Spirit Island strikes me as being the board game version of a movie that everyone tells you you need to watch but you know you are never going to watch
These BGG videos are fun. For god knows what reason, have a son and one friend that are with willing to enjoy batshit crazy games like spirit island. Still, as someone who gets to bring games to rotating weekly game group, I find your take valuable, entertainment value priceless
The fact that Troyes got bumped off the Top 100 pretty much eliminated its legitimacy in my eyes. In the meantime it contains 3 versions of Gloomhaven, 3 versions of Pandemic, and 2 versions of Clank?! Just waiting for Clank!: The Pandemic of Gloomhaven Legacy Seasons 1-100 to just take every place on the whole frikkin list so we can write the f***ing thing off for good.
Love this channel. Great video again. Looks like I’ll never buy Root, wingspan or Nemesis. Heard a few people give each a less than glowing endorsement.
I love everything about Scythe until it ends... then it is really unsatisfying. Agreed about GWT. I like Pfister's Blackout: Hong Kong much more. Skymines is also good, but not Mombasa.
Couldnt agree more about Spirit Island. Played Horizons of Spirit Island after I picked it up cheap, also have it on Steam, tried it solo a few times and thought it was meh, tried it with my gaming group and we gave up 2 hours in. It's going in my sell pile, or in the bin.
Playing as the alien in Nemesis to force the game's conclusion via more difficult aliens AND the triggering of a the self-destruct sequence, eliminating a ton of down time for eliminated players. The alien player has greater agency over the actions taken by the aliens and it really ramps up the difficulty for the surviving players. Nemesis is a game that becomes more about the story it creates than winning/losing.
Agree it's more about the stories that play out, and player elimination is a key element in that (the reverse is something like Star Trek, where it lost any tension because the regulars were never killed off). That said, I do agree with Mr Bollocks, that it can happen quickly and elimination before half way through is problematic. c.f. Thunder Road Vendetta, that cleverly uses player elimination as the trigger to place the finish line.
If it happens early enough, just let them start another character, or as you said, it's about narrative anyway, I personally find the alien player completely unsatisfying, why did the aliens all of a sudden become omniscient about the spaceship? Also it means players who would have otherwise had a chance no longer have any chance at all.
@MattWGAllan The secondary character respawn is a house rule I've thought about fleshing out where you wake up with a number of contamination cards in your new deck and you're automatically slimed. You get a new objective (a custom deck of cards) thay says whether your goal is to escape while infected, infect X # of players before game end by simply crossing their paths and randomly passing off a contamination card from your hand, have X # of intruders spawned at once, etc.). Intruders don't attack you but continue to behave as normal, including responding to noise you create.
@@Poiuytrew.Q It took until TNG for the first death (Tasha). Spock in the movie might count, but they did the cheesy 'he's not really dead' thing. Later editions have indeed entertained limited deaths, but my thoughts were very much focused on the original series.
I personally don’t enjoy Spirit Island as a cooperative because as he mentioned someone will just end up just telling the other person what to do, but as a solo game it is amazing and it is worth putting in the effort to learn and become good at. It is amazing as a solo game, almost certainly the best.
The BGG top 100 is all a load of bollocks. I own just 3 and have played half a dozen others. Games with loads of obscure rules, takes an eternity to learn, set up/tear down just does me head in.
Me personally rated Root and spirit island a 10 😊. Still appriciate your analysis of the top 100. You seem to like euro/worker placement games, which i Cannot stand unless i play with gamingfriends. Sitting through a game of Concordia is akin to torture.
The Special Edition of Castles of Burgundy is selling for around 200 bucks. I want a deluxe version of this game however thar just seems a bit too steep. I would have bit if it was $100. I got my 20th anniversary edition for like 20 bucks. Hard to justify that.
I love the Terra Mystica games as well. I went with Gaia project. I find now that the theme and the mechanics blend very well. The mechanics make a lot of sense with the rules.
Barkspan: collect different sticks of varying textures, wood grains, shapes and sizes. Winner is first to successfully use their assortment of sticks to clean the dogsh%t token off ones shoe card.
A couple of instances in there (Root / Spirit Island) of games having so much asymmetry that they become problematic to introduce to new players. No issue if you have the same players week in week out, and they're happy to go on a journey with a game over 4-5+ plays. However for those of us in a larger group, where there are different people each week, invariably there's always at least one person new to the game, often a full table's worth. In those situations, having games that are easy to teach / learn is very useful, and conversely Concordia shows just how streamlined a euro can be, making it a breeze to teach.
@@BoardGameBollocks Why is it on the BGG list twice then? They don't do that if it's just repackaged. Everything I have read says it's different - balanced better and what have you. However, you haven't played 2nd edition and I haven't played 1st edition, so maybe neither of us know for sure. Enjoying the channel, thx!
@@BoardGameBollocks I'm in agreement with you there re BGG. For instance, I held off against getting Gloomhaven and 7th Continent when they were BGG #1 games. I'm pretty sure I'm glad I did - for instance, based on your saying that they're bollocks! I was just citing the separate entries/scores as a piece of evidence that the 2nd edition Eclipse is game is different. If you look at various reviews of it out there, they supports this idea as well. Anyway, regardless, I have 2nd edition Eclipse. It is the only game I have ever painted - a pain, but it was worth it in this case for me. 2nd edition Eclipse is a big favorite of mine and it has gone over well with inexperienced and experienced gamers that I have introduced it to. It's a kinder, gentler TI4 IMO.
I’ve played Nemesis 3 times and never have we had someone die before the end of the game. The closest is the first time we played my nephew got in the escape pod a couple turns before the ship exploded and the rest of us died. You need to play it again.
We have played Nemesis quite a lot, and never had people 'die' really early, but have been in a position where I have completed my tasks early enough to slip into the sleeping chamber and hope no one decided to self destruct the ship or survive long enough to have something catastrophic happen. but sat back and enjoyed watching everyone else struggle. Honestly though I really don't like 99% of Euro games, I find the theme and games boring and a bit poncy, I don't like dexterity games either because it involves me losing because I like a beer when I am playing a game. I did play Terror in meeple city once, and we all felt like actually smashing it all up for real.
I'll have to double check, but I doubt that I even own 20 games or so of the top 100 on BGG. I have much different play tastes than the average BGG user I guess.
This comment inspired me to check which section I own the most form. 8 in the top 100 (Played 47). I actually own more in the 300-400 section of the list.
Spirit Island at 6 players - yeah, that's painful. I really enjoy the game at 1 and 2 players... could maybe stretch to 3 players tops. Four players & up, it takes an eternity to play and newer players' brains are melting, somebody is going to be trying and failing to quarterback the whole table in a game that's specifically designed to prevent quarterbacking... better to just avoid at this count.
Mixed metaphor for sure. My favourite of which was a friend who was going to say 'the dog's bollocks', but thought she better tone it down. However instead of saying 'the beez knees', it came out as 'the bees bollocks'...
Noticed you said Terra Mystica is one of your favourite games and gave it a 9. Just wondering how many games you've given a 10 to? Personally I agree with not throwing 10s out there, it should mean the game is basically perfect but people give 10s to things they like with little discrepancy
The way I view it is I've played and rated a little over 600 game's so the top 10% of that is 60 games so the best 60 get 9s and the the best 6 of those get 10s. The 1%,
Perhaps an expansion that fixes a beloved game would warrant a ten, "always willing to play" may be too exteme for you though 🤷♂️ never know what always may imply 🤔
Obviously you can use whatever scale you want, but since it's a subjective measurement, saving the 10s for some theoretical "perfect" games is completely meaningless. My favorite games are 10s by definition, because I don't know any games that are better. This guy's scale is one of the weirder ones I've seen: 9 and 8 are great, 7 is kinda bad and 6 is dogshit.
I like it. Not so much mechanically, but aesthetically it is enjoyable, and there are occasions where that's going to deliver more enjoyment and be better suited to the players at the table than something mechanically more interesting.
I think it's important to consider them in the context of the group. The same people playing together each week, and once taught once, everyone's up to speed and doesn't need to be taught again. In that setting significant asymmetric complexity is manageable and can shine. However having something like Root or Merchant's Cove, in a larger group where you'll play with different people each week, then every time it gets played it will need a re-teach of those asymmetric abilities, and the teacher having to keep a watchful eye on the players to ensure they've grasped that gameplay that nis specific to them. That can result in the game always being slow, and the teacher spending so much time & attention on those player specific rules, that they don't enjoy the game themselves. In such larger groups, modest asymmetric powers (e.g. architects of the west kingdom flipside of the player board) can be much easier on the demands for the teacher's attention, yet still giving direction to other players.
When you play Nemesis, you need someone who knows the rules very well. This way, beginners will avoid making common mistakes and no one will die early. By the way, what's the game you show when you talk about Nemesis. Like a little Nemesis but definitely isn't !
@@BoardGameBollocks 100% agree. The game can be fun, however it's just as often a mess. The game is thin and extremely table dependent. I can see why some love it but It did not land for us
I also owned the shitty paper edition of castles or burgundy, and i never wanted to play it because it looked like dogshit. Its in the bin now with my excellent beauitful new edition and we've played it to death 30 times in the month that it arrived and it is still hitting the table. That old edition was played like 3 times only it was such a frigging eyesore.
this new edition came out shortly after people who already had the game bought the "anniversary" edition so some have three versions of the same game...economy must be good@@BoardGameBollocks
Collectible card games (LCGs, whatever lies they try to disguise them under) are such garbage. At first MTG wasn't so bad, bu then the never ending deluge of endless crap flooded and diluted the game into a theme-less cesspool greed-fueled themed discordance. And FFG seems to have latched onto the teat of endless expansions for anemic sub-standard games as a profit generator. I bought into their LCG at first, but now ... . Yeah, that's something I should bundle up and sell. It's slop, the promise of thematic depth was an absolute horsesh!t lie. Shame on me.
I have to disagree, I dont think you do talk bollocks. You talk the truth. Anyway thsts enough bigging you up. Dont want you getting all big headed n that. 😂 Good upload. 👍
Was playing Orléans earlier today and we were discussing over-rated games. Needless to say Wingspan was our chosen game!! Just boring, and if in doubt as to whether you will win or not, just spam spam spam eggs in the last round...yawn! It's unbelievable people still backing KS campaigns, esp the likes of Castles of Burgundy, blinging n pimping up games as a cash-grab...its a mug's game that! As for Great Western Trail, hmmm it's ok, again, a bit boring. Probably better off getting the New Zealand version, helps resolve a few issues with base game like burning cards from your hand.
I was thinking you were going to say « needless to say Orléans was our pick ». No variability whatsoever, obvious overpowered buildings (the one giving you wheels and the one giving scholars monk-like versatility)… I’ve played four times and had seen everything there was to see by the second game… score 170 the third time…
I loved Terra Mystica, hated Gaia Project. In Terra Mystica there was that tension of sticking to your own plan or cutting off other players Gaia Project was race for the green planet.
@@Bigjeffro that's not my point. Describing Gaia Project as a race for the green planets just makes no sense. Especially when you know that the scoring conditions (for each round and for end game) in GP vary from game to game and are not constant. It's possible to play a game where green planets are not scored at all, so there won't be a race for them...
@@jagwoof9129 I just bought a board game off of GeekMarket. They stopped supporting GM. It's ... basically just emailing other board gamers and doing it unsupported. The rest of the site is becoming an ad space for KickStarter and and review shills.
it has good points sure, i can research alot of old games from the past for sure, but they way they run it now its complete crap And they censor free speech any speech they dont agree with they censor. Thats clown show behaviour. The only speech that should be censored is actual threats or call to violence, stating your opinion politically should not be gorunds for censor which is whats happening there now. If you are even SLIGHLTY right of centre they watch you like a hawk. @@jagwoof9129
I don't understand how you love Mage Knight solo but dislike Spirit Island. Mage Knight is definitely better, but SI has a lot in common to me as a solo experience.
I honestly can’t comprehend this either. Mage Knight is definitely more fiddly. If you can understand Mage Knight, you can definitely understand Spirit Island. For most, it’s probably best at 1-3, and even 3 is pushing it if everyone isn’t familiar. It sounds like he created a few troublesome groups for this game that left a bad taste in the mouth.
If I'm going to want to put in the time and effort to play a game like Spirit Island, then I'd rather be competing against the other players rather than cooperatively against a game system. Just feels like an exceedingly complex Pandemic, to me.
Arkham Horror is the most overrated game I've ever played. For a better experience, read a Fantasy Flight book and randomly take dice from a bag to determine the outcome of actions. Considerably cheaper and nowhere near the faff of having to resort to the rulebook constantly for multiple contradictory rules between cards and the game.
Wingspan is way too much about top decking the right cards. There are too many cards to consistently build an engine that works together. Beautiful production with mechanics that a mediocre and luck driven. If it works as a gateway for family or non-gamers than that is fantastic, but in the hobby space it is the very definition of overrated and over hyped.
I have had many lovely games of Wingspan where the perfect engine came together. Rarely a time where there was a run away leader, which implies it is balanced. I find myself somewhat unsure about this elevated definition of a hobbyist. It is certainly a better game than presented in this assessment.
Call the word police. Someone said 'hobby' they must be gate keeping. This is an under baked mass market card game that the publisher sold at hobby prices and compensated hobby media to claim it was the second coming. The concern here isn't really Wingspan. It's the potential of a paradigm shift in the industry if publishers decide they can skip the development and testing phase and still charge 60 bucks as long as the pay off media and put petty art on it. This happened with video games in the 20teens
@@jackabbott7295 I completely agree with you. I have purchased many games in this genre intending to sell, but they turned out to be a muddled mess due to being underdeveloped. However, Wingspan is a shining exception. It was thoughtfully produced, offers intriguing options, and truly deserves the hype.
spirit island is trash???? you sir are full of shiiiiiiiiite lol. all jokes aside I can totally understand your point, but to me as a dedicated solo player it is mana from heaven.
