansion if you don't have them and so that is a fantastic
there is loads of depth in that game especially with the expansions. is it utilizes what I call the king domino system where you can reserve a later effect to be more powerful but you go last in turn order. So there's some really interesting again emerging gameplay from that system which is really really fantastic. Great great game. Definitely worth checking out. Uh it's 10B. Okay, Matt. So next one on the list, we're kind of cheating. It's not one game. It's not two games. It's
it's three games.
Three games. But that's okay because we're very excited about this new series.
Yeah. So, this is from the guys at Inside Up Games and they it was a Kickstarter probably a couple of years ago and now it's going like full full retail and it's what they call the Twisted Realms trilogy. Uh that is is made of these three games that are all living in the same uh environment of Fantast Yeah. Yeah. in the same universe and they're going to be uh first one is stag of roll then we got crits and tricks and then we got thieves of eldrris well Eldrris is like this fantastical city or whatever um what it is but um let's start with with the first one let's start with thieves of eldries so what is steal for eldries is a one to six players of um a hidden movement where you trying to steal
steal from the denisens of the city in the market while also trying to discover who your opponent thieves are.
Yeah. So, cool stuff. There's this cool things. Well, um you're going to have the boards made of a lot of people like a grid of cards,
a grid of cards, and you basically you got your secret identity. You're going to be one of those people and you're going to manipulate the boards to move cards around and basically still steal the deal the other stuff. But at the same times you don't want to be too obvious because otherwise the other players will gonna find you out which one is your position and might
and uh bet seems really cool. A little bit of hidden movement interesting game. Yeah.
Um we also have
crits and tricks which you might imagine is kind of a
trick trick. It's a trick taking
but it's a trick taking with an RPG uh twist. So um as all the the trick taking games, you will have cards that will have their own suits and you need to to play normal trick taking. However, the cards themselves, they're not going to have any number of them and the number will be um uh decided by the dice that you're going to roll. So at the start of the route, you're rolling um x amount of dices and the numbers that you got available are the number that then you can use for that this or that card. For example, I got a a yellow and I got an eight and I play that and I say this is a yellow eight.
That's not a yellow eight
and and and and so on. That's really cool. And on top of that, some of the cards instead of using them with the with the dice, they got like a special powers. Uh so it is a a trick taking with a with an RPG to it
and with some cool special powers in it which we we really like.
Yeah. Um so this one looks pretty cool as well. And the last one that we want to talk about it is um Tug of Raw. So this is a two-player dueling game kind of. Well, it's a two-player lane battling game. Yes. So something that we've seen lots of before. And in fact, when you look at the map, what you're going to be doing is going to be competing over various regions of the map, playing uh cards in each region for for influence. In fact, it may be somewhat analogous to something like Almighty, which you've seen before, but this also utilizes kind of a bidding system where you're going to be getting cards and auctioning.
Yeah. Basically, how do you get in the cards for um adding influence to the to the different zone? It's just going to be basically a bidding at the start of the each round. There's going to be group of cards that the different players will have to bid to get this or that card. But of course, the more you bid, the less you're going to get in the next turns because you just have a um a fixed amount of like beating cards. Something like um think about um um El Grande uh stuff like that where once you spend your highest beating one is is gone. So you cannot outbeat other people's in the in the next round. Um then the cards will have special effect as well. And you want to do this like divided in these five different territories. Um, you want to basically have the have the majority there. Uh, sounds really cool. Sounds reminds me a lot. Yeah. Almighty mixed with something uh from like wood.
Wood. Oh yeah.
You got this this car games the the it's a very fantasy um team. So
So we kind of cheated here with the three games. But the thing is we're really excited about this series.
Yeah. So the production looks absolutely stunning. So you got each boxes of the games going where the the publisher come up with their own universe and they fit different games in the same universe. Uh so you got yeah taco ro that is just this like two play
conqu game of conquest. You got um trick and crit and tricks that is the uh it's the taburn game that the people in that universe plays. And then you got the
thieves of elders. We just stealing.
Yeah.
People robbing as well.
It's It's really cool. We're really excited about it. And um
Matt, if you pick one, which one sounds more exciting?
Yeah. I think to me, Tug of Raw sounds really cool.
Uh for me, I think probably Thus Eldridge, but but I think they all sound interesting.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, we're really looking forward to this trilogy.
Wayne, uh do you remember playing uh Destruction Derby on the PlayStation, many years ago? images of polygons flying everywhere. Yes, big time polygons. Love Yeah, love destruction derby.
And uh yeah, so this year we got this new game from the guys at Albi that is it's not destruction derby, it's crush derby. Probably like legally distinct from
legally distinct from destruction target. Uh but this game seems to be um sitting in somewhere between um in that space where where you got hit, you got thunder of vendetta, you got joy ride
somewhere somewhere in there in that space probably more toward the joy ride or what what it looks like but
it's it seems like doing something quite different from all the others.
This basically seems like a rea battler with
with cards with cars. So, you're going to be riding around trying to smash up your opponents uh while also trying to stay in one piece with your car. Yeah. Utilizing what looks like a very interesting action selection system.
Yeah. You're going to have on your board, you're going to have this um kind of like three big cogs that each round you will have to turn depending on which gear you are. Uh but as soon as you you turn it the available action on the cog that you turn are going to change and it's going to change of course the other two connected. So there is this kind of like um almost like well you need to think ahead of which which action do you need and you need to manipulate your board in to determine what what you want to do. On top of that you got this uh modular board where there is going to be changing with different terrain different things going on on it. Yeah, they're going to make you explode, jump, uh or just simply crush into another ones. That's what you want to do. U now, um Albby came out, uh last year with another, um car game, carish game that was dirt and dust that we were really excited, but it left a little bit of um sour taste. Not sour taste, but we were expecting Yeah, we were expecting more out of it. Uh, but this one looks way more what I thought that would
More way more interactive. Love the idea of Destruction Barbie as a board game. That sounds cool as heck and we can't wait to get
Yeah. Yeah. to to crush into each other.
Yeah.
So, next on our list is a game that was almost impossible to find at SN 2025.
One of the hottest one of the hottest games. Absolutely. And this is Orloy the Prague Astronomical Clock. Matt, this is getting a wider release.
Yeah, cuz the um the original publisher and with the designing teams from Perroll Locoo Games, uh they sold out every single copy that they had at Essen. It was very very difficult to find after that. Uh but the V was like unlike what what I see. It looks very much at the VIA game and uh yes they they got it now and now they are publishing this is going to be like a big retail so everybody can buy that
wider release
everybody can find a copy opportunity if you were interested in this game but you found it impossible to find which is like many people this is now your opportunity to go and pick up and buy that game like everything else we recommend you try before you buy like with all of the games on this you can do that uh some people absolutely love this game some thought it was a bit too wide. But this will be depending on what you like. Yeah.
But this is a wide modern Euro game.
Yes, it is. And it's heavier. It's on the end of the scale of the of the of the heavier game.
This is expert game.
Uh there's a lot going on. There is it's it's almost like toward the Lassera style style games.
Um so, um it looks beautiful. The production looks beautiful with this like rotating boards and stuff. There is production is absolutely stunning. Is it for you if you're looking to buy DC heavy game?
Have a look. But yeah, definitely if you can try to demo it somewhere. I'm shooting the open gaming or stuff. There's going to be someone someone playing it. We recommend at least having a look before. There is a lot of content already on YouTube and stuff. Find out cuz it's it's is on the expensive side is u on the heavier side. So stunning.
Absolutely.
Another games that um is getting a wider release cuz it's just been delivered to to the backers and now it's coming out like fully retail and you're going to if you haven't backed it, you're going to have a chance to buy it at the show. Uh we say delivered because we are talking about Container. Container is a game from 2007 nearly 20. It's nearly 20 year anniversary for this game. is one of those Grao games that was out of print forever. It had a couple of different versions
and now All Play have come in with a very affordable version of this game. The the prior version of this game was like 80 or 90 or something. This is like
£30 you can get this for.
Yeah. So way more accessible.
Way more accessible in a lovely production in an allplay sized box. Well, one of the bigger all play boxes, but still really nicely condensed. And Container is a fabulous economic old school, old-fashioned style Euro game. So interactive, a little bit mean, but kind of
subtly mean where the decisions that you make and the economy that you set is going to impact everyone around the table. This is a fantastic game where there is a fixed amount of money in the game that is going to flow between the players depending on the decisions made. It is essentially a game about your own shipping company getting uh containers and getting those sold uh and then getting the most cash at the end because cash is king in the shipping world. Um I am very very excited about this. I have my copy at home right now. Matt are going to play this tomorrow.
Yeah, absolutely. So we can't wait to to put that down on the board. And again, it's a game that is Yeah, you say it's almost 20 years old,
but it plays like it it came out last year. It's one of those eternal games. It's been impossible to get a hold of and this is your chance. Thoroughly recommend you grab a copy if you can.
So Matt, on the channel we love a western theme and this is a game we've been excited about and then we couldn't buy it for reasons of controversy.
Well, there's been a lot of controversy about this game, but all the controversies have been put resolved. Apparently the new artwork has been has been worked out and la uh but it's uh and we're talking about ace of spades.
It's the ace of spades.
Um what is ace of spades? Uh ace of spades is a one to two player most likely a solo a solo game where you can play with two player. Uh where you are a cowboy fighting the spawns of hell.
That is so metal.
It's so metal. You're a cowboy fighting hell for that's super cool. But this is taking the form essentially of utilizing what we know from poker mechanisms
and utilizing that a in a kind of a boss battling enemy fighting type system.
Yeah.
Yeah. We're going to be going through spawns of hell one after the other increasingly more difficult trying to survive playing the right hands to destroy the enemies.
Yeah. Each turn you're going to get your your hands of cards and depending on what good poker hands you got, you're going to do damage to the um to the to the spawn. So, for example, a double pair will do x amount of damage. If you got a full house, you're going to do a lot of damage. If you got a poker, you're going to do like the mega crit crit one. Um and and so on like this. And it's going to it's going to have this like hand management system that is kind of like your life points at the end of the day. Uh so every time you don't have good points, you can swap cards, but then your your health basically is going down. So you need to manage these things. And of course, then the game is uh you can make it more difficult adding more spawns and uh adding like different different monsters. Um this looks really cool. Again, it's coming out as well with with that zombie um uh expansion because the game is 2 years old, but for the controversy that he had, they had to change the artwork because of some uh um stuff. Yeah. Some some some bad stuff.
Basically, they they had to change it that it's been resolved and um it's basically the the the expansion was already ready. So, you can buy both at the same time.
Buy both. Let's see. You got cowboys, you got hellspawn, you got zombies, you got poker.
Ah, what else?
It sounds It sounds super cool. Like a one to two play. It goes in that category. It's like um unstoppable if you if you played it. That is very much a solo game, but you can play with a with another person too, adding more uh more threats to the to the deck. But this is sounds super cool. We we can't wait to to play this one. So, uh, last one on the list is a game that, um, I'm really excited. I know you're excited as well. Uh, it's very much a U game, but I'm very excited as well, cuz it's, uh, we're talking about the new games from the Edgeimonic, uh, project games, the ones that brought us Germany. Um, and this one is now ready for retail. They're going to have limited quantities at the show. And we're talking about World Order. Now, world order is a game of geopolitical stability and the slow balance and careful balance of power between major global players like the European Union and the United States etc.
China exactly and that's where we had this back in the days before it was all of this cardage that we have right now where things were had lots of diplomacy power. How does Yeah. Well, how does each country influence and you know project their power on the world stage? Do they do it through soft power and diplomacy or do they do it through having their military bases in different countries? What sort of negotiations can you make? This sounds
fascinating. It's u it's again it's uh that this social like political games each player is going to play um uh one of the the four superpowers in the game is going to be the US, Russia, Europe or or China and uh you're basically trying to with with hand management is trying to influence this or that areas. You need to produce goods. You can uh um um exchange goods and make it more more profitable. Yeah. and and all of this in this very like fine-tuned political system where everything that you do on the board is going to have repercussion for the rest of the player. Um, now this is super exciting because first of all it's a very it's it's similar to a Germany but it's quite different at the same time. uh you will recognize some of the spirit of the uh of the game. However, made in a more accessible streamline way ever so slightly, but yes.
Yeah. But a Germany is uh is a beast to the game.
Is a beast while this one promised to be slightly slightly lighter. I'm not saying lighter. I'm say slightly lighter.
Slightly shorter. Uh so shorter instead of 4 hours to 3 hours. But still still so the game is set a very specific period in history in 2010 where you had historically the uh big influence of the United States which has started to become more shared between those other superpowers and what's very exciting about the what hegemonic project does is how they utilize like actual academic political theories.
Super cool.
Yeah. In to make this exciting interesting gameplay experience where you get to simulate geopolitics which is just a fascinating thing to try and do.
Yeah. again more on the obvious side but it's got this like very cool like study behind there that that that made the fortune of a game like a Germany and now they they scaling this up outside of one single country to have a on a on a global scale um they learned from the from the feedback on the first of their first game in Germany the was a little bit
too complex for some of the people so they streamlined some of the process uh we can't wait for for for seeing this finally in the final shape. We saw a few versions.
We've been excited about it for a long time. Yeah, a long time. If you think of it from World War copies run,
save one for me.
So, Matt, that takes us to the end of this video where some of the most exciting new games that you can buy at UK GE 2026. And we focus this on the newest of the new as best as we can. But, as we say, there are thousands of games that you can buy from years before as well. Go make check the list on BG on the UKG websites. There are so many other games but we can't be here for for hours to talk.
No, exactly. We had to focus on something. So,
exactly. Uh, but very important. Uh, we want to talk to you about the live giveaways that we're going to do on Saturday at 5:00 p.m. at the cube outside the main entrance of the um of the expo at the NEC. Uh just because this year we gonna do what we done last year.
Yeah.
But bigger
even bigger. We got even more games to give away. Over 50 games. Some of them absolutely huge.
In order to enter our giveaway totally free, but we got a couple of different ways. Matt's got the tickets here. You can just turn up 5:00 p.m. outside the cube on Saturday at UK Games Expo. If you're a subscriber, just tell us you're a subscriber and you get one ticket. Or even more fun, if you can find us during the halls of the expo on the Friday or Saturday during the day during the expo halls, come up to us again, tell us you're a subscriber and you'll get
two tickets.
That's your reward for finding us like where's Wally? That's the game. If you can do that, twice the chance to win. And finally, if you're a member of the Patreon, which you can check out below, you get three tickets.
So, even more. and on the Patreon. Go and check it cuz we already started doing some more indepth videos where we talk about way more many more games that are coming out that you can sort of stuff. We're going to have all the exclusive stuff for the um from from the show and uh you can check it out. We got live we got giveaways that we do monthly on the on the Patreon. We got the secret WhatsApp group. We got a lot of stuff. So you can check that and um yeah, but again for the live giveaway is free. You just need to be a subscriber. So, hit the subscribe button now. Do it now. Come at 5:00 p.m. at the cube outside the Saturday at 5:00 p.m. Not not later than that. It's going to be very very
and uh or find us in the hall to support two tickets that basically you can win two games
potentially you could.
Other than that, check out the rest of our videos. Stay tuned for our UKG content and we'll see you at the show. Ciao. What's the pink game we'll use for you and me? What's