Top 10 Games That Need One Change 

Could not stop laughing when Zee told Sam to leave the Heroscape board set up between games as a centerpiece

Zee: "You have to admit the art is consistent". I'm dying. 🤣

"Like a centerpiece!" sick callback Zee hahah

That Carcassonne scenario where people refuse to show the tile they draw is so true and very annoying! It doesn't change anything to show the tile and we all want to see it lol.

YES!!!!!! Zee Garcia!!! Preach it!! Testify! That exactly is one of two major things that needs to change in Dead of Winter I couldn't agree with you more!!!

Friendly neighborhood Kindom Builder defender here: having one card in Kingdom Builder is central to the tension of the game. The central feature of the game is to balance powers so there is no such thing as a bad draw.

Sam 'You don't have to stack them' Zee 'I do' Love it guys.

My #1: Spyfall: game about an unknown spy guessing a location. But the only list of possible locations is in the rulebook so as the spy you have to sneak a look at the middle of the table where the rulebook is. Include freaking player references for up to the 8 players with just a list of the locations, easy enough. Just glance down to make the guess. #2 Splendor: 3 player rules are stupid, 2 player is fine because you rarely step on each other, 4 player is fine, you use all the chips, but with 3 they take 2 chips so it becomes an entirely different game of sitting around waiting for the right resource to be spent so you can get it.

I always thought that the pirates in Jamaica should have had special powers. Another change I think should have been with Sheriff of Nottingham, the character boards are double sided so why not have one side be male and the other side be female instead of just the one female character.

Sam just convinced me to buy Sons of Anarchy.

Zee's sad little "I do." after talking about tins was the best part of this whole video.

I would love to see a way in Lords of Waterdeep to wipe the builder's hall like you can the quests. Sometimes you turn over 3 buildings that no one wants to buy, and then they just sit there for round after round. This can be a big problem with smaller number of players, or if playing with the expansions, when no one is forced to go there for lack of other spaces.

I feel like a few from Sam's list were borderline getting away from one change that needs to be made and closer to what would in effect mean a whole re-designed or new game rather than a single change. Making Powergrid less math involved, taking the Sons of Anarchy theme off the Sons of Anarchy game, reducing the complexity and combinations used in Race for the Galaxy, not having to set up a Heroclix map ... I feel like those are reasons you don't like these games not single things that need changing, which are similar but not always the same.

Kingdom Builder's one card restriction, I feel is what makes the game interesting and makes placement a key element to leverage. End of discussion. ; )

Zee's 9 got heard: Ruse & Bruise it's currently on Kickstarter with a new edition that includes a new translation

Re: Kingdom Builder - We play that you start with 2 cards and play one. Then draw another to replace. So you always have two cards to choose from. We like it a lot that way.

I’m with Zee on Arboretum. My friends thought I would love it because Parade is my favorite game of all time; but Arboretum just bores me to death.

I was thinking about that same issue with Dominion. I always wondered if having a small set of boards that would come with each expansion that gave optional Themes to a deck. Each board would be a whole city, and it would have a Bazaar, a Barracks, a Castle, and a City. Each section would focus on different aspects, like the Castle around VP's, the Bazaar around Treasure, the Barracks with Attacks, etc. Each board would also come with a general theme, like one would focus on "expanding the kingdom," so you have to buy the most "land" (i.e. VP Cards). Another might focus on having the biggest army, so it would focus around Attacks. And each part of the board would have abilities, like the Bazaar might change the price of cards or allow you to use other cards as Treasure, or whatever is most appropriate. And, of course, each expansion would have it's own set of boards that cater to the set, with 2 recommended cards to play with from that set. A 4-player game with then have 8 recommended cards and 2 cards that are random.

Rolling dice and taking....names? I got you Zee.

Video and sound is good in this one. I know you all are working on that so just wanted to give an encouraging word. Keep up the great job fellas.

Before i watch this video, i will say we had a change almost instantly in Cosmic Encounter. When all your ships are in the warp and someone plays mobius tubes, the player gets all his ships back and the ships are placed into the hyperspace gate. This makes the game better for us in so many ways. Hilarious situations and also it makes the losing player less salty when he/she gets all the ships back instead of zero ships.

Sam, Tide of Iron can be fixed by using a round file to open slightly the holes on the bases. It makes setting up units 50% faster.

For Artificium. I have not played the game so I don't know much about it, but I think it might be solved in a way that when ever you go over a spot that gives you something extra you get that many as what is your position in the game. So the first one would get 1 item, second one would get 2 items and so for. It would still benefit you when your ahead (which is not very good mechanic I'd say), but it benefits even more then players who are behind. Would that work?

I am literally watching this Top 10 while putting stickers on my copy of CC: Ancients!

Sam, how would 3D buildings work? In New York 1901 vertical space is represented in 2D, so tall builds are actually long. I feel like it would actually be difficult to implement your idea without changing the game a lot. Am i missing something?

Zee understands Arboretum about as well as he did Agricola

Sam, with Tides of Iron, all you need to do is to drill out the holes making them just a little bit bigger. The fix is just about everywhere and took me less than half an hour to accomplish.

Shadowrun Crossfire, as is, is one of my favorite Deck builders(speaking of which I need to get it played again soon) but I will agree progression is quite slow. I've thought of doubling Karma on certain missions and maybe award 1 for losing, 2 for successfully aborting.

I absolutely agree with Zee. I hate the win requirement for Dead of Winter. It's not cooperative if other people win and I lose when I am not the traitor.

Forbidden Desert also should change the tiles for square cards, so people could sleeve them. When you shuffle those tiles to randomize the board, they WILL get at least a few white dots, and this could potentially leave you with marked tiles.

ARCADIA QUEST The death curse as it is in the rules breaks the game. It basically makes it so that the person that's on the losing side gets a disadvantage for the next scenario, thus getting a higher chance of getting disadvantaged in future scenarios. I'd change it around so that when you die you immediately get a death curse card. If you die again and get another you keep the one with the highest number, discarding the other ones. Keep gathering death tokens to keep track for scoring after each scenario. Once a scenario is finished you discard all death curses, starting the new scenario afresh.

Good news for Tom, Tiny Epic Galaxies has an ULTRA Tiny version which fits everything into a box similar in size to a deck of playing cards. On the other hand that might be exasperating the issue, it's hard to tell with Tom's reasoning, it's kinda half the point of the tiny epic series.

New York 1901 with 3D buildings would make it very difficult to see the properties that are not developed.

Love this video, one of the most fun ones yet! I had a couple of other games that sprang to mind: Urbania and Terror in Meeple City. Urbania - I find this city-builder really good fun and a good one to bring to Ticket To Ride fans... apart from the silly graphics choices! It's so hard to tell the difference between the colours, or which tiles have been developed and which haven't, or which project card goes with which colour (because they just rely on the symbols, people and building shapes), and various other things that I believe you talked about in your review (so you don't need me to tell you!). It's especially problematic if you have bad (or frankly, even just average) lighting. It's a shame because underneath... there's a really fun game in there. Terror in Meeple City (TBGFKA Rampage) - Love the mechanics of this game so much... and the theme... but the one thing that makes me genuinely queasy about this game is the casual sexism. Men, you are represented by superheroes! by on-the-scene journalists! by super-tough army dudes, big boss businessmen and, um, old dudes! Women, on the other hand, you get to be represented by... wait for it... dizzy blonde cheerleaders who run around panicking. It's so tedious, so 1950s, and so needless. And once you notice it, you can't un-notice it. I guess your mileage may vary as to how tedious and needless it is, but I hate it. Anyways, like I said, really enjoyed this video, you guys sure know how to have a good argument!

I love the tin box on Forbidden Desert :) But that probably has something to do with it being on the top of the game pile (since it is actually pretty small).

my 1 rule game fix would be for Catan: Include 1 ship for each player in the base game which, upon upgrade of an already established coastal settlement, allow players to make 1 disconnected coastal settlement via the ocean per game (settlement must be built on the same turn as the ship is built for ease of tracking). Too many times, most often in a 4 player non-expanded base game, someone is boxed in 5-10 minutes into the game and has to basically accept defeat, especially if they don't have access to one or more of the materials needed for development cards. This change would solve that

Please do a "Top 10 games that are easy to teach, but difficult to master"

We always tell people to draw their next Carcassonne tile at the end of their turn. I'm with you there, Tom. It gives you more time to think about what you want to do on your next turn.

I would like to see one change in Small World Underground, and that's to make it mix with the original more seamlessly. As it is, it's -mostly- compatible. I really wish they would have just went that extra little bit. The worst part is, they had the perfect opportunity to fix it with Realms, but they didn't.

Great idea for a Top 10....great discussion. Thanks, gentlemen.

The one game that came to my mind was Stone Age: If you don't want to get negative points, you have to gather food. The long term most efficient way is building farms. It's a worker placement game, and only one player per turn may upgrade their farm. So of course the starting player always chooses to do that, unless they are playing the only other major strategy, where you multiply like rabbits and ignore starvation. My fix would be to get rid of the farms, since it's anon-option anyway.

Zee was spot on with his Dead of Winter critique. Primary reason I dislike Dead of Winter.

I disagree that no fix needs to be proposed. It's games that need 1 change, not games that have 1 problem; if you're not able to provide a good change that will solve the problem you have with it, then you can't make the game better with one change.

I agree with you, Zee. Dead of Winter often doesn't work unless you ignore the express win conditions.

At Witch of Salem, just keep an individual notebook with the information you gathered, and change that information (meaning: show your notebook) to the other players when on the same location (what Sam said, actually). Then it's just a mather of "information proliferation" between all the players. Or you can play as Zee said, and just imagine there's a "telepathic connection" between all players and the witch, which allows some knowledge sharing. There... theme + mechanics... free of charge.

I don't even think Dead of Winter is a cooperative game. It's just not competitive in the sense that you're actively fighting the other players. In the end you have an obvjective that only you have to complete, and you only win if you complete it. It's a game with possibly multiple winners, but it's only cooperative in the sense that you all have to work together.

I really enjoyed this video. I laughed and smiled all the way through.

Killer Bunnies. I had fun with the game until the end when the winner is random. yes doing better gets you a better chance of winning, however all my friends who were playing disliked the random ending.

As for Sam not liking the theme to "Sons of Anarchy" but loving the mechanisms... it is the same thing with "Chaos in the Old World" he mentioned in the past. He couldn't get into it, but the game is great. I think Sam is a bit too sensitive to games, but to each their own.

They actually did speed up setup of Heroscape in its new Arena of the Planeswalkers version, with the board. Blue Orange actually has pictures of custom 3D buildings in New York 1901 on their Facebook page, but that game would cost a lot and have a huge huge box... Zee's complaint about Dead of Winter is the one thing that really interests me about that game, and I want to see more co-op games with weird hidden goals. But you guys are great, just to be clear. It's hilarious when you make fun of each other...

I think an easier way to sort out sam's problem with the Sons of Anarchy game is to do what Dead of Winter game did, have some of the more darker cards be highlighted with a symbol, that way you can swap cards in and out depending on the groups preference. I don't think this was necessarily a fault of the designers and more of a design choice that they wanted to keep the games theme dark to stay true to the series' fans. Another alternative would be to make custom cards with the same mechanics but with a lighter theme, I do that whenever I've got a board game I know my friends enjoy but don't agree with thematically. It's a lot of work but it helps.

Proposed alternate theme for Dominion: Political Campaign Victory Points = Votes Money = Campaign Funding Actions = Influence Cards = Supporters Buys = Political Favors Curses = Bad Press Example Cards: Witch = Smear Campaign Council Room = Televised Debate Village = Labor Union Contact Thief = Civil Action Suit Smithy = Grassroots Movement etc. Not the most exciting theme maybe but the only thing I can think of that ties it all together.

I agree with Sam ( kinda) Sons of anarchy is a awesome game that my group loves but that is because we are all adults that love the show However If you could reprint this with a different theme and that means people play this game more then I'm all for it Its criminally underrated

So....What do you change about Power Grid to make it less mathy but still Power Grid?

I agree that Heroscape does not get played because I don't feel like building it and tearing it down. But back when that's all my group was playing designing the maps was a lot of the fun. I would sit at my computer for hours playing around with VirtualScape (for those who don't know what that is it was a program specifically for designing Heroscape maps).

"I like to judge people!" - Pastor Tom Vasel

I've been playing Kingdom Builder with 2 available cards to choose from since the 2nd time I played it, and it is one of my favorite games! Works perfectly and makes the game amazing. :)

The game I would personally fix/change is Legendary: Marvel. I would have loved if the game had each player choose their own character to play as instead of using the abilities of characters. That really killed this game for me, sadly.

Forbidden Stars - Combat System. Battlelore Second Edition - A mechanic similar to the Too Many bones game to help you with terrible rolling. Commands and Colors - Miniatures. The Game of thrones board game - More varierty in the decks. Mare Nostrum Empires - The trade aspect needs to be made more interesting and quick. Sons of Anarchy - Real artwork. Vegas Showdown - Upgraded player boards.

Jamaica Rulebook!

Great list! I expect some would like to see Pandemic Legacy be able to be reset for additional playability, but I'm OK with making the permanent changes.

So Sam likes Sons of Anarchy except the parts that are thematically from the show it is based upon. lol

I agree with Zee re: Shadowrun: Crossfire, with the addition that I think that if you are playing, you need to always have 4. Just didn't think it worked with 3 when I tried it. That alone was a deal breaker for me.

Great top 10. Now that you guys kinda announced an upcoming game of Witch Of Salem, you should make a live video of it. That could be interesting and funny to watch .

That's an insane layout at 15:00.

Totally agree with Sam on the New York 1901 thing. we played it the other day and I commented that it would be a cool game to get the 'giant sized at GenCon' treatment, with model buildings and a huge map.

I like the idea of a Carcassonne house rule of having a hand of tiles. However that would sometimes be clashing with two expansions (at least) at the end of the game, where some players would have to give others tiles from their hands. In Traders and Builders sometimes you take a double turn, playing two tiles in a row, and in Hills and Sheep you sometimes need to use an extra tile for a hill.

That's a good point with Kingdom Builder, I may have to try that from now on. Scoring will be much faster!

Sam, you can drill out the holes in Tide of Iron. Also, The battle of five armies got so much wrong that it isn't funny. Everybody except Beorn and the eagles on the side of the elves, dwarves and men (EDM) were on the battlefield when the orcs and goblins showed up. Nobody gave a rats ass about most of the places the EDM have to hold in the game; each side had to run off the other to claim the prize, the treasure in the dragon's hoard. Their was no mention of goblins trying to force the passes, because there weren't any passes; it wasn't called the Lonely Mountain for no reason. Those are only the worst sins committed by the game. How would you like a game that was called historical if it had the American navy trying to sink the Bismark in the Pacific, or the Battle of the Bulge was held in the summer, and the German army starts in Bastogne?

Magic: The Gathering absolutely _NEEDS_ a good client for online play! As far as I know, there are only two: Magic Duels and MTGO, both of which are absolute garbage and either too expensive and meant solely for professional players (MTGO) or just straight out not working at all (Duels). I love the game, and it's a giant shame that at this day and age, there really isn't any good way to keep playing it online.

Age of Empires III: Age of discovery - change the discovery to be a more valid strategy more equal to other scoring approaches. Many suggestions have been made as to how. the easiest way is to reduce the randomness of cards by removing the ones with 5 natives and the ones with 2 natives before starting play.

I was wondering: were Robo Rally's maps with more than two tiles in someone's short list? Namely on Tom's, who ripped that page out of the rulebook when he reviewed it (was it Tom? I think it was) :-D As for me, there is one game I love, together with its expansions: Thurn & Taxis. However, I hate the fact that in the All Ways Lead to Rome expansion you have to remember who each of your own clergymen is, since you can never look at it. The other half of the expansion kind of makes it worth, though, since the halves are actually two independent expansions and don't need to be playes together.

Personally, I'd like to change ONE thing about the games Colosseum and Kingsburg. In Colosseum I would like the auction mechanism to change. I do not like auctions that is allowed to go on forever, looping around the table until one person finally outbids the rest. It is boring and it makes the game drag out. If, instead, the auction mechanism in this game were like the one from Goa or New Amsterdam, it would have been great. Either that, or they could have change it into a master builder type mechanism like the one in Castles of Mad King Ludwig. In Kingsburg I would just like some sort of end scoring/objective cards, whatever, so that the last round of the game became more interesting. When I have played this game, the winner is usually already decided before the last round of the game. Oh, and you're wrong about Kingdom Builder. The one card limit IS the game. If more cards were drawn, there would not be much to it at all...

Very interesting list, thanks for making it.

I would add the manual for "Reef Encounter" (2004) ... that abstract game itself is really solid, but the theme is not needed and additionally makes the manual really difficult to understand.

feel like we need an update on this list!!

I think adding theme to Dominion would take the possibility to relaese 7+ expansions (or more?) :) As i started to play Magic more again (PC version only). I think i would enjoy it more if you could have some sort of control about your starting hand. Maybe not completely pick and choose, but some sort of control. Yeah, i know, that getting lucky with draw and customizing your deck to deal with luck is part of a charm, but it is too annoying to build a nice and seemingly balanced deck and still get screwed by draw in the opening..

I love arboretum and just got the blood of an englisman and am excited to play it.

Tom's complain with Clippers reminds me of my biggest gripe with Ticket to Ride: Marklin with the little point chits for passenger movement.

I also LOVE Vegas Showdown. I have been holding out buying waiting for a good reprint. Any chance Dice Tower Essentials line?

A bit late to comment, but whatever. I actually agree with Zee with Dead of Winter, as soon as I learned about that “Everyone has their own goals, you have to complete it to win” It immediately got minus points for me. I don’t think it works in this game.

I really like the Catan series and love,love,love Starfarers of Catan, but the game can take forever arising from some extra mechanics the traditional versions don't have. I would remove the encounter cards and simply assign a point value to the black ball. For me, I don't think much would be lost from the game for getting on and colonising, upgrading etc. One downside is that cannons become less important, but I can live with that. It would also make the game more amenable to two players, in my opinion.

Please do more Top 10 list, so entertaining.

14:12 - LOL...too funny...Zee, you're awesome :D

Inkognito - bad rolls can mean you wait for your turn and then get to do almost nothing. In a game where both players in a team need to be able to get information two turns of doing nothing in a row can decide the game. If I had known this before I put the Nun of Doom together I would leave out at least one white (you do nothing) ball. As it is we house rule so that two white balls = 1 red move or 1 gold move - decided before the start of the game.

I actually play loads of my tiny epic games BECAUSE they are tiny. they're easy to throw into a backpack when I'm traveling/visiting people. Perfect go-to if you're not at home.

I wonder if components in Think Str8 are on any of the lists. I would be my number one.

Twilight Imperium - Get rid of the secret objectives. They don't add anything to the game other than hand it to whoever lucks out with the easier ones. I've never seen anyone win without hitting their secret objective, and some of them are so much easier than others. It's a 6+ hour game and secret objectives play the biggest part in eliminating some players right at the setup (I refuse to play anymore because of the time investment needed for a game you can practically call before the first turn). There's been a bunch of house rules trying to balance them, but they should just be done away with. No reason the game can't revolve around public objectives only. Forbidden Stars- I liked this as a playable version of the Starcraft boardgame, but the one thing that made me want to flip the table was the dumb warp storm mechanic. It completely blocks you from moving to certain parts and can easily screw someone over to effectively eliminate them from the game. That mechanic could work if the movement worked on a bidding system where players bid to control the storm movement, or as a catchup mechanic where the person in last place got to move them. But everyone gets to move them equally and the selection order is set. So the lead player gets to influence them just as much, which is dumb. Since everyone only moves them one space per turn, it ends up averaging out so whoever is screwed over by them at the beginning will likely remain screwed over. It's also a luck factor of who controls them first during a crucial turn. Fix the damn storms!

Zee is absolutely correct about Dead of Winter. Semi-coop doesn't work for me either.

Hey Zee, play Zanny Penguins. Fun game by Bruno Cathala. The scoring is similar to Arboretum, let us know if you like it.

Man Sams complaint about War of the Ring is so odd. The game represents the theme perfectly. The politics of the world are a huge part of the overall narrative. His complaint started with, "In a game called WAR of the ring..." There's also no ring in the box, surprised he didn't complain about that too. Politics are a huge part of any war. What a weird complaint.

What is that outro music tune? it sounds really familiar, but can't put my finger on it.

I hope when they make a game about Breaking Bad they don't make it too dark and instead have peep making labs because changing the entire theme of the source material would make me happier.

I think that new expansion for Race for the Galaxy that Sam & Zee are referring to is "Gaseous Planet"

The "Horse Fever" tie break rules! Roll the die to see the tie breaker - The winner is either: - Smallest player - Heaviest player - Whoever can do the most one-handed push-ups - Most pimples on player's face - Whoever touches the logo on the box first - Player with "most diopters missed" Rule everybody I know uses: Tie breaker is money.

Dominion doesn't need theme. It is like a chess. A game which really has no theme, but is fundamentally solid mechanically. I understand Sam needs theme in every single game but Dominion doesn't need theme to be fun and if you like a game that mechanically sound, lots of ways to win, lots of ways to play, but gives no real advantage to any player (other than a slight advantage to the first player). Best 2 to 4 player game IMO.

I guess this comes out as me white knighting, but I fully understand the reasons Sam has behind the stuff he's getting so much garbage for in the comments. With Heroscape, I get it, I honestly think Arena of the Planeswalkers has a solution to that as well with the big boards it uses. Just have some boards like that so you don't have to build even the base part of your map. it would save a LOT of time, since now you only have to worry about elevated areas, and would make your parts stretch more. And for SoA, again, I get it, especially understanding the groups he mostly plays in. He's usually playing with teens or his own kids (Of which I don't know their ages), and there IS a big line between "Mafia game, we know the mafia does this stuff, but it's not really a part of the game" and "This is a thing I'm actively doing on multiple turns". The same can even be said with something like D&D to a degree, not with the game itself mind you, but the groups you play with. I've left multiple groups because they.... basically turned the game into that. I seriously was in a game where a bard decided to start a brothel, and he roleplayed it constantly. End of the day, everyone has their points of life where this bugs them, but that doesn't, it's opinion, it's how things work, some people have issues with "bad words" and others don't. I give props that Sam ISN'T sitting there just flat saying "It's dark and it's bad" like most people do. He instead makes it SUPER clear "It's personal, you wanna play the game then awesome, it's a good game, just not for me". That's a very commendable level of being objective that 99% of reviewers in any world lack. People need to lighten up about that stuff and stop thinking that someone's PERSONAL preference is an attack on them.

One of the things I like about Dominion is that you can customize the theme with different kingdoms -- I'll put together a more "fantasy adventure" board or a more "bleak medieval dystopia" board or a more "happy village craftsman" board. My challenge is always to find a thematic link that overlaps with a specific mechanical focus.

Betrayal at House on the Hill, they should fix the balance between good guys and the bad guy in the scenario's. This is a game I reeeeeeaallly want to love. And I really like how you explore the house and build it and the cards etc. But when the haunt begins.. It's over. Most of the time we get a scenario, where the bad guy is waaaaay overpowered and I know for certain, nope... no chance we can win this. I don't mind difficult games at all. I really love Arkham Horror, haven't won a single game (well once, but afterwards we found out that 1 rule was not used correctly. so doesn't count :)) But at least you have the feeling you can actually win. With Betrayal at House on the Hill it's not just the feeling of dread (which is good), it's the the feeling you get of being completely overwhelmingly and utterly owned. And that just isn't fun at all.

Now, I haven't played the game yet, but Zee's complaint about Dead of Winter is a selling point for me :p