Top 100 Board Games : 80 - 71

[Music] welcome to allies or enemies i'm jess and i am sean in this part three of our top 100 board games and this time we're counting down the 70s one thing we haven't mentioned is shawn and i mainly play games just the two of us it's usually whatever game it is we try and make it work for two so most of the things that are on our list work great for two we do we do occasionally get something that we want to like maybe maybe people are wrong and we can make this work for two we've definitely made that mistake sometimes we've made it work yeah but we've definitely made that mistake on occasion and those few ones probably aren't on our list i think i think a couple got on here anyway that we've kind of forced but if if you if you do want to like learn a little bit more about how some of these games work for two we've got other videos and a lot of these are going to be in those videos we always have a little section about that specifically about how how does this play for two but we should let's not talk about those other videos let's talk about this video and um let's let's get rolling with it yeah you kicked things off last time so i think it's back to me yep all right well why don't you kick us off my number 80 i've grouped under one it is the unlock games so these are a box that come with usually a set of three and it takes about an hour to play it's kind of like an escape room in a box the last one we played was mythic adventures and that one was great most of the other ones we've really like kind of maybe two out of the three but i love co-op games so i love working together to try and solve this puzzle yeah i think the the mythic one was was really good and i think they've actually been getting better at them as they've gone i think some of those first ones were a little they tried some things and not everything worked and i think um that one was great because they they i was gonna say they got back to basics but no they had like like some really cool kind of things that they did with the camera yeah you could yeah i don't want to say too much because i don't want to spoil it because it's it's legitimately pretty cool but i'd say like start at the end maybe and work backwards yes i i think they're getting better at them i think so too that's my number 80.

my number 80 is champions of midgard this game we've had for a little while and it's kind of bounced up and down on my list a little bit um but it's it is a very cool game where you're you're collecting up uh dice who are kind of like mercenaries who work for you and then you're using them to fight monsters and there's different levels of monsters and some you've got to like send ships out um to like the far reaches to fight and those are more dangerous and some are right at home and then there's expansion ones and with both expansions you've actually got quite a bit going on in this game too and it it is a really cool game and there's times that i just love this and there's times it just you know just falls down a little bit on on the list and this is one that i think actually works really well for two player because you if you want to fight something you will be able to whereas if you're playing with more you do have some more monsters to fight but not quite the same extent so we really go out there we really do some slaying yeah yeah we usually have like three or four different monsters we're fighting yeah it'd be interesting actually to play with more because you're right you'd have because you really like you don't add i think you add one of like the distant kind of scene monsters but otherwise you've got the same number of monsters but just a lot more competition fighting them so i imagine you're you probably take fewer risks because we do a lot of like one dice yeah and just hope for the best and just hope for the best yeah we can spread those resources uh but that is my number 80.

[Music] my number 79 is lords of water deep so this is often one that gets recommended as one of the first kind of starters to get into work replacement and it is worker placement and you go to different spots to hire these different cubes which represent people and you use that to complete quest there's also a stack of buildings that come out and you can get those to be spaces that you go visit as well so it is just that fun puzzle of what colors that you need in what order and then trying to sabotage your opponent a little bit too yeah there's there's these mean cards you can send people on like kind of terrible quests where you only get like couple points but it's just a bit of a pain in your butt it is like like you say kind of a starter work replacement game but as you get those buildings and you add them out you can have like a lot of spaces on the board that you can choose from and there is quite a bit of um it's it's like it's not rules heavy but there's there's a lot of options that build throughout the game which which works well and apparently it's got a really cool expansion too but we yeah we haven't tried it great things about it uh so that was lords of water deep my number 79 is gizmos and i i really like gizmos i really like phil walker harding's just kind of like light to middleweight just easy to understand but a lot going on games and he's he's got a bunch of them and he's really good at just boiling down a complicated system into something so simple that it's like why aren't all games like this a little bit and this one really does a great job of that too so it's it's like an engine building game and you're getting these cards and you're adding cards so that as you do this this will happen this will happen this will happen and the machines get quite complicated and kind of the string of things that happen to get you these marbles and then you use those marbles you spend those marbles you get other things you get other things you're trying to get these like higher level cards in this pyramid and um it's it's surprisingly thinky for a game that's like one page of rules yeah no there is a lot to it and whether to get lots of the low value ones because you can get those quick or save up and get the higher value ones which will get you big points and then kind of bring you closer yeah yeah it's kind of a mix of both strategies and it's just uh we talked about this with yours too i just i love the gumball machine and grabbing the marbles and chucking the marbles back in yeah um it's yeah it's a really fun game that's number 79.

my number 78 is root uh this is an area control one but it's asymmetric although the factions play very very differently and have different goals i'm normally not a huge fan of kind of war themed games but i do love how different the factions play and so just the strategy behind that hooks me in if i play one i want to try a different one if i'm not feeling like fighting i can i can be the vagabond uh this is one that works great at four for two player we weren't so sure until we got the the clockwork expansion yeah the clock and we made a video about this and we talked about like playing with two factions and stuff and i really wish i want to go back actually redo that now that we've had the clockwork expansion because it it works shockingly well and i'm excited we've already got on pre-order um the other factions the the clockwork bots for the other factions and then also the two new and we've got um we've got all of the factions because i i love that you'll hear more about this one yeah we we play a lot of this one my uh my number 78 is i think maybe the lightest game on my list they don't come that much lighter but it's ice cool and ice cool is is a flicking game it's a dexterity game and what it is is you've got your the box actually it's it's really it's it's really smart how they've done this so the box has smaller boxes in the box and you take those apart and you build a school and some of your penguins are trying to skip school and leave school and some of your penguins are home monitors so someone's trying to get out well usually there's multiple people trying to kind of escape class and then there's one whole monitor it's trying to tag them all so you're flicking them through different doorways and you collect up fish and you get points that way it's super simple you can play this you can easily play this with like a five six year old and they would love it um but you can also play it with a bunch of adults around the table late at night flicking the penguins around is a blast is it's a really fun really simple game yes and this may appear shortly on my list so i think i'll save my comments for just in a minute so that was my 78.

my number 77 is grand austria hotel so in this game it's very euro looking it's these people who've checked into this hotel and you have to feed them food and drinks and get their rooms ready and and send them away it's a distracting game so you roll your dice and then you have to pick your turns and do your actions but there are only seven rounds and two turns per round so you try and do all of this in 14 turns and halfway through it seems impossible it seems like it's not going to work and i love that tightness of it and that kind of trying to figure it out and what do i do now give the theme the theme in this is absurd the theme is that someone has come to your hotel and they want a room but it's so specifically like this hour period that you have to entertain them between when they wanted to get the room and when the room's ready yeah such as strange i don't think they've ever had the situation in real life no and it is one that i think i don't i i wouldn't play with more than two players i you could not talk me into playing this with four players just because of that sneaking it's gonna and it's stinky so turns are not quick no and you said it feels like it's impossible to do everything in 14 seconds it is impossible to do everything in 14 turns i just i can't get my head around this one but i um i definitely recognize it's it's a good game and it's well made yeah so my 77 was grand austria hotel my number 77 is teo to hua khan it's based on the ancient mexican city and it is this uh it's really cool it's actually another dice placement game a dice worker game um like you were just talking about and it it's it is this really interesting system that's kind of different from any other game that i know of where you're moving your dice they go around the board so they have to kind of continually go clockwise around the board and and they're you know gathering resources they're building a pyramid and the cool thing is every time they're moving they're gaining experience or getting older i'm not sure which and once they get to six they ascend or die really so it's this really cool mechanic that i i can't think of anything else that has that yeah no it is great and it has other options of like locking in a worker and so i often do do that because it's a quick way of the temples but then you might spend a whole turn unlocking so there's just so many decisions to be made and it's so fluid based on where everybody else's dice are as well and you've got to feed them coffee constantly they're like coffee they love their cocoa yeah yeah your feet well you're feeding them cocoa but i'm picturing that you're really you're using it to soup them up build that temple quick um get those resources but it's it's a really cool game it looks great too and it's just a really clever dice placement and that is my number 77.

my number is 76 is forbidden desert so again this is a co-op game i love co-op games this is part of the forbidden series so it starts off with forbidden island and forbidden desert and forbidden sky i'm kind of just grouping them all as as this one it's the one that we have here and it's great you're working as a team to try and unbury yourself find your ship parts and escape off the island before it gets covered in sand and i love that yeah and it's a great series too the thing i didn't i didn't even realize about the series at first and then i just noticed it recently is forbidden island you leave in a helicopter then you see that helicopter crashed in forbidden desert and you leave in an airship like a flying airship dirigible and then that crashes for um forbidden sky from the sky and then you take off in a rocket ship and forbid this guy the rocket ship actually makes noises when it takes off which i which blue i didn't expect and it blew my mind yeah and for this one it is great we lose about half the time which is kind of great for a co-op because it keeps pushing you to try again hi number 76 is zombie teens and i'm kind of grouping it in with zombie kids and i know this one isn't for everyone this is the least watched video i think on our channel by a lot but you know what i love it it's meant to be a kids game um and i don't care i still watch pokemon and i still eat chocolate cereal for breakfast and i'm still going to play a kid's board game and it's it's legitimately really fun it's super simple at first and in both of the different games you've only got three things that you that you can do and it's you can move you can fight a zombie or in teens you can move a box and kids you can lock these gates but as you go you open new things you open i'm not really going to say what the things are because it is a campaign it is legitimately fun to get the new things um and it does get more complex as it goes and i'm not gonna say it gets so complex but it gets a little bit more complex and it's just fun to have a game that's like 10 minute games and you can like zip through the campaign and i think we played it in like a day like we played a whole one in a day but it also it cost us like 15 bucks so it was a fun 15 bucks yeah it was when we were in isolation so we couldn't leave our apartment and it was great just to have that full day of entertainment and playing through and completing these missions it was exactly what we needed just gotta kill them zombies uh they're they're great and if you have kids get them for sure because kids are going to love them and that was my 76.

my number 75 is ice cool so sean already spoke about it before and it's these penguins that are trying to skip school and these other penguins that are trying to catch them and just i love a good dexterity game it is super silly they have lots of different ways you can play because you can try and take each other or you can play a race version too and the cards that you mentioned some of those cards are like trick taking cards so you have to try and like jump your penguin over over a wall or bounce off two edges and through a door uh and so those are always fun to do as you're like chasing each other around and when you say trick taking she doesn't mean trick taking like a normal board game of like getting a matching but she means like actual doing tricks you're actually you get the card and you take the challenge of flipping your penguin over a door or bouncing through two at once which is fun and i i didn't talk about the um the races too because if you have ice cool one and ice cool two which we did you can combine both of them and make like a massive ice cool and then you can do these fun races which actually for two players i think is probably the better way to play two players works okay it's kind of just the tag hide-and-seek game but um the ra the races are really fun we we enjoy always a play in ice cool my number 75 is ultra popular game you definitely know it it is a wingspan in wingspan it's it's a great game it's the the artwork is beautiful um it's it's a clever game like the uh the the tower that you put the dice down to get the birdseed is so cool the production's so cool um the mats are like everything about it is really nice i think the one thing that holds it back a little bit is i just i just don't care about birds i'm sorry but i they've always freaked me out since i saw the hitchcock movie as a kid and i don't think i've ever gotten over that and i just i just can't get that into them so i think theme such a big deal for me that like i love the mechanics and if you had if you put out a wingspan that's dinosaurs this is going to be way up on my list but wingspan um just just the birds doesn't doesn't quite connect but the rest of the game's cool and if you like birds um it kind of hits all cylinders i think yeah i i really really like this one i have a zoology background so yeah i love some bird facts and it's all accurate i've got some real bird enthusiast friends and they say that everything on there is scientifically accurate which is great and i've got a feeling we may hear more about wingspan down the list a little bit too [Music] my number 74 is star wars rebellion so this is another one of those games that can can take kind of a good three hours to play through but feels like a story that you're telling this big epic adventure i i like star wars sean loves star wars so it is great to play through that story i like being the empire because i love having kind of the mass military and all of this forces trying to find the rebellion i've only been the rebellion once or twice because i get so scared like it's just the the empire has all of these ships and all of these guys and everything in production and you start with so few and i just don't have any hope you love being rebellion because you really think all right but like against all odds i can overcome uh it really is fun being the underdog in that game and you you see the like massive odds it's funny how differently we see this um and then you're just this little plucky group and you gotta hide where your planet is and there's this really fun kind of hide and seek of like oh is my base over here is it over here and they're trying to find it while you build up just enough to get by it's it's a really fun game i think the one problem is it's long and we always forget it a bit so we always have to relearn it yeah yeah whereas if i'm the rebellion i think nope i'm i'm just gonna lose and i get grumpy but it when when we play in our roles it's great uh my number 74 is disney villainous and disney villainous so there's a few reasons i really like this this this really uh it's just a good fit for me because first of all it's asymmetric factions and i love that i'm a huge fan of that um and then also it's pretty and it's collectible and these are real weaknesses for me and i will actually sometimes not buy a game because i'm like i'm gonna buy all of this game so i gotta steer clear of this game but this one they've had just enough expansions and they're really cool like the new one had black cauldron i love black cauldron um and gaston and they all it's like they're not that well um oh what's the word balanced against each other like there are some that are gonna be way stronger there's definitely flaws in the game and i can see that but i love looking at the collection of it yeah i i love disney it's it's i'm super onto that theme but it is a game meant to be frustrating because you are your villain trying to complete your like evil plot and then the other person is also doing that but is trying to make sure you don't complete it so it's purposely like destroying your plans and getting in your way so you get so far and you think you can do it and then the other person sets you like three steps back and so it can be frustrating but it's frustrating on purpose it is pointedly mean it's very mean if you don't like me and games uh steer clear of this one because it's it's very mean but it's it's fun and they nail the themes too like everyone feels like they should feel which is really fun yeah uh so that is my 74.

my number 73 is explorers of the north sea so this is part of the north sea trilogy i've mentioned before i love games that you are building something you have something to show for the end and this is exactly that so you're vikings and you're building out and you're putting adding to these islands you're collecting all of these different types of animals and i am a sucker for animal meeples so i love the cows and the chickens and the pigs they're all great uh and you are finding ships and you're you're claiming these territories so i i love that process and each time you get a leader and all of the leaders give you a little bit of a different goal which is fun so you don't kind of get stuck and kind of doing the same thing again and again yeah it's i i love i love anything where you're exploring in different mini islands i'm a wind waker is by far my favorite zelda game love it um i just i love the just sail to the different islands and you're building your different islands you feel a little bit like you're exploring them and you've got all these different things to do and the different bosses it's it's really cool and i think kind of overlooked a little bit from his games people really love the west kingdom as do we and the raiders i think gets a lot of kind of the play in this early one but i i think explorers is is kind of a little bit of an overlooked gym yeah and it's amazing how much at the starting board can make a difference because whether you start with the beginning of of two islands or no islands can completely change the game as well so you we've played a few back to back and they've all felt very different my number 73 and i feel like i've had a lot of light games in this list and this is very much going to change that this is a vitellis vitella sorta game and this is the gallerist the gallerist is an art gallery and everything in it it's eno tools artwork and it it feels like it feels very classy like if if if you're if you're kind of older like fancy friends came over and saw you playing a game this is the game you'd want them to see um and it's got what really what you're trying to do is you're hiring artists and those artists are making works for you that you're commissioning and then you're putting those into your gallery like all of laserdisc games it's very much this kind of clockworky um like you've got to do this to make this happen to do this to do this to do this and you've got to always be thinking three or four steps ahead it really hits a sweet spot for me because i'm the first thing we do when we go to any city i think is look at the galleries we're real suckers for galleries especially modern so this it really really fits in that niche for me yeah it is a great game it is very thinky because of having to plan ahead and you also have assistance that you can leave at the spot that you kind of left behind so you might be able to predict where your opponent might go and if if they're going to go where you just left then you can kind of go down and do that action too so it is great it can be a term can take a while as you figure out all right i will do that bonus action and then i'm going to do my full turn uh but it is a great game my 72 is potion explosion so this is a fairly light game and you have all of these marbles and what you try and do is is you take a marble and then clack together ones of the same color and then you take those and then if the same color clacks again you get to take those so you're building up all of these marbles and your goal is to fill these potions because you're a student in a potions class and once you fill those potions they they give you a power that you can use and you try and complete as many as you can and get the most points some of them are worth different amounts as well so you might try and take the challenge of getting more marbles for a higher point potion and it's just super fun i really enjoy playing it it's really light we play it very quickly have a great time drinking our potions and it's it's fun this is the most phil walker harding game that phil walker harding didn't like yep i think like i thought it was by him until just recently just because it feels it really has that feeling and it yeah it's it's simple but it's it's got that great you know that clacking and grabbing the marbles and putting the marbles into your potions and drinking the potions um and it's it's also got the because there's different potions you can always play with the same ones too it's it's got some variability in it as well that it makes it fun it's just it's great it's great one for kind of like all ages too yeah my number 72 is dice hospital and it feels like this part of the list is a ton of dice placement games this is another one but the cool thing is this is so different from any other dice placement game um that i've played so you've got you've got your hospital and you've got your dice and your dice or your patients and so you've got to heal them by getting their numbers up until they get to seven right obviously dice only go to six so once they get to six you can put them into your discharge and you can send them away but the tricky is if you don't heal them fast enough they're going to slowly get worse and then they actually die which is a little sad and they go to the morgue and you're given a little tombstone for them yeah um and it's it's really it's it's cool because as you play like each round you add to your hospital or you add new specialists um and it's it's just a really creative cool game i love how the boards too all the patients are are dice as well which is kind of a super fun touch with that and and yeah the rooms that you get and the specialists that you get uh make it a really interesting puzzle and you do your your dice drafting first and then it's simultaneous actions which is really good because that puzzling bit can take a while but at least everybody's doing it at the same time yeah i love i love simultaneous action games i think it's if you can make a simultaneous game that's the way to do it because it works so well for it doesn't matter how many people are playing you can play with us with two to i think you can only play the parts that's how many boards there are but um and it's it's gonna take basically the same amount of time yeah exactly uh and that was my 72.

my 71 is eclipse and specifically the second edition is the one that we have and it's a great space game you're all given different uh factions to be and they all play very differently and have different goals and you're exploring space your have things to fight in in two players it's really good because you do have a lot of different things to fight so you're not necessarily having to fight each other maybe you do go after each other you have to do some research and build your ships that you're going to use and it feels really quick for this kind of game i think it plays for us in just over an hour which for this type of game is is really good and we always kind of feel like oh it's done already but that feeling for a game is great it's much better that you have that then like this is going on forever this is one that um i like we like it for two players uh because we're not like we don't love fighting against each other but it's it's got these kind of npcs that are like two different kinds of npcs where there's like the tough guys and then the not so tough guys and there's also like the really it's a death star in the middle that you're fighting so that gives you plenty to fight and then also the exploration and there's so many parts to make your ship and build your ship um so i think it works great for us for two but if you do want that combat you're probably going to want to have three or four yeah and what i love about this is is the different factions because some of them are really about combat some of them are about research some of them are about kind of building your ship and so figuring each one out is great for replayability and makes us like play it again and again to try and puzzle it out my number 71 is suburbia and i love city building i'm i'm nuts for it uh i played sim city so many like just the original black and white sim city so much and i've always i feel like i'm always kind of chasing that and i i love any game that has that feel of building it and this one does a really cool job and we've got the um like the collector's edition one that came out recently um and so it does look a little bit prettier because i know one complaint with the original is it wasn't as pretty as it could be um that's definitely not a complaint with this one this one is it looks really cool and and it's it's really fun to kind of combo them together we always think by the time we get to the last round we're like we i my brain cannot handle one more round yeah this is as much as i can as much as i can hold at once because every time you put a tile in and it affects everything else in your area maybe something in somebody else's area that's a lot to remember and i'm i they have some fun tiles and i'm a sucker for fun tiles like if if the like amusement park uh big boardwalk comes out i want to get that the haunted house i want to get so those fun tiles really keep me interested in what's out now yeah it's cool because the the collectors one comes with all of the um expansions with it as well as i think there was like a collector's special expansion and that's like the night one oh okay and so it's called nightlife but it's got yeah it's got like haunted house it's got like a ghost house werewolf den werewolf den like some vampire thing and there's a lot of these kind of tongue there's some real serious buildings but then there's a lot of these tongue-in-cheek buildings as well and it's fun to have the mix of the two yeah that's a good one so that was my 71 and that is it thanks a bunch for watching part three and obviously we're gonna have more of these coming so we're gonna count it all the way down to number one and we would love you to play along too so if you want to share with us you are your top 100 please stick them in the comments feel free to do kind of ten at a time or even just your top ten we'd love to see what you're playing yeah do however many you feel like or just like and subscribe or feel free to leave a comment as well all of that stuff helps us a bunch and we really appreciate everyone for watching these videos and we'll hopefully see you for the next one [Music] bye