10 Board Games with the best first player rules!

0:00 Hi, Bo. Who's on first? No. What's on second? I don't know who's on third. Do you know who's going first? You are. Okay. Well, B's going to go first. But these next games have some really peculiar first player rules. Uh, but let's also just talk about the games themselves, too. First one's not a little too out of the ordinary. Cascadia, a tile laying game where you're trying to do some pattern matching to score points, wants the last player to have seen an animal that appears in the game. Unfortunately, Bo, there's no dogs in Cascadia. Would have to be a bear or a elk or a salmon or maybe a hawk. We do have hawks around here. So, that means I'm going first.

0:48 Sorry, Bo. In Lost Ruins of Arnack, a worker placement style game where you're going on an adventure, the last person who's been to some place they've never been before gets to go first. Yeah, we've done that a lot of times. Me and Bo like to travel, especially to Packs Unplugged where you'll be able to find us this year. I know. Yeah, we're going to go to Packs Unplugged. But Lost Runes of Arnac, I I've played this a few times. I've talked about this a few times where I'm like, I'm iffy on it. I played it again recently with the Twisted Path expansion and still felt the same way. It didn't feel as punishing not going as far up on the tracks, but I did still get destroyed in that game. Like true Viking glory bow is in Champions of Midgard. The last person to have getting glory is the person who gets to go first. I mean, I guess he's going first, but he's going to go away first. In Champions of Midgard, you're going to be rolling dice in order to defeat some monsters, but in order to do that, you need to gather all the resources that you need, which you're going to do through worker placement.

1:45 two very favorite mechanics that I love. As well as the area on top is the mountains of monsters that are going to come down and defeat you. Or you can go shipping to the seas and see about the monsters in the seas. Two different sides of the board. They're going to attack in different ways and it just keeps the game moving nice and fluid. And it's actually now just about to start fulfilling its 10th anniversary edition. It was one of the first games I'd ever played. Hats off to you, Traurion. The last person to wear a top hat goes first. Now, this one is an incredibly heavy game of resource management and worker placement as well as planning. So, you're going to be going around the area to try and gather all the resources you need in order to perform magic tricks. You like tricks or treats? Trick or treat. Treat. Okay.

2:32 I've owned this game and unfortunately sold it before we even got to play it. I have managed to play it a few times though of other people's copies. I do enjoy this game, but it is a very heavy Euro that a lot of people are frightened by by all of the moving parts. It is definitely a game that's going to take you quite a long time, but I think it's totally worth it. And this one also got another reprint uh a couple of years ago with a deluxe collector's edition that comes in an even bigger box, although not without a top hat to see who can go first. Wondrous Creatures has been on my many of my lists. I love this game. I just played the new Winterfell expansion, which is totally worth it. It completely changes up the game. It makes the uh variability of the animal scoring a lot easier. And the first player here is the person who has befriended the most unusual animal here in Toronto.

3:25 That's probably going to be a raccoon. Anacrony got an Essentials edition a couple of years ago which streamlined the game a little bit into a smaller box, but I had the original big box one with the minis. Was actually the first minis I had ever painted. Uh, and they were beautiful. But in this game, you are traveling uh through time. You're going to ask for resources from your future self that you then have to pay back before the end of the game or you're going to lose points. Throughout the game, you're going to be getting points by completing objectives. Surprise, surprise. uh in this roundabout way of gathering resources based off of which mechs you have available to you and how well you planned in advance. Another one of those heavier style of games. This one it's still a little lackluster though for me. We played the Essentials Edition when it came out. Um it's still not in my collection anymore after I painted it and got rid of it. Now, I am not one for avocado, but in Trio, which is the English version of Nana, which is one of my favorite card games. The last person to have ate something with avocado in it, goes first. This one is a memory game where you are going to ask for a person's highest or lowest card or reveal your own highest or lowest card or look at the center table, one of the cards that is there. Your goal is to try and find three of the exact same number, and then you'll win that set. Once you've won that set, you want to win three sets or you want to win the pair to that set that you have won. That is going to add up or subtract together to equal seven. Or if you're really lucky, and in Nana, the first player is the person who is the luckiest, you can play

4:55 by winning just one set of the sevens. But because you can only ask for the highest and lowest cards in someone's hand, your hands have to be arranged from lowest to smallest, and the sevens are smack dab in the middle. Getting into some really cool and interesting ones. dinosaur island. You're going to be building out your own little dinosaur theme park, making sure that your dinosaurs don't eat your visitors as you try and research more in order to gain points. Person who goes first in this one, of course, the last one who abstracted DNA from a mosquito that was encased in amber. And if you can't find anybody that meets that case is the last person who's gone to a theme park. It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's an unidentified object in the sky. And that's how you're going to determine the first player in SETI. I have owned this game twice. I have sold this game twice.

5:41 The expansion definitely makes it better. You have seen me talk about this before. You can see a playthrough of both the base and the expansion. Maybe not the base. I think we did both uh here on the channel uh from a way back uh as well as we saw the expansion early at UKGE last year. I would definitely recommend it with the expansion. It's still a great game. I just don't think the theme really works for me. And it's one of those ones where you need to look into a couple of the different strategies or be someone who plays your games quite a lot and frequently that you discover those strategies on your own. If you go into this just uh lazy fair and play it, you might not have the greatest time because if you're playing this with someone who does know and understand the game, they are going to crush you. All right. And number one on this list, probably the most favorite and the most peculiar one is Sulken, the Mayan calendar. Whoever last made a sacrifice goes first. And at the end of the game, in case of a tie, whoever is most willing to be sacrificed next wins the game. That's uh peculiar, but the game itself is actually also very unique. It has one, two, three, four, five wheels that are going to spin. And on one part of your turn, you can place your workers out. Do your worker placement actions. Or after on the next time it's your turn, you can retrieve workers. The longer you let your workers stay on the wheel, the further it's going to go, and that's the resources you're going to get. Then they're going to convert those resources into availabilities to go up the tracks um or get yourself some food. Um this is really cool. The

7:14 game itself is not that complex, but it is hard sometimes to wrap your head around because of the planning is is a little bit more than a particular normal planning game where you could just like I'm going to plan this out and and do it. This one is like oh the it's going to rotate and on someone else's turn I expected them to rotate but they actually pulled and so now it's my turn again and they didn't rotate and I actually needed it to go one more space forward so it didn't. Now, people have done amazing jobs customizing these games over the years uh be with the painting of the Mayan calendar wheels as well as the game itself comes with really cool components like those little crystal skulls. Amazing game. Highly recommend this one and it's an older one. Now, one honorable mention that when I was reading through this, I laughed at this, but it's not really the best first player condition. That is a fee for Odin. It says, "Randomly determine who receives the first player moose." So, I thought that was funny as a Canadian. Let me know in the comments down below what you is your favorite first player rule. And we will see you next time. Bye-bye.