My Holiday Gift Guide to Board Games! - 10 Games to Level Up Your Collection!

are you looking to take your game collection to the next level maybe you've spent a lot of time in covid wearing out your katan board and you're ready to try something new or maybe you tried bringing cards against humanity to the family function last year and it wasn't a big hit with grandma well either way if you're looking for some games this holiday season that'll be new to you but still feel familiar enough to just jump right in and start playing then might i suggest [Music] hi i'm alex and welcome to might i suggest a game a channel devoted to helping you find the perfect board game the holidays are just around the corner and what kind of board game sommelier would i be if i didn't give you all some of my favorite recommendations for the year so i'm gonna break it down for you my first official might i suggest a game holiday gift guide now if you do a quick search you'll find that there's a bajillion of these holiday gift guides so i'm trying to do mine a little bit differently i'm gonna take 10 of the most popular games out there including many that might make it to your table this holiday season and based on those games i'm gonna give you my suggestions for games that i think are a natural next step for your collection so grab a pen and get ready to update that gift list and while you're at it why not take a second to subscribe and hit that little bell button right next to it so you can get notified when i post new content i've had a lot of new subscribers join the family lately and i'm really looking forward to adding a whole bunch more during the holiday season so come join the party anyways let's get into it will one of these games on my holiday gift guide be the perfect game for you let's find out shall we [Music] all right we're starting off with the heavy hitters here since it's released in 1995 settlers of catan has become one of the most popular games of all time selling over 32 million copies worldwide which means there's a pretty good chance that you either own it or you've played it at some point now considering how widespread and well-known katan is you'd think it'd be safe to assume that it's also an amazing game right that's not entirely accurate well okay it's partially accurate at least settlers of catan has introduced thousands of people to the board gaming hobby and has taught them key mechanics that have helped them grasp all kinds of different games but saying that katan is the best game out there is like saying that a 95 camry is the best car ever sure it set the standard in its day but things have progressed since then and they've built on the formula that made it so successful so let's get you into something a little newer a 2011 title that's been around long enough to show that it has a lot of staying power it's the castles of burgundy in the castles of burgundy you'll be rolling dice and collecting hex-shaped tiles to build a contain-shaped kingdom on your own personal board the look and feel of the game even down to the artwork is really reminiscent of katan and i've found that this familiar setting helped players that are leveling up from katan feel right at home castles of burgundy also improves on some of my biggest gripes about katan like dice mitigation and spiteful player interaction let me explain have you ever had a game of kitan where you're convinced that you're set up for success you've settled on some great numbers and you should have plenty of resources lined up and then nobody ever rolls those numbers even though you're strategizing with probability at the end of the day the dice roll is still random the distribution isn't always what it should be and that can be kind of frustrating in castles of burgundy though they introduce a mechanic called workers a resource that you can collect throughout the game and then spend to either add or subtract one from your die roll this helps gives the frequent dice rolling a little bit of a strategic side that'll give you a leg up when you need it most while still maintaining that fun game of chance that makes the game interesting another thing that i think castles of burgundy improves upon is that mean player interaction that katana is sometimes known for catan is notorious for allowing people to punish the player that jumps out to an early lead they become a target that everyone steals from and nobody wants to trade with and that's no fun the scoring of castles of burgundy is much more multi-dimensional than contam and because of the sheer amount of victory points being thrown around not to mention the many opportunities for end game scoring objectives it's almost impossible to know who's really ahead at any given point in time this frees up everyone to just focus on playing their best game and removes a lot of that hostility that can turn katan into a war zone all in all i think the castles of burgundy is the perfect next step for someone who's out there wondering if there's more to life than katan the mechanics are slightly more complex but because it shares so many of them with katan you're not starting from zero which you would be for many games of this weight so if you love settlers of catan but you feel like you've mastered it or you're just ready to take that next step into the wide world of board games then might i suggest the castles of burgundy [Music] [Applause] the next one we'll talk about is the classic train game ticket to ride an amazing family weight game that's become a household staple in recent years now don't get me wrong i'm a huge ticket to ride fan and i always enjoy it when we get it out to the table especially when i get that longest train bonus but here's the thing because the board's so big and there's so many of those awesome little plastic train pieces as soon as you have kids running around the house during the holidays this game turns into a disaster waiting to happen don't don't don't touch that why not if someone even just accidentally bumps the board it could take half an hour to reset everything and remember how many points everyone had not to mention that those trains are a mega choking hazard so how do you solve this logistical problem without removing too much of the soul of the game well let me introduce you to metro x metro x takes those beloved trains and puts them underground and replaces those plastic bits with a white board and a marker instead of building a transcontinental railroad you'll be creating a compact subway system with enough junctions and crossings to make your head spin the heart of the game is the same you're connecting routes and reaching destinations to gain points that'll help you win at the end of the game but the way you do it is slightly different instead of collecting sets of colors and playing them to build a route you'll instead be flipping cards over with different numbers these numbers will tell you how far along the route you can travel now the tricky part here is that the number isn't just for you it's for everyone which means that every player has an equal opportunity to build the perfect subway network one of the most annoying things that can happen in ticket to ride is when you need one specific color to complete a route and it takes forever to pop up in the market you don't have to worry about that in metro x you can fill out spaces on any of the routes from the very beginning of the game and these decisions are the ones that end up affecting the final outcome metro x is a much smaller and much lighter game that carries the joy of ticket to ride in a package that you could bring on an actual train and enjoy i don't think it replaces ticket derived by any means but i do think that it's a worthy substitute for those that don't have the time or the space to get all those plastic trains to the table so if you love ticket to ride and you're looking for something to add to your collection that's a little quicker and a little bit more mobile then might i suggest metro x [Music] ah yes we meet again old friend clue is the quintessential deduction game and its proven formula of creating a simple yet replayable whodunit has made this game a nostalgic icon everybody loves choosing their characters i'm a mr green guy myself and who doesn't love solving a good mystery but you know what people don't love they don't love having to roll and move across a board only to have someone solve the case faster than them because they rolled all sixes this roll and move mechanic and clue seems really arbitrary to me so i wanted to find a game with less of that and more of the good stuff so what is a game with less dice and more characters less murder and more deduction look like well it looks like picture perfect in picture perfect instead of 6 main characters there's 14 and the best part is you don't even have to choose your favorite because each player gets their own individual set now i think the publishers may have missed an opportunity to name all these characters but somehow i think it's even more fun to come up with names on your own like fancy boy colonel mustard or tracy ellis ross anyways the goal of the game is to learn as much as you can about each guest so that you can place them on your board to take the perfect photo each character's preferences are different based on their three bits of private information hidden in an envelope sound familiar you'll start the game with information on a few of the characters but you'll need to swap and gather more envelopes as the game goes on to really see the bigger picture see what i did there at the end of the game you'll reveal each envelope one by one and whoever met the guest's requirements best wins the game now i know what you're thinking alex there's no murder in this game yeah exactly you want murder sure this game won't make a movie as compelling as that tim curry masterpiece we're trying to find out who killed him and where and with what there's no need to shout i'm not shouting all right i am i'm shouting i'm shocking i'm sure but if murder was the only reason that you like clue then maybe you should seek help picture perfect has those elements of clue that have made it a staple for so many years it's got a memorable cast of characters it cranks the deduction all the way up to 11 and all without ever having to roll a single die it's just as simple to pick up as clue and the variability of potential objectives means that every game plays differently so if you loved clue growing up but you're tired of having to roll yourself all the way to the kitchen to accuse professor plum of using the wrench then might i suggest picture perfect [Music] now i don't want it to sound like i hate rolling dice i have nothing against dice who said i had something against dice dicer dice you know am i saying the word dice too much dude i think he's doing the dice thing too much anyways if you want to talk dice let's talk about that classic pushy look dice game yahtzee now yahtzee is a fun dice chucking game with a little bit of strategy to give you the illusion of control but for the most part you're at the mercy of the dice and it usually is the luckiest player that ends up on top now if you want to take the next step in this roll and write genre and you want to get a little bit more strategy involved so that it feels more like a puzzle and less like a craps table then let me introduce you to that's pretty clever that's pretty clever or gonchon clever for all of our german board game enthusiasts is a fantastic roland rite that improves upon the classic rolling the dice and filling out your boxes formula popularized by yahtzee that's pretty clever takes the five dice from yahtzee adds a sixth one and gives you all different colors to help you make combos throughout the game the combos are actually my favorite part of the game unlike yahtzee as you're marking off boxes on your sheet some of those boxes will trigger an effect that can allow you to fill out more boxes re-roll some of the dice take extra actions etc etc this means that even though you're still at the mercy of whatever's been rolled you have more opportunities to fill out boxes even if they never show up on the dice another cool thing about this game is that everyone is involved in every turn unlike yahtzee where you have to watch everyone else roll before it's your turn again and that's pretty clever you'll get to take the value of one of the three dice that gets discarded every turn which means that you increase your chances of getting that perfect number every round all in all that's pretty clever feels like if yahtzee had an older brother that went to college got his degree and didn't develop a gambling addiction it's a really fun puzzle that keeps you involved on every turn but plays quickly enough to not overstay its welcome so if you're looking to gamble go to vegas but if you're looking for a game that improves upon the yahtzee formula with simple strategies and cool combos then might i suggest that's pretty clever [Music] [Applause] now it's time to talk about chess the og board game an abstract classic that has endured for millennia maybe you got back in the chest because you watched the queen's gambit this year but after a little while the daunting nature of having to learn a bunch of different openings to even be the slightest bit competitive got too much for you chess has been around forever and because of that people have gotten so good at it that it often feels more like a mental contest than a fun game this is supposed to be fun and now i'm not having fun so is there an abstract strategy game that feels chest-like but is more simple more approachable and more fun well let me introduce you to hive hive is about as chess adjacent as you can get you've got a duel between the black pieces and the white pieces each of the pieces has variable movement powers just like in chess but in hive instead of playing on a grid you make your own board you'll be placing your bug themed hexes adjacent to one another in an attempt to fully surround and capture their queen the concept is the same as chess and the objective is the same so really the only thing that needs to be learned is the different movements of the bugs in your supply now don't let this simplicity fool you hive is by no means a simpleton's game in fact it requires a ton of strategy and forethought to be able to attack and defend simultaneously but compared to chess and its seemingly infinite possibilities hive is just the right amount of abstract thinking to feel like a challenge while still being fun so if you enjoy chess but you've come to terms that you're never gonna be a grandmaster and you're just looking to have a little bit more fun than might i suggest hive all right we're halfway there and this christmas sweater is getting hot so let's keep going [Music] [Applause] it's time now to talk about word games and although there may be a bunch of games in this genre that make it to your table over the holidays like bananagrams categories or boggle i thought that the og scrabble would be a good one to talk about now i like word games i'm a fan of spelling i was runner-up in my elementary school spelling bee three years in a row but scrabble is a game that i can say objectively takes way too long to play and unless you're planning to flip a sam timer on everyone's turn then you're probably looking for a game that feels like scrabble but in a more digestible format now some of these word games that i mentioned before are decent replacements and they're definitely fun to play but they also do tend to be speed based and therefore very chaotic in nature i don't wanna have to put on workout clothes and open a new stick of deodorant every time i want a spell ain't nobody got time for that so is there a game that captures the relaxed nature of scrabble without taking multiple hours to complete well let me tell you about q-less i did a video on this super fun and super portable game a while back so if you want to know more details about the gameplay and info on where to buy this game then hit the link in the corner essentially cues is a mini solo version of scrabble where you roll the different letter dice and try to make your very own scrabble formation of words that are three letters or longer the game requires no board no bag no scoring just your brain and somewhere to roll those dice my wife and i love to pass this game back and forth even over dinner it requires enough concentration to be a challenging puzzle but not enough to prevent you from having a good conversation you still get that scrabble satisfaction of making the perfect word but it's in a time frame that's incredibly manageable and oftentimes so short that it'll make you want to play another round it also comes in this amazing little altoid tin which makes it a great game for travel and an ideal stocking stuffer plus it's just a little passion project a small business started by a guy that had an idea and just wanted to put it out in the world i can guarantee that you'll feel better buying from him than you will from amazon so if you love scrabble and other word games but you're looking for a way to play that's low stress and doesn't require such a big commitment then might i suggest cueless [Music] [Applause] ah here it is the infamous trivial pursuit another case of a great idea with a terrible execution let me ask you when was the last time you made it to the end of a game of trivial pursuit without either cheating or giving up or throwing the game that's what i thought trivial pursuit has been the gold standard for trivia games for forever but when you actually take a look at the game with a discerning eye you'll end up with more questions than answers mostly why why why why why why why do you have to roll a die to figure out how smart you are and more importantly why do you always know the answers to all the other questions but when your question comes up is the hardest question of all time needless to say this ancient formula needs some updating so let me introduce you to half truth half truth is a trivia game created by ken jennings of jeopardy fame and richard garfield the creator of magic the gathering and if hearing those two names together doesn't get you excited well we are not the same but that's okay even if you don't know about these two nerd legends you should still know about half truth the idea behind half truth is that each trivia card in the game has six answers on it three correct and three incorrect players will play simultaneously meaning that unlike trivial pursuit everyone gets to answer every question and you'll score points based on how many correct answers you get you could try to guess just one of the correct answers or go all in with three but be careful if you get even just one answer wrong you lose all your points for that turn now the best part of this is even if you don't know anything about the subject you still have a 50 50 chance to guess one right and score points oh yes that's very good i like that half truth is a trivia game the way it's meant to be played it's quick it's fun and it doesn't punish you too hard if you don't know something the trivia is obscure enough and doesn't fall into a specific category like its predecessor so that means that every game there's a pretty good chance that something will pop up that you're an expert in so if you enjoy trivia but you can't stomach another three hour session of trivial pursuit where you lose on a question about a movie star from the 50s then might i suggest half truth [Music] [Applause] let's talk about code names this hidden word party game has taken the world by storm since its release in 2015 but there's a reason why i put the word party in air quotes i mean sure the idea is great and all and i've definitely had fun playing it in the past but you can't deny that if your clue giver has any form of analysis paralysis at all then you might as well pick up a new hobby because you're going to be waiting forever to get your clue plus the fact that this game is competitive and you're always trying to beat the other team adds even another layer of pressure onto the clue giver i don't know about you but i'm not looking for that kind of pressure at any party i'm going to i'm more of a lloyd christmas guy i'm gonna hang by the bar put out the vibe okay like i said before the idea is great but the execution could be improved and a game that i think improves upon this formula is so clover so clover just came out this year and i love its cooperative approach to the hidden word mechanics similar to just one if you've ever played that but with more of a team vibe in so clover everyone gets the chance to be the clue giver so you're always staying involved and more importantly that super slow clue giver only has to go once this game is all about word association in a similar way to code names but instead of trying to go over the bajillion different connections on the codenames grid you just have a couple of pairs of words that you have to get people to guess in the game you'll write clues to connect the two words on each side of your board and then you'll take your cards off your board add a few extra in and then the rest of the team will do their best to decipher your clues and put the cards back in their correct orientation so clover is low stakes it's quick it's really easy to teach and you still get all the fun of hidden clues and word association that has made codename so popular so if you're looking for a way to make code names fun again and you want a game that you might actually want to bring to the party especially on st patrick's day then might i suggest so clover [Music] [Applause] okay so this one isn't really a board game per se but a lot of people that i've talked to said that their family mostly just plays card games like pinocchio euchre hearts rummy spades etc there's a bajillion different card games out there and i feel like every family has their own variation and their own house rules now this is all well and good until the siblings can't agree on what the house rules are and someone ends up flipping the table and the whole play game to have some bonding time idea goes right out the window no i'm not speaking from experience why would you say that so let's introduce a new family card game that feels both familiar and unique and has all the players working together towards a shared goal you guessed it it's the crew okay so you may be thinking will alex ever have a video where he doesn't talk about the crew why are you so obsessed with me well once it stops being so good i'll stop talking about it the crew is the perfect board game to turn into your next family tradition because like any good card game it's one that you can get lost in for hours at its core it's just a simple trick taking card game but the twist is that the objectives change with each round which means that you'll have to find new and creative ways to communicate and play your cards right in order to win there may be levels where you get totally stuck and you have to stand up and take a breather but those moments make the moment when you do pass the level seem that much greater the crew takes the classic trick taking game formula and adds just enough of that special sauce to make it one of the most accessible and most fun games that i've played in a long time plus it comes in a pretty compact box so it can make for another really great stocking stuffer so if you're looking for a new car game to bring home to the family that might just turn your crew into the crew then might i suggest the crew [Music] [Applause] and last but not least you knew i had to throw this one in here it's cards against humanity now this raunchy party game had its heyday a few years back and now there are so many different spin-offs on the target shelves that it's impossible to count there's too many of them every one of these games follows the same formula someone draws a card and then everyone plays a card from the hand that's either the most shocking the most funny the most ridiculous etcetera etcetera people love these games because they're easy to play they're good for a few laughs and it usually reveals something about the other players that you didn't know before and that's great but let me tell you there are better games out there there are way better games out there that fit those criteria and don't make your grandma cringe so let's talk about monikers monikers is one of my favorite party games of all time because it combines elements from many different games into one super fun activity at the beginning of the game you'll each pick some clue cards from the box and select a number of them to make a shared deck these clues vary from random internet memes to historical figures to some irreverent references that would make cards against humanity proud the best part is though you can pick and choose which ones you want to do and which ones you don't want to do which means that you can definitely tailor the game for all kinds of different demographics once you create the deck you'll do one round like taboo where you've got a minute to try to get your team to guess as many clues as they can without saying the key word then when the deck is empty you'll reshuffle it and you'll do the next round where you can only use one word to describe the card kind of like code names and then when the deck is empty again you'll reshuffle it one more time and the last round is just charades see it's that easy could it really be that simple monikers is a perfect party game that's super easy to learn and leads to a ton of memorable moments you can still spice it up and have those awkwardly funny moments like cards against humanity but in this format you're never on the hook to judge and you just get to spend the time watching your dad try to do the charade for a belly dancer so if you're looking for something more versatile and more replayable than cards against humanity that's honestly just way more fun than might i suggest monikers thanks so much for sticking around for my very first mighty suggested game holiday gift guide i hope this list gives you some ideas on what to give or what to ask for this holiday season and i really hope we all get to start the new year with some awesome new games if you have any more suggestions based on the games i talked about today feel free to drop them below in the comments and thanks all of you that have made this channel a reality i hope you all have a very happy holidays please don't forget to like comment and subscribe so it can keep growing this channel and keep helping you find your perfect board game once again this has been a mind i suggested game production and i'm alex your board game sommelier signing off