We asked regulars to share their top board games and tell us why they love them so much that they are ready to sit and play all night long! We have collected the widest possible range of favorite board games – for a large company and for one or two players, for a relaxed evening when there is no strength and desire to make mental efforts, and for a full-fledged brainstorm.
Daniil sandstone96 // Poker Dnevnik
Spartacus: A Game of Blood and Betrayal (also known as Spartacus: Blood and Sand )
The meaning of the game: you are transported to the world of one of the ancient Roman cities, where several influential people (one of whom you have to play for) are fighting for influence. They gain influence through intrigue, organizing gladiatorial fights and other, sometimes not entirely legal or worthy of respected patricians, ways. The game combines: PvP ( Ed. – Player vs Player) component – gladiators fight in the arena, economic – you can buy / sell gladiators, slaves and equipment for gladiators on the market and from each other – and intrigue. The winner is the one who gains the twelfth influence. At the moment when your gladiators fight in the arena, you can bet on the winner or on someone being wounded or beheaded 🙂
I have a club of like-minded people (we meet in Moscow) who have been playing this game with all the add-ons for about seven years now.
This is my favorite game after poker, because of its monstrous replayability. Each new game is not like hundreds and thousands of previous ones, you can win in a million different ways. There is no concept of honesty in the game: you can betray your opponent (kill his slave or gladiator, not challenge him to a fight, cheat in some deal or financial transaction) and continue playing. In general, everything that normal people try not to do in everyday life. It expands horizons and adds spice.
When four or five people who have been playing for several years gather at one table, it turns from a regular board game into something like a high roller poker tournament, where all the players at the table know all the opponents' strategies, the meanings of 200+ intrigue cards by heart, etc. The game turns into a puzzle, where you need to make the most profitable moves yourself and not let your opponents interfere with you.
The game teaches you to be patient, to plan, to calculate your actions several steps ahead and to change your plans depending on how others play or whether you are lucky in the battle in the arena.
Artem Nutspkr29 // Waiting for the upstreak
My favorite board game by far is the economic strategy game Scythe . There are board games that get boring after 3-5 games, but I've played more than 20 games of Scythe and every time I've had fun!
We also play Everdell, Legends of Arnak, and Battles of Heroes.
Poker is also present :)
Akhat Warlocheg // Warlocheg blog, tricks, jackpots, re-upload
Our whole family loves board games, in Tashkent I got acquainted with the strategic board game Dune Imperium . Upon arrival in Pattaya I immediately joined the local board game community, a game for four, sometimes I + 3 former poker players. Of the relatively "heavy" board games – my favorite.
For relaxed play with family, without too much confrontation (important when playing with children):
Carcassonne is a classic.
Luxury is for those who want to jingle their chips.
Azul is a relaxed game played with wine.
Among the easy, slightly trashy games for the company, I would single out Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards, lots of additions, great variability, and lots of action 🙂
For fans of games with elements of social deduction – Overboard, Avalon
Gleb HelpUSomeHow // Blog of a regular repper :)
Fun fact: I once co-founded a poker set company and we patented extrudable cardboard chips. These chips have been used in 50% of all board games for decades, but for some reason no one thought to patent them 🙂 We didn't make any money on it, though 🙂
I am a big fan of board games, we try to play every week. The priority is big games with gameplay for 3-4+ hours.
My favorites:
1. Conquering Mars is a game for 1-5 people, and it is also fun to play alone. The main task is to increase the global parameters of the planet (oxygen, temperature, oceans) to those suitable for life. Everyone strives for a common goal, but tries to score more points. The game has a very wide variability and excellent replayability, many strategies, the ability to counter opponents' strategies, etc. The poker players I showed it to fell in love with the game – they even went to a championship on it 🙂
I like the game because of the need to find balance (just like in poker). An economy that is too pumped up will almost always lose to a balanced one; the game teaches the need to refuse some tasty projects that we are unlikely to have time to implement; there are non-obvious strong strategies that at first glance seem very negative, but over time you understand their effectiveness. Over time, experienced players prefer to play only in strong teams, because that is when the beauty of balance is revealed to the maximum!
I played more than 150 games.
2. Winemaking is a Euro game where you need to plant grapes, make wine, and at the same time increase your influence and develop your estate. The game is much simpler and faster than Mars, and it is interesting to play in any composition, since the actions of weak players do not worsen the balance. The game has many original mechanics. Easy and enjoyable, up to 6 players can play (and, in my opinion, an increase in the number of players increases interest, since some mechanics are better revealed).
Perhaps the feeling of ease from the game is connected with the small number of games played so far – I have less than 15.
3. Dune is another Euro game that has elements of both deck building and direct confrontation with opponents. Good original mechanics, the ability to achieve the main goal in different ways, balance.
4. Sid Meier's Civilization is a cool game with lots of soldier figures, where you have to fight for resources, negotiate alliances/engage in diplomacy, develop, and fight. A game in which it's very easy to quarrel if you play with people who are not ready for conflicts of interest and don't like to lose. I remember the quote from the rules: "Communication between players is welcomed and encouraged, but you are not obligated to keep agreements."
5. Macau is a game that is very hard to get. It was not released in Russian, we play the German version, having printed and pasted the translation on the cards (this is not our idea, the translation and printing templates were made by other fans). The coolest mechanic of this game is working with resources, where you need to roll dice of different colors and then choose what type of resource, in what quantity and when you will receive. If the green dice is 5, and the black one is 2, then you can get 5 green resources in 5 moves, or 2 black resources in 2. It is very difficult to evaluate the value of resources at different stages of the game, so it is interesting to play.
6. Gloomhaven is an analogue of Dungeons and Dragons , it will be interesting to play alone, and two, and a large company. We create characters, learn the backstory, go through a campaign with a bunch of side quests. Excellent deep mechanics, many plot twists. One of the big advantages is that the game is exclusively cooperative, but this does not prevent scandals from breaking out on the basis of "oh, you, rat, collected all the loot, while we honestly fought with monsters!" This is especially funny in situations when the player really plays for the rat race. I recommend it.
7. Ksia is a game on a large map where you need to build a ship, complete missions, fight and take risks. The game is cool in terms of mechanics (each ship has its own features and dimensions, which affects how to place engines, weapons, and holds in it), but all actions are tied to randomness – you constantly need to roll the dice. A full turn for 5 people can take 30-40 minutes, but if you are very unlucky twice – in 1.5 hours you risk not even flying out of the city 🙂 In my opinion, some of the mechanics are unbalanced, so it makes sense to introduce a lot of special house rules.
Among the simpler games are Code Names (explanation of words and associations), Space Truckers (a funny, funny random game with short games, where you need to quickly build spaceships that will almost certainly fall apart halfway along the way), Gnomes-Saboteurs (top for a large company of 5-12 people with a sea of humor and randomness), Bunker (a funny game for 10+ people, where you need to decide who will deserve the right to stay in the bunker during the apocalypse, and who can be sacrificed).
Vyacheslav Fenomenico // Mixing disciplines and limits...
Phew, that's going to be a tough task :) I've gotten really into the board game hobby in the last couple of years, played a bunch of games, and so putting together a top list is now quite a task. Different games will suit different groups. What works for one may not grab the attention of others at all.
Let there be three top-3 at once. I tried to take localized games that are currently freely available in the Russian Federation.
a) Party games. Instead of running Alias and other Crocodiles once again, here are more worthy candidates:
1. Speed scribbles. The name of the game speaks for itself. The host thinks of a word, the others try to draw it on their tablets faster than others, but at the same time, so that the host understands it. It will go down well both at a drinking party and at gatherings with children.
2. Type Top. A cooperative game (better for 6-8 people), everyone gets cards with numbers from 1 to 10, the captain reads out the situation, and everyone must give an association corresponding to their number. A real top party game in my company. There is a box with an 18+ version, if needed.
3. Avalon. Social deduction. I can responsibly declare that it is much better than Mafia. Poker players will love it because there is a huge scope for bluffing and intrigue, while the games last up to half an hour on average and no one gets killed on the first night!
b) Immersive games. If you started playing, liked it, and are looking for something more serious, but not too tricky.
1. 7 Wonders. An ageless classic with draft mechanics. Great for a company of 3 to 7 people. There is a duel version, if, for example, you like to play with your significant other.
2. Ticket to Ride: Europe . Just collect colored wagons on maps and build routes across Europe, trying to reach the secret goals you get. Simple, but always exciting.
3. The Charlatans of Quedlinburg . This is simply a gambling game with a bag-making mechanic, where you will brew a potion by pulling ingredient tokens from a bag. The more you pull, the better, but there is always a risk of "exploding". A test of greed.
c) Games for advanced and just my personal top 3 games at the moment:
1. Dune: Empire. A perfect hybrid of deck-building and worker-deployment mechanics. The game will be best played with the two expansions that have been released, but the base version is also quite good.
2. Conquering Mars. A hit that I still can't get enough of. A perfect scoreboard builder (engine building game) with card mechanics. With the abundance of add-ons, you can simply drown in content.
3. Brass: Birmingham. In my opinion, the best Euro game with close interaction between players and a verified balance. At the same time, it is complex in the details of the rules, and laconic in the main gameplay. By the way, this is the top-1 board game according to users of the main world portal about board games BoardGameGeek.
Dmitry Imbafer // GipsyTeam Editorial
Pandemic: Legacy
An ideal board game for small groups that can get together a few times a month (friends or family members, two to four people, will do). The premise is simple: you team up to fight a virus that is trying to wipe out all of humanity, draw cards, move tokens around the world, and coordinate moves with other players. The basic mechanics hold your attention well from the start, but the game really opens up after the first game: it turns out that each subsequent game is connected to the previous one in terms of plot and gameplay.
A lot depends on your actions: what the game board looks like, what tasks there will be, what skills the characters will unlock. Meta-progression, like in video games! The game itself also throws up new rules in each game. It is incredibly interesting to experience all this in one company, the experience unites no worse than joint mountain hikes. It is not difficult to understand the rules, so it is suitable for those who rarely play board games.
A separate delight is the tactile one: as the plot develops, you will need to open closed boxes with new figures, paste new rules into the book, or tear up especially powerful cards with one-time abilities (or dead heroes).
Twilight Struggle
Almost the complete opposite of the previous board game: strictly two players, instead of cooperation – solid antagonism. The setting is as realistic as possible: the Cold War, you as the head of the USSR or the USA are trying to lead the country to world domination, reacting to political crises and fighting for influence in all parts of the globe. The crises are quite real, so for fans of the political history of the 20th century, familiar events will occur every five minutes, and the available arsenal of techniques is quite wide: you can organize coups, send agents, compete in the space race or even put the world on the brink of nuclear war (as long as you don’t accidentally cross this line). But the main thing is depth and variability: you can easily play dozens of games without getting bored, and the balance is so well-honed that full-fledged championships were held for the game.
The main disadvantage is the complexity: if you are not ready to spend several hours reading all the rules and then seven hours playing the game, you should not even start.
7 wonders
A simple but exciting economic strategy for a large company, which is easy to understand. Each player has a city under control, where you can build buildings and wonders of the world, buildings bring points, and whoever has scored the most after 3 rounds of 7 moves wins. The dynamics are ensured by the fact that each turn you play one card from your hand and pass the rest to your neighbor, so you can plan not only your development, but also your opponents.
