Top 10 Boss Battler Games 

Really like this format. Not saying that you should do it with every top 10, but it seemed like it encouraged more discussion of the games. Sometimes when there's a crossover in a standard top 10, you end up with one person giving an overview early on by themselves and no one else wanting to say much, but then by the time it's their turn higher up the list, they race through it because it's already been covered.

Well, as I sit here playing Oathsworn and waiting for my Primal pledge to arrive, I feel all warm and smug and validated right now. Excellent list!

I like this format, talking about overlap favorites aa the happen on one list, rather than repeating each list.

Not really my genre, but I'd put Sentinels Of The Multiverse on the list.

Dice tower one of my top 10 towers.

I just got my copy of Leviathan Wilds a week or two ago, and wow it’s fantastic. Just seeing it on KS gave me flashbacks of Shadow of the Colossus and it just does a great job

Love the format. A graphic that slots in each person's ranking as they are revealed would be cool. Three columns of 10, side by side.

I think Marvel United is a great “Boss Battler” as that is what the whole game is, but it breaks away from convention and does it in a unique yet wholly accessible way.

We sold all of our shadows of brimstone stuff once we played kdm. Filled similar spot.Buying node 1 monsters would definitely help with variety in kdm. But technically the monsters like the lion do change per which level your fighting. Lvl 1 lion is very different to fight then level 3. I only play kdm for town phase as well. Boss are fun to. Been a good couples game for us. Once you realize your survivors are a resource to keep the next generation alive the swing moments don't hurt as much mentally. Personally think it plays best 2 or 3 players. You always go with 4 survivors. Gamblers Chest prosbly the biggest expansion for a game in the hobby adds some really great systems.

Great video you three!

_Assault_ _on_ _Doomrock_ is a great, relatively lightweight dice-allocation game that was one of the first couple of boss battler games to come out (the first edition came out in 2015, the same year as KDM). The recently released 2nd edition of it is soooo good. AoD has an interesting take on tactical action that simplifies things but still allows for lots of options like terrain, obstacles, ranged attacks, and so forth.

Fun list and happy that you already got Primal and it was so well received :D Hope mine gets here soon. Already longing to paint up these gorgeously chunky monsters :P ... only need a larger house to store it all in oO

Awesome video.

Leviathan Wilds is amazing. Super clever card play, movement, and positioning.

In Oathsworn, I love the companions for my kids to use. Easier for them to understand and master and less for me to explain and talk through their options with them.

Never let So Clover be forgotten.

I’m so so excited to see that Leviathan Wilds made your top 10! Such a beautiful, fun, game with so much replayability! 💖🙌🏼✨

I wonder if Grimcoven would make into this list in the future.

What a great list and so much fun to listen to! 100% agree on Adventure Tactics. Fabulous family boss battler, so much fun, my 8yo and 10yo love it! We played through (completed) both the base game and Adventures in Alchemy. We have Kinfire Chronicles in shrink and can't wait to get it open and run through with the kids. Thought about Oathsworn so many time but I think it might be too dark for us. We didn't really grab onto Destinies for that reason.

Even though seeing more games is fun, it's even more fun when I hear more in depth discussion about each game. This is a very good format. Maybe a slight tweak: Do a combined top 10, then do 3 highest outliers each with some honorable mentions. EDIT: this turned out as one of the best top 10s I've ever seen! So much discussion on each game!

Great list and discussion. I have no boss battlers.... hmmm.

Adding Leviathan Wilds to my "be on the lookout for" list at UKGE

I do like this format

The size of the miniatures is so good because they are so big.

I have almost all of them and primal is epic and my #1 as well :) fast to setup and expedition mode is really nice when your group doesn't want to commit to a campaign Love your top 10

I was one of those people that thought Marvel United was overhyped but for some reason I kept going back to it every now and then. I then bought some of the expansions because they were so cheap. I have four boxes and never paid more than $16 for any of them and now MU has become one of my most played games. I love it. It's deeper and more replayable than it seems when you first play it, IMO, but it really grows on you.

Was Kradia wild hunt festival on there?

I feel the individuality of each host gets diminished when there's only one pick of game per number.

How did Sentinels of the Multiverse not make this list??

Interesting video! 😛💣💚

40:10 Tom: This is what a normal human being would say is "cute". Camilla: Oh. . . . how sad. The look on Camilla's face killed me.

Shout-out to whoever produced the bumper music.

Wildlands Ancients was a great choice! I'd add in Attack on Titan as a great, light boss battler 1v4.

I LOVE OATHSWORN!

Love MU and looking forward to DCSHU (Geese! 😛) - Bit of an oddity as a "boss-battler" but each is def. unique, they absolutely "Make" the game, for sure! ❤

Shout out yo Street Masters. It feels like a beat em up + boss battler. Highly recommend it if you can get your hand on it.

I want to see Ryan Laukat take the combat system from Now or Never and use it in a co-op boss battler set in the Arzium universe

Absolutely love primal, combat is amazing with the reaction AI, the crafting, and the monsters. I hope Reggie Games makes more expansions

Marvel Champions is the best boss battler I’ve played. Pick a boss, and a hero or 2, then play. That’s all you do is fight the boss.

Any chance of a follow-up video with Roy's Top 10 Boss Battlers?

now I'm spending my entire weekend trying to find kinfire chronicles

I love deck builder and input randomness. I dislike pre-game deck construction, output randomness and narrative. I don’t think anything could beat Aeon’s End for me. Slightly disappointed that it’s so low on Chris’s list. Also slightly surprised that Tom has cooled on it as I didn’t think he ever really liked it in the first place.

When Tom talks about multiple bosses, he is probably referring to the dragon slayers in Dark Souls 1.

… and Zee’s number 1: “I’m the Boss” by Sid Sackson.

Hmm. Maybe Battle At Kemble's Cascade could be considered a boss battler board game.

May we see a top ten dungeon crawl?

23:58 "that causes the TAINT to move around" ...sounds like Tom is playing a very different game than the rest of us when he pulls out Vagrantsong! 🥴 (maybe that's in the New York subway expansion?)

Oathsworn is phenomenal. I really hoped to see monster hunter. That game is just amazing.

I like how Wendy corrected (during Tom's #2, Oathsworn) corrected her verbiage of "dice" to "die" without missing a beat. Is Wendy a ...a...PERFECTIONIST?!?? :)

If Deep Water / Source Point / whatever they are calling themselves now, didn't totally botch the Rat Queens game, it probably would be on this list!

I was thinking Star Realms Frontiers as a great boss battler.

What a great list, number 7 will SHOCK YOU!

Monster Hunter needs some love, your progression comes from the parts of one boss to fight another boss and theres some choose your own adventure story parts in between which just gets you more stuff. Its just faster, lots of different play styles. I think the IP made the concept of Boss battling famous.

I would argue the Souls-like games (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring etc) can kinda fit in the Video Game Boss Battler genre because killing bosses is the only thing that gates progression. You can technically run past all of the fodder enemies and only fight the bosses, but you *have* to fight the bosses. Granted, you'll be very under-levelled but there are plenty of masochists who do level-1 only boss fight runs of those games.

Camilla. the sworn Oathkiller. ;)

Aeon's End is pretty far from generic fantasy imo, but I understand why someone would think that if they don't really engage with the game much outside of the gameplay

Leviathan Wilds is getting a reprint. I hate that most of the games listed are not available.

When Tom says Aeon's End is "generic fantasy" I really wonder if he's played it or just looked at the cover. There's no generic fantasy races, there's no plate armor or greatswords, or any of that at all. It's really about as far from generic fantasy as you can get while still being fantasy and not being distinctly sci-fi. I actually wish it were generic fantasy as I'd like that theme a lot more. Maybe it's just that the artwork doesn't grab him? I can agree the art is mediocre.

58:03 - Did Chris just announce Witcher, DC, and GI Joe Unmatched sets?!?

I like this Top Ten format, as it cuts down on the 'duplication' of talking about these games, and feels a little more 'focused'. 🙂

I think for someone who is not into the theme , KDM without any expansions is good to be at number 7.

I'm confused by Adventure Tactics. I hear about people playing with their kids, and the game seems RIDICULOUSLY hard to me. I've finished Gloomhaven, Oathsworn, and won 100s of games of Aeon's End. I struggle so much playing AT that I am convinced I must be playing it wrong.

My top 4 would be 1) Marvel United 2) Bullet❤ 3) Warp's Edge 4) Astro Knights

Sanctum should be on this list.

Thank you doing the list this way. I personally don't like when all the hosts share their number at the same time, drags the video down. I think another way would be if you merged your lists and then did the "quick share" of individual lists to cover games that didn't make it at the end.

The dark souls board game had a boss with a deck of cards afaik.

I haven't played any of these games. Where should I start?

KDM being 7 is a dishonour.

Bloodborne is from CMON, not Steamforged. I will shill for the boss rush mode of Dark Souls, the board game though

I painted all miniatures in Oathsworn and i did fantastic job )

Some older games are in my list - Boss Monster, Marvel Legendary, Thanos Rising, King of Tokyo, Mansions of Madness 2nd edition. Also another game that is so-so for me, Talisman Batman. Also a newer game that is a borderline BB, Nemesis...I can only comment on games I've played

Aeons end ❤

No Monster Hunter World? Feels like a travesty to me

I havnt played it yet.. but Monster Hunter World could be on this list

I like MU but the villains are so anticlimactic. By the time you do all the mandatory side objectives, the boss gets onehit

Yeah going to disagree that 1st person vs 3rd person are just a difference in perspective. Here's a simple difference. Evasion. In first person games you are rarely able to dodge attacks. The movement would be too quick for first person, completely disorienting. But in 3rd person dodging is commonplace. It's the same difference between roll and move and being able to move a set distance.

😵No Cthuhlu Death May Die!?!? - seriously disappointed. Best Boss battler out there, for sure - nice that it's "episodic" rather than a massive campaign game.

The incredible disappointment of Aeon Trespass overtaking Kingdom Death…

As an avid KDM fan it always miffs me when reviewers dwell to on how many times you grind the lion. If you actually "played" the game into LY5 + you'd realize you don't "grind" the lion. It's honestly a cop out. I feel like they played 3 games and imagined what it is like to play the campaign (opposed to playing it...) I'm into my 4-5 CAMPAIGNS and I'm not bored of the lion. With that being said - there is the Gorm & Crimson Crocodile to replace the lion if you feel so inclined. What I would accept as valid feedback would be there are no mechanisms to force you to fight a Level 2 Lion, and when your settlement is on say LY8 and you have 5 survivors left you CHOOSE to fight the lion as an 'easy' prey opposed to procession of facing a level 2 lion (which is MUCH different than a LY1 lion.) Another feedback point there are 20ish events that could occur every settlement phase and it just isn't enough. Two of the events 'murderer' and 'death eater?' could be campaign enders. I honestly had murder pull 3 times in row (which probably had more to do with the shuffle ability of the oversized cards, then odds of hitting 5% 3x in a row.) I also have Primal with 6+ plays and KDM blows primal out of the water. Primal is very good, and I'm actively playing more so my opinion may change.-- Just my 2 cents!

I have the complete opposite interest of Tom in almost every aspect. He just doesn't do it for me anymore. Nothing against his opinions but i disagree with the majority of them. However, I still watch almost all his reviews, just doesn't carry the weight they used to. He's too wholesome

I would put sentinels up there and replace marvel united

Marvel Champions, the best game ever made IMHO. Infinite replayability, very easy to customize difficulty from easy to unwinnable and everything in between, very rewarding decisions, satisfying chaining/comboing, nice co-op play, characters feel very unique. So many things to love about it.

Aww I really hoped marvel Champions was on here.

Sentinels of the Multiverse Marvel Legendary The Reckoners Star Realms: Frontiers King of Tokyo Thanos Rising

Monster Hunter is missing for me tbh

How about Descent or Runebound? You fight bosses in these games, but they are not cooperative, which is a genre I detest.

Not a fan of this format, the old format is just so perfect and it's true to the top ten of everyone. I don't think you should change the format. It seems really choppy and not smooth.

Unlike 95% of board gamers i actually play my games from start to finish. By the end of Osthsworn i was just so tired of it. The story sections just drag on forever, all the “choices” just boil down to what token you get. I love the card battleflow system but moving the bosses and mob enemies suck, as does the north west rule. Do i not like board games or do campaign games just out stay their welcome?

Ok I’m at 8 and have already had 4 mid roll adverts show up. First time I’ve ever had a mid-roll advert appear on a Dice Tower video. Oh no.. 😔 EDIT: at 7 now and just watched my 6th advert. I’m out

My wallet requires me to put KDM in my number 1 spot. 😅

1. Monster Hunter 2. Oathsworn 3. Aeon’s Trespass 4. Primal 5. Townsfolk Tussle

Standees > Minis. Especially unpainted ones. There is nothing more sad than giant boxes of forever unpainted minis.

In Leviathan Wilds, it's lame that you're "healing" the leviathans rather than killing them.

No King of Tokyo? Shame!!! 😂

Oathsworn 🤮 Fancy toy. Poor design. But I guess if you like throwing dice without having to think at all, it’s nice. I’d rather play yatzhee.

I like Monster Hunter way better than Primal.

Hate the format; it doesn't even save time. Give everyone a top 10 as usual. This is weird and seems dismissive of Milla & Chris.

Not a fan of boss battler board games.

I think boss battling is my least favourite genre in any interactive gaming medium, just so, so boring.