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

"Like a centerpiece!" sick callback Zee hahah

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Sam just convinced me to buy Sons of Anarchy.

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.

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.

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

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. ; )

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.

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.

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 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.

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!

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

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

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.

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

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’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.

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.

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

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

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).

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 .

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.

Zee understands Arboretum about as well as he did Agricola

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'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. :)

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.

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

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

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.

Very interesting list, thanks for making it.

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.

feel like we need an update on this list!!

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.

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.

Nothing Personal - The score track doesn't even fit ONE players mobster!

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.

Please do more Top 10 list, so entertaining.

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 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 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.

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 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.

That's an insane layout at 15:00.

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

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

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

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.

That was so much fun :)

I was so sure that Witch of Salem would have made Zee's list.. ^^

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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..

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

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

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

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.

I thought this list was a list of games that could be fixed or be so much better with one house rule. Even if some of the entries in this list would fit in that list, it would be cool if you do that list some day

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.

Zee, do you think all semi-coops are broken, or just ones with hidden missions to obscure the possibility of a traitor?

I totally agree with Sam on New York 1901, but I wonder how much impact 3D buildings would have in production costs.

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.

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.

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

You should do a Top 10 Rules of Mysterious Origin/Rules that seem to serve no purpose a la Witch of Salem.

The one thing that annoys me with Power Grid is that there isn't a simple cover or map thingy to cordon off the part you aren't using if you are less than 6 players.

End of discussion!!! Good Day, Sir!

I'm with Sam on the tin box. I wish more games came in tins; they are amazing!

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.

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

Jamaica Rulebook!

My "one thing" was turning Fantasy Frontier into a programming game. It need a few things more than just a rule tweak. But it kinda worked out.

I was really hoping this would be more rules-oriented than components-oriented. Because of this, I think Zee had the best list by far.

Wait...does Tom have perfect pitch? That was a Bb!

Whenever I travel with Forbidden Island, the bloody lid pops off. To the point where I’m now missing pieces 😥

Son's of Anarchy is an excellent game. Watching the show really helps with the locations though, I think its set around season 3 - 4

For Zombicide, we play you only hit a survivor if you miss your shot.

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.

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.

For Arboretum, I thought it was whoever was holding the highest card at the end scores, with the exception that 1's trump 8's is it not?