You’re in a job and you find a co-worker likes board games as well. You chat for a while ad decide during your lunch break you should play some board games with each other. What board games would you bring in?

The Criteria

• Small/Portable
• Plays in 30 minutes or less
• Little to no set-up/tear down
• Easy to teach
• Small Footprint
• Plays well with few People

Small/Portable

There are some big games that do play fast or meet some of the other criteria, but let’s face it, you probably won’t be bringing in a Gloomhaven sized box, or have a spot to keep a Gloomhaven campaign set-up. If you do, you are lucky. So instead if a game is small and easy to take around, that is going to be the best way to go.

30 Minutes or Less

Game play needs to be fast. Even if you get an hour for lunch, you probably want to play something that is fast. A game that takes an hour, with teaching the rules, and other things can take longer. And you don’t want to have something that you can’t finish in that hour. Now, if you have a table in your work area, you can maybe leave something set-up, but otherwise, keep it snappy.

Minimal Set-up

This ties into that thirty minutes or less as well, Keep the game simple to set-up and take down. You don’t want to spend half your lunch setting up the game to rush through the game and be taking it down once lunch is over. So, instead, look for games that you can play basically right out of the box.

A Fast Teach

Rules are another big thing to think about. If I teach Gloomhaven, that’d probably take 15-20 minutes by itself. But there are games out there that you can teach really quickly. Pick those ones off of your shelf first. Or if the people you are playing with are up for it, teach them ahead of time via Watch It Played or some other rules video.

Small Footprint

You might think I already talked about this with a small game, but this different. A small footprint game is going to take up way less space on the table. Some of the Tiny Epic games come in a small box, but they take up a lot of table space. This one depends more on your work. some offices might afford you room at break room tables to play bigger games. I have played Power Grid and Dominion during lunch, not the smallest games. So know if it’ll work for you work.

Player Count

Some games scale well without adding times, some games do not. If you bring in Sushi Go Party, you can play with 8 people in the same time as two. Other games, however, you add in more players it increases the game time. Also find out if you play with analysis paralysis players, because that will make a difference in what you bring in, or what player counts you can do.

What Games Would Work?

Hanamikoji

This game is only a two player game, but you generally can knock out a game of it in 15 minutes. The actions are simple, set-up is fast, you could maybe even get in three games during an hour lunch. The biggest table hog part of it is the cards that are in the middle of the table, but generally pretty small and can be set-up and taught extremely fast.

Ohanami

This game is set-up right out of the box. And it is a drafting game, so that means from two players up to four players, the game goes about the same speed, which is as fast as the slowest player. Now, this does take up a bit more room, but you could condense the stacks so just see the high and low cards and then flip through scoring at the right time. But another really easy to teach.

Criss Cross

First of a few roll and write games on this list. Criss Cross is one where everyone goes at the same time, and that’s going to be a theme of all the roll and writes. It works well because the rules are fairly simple. The only tricky part of the teach is getting people to place the dice in pairs, so just really emphasize that.

Second Chance

Another roll and write game, this one again has everyone playing at once. So it can really scale as high as you want. Second Chance, to me, is supposed to be a relaxing game, so rushing to fit it into a half hour lunch with the teach and eating might make it seem a little bit fast, but once people know it, it’ll be easy to pull out.

Magic The Gathering

Now, this one breaks one of the rules for sure. Magic the Gathering is not easy to teach. So I wouldn’t recommend teaching it during a lunch period. But there are a lot of people who play Magic the Gathering. Instead of teaching it, hope the person knows it and has their own decks. A standard game of Magic with a 60 card deck and players knowledgeable in the game can make it go fast.

Cartographers

Back to roll and write games. The theme for them is that everyone goes at once. Cartographers is fun because for a roll and write, it offers more player interaction. I really like that about it. Teaching it can take a bit longer than the other two, but since it is map making, I feel like the teach can be a bit smoother as well. The game provides framework for what you are doing based off of the theme.

Sushi Go Party

I mentioned this one above, it works well and scales well. Since it’s a drafting game, the slowest person determines the speed of the game. And even in the players first game, people generally get faster as the game goes on. The one tricky thing is the combinations of scoring can change a lot. So to make it even simpler, consider just Sushi Go where you don’t have the card variability.

Dice Throne

This one would work better for a longer lunch because of the dice rolling. Now, there will be some people who don’t think this works because they have the big box of everything. So it isn’t a small box to take around. Open up your big box, take out two of the Game Trayz and take those. Or, I have all the duel boxes because I wanted to keep it portable. Probably for an hour lunch, but the dice rolling Yahtzee style makes it an easy one to teach.

Final Thoughts

Board games can be a good way to interact and get to know co-workers more as people. Out of a number of my jobs I have left with good friends who I still talk with. I know some people like to keep their personal life and work life separate, I don’t. I can get that mindset because sometimes people lose the business and professionalism over time. But I think being able to see your co-workers and people and friends can be helpful at times. And then be professional at other times.

I asked it at the beginning, but what board game would you bring in to play with this theoretical co-worker?

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