Top 50 Anime – 30 through 21

30. Gamers

Some of these it’s been a while since I watched them, but I remember liking them. Gamers is one of those. It’s about a high school game club, not this time it’s video games. But it’s about the characters, really, who go from being a unique group to actually be a group and working together. They learn what the others are best at, and they grow together. There’s some romance sprinkled in as well, because, well, that’s a good enough reason for one of the kids to join the club that the person he likes is in it.

29. Little Witch Academia

Next up is Little Witch Academia, another one that I watched a while ago, but one that is again a lot of fun. What would you do if you really want to be a witch, but you aren’t that good of one. That’s the struggle of the main character as she tries to make it in magic school. The story is cute, it has some fairly classic anime feel to it. The character who is overcoming everything, the typical bad guy groups, but it’s a really enjoyable show. Mainly because the main character is do endearing.

28. A Couple of Cuckoos

A newer watch on the list is A Couple of Cuckoos. And I enjoyed it a lot, though how it ends season one, I feel like it was a bit disappointing. It has some of the typical harem anime style story to it, all the girls fall for the main guy, kind of. But the big hook is the two main characters find out they are arranged to be married. But they don’t know that’s the case to start the show. It is a fun premise and made even better by some of their interactions before they find out.

Now, why it is likely to drop is because of the harem aspect. I wish it just focused on the two main characters getting to know each other and how both of them are weird in their own ways, but also why they like that about each other, that’d be fun. But now it mixes in a bit more, and where it ends, I won’t spoil that, just feels lazy and like the writer didn’t have a good plan on how to stretch out the story. So they went with the most simplistic and harem focused approach.

27. Beast Tamer

A fantasy story, this one is not an isekai like a lot of the fantasy ones that I watch are. But it does have the harem elements mentioned above, but it’s less romantic in nature. The main characters “beasts” that he tames are all legendary creatures with female forms, that’s the main thing. And they protect him versus being damsels in distress almost all the time.

The plot is fun as well. The main character is kicked out of the heroes party because he’s just a beast tamer. That’s not that big a deal or that important. Turns out, he’s the best beast tamer that there is, and not just by a little bit, but by a ton. So no the question is, is he maybe the hero instead. But it’s not something that he really wants nor is it the title the other hero wants to give up. So the story has some standard things to it, but I like the beast tamer powers and how they play that out.

26. Restaurant to Another World

This is one that I’ve watched a couple of times. I like the food in this anime and the story is pretty simple but it works. There are doorways in another world that appear once a month. And those doorways open up to a restaurant in another world. Mainly, it’s a restaurant on Earth in Japan that is open to creatures and characters from this other world. You get their stories as you go through and you get to see lot of different foods. It’s a cute one that has some solid feel good elements to it which I really enjoy. I find it to be a nice relaxing anime to watch.

25. Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy

In standard isekai the main character appears from another world. But the goddess who summons him, well, she thinks that he’s disgusting and worthless. So instead of making him one of her heroes in the wars against the demons, she drops him off on the far side of the world.

Turns out that he is way less useless than she had thought and he starts to develop his own way in the world. It has a lot of Reincarnated as a Slime to it. There is city and society building, but really it’s about the character and how he’s navigating the world. I enjoy that sort of story. And this one doesn’t get bogged down into some kind of weird side stories or long stories that Slime does.

24. My Roommate is a Cat

Do you want an anime that is all about a lot of heart and a cat, this is the one for you. And it’s actually surprisingly emotional for just having a few characters and not that many settings. A novelist who just likes to stay by himself is adopted and adopts a cat. Well, that cat leads him into some new relationships and helps him through some tough times and some meaningful growth. But it’s also saving the cat as well, which is just adorable.

What really drives home this anime is that you get the episode played back, most of the time much more quickly, from the cats perspective. Of times that fills in some really meaningful and cute pieces to the story.

23. Cowboy Bebop

We’re going a bit more serious here with Cowboy Bebop. I say a bit because Cowboy Bebop does have a lot of light moments to it as well. But the story is much heavier in terms of the overall plot. But it works so well. Cowboy Bebop is a classic masterpiece of an anime that has some of the best music if not the best music for an anime ever. Each episode has it’s own well crafted score and that really drives the feel for that episode. It just works. I don’t know what more to say than that this is an anime that every anime fan should watch.

22. My Love Story with Yamada-Kun Lv999

Another romance and this one I watched just recently. Lv999 as I’ll be referring to it as, is the story of a girl who is dumped by her gamer boyfriend. She swears of gamers as all being horrible. Turns out, they aren’t as horrible as she thought when her life bumps her into Yamada. It’s a will they – won’t they – can they admit their feelings for each other sort of story. Neither of them really wanting to, or knowing how to as their relationship grows and starts to mean more to both of them, obviously. It’s really cute and the stakes are never that high, so it’s relaxing and enjoyable to watch as well.

21. Dagashi Kashi

And wrapping up this section we have Dagashi Kashi. Another one that I haven’t seen a bit, but it’s a cute story about a dagashi store being run by basically a kid. If you’re not familiar with dagashi, it’s basically cheap candies and snacks. They are one of a few of these stores that is still family run and owned. And it’s about that, but it’s also about the history and story of the food.

The cast of characters is fun, there’s a bit of romance to it, and overall just another one of those relaxing and enjoyable watches. It’ll make you want to try all of the foods as well, which is good and bad all at the same time.

Final Thoughts

I really love so many of these. Little Witch Academia is one where I feel like I want to watch again. And this time it’s a little bit less funny and more cute or heartfelt anime on the list. Is there one that stands out to you as a favorite? Or is there one that you’d want to watch?

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Top 15 Anime

HM: Fruits Basket, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K, Restaurant to Another World, After School Dice Club

These were all close. Fruits Basket is so heartfelt. The Disastrous Life of Saiki K is really funny. And Restaurant to Another World is a lot of fun with great food. After School Dice Club is about board games, and it’s good but not as great as it could have been so just misses as well. All of these, probably, could have made it only my list.

15. Ghost Hunt

Oddly enough, this is the only horror one on my list. Ghost Hunt is about a kid who can deal with ghosts who has his own agency. But he’s not the main character, the main character is a girl who gets roped into being his assistant and might be better at the job than he is. He knows how all the things work but is too cold and calculating. It’s a nice balance of everything for an older anime.

14. BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense

There are some premises for anime that just get me. BOFURI is one of them. A girl joins an MMORPG and she’s worried about it. What will it be like to die, will it hurt, and she really doesn’t want to die. So instead of leveling up by going out on epic adventures, she levels up by grinding and focusing only on her defensive stats. It’s a fun play on the genre with a character getting really over powered, but in such an odd way.

13. Gamers!

This follows another trope that I really enjoy. A main character who maybe is a bit out there, they have their own nerdy hobby or odd thing that they do that makes them not quite fit in. Gamers! follows that character who loves video games, into finding out that there are more people like them in the world directly around them. It’s cute and heartfelt and just works well.

12. Dagashi Kashi

Dagashi Kashi is all about yummy snacks, their history and eating them. Mixed in with all of that is a slice of life show that is a lot of fun. You might notice there are a few shows on the list about food. Anime tells a lot of really enjoyable stories about food and Dagashi Kashi gives more of a unique flare to it than some. While not the highest on my list, it is very realistic and focused on tradition of these snacks and shops.

11. Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?

Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? does some of my favorite anime tropes. Mainly the clueless main character so focused on one goal he doesn’t notice the group forming around them. This isn’t the best I’ve seen of that, but Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? works well and especially for the first season gives a fun romp. I don’t like season two nearly as much, but it is an anime that I keep on coming back to. There is just something wholesome about the main character that makes this fantasy, and fairly standard fantasy, but with good twists, fun to watch.

10. The Devil is a Part-Timer

This Isekai really handles the genre differently. Most Isekai a character gets pulled out the real world and into a crazy world. In this case, the Devil is pulled out or leaves their own world and ends up on Earth without enough power to go back. So now he needs a part time job. This is another one that I need to watch again, I started the 1st season because a 2nd season just came out. But it’s fun and well done.

9. Cowboy Bebop

Used to be higher on my list. And in terms of technical, this is probably the best anime on the list. An anime that tells interesting stories and all set to different types of music, it’s just fascinating. But it also falls into that category of an anime that I’ve watched, and I’d watch again, but I’m less likely to pick it myself. Still, the music in it is so good and just the story that it weaves, it’s done so well.

8. Space Dandy

Space Dandy is another anime set in space and this one is easier to watch again, mainly because it’s such a comedy. The main character, Space Dandy, is not a competent character at all. But through dumb luck he somehow survives. He doesn’t do so well, but with a cat and a robot he somehow makes it work. Just well done comedy throughout this series.

7. Food Wars!

Food Wars is odd to me that it’s so high. Mainly because it can be a bit inconsistent. There are some arcs in the show that are amazing. It is also one of the highest on the list that has this amount of fan service. But it’s generally fan service overall and played for a very specific reason. But the whole concept of the show is about being the best chef that you can be, and the enjoyment that can come from food.

6. Assassination Classroom

Assassination Classroom might push Food Wars! for the weirdest anime on the list. Part of the moon is destroyed and an alien decides to become a teacher of students who are poor students so that they can try and assassinate the alien. That sounds so crazy, but what worked for me with it is that it tells a good story of the characters coming together. Yes, it is an completely absurd situation and setup, but somehow it manages to work.

5. My Senpai Is Annoying

Now we hit a few that fall more into that slice of life category. My Senpai Is Annoying is about an office worker who has an annoying senpai that she is under. Well, maybe he’s not quite as annoying as she thought. It’s really a romantic comedy of characters liking each other but not knowing how the other character likes them back. Plus a whole lot of fun and crazy situations to get into revolving around work. I think the whole work setting is a lot of fun and works really well for this type of story to make it feel different than high school.

4. Komi Can’t Communicate

But speaking of high school and romance we have Komi Can’t Communicate. It’s about Komi who is the prettiest girl in the class and seems aloof. But really she just has crippling anxiety when talking to people and can’t for the most part and it is a lot of effort for her when she does. Tadano, new to the class ends up making friends with her through writing and agrees to help her with her goal of making 100 friends. This is a sweet show with a lot of weird characters.

3. Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki

And then another high school series. This one again about a nerdy character who loves the game TakFam, think Smash Bros sort of game. To him, it’s the best game ever, much better than life. When he finds out that the #2 player of the game in Japan is in his town too, he’s #1, they decide to meet up. It turns out to be a classmate, but not one who is a bottom-tier character like him, someone who doesn’t think that life is a lousy game. Can she convince him and level him up so that he’s not a Bottom-Tier character anymore?

2. Steins;Gate

Constantly a high one on my favorites list. And it’s also one that I probably would watch again, but man, would it be hard to watch again. There is so much depth in this time travel story with tragedy and distress. But the story is told and woven together so well that it just stands out. While Cowboy Bebop can be heavy and gorgeous, Stiens;Gate for heavier anime on my list, just tells such a good complete story. And it handles time travel in such a good way.

1. Sword Art Online

Finally, and I know this one bounces around a lot for me, we have Sword Art Online (SAO). SAO is just comfort food of an anime for me. It gives me big adventure, romance, comedy, all wrapped up in one. But it is mainly about that adventure and how the characters are navigating different worlds, of computer games, as they go. And the craziness that can end up following from these games into the real world or the other way around. Plus, there is just so much story and so much work done on developing the characters, you care for them as you go through it.

Final Thoughts

It’s tough to do a Top 10, it’s even tough to do a Top 15. I’ve really found myself gravitating towards watching anime a lot. It used to be and it does happen in certain time periods, of throwing on a cooking show or some house remodeling show. But there is just so much anime out there that I need to checkout still and want to checkout. I actually went through recently and created a massive list, I just don’t know when I’ll have time.

And I am guessing that I’ll think about it and come up with a show that I missed that I really enjoyed. And for as many good or great anime as I watch, there are a lot that are just fine. Pretty rarely do I end up sticking with and watching one that is bad. But if it’s short enough I might power through it. I can think of one example which just went from being okay starting out to so bad at the end.

What are your top anime?

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Heavy vs Medium vs Light Weight Games

Let’s start with something that I’ve talked about before, but I want to talk about it in a different way. I want to talk about it from the point of view of an experienced gamer. This came up in a conversation last night when talking about Catan and how influential Catan was and whether or not Catan is a good game. But it applies to game weight as well. When I first played Catan, and for a lot of us this will be the case. As we play more games, now Catan feels much lighter, much more random, much more mass market.

And Catan goes from when we first played it, a medium weight game, into a light weight game. And that is because of our shifting perceptions of gaming. At this point in time, I could learn and teach Catan for the first time in a few minutes, the game isn’t that complex for me. However, when I was learning it back then, it was different. There wasn’t the oral history and teaching of a game that naturally occurred with Clue, Monopoly or Uno. And Catan is more complex or as complex as those games.

What’s the Point?

I do have a point with all of that, I think that often as people in the gaming hobby versus people getting into the gaming hobby, weight can vary drastically. For example, I play a ton of games but a war game that is a 2.5 is going to feel way heavier to me because it is outside of game types I know how to learn. But for a war gamer, a war game with a 2.5 out of 5 weight wouldn’t be hard to learn.

So weights of games change depending on the experience level of the gamer. The more that you play, the lighter games will become, because the more you will know how games work and how to learn games. To pull another example of how this works, Gloomhaven is not a complex game to me, at least in how it plays. But for even a lot of experienced gamers, that is a lot to learn. So be helpful to new players and try and understand their weighting and understanding of games.

Family Weight/Gateway Games

Now a good way to get around those light/medium/heavy debates is by calling a game family weight or gateway. These two can be slightly different as an older group of people can probably handle something slightly heavier, but there will be overlap.

A family weight or gateway game is the one that you’d take to play with your family. Can you teach the game to your parents, aunts, uncles, or maybe they’re gamers, so some other group of non-gamers easily. Where the difference between family and gateway could arise is that family is going to imply for most people it’ll be a topic/style/text that is family friendly as well.

These are the games like Catan though, the ones that I might find to be super light now. So I don’t need to say that it’s a light game or an easy to learn game, because it might not be. I can call it a gateway game which makes it feel friendlier when someone is learning. Calling it light and someone not getting it makes them feel inferior, but the nomenclature of gateway, that has a very different feel.

Filler Games

Next we go onto filler games. What is a filler game you might ask? That’s a game with a quick to the table and play time. It is a game you can pull out of the box and get played with a number of people in a few minutes while waiting for another game to wrap up or more people to show up. These games don’t always add in a ton of strategy to them, instead they are meant for making fast decisions and getting onto the next turn. These games are often so fast that we don’t really consider them in gateway or family weight categories because it’s less about playing it to teach new people.

What About More?

Well, there are a lot more types of games out there. I talk about a lot of them over the years and they can be found over here and more topics on board games. I think that there is a lot of interesting game types to talk about and I can dive into them more.

But this topic of game weights and kind of the different types of lighter games as interesting to talk about. I skipped party games because I tend to think people who are looking for light or gateway games have already played a lot of party games. And there is certainly a wider world of games that can be jumped into as people play more games.

I also wanted to talk about it this because I do see people often encouraging new players to get bigger and more complex games. I think it’s a good reminder for myself and for other more experienced board gamers to remember the board games that we started out with. Even if Catan wasn’t our gateway game, we all had some game like that which we started with.

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AP (Analysis Paralysis) Player
So I’ve talked about AP players in the past and I’ll get them out of the way fairly quickly here, but these are the players, when it’s really bad, who will take 5-10 times longer on their turn than any other player. They overthink everything, sometimes trying to optimize points, sometimes just because they happen to see another possibility, so they need to think about that one a little bit, and they weren’t planning ahead of their turn. It’s fine to take of extra time on some key turns, but when you, yourself, call out that your turns are taking long, that needs to be a mental trigger to just do something, even if you don’t know if it’s ideal.

Game Recommendation – Sagrada
There are a few reasons why I think that this one would work well. First, there are no major decisions in it, yes, you have to decide what die to take and where to place it, but you have specific restrictions on it and the die pool is small enough. Everything leads you in a direction versus being able to pick what direction you want to go, and with that, you cut down on the AP.

Alpha Gamer
So, Alpha Gaming is mainly brought up in the context of cooperative games, but it can happen in any game. It’s when some player at the table thinks that they know better than everyone else, so they tell people what to do on their turn. This can come from two things, feeling like they know better in the game, or in cooperative games, desperately needing to win. The downside is that the Alpha Gamer is basically playing a solo game with other people moving pieces, and sometimes not even that, the Alpha Gamer will move another person’s pieces as well. If you notice yourself doing that, it hurts, but shut your mouth. Or, if that ends up being too hard, do what I do when running a game of D&D, if someone seems to be struggling with what they can or should do, give them two or three options, including the ideal option, just don’t tell them what’s the best option, but give them some help in in things to pick from.

Game Recommendation – The Lost Expedition
This game really tries to solve a personal issue, alpha gaming, in the game itself. The Mind is also another example of this. Anything that limits communication, I just think that The Lost Expedition is the best I’ve run across. You can’t discuss what cards you’re playing down when you’re hiking in both the morning and evening, so it’s the person who is laying down their cards decision. After that, the Alpha Gamer can have some fun as you discuss what’s the most ideal course of action, but the game is already giving you half of it that the Alpha Gamer can’t run.

Must Get It Right Gamer
So this one was harder to come up with a name for them, but they’re the gamer who needs to know the rules perfectly at the start of the game. If there’s something that comes up and is ambiguous in the middle of the game, they have to stop it and look up the rules. Now, sometimes it’s very important to get that rule right if it’s a major scoring rule or something like that, and I’m fine pausing a game to look that up, but when that person is flipping through the rule book between every turn and sometimes a couple of times on their turn, it’s dragging the game out considerably. If you find yourself doing that, keep track of what you’re wondering about and look it up either not on your turn or after the game. Don’t slow down the game by looking stuff up on your own turn, and if it gets to your turn and you don’t know the answer and that would affect what you do, do something else, and then continue looking it up.

Game Recommendation – Quoridor
Now, this is a placeholder for a number of games, and a lot of abstract games are going to work very well, because they can have simpler rulesets. But in Quoridor you either are moving a space left, right, up or down, or you’re placing a wall. That’s it, so it’s a fast game to teach and there aren’t rules to look up. Finding a game with good and simple rules that still offers a choice is going to be the best bet.

Between Turn Scroller
This is the person who gets distracted by something, anything, between turns. They have trouble sitting there and waiting for their turn, so they pull out a phone and start scrolling through Facebook, and then all of a sudden, it’s their turn, they don’t know what they want to do, because they were scrolling through Facebook or something like that. It can also be the person who gets up and walks away from the table to do something between turns, or starts a conversation with someone the second their turn is done. This one is harder to suggest things for because attention spans are short and sometimes between turns is quite long. My recommendation for someone who notices that they’re doing this is take up knitting or something else that keeps your fingers moving and brain somewhat engaged but isn’t as fully distracting. Once it’s more muscle memory as you know what you’re doing and you’ve done it a lot, you’ll be able to pay more attention between turns but still be doing something so it doesn’t feel like dead time.

Game Recommendation – Welcome To…
Now, there are a number of games that can fit here, and really any real time game could or simultaneous turns. In Welcome To, there’s just no downtime, same with Second Chance or Criss Cross, so if you know you have someone who can start scrolling at the table, just don’t give them enough time to do that by keeping them always invovled.

This Games The Best/Worst
This is the person who after having played the game for 10 minutes will declare the game the greatest game of all time or the worst game of all time. Now, sometimes this isn’t horrible because if the game is the best of all time the person is probably going to be happy and in a good mood, though that might also just mean that person is winning handily, which is why it’s the best, so it can come off as bragging. The this game is the worst side of things is tougher because if they make that proclamation 10 minutes into a two hour game, they’re going to spend a lot of the rest of the time complaining and that’ll kill other people’s fun. And it might turn out that what was thought in the first 10 minutes isn’t accurate to how good or bad the game really is. So if you’re one of these gamers, how do you combat it? First, try and free yourself from all preconceived notions. That’s way easier said than done, but often times when a game is the best ever it lived up to hype or if it’s worst ever, it didn’t live up to hype. So I guess another thing to say would be to avoid the hype market, now that means you probably can’t checkout Board Game Geek or something as much as you’d like, but it’ll keep the bias for or against a game lower. And the biggest thing is just bite your tongue at times. Now, if you don’t like a game after 10 minutes, you can make a comment, same if you like a game, but try not to use best/worst language and keep it to a comment. That way you have a release for some of your opinion in the moment but that doesn’t become the focus of the game.

Game Recommendation – Draftosaurus
Why, the game is 15 minutes long, so that’s really a placeholder again for this type of player. They might hate Draftosaurus, but it’s only 15 minutes long, so they aren’t going to be able to complain through a long game. And the game has enough going on in it that it should keep them somewhat entertained at a least and it looks good on the table. But basically, with this type of player, try and avoid the 90 minute long games.

The Sore Loser/Bad Winner
This can tie into the this is the best/worst game ever person, but this is going to be the person who can’t believe that they lost, that their strategy was clearly worse than everyone else, that the dice hate them, etc. When you’re done playing a game with them, you kind of wish you’d let them win because you’re done with their complaining. This can stem from several things, but probably the most obvious is going to be taking the game too seriously. And on the winning side, there are couple of types of bad winner, there’s the person who gloats, which is just annoying but can be dealt with, and there’s the person who makes it seem like they lucked into the win. For fixing some of this issue, first, remember that it’s only a game, if you win or lose, it’s still only a game, the point of playing games is to have fun first and foremost. Secondly, and this is stealing from little league, hockey, etc, train yourself to tell people good game afterwards. You don’t need to line up and give each other high fives, but try and compliment people on what they’ve done, and this really can go for everyone at the table to do.

Game Recommendation – Pandemic
More placeholding for games, this one is simply anything cooperative. Pandemic is just a good gateway cooperative game to get to the table, but if you can win or lose as a group, that’s going to make the poor winner/sore loser feel better about the game because they are in the same boat as everyone else. It also gives them a chance to see people model a healthier style of winning and losing at the same time they’re going through the emotion of winning or losing.

Now, I’m sure there are more types of gamers out there that can cause issues at the gaming table. And I didn’t touch on things like hygiene or anything like that, more on the mental and emotional side of board gaming. Hopefully this will give you some ideas of how you can improve your gaming habits if you fall into one of these categories, or what you can bring to the table if you play with someone who falls into one of the gamer tropes.

Which gamer tropes have I missed? And what games would you recommend to some of the groups that I’ve mentioned above?

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Gamers! is a cute little slice of life anime about Amano, a big video game nerd who just loves to play video games and have fun with it. He gets invited by Karen Tendou, the prettiest girl in the school, to join the gaming club that she started. However, that isn’t why Amano plays games, and he declines. The problem is that Tendou is head over heals for Amano and the anime follows their relationship as it grows and the meddling of Tasuku, a closet video game nerd, who befriends Amano and tries to help him with his girl problems.

It’s a slice of life anime that focuses on those main characters as well as Aguri, Tasuku’s girlfriend, and Hoshinomori, another girl in the school who is also a huge gaming nerd who just loves video games, but not competing like Amano does. It really focuses on Amano and how Tasuku tries to help him get out of his shell so that he can be part of society. There are all sorts of crazy twists and turns and everyone tries to figure out who likes whom and who to try and set-up together.

What this isn’t is a gaming anime. A more traditional gaming anime like Sword Art Online or Overlord focuses in on the game that is being played. In this anime, though it is called Gamers!, it’s about the people who play the video games and their relationships versus the actual games themselves. The games are really there to bring the characters together, if you go into it thinking it’s going to be about some epic game or focus in on a game every episode, you’ll be disappointed. But what it does, it does well. It really focuses in on the relationships and how gamers aren’t always the best at talking relationships through and saying what they mean. So there are lots of misunderstandings about what is going on and who likes who, it’s a real Comedy of Errors.

Now, is it a great anime? I don’t think so, I don’t think it would likely even hit my honorable mentions list when I do my top 5 (or 10) anime at the end of the year. But it is definitely enjoyable. The characters are all quite sweet, so you don’t have the traditional antagonist in the story. Each character, is, in some ways, their own antagonist, as they struggle through relationship drama. Also, with the relationship drama, it’s never heavy or overbearing drama, it’s almost always the case of someone thinking something that isn’t happening and it just works quite well.

So, would this be an anime that I recommend to people? If they are looking for an anime with a cute story line and some fun characters, it’s a good choice. There is a bit of fan service, heavy fan service in the finale, but for reasons you’ll understand if you watch the anime, so it does a solid job of not going too over the top. This isn’t a thinky anime and it isn’t an action anime, so if that’s more your thing, this one is probably going to seem too fluffy and simple for you.

If you’ve seen Gamers! what are your thoughts on it?

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I’m blessed with a lot of friends who like to play board games. When I was starting playing Gloomhaven, we didn’t end up with a fourth player because the person I asked was too busy playing other board games to commit. We host a board game night and get 8-10 different people showing up most times. The Risk Legacy group and the Gloomhaven group have no overlap. So clearly I have a lot of friends who like to play board games like I do. But what if you aren’t as blessed or you’re working against bad board gaming experiences?

Let’s start by talking about places where you can meet new people. This might be outside of your comfort zone, but it’s a good possibility for meeting new gamers to start playing with.

Look for meet-up groups online. There are a lot of meet up groups that plan events at breweries, game shops, and other places to hang out and play games. Obviously, this is going to be all strangers unless you can grab a friend to come along, but it would be a solid way to find people you know will be interested in board games. It’s also low commitment since you don’t need to show up at all of them, but going to a few in a row would be good to build up relationships.

Local gaming stores are another good option. Again, this is going to be more random people that you are meeting up with, but keep an eye out for board game events. International Table Top Day which happens in April of each year (most likely) is a great option. A lot of stores have sales, promo cards, and other events. Depending on the shop, they might have limited events otherwise, so they are going to be less likely to get you randomly connected with more gamers than a meet-up would be.

Local conventions are also a great option. Nerdy conventions often have gaming rooms and planned events and games that you can sign up for. If you have one that is for gaming in particular, that’s going to be your best option to get connected with people. Even conventions that aren’t focused on gaming often have gaming rooms. CONvergence, the one that Kristen has written about, has multiple gaming rooms even though that is not the focus of the convention. So even if the convention on the surface doesn’t look like it’s focused on gaming, check out the details and you might find that they have some gaming that you can take part in. I will point out that this is the most likely to be a one off, but who knows, you might make some great connections, or get connected to a group that way.

If all of that seems too intimidating, you can try and recruit from within your friend group. You might find out that there are people who actually like board games that just assume when someone asks if people want to play board games, that they mean Monopoly or some other game that they don’t like. So be specific when asking people to play board games with you.

That is going to be the case sometimes, but more likely, you’re going to have to introduce people to the hobby or break down the perception of the hobby. What am I talking about when I say break down the perception of the hobby?

A lot of people have the idea of board games of rage quitting Monopoly, or a game of Risk that lasts five hours. There isn’t fun with their memories of board games, and that is something that is tricky to work against. Or they have an idea of gaming as a bunch of overweight guys with acne sitting in of their parents basements playing a massively complicated game. It takes time and patience to change peoples opinions, especially from negative to positive. So what can you do to change minds?

Start with easy to grasp games. Games that have lighter rules and a heavier theme or at least a nice look to them are going to get people more apt to play. Sushi Go! is a good example of this. The game is pretty simple and straight forward, you try and get points by picking cards. It’s something that people can understand, and then you add in the graphics. The sushi and various foods are drawn in a very cute way, so it’s fun to look at while you play it. Once they’ve enjoyed a simpler game like Sushi Go! start them on more challenging games like 7 Wonders, which is a similar concept, but more moving pieces.

Also, start with games that are faster. To keep on Sushi Go!, it’s a fast game as well. There are a couple of areas that you can keep a game faster. One is how long it takes to play the complete game, but the other is how long it takes between turns. Now, gaming is often a social event, but you want people to stay involved in the game. So while in Sushi Go! there can certainly be talking, it also moves forward and keeps everyone busy with the game, so you’re less likely to forget what is going on. It doesn’t have to be a game where everyone is always taking their turn, but as long as they stay involved throughout the game that’s good.

Sometimes you also run into people who just think that they won’t be good at a board game because board games are too logical and they aren’t that logical. This has a nice solution to it, and that’s cooperative board games. A good cooperative board game means that they don’t have to do all of the thinking and planning themselves. As they are learning the game and the strategy behind it, try not to run their character for them. Give them time to come up with ideas, give suggestions when asked, but let them learn to play their character. Pandemic is a good game for this, especially with giving them a more straight forward role like the medic where they are going to be removing disease cubes, let them figure out where they want to go and what they want to do, and then suggest something if you see a better/different option. Cooperative games also has a lot of theme or an interesting theme a lot of times, so it might be easier to grab someones attention.

Speaking of theme, that’s one final way to get more people to play board games. Find your friends who really love The Thing, those are the people who even as non-board gamers might be interested in playing. Or find the theme that people might be interested in, your Lord of the Rings friends might want to play a Lord of the Rings themed game or even a fantasy game as compared to playing a Sci-Fi themed game to start. If you really like Euro games and trading the Mediterranean, you might have to find one that has a theme pasted onto it that people might like better. For example, there are some Euro games with a Vikings theme, that might be easier to get people to play. So look through your collection and figure out who you know who might like some theme in particular.

Now that we’ve gotten some ideas out there, go find your gaming group or make some new fans of board games. Have you tried any of these before, if so, let me know how it went in the comments below…

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