I think you should play modern board games, but can we agree that there are both good and also heinously bad lessons to learn from them? Far too many board games want to be computer games, and seem to think it's trivial to have 20 different piles of crap to set up at the start, and then a dozen different pieces of state to track in your little corner of the table during what will inevitably be a complicated five-phased turn. If your board game takes hours to learn and set up, and then half an hour to put away again at the end, I am just going to invest my time in a proper TTRPG that better repays the investment.
>Far too many board games want to be computer games
very concise way to nail the root cause of this problem. I dont think it is intentional. I am developing my own board game right now with my brother, currently playtesting with close friends with solid results, and due to growing up with video games I cannot tell you how often we have had to confront the urge to add a state tracker here or a system there or maybe if we use cards with stats on them then .. etc. because a lot of our love for games has been influenced by video games. We managed to overcome that and keep things fun and simple, but we also have the luxury of working on this over the past couple years in our spare time and not pressed to meet a deadline or other corporate constraints. By that I mean when we hit a wall that could be solved quickly by increasing the games complexity, we are able to step away for a while until a good idea hits us.
there is certainly some room to bridge the gap between video games and board games, to have systems the players dont need to learn but operate in the background while still enabling tabletop interaction - but i dont see how to do it on a budget, so maybe a future project. we need projector enabled coffee tables to get popular in general or something maybe
I agree. I generally bounce off those sort of games.
I gravitate towards games that have simpler rulesets with deep gameplay. I’m a big fan of Reiner Knizia but also Phil Walker-Harding and David Thompson.
100% agree, I think the past 10-15 years of changes in the hobby have been profoundly negative.
- The trend towards videogame-ifying board games
- The trend towards "cozy" games, i.e. games that are not interactive, have no potential to produce negative emotions, and focus efforts on a solitary optimization puzzle.
- The kickstarter-ification of games that focus on early release exclusives, excessive plastic, aesthetics over game design, etc.
I really urge players today to look at some of the games from the 90s to early 2000s if they're interested in getting into the hobby. Seek out some of the "classic" hobby games. Even some games predating that are fantastic, but you will also run into a lot of over-the-top simulationist war games during the 80s period.
Humor aside, you're not wrong - spending an hour setting up and then 10 minutes per player to actually play was a lot more fun when I had a lot more free time
I'm thinking of breaking up with my local board game Meetup.
The reason why is: everybody there has board game ADD! I've been coming for 2 years, but we never play the same game twice; someone always brings the Hot New Game of the moment.
But I find that the first playthough is the least-fun one. That's the one where you're trying to remember what the grey cubes do, and whether they're worth victory points or not. And the game takes twice as long as it says on the box, because everyone needs to reason out their strategy from scratch.
I wish that I could convince my group to pick some set of N games to focus on!
I always enjoy the first playthrough(s) the most, because learning the system and strategies is the fun part. Once everyone knows all the rules and how to beat me, it's only going through the motions as a social experience.
It's interesting that you said "how to beat me." You also get better as you play the game more, right? So it could be you learning how to beat them ;-)
I ran into the same issue with my play group. I told them that I will only learn 3 new games a year.
Since I added the rule about a decade ago, we've never once hit the 3 game limit. Just having the rule made them rethink if it was worth learning a new game or playing one we had a lot fun with already.
We are living in a board game and card game Renaissance. For those outside of "the hobby", there are thousands of new titles being released every year. Some challenge the notion of what it even means to be a game. Even in the party game space, there is a lot of innovation. It doesn't matter what kind of game you like, there is one from the last 10 years that is your "perfect" game. If you hop on to BGG or the right Discords, you can find it fairly quickly. There is also LOTS of online playtesting happening with groups like Break My Game where you can play games still being designed. Additionally, I'll mention Board Game Arena which has digital implementations for over 1200 games.
[Source: I've been designing games as a hobby for the last 10 years)
These days far too many board games are designed to appeal on Kickstarter with needless plastic minis and content. All that time and effort could have gone to play testing and improving the game but instead you get 2kg of plastic that doesn’t improve the game in anyway, increasing costs, and day one expansions or bonus content that’s often mediocre.
For every truely innovative game out there, there’s many more that look great and have incredible table presence but are throughly mediocre rehashes of the something else and rely purely on hype or great art.
Now you see people backing KS or buying 2nd hand games specifically for scalping, and Kickstarters preying on people with FOMO.
Also you can no longer trust Board Game Geek ratings.
The good news is, the vast majority of what’s really good, is probably already out there and available new or 2nd hand for a fair price.
Agree 100%. This hobby jumped the shark probably 5-10 years ago.
Thanks to crowdfunding, there are deluxe editions of games all the time being announced for $400–500.
Games ship with "6 expansions in box" which sounds great and like a ton of replayable content, until you realize that they're poorly playtested, lack balance, and add a confounding (and sometimes contradictory) number of rules.
As you noted, games come with a ridiculous number of minis and trinkets and baubles that drive the price of new games well past $100 in many cases.
As the industry has gotten larger, many publishers are turning more toward bankable IP as opposed to innovative concepts. Or, they're releasing a bajillion reskins of the same game (looking at you, TtR, Azul, Pandemic, 7 Wonders, etc..) This is not unique to board games by any stretch. But it's a sign of an inflection point.
I'm not saying there aren't good games being released. I'm saying they're harder to find and getting drowned out by the shameless cash grabs and lazy IP-based games.
Go find some of the classics by Rosenberg, Knizia, Feld, Luciani, and others. You'll get a lot more bang for your buck.
> Games ship with "6 expansions in box" which sounds great [...] until you realize that they're poorly playtested, lack balance, and add a confounding (and sometimes contradictory) number of rules.
Hot take: I have never played an expansion that I liked more than the base game.
If you wander around the gencon halls this seems less true than people think. The number of innovative things or even kids ish games that are actually pretty interesting for all is _expansive_. The smaller stuff just doesn't get all the marketing splash.
I came back from last year with a few things but one of the hits was a physical area control game with just cards. The 2 play version is a pack of cards.
We're living in a renaissance in terms of the quantity of board games being released, but personally I am finding a declining number of titles I'm even remotely interested in each year, and many of the titles I am interested in are remakes/reprints of older titles!
I think with the increased public interest in hobby board games, the pursuit of profit has lead to some really negative changes in the games that tend to get published.
I recommend Wingspan for a wide range of gamers. If you don't have anyone to play with there is a very nice app you can play (steam, ios) with great music, AI, relaxing vibe.
I enjoyed this one digitally but it took me a really long time to grok the rules, maybe my first standalone deckbuilding game outside of the Witcher 3 in game card collecting quest. The expansions didn't make the game more fun IMHO outside of seeing new birds. It seems like a lot of rules to keep track of if doing it in person - is that normally an issue when playing it with physical cards and pieces? After I got decent enough to beat the CPU on high difficulty a bit I ventured online for multiplayer with real people - the online community was very small - I tried a few times and there's such a small pool of players for matchmaking I always ended up against the same player who was much better than me so I could never manage better than second of three.
Race for the Galaxy
A fast paced SF card game. Players build galactic civilizations by simultaneously selecting roles (like Explore, Develop, or Settle), which dictates the phases that occur that round.
New Frontiers
Often described as "Race for the Galaxy: The Board Game." It takes the core role-selection mechanisms of Race for the Galaxy but implements them into a more spatial and resource-driven board game format.
Imperial Settlers
A deceptively cute but highly competitive engine-building card game. Players take on the role of asymmetrical historical factions (Romans, Barbarians, Egyptians, etc.) to gather resources, build locations, and occasionally raze their opponents' buildings to score the most victory points.
Kyoto Shogi
A fast-paced micro-variant of traditional Japanese Shogi played on a tiny 5x5 board. Its defining twist is that pieces alternate between their promoted and demoted states every time they move, requiring serious forward-thinking and tactical planning.
Seirawan Chess
A chess variant created by grandmaster Yasser Seirawan. It is played on a standard 8x8 board but introduces two new fairy pieces: the Elephant (combines the movement of a Knight and a Rook) and the Hawk (combines the movement of a Knight and a Bishop), which are dropped onto the board as the starting pieces move.
Star Trek: Captain's Chair
An asymmetrical deck-building game where players take control of iconic captains and factions from the Star Trek universe (like the Federation, Klingons, or Romulans). It has a strategic combat and resource management system with dcombo-building.
Gaia Project
A science-fiction successor to Terra Mystica. Players control one of 14 highly asymmetric alien factions, expanding across the galaxy by terraforming planets to match their environmental needs. It’s an economic eurogame with a tech tree.
Cry Havoc
A card-driven, asymmetrical area control game set in a sci-fi universe. Four different factions (including native aliens and invading humans) fight for supremacy.
AuZtralia / TaZmania (Expansion)
Set in an alternate-reality 1930s where humanity fled to Australia only to find it populated by Lovecraftian Old Ones. It blends economic route-building (railways and farming) with tower-defense combat. The TaZmania expansion has a dual-sided map specifically designed for solo or 2-player games, including a randomized terrain side.
Lancaster
A 15th-century worker placement and area-majority game. Your "workers" are knights of varying strengths. Stronger knights can physically bump weaker knights out of locations. Players manage their forces to gain resources, vote on shifting game laws, and fight alongside the King in France.
Calico
A cozy but brain-burning puzzle game. You draft different colored and patterned hex tiles to sew a patchwork quilt. Score points by completing design goals, sewing on buttons, and attract specific cats to sleep on their fav patterns.
If only playing board games didn't require colocating several friends for a non-trivial span of time... Everyone around me (including myself!) is busy with work, children, partner, running their household, and exercising.
I play mostly with the aforementioned wife and kids!
We were shocked by how early our kids could pick up board games, including many of the ones mentioned in this article. Our 2 oldest kids were playing Ticket to Ride and Carcassone well enough to beat us form time to time at 3 and 4 years old. Now that they're a little older, slightly more complicated games like Catan and Flamecraft are on the table!
We all met, and picked a day that was likely to work for us regularly, going forward - for us, it's a Tuesday. That way we know, and can plan ahead for the foreseeable future, that Tuesdays will be D&D nights. People with kids can get babysitters, or get spouses/grandparents to take care of them. People with other obligations can keep that night clear. Etc., etc.
I used to prefer the whole "let's schedule the next session at the end of the night", but that has 100% led to campaigns falling apart. Consistency is key.
(Also, it helps to have a big enough group - either for D&D or boardgames - that the absence of any one or even two people doesn't tank the night.)
Doing things virtually is also a good suggestion, but I'm pretty burnt out of staring at people's faces on a screen, so I hate playing D&D or other games over a screen - but your mileage may vary.
If anyone's looking for a good, quick, 2 player game, Sky Team was a lot of fun. My partner and I are always on the lookout for quick, but strategic 2 player games and this hit the spot.
It's cooperative and has enough variety to keep it at exactly the right balance of fun/challenging.
Similarly, if you're looking for a wild 8 player game -> captain sonar. It sounds confusing until you start playing and then the light bulb goes on and you can't get enough.
Sky Team is great, I agree. For a few more 2p co-ops to try out, I can recommend Sail, Burgle Bros (give it a few playthroughs to get a feel), and Regicide. All are available on BGA if you want to try them and I've loved playing them.
I tried a few, the only one that really meshed with me in terms of competitiveness, strategy, constant pivoting and wide decision space is Dune Imperium Uprising. My group started with wingspan which was fun but we ended up hating how much it became just pure chance.
Dune was basically the opposite you have an element of RNG from deckbuilding, you have multi-step planning and if someone else takes your move you have to recalibrate your plan, you can pull off crazy combos and hidden plans with intrigues.
I highly recommend Dune Imperium Uprising for engineers.
Would love if anyone can recommend any game of similar depth. We tried Arcs, root, and some others but couldn’t find anything similarly competitive and deep while not being one of those way too complicated games like twilight imperium or something.
If you aren’t finding Arcs or Root “deep” or competitive enough you’re probably playing it wrong. Both have war game elements and a lot of subtle shenanigans you can play.
If you’re pure euro gamers but need a bit more interaction maybe try Brass Birmingham, Food Chain Magnate, 1846, City of the Big Shoulders, Inis, Kemet.
Give terraforming mars a try. Massive replayability with a lot of expansions to add to replayability and the theme is really really good. It isn't a worker placement game but you do get a lot of RNG from card drafting each round. The drafting is really great for strategic play as you can see what your opponents picked and build a plan around it
It is also a fantastic 2 player game. My wife and I have played hundreds of matches and it was our go to game during the pandemic.
PSA: don't bother with the steam edition. It has been plagued with bugs and is honestly more infuriating to play as the bugs can be game breaking. And the bugs have been around for years.
When I was a team lead I used to play board games as fun activity after releases.
I find it’s a great activity for people that aren’t that social. You get to participate in a group activity where your focus is on the game. Choosing the right game for the group is important though.
Our circle of friends tends to gravitate toward games (such as Balderdash [1]) that don’t necessarily give an asymmetric advantage to the people who own them and likely have a lot more hours of experience.
I got back into board games in about 2013, then when the pandemic came around and in-person wasn't viable we hit Board Game Arena big time for about 18 months.
Online isn't as nice as in-person, but it sufficed.
Does there have to be a board? Spyfall is no different to Imposter, except that there is no board, nor cards.
D&D is mentioned as a board game, but you don't really need a board.
Maybe we should call them "tabletop games" instead, in which case I think card games should make it (bridge, for example, means reading both your partner and your opponent).
The terms "board game" and "tabletop game" are considered pretty much interchangable by the vast majority of hobby board gamers, "board game" just tends to be the default. There's no requirement for a board game to have a board. BGG is full of card games, tabletop RPGs, dexterity games like jenga, junk art etc - none of which have boards
"Tabletop gaming" was a term invented specifically to capture things that weren't considered self-contained enough to be a "board game" or "card game".
I agree that "a board" is not necessary, but I do think that "less faff than D&D or Warhammer 40k" is a hard requirement.
Are there any good low-stakes games for a regular game night?
I'd love to try to host something like a poker night, but without the sour taste of gambling. Poker has lots of great qualities: people can drop in and drop out of, pick up quickly, not require so much focus that it precludes whitty bantz or idle side conversation. Are there some modern games that fit this shape?
Are there actually people out there who have never played “modern board games”? Maybe I’m just surrounded by nerds, but I don’t think these games are very niche. If someone I know hasn’t played board games like these, then it’s usually because they don’t have the attention span or don’t enjoy the strategy, not because they don’t realize board games exist.
You're definitely surrounded by nerds, just to use your words. I'm even in a PhD right now and most people just aren't in the hobby. It's something they did as a kid, ran out of interesting things, moved on to video games and either grew out of those or never looked back. Of the people that did, they started D&D campaigns and have little time for anything else. Boardgame culture is still very much niche, even among the broader nerdgeist
These are the top ranked games on BGG from 1990 - 2007. Pick a few of these, try to pick games that are highly differentiated from each other by category and mechanisms on their BGG pages (also I recommend you pick ones with under ~2hrs expected play time to start). Read the rules for one, go to your local board game cafe with some friends and play it. Try to recruit friends willing to play a game more than once, even if they initially dislike it (hard ask, I know, but sometimes games only reveal themselves after repeated plays). If you are enjoying this, repeat this with a couple picks and try to determine what are the features of these games that you enjoy (may be shared mechanisms, but eventually I think you will come to a more philosophical understanding of what you enjoy about board games, if you enjoy them!). You may find out early in this, that you don't really enjoy games except for the social experience. That's extremely common.
I do not recommend looking at kickstarters or the current top ranked games on BGG, or looking at recent youtube reviews.
although have to mention Diplomacy for its capacity to end relationships and practice war time negotiations and cheating is part of the game (IIRC it was a favorite of Kissinger and JFK)
> Alongside these games there have always been small groups of men moving around groups of small men in a basement somewhere re-enacting some battle or other.
The same social deduction genre, but the possible game states and the permutations of possible interactions are so massive that it stays interesting even when playing with the same group for years. It rewards both good calculation and good social reading skills, along with good bluffing of course.
Board games are great fun and also provide an excuse to hang out with your friends on a schedule. Some of my favourites are:
Power Grid: An ancient one. You compete to connect cities to your power network by buying resources on a market with a fixed replenishment cycle (so the book depletes as each player goes) and buying plants in auction.
Forbidden Stars: WH40k game. The interesting device in this game is that you commit to your actions ahead of time and others stack their actions on top of yours so yours will happen last but you can activate each map section available at your convenience. Combat with card draws and figurines.
Twilight Struggle: The US and the USSR struggle for control of the world. You play cards that represent various pivotal moments in history to give you influence in various parts of the world. You're allowed to coup and realign countries. Dice rolls are significant. An amusing self-confession is that I can't bring myself to play the USSRs. Nuclear Subs as a headline just makes me flush with pride https://twilightstrategy.com/2012/09/10/nuclear-subs/
I haven't played the latter two in recent times but ones I have played recently are:
Terraforming Mars: Tableau-building game (you have points based on the cards you've played) with an economy and map placement. I like the Venus and Colonies expansions. Best played with 3d printed parts to keep your nezos in place.
I super recommend Innovation. If you enjoy nuanced gameplay like in TCGs, this is for you. Everyone starts in the Stone Age and the goal is to race to 4-6 achievements, advancing through technological ages. Cards represent technologies and they have powers, like drawing cards, forcing other people to give you cards, score points, etc. It's a great game of resource management, politics, and sabotage.
Innovation is worth playing but it’s a Chudyk game. Perhaps with a lot of plays there is more strategy and nuance, but even with experienced gamers, I find Innovation much too swingy. With the right mindset to embrace the chaos, and players with the same level of experience/skill in the game, it can be fun though.
Terra Mystica, Brass Birmingham, Scythe, Root, ARCS and its expansions, Nemesis: Retaliation and SETI would all get shouts from me for that sort of thing. Slightly depends on your definition of complex and sophisticated, but I'd put all of those in that list.
I think the most complex board game I've really played any amount of is Carcasonne (Not particularly complicated). Often, if I'm playing a board game, I prefer it to be on the simpler end, more of a relaxing thing.
One memorable board gaming experience I had was playing Splendor (I believe) with my cousin, and it ended up being almost completely silent, just passing tokens around and the occasional "oh..." when another player did something undesirable.
Pit is also popular in my family when there's a gathering of us, with rounds often lasting only a minute or so, and getting quite frantic, and it is a very simple game
The article is more about a certain style of "modern" games, which is an interesting strand but does not exhaust the category: classic games (chess, go, shogi, backgammon), card games (bridge, poker), TCGs (magic the gathering, hearthstone) often are as complex and sophisticated as any of those.
If you're looking specifically for games in that style, Twilight Struggle has been studied extensively and there's significant competitive play and a well-developed theory. 7 Wonders Duel and Dominion also have significant depth.
Dominion has a fair amount of depth, but it seems common for individual player groups to get hung up on a particular play style and decide that they've found the ultimate strategy.
Ark Nova. It's not Agricola-scale, but it has some similar "move maximization" vibes.
You can also play it on Steam if you can't find a crop of folks to sit down for three hours with you (though you can run through a full game against the computer in 35 minutes).
There is a lot of love in my group from years of MtG for drafting games, so 7 Wonders and Dune Imperium are consistent favorites. When we have the time, we'll do Twilight Imperium. We've enjoyed all three Nemesis games. We are currently also really enjoying Spirit Island. We've completed Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion and put in some serious time with regular Gloomhave as well. As LotR fans, we've also enjoyed the LotR LCG and War of the Ring.
- 18xx games (1889, 1830, The Old Prince 1871, etc.). Basically stock market games built around running train companies.
- Games by the publisher Splotter Spellen (i.e. Indonesia, Food Chain Magnate, etc.). Interactive games, usually with an economic bent. Turn order manipulation is a large part of these games. Splotter games often feel like they are designed in a lineage similar to Uwe Rosenberg games, where you can see threads of design traits shared between games.
- Carl Chudyk designed games (Innovation, Glory To Rome, etc.). Games that feel random and broken but have lots of tactical play embedded in them. Tempo is challenging to figure out in these games (IMO), and sometimes there is a non-linear progression aspect to them.
- Older euros, predating the trend toward solitary play: El Grande, Tigris and Euphrates, Bridges of Shangri-La, Medina, etc. No single connective feature, but these are games that are more on the combinatorial and strategic side but predate the development of the "personal player board" as the primary place the game is played.
- Pax Games: Pax Pamir, Pax Porfiriana, etc. History-based card tableau games that all feature a conveyer-belt market mechanism (where you buy cards from a market and cards get progressively discounted the longer they're visible and give you turn lookahead). Semi-economic, but more about the interaction of card abilities (and sometimes map play). Very fun weird games, just ignore the footnotes in games designed by Phil Eklund (I also don't love the futurist optimism in Matt Eklund's Pax Transhumanity, but that's me).
- Some abstracts (such a time investment to get deep into these, but they're obviously fantastic games): The Gipf Series, TwiXt, Hive, Paco Ŝako. I'm not yet sure what type of abstract games I most enjoy, still figuring that out.
I tend to like strategic, competitive games with higher interactivity, but with lower amounts of "take that"-type interactivity.
Not just board based but Phutball it's interesting; and there was another one called Racetrack or something like that moving on vectors where you speed can just change on one unit around -+ x and/or y axis (9 directions).
My friends and I graduated from playing video games as teens to now we play almost exclusively board games together in our 30s. If you’re new to the scene, you may not be aware of the different styles of game design, here’s a video to get you started on the basics: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nyYexTcyY2A
I think you should play modern board games, but can we agree that there are both good and also heinously bad lessons to learn from them? Far too many board games want to be computer games, and seem to think it's trivial to have 20 different piles of crap to set up at the start, and then a dozen different pieces of state to track in your little corner of the table during what will inevitably be a complicated five-phased turn. If your board game takes hours to learn and set up, and then half an hour to put away again at the end, I am just going to invest my time in a proper TTRPG that better repays the investment.
>Far too many board games want to be computer games
very concise way to nail the root cause of this problem. I dont think it is intentional. I am developing my own board game right now with my brother, currently playtesting with close friends with solid results, and due to growing up with video games I cannot tell you how often we have had to confront the urge to add a state tracker here or a system there or maybe if we use cards with stats on them then .. etc. because a lot of our love for games has been influenced by video games. We managed to overcome that and keep things fun and simple, but we also have the luxury of working on this over the past couple years in our spare time and not pressed to meet a deadline or other corporate constraints. By that I mean when we hit a wall that could be solved quickly by increasing the games complexity, we are able to step away for a while until a good idea hits us.
there is certainly some room to bridge the gap between video games and board games, to have systems the players dont need to learn but operate in the background while still enabling tabletop interaction - but i dont see how to do it on a budget, so maybe a future project. we need projector enabled coffee tables to get popular in general or something maybe
I agree. I generally bounce off those sort of games.
I gravitate towards games that have simpler rulesets with deep gameplay. I’m a big fan of Reiner Knizia but also Phil Walker-Harding and David Thompson.
100% agree, I think the past 10-15 years of changes in the hobby have been profoundly negative.
- The trend towards videogame-ifying board games
- The trend towards "cozy" games, i.e. games that are not interactive, have no potential to produce negative emotions, and focus efforts on a solitary optimization puzzle.
- The kickstarter-ification of games that focus on early release exclusives, excessive plastic, aesthetics over game design, etc.
I really urge players today to look at some of the games from the 90s to early 2000s if they're interested in getting into the hobby. Seek out some of the "classic" hobby games. Even some games predating that are fantastic, but you will also run into a lot of over-the-top simulationist war games during the 80s period.
Hey! Hey! Some of us _enjoy_ Axis And Allies! /s
Humor aside, you're not wrong - spending an hour setting up and then 10 minutes per player to actually play was a lot more fun when I had a lot more free time
I'm thinking of breaking up with my local board game Meetup.
The reason why is: everybody there has board game ADD! I've been coming for 2 years, but we never play the same game twice; someone always brings the Hot New Game of the moment.
But I find that the first playthough is the least-fun one. That's the one where you're trying to remember what the grey cubes do, and whether they're worth victory points or not. And the game takes twice as long as it says on the box, because everyone needs to reason out their strategy from scratch.
I wish that I could convince my group to pick some set of N games to focus on!
I always enjoy the first playthrough(s) the most, because learning the system and strategies is the fun part. Once everyone knows all the rules and how to beat me, it's only going through the motions as a social experience.
It's interesting that you said "how to beat me." You also get better as you play the game more, right? So it could be you learning how to beat them ;-)
I ran into the same issue with my play group. I told them that I will only learn 3 new games a year.
Since I added the rule about a decade ago, we've never once hit the 3 game limit. Just having the rule made them rethink if it was worth learning a new game or playing one we had a lot fun with already.
> victory points
TIL this is an established term and not a joke term invented by a certain YouTube personality.
We are living in a board game and card game Renaissance. For those outside of "the hobby", there are thousands of new titles being released every year. Some challenge the notion of what it even means to be a game. Even in the party game space, there is a lot of innovation. It doesn't matter what kind of game you like, there is one from the last 10 years that is your "perfect" game. If you hop on to BGG or the right Discords, you can find it fairly quickly. There is also LOTS of online playtesting happening with groups like Break My Game where you can play games still being designed. Additionally, I'll mention Board Game Arena which has digital implementations for over 1200 games.
[Source: I've been designing games as a hobby for the last 10 years)
I’d argue we’re past the peak though.
These days far too many board games are designed to appeal on Kickstarter with needless plastic minis and content. All that time and effort could have gone to play testing and improving the game but instead you get 2kg of plastic that doesn’t improve the game in anyway, increasing costs, and day one expansions or bonus content that’s often mediocre.
For every truely innovative game out there, there’s many more that look great and have incredible table presence but are throughly mediocre rehashes of the something else and rely purely on hype or great art.
Now you see people backing KS or buying 2nd hand games specifically for scalping, and Kickstarters preying on people with FOMO.
Also you can no longer trust Board Game Geek ratings.
The good news is, the vast majority of what’s really good, is probably already out there and available new or 2nd hand for a fair price.
Agree 100%. This hobby jumped the shark probably 5-10 years ago.
Thanks to crowdfunding, there are deluxe editions of games all the time being announced for $400–500.
Games ship with "6 expansions in box" which sounds great and like a ton of replayable content, until you realize that they're poorly playtested, lack balance, and add a confounding (and sometimes contradictory) number of rules.
As you noted, games come with a ridiculous number of minis and trinkets and baubles that drive the price of new games well past $100 in many cases.
As the industry has gotten larger, many publishers are turning more toward bankable IP as opposed to innovative concepts. Or, they're releasing a bajillion reskins of the same game (looking at you, TtR, Azul, Pandemic, 7 Wonders, etc..) This is not unique to board games by any stretch. But it's a sign of an inflection point.
I'm not saying there aren't good games being released. I'm saying they're harder to find and getting drowned out by the shameless cash grabs and lazy IP-based games.
Go find some of the classics by Rosenberg, Knizia, Feld, Luciani, and others. You'll get a lot more bang for your buck.
> Games ship with "6 expansions in box" which sounds great [...] until you realize that they're poorly playtested, lack balance, and add a confounding (and sometimes contradictory) number of rules.
Hot take: I have never played an expansion that I liked more than the base game.
If you wander around the gencon halls this seems less true than people think. The number of innovative things or even kids ish games that are actually pretty interesting for all is _expansive_. The smaller stuff just doesn't get all the marketing splash.
I came back from last year with a few things but one of the hits was a physical area control game with just cards. The 2 play version is a pack of cards.
We're living in a renaissance in terms of the quantity of board games being released, but personally I am finding a declining number of titles I'm even remotely interested in each year, and many of the titles I am interested in are remakes/reprints of older titles!
I think with the increased public interest in hobby board games, the pursuit of profit has lead to some really negative changes in the games that tend to get published.
I recommend Wingspan for a wide range of gamers. If you don't have anyone to play with there is a very nice app you can play (steam, ios) with great music, AI, relaxing vibe.
I enjoyed this one digitally but it took me a really long time to grok the rules, maybe my first standalone deckbuilding game outside of the Witcher 3 in game card collecting quest. The expansions didn't make the game more fun IMHO outside of seeing new birds. It seems like a lot of rules to keep track of if doing it in person - is that normally an issue when playing it with physical cards and pieces? After I got decent enough to beat the CPU on high difficulty a bit I ventured online for multiplayer with real people - the online community was very small - I tried a few times and there's such a small pool of players for matchmaking I always ended up against the same player who was much better than me so I could never manage better than second of three.
I love the Wingspan soundtrack, it's available on Bandcamp! https://monstercouch.bandcamp.com/album/wingspan-original-vi...
Games I currently play:
Race for the Galaxy A fast paced SF card game. Players build galactic civilizations by simultaneously selecting roles (like Explore, Develop, or Settle), which dictates the phases that occur that round.
New Frontiers Often described as "Race for the Galaxy: The Board Game." It takes the core role-selection mechanisms of Race for the Galaxy but implements them into a more spatial and resource-driven board game format.
Imperial Settlers A deceptively cute but highly competitive engine-building card game. Players take on the role of asymmetrical historical factions (Romans, Barbarians, Egyptians, etc.) to gather resources, build locations, and occasionally raze their opponents' buildings to score the most victory points.
Kyoto Shogi A fast-paced micro-variant of traditional Japanese Shogi played on a tiny 5x5 board. Its defining twist is that pieces alternate between their promoted and demoted states every time they move, requiring serious forward-thinking and tactical planning.
Seirawan Chess A chess variant created by grandmaster Yasser Seirawan. It is played on a standard 8x8 board but introduces two new fairy pieces: the Elephant (combines the movement of a Knight and a Rook) and the Hawk (combines the movement of a Knight and a Bishop), which are dropped onto the board as the starting pieces move.
Star Trek: Captain's Chair An asymmetrical deck-building game where players take control of iconic captains and factions from the Star Trek universe (like the Federation, Klingons, or Romulans). It has a strategic combat and resource management system with dcombo-building.
Gaia Project A science-fiction successor to Terra Mystica. Players control one of 14 highly asymmetric alien factions, expanding across the galaxy by terraforming planets to match their environmental needs. It’s an economic eurogame with a tech tree.
Cry Havoc A card-driven, asymmetrical area control game set in a sci-fi universe. Four different factions (including native aliens and invading humans) fight for supremacy.
AuZtralia / TaZmania (Expansion) Set in an alternate-reality 1930s where humanity fled to Australia only to find it populated by Lovecraftian Old Ones. It blends economic route-building (railways and farming) with tower-defense combat. The TaZmania expansion has a dual-sided map specifically designed for solo or 2-player games, including a randomized terrain side.
Lancaster A 15th-century worker placement and area-majority game. Your "workers" are knights of varying strengths. Stronger knights can physically bump weaker knights out of locations. Players manage their forces to gain resources, vote on shifting game laws, and fight alongside the King in France.
Calico A cozy but brain-burning puzzle game. You draft different colored and patterned hex tiles to sew a patchwork quilt. Score points by completing design goals, sewing on buttons, and attract specific cats to sleep on their fav patterns.
If only playing board games didn't require colocating several friends for a non-trivial span of time... Everyone around me (including myself!) is busy with work, children, partner, running their household, and exercising.
How do people do it?
I play mostly with the aforementioned wife and kids!
We were shocked by how early our kids could pick up board games, including many of the ones mentioned in this article. Our 2 oldest kids were playing Ticket to Ride and Carcassone well enough to beat us form time to time at 3 and 4 years old. Now that they're a little older, slightly more complicated games like Catan and Flamecraft are on the table!
I play a lot of games solo it’s how I got into board games. Was looking for an alternative to video games when I was having RSI issues.
There are lot of solo only games and most cooperative games allow for solo play. During the pandemic it became pretty popular.
I do a mix of solo, in person and online with boardgamearena.
I play D&D once a week with local friends.
We all met, and picked a day that was likely to work for us regularly, going forward - for us, it's a Tuesday. That way we know, and can plan ahead for the foreseeable future, that Tuesdays will be D&D nights. People with kids can get babysitters, or get spouses/grandparents to take care of them. People with other obligations can keep that night clear. Etc., etc.
I used to prefer the whole "let's schedule the next session at the end of the night", but that has 100% led to campaigns falling apart. Consistency is key.
(Also, it helps to have a big enough group - either for D&D or boardgames - that the absence of any one or even two people doesn't tank the night.)
Doing things virtually is also a good suggestion, but I'm pretty burnt out of staring at people's faces on a screen, so I hate playing D&D or other games over a screen - but your mileage may vary.
We did it before we had kids. And now we do it virtually. Or very occasionally.
This is such a sad comment. You can call people and make a plan. It's called socializing.
that's the ultimate board game I guess.
If anyone's looking for a good, quick, 2 player game, Sky Team was a lot of fun. My partner and I are always on the lookout for quick, but strategic 2 player games and this hit the spot.
It's cooperative and has enough variety to keep it at exactly the right balance of fun/challenging.
Similarly, if you're looking for a wild 8 player game -> captain sonar. It sounds confusing until you start playing and then the light bulb goes on and you can't get enough.
Agreed that Captain Sonar is awesome, if you can find 7 other players that are into it.
It's a rare thing: a real-time board game. No turns!
Sky Team is great, I agree. For a few more 2p co-ops to try out, I can recommend Sail, Burgle Bros (give it a few playthroughs to get a feel), and Regicide. All are available on BGA if you want to try them and I've loved playing them.
I tried a few, the only one that really meshed with me in terms of competitiveness, strategy, constant pivoting and wide decision space is Dune Imperium Uprising. My group started with wingspan which was fun but we ended up hating how much it became just pure chance.
Dune was basically the opposite you have an element of RNG from deckbuilding, you have multi-step planning and if someone else takes your move you have to recalibrate your plan, you can pull off crazy combos and hidden plans with intrigues.
I highly recommend Dune Imperium Uprising for engineers.
Would love if anyone can recommend any game of similar depth. We tried Arcs, root, and some others but couldn’t find anything similarly competitive and deep while not being one of those way too complicated games like twilight imperium or something.
If you aren’t finding Arcs or Root “deep” or competitive enough you’re probably playing it wrong. Both have war game elements and a lot of subtle shenanigans you can play.
If you’re pure euro gamers but need a bit more interaction maybe try Brass Birmingham, Food Chain Magnate, 1846, City of the Big Shoulders, Inis, Kemet.
Give terraforming mars a try. Massive replayability with a lot of expansions to add to replayability and the theme is really really good. It isn't a worker placement game but you do get a lot of RNG from card drafting each round. The drafting is really great for strategic play as you can see what your opponents picked and build a plan around it
It is also a fantastic 2 player game. My wife and I have played hundreds of matches and it was our go to game during the pandemic.
PSA: don't bother with the steam edition. It has been plagued with bugs and is honestly more infuriating to play as the bugs can be game breaking. And the bugs have been around for years.
When I was a team lead I used to play board games as fun activity after releases.
I find it’s a great activity for people that aren’t that social. You get to participate in a group activity where your focus is on the game. Choosing the right game for the group is important though.
Good article and I was shocked to see a picture from my old office at the top of the page!
Our circle of friends tends to gravitate toward games (such as Balderdash [1]) that don’t necessarily give an asymmetric advantage to the people who own them and likely have a lot more hours of experience.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balderdash
I got back into board games in about 2013, then when the pandemic came around and in-person wasn't viable we hit Board Game Arena big time for about 18 months.
Online isn't as nice as in-person, but it sufficed.
Does there have to be a board? Spyfall is no different to Imposter, except that there is no board, nor cards.
D&D is mentioned as a board game, but you don't really need a board.
Maybe we should call them "tabletop games" instead, in which case I think card games should make it (bridge, for example, means reading both your partner and your opponent).
D&D is not a board game, nor is Warhammer 40k.
Tabletop games is already used as the broader category (covering board games, role playing games, miniatures games, and whatever I'm forgetting).
I distinctly remember Spyfall having cards...
The terms "board game" and "tabletop game" are considered pretty much interchangable by the vast majority of hobby board gamers, "board game" just tends to be the default. There's no requirement for a board game to have a board. BGG is full of card games, tabletop RPGs, dexterity games like jenga, junk art etc - none of which have boards
I don't really agree with your assessment.
"Tabletop gaming" was a term invented specifically to capture things that weren't considered self-contained enough to be a "board game" or "card game".
I agree that "a board" is not necessary, but I do think that "less faff than D&D or Warhammer 40k" is a hard requirement.
Are there any good low-stakes games for a regular game night?
I'd love to try to host something like a poker night, but without the sour taste of gambling. Poker has lots of great qualities: people can drop in and drop out of, pick up quickly, not require so much focus that it precludes whitty bantz or idle side conversation. Are there some modern games that fit this shape?
Sure, there are lots of good lightweight card games. For example:
* Skull: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/92415/skull
* Cockroach Poker: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/11971/cockroach-poker
* Flip 7: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/420087/flip-7
The Gang: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/411567/the-gang
This has become one of my favorite low-key games. It has a great poker "feel" without being as complicated.
Are there actually people out there who have never played “modern board games”? Maybe I’m just surrounded by nerds, but I don’t think these games are very niche. If someone I know hasn’t played board games like these, then it’s usually because they don’t have the attention span or don’t enjoy the strategy, not because they don’t realize board games exist.
You're definitely surrounded by nerds, just to use your words. I'm even in a PhD right now and most people just aren't in the hobby. It's something they did as a kid, ran out of interesting things, moved on to video games and either grew out of those or never looked back. Of the people that did, they started D&D campaigns and have little time for anything else. Boardgame culture is still very much niche, even among the broader nerdgeist
I love the word "nerdgeist!"
> ‘Euro’, or German style, games and what is affectionately called ‘Ameritrash’.
Trash sounds more derogatory than affectionate to me?!
If you are not yet a player of modern hobby board games and are interested to try some I recommend this method for picking some to try out:
https://boardgamegeek.com/search/boardgame?sort=rank&advsear...
These are the top ranked games on BGG from 1990 - 2007. Pick a few of these, try to pick games that are highly differentiated from each other by category and mechanisms on their BGG pages (also I recommend you pick ones with under ~2hrs expected play time to start). Read the rules for one, go to your local board game cafe with some friends and play it. Try to recruit friends willing to play a game more than once, even if they initially dislike it (hard ask, I know, but sometimes games only reveal themselves after repeated plays). If you are enjoying this, repeat this with a couple picks and try to determine what are the features of these games that you enjoy (may be shared mechanisms, but eventually I think you will come to a more philosophical understanding of what you enjoy about board games, if you enjoy them!). You may find out early in this, that you don't really enjoy games except for the social experience. That's extremely common.
I do not recommend looking at kickstarters or the current top ranked games on BGG, or looking at recent youtube reviews.
Twilight Struggle is my all-time fave
although have to mention Diplomacy for its capacity to end relationships and practice war time negotiations and cheating is part of the game (IIRC it was a favorite of Kissinger and JFK)
> and cheating is part of the game
My main problem with this is that if the other players are not in on this and just minimax, any such game becomes really boring.
> Alongside these games there have always been small groups of men moving around groups of small men in a basement somewhere re-enacting some battle or other.
Amazing line.
The peak board game experience to me is Blood on the Clocktower.
I just checked it out, what's the difference between it and non-board-games like werewolf and mafia?
The same social deduction genre, but the possible game states and the permutations of possible interactions are so massive that it stays interesting even when playing with the same group for years. It rewards both good calculation and good social reading skills, along with good bluffing of course.
It's very similar; they're all "social deduction" games.
Board games are great fun and also provide an excuse to hang out with your friends on a schedule. Some of my favourites are:
Power Grid: An ancient one. You compete to connect cities to your power network by buying resources on a market with a fixed replenishment cycle (so the book depletes as each player goes) and buying plants in auction.
Forbidden Stars: WH40k game. The interesting device in this game is that you commit to your actions ahead of time and others stack their actions on top of yours so yours will happen last but you can activate each map section available at your convenience. Combat with card draws and figurines.
Twilight Struggle: The US and the USSR struggle for control of the world. You play cards that represent various pivotal moments in history to give you influence in various parts of the world. You're allowed to coup and realign countries. Dice rolls are significant. An amusing self-confession is that I can't bring myself to play the USSRs. Nuclear Subs as a headline just makes me flush with pride https://twilightstrategy.com/2012/09/10/nuclear-subs/
I haven't played the latter two in recent times but ones I have played recently are:
Mahjong: An old classic. Trick taking with tiles. We most enjoy playing with the Chinese Official scoring rules https://web.archive.org/web/20250219225547/http://mahjong.wi...
But the Taiwanese style are easier to start with
Terraforming Mars: Tableau-building game (you have points based on the cards you've played) with an economy and map placement. I like the Venus and Colonies expansions. Best played with 3d printed parts to keep your nezos in place.
These are all great fun!
Those people playing board games must lose their mind if someone shows them video games with nice UI.
Any particularly complex or sophisticated board games HN likes to play?
Curious what kind of games appeal to the HN mindset
I super recommend Innovation. If you enjoy nuanced gameplay like in TCGs, this is for you. Everyone starts in the Stone Age and the goal is to race to 4-6 achievements, advancing through technological ages. Cards represent technologies and they have powers, like drawing cards, forcing other people to give you cards, score points, etc. It's a great game of resource management, politics, and sabotage.
Innovation is worth playing but it’s a Chudyk game. Perhaps with a lot of plays there is more strategy and nuance, but even with experienced gamers, I find Innovation much too swingy. With the right mindset to embrace the chaos, and players with the same level of experience/skill in the game, it can be fun though.
Seconding this. It's somewhat challenging to learn, but a lot of fun once you get it.
Terra Mystica, Brass Birmingham, Scythe, Root, ARCS and its expansions, Nemesis: Retaliation and SETI would all get shouts from me for that sort of thing. Slightly depends on your definition of complex and sophisticated, but I'd put all of those in that list.
I think the most complex board game I've really played any amount of is Carcasonne (Not particularly complicated). Often, if I'm playing a board game, I prefer it to be on the simpler end, more of a relaxing thing.
One memorable board gaming experience I had was playing Splendor (I believe) with my cousin, and it ended up being almost completely silent, just passing tokens around and the occasional "oh..." when another player did something undesirable.
Pit is also popular in my family when there's a gathering of us, with rounds often lasting only a minute or so, and getting quite frantic, and it is a very simple game
Carcassonne is not very complicated, but when you start adding expansions it can become a bit complicated.
> Pit is also popular in my family when there's a gathering of us
We call Pit "The Yelling Game". For being over 100 years old, it's elegant, clever, and fun.
The article is more about a certain style of "modern" games, which is an interesting strand but does not exhaust the category: classic games (chess, go, shogi, backgammon), card games (bridge, poker), TCGs (magic the gathering, hearthstone) often are as complex and sophisticated as any of those.
If you're looking specifically for games in that style, Twilight Struggle has been studied extensively and there's significant competitive play and a well-developed theory. 7 Wonders Duel and Dominion also have significant depth.
Hmm i found 7 wonders and dominion to flatten out in strategy quite fast.
Dominion requires to monitor cards that while helpful initially,can burden your hand in the end.
Dominion has a fair amount of depth, but it seems common for individual player groups to get hung up on a particular play style and decide that they've found the ultimate strategy.
In support of Dominion: there are a million expansions that add new cards and mechanics.
Ark Nova. It's not Agricola-scale, but it has some similar "move maximization" vibes.
You can also play it on Steam if you can't find a crop of folks to sit down for three hours with you (though you can run through a full game against the computer in 35 minutes).
There is a lot of love in my group from years of MtG for drafting games, so 7 Wonders and Dune Imperium are consistent favorites. When we have the time, we'll do Twilight Imperium. We've enjoyed all three Nemesis games. We are currently also really enjoying Spirit Island. We've completed Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion and put in some serious time with regular Gloomhave as well. As LotR fans, we've also enjoyed the LotR LCG and War of the Ring.
18xx, hardcore economic train games. Think war games with money.
Figure your site deserves a plug ;)
https://18xx.games/
That’s the captaintobs site!?
I salute you. Incredible implementation. My group has spent so many hours on there.
Considering the popularity of Factorio and Satisfactory I'd recommend RoboRally. It gets a bit silly but it's accessible.
For much more depth I recommend Dominant Species by GMT.
On Mars, Great Western Trails, Obsession, Luthier, and Spirit Island are some of my favorite games.
And Netrunner of course!
I've been dipping my toes into High Frontier lately
- 18xx games (1889, 1830, The Old Prince 1871, etc.). Basically stock market games built around running train companies.
- Games by the publisher Splotter Spellen (i.e. Indonesia, Food Chain Magnate, etc.). Interactive games, usually with an economic bent. Turn order manipulation is a large part of these games. Splotter games often feel like they are designed in a lineage similar to Uwe Rosenberg games, where you can see threads of design traits shared between games.
- Carl Chudyk designed games (Innovation, Glory To Rome, etc.). Games that feel random and broken but have lots of tactical play embedded in them. Tempo is challenging to figure out in these games (IMO), and sometimes there is a non-linear progression aspect to them.
- Older euros, predating the trend toward solitary play: El Grande, Tigris and Euphrates, Bridges of Shangri-La, Medina, etc. No single connective feature, but these are games that are more on the combinatorial and strategic side but predate the development of the "personal player board" as the primary place the game is played.
- Pax Games: Pax Pamir, Pax Porfiriana, etc. History-based card tableau games that all feature a conveyer-belt market mechanism (where you buy cards from a market and cards get progressively discounted the longer they're visible and give you turn lookahead). Semi-economic, but more about the interaction of card abilities (and sometimes map play). Very fun weird games, just ignore the footnotes in games designed by Phil Eklund (I also don't love the futurist optimism in Matt Eklund's Pax Transhumanity, but that's me).
- Some abstracts (such a time investment to get deep into these, but they're obviously fantastic games): The Gipf Series, TwiXt, Hive, Paco Ŝako. I'm not yet sure what type of abstract games I most enjoy, still figuring that out.
I tend to like strategic, competitive games with higher interactivity, but with lower amounts of "take that"-type interactivity.
There's also Clue, Combat, stratego, Life, Parcheesi
Not just board based but Phutball it's interesting; and there was another one called Racetrack or something like that moving on vectors where you speed can just change on one unit around -+ x and/or y axis (9 directions).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phutball
Race Track
http://ideaexplore.net/racetrack.pdf
There are a fre more great 'realistic' pen and paper games like Tennis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_(paper-and-pencil_game)
My friends and I graduated from playing video games as teens to now we play almost exclusively board games together in our 30s. If you’re new to the scene, you may not be aware of the different styles of game design, here’s a video to get you started on the basics: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nyYexTcyY2A