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Spider-Man Bundle Opening – MtG

Marvel Zombies Review and First Impression

Spider-Man Collectors Pack Opening – MtG

Thanks for Listening

I hope that you are enjoying the podcast. If you are, there are a few ways that I always talk about that you can support 10 Minute Marvel. Firstly, please consider sharing it with your friends as word of mouth really is a great way to help more people find the podcast, and personal recommendations are always great. As well as then subscribing or leaving a rating and review. Both of those make the podcast easier to find for people looking for a fun Marvel podcast. You can find the podcast on iTunes, Google Podcast, and Spotify or wherever you get your friendly neighborhood podcasts.

We also run a Patreon and that is another way you can help support. The Patreon, found here, goes to help improve the quality of the 10 Minute Marvel Podcast, pay for advertising and more. It also helps improve the Malts and Meeples YouTube Channel and Nerdologists.com website. Thank you, again, for listening and for considering supporting us financially.

Comments or Questions: What Did You Think of Marvel Zombies?

Let us know what you thought of Marvel Zombies. Was it brain eating goodness or could it have been done better?

You can let us know all of those things down in the comment section below, or tweet them to me @TheScando or by using #10MinMarvel. And there is now the Facebook page, as well, where you can join in the conversation here. And follow us on YouTube for more content here.

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And if you want to know the criteria that I’m using, or the conversation starting point, you can read that article here.

What Party Games Do I Own?

Let’s go through and make a list of everything, keep in mind this list is split into two parts. The first part is party games I’ve owned and played and the second part I still need to play. And also, let’s see what Board Game Geek calls party games.

• Deception Murder in Hong Kong
• Sushi Go Party
• Skull
• Just One
• Take 5/6 Nimmt
• Wits & Wagers
• PitchCar
• Spot It
• Flip 7
• Ready Set Bet
• Zombie Dice
• Scattergories
• So Clover!
• Tumblin’ Dice
• Letter Jam
• The Gang
• Cross Clues
• Medium
• Green Team Wins
• Fun Facts
• Blank Slate
• Doodle Dash
• The Table is Lava
• Beat the 8 Ball
• Plakks
• Dungeon Party

And now for the ones that I haven’t played.

• Boy Band Builder
• Mutton Bustin
• Mojo
• TAGS
• Crash Octopus
• Wavelength
• Cockroach Poker
• Master Word
• Draft’d
• Ito

Just as a reminder, I am generally going to keep the ones that I haven’t played. Why, because I want to give them a try, so they get a free pass.

The Played Games

So now we need to look at the games on that list and you can break them down into some different categories. There are push your luck games like Flip 7 and Beat the 8 Ball. There are the more classic write something down or trivia style. And then there is a hidden role game on the list because I like Deception: Murder in Hong Kong and dislike basically all the rest of them. And then dexterity games.

Classic Party Games

Let’s really stick to talking about the classic party games here. I think some of the others will show up at other times. And there is not a ton of overlap with them. But that classic write something down or do trivia games, let’s talk about them and see which ones should stick around.

Let’s just put that list together. We have Just One, Wits & Wagers, Scattergories, So Clover!, Medium, Fun Facts, Green Team Wins, Blank Slate, Cross Clues, and Doodle Dash.

The Cooperative Classic Party Games

Then I want to look for where there is overlap. And there is pretty light overlap. But I also want to look for ones that have that element of fun factor that I keep on wanting to come back to as well. Does it feel different and unique enough. Games like Just One and So Clover are always a hit, so even though they are cooperative they both are going to stick around. However, I feel like Cross Clues, another cooperative party game, is a lot of fun, but I like those two cooperative ones better.

The Competitive Classic Party Games

Looking at that list it leaves us quite a number more. One question I think needs to get answered in the long term is do I need both Ito and Fun Facts. Both of those seem like they hit kind of the same thing, even Wavelength also seems to fall into that category. But I haven’t played Ito and Wavelength yet. Green Team Wins is also kind of in this category, and it feels like the loser of the group.

There we have to look at the word based games, Medium and Blank Slate both offer that matching words. But I like both enough that I plan to keep both of them. Scattergories is also in this category ,and I think it’s leaving finally. It stuck around because it was solid as a remote game, I could show the sheet on camera. But there are websites that do that just as easily and we play in person mainly.

Doodle Dash and Wits & Wagers are both kind of different in the group, but still have that classic party feel. Doodle Dash is speed drawing which is a blast, I need to play it again. And then Wits & Wagers is number based trivia with betting. It is one that has been a hit a good number of times, but it hasn’t come off the shelf in a few years at this point, so it is going to leave because while I like it, it just isn’t getting played.

What Party Games are Leaving

So let’s talk about the ones that are leaving here to just recap it. Cross Clues, a fun cooperative party game but won’t get played over So Clover! or Just One. Green Team Wins, kind of that same get to you know you type of game like Fun Facts and Ito, so it is the odd one out. And then Wits & Wagers just because it hasn’t gotten played. And Scattergories is a classic, but I think it’s finally hit end of life for me.

Would you make a different decision than I did? And what are some party games that you own that you know you’ll never get rid of.

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Catch Up on the Top 100 Games

100 through 91
90 through 81

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition – 80 through 71

80. Rock Hard 1977

Published By: Devir
Designer: Jackie Fox

Buy Rock Hard 1977

Do you want to be a rockstar? Rock Hard 1977 is all about being a rockstar and the designer is legitimately a rockstar. In this game you place out workers in day, evening and night activities that help take you from garage band playing little local shows to playing sold out stadiums. The player who can make the journey the best is going to be the winner of the game. And each part of the day is going to let you do different things, in the day you might record a record, evening perform, and night go hang out at a club.

79. The Night Cage

Published By: Smirk & Dagger Games
Designer: Christopher Ryan Chan, Chris McMahon and Rosswell Saunders

Buy The Night Cage

I like a good spooky game. The Night Cage gives you that spooky feeling by creating tension as you race to get out of an every changing labyrinth. Can everyone get their keys and get to a portal before the candles run out and the players are lost in there forever. That counting down of tiles as they leave the board and new ones are placed out as a timer is great in this game. And it is spooky, which is hard for a board game to do.

78. Cthulhu: Death May Die

Published By: CMON Global Limited
Designers: Rob Daviau and Eric M Lang

Sold Out on online retailers, look for sellers on the Board Game Geek Marketplace or eBay.

Maybe your spooky is better with lots of giant monsters and a scenario where you know an elder being is going to come eventually. Cthulhu: Death May Die, called CDMD or Death May Die in the hobby, is a big game with minis and madness. You want to push your insanity up a little bit so that you unlock new powers and abilities to defeat the ancient horrors. But too much insanity and you knocked out of the game. This is a good beer and pretzels sort of game.

77. Captain Flip

Published By: PlayPunk
Designers: Remo Conzadori and Paolo Mori

Buy Captain Flip

Moving on from the spooky games, we have Captain Flip. This is tile laying game about filling up your pirate ship with crew. Every crew member is going to give you points, positive or negative, in some way. When you draw a tile you see one side. Then you decide do you want to place that onto your ship, or do you want flip it? If you flip it you are stuck on that side and have to put that down. It’s this balance of optimizing your score, playing out pirates, and pushing your luck as you flip the tiles.

76. Cartographers

Published By: Thunderworks Games
Designer: Jordy Adan

Buy Cartographers

Cartographers used to be my Top Roll and Write style game. Now it is dropping a bit, some because there are so many roll and write games that I like, and some because I haven’t played it recently. But I really enjoy this one and really enjoy making a map. I like the interactivity of the monsters who I play it on my opponents board in the worst spot possible for them. And I like how you score four different things, but depending on the season you score two and the season determines the two. It’s one I need to play again.

75. Letter Jam

Published By: Czech Games Edition (CGE)
Designer: Ondra Skoupy

Buy Letter Jam

Do you like word games but it seems like some people are just better at them? Letter Jam is a cooperative word game, so everyone needs to work together. In this game you don’t know the letters or the word you have. But everyone else can see one letter of yours at a time, and you can see one letter of everyone else’s. You all need to give good clues of words so people can figure out what their letter is. Say you have an “O” if I give a clue that shows you that the word uses the letters “FR[your letter]M” you can figure out what it is. But everyone needs to figure theirs out and figure out their word.

74. Can’t Stop

Published By: Eagle Gryphon Games
Designer: Sid Sackson

Buy Can’t Stop

Can’t Stop is another push your luck game to make the list. I like a good push your luck game like this one, Push, or Flip 7. They are easy to teach and play. In this one you want to get to the top of 3 columns. If you do that, you win. How do you do that, well, you roll dice and then split them into two pairs of two. The twist is that you only move up on three numbers per turn. So I might roll and get a combo to make ten and eleven, if I am not going up on ten or eleven, I lose my progress. But if I play it too safe, I lose.

73. Under Falling Skies

Published By: Czech Games Edition (CGE)
Designer: Tomas Uhlif

Buy Under Falling Skies

Do you like the movie Independence Day? Did you grow up playing the game Space Invaders. Under Falling Skies is a game that gives me the feel of both of those things. You need to research how to stop the mother ship while keeping too many of the smaller ships from making it to earth. And it uses an interesting die system. The higher the die, the more powerful the actions you can take are. But also the faster those little ships descend towards earth. I love that balancing act puzzle of the game.

72. So Clover!

Published By: Repos Production
Designer: Francois Romain

Buy So Clover!

So Clover! is a cooperative party game. It is one that is easy to teach in person and hard to explain. Basically you create a grid of cards that have words on every side. So you need to connect the two words per side with another word. Then everyone else is trying to get those words back onto the board in the right order, but the twist is there is an extra word thrown in. Plus often times the words are not easy to match. The better you do that as a group the more points you get.

71. Rallyman: DIRT

Published By: Holy Grail Games
Designer: Jean-Cristophe Bouvier

Buy Rallyman: DIRT

Finally rounding out this 10 is Rallyman: DIRT. This is another push your luck game and a racing game. In it you plot you course down the track and then get a choice. You either roll one die at a time which allows you to stop before you spin out and bad things happen. Or you roll all the dice at once. Why roll all at once? Well, when you roll all at once, you take negative one second to your time per die rolled. So you can reduce your overall time if you don’t spin out.

Join Next Week

Just as a reminder, I am streaming my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition every Wednesday night at 9 PM Central Time. The next few videos have their links up, so you can click notify on them to know when I go live. Or you can subscribe to the channel and click notify to know whenever a new video comes out. Currently I am playing through Legendary Kingdoms on Monday and then my wife and I are playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on Fridays. So join us for those videos.

And thank you for checking out the video and articles. Let me know what your favorite game from this chunk of 10 is and which one you would love to get played.

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How To Play Moonshine

Moonshine is an engine building game where you are racing to 12 points. To do this, you need to score patrons to your speakeasy by meeting their requirements. On the turn where one player gets 12 points, the game ends and whomever has the most points, as you can go over 12, is the winner of the game.

A Turn

Turns are pretty simple. You roll three dice, possibly more, and then per the rerolls that you have, you start with one on your speakeasy, and you try and get combinations to complete the patrons you have at your speakeasy. To do this you need to match symbols. The symbols are money, music, drink, and moons.

If after your roll or your opponents roll you cannot complete a patron’s requirements, you choose from two other options. First is you can choose to get a moon. If you do, you cover up a moon spot on your speakeasy or one of the patrons. I plan to talk about that more in the engine building section. The other option is that you draw patron cards and may replace one of your patrons.

Engine Building

The engine building is done in two ways. The first is with the moon tokens. When you get moon tokens from rolls or for your turn option, you place them on a moon location. These offer some benefits. On the speakeasy it is either unlocking a blue die to use or a wild symbol for money, music, or drink.

The patrons also might have one as well that you can spend into. When you spend into those, you gain that benefit for as long as the patron is waiting at your speakeasy. Once a patron is complete, they go to your speakeasy. They offer two things potentially there. The first is points, some patrons have a fixed number of points, some have no points, and others offer a variable number of points based on card color.

The other thing that patrons add is symbols. These can be symbols like money, music, drink or moons. These symbols are permanent and let you more easily complete other patrons’ requirements. Or it might be access to the blue or orange dice. It is also possible to get access to looking at more cards when you gain a new patron or three patrons waiting at your speakeasy versus just two, or additional rerolls.

What Doesn’t Work

This is one where i don’t find a ton that doesn’t work. As normal, in that case, I want to talk a little bit about luck. There is luck in this game with what you draw. Now you always draw a few cards to look at and choose one to add to your waiting patrons, but that is not always going to give you what you want. So it is possible that you just need to draw patrons again after a role.

And the other minor thing is there are a few patrons who when you gain them, they give you a moon and remove a moon from your opponents. There are not many and it doesn’t set your opponents back too far. But that is a negative player interaction that might feel tough for a player.

What Works

I like how simple this game is. The dice are easy to understand what symbols they give you. And it is easy to see what you want to roll for. I like it when a game can get to the table very quickly and is very easy to teach. There are a few symbols but those are really easy to understand after a turn or two in the game.

I also like the interactions in the game. I mention the few cards have that negative interaction. The game is also going to offer a chance to mess with your opponents on your turn when you roll the dice. But this is not too negative, they still get to take a positive action, get a moon or replace a patron, if they can’t fulfill a patron’s requirements. I like that the game isn’t purely solitaire though because you can set up your roll or pick your patrons in such a way to maybe fulfill them on an opponent role.

The engine building is Moonshine is good as well. It is simple, I liken it to Splendor. But that goes back to how simple the game is. I know how to leverage my engine pretty quickly once it gets going. And that moment of when do I stop building my engine and go for bigger points is nice. And because it is a simple engine, it keeps the game moving. Moonshine doesn’t stall out.

Who is Moonshine For?

I think this is a good game for people who like Splendor. And I think that this is a more enjoyable game than Splendor. So maybe for the people who think that Splendor is a bit slow in getting going, Moonshine offers a lot of the same engine building style, but is faster to get to it. And there is a bit more in terms of strategy, I think, than with Splendor but just a tiny bit more. So if you want to introduce someone to engine building concepts, this is a good game for that.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Moonshine

I very much enjoy Moonshine. It is a game that I already have played at least five times and have a few more games of it going on BGA. I also think it is very possible that it is a game that will start to feel similar. Your engine is not going to massively change from game to game. So it is never going to feel wildly different as you play it.

This is a bit of a negative, but it is also something to be aware of what type of game it is. Mainly, Moonshine is a great game for BGA because there isn’t too much going on. At the same time, if you want heavy engine building it is going to feel a little bit lacking and won’t stick around as long because of that. But it is meant to be an easy to get into and play engine builder, and it is great for that and for that reason I like it.

My Grade: B
Gamer Grade: C+
Casual Grade: A-
Strategy (out of 10): 4
Luck (out of 10): 5

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Catch Up On Videos

Spider-Man Magic the Gathering Collectors Pack Opening

Thanks for Listening

I hope that you are enjoying the podcast. If you are, there are a few ways that I always talk about that you can support 10 Minute Marvel. Firstly, please consider sharing it with your friends as word of mouth really is a great way to help more people find the podcast, and personal recommendations are always great. As well as then subscribing or leaving a rating and review. Both of those make the podcast easier to find for people looking for a fun Marvel podcast. You can find the podcast on iTunes, Google Podcast, and Spotify or wherever you get your friendly neighborhood podcasts.

We also run a Patreon and that is another way you can help support. The Patreon, found here, goes to help improve the quality of the 10 Minute Marvel Podcast, pay for advertising and more. It also helps improve the Malts and Meeples YouTube Channel and Nerdologists.com website. Thank you, again, for listening and for considering supporting us financially.

Comments or Questions: How Do You Rank the Marvel Projects?

Join us in ranking all 53 Marvel projects. Now this doesn’t include the Netflix stuff but it maybe should. Let us know your rankings in the comment section. And which one is the biggest shocker for you thus far?

You can let us know all of those things down in the comment section below, or tweet them to me @TheScando or by using #10MinMarvel. And there is now the Facebook page, as well, where you can join in the conversation here. And follow us on YouTube for more content here.

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How to Play Arigato

Arigato is all about getting the most points that you can. You do this in a few ways, by sending workers to deliver their offering. You get points for artisans in your village, potentially, and you get points for completing the main objectives. At the end of 12 rounds, the person with the most points is the winner.

10 of the 12 rounds are going have those main objectives to complete. The objectives might be about having a number of artisans in your village with offering tokens, different or same resources, or total of number of artisans who have given an offering and more. The more of them you complete, the more points you get from them.

Morning Phase

You play the game over a few phases. The first one is the morning phase. In the morning phase you get five artisans and you split them into three groups. One artisan goes into your village. Each artisan is limited, and the card shows, as to where you can place them in your village. If you want to place an artisan and a spot is blocked you can discard an artisan from that spot to place them.

The other divide the other four two and two. Two artisans will get discarded for resources based off of their color. And the other two artisans get passed to your opponent at the start of the next day or round. Those will be used to create their new hand of five artisans.

Day Phase

During the day phase you flip over your cards, all are played face down, and you gain resources for them. You check and see if any of the artisans in town have an ability to trigger. Generally these abilities either give you more points or they give you more resources. Some abilities also trigger in the dusk phase, but we won’t cover that phase right now.

Then you spend your resources to place offering tokens onto your artisans. Just because an artisan has an offering token on it does not mean you need to move it to deliver that offering immediately. You might find that you don’t have the right combination of resources to complete offerings. If you want, you can trade two items in for one of another type. Once an artisan has an offering token on it, you can send them to deliver that offering whenever you want.

Dusk Phase

At the Dusk Phase a few things can happen, but the biggest is you check and see if you completed the objective for the day. If you did, you mark that with taking a token. And you also check and see if any of your artisans have things that would be triggered at dusk. The final thing that happens at dusk, though I might be off on order, is you discard your resources to get down to seven total. This is fairly rare that you will find yourself with more.

The game, like I said, ends after twelve days. You check to see your score for all the main objectives you completed. Then you add up the points you have taken during the game, and the points on the artisans who have delivered offerings. The player with the most points is the winner.

What Doesn’t Work?

The one negative I can think of is that there are a good number of symbols. On the artisans in particular you need to know what each section does and when the village ability is going to activate and what one it is. This is an issue only at the beginning playing on BGA because the more you play, the more you know just from looking at the symbols.

My hope, though, is for the physical version of the game, there are player aids. You don’t need anything much for it, just let the players know what the symbols are for because there are enough of them that it’ll be annoying to reference the rule book or pass around the rule books.

What Works?

Phases

I think that the different phases work quite well. Mainly because everyone is doing them at the same time. So it is generally a solitaire game. That means, though, that no player is going to have that much downtime. It’ll mainly just be waiting for the other players to complete their phase. And the phases are simple enough that it shouldn’t take too long.

With that comment about solitaire, I do want to comment about how it’s not purely solitaire. It is best to select cards in the dawn phase that is best for yourself. But if you find that you are not getting what you need, you also are able to pass on cards so that your opponent next turn is less likely to get what they need. It is a minor interaction, but can be a useful one at times.

Scoring

I really like the scoring in the game as well. All three elements work well in Arigato. I like that I can plan for those main objectives to get them, though, it’s improbable that you’ll get them all. But if you just go for those objectives, someone can score a lot of points from the artisans in their village and make up ground. And also getting a lot of artisans to deliver offerings is worth a lot of points.

Engine Building

Finally, the engine building in the village is fun. It adds to what you are thinking about when you pick which card to add or what cards to pass or keep for resources. You can go for a village that kicks out a ton of resources and rotate that and really focus on getting offerings delivered. Or you might go for one that doesn’t produce as many but is going to give you a lot of points from villagers. It’s up to you, and I like that variety.

Who Is Arigato For?

I think that people who like engine building are going to like like Arigato. But it is nice that it is not a massive engine that you build. It is only ever four artisans and often fewer. So this one is going to work well for that engine building but also for people who want to learn engine building. The drawback is, of course, the symbols, but that is common with engine building games.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Arigato

I really like Arigato. Even though my first play is not great, because of all the symbols, every play after I feel like I learn more and more about the game. And it is fun to explore the engine building that is done. Especially since it is possible for it to go different ways and how you can use them to your advantage in those different ways. If the village were larger it might feel like a lot of upkeep, but four artisans in your village is the perfect amount for the game.

It is also nice that all the turns are at the same time. Again, that often lends itself to being a bit more solitaire in nature. But in Arigato that isn’t a bad thing. Like I said, it is possible to toss some cards to your opponent that they might not want. But that is not the focus of the game. I like a game where it feels like what I do is awesome, and I can mess with you a little bit. Arigato is a game like that.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: C+
Luck (out of 10): 4
Strategy (out of 10): 5

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Catch Up on the Top 100 Games

100 through 91

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition – 90 through 81

90. Wandering Towers

Published By: Capstone Games
Designers: Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer

Buy Wandering Towers.

This is just a fun simple game of trying to remember where you wizards are hiding and get them to the main tower. I like how easy it is to make it work. You play out two cards and if you have potion bottles filled you can cast a spell. The spells are simple, the cards are simple, you choose to either move a wizard or a tower as far as it says on the card. But it’s still a lot of fun because of that memory aspect and burying your opponents wizards under a stack of towers.

89. Grove: 9 care solitaire game

Published By: Side Room Games
Designer: Mark Tuck

Buy Grove.

This one is two games in one really with Grove and Orchard. I put them together because the games are very similar, though I do slightly prefer Grove. In this game you stack cards to get matching tree types to overlap. As they overlap you tick up dice that are going to give you more points. The more points you have at the end of nine cards, the better you do at the game. Grove adds in scoring cards, and that addition is what pushes it over because it’s bonus scoring, but also how many points you need to beat to win the game.

88. Via Magica

Published By: Hurrican
Designer: Paolo Mori

Buy Via Magica.

It is weird to think that drawing chips out of bag and everyone getting a cube to add to their spells, basically bingo, can make a fun game. But it is great in Via Magica. This is a simple game with powers that you get from completing spells. It’s one of two games that actually has abilities or powers from completing spells on this section of the top 10. But it’s all about drawing those chips and hoping to get the right ones. Or then being smart about the spells you take so you can always use the chips.

87. No Thanks!

Published By: AMIGO
Designer: Thorsten Gimmier

Buy No Thanks!

This section of the list has a few push your luck games on it. No Thanks! isn’t a tradition push your luck game, but it does have those elements. In particular, you need to decide when it is worth taking a card. Cards are bad, cards give you points, so you want to say no thanks to them. But you need chips to do that, so No Thanks! is a game about determining when there are enough chips on a card to make it worth taking. Because, not only a chips needed for saying no thanks, they are also negative one point per chip at the end of the round.

86. Strike

Published By: Ravensburger
Designer: Dieter Nuble

Buy Strike.

Imagine a gladiatorial battle in the Coliseum. Actually don’t, this game is all about rolling dice to get pairs and knowing when to stop if you don’t get pairs. You just want to be the last one in the game and that’s it. It’s a simple game and simple system but it is always fun when it hits the table. I think everyone just likes to make a decision to roll a fist full of dice. And if you don’t get any matches, you can always roll more dice that you held back, but beware the one because when a die lands on that side, that die is gone forever.

85. Marvel United

Published By: CMON and Spin Master
Designers: Andrea Chiarvesio and Eric M. Lang

Buy Marvel United Multiverse Core Box.

Do you want to team-up as Marvel heroes to defeat villains in a fast and easy game? Marvel United is great for that. You pick your hero, the villain to go up against, and a few locations and you are ready to play. This game is all about managing what the villain is doing, and they do some fun stuff, and then chaining off of what your superhero teammates did, because you use the last card played, to have a great turn. This is a great game to teach people cooperative game play because you can really cooperate. And there is so much for it.

84. Homebrewers

Published By: Greater Than Games
Designers: Matthew O’Malley and Ben Rosset

Buy Homebrewers.

I like brewing beer, I did it for a long time. I’m not sure it’s hobby I’m going to return to. But I can still get my beer brewing fix with Homebrewers. This is about brewing the best beers you can. You brew a beer and you go up on a track, then you need to deal with the spent grains, sanitize, get more grains and brew again. All of that is like homebrewining.

But then the game offers different ingredients you add to your brewing. And these cards stick around between brews. So if you brew a porter with almonds, you now always will. And those ingredients give you brew something special that might be more money, or it might be that you move up on another beer. At the end, you just want to be the best homebrewer out there.

83. Chronicles of Drunagor: Age of Darkness

Published By: Creative Games Studio
Designer: Eurico Cunha Neta

Buy Chronicles of Drunagor.

I love my big campaign games. And Chronicles of Drunagor is no expection. It is just lower on the list because one of them has to be and it is one that I haven’t played a ton of. There is so much in the game, but I highlight three things in the video. I want to highlight one here, the activation system. You use different colored cubes to activate abilities of those colors. But when you run out of cubes or need a specific ability, you need to pull back those cubes. Then you cover up a spot so you can’t use it. It’s a unique system that I find a lot of fun.

82. PUSH

Published By: Ravensburger
Designers: Prospero Hall and Brian Kirk

Buy Push Here.

I like simple push your luck games, and PUSH is my favorite of them. This one is just push your luck, but as compared to other simple push your luck games, this one offers just a few choices. Mainly you create three stacks of cards on your turn. But those stacks can’t have the same color or number in a single stack, aka you can’t have two blue cards in a stack. Well, that is easy enough, you could stop early. If you do that, then other players could push their luck for more points. And then there is the die, if you have the roll the die, you might lose cards. It’s all about balancing that risk for points.

81. Potion Explosion

Published By: Horrible Guild
Designers: Stefano Castelli, Andrea Crespi, and Lorezno Silva

Buy Potion Explosion Here.

If you want a game that feels like app game, Potion Explosion definitely meets that need. It is one of those games where if like colors are touching they explode, or in this case, you get them. And it’s all about chaining together colors of marbles the best you can, and then you use them to complete spells. And those spells give you points that you need to win the game, but they also give you one time abilities that you can use to chain together more marbles and complete more spells. This game is just tactile and fun.

Join Next Week

Just as a reminder, I am streaming my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition every Wednesday night at 9 PM Central Time. The next few videos have their links up, so you can click notify on them to know when I go live. Or you can subscribe to the channel and click notify to know whenever a new video comes out. Currently I am playing through Legendary Kingdoms on Monday and then my wife and I are playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on Fridays. So join us for those videos.

And thank you for checking out the video and articles. Let me know what your favorite game from this chunk of 10 is and which one you would love to get played.

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What Is To Be Hero X About?

Imagine a world of superheroes. We can do that, we know Marvel and DC comic worlds. But instead of these heroes just having powers their powers are stronger the more people love them. That is the world of To Be Hero X. And Hero X is the hero who is most loved.

The show is all about those heroes and the ones who are in the top 10. They all want to be Hero X or at least will be taking place in the tournament to see who will become the new top ranked hero. The show is all about their stories and how they got there.

And I won’t go into more detail than that.

Who is To Be Hero X For?

Firstly, I do want to comment on fan service in this, because that will determine some of it is for you or not. But really, I like to do that all the time because people’s tolerance levels are different. There is very little fan service in this show, and it is never dwelt upon if it happens.

I think that this show is for people who are up for some fun animation. But there is more to the show than that, this is a show that is for people who want that slower build into characters and to delve into them at a deeper level. Is it heavy with plot, there is a lot of story throughout that connects to the whole, but it is also very focused on the characters.

What Didn’t Work For Me?

It is a bit jarring the first time you finish up the story with one character. Mainly because you get to like the character and then you move on to the next one. This is not a bad thing, but it is somethin to be aware of when going into the show.

It is also a bit tricky to keep track of the timelines and when it falls into line with certain characters. Generally you can make sense of it, but they reference events that might be occurring at a different point in other characters stories. And they do a solid job of giving you dates for things, but that is still a lot to remember.

What Worked For Me?

The animation on this show is amazing. And it should be, there are a ton of different studios working on this anime. And it shows in the different stories how there is different animation that is used. They are done to tell different and unique story beats and character stories. And there are some bonkers fight and chase scenes that use animation really well.

I also like the stories. Not all of them resonate with me quite as well, but how they intersect is really interesting. And the vast majority of the character stories are ones that I really enjoyed and I could connect with the characters. Each of them is unique as well and deals with some interesting things that unfold the larger story.

And without going into spoilers, I think the overall plot is interesting. This idea that the more people love you, the better hero you are is really interesting. And it has some very questionable implications to it as well that they dive into in the show. And where it ends, I think that is interesting and it makes me ready for a season two. I think there is a lot more world building that can be done around the main plot. But I suspect season 2 is going to focus a lot on the tournament.

Final Thoughts on To Be Hero X

This show definitely caught my interest throughout the whole show. I think the animation drew me in, but the plot and the characters really kept me there. It takes a bit to figure out everything that is going on in To Be Hero X. And I would say, there are elements that make me want to rewatch it right now to pick-up on some of the bigger story implications that I might have missed. To me, that is the sign of a good anime to watch because it kept me engaged and keeps me wanting more.

If it was one consistent animation style would it be as good? I think it would be. This is not an anime with style over substance but with the lead of BeDream making this and the animation partners, it rocks. And that is something else I didn’t mention but I feel like I always want to listen to the music both the opening and ending credits, but also the music in the show. The amount of time and effort that went into this show is very impressive and makes for a great show visually and story wise.

To Be Hero X is one of my top new anime this year. And you know from the last anime round-up that I have watched a ton of anime this year. So it is sitting pretty as a favorite.

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How To Play Tikal

In Tikal you want to get the most points. You get points for having treasures and majority at temple locations on scoring rounds. At the end of the game once all players take a scoring round the player with the most points is the winner of the game.

Two Part Turn

Turns are split into two parts, though the second part is where the majority of the turn is. So let’s talk quickly about that first part. On your turn the first thing you do is place a tile. It must be connected to another tile and accessible. To be accessible there must be a stone connection to another tile. If you draw a volcano you do a scoring round which we will talk about in the next section.

Once you place a tile you are able to do up to 10 action points of actions. The different actions cost different action points. I won’t go through all of them, just some highlighted ones.

• Place a worker
• Move a worker paying action points for stones that you cross
• Uncover part of a pyramid
• Find a treasure

Like I said, there are more, but these are some of the highlighted ones. When you uncover part of a pyramid you make it taller. The taller it gets the more points it is worth in a scoring round. And when you find a treasure, it is set collection. The more of a type of treasure that you have, the more points they are worth in a scoring round.

Scoring Rounds

The other big element is the scoring round. When a volcano tile is going to be placed each player takes a scoring turn. On your turn you don’t draw and place a tile. Instead you just spend action points to take the actions defined above, plus any of the others you want.

At the end of your scoring turn, you score points for temples that you own the majority at and for treasures you have. Then the next player takes a scoring turn. So it is possible that multiple players might score a temple as majority changes as they move workers.

What Doesn’t Work

No real complaints for this one. Because of how scoring works the area control is not too in your face. But you do need to pay attention and manage a few things based off of what your opponents are doing. Probably the biggest thing that might get some people is when placing tiles you can maybe mess or block off areas temporarily to limit how your opponent can build out. That is the most negative interaction in the game and it’s not very negative.

The other slight negative is that the treasures are less impactful in scoring. Having a lot can help, but scoring temples that are worth a lot of points is just better, for the most part. But some of my negative opinion with them might be me messing up my scoring in the first game. Still it is more luck based to see if you can create sets because sets are worth more points, if it’s just a one off, that is a wasted action to get it in some ways.

What Works

Firstly, I really like how the Tikal scoring works. I messed that up big time in my first game. That’s not an issue to mess it up in a game as long as you learn from it. But I like that it isn’t just straight area control. If I take control of an area I get the points for it. Then if you score after me, you can move in and gain control of that area. Now I might block that if I can cap it off so that the temple is completed, an action I didn’t mention, but that is limiting points in the future for me as well.

Let’s talk about that capping off action. You need majority. And it is going to cost you all of your workers there. And they don’t go back into the worker pool, they are just gone. So that is a nice tradeoff as you decide what to do. Do I want to have a ton of workers available further into the game, or if we fight over a spot is it worth spending a number of workers to lock in that scoring every scoring round?

I like the action point system in Tikal as well. I think that it’s pretty slick and easy to understand. Once you take a turn you generally know the actions. There is also nice strategy in figuring out how you want to spend your actions or when you should put out a tent, an action that costs five action points, to help you get into the further reaches of the jungle.

Who Is Tikal For?

I think that Tikal is a game for people who like that action point management and that feeling of exploring while optimizing your scoring. Now that is saying a lot. It is less of a puzzle than some games, say Lost Ruins of Arnak, with a similar theme. So this one is pretty welcoming game and easy to understand and play.

It is not going to be a game that I’d introduce someone to as their first game. It is also probably not going to be a game where heavy euro gamers are going to feel like there is enough going on. But it’s that nice welcoming action point game for people who have played a few games, like Catan and Carcassonne, and they want a bit more.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Tikal

I really enjoy this game and system. I was not sure I was going to when I started, but it is easy to learn and play. Like I said the one thing that tripped me up was that I score at the end of my turn on a scoring turn. I easily could have gotten more points the first game had I remembered. That is a rule that I would drill into the heads of people I play with at the start of the game and then remind them at the scoring round. It is something unique about the game, so something to remind about.

This is a game that I want to add to my collection. Now, I know there are a lot of games like that which I play on BGA. I think that Tikal is a good one because there is a bit more going on to it and some things that make it feel unique as compared to other games in my collection. And I like it because it is quite easy to teach. Even with all the actions, I assume there is a cheat sheet like on BGA, that the players can see what everything costs. So it makes teaching the game faster and easier to get Tikal to the table.

My Grade: A-
Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: B
Strategy (out of 10): 6
Luck (out of 10): 2

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Comments or Questions: How Do You Rank the Marvel Projects?

Join us in ranking all 53 Marvel projects. Now this doesn’t include the Netflix stuff but it maybe should. Let us know your rankings in the comment section. And which one is the biggest shocker for you thus far?

You can let us know all of those things down in the comment section below, or tweet them to me @TheScando or by using #10MinMarvel. And there is now the Facebook page, as well, where you can join in the conversation here. And follow us on YouTube for more content here.

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