10, OUT OF 10: We rate our entire board game collection! (Part 2)
This is Part 2 of our new series, 10 (COMMA!) OUT OF TEN, where we rate 10 games on a 10 point scale from our two unique perspectives. We hope this helps you get a better sense for our game preferences, and remember…..
1) ratings are subjective, based on our own individual enjoyment of the game, they’re not a judgment on game quality or the likelihood you would feel the same,
2) our game preferences are ever evolving and these may change,
3) we respect and would love to hear your differences of ratings in the comments… that’s what makes gaming so fascinating and full of joy. There is something for everyone! 💜
Thanks for watching,
A&M xx
Timestamps:
00:00 Common questions
06:55 Fjords
(BGG 7.2)
12:09 The Search for Planet X
(BGG 8.1)
18:30 Splendor
(BGG 7.4)
24:43 Egizia: Shifting Sands
(BGG 7.6)
32:59 Planted
(BGG 7.5)
38:18 Dream Crush
(BGG 7.2)
45:07 Nusfjord
(BGG 7.7)
52:27 The Guild of Merchant Explorers
(BGG 7.8)
01:00:05 The Loop
(BGG 7.8)
01:08:24 Blood Rage
(BGG 8.0)
01:19:33 Wrap up
Thanks for stopping by! We’re Amy & Maggie aka ThinkerThemer. We’re an Australian couple with two very different perspectives of what makes a great board game – Amy (Thinker) is all about the mechanics and enjoys tight, competitive games, and Maggie (Themer) is all about the storytelling and the theme of the game, and the ‘world’ that the designer is trying to create. Subscribe to our channel to hear us talk about these two elements of a game, and how well integrated we feel these are in delivering a cohesive and wonderful game experience.
#boardgames #tabletopgames #thinkerthemer ❤🏳️🌈🇦🇺
I think every few videos in this series should be a “Big Talk on Small Box Games” … cover about 20 filler/card games in the same hourish amount of time as these two videos. I’d love a round-up of your smaller games (even if they were already covered in Small Talk).
Genuine question, given that you have a collection of 300+ games, what's the point of keeping games that you rate less than 7, or even 7.5?
Great episode of this awesome series! Thanks again and have a wonderful week! 🙋 Cis
I like you talking 🙂
was both your blood rage rating based on 2 player game? wondering if it's good at 2 because i am also mainly a eurogamer but is slowly branching out to others
Thank you for doing these. Keep ‘‘em coming! I appreciate the thought you put into discussing each game before the numerical rating. As more of a euro gamer I have always been curious about Blood Rage, I have to give it a try. 👍🏻
I love the length of your videos! Your "rambly" videos are my favorite! 😁
dream crush sounds like the teen girl sleepover game.
I've played Dream Crush with people I didn't know well and still had an hilarious time. I could see how it might lend itself to awkwardness if people weren't open to playing and taking a relaxed approach to the experience. Watching the whole group switch from one suitor to another because some terrible flaw has been revealed was very funny. Turned out the slightly boring beekeeper was the best of our options 😁
Nice, I like this format. I've always wanted to try Blood Rage, but I play almost exclusively at 2 player and it just seems that this would not work well at that count. Any thoughts on this? Do you ever play at just two? If so, what are your thoughts about the game at that count?
I'm one of the 3 people worldwide who prefer Ankh to Blood Rage 😀
I like the cull potential in this series
Great reviews and walkthroughs. Never heard of Egizia and will be watching a playthrough of that this week. 9.2 for Blood Rage! Wow. I've played a couple times on BGA and need to read the rules for better understanding. Its on my top 100 but strikes me as a game that will rise once I play it more.
Another great video! Thanks for sharing more of your collection.
I'm loving this format. Thank you for putting in all the effort towards making this series 😀
This is my new favorite series. The length of the video is not an issue for me. I love hearing you both talk about these games. Hearing ur opinions and feelings is so nice as opposed to just hearing about how a game works. I do not get to play as many games as I want in my life and hearing all this convo about board games gives me a space and puts me at home.
Are these ratings going to be on your BGG page? I don’t see them on there.
I really enjoying this episode. I like how you are discussing and rating the games in your collection. There are so many games out there and not everyone knows about all the board games that exist. It nice to hear what you think about the games you have played. I never heard of blood rage and shock that I haven’t. I need to add to my wishlist 🙂
Again, a great video. Love these reviews. Amy, I knew Blood Rage would be very high on your list. The picture with the minis was this your paintjob? They look awesome! (If not, I am intrigued what they look like.) I still need to play my copy of Planet X and Fjords. I was actually really looking forward to Fjords and I hope I like it more than you… Keep up the great content.
Splendor is my wife's absolute favorite game
i always prefer longer form content on youtube. I usually skip anything shorter than 20min.
EDIT: My preferred scale for rating like things (eg films, boardgames..) is -4 to +4. sometimes zero isn't low enough
This is a great idea, as a non content creator I don't have the access to new games and can't back everything on kickstarter. I acquire most games through trade. So I love hearing about older games and getting your thoughts on them. This space has plenty of content on new games and games we can back. I always enjoy content on the older easier and cheaper to acquire games. Please keep it up and hopefully other content creators join in.
Blood Rage is such a great game! I'm not surprised that Amy would rate it highly since it has a really satisfying set of mechanisms that are very well integrated together as well as being very interactive and competitive. I was more surprised that Maggie gave it as high of a rating as she did. I figured this would be one she wouldn't relate to at all.
Would be interesting to keep some stats as you go through these. Maybe each of your highest and lowest rated games to date and the game with the largest differential (in both directions) between the 2 of you (one where Amy is higher and one where Maggie is higher). Seeing if/how that changes as you go through your collection would be fun.
Edit: Oh, and forgot to mention how surprised I was at both your ratings of Splendor! Since it's pretty light mechanically and virtually themeless, I didn't expect it to be one either of you would find very compelling.
Thanks for the surprises and the series.
I never understand people that want shorter videos. First of all, you don't have to watch it all in one sitting, so every video is exactly as short as you want it to be. Secondly, if you like someone's content then it's bizarre to me to want less of it.
BLOOD RAAAAGE! So good, just like this series– keep it up!
Another great review of your games! No complaints about the video length. Can't wait for the next one!!
I appreciate your thoughts on the Loop, but I really like it because there's so much opportunity for chaining and creative problem solving! Yup, punishing game, but really fun to puzzle through what we can do to maximize what we're doing as a group! I also think it's not prone to captaining, so it's a solid co-op option!
Blood Rage is good, but I think Kemet is better. Not a fan of the Quests in Blood Rage.
Still enjoy this series 😉 Already looming forward to the next one… Keep also seeing the the purple side of Pax Pamir, this I rate highly and I remember you reviewing the game and being quite enlightened… Wonder how your thoughts are a leap year in.
I've enjoyed all of your videos and this series is no exception. I think you should take as long as you want to talk about each game. As a slowly more discerning gamer, I love hearing all of the details that might sway me towards trying them out. I'd like to keep track of all your scores and start to make my way through trying all the 8's and above or so. Most of the games I play tend to be light so I would definitely like to see your scores for small box games as well.
Nusfjord! It's the first big Rosenberg and still a top 5 for me. Love how there are so few resources but so many different things I can do. Played only solo.
Hi Amy and Maggie, this is such a great series!!!
I also really like Egizia and own the original, but stopped getting it to the table because the original rules had so much errata that it just got too frustrating. I've debated getting the new version… we'll see.
My favorite quote of the episode:
"I tend to not like fun games." – Maggie
I highly rate Blood rage too! I'd love to see your paintings of the models!
Love your videos 🙂
I cull everything under an 8, & my collection is currently 70 games which is more than enough for me! I turnover a lot of games, but when I look at my collection, it makes me so happy because I LOVE all my games!
Really interesting series and I love the depth and richness of your reviews. Excited for the continuation!
Blood Rage…. what a revealing game. Maggie instigating battles and coming in like a monster…well, it's us sweet and innocent ones you got watch out for. 😂
Splendor is still one of my favorites too. It's like when a game becomes comfort food. I hadn't played it in quite awhile, but decided to take on our lake trip recently. I was able to introduce it to my husband for the first time. It was so cool to see how he reacted as the game revealed itself to him. He rarely wants to play board games, but this one he asked to play again two more nights in a row. 😀
If you have a game that you've only really kept for your friends, you should give it to your friends
For the smaller, filler games, do a Keep or Cull (not that you would get rid of anything), but "If you could only keep [some number] of these games, which do we keep and which do we let go."
I feel like this series will let me find out about a bunch of quality games I missed the first time around 🙂 I'd never heard of Egizia, but it's now on my want to try list for sure!
For anyone else keeping track of the scores in a list format, here ya go:
Amy
9.5 A Feast for Odin
9.2 Blood Rage
8.6 Egizia: Shifting Sands
8.5 Dream Crush
8.2 Nusfjord
8.1 Splendor
7.9 Ark Nova
7.9 The Search for Planet X
7.7 Brian Boru
7.6 The Guild of Merchant Explorers
7.5 Dice Miner
7.5 Kitchen Rush
7.4 Scythe
7.1 That Time You Killed Me
6.9 Boon Lake
6.7 The LOOP
6.6 Fjords
6.5 Mercado de Lisboa
6.5 San Francisco
6.4 Planted
Maggie
9.5 A Feast for Odin
8.7 Nusfjord
8.2 Scythe
8.0 Blood Rage
8.0 Dream Crush
8.0 Egizia: Shifting Sands
8.0 Splendor
7.7 Ark Nova
7.5 The Guild of Merchant Explorers
7.5 The Search for Planet X
7.3 Kitchen Rush
7.1 Brian Boru
7.1 Dice Miner
7.0 That Time You Killed Me
6.8 Boon Lake
6.8 Planted
6.7 Fjords
6.6 The LOOP
6.5 Mercado de Lisboa
6.6 San Francisco
Thanks for the great video you two, from across the ditch 🙂
I love these videos, and absolutely don't think they are too long. It's great to hear fully what each game is about, and all the reasoning behind each rating.
You asked about why people do or don't like Blood Rage. Well, I really dislike area control because I'm a bit of a "care bear" as Rahdo likes to say and so I really dislike the meanness of destroying something that another player has built up (area majority is sometimes OK, though). And having said that, Blood Rage wound up being so much worse than I even thought it would be. It has such a huge barrier to entry in the fact that anyone who has played it even a few times will absolutely destroy a new player, because it's not just about drafting what seems to be the right card from your hand, but you really need to know what every card is and what they do, and how they interact to even be slightly competitive. This means that a new player basically has to do a ton of homework and study and memorize all the cards or it's just not even a contest, no matter how good they may otherwise be at planning and strategy in general. So, the area control made it a pretty hard sell for me already, but the hugely uneven experience to devastation ratio made it a hard pass. I can see how the first time you play, if you are playing with other people who are also first timers, it could seem better, because there's an even playing field. Sadly, that was not my experience.
Love the time yo spend on each game. The variety of games is perfect reminding me of one’s I meant to try, favorites & discovering something new. Fun
First. Great content you guys are fantastic.
Second. There is a bad trend happening amongst board game content. It shouldn’t take more than 2 min MAX to get to the point of the video. More and more I’m seeing all kinds of explanations, rumination’s on past videos etc etc. get to the point. If you want to pepper these ruminations in throughout the “content” great but when I’m waiting until nearly six min to get to the point I’m off to another video. I’ll watch two hours of your content in one sitting no problem but if it takes more than two min to get to the point I’m out. Podcasts are notorious for this, don’t do it.
Three. Keep at it, you guys are fantastic…just tighten it up a bit. You don’t know me, this comment is too long. If you thought that while reading it….well now you get it…
Thanks for another long form video – lots of games here I have never heard of! Egizia looks like a game I might enjoy, although my chances to play at 3-4 players might be limited.
Also 300 games in your collection sounds like a lot! How many years has it taken you to get to that point (and how do you find the space!?)?
Love the series 🤗
This series is SO GOOD
"I tend to not like fun games" 🤣Maggie.
I also absolutely love Blood Rage! Like you, I've also painted my copy, I agree it makes it more special to play. Working on painting Ankh: Gods of egypt at the moment
Blood Rage has been one of the games that I've most wanted to try out, but have never had the opportunity to do so. So it's a delightful surprise to see how well it feels for both of y'all. Even if it isn't Maggie's cup of tea. It's reinvigorated my eagerness to search and play it.
Really another lovely video. A couple of games I've never heard of here and it was great to hear about. I'm so excited for this series! Thanks again and I hope y'all have a good one.
Ratings and reviews brought some of the best titles to my game shelf. So no, it's not boring, it's interesting and important, and you seem to have great skill in doing just that!
I find it especially informative to tune into the difference between qualitative opinion and numeric valuation. You'd be surprised how often reviewers give high praise like "really fantastic solid game" and then go on to give it a 7/10. Thanks to your reviews and others, I'm even able to avoid reaching the culling stage in the first place.
A small recommend: I really like Blood Rage but replaced it with Mezo, which I find to be deeper and more varied without extra overhead. Happy gaming!
We need to play some Blood Rage together Amy! Painted minis are a must!