Board Games that Deserve a Second Chance | Board Games & Brew
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Jump:
00:00 – Intro
01:57 – Big Announcement
05:09 – Game 1
07:38 – Game 2
10:31 – Game 3
11:46 – Game 4
14:20 – Game 5
16:03 – Game 6
17:37 – Game 7
20:11 – Game 8
22:18 – Game 9
24:55 – Wrap Up
26:36 – A Little Bit Extra
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Nidavellir was my biggest surprise. Might be a BGA thing because I feel like when you play in person you do all the scoring at the end so it’s hard to know you’re getting stomped until the scoring and then it’s like wow I made a horrible mistake. Maybe BGA tallies as you go. I’ve only played twice though so could be wrong
I’ve heard the world of Warcraft pandemic is really fun and we are going to give it a try despite not having much luck with original pandemic.
I think you guys would love the experience of Pandemic Legacy Season 1. I hated Season 2, but that wasn't a typical opinion and it didn't change my love for Season 1.
For myself and my wife, I think we need to give Anachrony another chance. We had traded for a huge box full of all sorts of expansion content, and so most of what we remember is the miserable setup and tear-down. But we liked the game itself, and I kind of miss having a meaty worker placement game like that.
Wow!! Congratulations on the sponsor guys!! That’s a big deal. I’m so happy for you 🥳🥳
Jeff what is your favorite 1 v many game?
Congratulations on the sponsorship! For what it's worth, we felt the same way about Spirit Island. We played it a LOT and still just couldn't get behind it. 🤷♀️
Pandemic legacy season 0 from what I understand is A prequal . so I assume you wouldn't be spoiled for going to that part Of the timeline and is not about like an actual global pandemic. I think it's about like cold war. So you might enjoy that 1 and you wouldn't have to deal with the. Context of a global parademic since that is kind of a shity reality we are all dealing with right now
You can try Horrified instead of Pandemic. It has movie monsters. each one with its one way of doing things. At the beginning of the game you can manage the level of difficulty by adding more monsters or removing monsters from the game.
Jeff, co-op games with limited communication—we stay away from them! IMHO it's not cooperative if you can't communicate freely! I think this mechanic has become popular as a way to prevent quarterbacking, but if quarterbacking isn't a problem, then it's just aggravating🤷♀️I've heard such great things about The Crew, but I think it'd drive us crazy!😆
Wait you can't talk during The Crew? lol We talk all the time, just not telling each other what cards we have, lol, it's my friends and I's go-to-game
Feel ya on The Crew. I felt like I was the only person who didn't enjoy it. Good to know there are others, too, haha.
Shout out to Jeff, a fellow traitorous spirit!!! 🙂
Love this video—second chances for games is a real thing, and it goes both ways. We thought Eschaton was broken when we first played it, put it storage for literally years, brought it back out after becoming more experienced gamers, and it just clicked! On the flip side, when we started going back to old "favorites" like Munchkin, Exploding Kittens, Boss Monster, etc… they had lost their shine compared to things we'd explored more recently.
I actually JUST played the Clone Wars version of Pandemic, and adored it. If you want to dive into a version of Pandemic, strongly recommend… but as much as liked it, we walked away from our plays thinking "this was a lot of fun, but we don't need to own it." And it came from a place of feeling like we'd moved past it in terms of what we look for to table these days. So I'm definitely excited to see how it lands for you!
I got rid of pandemic, spirit island and dead of winter. There are too many other good games out there to waste time on games you find meh. It’s ok to dislike highly rated games.
Spirit Island is my favorite game. And I love it solo. I think it's important to make good choices when it comes to spirit combinations. Even if you play it solo, play it with two spirits. The thing is that one spirit is rarely useful in all situations. Combining spirits that are complimentary will increase the likelihood of success. I also believe that when you play it solo, you gain a deeper understanding of how the different mechanisms intertwine with each other and you're then able to be a better teacher.
Jamie is going to be really upset at us, but Flamecraft is our game that we’ve tried a few times and feel like we should love it but it’s just meh. The other one (which may have been because of who we played with) was just one. That one we’ll definitely try again though.
We have a list like this…games to give a second chance bc everyone else says they're great, and the Crew is on that list. After we played it we thought …huh I don't get it 🤷🏾♀️. It wasn't terrible, it just felt meh! So we need to try it again at a higher player count though. Also we played Pandemic at two player and three player and thought that it was a great game so I hope you have a better play of it next go round.
I agree that tenpenny parks felt so restrictive for a polyomino game, I much prefer Funfair for an amusement park themed game. Pandemic is great, I loved it but we’re thinking of parting with it now since Horrified has similar mechanics and a better theme. You guys can beat Spirit Island, I believe it!!!
Great video, miss you guys!
Co-op games need to be challenging, but they also need to be winnable most of the time, but just barely. You need a long drip of adrenaline followed by a big hit of dopamine – Spirit Island is so hard for beginners that it fails to deliver the dopamine (why keep playing if it doesn't make you feel good?), while Pandemic eventually becomes too easy and the adrenaline drip dries up (why keep playing if it's no longer exciting?).
I know you guys have a giant Campaign/Legacy game queue, but Pandemic Legacy really is worth it, it tells a great story, the set up and tear down is minimal compared to most campaign games and plays in 1 to 1.5 hours a game, and will probably be about 14-18 games long 🙂
Before you start you can also play the base game using it to get "back used to it" 🙂
There is a learning curve to Spirit Island. Def better with a veteran SI player. Its in my partners top 5. I usually play with an easier lower complexity spirit when I haven't played for a while because I have to remember how to play
I prefer Pandemic Iberia to original pandemic
Congrats on the sponsorship! I've never played any of the games on your list (although both Crew games are resting comfortably on my Shelf of Shame), but it sounds like your reasons for not loving them are valid. A big one that I need to give a second chance to is Decorum. Everyone raved about it last year, but it just didn't click for me at all. I think we played the first couple scenarios feeling like they were almost too easy, then we hit one that felt absolutely impossible. Could have just been we were tired, or not in the right mood for the game.
The opposite of quarterbacking is sidelining (if someone quarterbacks you out) or benching (one or more fail to act). ❤ HTH!
Extremely popular game that we don’t like…yet Jamie’s favorite…Disneys Villainous 😬
We love Roll & Writes, but Rolling Realms isn't hitting for us. Giving it a second go today.
Pandemic was the second game that we explored in the hobby (Catan being the first). We loved it for a long time, but got burned out of it. We felt that some setup was too easy and some were too unfair. I got Pandemic starwars recently and it feels like the sweet spot as it's easy to just add a ton of mission and it scales well at all player counts. Though I fear there's not enough vilains that it might get stale (though saw no BGG a variant to player with 2 vilains… kind of excited to try).
Dead of winter was our 3th game into the hobby and it was pretty fun for a while, but that is another game that is just unfair to play. Feels like the traitor can just help out all game long and eventually, your morale is going to go down low enough that they can just win on the stop (depending on their alternate mission). Getting ride of it at this point, but definitely got our value's worth by now.
I sincerly tried for those games but nope, giving them another chance just made me remember why i don't really like them. I played pandemic 7 years ago and didn't like it, then a few month ago my sister wanted to play it on BGA and i tried it, still don't like it but it's fast so i'm ok to play with her when she wants to. We played a few games on BGA of the crew, we laughed because we sucked but really didn't care for the game, i could play it again but it wouldn't make me like it more. Played nidavelir on BGA when it came out, didn't see the appeal, i played again in the past month and i'm still not interested in what happens in the game. Dead of winter, i wouldn't ever play it again, takes too much times and too much downtime.
Agreed Spirit Island isn't my favorite.. lots of Admin work and not great IMO as I'm not a huge fan of cooperative games in general . I've had lots of fun with Nidavellir and highly recommend trying it again.
Different strokes for different folks, right? Glad everyone isn’t the same… gotta say though, the fact that Spirit Island didn’t click for you guys hurts me deeply 😜
Jeff instead of Dead of Winter, if you like playing against the others, have you tried being the Zombie Master in Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game? It's a one-versus-all style game.
I actually can't stand the Crew. I don't think I'll ever give it a second chance. You'll have to keep us posted if these games change your opinion.
Endless Winter was a big miss for me but I’m willing to try again with some expansion content. You definitely need to play Ankh. Pandemic, Spirit Island and The Crew are all overrated. Dead of Winter is just meh.
With Spirit Island, we also got it pretty early in board gaming and it destroyed us the first time we played. We finally broke it out a long while later and ended up enjoying it and not feeling like we got our teeth kicked in.
I suspect you might have gotten the rules wrong to lose every game you’ve played. Speaking about Spirit Island obviously. The basic level is really easy. An experienced gamer would likely win every level 3-4. For me, I enjoy playing at level 4-6. 6 is truly punishing but winnable if you get your combo out. That’s for solo plays. I’ve played 2-4 players too but would suggest doing level 2-3 when playing with other players.
Now, for Rajas of the Ganges, it’s about Dice efficiency and building up strong turns through good planning. I’ve won before in a 4p game where I’ve crossed the 2 tracks and my 3 opponents 2 tokens are on opposite sides of the map. Meaning I doubled their score. Of course, the final 2-3 turns are where you run away once you build up your engine. 😅
Man I agree with you on every single one of these I have played. I am way less forgiving though and there’s likely not a second chance for me😂
4-5 times played is more than a second chance! Lol. Spirit Island is the number one game on my Want to Play list but have no opinion yet.
Also, Tenpenny is on my shelf of shame – I am grateful to go into it with tempered expectations now 😂
PS congratulations on the sponsorship!
P.P.S. I love the subtle nod to our Stone Age game ☠️
For Jeff, have you played any of the All vs One style games?
Hahaha I’m also similar in my unpopular dislike of spirit island!! 😅😅😅
Hope you guys arent getting whatever bug we just had 😷 ended up w tonsilitis.
So I need to know who was right, was it 1 or 2 plays of Dead of Winter!
Regarding Spirit Island – your instincts are right. Get a 3 player game in of it with someone teaching the two of you. If you feel it's starting to catch, preferably get another few games in shortly after – perhaps even buying the game on steam or the iPad now that you can play with each other that way. It's one of my favorite travel digital games but there's too much to play well on a phone and like many things you'll do better learning with the physical game first. I promise that once the rules lock in your head, it's a lot easier and unlike some games they are easy to remember after that point. The fun is getting better at the game. Really once you do understand the system and what kind of cards to prioritize, how to play certain spirits, etc – the base game difficulty is easy to overcome. At that point then you get to start playing the different adversaries and increasing the difficulty levels they have which all alter the game in interesting ways just like your spirits.
Yeah, we bounced off Pandemic, but not that hard. I'll still play it, but it's not a great game. Our Pandemic Legacy run has completely fizzled out (ended after April) because it's both really hard and simultaneously underwhelming every time.
Try Betrayal Legacy instead (if you can find it), it's jaw-droppingly good.
Dead of Winter is my least favorite game of all time. I've tried and tried, it's just not fun.
I absolutely feel the same about Tenpenny Parks!! I've played it a half dozen time😒
Hey friends, great video and congrats on the sponsorship! Always nice to see people being open-minded to giving games another chance. Some thoughts on the ones I've played:
Pandemic – I hear you on the theme, BUT Pandemic: Iberia is REALLY good. The art is stunning and since it's set during the 1800s it feels more removed from the pandemic we've experienced, plus the roles are more interesting than in base Pandemic.
Tenpenny Parks – I agree with Jeff about all the restrictions. The Vincent Dutrait art is amazing, and the components are really nice, but I don't think the game has a ton of depth or replay value beyond a couple of plays. Could just be a personal preference though.
Spirit Island – Dylann and I felt kind of similar, albeit for different reasons than you. When we talked about it in our Games We Wish We Liked More video a while back, we got a ton of comments from people saying it's a totally different (and much better) game with expansions and when playing against adversaries. Also, most people seem to exclusively play it either solo or 2p. I know you said you'd like to have someone show you the ropes but don't be surprised if a 3 or 4-player game feels too long. Apparently the Steam version is great, I'm keeping an eye out for a sale on that one myself because I also want to give it another chance.
Ankh – I've also only played it once (with 4 players) and even though it sounds like I enjoyed it a bit more than you two did, I had mostly similar thoughts. Curious to hear what you think once you've played it 2-player (that's my plan for next time too).
The Crew – YES! MDS is 100% the better version, but QFP9 is still phenomenal.
Nidavellir – weirdly I think I prefer this one on BGA. The added time from setup/tear down and manually counting points can make it feel a bit long. Plus, you can't just hover over a Hero with your cursor, so if you don't play the game semi-often, people will likely be asking to pass the rulebook around to read up about a few Heroes that aren't clear based on the icons/text on the cards themselves.
Haven't tried the other 3 but I really want to try Baseball Highlights… Jamie, you got my hopes up when you started talking about this, especially after Jeff said he'd love to play it any time, because for a second I was kind of expecting a redemption arc for "Agrico-blah". Haha. Either way, no hard feelings of course, really enjoyed watching this one.
– Carlo
Tenpenny Parks plays way better at the higher player counts. 2 players is ok 3 or more is terrific. Also really enjoyed Pandemic: Reign of Cthulu and Clone Wars over regular Pandemic, the themes were so much better.
Pandemic Season 1 is good if you will stick with it for about 18 games, but otherwise Fall of Rome and Clone Wars are my favorites. Iberia is really good too, and is tough.
I want to give Lost Ruins of Arnak another shot. "Deck Building plus a board" (Dune Imperium, Clank, Quest for El Dorado….) has been my favorite category of games, but Arnak just didn't land for me after a few plays. Want to give it another shot though.
@Jeff – To fix the Crew: Just talk. The game has no theme anyway and I refuse to be silent at that table. We use standard trick taking rules in that you can't discuss anything about your hand itself but we talk through the game, through the strategy in a round, etc. It means we get to have fun with each other and be social (which is the biggest reason I play games). Considering how many people we teach trick taking to WITH this game, it would be awful to be silent in it.
I own and have played once Mombasa. Enjoyed the game but The book section confused all 3 of us so we felt it might be useless. After watching it played on another channel though I think I'd love to try it again.