There are so many board games out there in the world. Several thousand come out each year, and believe it or not, I don’t have time to play them all. I certainly can’t buy them all, so I need to be selective. And I think for a lot of consumers in the hobby, it’s hard to be selective sometimes. You want to try out all the new and hottest games. They must be good if other people love these board games. I can’t do that for each board game.

The issue with that is that almost any game is going to have someone love it. And I catch a lot of the hype from places. If The Dice Tower, Man vs Meeple, One Stop Co-op Shop, Meet Me At The Table, Tablenauts, and more talk about it, I will hear about it. So I need ways to pick and choose. One way is theme. So what are 5 themes that will draw my attention?

Top 5 Board Game Themes

The list isn’t really in any order, not even the order I thought of them. Also, no game is a must buy if it falls into these themes, but I will pay attention.

5. Epic Space

Let’s start out saying, space games are great, because a lot of them are epic. But I specify that I appreciate the epic ones. The ones that just have a theme of space and are light filler, I’m not going to check out immediately.

But when a game like ISS Vanguard or Star of Akarios is announced, I want to know more about them. If it looks like it does something cool mechanically and can give me a big epic story, I am going to be interested in it.

4. Epic Fantasy

Next is epic fantasy. It’s basically the same thing just with magic instead of laser pistols. I want something that is big and epic and that makes it feel like I’m going on an adventure through a fantasy setting. Whether that is grim and dark or light and wholesome, I’m up for either.

So you have things like Gloomhaven, Oathsworn, Solomon Kane and more here. Even the weird west like Shadows of Brimstone catch my attention. And I listed off a lot of campaign games. But things like Village Attacks which isn’t an campaign, it tells an epic fantasy or maybe horror story and adventure in one shot.

3. Marvel

Probably is my #1 to get me to look at it. And I could put down superheroes here, but it is really Marvel. I want to know when a Marvel game comes out so that I can check it out. Marvel theme is what got me into Unmatched. I play Marvel Champions, have Marvel Remix and Age of Heroes. But even with me loving Marvel, I still am picky. The Fantasy Flight Marvel game that used, kind of, Elder Signs mechanisms didn’t interest me. Or there is one about cleaning up after the heroes, Damage Control, I’d play it, but I’m not running out to try it.

2. Anime

This one hurts me to put on the list. I want great games around anime or even with just that anime/manga style to them. When a game comes out, I check it out, and I don’t buy almost all of them. It is an area that gets what feels like Hasbro level games made for it a lot of the time. Yes, there are exceptions to that rule, but the games aren’t as good and polished as they should be.

I say Hasbro, and that isn’t fair. It’s more that the rules consistently from the companies who make games with anime themes, aren’t as good or polished as they should be. And the games themselves are often more simple than they need to be. It feels like a minimal effort situation.

1. Horror

Finally, we have horror. I love horror, and I will say, horror is hard to get right in board games. So much of a good horror book or movie is the setting and feel that it creates. In a 30+ minute board game, that can be tricky to do. You don’t have a first chapter to lay out the setting. You can’t make jump scares. But I still want to find great horror games.

Campaigns, or grim dark work well for thise because you can build into it. Things like Oathsworn have horror type elements. Or Deep Madness and the Lovecraftian realm of games. But a lot of those don’t feel too scary. But then you have something like Night Cage which somehow gets the closest to creating a jump scare as you add tiles hoping not to flip a monster.

Final Thoughts

There are so many great themes out there, or great games that fall into those themes. I am going to do a list of my favorite game for each of the themes coming up here. It might take a week or so to get through it all, but expect one for each one of them.

And as I was doing this, I was thinking, there are other ones, like being a detective, cyberpunk, or nature that could easily make my list as well. Action movies would be up there too. I maybe could have done a top 10. But with the Top 5, it is specifically ones that I will stop and look at. Others I might gloss over more so.

What are some of your top themes for board games?

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