A Pile of Mid Games: Lairs, Blue Max and More!

0:11 Hey everybody, I'm Tom Vassal. Welcome to a pile of mini games where I take a look at games that came out um on just all sorts of different games that came out and we're going to boardgamegeek.com which is the largest place you can go and rank board games in the world and we're taking a look at games that are ranked 3,000 or lower. In fact, today we're taking a look at 3,700 to 3,750. So, we're going to jump right into these here. I'm going to take a look at them and tell you what I think about them. So, um some of these games I'm going to skip a little bit because we've I'm just always just kind of run through them cuz I talked about them in the last one and ratings change from time to time. For example, there's Margrave of Valeria we talked about last time. So, and also talked about Cupcake World and Welcome to Dino World. But, um let's take a look at a few of these here.

1:02 All right. So, first we have Dragon's Down. So, this is a game from Mr. B Games and I have not played this yet, but I am told um I have this one. It's an adventure game inspired by the classic game Magic Realm. So, I'm I'm interested in this idea. I don't think the game looks particularly exciting or I'm not exciting. It looks exciting, I guess. It doesn't look super amazing um graphic-wise. But, I've always wanted to play Magic Realm, so maybe this will be the way to jump into that. Wizard Kings. So, Wizard Kings is a game that I wanted for a long time cuz it's from Columbia Games and Columbia Games normally makes, you know, they make block war games where the blocks face you and your opponent doesn't quite know where they are and you rotate the blocks to take damage and they do historical games. This one is fantasy. So, I've always been curious about this, but it's 26 years ago, so who knows.

1:54 Tiny Epic Game of Thrones. I'm not a huge Game of Thrones fan um or a huge Tiny Epic fan. I think this is one of the last ones they did before the company was sold. I'm not 100% sure. I don't know much about this one. It hasn't got amazing ratings, but who knows? Gambit Royale. So, Gambit Royale here was originally called Roose and Bruise. I believe this was the original cover here, Roose and Bruise. And so, this is a card game in which you are you have goals and you are I believe you're playing cards or rolling goals to get these cards. It's been a while since I played it. I remember enjoying it and thinking, "Hmm, it's fine." It's been a long time since I played it, though. The Road to Canterbury. I don't know much about this one. Greed, Pride, Gluttony, Wrath, Luxury, Idleness, and Envy.

2:44 Uh, this is from 2011 from Eagle-Gryphon Games. Huh. Yeah, this one I never heard of. I have heard of Dark Tower. Now, Dark Tower was remade by Return to Dark Tower. I actually never played the original game. Uh, very interesting looking game. I was fascinated by it when they reprinted it and redid it. They did such a fantastic job. Return to Dark Tower is an amazing game. So, I'll probably never go back and play the original game, but I'm glad that it is here. Brink. So, Brink is brand new here from Ivy Studios. Well, brand new but it came out last year. This is a very fun aspect for me of worker placement where you place a ship and some ships you place on a hex, some will go between two hexes like this green one here in the picture, and some between three hexes, and then you get the resources and you do things with them. Has the Ivy motive to it. It looks more complicated than it is. I mean, honestly, it's like a sort of like a souped-up Catan, sort of. There's a little bit more to it than that, but I do like this one a lot.

3:49 All righty. Let's see. We have Dark Souls: the board game. Here's a Ticket to Ride that I've not played before. Um, Blockbuster. All righty, Dark Souls. This is the game that put Steamforged Games on the map for me and not in a good way. I had never played any of the Dark Souls video games um, before this. And while I do really like Elden Ring the video game, uh, this game just was so bad. You just had to keep grinding and grinding in a cooperative board game. Just fighting enemies over and over and over again so you level up, then you can fight these bosses. It The miniatures are great, but the game itself was bad. Narcos the board game, this is very popular this, uh, IP Narcos. Um, but I haven't played this one. I know this was from CMON was making a whole pile of different games. It seems like it did okay.

4:46 Ticket to Ride Northern Lights, this is the remake of Ticket to Ride Northern, uh, Nordic countries, which is why I haven't played this specific one, but I have played Ticket to Ride Nordic countries, which I believe is almost the same thing. It's a stand-alone game. Um, actually my wife just played the Nordic countries one, so I think it's pretty close to the same deal. Blank Slate. So, this is a party game in which everyone's going to write a word trying to finish a phrase and you're trying to match someone else without giving any clues. It's a really solid party game here. And everyone's writing a word down and then you see if you match. Cold blank. So, some people wrote brew, some people wrote medicine, one person wrote weather. One person wrote season. It's an easy game to play. If you're looking for one of those party games you can just pull out and teach, I would recommend it.

5:36 Battlestations is such a big game. This is your ship. So, you build your ship in this game and you're going to you can move around your ship, but you also, and uh, you also have a map here where your ship flies around. It's basically a role-playing game. You're flying your ship around and you'll find other ships and sometimes they'll board your ship so then you go to the ship and you fight on the ship and it's really unique and weird and odd. Blockbuster, this was inspired by the demise of Blockbuster which had just happened I think around 2019 or so when this came out from Big Potato Games they even had booths at conventions that were like a Blockbuster and it's basically name a movie that matches a couple things. So if you like that sort of thing you'll enjoy the party game. Advanced Heroquest. So this was re-implemented by Warhammer Quest which came out later. You can see that here and that's one Warhammer Quest is ranked much higher 1,500.

6:28 Advanced Heroquest is a remake of Heroquest and there's more going on in it. This is one of those games that I know a lot of people have heard about and played. I mean Heroquest is out now. I would be curious to hear from people who played this and have played the new Heroquest that has come out plus all its myriad of expansions as to whether that's catching up or not. Lands of Evershade. Wow, this is a fairly new game. If it's already here at 3,722 and it just came out like it is literally came out a month ago. And if it's already this high then you're just watching a shooting star to some degree. Now where it will end up this is a big storytelling game from Awaken Realms. We will be eventually reviewing it but there's a like I said it's a big game and we need to go through it and play it.

7:16 On Guard is a small little game from Reiner Knizia about two guys who are fighting back and forth here. I guess this is showing four different versions of the game. I There definitely was one that was in a magazine and you're just going back and forth with a die and it it's it's one of those games that's too simple that it shouldn't work but it actually works pretty well. Here's another 18XX game. We got Crystal Clans, Topiary, King of 12, Dreadball, Marvel Heroes, uh Nightfall, Marshall Law, Hippocrates. I really wanted to try that one out. Hoplomachus: The Lost Cities, Ghost Blitz 5 to 12. All right, let's take a look at some of these. Crystal Clans, Plaid Hat likes making two-player games.

8:04 They have a bonafide hit with Summoner Wars. Well, at least a cult classic. A lot of people like Summoner Wars and Ashes. Crystal Clans was another one that they tried where the idea was you put together groups of cards and those groups would fight on the board. And I liked it. I didn't love it, but I liked it, but it didn't really take off anywhere. Topiary is about trimming hedges, I believe. No, no, you're walking around a garden, sorry, trying to look in and see them. Get these games [clears throat] mixed up. There It's trimming hedges is the uh theming of the game, which is pretty neat. Uh King of 12. This is a game in which you are rolling a 12-sided die, and then everyone reveals a card. First everyone reveals a card, then you roll a 12-sided die to see who wins. Kind of a silly filler-style game.

8:50 Don't love the cover of it, but it's a but it's it's it's passable, good. Dreadball, the futuristic sports game. This one I never got a chance to play. This is one of the many, many games inspired by Blood Bowl. And so, I yeah. Marvel Heroes. So, now this is a fascinating game. This game is now 20 years old. Marvel Heroes came out 20 years ago, and at the time it came out there was I we were like breathless with excitement because there were almost no Marvel games at this point. A few years later, we were covered in Marvel games. But, I was very excited about this one. You went around the city with your team trying to stop things before other people's teams did things. There was a neat thing about it. It's not nearly as good as made by the people who made War of the Ring. And it's interesting, it's cool, it just hasn't aged very well.

9:40 Nightfall Marshall all I believe this is a standalone game yet for Nightfall. Nightfall is a deck building game where you can build combos. In the corner here you see this yellow moon and then a blue and a red. That means if you play yellow moon, you can then play a red or blue moon after it and then if you come you can so you when you build your hand you're trying to build different combos. And it's all about werewolves fighting vampires fighting humans, whatever. Hobo Kings. This is one I always wanted to play and then never got around to playing it from Game Brewer. I heard fairly negative things about it. Also it was a humongous table hog. But yeah, I just never got around to it. Hop Lemacus the Lost Cities. This is the first game or one of the first games that Chip Theory Games put out where you had these units here and they would have a stack of poker chips underneath them as their life. And I liked it fine. It's it's just kind of fine for me, but it did put this company on the map with their poker chips. Well, I guess the company the game that put them on the map was Too Many Bones.

10:43 But this one was their first one and they've remade it since and the remake has been very popular. In fact, let's let me see if that one how what the rating of the remastered one is. The remade 2,431. Yes, so that one went higher. Ghost Blitz 5 to 12. I know that I've played a version of Ghost Blitz. Uh I think I played the first one here, right? Yep. This is a simple game where you flip over some cards and grab the object that's not on the different cards or the one that is depending on what it is. Alrighty, a few more games here before we go. Let's take a look at Blue Max Jean Barrano. I feel like I just talked about Barrano. I did in my look back. Uh I don't know much about this Luna Maris game. Hickory Dickory Serenissima.

11:33 Icore. What's another new game going up. Clue Master Detective and wow, layers. So we're definitely seeing some games that are going to be zooming by here. Blue Max is very very well known in the war game community because it's an aerial combat game and I know a lot of people who play this game online. I don't know much about the game other than that. I just I remember I had a friend once who was like in 10 games of Blue Max simultaneously and you're flying World War I aircraft around each other. Xi'an here is about the Terracotta Army and painting them. It has some neat statues. I thought it was a pretty nifty game. This is from Pen Dragon Studios. The statues look pretty cool. Let me see if I can show you the board. That's not a very Wow, that's a very small version. Let's see if I can find you a better There we go.

12:24 It looks really cool and the idea is about painting them and I liked it. Burano is a game that I very much enjoy. This is a game that has a track around it and you're moving these boats. Wait, I'm mixing these up. I'm thinking of Murano. No, this is Burano. Man, these games all sound the same. You're moving boats. Let me see if I have this right. Yes, you're moving the boats around it. No, this is Burano.

12:50 I really am mixing up the names of my games here. Burano, the brightly colored hexes and putting them out there, but I did enjoy this game from Aprils 4. No, I am right. It's moving the boats around and taking actions. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure. Formula Motor Racing, such an interesting game. This came out from GMT Games in 1995. So this is 31 years old and the whole game is just about positioning. You have these cards here and then you're just going to put a bunch of these a bunch of cars in a row. Let me see if I can find you. Uh, yes, this is the game. You put these cards in a row and then you play cards. It's almost like a take that card. Move the yellow card up three. But, whenever you move a card, the card behind it also moves drafting-wise. So, you're trying to pretend, "I'm moving the yellow card." But, the green card behind it moved up. That's it. Simple filler game.

13:44 It's fun to play. There's a lot of games about repositioning things now, but this was one of the originals. Lunacy, this is uh from Broadway Toys. This is an interesting-looking game. I don't believe I've ever played it, but just bringing it out to look at it. Huh. It's one of those games where I look at it and I go, "I feel like I played it, but I guess I didn't." Huh. Hickory Dickory, I said some positive things about Plaid Hat. This is unfortunately one of their misses and unfortunately it's a really cool game, lower-looking game, where you have this clock hand going around the clock and your mice are jumping off at different spots and the reason they're jumping off is you're getting these tiles to fill in your little grid. The game is about this clock hand moving around and that's awesome. I mean, this thing here with the mice jumping on and off, that sounds amazing.

14:35 It's just that the rest of the game doesn't really hold up to that, at least for me. Serenissima second edition, this is a game and an old game. When did the second edition come out? The second edition came out 2012. The original game came out in 1996. So, that game is 30 years old now. Uh, this one here, which is only 14 years old, is a remake. And you have these ships and you move them around, pick up goods. And the number of sailors you have in a ship is how fast it moves and how good it is at fighting. But, the more sailors you put in a ship, the less goods you can put in that ship. A simple concept. Hasn't aged particularly well because uh there's a lot of take that, you know, go around, blow up other people's ships, but All right, Ichor. This one's on its way up, I'm sure. This one was released last year, a two-player game from Minor Arcana and Bitewing Games.

15:21 Uh, this is one uh I I like this one so far of the two-player line. I've only played three of them. This is my favorite because all the pieces move like rooks sort of and you're trying to take over other people's pieces and each one has a special power and I like the theming of it. So, it's pretty neat. Clue Master Detective. I don't know anything about this actually or Super Clue. It looks like it's just a bigger board. It looks like they took Clue and added more stuff. Yep, 10 suspects, eight weapons, 12 murder locations. Yeah, so just a bigger version of Clue. Meh. And Layers is another one that's shooting its way up here. Now, you'll notice that I gave Layers a seven, but I want to be clear that Layers expansions bring it up to a nine. Layers is amazing. I think the base game is fine, but when you I mean it's it's very it's enjoyable, but when you add the expansion it's fantastic. Definitely was played a lot at Dice Tower East.

16:15 Very, very popular game, so it's on its way up. So, there you go, folks. Another pile of mid games. Check them out. What's your favorite in the lot? Oh, I didn't say my favorite in the lot here. Now, that's interesting cuz on one hand I want to say with the expansion it probably would be Layers, but let me see what else is on here. Yeah, there's a lot of games I enjoy. Nothing here I think is amazing. Yeah, so that's what I'm going to say. I'm going to say with the expansion Layers, what a fantastic game. Anyway, thank you all for watching. Another pile of mid games. I'm Tom Vassal. We'll see you next time.

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