Where would be scholars of the south tigris on that scale?

I get your point on the Vagabond, I really don't like to play them personally, but at the same time, if you're playing a 5 or 6 players game, they're kinda mandatory. The board is just too crowded otherwise.

Maybe you should try Dune Spice Wars :)

when I heard people played it multiple times and it is always the same "team" wins so its a matter who gets to be the winning teams by draft - not the card during game, but just role picking

I thought it was bad because the evil side wins almost by default and not due bugged burning mechanics of The Thing

Birds the best all round imo. Perfect for new players and satisfying for experienced ones. Amazing design!

Two weeks too early for HOMELAND ;D Frogs & Bats !

32:25 I spat out my drink at this scene. Why on earth did the alliance buy?

Honestly sometimes I think the game is balanced around having a cat at the table

I really felt the difference between complexity and depth with Ankh (CMon). There are four simple actions and then three more "actions" that can happen, two of those very simple and even the battles are pretty straightforward (ruleswise). However, WHAT you do with those 4+3 things is incredibly difficult to handle. Especially with two players, you need to think way ahead of current turn to be able to think what you should be doing and what actions to take etc to control who will be starting the next battle and when and with what action etc.

I feel like TI4 is rated a bit higher than it should be. I think an 8 is more fair, it doesn't seem anywhere close to something like Mage Knight which I'd see as a 10

Very good video and a well-compiled list. I found myself mostly nodding to the remarks, which is surprising for such a subjective topic. I've only found myself wondering in two places: 1. Gloomhaven - I think today there's a huge overlap between people who grew up with RPG video games, people who tried or at least have knowledge of DnD, and people who'd be interested in playing Gloomhaven. With that, I think many of the rules of Gloomhaven become pretty self-explanatory, because they make sense in the context of these other games. Sure, you have to play a bit for the game to flow freely without checking the rulebook, but most of things are standard or written down on the gaming pieces themselves. 2. Most of the reasoning for Dune being a tier of its own - Just because a game doesn't have a clear ruleset, or even if it has multiple conflicting rulesets, it doesn't make it any more complex. It either becomes multiple games with the same pieces, or one game with an ambiguous / badly written ruleset. To illustrate my point: If half of the people would be playing chess with pawns also being able to move backwards, it wouldn't make it any complex, just unclear what you're actually playing. Dune is complex enough in and of itself (maybe not a separate tier complex), ambiguity of rules is a completely separate issue imo. (And it is just that, an issue. Unlike complexity which is deliberate way to appeal to the audience.)

Root's depth seems to be ranked way higher then it should be. Who wins mostly depends on other player's actions, not your own. In a sense it is no different than camel cup where things are out of your control despite your best play and intentions.

War of the ring, enough said to be an 11

Corvids rely on the social dynamic of the game as much as the otters do. It's just less obvious because they're trying to deflect heat off of themselves rather than openly bargain with their cards.

Dude, Dune could be a game that some peoples scale actually starts, ever heard of Lacerda, wargames or games like Mr. President?

I introduced my kids to strategy with a home brew rule in Candy Land - at the start of the game, they draw three extra cards. On their turn, instead of drawing a card from the deck, they can pick to use one of their bonus cards instead.

"It's got tiles like we are gonna remodel a bathroom" 😂😂😂

What is ASL? (Advanced Squad Leader)

Imagine believing there is no depth to human social interaction in games like Secret Hitler lol

I can’t help but notice that you compared to missing a roll in Elden Ring to getting unlucky

Vagabond is king. All will fall to the single dude in the woods.

So where would a game like risk end up on this scale?

well well Im at 9, 9.5 but I do want to play that Dune thing

I always think Power Grid is at an interesting level of complexity. You really only need one person to know the rules really well to make sure the auction flow and phase changes are handled properly. No one else needs to learn the complex administrative rules if they don’t want to.

Leder games managed to pull a fast one on you, huh

Campaign for North Africa?

Has your opinion of the app version changed now that the Ix Expansion is available?

I like to think Eclipse is like Twilight Imperium minus 2 complexity points and can be played in half the time.

If you dont know the rules, make shit up.

That hit against concord caught me so off guard, and it was so hilarious

"It has 25 factions. Which is more than the number of people who played Concord." Nice. 😂

I strongly disagree that you can't get better at Secret Hitler. You actually need deduction skills, sophistry, been comfortable to play mind games and to lie on the face of someone who knows you're lying. Maybe simple mechanics, but in this game you play more the people than the game

Crows are definitely underrated. The metagame of playing around their weaknesses makes them significantly more complex and fun

I think Biosgenis is also up there in the level 9-10. It took us 4 times to play with 3 people with a Master in Biology and dozens of times reading rules and watching videos.

The Galeforce 9 Dune reprint is not that bad in terms of complexity. But yeah, if you are including old rules sets, expansions, etc it get kinda crazy. My vote for 10 level complexity game is Europa Universalis Price of Power, that one takes the cake. There are literal flow sheets on BGG on how to perform an action.

22:20 i love root but i ain’t got nobody to play it with 😭

Make more videos! Get cracking!

Brilliant, thank you

I think it would be beneficial to instead have a range for each metric. For example, Go has a pretty simple ruleset, but the complexity that comes from the rules is easily a 10 at the top end where you're reading out hundreds of move variations and trying to evaluate each segment of the board and how they interact. I supposed you could consider the depth as a sort of ceiling, but it's also a bit different, so I think a range is still valid. There are also a lot of games for which the depth is locked behind competent play. For example, in Root if you ignore the rest of the table and just think at level 0, only considering your own faction and what you're able to do right now, then it's not very complex at all, but the depth of the game collapses as well.

You know your game is complex when you have 3rd party apps for managing parts of the game xD

Root is actually not that complicated... If you don't play with new factions every time, I'd say it's really only a 5 on complexity. There aren't that many moving pieces and the complexity really comes from everyone having different factions and how those factions interact.

Brass LOOKS complicated, but is actually fairly approachable. TI is like wading into the edge of an ocean and then finding you're in the middle of outer space and have no idea what's going on or how to get back

ROOT! My favorite game is here :D

i'm sorry, but the old Dune is not Complexity 10.

My roommate in college tried to teach me and some of our friends DUNE about 3 years ago. We spent our first session just learning the rules and the steps for a player to take a single turn. After a little over an hour and a half, we decided we would play next time we all met up for a board game night… we never met back up for a board game night because everyone was too scared to play. I still wanna play eventually. I remember I was assigned the Bene Gesserit and I predicted that my roommate who was teaching us, and was playing as House Atreides, would win on turn 7. Still waiting to see if I was right lol. I just sent him this video so maybe I’ll finally get to play it.

What are you expecting out of the new Homelands factions? Especially the Knaves of the Deepwood, replacing(?) the vagabond?

Will you update with the new expansion on release ?

Heavily disagree on depth and complexity being two completely different things, on the contrary I think depth, mental space, intricacy, are the main aspects of complexity in board games. Complexity of rules perhaps.

chess is also very simple but extremely deep, and it's definitely one of the most studied games out there