The Ultimate Gateway Board Games Guide
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New to board games? These are the best gateway games to start you off.
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🔵Amazon links, by category:
00:00 Intro
00:27 Categories
01:57 Cooperative Games:
Pandemic –
Mysterium –
Sherlock Consulting Detective –
Magic Maze –
Chronicles of Crime –
Forbidden Desert –
Burgle Bros –
Detective Season 1 –
MicroMacro Crime City –
Chronicles of Crime 1400 –
Magic Maze On Mars –
19:49 Personal Puzzles:
Sagrada –
Cascadia –
My Farm Shop –
Spring Meadow –
Cartographers –
On Tour –
Dice Forge –
Dream Home –
Bad Company –
Railroad Ink –
Copenhagen –
38:27 Friendly Competition:
Ticket To Ride –
Carcassonne –
Parks –
Sushi Roll –
Luxor –
Trekking The World –
Azul –
7 Wonders Architects –
Clank –
Diamant (aka Incan Gold) –
Quest for El Dorado –
Blue Lagoon –
Get On Board (formerly known as Let’s Make A Bus Route) –
Las Vegas Royale –
01:00:30 Feisty Games:
Sheriff of Nottingham –
Colt Express –
K2 –
The Resistance –
Survive: Escape from Atlantis –
QE –
Bohnanza –
Celestia –
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Quest for El Dorado link doesn't work, seems as well on Amazon they only have the German language version :(Thanks for your videos, I picked up Diamant from the last time you recommended it and it's great fun.
Loving the ideal player count #s! So helpful even for the games I already love!
I love the teach of Las Vegas in rhyme!
As usual, an excellent & thoughtful watch.
I found that railroad ink is not a great gateway game in my opinion. Newcomers are drawn to it's simple and attractive design. But they soon start to get analysis paralysis at the second turn.
It's a much more complicated game than it seems. Experienced players therefore like it more especially with the new editions (green and yellow) and expansion dices.
Enjoyable from beginning to end! I have some of the games on this list which makes me think I will probably enjoy the others. Thanks for making this!
1:05:58 as a South African, I appreciated that joke haha
Zombie Teens is a great alternative to Pandemic.
This is a great compilation video! Great to get ideas for a huge variety of the best games.
One thing, I understand that it would require a lot of editing, but I think this video would be a lot more approachable without the “skits”.
This was an EPIC video… and it’ll turn into an equally epic Amazon cart as well I’m afraid
Our first games
Summer camp, sushi go party, king domino orgins, tiny towns, ticket to ride, king of Tokyo de, disney villinous, 7wonders, raiders otns, down force and parks. I think we're ready for Wonderland wars
Good list and a good reel of that dysfunctional but realistic family you have!!
Don't think I've ever had a friendly game of Ticket to Ride.
pursuit of happiness please
Where did you get those custom character pawns for pandemic???
Pandemic was also the boardgame which made me fall in love 😍
So, Parks is basically Tokaido?
"Gateway" games are all I have time for nowadays!!
Fantastic video on a great selection.
Another informative vid. Really like your Pandemic meeples. We love pandemic and would love to know where we can buy those character meeples.
MicroMacro has been a wonderful gateway game for me. The transition from Where's waldo helps a ton!
Just started the video but I like the categories
A hour and 15 mins of board gaming discussion? Alright, you've got me, I'm in.
I havent even started this video yet and I can already tell I'm going to hate every second of it.
I'll be back in an hour if my thoughts change.
Edit: okay I'm one second in and I see Jon is a fan of Hendricks the best of all the gins and also the sentient near sighted blue square is back.
Already winning me over.
Edit: sorry that's clearly a rectangle.
Edit: It is apparent that despite the bottle of Hendricks in the back Jon is drinking something else.
Back to hating it. But still loving the Rectangle. I'm torn.
Edit: You had me at the first skit and you know it.
Own almost all the games in the thumbnail so look forward to listening to how right I am to own these games.
babe wake up, 75 minute actualol just dropped
I'm not a board gaming fan, but have been working my way through this list. After trying 40+ of them I was beginning to lose faith… but after the 45th one I was hooked! Thanks Jon!
22:40 ‘When you slot something in that fits perfectly, you feel so pleased with yourself’ 🤔😛
If only you knew how happy I get everytime youtube notifies me you have a new video. Also, how much people make fun of me for buying too many games ( games suggested by you). Your channel is my favorite thing on youtube. Keep it going!
Absolutely love how you split the games into 4 categories that make absolute sense. I like all categories but I think personal puzzles might be my favorite. And some friends absolutely want to be mean to each other so this video is an excellent starting point.
Love the production of this channel, but why all games are family games, cute, pastel? Where are the games to play with male friends and beers?
Very impressive rhymes! Quite entertaining to watch, will surely pick up a game or two here.
The different versions of Azul and Sagrada are the games that most often end up on my family's table – along with a bunch of easy to play roll and writes and – at moment Cubirds and Castro. But as you brought them out here as well you really reminded me that our copies of Ticket to Ride, Catan and Carcassonne are gathering dust on the shelf, I really need to bring those out again.
Great video but you really need to try harder, I am sure there are some parts of the country you forgot to insult 😁
For someone that has seen all your videos, this thread of recycling videos is not for me…
1.5h video + recycle material (again) = dislike
Loving the return of Timmy, Barry at el. Great stuff as always, Jon.
For my group, a couple games not mentioned here that we use for gateway games are Splendor and Miaui.
Splendor clicks because of the combination of the simple engine-building rules combined with those nice, hefty tokens that players collect and pay with. It's also fun messing with other players by snagging the resource or card they need before they have a chance to get it themselves.
Miaui's a fun little trick-taking game that makes for an excellent breather title. Players have a deck of cards 1-12 and play them over 12 rounds to snag one of 3 fish cards (worth between -15 and 15 points plus a few with special abilities). The fish go to whoever played the highest, 2nd highest, and lowest cards (Ties determined by proximity to a tiki figure that travels around the table between rounds). As you can only play each card once per game, you have to keep weighing your slowly-depleting options as well as trying to figure out what cards the other players are gunning for and remembering what they've got left.
We also have the game My Little Scythe as sort of a mid-gateway game. As the game plays like a simplified and streamlined version of the original, it helps get players more of a feel for how some of the heavier titles in the collection work and in turn, makes them easier to teach (And we all know the pain of trying to teach a complicated board game to multiple people at the same time).
Hey Jon, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on our continued use of the term "gateway game". Sure it's alliterative and adequately conveys the intent behind introducing someone to that game, but it also earns conveyance from an association to drugs, which is a less-than-wholesome and somewhat stigmatized thing in society. I know there's a lot of parallels one can draw between board games and drug use and that a lot of us joke about being addicted to buying/collecting games, and fear thinking about how much money we've actually spent in pursuit of this hobby… But I sometimes worry that calling them "gateway games" automatically puts a negative spin on the hobby in the subconscious of the exact new people we're trying to entice to join us.
P.S. The illegal purple-next-to-purple placement on your Sagrada B-roll is upsetting me way more than I thought it would…
What great thoughtful categories. I wish BGG used something similar!
i don't mean to be rude, but reusing 90%+ of your old video's in clips for this video seems rather disingenuous to your previous subscribers.
Especially when this video seems like it would have been a new content instead of a "recaps" sort of video.
As a Parks player, it really bothers me that you put weather on the first tile AND it was the 4 player tile when you had the game set up for 3!
Is that a 6 shot scotch? I’m also in for an hour and 15 minute show. Let’s pour and do this.
Glad to watch a recap video, nice seeing your old skits, hope your start doing them again in future videos.
Wow, what a treat!! How much work you put into this! I don't even want to know how long it took you to make this one. Great content, thank you so much!!
Amazing list!
Yesss! I’ve been looking forward to your video & have been checking my subscription updates daily for it!…another amazing video. Tastefully hilarious & intelligent.
Although I've seen you recommend these before. Still love this list as I still haven't made it through all of them!! You give great recommendations.
Perhaps in the future you can made a list of next step beyond gateway games? Great content as always. You put in so much effort.
I think we often underestimate how mean and aggressive newbies can be, but I think it is useful to teach people the power of passive aggression which is so vital to so many board games early, so I don't entirely disagree with keeping it friendlier to start.
This channel is one of a kind. One video per month, but extremely high quality.
Incredible list! I like how you somehow manage to convey the gist of the rules in such a short time, unlike for example SUSD, wich often leave me guessing after a full review