Mine is Ludo: A solid 2 to 4 Player board game.
Fun Fact: It causes a war in Hindu Mythology.
Second is Chess because dev abandoned their game.
Power Grid
Which map?
I mostly play US. Don’t have any expansion maps myself. Any recommendations?
The China map is interesting as it changes the power plant drawing order.
That is easy to answer for me.
Mansion of madness
I have played so many rounds with so many different people. The game is complex enough that each round is different. But easy enough to geht people to start with. Easy to play hard to master.
The digital game master via APP is great. I had so many games in which the last player actions decided the game. After some hours of game time. Your actions feel so impactful.
I treat Chinese checkers with the same reverence and over-seriousness that chess players have towards chess. I’m not especially good at it, but I really enjoy it.
so many good options on here already so I’ll add one that’s a little more of a dedicated game:
Arkham lcg.
you create a deck that represents the character you will play in a series of approximately eight games where you cooperatively work through Lovecraftian mysteries loaded with interesting stories lore and twists.
has almost a tabletop RPG feel to it if it was converted to a card game, absolutely love it.
Unfathomable hands down.
It requires 3-6 people for well over two hours (longest was around 5h).
Constant attacks from the sea creatures trying to destroy your ship. With traitors.
But it’s so engaging and fun. There is enough depth for replayability, lots of variation, there is always something happening, and players interact a lot, so there aren’t boring parts just watching someone go off with their turn.
There was recently an expansion, adding lots of variety and more depth.
Almost everyone who played once wanted to try it again. If you can find people who have the time, they will not walk away until it’s over. And will think about how to play differently the next time.
Champions of Midgard - Because Vikings! Its a resource management based game where you go on journeys to fight magical monsters. Its pretty tight and you can play a complete game in one-two hours.
Pandemic - I mostly enjoy this because it is a co-op game. You all fight the disease! That said the game mechanic is pretty fun and can be challenging.
Single favourite is hard to pick.
Casual: I agree, Ludo is GOAT.
Invested: Catan… Maybe Scrabble
Dumb fun: Mad magazine game
Clue.
I never got into Clue myself, though I blame Clue DVD for that. The premade cases led to a limited replay ability, sure, but due to these cases involving background narratives made you feel like a detective as you piece together alibis through story snippets.
It’s a shame they aren’t producing it anymore for quite some time now.
What’s your motive for liking it?
It’s complex yet very simple. Can be played by a small or large group easily. Teaches logic, reasoning, and deduction over “outscoring” your opponent. Being the dealer doesn’t give you any advantages if you play it right. And because of all the various permutations of the cards, it’s always a new game each time vs a number of set scenarios/strategies.
I just looked up Mage Knight based on your comment. This looks awesome, I’m ordering a copy right now. So, Thanks.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Mancala, if that counts.
Go. It’s nobody knows how many thousands of years old, it’s easy as pie and difficult like crazy. The game can’t end in a draw. It’s easy to balance strong and weak players so they can compete with full effort. The equipment is trivial to make with common, cheap household items. Computers got competitive against humans just a couple of years ago (compare to chess where they beat humans in 1997 and ever since).
Call to Adventure, Wingspan/Wyrmspan, most of the Tiny Epic series, Coup are all solid contenders.
I like the Red Raven games but I don’t really look forward to playing them because of all the set up and tear down lol, I would love them as digital products with automation.
I like Wyrmspan because it shakes up the mechanics, but to be perfectly honest I just love dragons more than birds so the art alone practically sold me on it lol
My partner and I prefer dragons as well. I don’t mean to keep bothering you but I have a couple of questions if you don’t mind
1.) Are they all different dragons with little trivia tidbits like the birds?
2.) Do you know if it plays well at two players? We really appreciated the Asia expansion for catering to that specifically
No bother at all! They are all different dragons with wonderful original art, but the cards don’t have trivia. There is a “dragons facts sheet” thing that’s included just as flavour.
Might not be the best person to answer the latter, as my partner and I played an absolute crap ton of Wingspan just the two of us and thought it played fine enough, even without the Asia expansion.
I’ve got the digital version of scythe but haven’t gotten around to trying it.
Silver
I have WAY more games than I should, and I have so many better games, but Silver is the one that my wife and I have played more than ALL the others put together.
Technically, we play what we call Super Silver, which is using all the cards from every expansion (except a few we hate) and don’t shuffle them back in between rounds. The game ends after four rounds or the deck is gone.
It’s just easy to pick up and go, and random enough that every game is a little different.
2 players : Hellton Palace 3-5 players : Oriflamme
