10 AWARD WINNING Family Games ...and how they stand the test of time.

0:00 the games in this top 10 list aren't just one person's personal favorites but 10 out of over 50 of the most highly rated popular and award-winning family board games in the last 20 years to put this list together i looked up many board game awards for family board game criteria and did my best to compare them against their ratings and popularity now the result is something that i personally might not highly recommend but it is definitely something that people would agree have had an impact in the world of board games at least as far as families are concerned but aside from my personal criticisms some of these games won awards for something they did that was new and exciting and had an impact that may have worn off a little as the years have gone by so in this video i'll talk about why these games had such a huge influence as well as some of the reasons why they might not be as exciting anymore or really what you might want to play instead before i get started it's worth mentioning that the algorithm that i used to compare these games took into consideration the board game geek rating and in my opinion the board game geek rating is a little biased towards more complex games so i noticed that some simpler but very popular games were a little lower on the list possibly because of this and some people who play

1:32 a lot of family board games might be wondering why they're not listed but if i were to briefly mention the games that came into position 13 12 and 11 those would be carcassonne just one and ticket to ride i won't be talking about those games in this video but if you were wondering they were very very close throughout this video i'll be comparing board games using this rating system which was newly updated to feature this attribute if you'd like to learn more about that i would recommend checking out that video anyway let's go ahead and get started at number 10. number 10 is a game that exhibits characteristics that you're going to see very often among family board games it's a game that keeps everything very simple while showcasing intuitive and fun exciting mechanics the game is splendor so how does splendor keep things simple well on your turn you can really only do basically two things you can either buy cards or you can take currency that you can use later to buy cards splendor is an engine building game because the cards that you buy aid you in buying even more cards and then eventually those cards are worth victory points and of course like many other games the objective is to get the most victory points so the game is something that i would call a filler game today because it doesn't have much to theme or complexity and even strategy

3:02 there's not very much going on but it is a very tactile game with excellent components that are fun to hold and play with if you'd like something that has a little bit more meaning to it i would recommend a game called little factory which is almost identical to splendor but makes a lot more sense as the things that you're trading are often related to each other the next game is a board game that is so popular it almost single-handedly introduced the world to a commonly known problem in cooperative board games the problem is the alpha player and the board game is pandemic now let me explain if you're not familiar with pandemic it's actually one of the first cooperative board games i've ever played the theme of the game is to save the world from vicious diseases by moving players around a world map treating the disease in different countries and working together to build the cures and eradicate the disease now that's an excellent game and thematically the game has fantastic tension but the problem is the alpha player the alpha player is the most experienced player or the person who's teaching the board game who leads other players through all of the thinking for example i played this game many times with people who walk away saying well i think that was fun but i don't really know what i was doing i sort of feel like i leaned on your

4:32 expertise and that's not really an experience i recommend especially when you're playing with your family or possibly your kids where you know you may really feel like there's a great move there but you kind of have to sit back and see if the kids figure it out that's not really very fun it's a lot more interesting of a game when you're playing with people with whom you can see eye to eye now i struggle to name an alternative to pandemic that is much like pandemic and resolves the problem of the alpha player there is a great game that i'll mention later in this list and it might be worth trying some games that have a traitor mechanic which is where one person is secretly against the rest of the players one game that comes to mind is shadows of camelot or another game that is very simple and excellent to play cooperatively and was on the list of 50 but didn't make the top 10 is the mind number eight is a game that is stunning and strategic and fun and like only slightly interactive so that most players can focus on their own thing it made a big splash and is still making a big splash today the game lost ruins of our knack lost women's varnack is a very well-rounded game and it really does so many things well it's not very hard to teach there's a lot of very interesting decision making going on the components are beautiful the um the theme of like

6:05 exploring this jungle is very interesting the only problem that i've ever had with lost wounds of arnac is for some reason it just it just doesn't really seem meaningful and maybe that's because it seems like the whole point of the game is to take cards that can turn into money that can turn into compasses that can turn into arrowheads that can turn into tablets they can turn into gems that can turn into victory points it's like this long chain of just converting things and you're trying to do that by playing cards i personally like to find games that have a little bit more thematic significance at number seven is a cooperative card game that fixes the problem of the alpha player the game is the crew and it's a cooperative trick taking game players are dealt cards that they have to keep a secret they all have a very well understood objective and they have to work together without telling each other what their cards are in order to meet the objectives this is an excellent game i have played it so many times that my cards are getting kind of worn out which is maybe my only criticism about the components but i don't know if it can be avoided this is a game that hits the table over and over again when i introduce it to my friends my friends buy it immediately now i did do a video where i suggested five alternatives to the crew and you can check that out in the card to the side or in the description but the crew was

7:35 and remains an excellent cooperative game that families can play number six is yet another game that exhibits that characteristic of just being really stripped down and emphasizing excellent mechanics the game has so many expansions and i think everyone knows it's going to be on this list the game is dominion now dominion came out years ago it is still such a popular game for many people it's an entry game they play dominion early on and then they get up into some more heavier games but the nice thing about dominion is a deck builder game if you haven't played it it's almost like a canonical classic card game you draw up to your hand limit and on your turn you can play cards and then when you're all done you can buy more cards the interesting thing about dominion is that all of the cards and everything that's available to you varies depending on which expansions you play the next game is also classified as a party game the game code names now code names is a word game played in teams like many other word games the objective is for players to gain points by having one person the clue giver uh give one word clues to the members of their team and see if they can guess them now what makes this game unique is that the available words that can be guessed are on cards laid on the table and the person giving the hints

9:05 can only give a one one word hint that could trigger more than one word out of those on the table and then of course the opponent's words are on the table as well so you want to give hints that can trigger your words without your teammates accidentally choosing opponent's words this is a game i've played dozens of times with my friends again a party game i haven't yet played it with my kids yet because well still my entire family can't read my youngest daughter is five she's still working on it so this is a game i definitely look forward to it has just huge success every time i've played it before and it definitely belongs on this list if you love code names or if you want to try something a little different decrypto is an excellent game as is um trap words so i recommend you check those out as well at number four is a game that i've put off playing for a really long time because if you've been watching this channel you know that i don't really get excited about games that have a lot of luck involved and this next game it it may as well be bingo i mean this game has a lot of luck involved i have a rating for luck on here that goes up to high maybe this would get a very high rating the game is quacks of kwendenbug in the game this is a press your luck style game so players are drawing tokens from a bag

10:37 and adding them to their potion they're trying to fill their pot with ingredients and they get victory points depending on how much they can fill their pot but if they put too many ingredients in the pot some ingredients may cause an explosion and that of course is going to have a negative impact so you've got to really press your luck in this game and if that wasn't enough there are also cards that are going to come out that are going to have an impact and every round the person who's in first place for the round is going to roll a die and get an additional bonus so it's luck stacked on top of luck on top of luck but as a family game man my kids love this game it's very very fun for the kids now as an adult i gotta admit like okay you know me right like i'm always critical of games that have a lot of luck take what i have to say with a game of salt because this is not really a game that's for me um it does kind of feel like i'm playing it for the kid's sake to an extent but there's some excellent replayability because the tokens that you're playing have effects and there are many variations where you know each token can have a different effect based on the game setup and i think that's really cool it's really easy to learn it's an excellent introduction game um and a lot of fun admittedly it is a lot of fun quacks of kunda buck the next game is a game

12:07 that's been around for years and it's a pioneer in popular card drafting games it's the game seven wonders now personally i don't think seven wonders belongs on a list of family board games i think it's too complicated but it does have some really exciting mechanics going on players are all being dealt cards they can choose one of those cards and they pass them to the player on their left or right and play continues in that way drafting a card and passing at the end of every single round the cards they've drafted have an impact now the thing with seven wonders is that it created a new category of games there are so many games that follow in this style there's sushi go there's this donut game whose name i'm forgetting the name of there's boomerang there's gosh the draftasaurus there's so many drafting style games that follow in this pattern and seven wonders was the game that started all of this so it deserves respect for the influence that it has but i definitely think that a more family style board game needs to simplify all of the rules the next game is a game that has won so many awards it's almost obnoxious to me it's not my favorite game but it's the game azul now the reason it had such a great impact i have called it the candy

13:37 crush of board games this is an extremely tactile game uh the pieces they feel almost like dominoes like if you were to cut a domino and a half they've got some weight to them and it's actually satisfying just to pick the pieces up and move them around so what is my problem with it why is the game obnoxious to me well i really have two problems one is that the game doesn't have any thematic meaning but that's nothing new i'm always complaining about games that aren't thematically significant aside from that the problem with the game is that it can sometimes be the case that tiles stack up and create a option that is not desirable to anybody and so eventually the game becomes about avoiding this terrible thing and everyone knows that eventually someone has to take this terrible pile of tiles and the result is that they're going to add it to their board and only get negative points i don't like the fact that there's a move where everyone just wants to avoid something it's much more interesting to have objectives that you are pursuing so if you agree with me on that you might want to try locomomo locomomo is a game that has very similar mechanics but no negative points involved and unfortunately it has cardboard pieces rather than the satisfying tiles but it might be a great alternative for you number one is wingspan now when wingspan was

15:09 announced it was probably the most beautiful game i had ever seen up until that time it had a dice tower that looked like a bird feeder it had all of these amazing cards every single card was unique it had these these portraits of birds that looked like they came right out of a guidebook on different bird species it had this excellent flavor text you were you were like laying eggs and feeding birds it was stunning i bought it i bought the expansion um it was very exciting to play it was exciting to introduce to people because it would hit the table and people just wow the wow factor in this game but i think that these days more and more games are being released that are just stunning games and it's no longer the case that you buy a game simply because the game is so beautiful there are so many beautiful games you can now take your pick between all of the beautiful games and which one you like most so now when i look back on wingspan i look at some things that i really think the game could have done better first of all aside from having excellent components the game doesn't really have a lot of meaning there's nothing in there that really makes it feel like you're a bird watcher who's you know you're getting points for i guess building up your journal of all the birds that you've seen i suppose and

16:39 collected um there's that and then there's that there's a lot of upkeep you know you've got an a lot of luck involved too you're drawing cards to find out what birds are available to you you can't really depend on any one strategy because there's no predicting what cards could come out later in the game and then you're constantly rolling dice to provide the resources that you use to collect birds so some of that stuff really falls flat for as long as i've had this channel going i've talked about wingspan and i've compared it to gizmos which i think mechanically has a lot of the same stuff going on it doesn't have a stronger theme but it's stripped down and a lot more streamlined but then as an added bonus the game is also very very beautiful so those are my thoughts on the top 10 family board games however as i mentioned earlier i have my own recommendations and i have recommendations that are reading independent so if you have younger kids and you're looking for games that don't depend so much on reading you might want to check out that top 10 list which of course i'll leave a link for you if you're interested to hear more about how i compared these games i've decided to go ahead and upload the spreadsheet that i used onto my patreon site so i will leave that there if you'd like to check that out and support me you can check out the link to my patreon in the description thank you so much for watching and i hope to see you next time bye