What are your favorite board games? Me and my friends love playing board games, but I get the feeling their tired of playing the same things. What do you guys usually play? My favorite board game of all time is HeroQuest. I never get tired of playing it. Also love Catan, Arkham Horror, Betrayal House on the Hill, Spyfall (great at parties)
My partner and I love playing Wingspan. A game about bird may not sound great but it’s full of strategy without being too hard to pick up. It’s competitive, but just total points at the end, you can’t screw each other up during play.
I came here to say Wingspan. I have gotten my friends and family to play it, and everyone likes it.
My second favorite game might be Scythe, another one of their games. They just make good stuff.
Ooh, we picked up the digital version of Scythe because it was a few dollars during a Steam sale, we’ve only played one game so far, but it almost immediately jumped onto our list of games we’re planning on buying.
Nice! It’s super good in real life. It feels like there’s so many things at the start since there are so many ways to win. But I really think the game is pretty smooth after a couple of turns. Every time I play it I have a good time — even if I lose.
I ended up buying the expansion that tells a story as you go. But unfortunately my friends and I haven’t had a good time to really play through it.
You can definitely screw people over via “hate drafting.” My group usually plays casually but sometimes we’ll agree beforehand to tryhard and then this happens somewhat often.
Wingspan is my favorite! I want to try the Asia expansion sometime soon, I really liked the Oceania one.
We have a wider circle of friends who are boardgame enthusiasts, so we go through a rather lot of them. Some stick, some don’t. These we play regularly and have a lot of fun:
There are more that made an impression on me, I remember playing them a few times, but do not want to play them again (Do you know that feeling? :D ), eg. Eclipse (the galaxy-wide battle 4X preparation-takes-as-long-as-playing-and-playing-takes-a-whole-day strategy), Agricola, Mice and Mystics…
Brass Birmingham is a masterpiece. I absolutely love that game. It’s and absolutely heartbreak that my SO dislikes it.
Have you tried Lost Ruins of Arnak? It’s great!
My current favs are Wingspan, Dune Imperium, and Deep Rock Galactic (both a great video game and board game!).
Been really into Azul lately. Pretty simple to explain to people, and the game pieces are very pretty and high quality
And now there is also Baby Azul! (aka Azul Mini). I am trying to tell myself that we don’t need it, we already have the regular box. But it’s tiny!
‘Splendor’ is another gem of a game like Azul. Simple rules with quick turns, and the “poker chips” are substantial.
Yo nice! Thank you I’ll def check it out. Always looking for more games that are good for a wide audience 🙏
Gloomhaven came out at the perfect time in my life- after my party days but before my marriage/kid days. I had a friend group that would play at least one scenario per week, and sometimes we’d just spend an entire Sunday playing. That’s been my best experience so far.
I wish I could play Frosthaven with them but we’ve all moved away and I don’t have a group that would ever be consistent enough right now.
Ticket to Ride is our go to.
Got back into that recently as my family wanted to play a board game at Christmas and it’s one of the easier ones I own.
My brother in law immediately ordered it when he got home so I’ve brought him the Italian expansion for his birthday, since he comes from there.
I really love Spirit Island because i find the setting really nice. You are Spirits and need to destroy the invaders to your island. Another great part is that its a coop game and you can chose many different spirits with each different playstyle.
Feels like everyone I know has eventually ended up with their own copy. Hands down my favorite coop board game - it does a good job of minimizing the problem where one person effectively ends up playing for the whole table. Plus as you said the flavor is great.
Not so much a traditional “board” game, but I’ve been a lifelong enjoyer of Munchkin! It’s a whimsical dnd-esque card game with (almost literally) hundreds of different themed versions, from Space to the Wild West to Cthulhu even.
Might be a slightly separate category, but I still think of it as a board game. I really like Call of Cthulhu. Tabletop RPG systems in general are typically good fun as long as you have a good group of people to share the time with, but mechanically I think CoC is particularly good. It is simple to learn and the mechanics really assist in the tense storytelling.
Tabletop rpgs are my passion. I devote a lot of time to it, and getting together with my friends to play is my favorite thing in the world. Currently dming Pathfinder Kingmaker.
I so agree with you! Been playing RPGs for decades now …!
I just started reading the pathfinder 2e core book. It’s really interesting compared against 5e. I’d like to convince my group to give it a try, but I’m running Deathwatch right now, then there’s 2 or 3 other campaigns lined up before the DM hat will get back around to me, so it might be a minute before I get around to actually playing it.
Pathfinder 2e is pretty great, and an all around upgrade compared to 5e. If you need any Pathfinder 2e book pdfs just dm me
I had a chance to play a CoC one shot recently, it was really good!
So, with the caveat that my “gaming group”, more often than not, is my kids and therefore we’re not up for a 6 hour rules-intensive cardboard-based cutthroat brawl, here are some that I like:
- Tiny Epic Galaxies: Blast Off : this is a fun little dice-based game with cute imagery. You need to get control of planets to gain points (21) and you have some resource-wrangling opportunities to get to, and then claim the planets before your pesky competitors get them. This also has the advantage that you can play it solo.
- Star Realms : a deck-builder from a couple of old-school M:tG Hall of Famers. It’s really a two-player game, but it’s got passable options for 1 to 4 players. Each player had a basic starting deck and a common randomised trade row is populated from a shuffled deck. Your need to knock your opponents life down to zero by purchasing spacecraft and bases from there trade row to augment your combat ability, whilst avoiding your opponents similar attempts. There are four card types that allow you to level-up your trading, health regeneration, combat or enemy-annoyance factor. I love this game, but recommend the Frontiers version as it’s a little better balanced.
- Hey, That’s My Fish! : a fast, surprisingly cutthroat and, to be fair, rather physically finicky game but it’s a lot of fun! It’s a hexagonal-tile based game with up to four teams of penguins competing to harvest fish from a rapidly dwindling ice floe, where each penguin leaves a trail of melted-ice destruction in their wake! This one can lead to fisticuffs if someone manages to bisect the ice, leaving an opponent stranded and fishless!
- Wreckland Run : this is definitely outside your preferences, it’s solo-only. That said you asked for people’s favourite board games, and this is one of mine currently 🙂 It’s a Mad-Max-esque campaign theme in which you pick a vehicle and driver (giving you a set of core abilities) and attempt to fight your way through a series of vehicular brawls by judicious dice placement. And luck. Despite the fact that the initial rule book was an unmitigated disaster, I’ve really enjoyed playing this one and I’m currently battling Chapter 4 after not too many attempts at the previous chapters!
I really like board games that don’t take that long to play. It’s a lot easier to rope your friends into a game that takes 30-40 minutes to play and is easy to learn rather than a game that takes 4+ hours.
Some that I’ve found
- Azul
- Sheriff of Nottingham
- Splendor
Azul is such a beautiful game too. That’s usually my intro for people new to board games.
Since it doesn’t seemed to be mentioned by anyone (or I missed it), I’m going to say Robo-Rally… Programming your robot through a racetrack on a moving factory floor using drawn command cards, bumping into others, knocking the off course and ending in a totally wrong spot yourself because you miscalculated a step…
I realise this doesn’t really count (well, it does but you know), but chess. The rules are straightforward and it has infinite replayability. And you can play a game online any time you want in an instant.
Other boardgames I enjoy are Arkham Horror and Twilight Imperium, though I haven’t played either in a while.
Was into the tabletop simulator version of TI4 for a while. But even with automated set up and digital streamlining, the games are still 6-8 hours.
Love the game, but just don’t have time to play anymore.
Jeez, when you play a board game you really decided it’s an all day event. Both Arkham Horror and Twilight Imperium take forever every time I’ve played them
Try the Arkahm Horror Card Game. It moves quite a bit faster but shares much of the difficulty and has great stories.
It’s a card game rather than a board game (but still within the tabletop sphere so I think it still fits): I absolutely love Sentinels of the Multiverse. It’s by the same people who made Spirit Island, which I believe is more well-known. It’s a cooperative game where you play as superheroes working together to take down a villain. Aside from the game itself being a lot of fun, there’s a bunch of hidden story and lore within the card art, and the creators even have a podcast where they create stories and characters within the game’s world.
I love Sentinels of the Multiverse. Every player picks a different superhero with its own unique deck and powers, the villain is a separate deck, and there is an environment that adds a bit of chaos and having so many individual components you can swap out makes for a very high replayability. I love cooperative games, too, and this being cooperative is nice if you want to include someone who is less experienced in games because nobody is going to be out to exploit them. I’ve never been much of a superheroes fan, but the game plays so well. That’s one that has gotten played over and over in my house for many years at this point. It’s also available on Steam if you want to play with someone remotely, but I do prefer playing the physical version when possible.
I play boardgames with a few different groups. In one group we play almost exclusively Hanabi and Spirit Island. In the other group, popular favorites are Skull, Shamans, Wingspan, and Dice Forge. We play 6nimmt if we need to waste some time, and Avalon if there are lots of people.
