Yes, it’s a shocking title, no, I am not getting rid of all my board games to just get Marvel Zombicide. No, instead, this is being done because I was watching a video from Tablenauts and it was a fun thought exercise that they were doing. If I could only play six board games for the rest of my life what would they be. What sort of criteria would I even be thinking about for these games? They had one rule, you get one expansion per game.

Here are theirs:

But what board games would I pick?

Frosthaven

Now, this game isn’t out yet. But it also is the follow-up to a game that I already love. So this one is a bit of a cheat, but I’ve already beaten Gloomhaven. It was the first game I thought of because of the fact that this is going to be another game that takes 200 hours to play and even when I’m done with those 200 hours, I’ll probably still have other things I haven’t seen in the game. I for sure won’t have played all the side scenarios or solo character scenarios yet.

Plus, Frosthaven builds upon Gloomhaven in that it adds in city building. City building is not something that I knew I wanted in Gloomhaven, there is a lot going on. And you do increase the prosperity of the town and you keep track of that. But being able to build up your town, upgrading buildings, I am sure that when you’re done with 200 hours of the main campaign there will still be more that you haven’t found yet.

Now, I could go with other Kickstarter games on this list. But I don’t want to do that, because I also have other games on my shelf that need to get played or that I’d add to the list.

Dice Throne Seasons 1 & 2

Yup, Dice Throne Season 2 is technically an expansion. At least, that’s what I’m going with, so it counts for the list. If not, then We’ll go with Season 2 and bring in Season 1 Pyromancer duel box. But I love Dice Throne, this is a game that I’ve probably played 30 times already and there are still lots of combinations that I haven’t played.

Plus, this one is also a game that I can play with a lot of people. Frosthaven is a complex game, Dice Throne, I can probably teach it to most people. But it is also a game that isn’t too light. So that means that I won’t, for a long time, get bored of playing it. And even with 10 characters, say that’s all I’m allowed in these made-up rules, repeating a character I play every ten games, yeah, I won’t get bored.

Lords of Hellas with Dark Ages Expansion

Another bit of cheat game here. The Dark Ages Expansion is the Kickstarter expansion, but I do own it. It takes all the expansions and puts them into a single box, which means that there is more content for the game. But this is my list, so my rules, and Lords of Hellas is on the list. Lords of Hellas is an area control, statue building, monster fighting game, and it’s a lot of fun.

Plus, this game has one important thing to it, variability. Whomever you pick for your leader, that is going to determine what you go after, at least at the start. They give you a special power. And then as temples are built, you draft more special powers. You could play this hundreds of times and never get the same combination. Plus it’s a longer game, but not a campaign game. Though, likely we’ll see more campaign on the list.

Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1 & 2

This one is a tough one to put on the list. I own Act 1. Act 2 gives more story, and I have yet to play it. What makes it hard is the fact there is an act 3. So now I have limited myself by the rules of one expansion to missing out on the end of the story. With that said, it seems like act 1 is a great story anyways because people have beat it now and might want more but aren’t complaining about a cliff hanger.

This is a big dungeon crawl style game, box size is similar to Gloomhaven in terms of volume. But this game has more story to it. So while it doesn’t have the characters that Gloomhaven does, it does have a lot to play through. Assuming that this takes 100 hours maybe 200 with two acts, and Gloomhaven took my group 3+ years to get through, between Frosthaven and Middara I now have 6 or 7 years of campaign games on my list.

Root and Riverfolk Expansion

This is another game that gets onto the list because it’s bigger and longer and because each faction plays differently. So with Root there are four different factions in the base box, I believe the Riverfolk adds in two more. So while you need potentially four people to play the game, Root is going to be one that feels different as you play with the different combinations.

Each factions being asymmetrical to the others also means that each faction will feel unique when you play them. And it gives me something to master as well. Once I’m really comfortable playing the Eyrie I can move onto playing as the Marquise d’ Cat and then the Vagabond. Each of those plays differently and will take time to master. So a lot of game play and a lot of learning for this game.

Village Attacks and Grim Dynasty Expansion

So, this is a game that is also in that waiting on the Kickstarter category, and I only have the base game coming. But I have played this game, so its not kind of cheating like Frosthaven was. This is a tower defense game where you are playing the bad guys. There are a few reasons why this one would make the list.

Firstly, the bad guys who are in the tower, there are several different ones, add in the second big Kickstarter, now there are a lot of them. So variability as to what characters you play as. Plus, like Lords of Hellas, you get to add more abilities as the game goes. It might not be as variable but it is close. And this is scenario based, so I can play a scenario one time and then the same character and a new scenario and the game changes, slightly.

Other Board Games Considered

So, I think those are the four. On the Tablenauts list, they had Sagrada which would be another really good one, and I did steal Root from them, though I think I’d have landed on that as well. Sagrada makes sense because your window, the dice, the powers, scoring, all of those things are variable. And it’s one that you can teach everyone.

I also considered Western Legends, it’s a sandbox game where you could decide to just gamble the whole time to get points, go out adventuring or become a bad guy. Since it is so sandbox, it means that it’ll have solid replay value. But the game doesn’t force variability on you like Lords of Hellas or even Sagrada, so didn’t make the list.

Reichbusters was another one I considered ,it has a campaign, and you can play it as a one off. I could have just gone with campaign games though, and I didn’t want to do that, because I like to play one off games as well. And I think that Middara and Frosthaven are just better campaign options.

And no roll and writes on the list. As much as I love ones like Cartographers, Sonora, or Ganz Schon Clever, they tend to change less. And even Welcome To… and taking a map that is different, the game play changes somewhat but not completely.

And Kingdom Death Monster, I didn’t pick that one because I’d never buy that one. Yes, it is a massive game and a campaign game, but I don’t want to put the monsters together. And the whole thing costs so much. Maybe if I played it, I’d be saying differently, but I haven’t.

What six games (with one expansion per game) would you pick? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter.

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