hello! any board game recommendations?
Ahh actually got excited when seeing this ask in my inbox! Thank you for giving me an excuse to ramble about different boardgames I like!
And boy, do I have some recommendations for you! These games will vary in difficulty level / weight as I play quite a wide range of games. If you want some indication about the difficulty of these games, I recommend looking them up on Board Game Geek. There, you can find a community-rated weight rating for most games.
Alright, so let's begin! These will be in no particular order.
1. Harmonies
Harmonies, for one, is definitely a very pretty game. Like I don't know if the picture here does it justice but in person the game is gorgeous.
In Harmonies, players take turns taking 3 tiles from the little plate in the middle and try to strategically place them on their personal board to score as many victory points as possible by the end of the game.
Animal cards you take allow you to earn extra points by placing tiles in specific arrangements, allowing for some more depth and strategy.
Harmonies is like a combination of the two board games Azul and Cascadia ( which I would also both recommend) and works very well. I have enjoyed each of my plays of it and the rules are not all that difficult to learn.
Would play a game of this at any time.
2. The Quacks of Quedlinburg (getting rereleased as just "Quacks")
This is a staple in the modern board gaming scene for a reason. The Quacks of Quedlinburg is a fun and easy-to-learn game in which players try to brew the best possible potions to earn money and victory points.
Each round, players pull ingredients from their bag and put them in their cauldron, the furhter you get, the better the payout! But beware, there are these pesky white cherry bombs in your bag. Pull out too many of those and your entire cauldron explodes!
It's one of these games where you have to decide how much you want to push your luck - or to know when best to stop while you're still ahead.
With the money you get by successfully brewing potions, you get to buy new ingredients to add to your bag every round with several interesting effects, making each playthrough a little unique.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg is a very fun game which I would honestly recommend to just about anyone!
3. Just One
For me, Just One is the quintessential party game. It's my go-to game to pull out at family gatherings.
The game is very simple and quick. All players play cooperatively.
One player closes their eyes and says a number between 1 and 5, which all correspond to a word on a card being drawn each round. All the other players learn what the word is and must now help that player guess what the secret word is.
To do this, each other player secretly writes down a single word as a clue for the guesser. The players then compare the words they wrote down: If any word was written down by more than one player, it must be completely wiped off.
Then, the guesser has one chance to guess the secret word by looking at the remaining clues written down by the other players.
If you're going to buy just one game to play in larger groups then this is definitely it for me. I've spent hours playing this game on Sylvester with my family who usually don't really play board games.
It's very simple and I can't recommend it enough!
4. Colt Express
Colt Express is a very fun, chaotic time! The players will play as bandits robbing a train - and of course everyone wants to be the richest criminal by the end of the game!
Players plan their turns by playing cards from their hands to run, climb the train, steal, shoot, punch the other bandits in the face or to call over the marshal to send the competition scrambling for the roof.
The trick with this game is that players don't immediately do the actions on the cards they play but rather, players take turns putting one card at a time on the pile until everyone has played around 4-5 cards. Then the pile gets turned around and one-by-one as the cards get flipped, the players must now take the actions that they had planned before.
As players can influence each other and some cards initally get played facedown the question remains: Will everything actually work out as I intended or will my entire plan go up in flames because someone else decided to mess with me?
5. Mysterium Park
This is another cooperative game. One player plays the part of a ghostly murder victim that was killed in a circus, the other players are psychics trying to communicate with the ghost to finally solve their murder.
Each psychic secretly gets assigned one card out of a selection of 9; in the first phase a suspect, then a location. Now, the ghost must help the other players guess which among the selection of cards have been assigned to them.
Unfortunately, seeing as they are very much dead, the ghost isn't allowed to directly communcate with the other players through for example speech or movement. Instead, they have a hand of cards with different quite abstract artwork on them.
The ghost hands out any cards from their hand to a player that they think somehow connects to the card that player must guess. The other players must then try to interpret what the ghost player was trying to tell them with that card.
Very fun and unique game that I can't help but love! It's very interesting to see how different people can interpret the same artwork differently and might make links that the ghost hadn't really intended in the first place.
6. Lost Ruins of Arnak
This is definitely one of the more complex games on this list but one I would also wholeheartedly recommend.
In the Lost Ruins of Arnak, players set out to explore an island by strategically sending out their workers to gather the resources you need to continue your research until you make it all the way to the lost temple.
The Lost Ruins of Arnak combines worker placement and deck-building in a very fun and exciting way. Players need to decide exactly where they need to place their two precious workers to reap the most benefits possible every round.
Meanwhile, players can buy new cards to add to their deck to make use of powerful effect or hire additional allies to help them on their way to the temple.
Arnak feels very satisfying to play as each of the 5 rounds in the game gets progressively longer because the longer the game goes on, the more things you can accomplish during your turn.
7. Mind MGMT
Mind MGMT is perhaps most similar to the game Scotland Yard - it is a hidden movement game where one player plays as Mind Management, operating in the shadows and trying to gain more influence by finding more recruits. The other players are rogue agents trying to locate the Management and capture them before they grow to powerful to stop.
Mind MGMT chooses a starting location on a big board and then secretly moves one space every turn, collecting new recruits on the way.
The rogue agents can ask the Management questions to slowly find out where they have been to narrow down their location and then finally capture them.
Mind MGMT wins by recruiting a certain amount of people or outlasting the turn limit. The rogue agents win by moving onto the space the hiding player is currently on and using the "capture action".
There are many things I love about this game. For one, I am very fond of the artwork used in this game. I know it can be divisive but I love how unique it is in the boardgame scene. There are also so many little details in this production that really shows how much care was put into creating this game.
Another neat thing about this game is quite modular and you can adjust it as you see fit.
For one, there are two game modes: Training Mission and Full Game. The training mission omits some of the rules and makes it so that the game is simpler in it's rules and accessible even to people that don't play these sorts of games very often while the Full Game offers more depth and complexity for those that like a good cat-and-mouse game.
In my opinion, Mind MGMT is the gold standard when it comes to hidden movement games.
8. Arkham Horror: The Card Game
Of course I can't make a board game recommendation list without including my favorite game. Now fair warning, this game is way more complex than anything else on this list and I wouldn't really recommend for someone that doesn't have experience with these sorts of games to immediately jump into this.
Arkham Horror LCG is a cooperative deck-building game where players must face unspeakable horrors and challenges in a wide range of different scenarios.
Players choose an investigator to play with all of them having different stats, abilites and cards. They then build a deck of 30 cards to help them during their gameplay.
Arkham Horror is a very unique experience that is really hard to describe. There have been several different expansions over the years, adding new campaigns to play through, new investigators and new player cards. There is so much stuff, there is bound to be something for everyone.
This is a game very near and dear to my heart and so I would be more than happy to also make a separate post talking about it in more detail.
What I love about the game is how different each scenario plays, how you can slowly upgrade your deck over the course of the game and how truly unique and thematic it manages to be, even while sometimes being absolutely brutal.
Over the time I've known the game, I have already converted 6 people to this game and I will continue to pour out all my love for it to anyone who asks. Please do let me know if any of you are interested in a more in-depth discussion or explanation for Arkham Horror: The Card Game or if you need any adice or help ( for example what to get first and so on) then don't hesitate to reach out!
For now though, this will be the end of this post. I might give more recommendations in the future though, board games is a hobby that I'm really passionate about and love discussing. Are there any games you guys really like? Let me know!
