Board Game Suggestions

[Celcey]

Greetings Playgrounders! I'm a big board game fan, and every week on Shabbos my friends and I spend the day playing board games. We have some great ones, and I got a Toys "R" Us gift card for my birthday so I'm looking for something new to add to our collection.

I'm not looking for anything standard, like monopoly or scrabble or banana grams. We should be able to play with at least up to four but preferably with up to six or more players. It doesn't have to be specifically a boardgame. The game cannot have any electronic components or require writing anything down. It shouldn't take all day to set up and play, but up to three or so hours is fine. It must have a lot of replay ability as well.

Some games we already have:
Betrayal at House on the Hill
Epic Spell Wars
D.C. Deck Builders (several different ones plus expansions)
Cards Against Humanity
Settlers of Catan (plus expansions)

Any and all suggestions are welcome!

[Rynjin]

I used to work at a board game store, I'll throw out some of my favorite non-exclusive games (company went out of business earlier this year and I'm not sure if stuff like Otrio is available any more).

Some I enjoy:

Quoridor: Two to Four players, easy set-up. Each player starts one one side of the board and wants to get to the opposite, moving one space at a time (no diagonals). Instead of moving on their turn, a player can place one of a limited number of walls on the board to impede their opponents. First to reach their goal wins.

Spy Alley: Two to Six players, moderate set-up for the first game, but easier when playing back to back games. Each player is a spy for a randomly selected (and secret to all the other players) country. Each player is trying to collect four spy tools (like passports and such, locked to certain countries) and get to their embassy. If any player correctly guesses which country you are from, you are eliminated (if they guess wrong, they are eliminated), so it's usually important to spread your tools around to different countries' variants (the Russian Spy might find it a good idea to pick up a German Passport and Italian Codes to obfuscate his allegiance).

Dead of Winter: Two to Five players, moderate set up. Zombie survival game, each time you'll have a different end goal and resources to gather to achieve that goal by a certain day. Each player starts with control of two characters (each with special stats and abilities), but can gain more over the course of the game. Each turn divided into days) a new crisis is revealed, usually necessitating large amounts of a certain commodity be sacrificed or morale is lost (hitting zero morale loses you the game; the other primary way to lose morale is when people die). It sounds grim but can often be goofy and fun. For whatever reason Felicia Day is a playable character, and her special ability leads to amusing shenanigans on many occasions (basically, she counts as every character not already in play for the purpose of special event triggers. As an example, this can include a stunt dog. Hilarity ensues.). Biggest twist: Each character has a hidden goal to accomplish. Usually, this is in addition to the group goal, but is not always IN SERVICE OF the group goal and can be detrimental (and sometimes, a player can be an outright traitor who wants to make everyone fail). It is possible for the group to win, but any or all players to "lose" if their specific goal is not met.

Dominion: Two to Four players, moderate set up. A well established deck building card game. Purchase cards to get more cards to accomplish your goals (primarily ending up with the most points by the end of the game). Game ends if any stack of cards is bought out, and points are tallied. Has a base set which is perfectly playable, and something like ten expansion sets of varying fun and usefulness. Prosperity seems to be the most popular, though I personally like Seaside the most for all its card cycling shenanigans. The only other two I have personal experience with are Intrigue (a mixed bag, but with quite a few interesting cards) and Alchemy (CRANK IT TO ELEVEN: The Expansion).

Unfortunately I don't know any good ones for more than six.

[Sholos]

Sentinels of the Multiverse: 2-5 players. You and friends take the roles of superheroes and fight against villains in various environments, all represented by decks of cards. Moderate setup and a bit of a learning curve since every character plays differently. It's very thematic and fun, though.

Terraforming Mars: 2-4 players. Moderate setup. Long (3+ hours) playtime. Everyone represents corporations making Mars habitable. So you're kind of working together, but you're also trying to get the best score.

Resistance: 5-10 players. Quick setup, quick playtime. Everyone is a member of a resistance group, except some are secretly government agents working against the resistance. Game is based around bluffing with the loyal members trying to figure out who the spies are.

[Sian]

Illuminati : 2-6 players (ideally probably 3-5, 2 can be too binary, 6 can be to many) you're each a secret society which tries to gain control over companies, organizations and fandoms, with the goal of gaining enough power to succeed at your goal and deny others the chance of getting to theirs

[Winthur]

Here's games I have on my shelf that I can vouche for:

Sheriff of Nottingham: A game with a wonderful artstyle/nice feelies that is about merchants coming to the town of Nottingham, with players taking turns being the Sheriff in a round-robin fashion. Merchants insert goods into their bag, declare the quantity and type, and the Sheriff has to guess whether the Merchant put in legal or illegal merchandise. If the Sheriff catches you with contraband, you pay him and you don't get the contraband. If the Sheriff lets you through with illegal merchandise, you get bonus points for having it on you, but if the Sheriff tries to check your bag when you are only putting up legal merchandise, he has to pay you. Game heavily encourages negotiation and backstabbing, as well as maintaining your pokerface and playing mindgames. I once played a game of SoN between two couples that ended up being an orgy because everyone started selling out favors to win. Wonderful time all around.

Room-25: Contains multiple game modes. A "escape the dungeon" kinda game where you play as a bunch of prisoners and have to escape a place inspired by films like The Cube and Saw. You build the dungeon by randomizing; nobody knows which tile is which, so without proper scouting you can throw yourself into a death trap. You can play a full co-op mode, a co-op mode with a traitor (akin to the Battlestar Galactica game), a competitive mode where only one team can escape, or a FFA. Expansion pack to the game adds new characters, new tiles and gives each character a special power (in the basic game, they just differ in looks). Got the most mileage out of that game in the "co-op with a traitor" mode. There's a time limit. It's fun.

Neuroshima Hex!: A cool game for 2 to 4 players (with expansion packs can support up to 6) where each of you takes a post-apocalyptic faction and fight with diverse armies. Base game has a melee/disruption-focused army of Mad Max-style vagrants, a "humanity's last stand" glass cannon type army, an army of very quick mutants, and a heavy turtler type army of Skynet-like robots. It has expansion packs with many new factions and an Android app. The base game lasted me for quite a while now, haven't gotten any of the exp packs, though they're quite unique and some really toss the game upside down.

Codenames: The only party game I can stand nowadays. It's nice for starting up a gaming session. It's basically a game where two teams have to communicate between its team members by guessing sets of words based on the "boss" player's vague description. There's plenty of "dud" words and one "you die instantly" word on the map so the boss has to carefully use his vague descriptions in order to not lead his team to pick those words. Sorta like Taboo but better.

And of course there's also Talisman.

[caden_varn]

7 Wonders is a fast game that handles up to 7 (8 with an expansion), and does not bog down with more players. Card game of building ancient wonders. Each turn you choose one card from your hand, then pass the rest to the next player, so you are no only thinking of what you want, but what you don't want your neighbour to have.

Kill Doctor Lucky handles 8 I believe, certainly. Wander round a manor, picking up useful weapons & try to murder Dr Lucky. Not the deepest game, but pretty fun.
Deadwood Studios is another one by the same studio - take roles as a bit actor & try to become the richest & most famous.

Chariot race is 6 player - try to be the first to complete 2 laps without crashing into anything while your competitors throw spears and drop caltrops. Quite fast & easy, good fun.

Eldritch Horror is a longer cooperative game - takes a bit of setup though. travel round the world defeating monsters, going insane & hopefully solving the mysteries needed to stop the great old one from devouring the earth.

Love Letter is a card game for 3-4, about 10-20 mins per game. A good filler while waiting for the rest of the group to come over.

[Knaight]

I'll be making recommendations for games, but I'd actually check Meetup or the like first - playing a few games with an established group can introduce you to a lot of games quickly, and it's how I've learned about several of the suggestions below. Failing that though, here's a few options across a few different genres:

• Puerto Rico: Puerto Rico is my preferred Catan replacement. It runs about an hour and a half, and you spend that time building up an economic engine. Every turn you pick one action and everyone gets (or has) to do it, and the game is largely about making sure your advantages are bigger when providing shared improvements, with a side of blatant sabotage.
• Citadels: Citadels is a hidden information role selection game where you build up a vaguely medievalish city by taking the roles of influential people within it. The building competition is bracketed by lots of direct conflict, however this is done entirely through and targeting the roles - and you don't know which player has which role, which leads to all sorts of fun mind games. It runs about an hour.
• Empire Engines: Empire Engines is one of my favorite short games, running about fifteen minutes. It's a fairly minimalist resource management game where you're trying to get the most points out through shipping goods, inventing stuff, salvage, and military action. A few of the actions interfere with each other, and where it gets fun is in the hidden information. Everyone has two gears in front of them with actions on them, and two cards that they place face down to turn their gears, with everyone taking actions simultaneously but not placing cards simultaneously. Each card can turn gears two ways, and you can see which of the two ways is in use (although you don't know which card it is), leading to a lot more depth.
• Taboo: Taboo is a bit more traditional, but it's a fairly solid party game involving getting people to guess words.
• Quiddler: Quiddler is another word game, essentially a faster scrabble without the board. There's a few subtle design decisions that really make it work, with a focus on sets of multiple words and an increasing hand size standing out. It runs about 45 minutes, and can play large groups.
• Codenames: Codenames has been covered above, but I'd recommend it.
• Elysium: Elysium is a game themed after Greek mythology, involving the recruitment and collection of legendary heroes. It plays a bit like a weird cross of a deck builder and a worker placement game, the art is beautiful, and it's a solid game with a really nice gameplay-setup ratio that works out to about 45 minutes a game.
• Adrenaline: It's not the deepest game, but there's points for style for the core idea of making an arena shooter into a board game. You move around a small map, and every turn get two actions out of moving, moving a short distance and grabbing a pickup (weapons, ammo, and mystery items), or shooting someone. You get points whenever someone is killed (and they immediately respawn on their next turn), based on who hit them first, whether or not you overkilled them, and the damage distribution on them - which rewards a few different strategies, from going for kill shots and high damage to trying to get at least some points through chip damage and first blood on everyone.
• Spirit Island: Spirit Island is a cooperative game for those who've decided that they like their games really complex. You play as primeval nature spirits protecting your island from rapacious conquistadors, with the aid of a native culture less fond of things like strip mining. Each spirit then has a specific set of powers, ways to change it, several resources they manage, and just generally a fairly complex set of resources to use as effectively as possible against the invaders. It runs close to three hours.
• Pandemic: Pandemic is more of an introductory cooperative game, but it's still a great deal of fun. You play a medical team trying to stem the simultaneous outbreak of four nasty diseases across the globe, splitting your attention between infrastructure, researching cures, and just keeping the diseases from getting too severe. It runs about an hour.
• Clank: Clank is a deckbuilder with a board, following a group of competing adventurers trying to loot a dungeon without getting killed by a dragon. The setup is a bit much, but it's a fun twist on the genre.
• Star Realms (2 packs): Star Realms is another deck builder, in this case focused on fleets of warships blowing each other up in space. Each pack is enough cards for two players, so you'll need at least two, but it works well as a fairly quick game to start or end a night of gaming, or as a break between longer games.
• Dominion: Dominion is a lot like Catan - it's a fairly standard entry point, it's well known among board game nerds, and there are a lot of later games that show it's DNA. Unlike Catan it's not rendered completely obsolete by these later games, remaining a really good deckbuilder. It runs about half an hour, although groups that play a lot will drive that time down significantly. It's also extremely replayable, which is a bit of a signature trait of it's creator.
• Kingdom Builder: Kingdom Builder is another game by the designer of Dominion, this time about placing lots and lots of buildings in very specific fashions for points, while collecting abilities that let you place even more buildings.
• Mintworks: Mintworks is a super minimalist game that takes about ten minutes to play, and serves as a good introduction to the worker placement genre. You're trying to build the best neighborhood in a city using limited city resources, and you buy plans, build buildings, and manage workers to do so. It's a small enough game to quickly learn all the basic actions, while still leaving room for strategy.
• Tzolkin: Where Mintworks is relatively simple, Tzolkin is downright ridiculous. It's a worker placement game loosely themed on the Mayan calendar, involving juggling a bunch of resources, upgrading your civilization, and planning way ahead while doing your best to interrupt everyone else's plans. With that said, just keeping up with the game mechanics can be a bit much. It runs about two and a half hours.
• Great Dalmuti: Great Dalmuti is a trick taking card game that works as a party game, and is based on moving up and down the ranks with some deliberately unfair mechanics that limit that mobility. Where it really shines is with it's special deck - there's one one, two twos, three threes, etc. to twelve twelves, plus two special cards. Low cards beat high cards, you can play sets of an arbitrary size, and that makes the weird deck really work.
• Orleans: Orleans is what's known as a bag builder, where you have a few different types of workers and are picking up better ones as the game goes on. These workers are then used both to get more workers and to earn points, with a few different strategies. Thematically, you play a merchant house in France, buying up goods, establishing trading houses, and accumulating knowledge - along with more and better specialized workers.

[Sholos]

Another game thats funa nd has a unique twist is Between Two Cities. 3-5 players, I think, and you and the people you're sitting next are building a city between you via tile placement. The trick is that your personal score is the lower scoring of the two cities at the end. So you have to make sure they're both decent while also ensuring you're not giving the win to your "partner".

[J-H]

Diplomacy is a 7-player (fixed # required) classic, but it involve deceiving your friends to their face until you can A Ven->Tri, F Adr S A Ven->Tri. Hurt feelings or glorious vengeance may ensue. It does involve writing down orders.

Pandemic is a 2 to 4 player cooperative problem-solving game where you move around and collect cards/resources to end epidemics. The diseases generally get worse as you go, and can "explode" to new areas. I feel like it's solvable, but seeing how to apply the strategy to each game is difficult, especially since you may not have the same roles (special abilities) each game.

Last Night on Earth is a 5-player game. Four people control characters, each with a couple of special abilities and 3 hit points. One person controls up to 18 zombies, who all move very slowly but can come through windows. There are several modes of play and it's pretty fun. Not suitable for children due to zombie-stereotype art (cleavage, etc.).

Robo Rally is best with 5+ players, and can accommodate up to 8. Adding a couple of extra tokens for more players should be doable. The boards are modular and can be configured any number of ways. Each player plots their next 5 moves and lays down cards (face down) for those 5 moves. Everyone resolves phase 1, then 2, then 3, etc. Each robot has a laser that fires forward, and it's entirely possible that someone will be rammed in phase 2 - and shot! - and pushed out of alignment so that their phase 3, 4, and 5 moves put them in the wrong spot. That can mean ramming a wall, running into a fixed laser beam, jumping on the wrong conveyor belt, or driving into a pit and dying. Ultimately it's a "race to checkpoints 1 2 and 3" game, but "How do I get close?" and "How many people can I probably ram/shoot?" dominate more of the play time, especially if you pick up treats like Remote Control, Double Shot, Rear Firing Laser, etc. Extremely suitable for a group of nerdy-ish people. Not quite as suitable for playing with my mother.

I have played Civilization the board game. It was boring.

[Sian]

Pandemic is a 2 to 4 player cooperative problem-solving game where you move around and collect cards/resources to end epidemics. The diseases generally get worse as you go, and can "explode" to new areas. I feel like it's solvable, but seeing how to apply the strategy to each game is difficult, especially since you may not have the same roles (special abilities) each game.

The couple of times I've played this I have the problem that it ultimately feels like it's solvable (in and so far that 'impossible' is a solution), and I'm not convinced that it doesn't have a sweet spot in number of players with a specific composition, where it's significantly easier (or harder for that matter) to the point where its practically always winnable (outside a very small subset of deck RNG) or always impossible ... and I got a sneaking suspicion that the 'hardcore' spot is significantly closer to 'standard play'

[Knaight]

The couple of times I've played this I have the problem that it ultimately feels like it's solvable (in and so far that 'impossible' is a solution), and I'm not convinced that it doesn't have a sweet spot in number of players with a specific composition, where it's significantly easier (or harder for that matter) to the point where its practically always winnable (outside a very small subset of deck RNG) or always impossible ... and I got a sneaking suspicion that the 'hardcore' spot is significantly closer to 'standard play'

If you're finding it easily winnable there are ways to bump up the difficulty - there's even an expansion largely dedicated to this, which has tactics from the simple (seven epidemics instead of the five of a "normal" difficulty game), to the complex (mid-game disease mutations that make the disease tougher).

[Zombimode]

I can't believe nobody has suggested Robinson Crusoe yet. It's the best cooperative board game I've encountered.

The Players come to a small Island. The chosen Scenario sets the ultimate win condition and special rules. But besides that ultimate Goal, the Players have to survive. They have to eat, they have to find shelter, and they have to survive the weather. To do all that, you explore the Island, gather rescoureces, go hunting or build items.
The game is incredibly well designed. It manages to provide a lot of depth without too much complexity. While there are many moving parts, everything feels important and conductive to the whole. It is also full of nice and "cute" details.

[Cikomyr]

Lords of Waterdeep is a great worker placement game, highly thematic with very good replayability. You can play 2 to 5 players.

Clank! Is a new favourite of mine. A Deckbuilder game where you go and explore a dungeon, steal an artifact, and run away before the Dragon kills you. The game's victor is determined by scoring, so it is not necessarily the one who ran away who wins. Its a Dice Tower favourite.