What are Your Favorite YouTube Channels? Here are Mine for Board Games

[mouser]

I am a bit of a board game fan.  I very rarely get to actually PLAY board games but I am a bit obsessed with reading about them (usually at the Board Game Geek website), and watching video playthroughs and reviews.

You can see a few of my previous posts about board games on the forum here:

• Micro Reviews of board games
• Links to some of my favorite board game review websites

Over the last year I have been watching quite a few board game review videos and playthroughs.

Board game reviews are usually pretty short and entertaining if the game is one I'm curious about,so the technical quality of the review (video and sound) is not critical.  So if you're interested in a review of a particular game, you can't go too wrong just searching for it on youtube.

Long playthroughs are quite a different matter though.  The long playthroughs can end up being several hours long spanning a dozen separate video uploads over the period of a month, as you watch someone play a full game.  For these -- it's really quite important that whoever is doing the recording and editing do a good job of it, or it becomes exhausting to watch.

Anyway, I thought I'd post some of my favorite board game youtube "channels" -- that is, people who regularly post reliably good quality videos either reviewing or playing through full games.

My favorite Playthrough channels (multi-part full game playthroughs):

• Watch It Played - This youtube channel, run by Rodney Smith, is the high water mark of board game walkthroughs -- you'll not find another source of walkthroughs done with higher production quality or with more love for the process.  It's genuinely fun to watch Rodney and his children play through board games and you get a real feel for whether you would enjoy the game as they play.  Rodney also does a better job of (and takes more time) explaining the rules of each game than anyone else, by a large margin (Board game designers have caught on to this and are starting to hire him to do their official tutorial videos).  Highly recommended.
• Black Belt Gaming - Usually just playing by himself (often taking the role of multiple players), Robert takes his time playing through full games.  With good sound and video you feel like you are learning the game from a friend.
• Box of Delights (Ricky Royal) -This channel is much like Black Belt Gaming; Ricky takes his time playing (alone) through some great games and by the time the series is over you have a very good feel for how to play the game and whether you would like it. I'm currently watching his 18 part series on "Arkham Horror"
• Gamenight! - Non-rushed long playthroughs as 4 friends learn and play a game
• TragicTheBlathering - Nice solo playthroughs (horror board games, etc.)
• The Lonesome Gamer - More great full length solo playthroughs

My favorite Review channels (these don't teach you how to play or go over all the rules) but tell you if the like it:

• The Dice Tower - Tom Vassel regularly puts out a high volume of very watchable and informative board game reviews (and year-end top 100 lists), and has recently gotten into previewing kickstarter games.  Definitely one of the best channels for board game reviews. His reviews are medium-depth and quite opinionated -- sometimes he loves and sometimes he doesn't.
• Board to Death - This channel is run by a bunch of fun canadians; it's a little uneven but they have a good time and review quite a few games; usually don't review games they dislike but will rate the game
• Star Lit Citadel - Very brief reviews of board games but well filmed and highly watchable; only review games they like, no ratings
• Cat and Mouse Game Store - Again, brief reviews of board games but well filmed and highly watchable; only review games they like but make recommendations of similar games, no ratings

Now -- what are your favorite youtube channels? They don't have to be about board games -- maybe you have a favorite person who posts a lot of reliably good videos about cooking, sewing, etc?


ps. A shout out to my own Web Link Captor tool which took my list of favorites and found the websites and autoformatted them for me.

[rsatrioadi]

Ze Frank's videos never fail to make me laugh (or sometimes cringe), especially the "True Facts About ..." series.

On an educational side, I subscribe to the obligatory MinutePhysics (and its sister MinuteEarth), PBS Idea Channel, Vsauce, and AsapSCIENCE.

[40hz]

@Mouser - thx for the links to that in depth coverage of Arkham Horror. I'm a gaming fan much like yourself. I seldom have the time to play many games. But I too love reading about games, rule sets, and their design and development.

I'm also a diehard H.P. Lovecraft fan - so I've been looking wistfully at Chaosium/FantasyFlight's Arkham Horror (and the expansion packs) at B&N for about 10 years now, wondering of I might be able to someday justify the time and space needed (plus the commitment required since 'ArkHor" is a complex game), to get a circle of players together for it. Since the answer is "probably not," seeing it in action and listening to a discussion of its play mechanics and general strategy is the definitely next best thing.
 

[mouser]

Added TragicTheBlathering - Nice solo playthroughs -- including some good horror board games.

[TaoPhoenix]

Okay, Mouser said Board Games, so I'm gonna hit the Chess side!

For me, it's one thing if a GM can play, but I just have a tough time with foreign accents in the "new craze" of chess videos. (Big debate there, Videos vs Books, but that's another thread!)

So of the videos, via ChessBase aka Playchess, I got hooked on Daniel King's videos.

http://www.youtube.c.../user/PowerPlayChess

Now, there's a bit of a trick to being a chess commentator. Because the only games "people care about" are the top 25 Super Players, it poses a bit of a problem because for example Chessbase has started making the commentators not use computers in their live comments, so that they don't sound like "high and mighty gods from the armchair".

All well and good, but typically the commentators are rated 350 points below their game subjects, and medium-often they guess and miss. Here's where it gets tricky. The commentator doesn't pretend to be able to beat the game player - hence why he's in the news booth and the player is at the table. But if he can get close to the right idea, then for the viewer it's close to what the super-player is at least working on at the board.

When faced with a Super-Class move or four, the good commentators admit they have no idea what's going on, but then at least try to chop up the basics and keep going. A few second tier commentators just became tired and kept saying "I have no idea what this move does... I'm so lost...".

Daniel King then does re-caps with the computer indeed on, posted to ChessBase, and is one of the best to really hone in on the age old problem of Material vs Initiative & Mobility. Millions of Grandmaster games get all wrapped up in "Player A has an extra pawn, but to get it he had to give Player B active pieces and stuff to do for X amount of moves." So if Player B's Chaos confuses Player A, he wins fast and brutally. If Player A survives the Chaos, he wins because he wins a 66 move endgame with an extra pawn.

*That's* what modern GM chess is.

Plus Danny King has a cool accent!  And a is a GM chessplayer named King!   

Runner up because he doesn't officially have a channel but he's the lead "text reporter" for Chessbase is Alejandro Ramirez. He's fast enough on his feet to catch the other half of the game's story, so if you merge both of those commentaries, you basically get anything you need to know about a GM chess game.

2nd Runner up because he's rarer is "only" IM Andrew Martin, who talks at a faster Word Per Minute rate, and sometimes that matters for instruction if you're one of the types who works that way. So he might find some finesses the other two missed and he delivers longer sentences with more dependent clauses faster. See me in a PM if any of you are Learning Theory mavens and want to thrash out private theories. Just sayin' Martin earns "Second Runner Up".

A word on Accents. King's accent is closer to "Received Pronunciation". Martin's is a different kind of dialect. (Northern? Half-Cockney without the slang?)

So a typical Chessbase report ends up with Alejandro Ramirez on print reports, Danny King on video.

But if you do a YouTube search for Alejandro Ramirez, he's pretty good on lectures too. Here's a couple of links for A. R.
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=PAgfd7IK1Eo
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=RhuqBrFl2xc

[tomos]

A word on Accents. King's accent is closer to "Received Pronunciation". Martin's is a different kind of dialect. (Northern? Half-Cockney without the slang?)

-TaoPhoenix (December 24, 2013, 04:36 PM)

No expert here, but Martin's is more London (reminds me of the snooker player Steve Davis). King's seems more generic ('Essex'?), but I'll restate that I'm no expert ;-)

[mouser]

Top 30 Solitaire board games by Ricky Royal:

https://www.youtube....re=player_detailpage
(that's the top 10 -- you can find links from there to #s 30-11).

He does a great job of describing the different games and why he likes them.  Great stuff. 

[mouser]

Added The Lonesome Gamer - More great full length solo playthroughs.

[TaoPhoenix]

A word on Accents. King's accent is closer to "Received Pronunciation". Martin's is a different kind of dialect. (Northern? Half-Cockney without the slang?)

-TaoPhoenix (December 24, 2013, 04:36 PM)

No expert here, but Martin's is more London (reminds me of the snooker player Steve Davis). King's seems more generic ('Essex'?), but I'll restate that I'm no expert ;-)

-tomos (December 25, 2013, 04:13 PM)

Heh well if you have that potential correction, I am no expert either!

But as a bit of a digression, "generic" is a fascinating term for an accent! What does that even mean? What is a "generic" American accent? Mid-West NewsCaster?

However, I think I became creepily attached to "Generic Modified British Accents" because a lot of movie villains use those kinds of long vowels.  : )

[nosh]

NECRO!  (I love necro. LEAVE NECRO ALONE!)

So I just discovered "Grand Illusions" - he's got a ton of physics based toys and curios. Very cool stuff!

[Renegade]

NECRO!  (I love necro. LEAVE NECRO ALONE!)

-nosh (September 30, 2014, 04:55 AM)

Hail Cthulhu! 

"Academy of Ideas" is an interesting channel. I've not seen all of them, but the ones I have seen have been good summaries of philosophers and the like. The "Frédéric Bastiat - The Law" video is really good.

On the downside, there's quite a bit of Nietzsche in there, and while I enjoy reading Nietzsche for giggles, his philosophy is a waste unless you're hell-bent on becoming the evilest, most psychopathic monster you possibly can be.

But, still more good topics in there.

[mouser]

nice find Nosh, I enjoyed watching some of those.

[zridling]

Hands down, the atheist comedy channel DarkMatter2525:
https://www.youtube....tZqdkjshgq8TqwIjMdCQ

[mouser]

Zaine!! Always great to see you, buddy