The TEN Levels of Boardgame Complexity (and Depth!)

It's hard to know how much of an investment a game can be. Somethings that look simple can be a confusing mess, and things that look hard can be a breeze. I wanted to take a look at complexity in modern board games, and see what games fit at each level, as well as the depth that's available with these games. Some of the best boardgames, and some of the worst can fall at each level, and it's a bit of a deep dive into complexity. Thank you for watching!

00:00 Introduction
00:56 Complexity?
01:01 Depth?
02:22 Weight?
03:05 LEVEL 0 - SHAPE SORTERS
04:20 LEVEL 1 - GAMES FOR THE ELDERLY
06:10 LEVEL 2 - I AN UNCOMFY WHEN I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO
08:54 LEVEL 3 - THE CARDBOARD WALL
11:29 LEVEL 4 - WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'I HAVE TO READ?'
14:32 LEVEL 5 - ACHY BREAKY BRAIN
17:29 LEVEL 6 - DUDE WHERES MY KALLAX
20:27 LEVEL 7 - THE SANE MANS LIMIT
24:47 LEVEL 8 - NUTTY PUTTY
27:54 LEVEL 9 - 996
31:32 LEVEL 10 - ???
38:23 SUMMARY + CONCLUSION

[TheKoffrig]

"Catan is the cardboard gatekeeper between people who think Monopoly is the best game of all time, and those who have 300 games still in shrink wrap". This, Sir, is Pure Poetry.

[piershanson]

You can get better at candy land actually… by getting better at arguing that you should go first

[FoxGhost]

'Go' is still the king of complexity vs depth. The complexity is so low that you are instantly lost in the depths of what to do because you only have one type of token, and it can go anywhere.

[TitusRex]

Now I want a comprehensive spreadsheet of games with their respective depth and complexity.

[janis]

Out of nowhere with the Concord burn. Love it!

[MooseBoys]

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.

[paaradx]

I only disagree with one thing - games with social deception (like Skull, Secret Hitler, Avalon and so on) - should have more depth then you’ve shown- like +1 in my opinion. Or seperate category for social strategy.

Sure, game mechanics are simple and when optimizing them you get little advantage. But the psychological manipulation aspect - that can be played at many differnt levels. And require big skill, maybe not analitycal one - but you need to be good at reading other people, bluffing, setting other people up and figuring up what lies can i tell that are belivable considering rules of the game. And you can learn to be better at it too.

If f.e. poker didnt have psychological elements it would be a game of counting probabilities and luck. But psychological strategy makes it something much deeper.

[xshadowscreamx]

Root at level 7 is still at normal person levels? A normal person would have tapped out after catan.

[certifiedwack]

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.

[AlShwaikh]

I've been watching board game content for over a decade, and this is easily one of the best videos I've ever seen. It’s the kind of video that remains relevant no matter how much time passes — even if someone watches it a decade from now, it will still feel fresh and insightful. This is truly timeless content. Amazing job

[discduck]

i like games that cheat in comlexity like Dominion and Betrayal at House on the hill because the have books worth of mechanics but you only learn them a little at a time

[joshmidd]

The big brain thumbnail brought me here. Now I am here to stay.

This is a quality video, not just in the filming, but also the succinctness of communication, the concord burn (jokes), and just the really thinky thought you put into this video.

[uselesscommon]

Here's how I would chart the sliding scale:

0) Games of Pure Chance
Candyland
1) Reducible to Rules of Thumb
Monopoly, Risk, Uno, Jackal
2) Nontrivial Decisionmaking
Skull, Durak, King of Tokyo, Munchkin
3) Simple Strategy and Simple Tactics
Coup, Smallworld, Secret Hitler, Machi Koro
4) Multidimensional Strategy or Tactics
Settlers of Catan, Dominion, Evolution: The Origin of Species, 7 Wonders
5) Multidimensional Strategy and Tactics
Smash Up, Five Tribes, Imperial Settlers, Eldritch Horror
6) Small Explosion of Key Considerations
Pixel Tactics, Neuroshima Hex, Through the Ages, Old EDH
7) Large Explosion of Key Considerations
Root, Game of Thrones, Mage Wars, Contemporary EDH
8) Grand Strategy
Terra Mystica, Twilight Imperium
9) Have Mercy, Lord Tet
Mage Knight, High Frontier
10) Good Scales Don't Reach the Limit
Campaign for North Africa

[ricardobatistacaceres]

Wow, great video. For me the “struggle” is trying to experience and enjoy more depth in games while trying not to overwhelm my gaming friends with complexity. Nice writing, keep with this good content.

[captainstroon]

Root is my boardgame group's current skill ceiling. I gifted it to my sister a few years ago because it looked fairly complex and the critters are cute. Reading into the manual and looking up video tutorials, she and my brother in law got quickly overwhelmed. We still have to tackle it to this day.

[toruno]

"25 factions... Which is more than the number of people who played Concord"

DAMN SON

Seriously I've been trying to explain the difference between depth and complexity to people for so long. I very much enjoy this.

[flow]

Honestly, I felt that there is a huge difference between learning the game by yourself and having a teacher to help you. I learned TI4 and Root by myself, and boy Root was PAIN. It took me around 6hours of reading, watching YouTube, checking bgg and 5 games to play the game even correct. TI4 was pretty straight forward: After reading the rules and maybe checking some minor things, I was ready to go.
BUT when I tought the games to my friends, the Root group was like "that's pretty easy" and the TI group was overwhelmed by the amount of stuff.
Btw. for me the worst games were: Mage Knight (complexity) and great western trail (depth).

[sparkingconduit]

I really appreciated your breakdowns and game examples. A personal bugbear for me is a game that is needlessly complex but doesn't have enough depth to justify it: for instance, A Feast for Odin. My eyes glazed over during the rules explanation, and I reached for the rulebook only to be even more bewildered. I ended up bowing out of the game before it started and came back later to watch it only to realize that there wasn't a lot going on; there was just way too much stuff up front.

[amdudley]

War games aside, I like to think 18XX games are the pinnacle of boardgame depth and complexity. Some are less complex but the get good factor is almost always 9/10.

[joeysung]

I've been playing terraforming mars with my friends, which is the most complicated board game that I've personally been exposed to so far, and it's really opened my eyes to how much is out there. It's kind of like my life goal to have a friend group to be able to play some of the games further down on this list now