5. Dead Men Tell No Tales
A cooperative game on the list, this one you are trying to rescue treasure from a pirate ship, dealing with ghosts, skeleton crew (all puns intended), and fires breaking out on the ship. If you have three players you have a nice range of powers, and the ship expands fast enough that you feel like your running around and it’s less contained. This is a tough cooperative game, but it’s a lot of fun, and you get that kind of Pirates of the Caribbean feeling with it. Definitely a game to check out for cooperative game fans, and it has some interesting mechanics with it that I’ve talked about on the action point list.

4. Lord of the Rings
Now, this isn’t the LCG (Living Card Game), this is the old board game. I do think it plays well with four as well as three. But I like it for it’s fast turns, and with three players you feel like you have enough players to have a shot, but it isn’t too long between turns. You’re going to see this come up later as well, the amount of times between turns. Keeping it moving fast is important in games because no one gets distracted or forgets what they are trying to do. I know it’s an older game so it isn’t always the easiest to find, but for someone who is a huge fan of Lord of the Rings, the game does have that travelling feel, and I guess the advantage of playing with five is someone can play as Fatty Bolger.

3. Ticket to Ride
Now, this one is good at any player count, but at three players the board is going to be the most open. So that is going to be the friendliest way to introduce someone to a game that can end up being a little cut throat with routes being blocked. Ticket to Ride, the North American map, is going to play very open and free flowing with three players and is likely going to get another non-gamer to like the train game if played that way. If played with five, or two, the map becomes quite tight and they couldn’t have fun if they get routes stolen before they can get to them just because of card draws. There might still end up being some of that, but it’s going to be less.

2. Dead of Winter
Now, this game can be played with a higher number, but I like it around that 3-4 player range. With two players, I don’t feel like you should play with the betrayer, with four players, the game can drag out a little bit long. With three players there is only one turn out of the three players turns you don’t have something to do. Either your taking your turn, or you at least get to check to see if the player triggers a Crossroads card. Even if you know immediately that the Crossroads card won’t be triggered, sitting through two turns while waiting for yours isn’t too long. Also, the more people there are, the harder it is to coordinate and actually win tough scenarios even if there isn’t a betrayer trying to screw you over.

1.Gloomhaven
I think I’ve said this before, but as my favorite game, I have to say I like it at my favorite player count. The reason I like it at three is that with Gloomhaven if it’s only two, you can probably spend more time figuring out the logic of what is going to happen when and really plan it out. With three players, you have to plan what you want to do and try and puzzle it out, but you also need a contingency so that your whole turn isn’t a waste. It forces you to not always do the best move but instead what might be the most versatile move. I also think that with four, it’s going to push that randomness too far out and you are going to have a number of wasted turns, especially if you have a character who isn’t that fast. For that reason Gloomhaven takes the top spot on my 3 player list.

Now, these are my person opinions, you’ll see on Board Game Geek that they disagree with me some (the community there), but these should all be enjoyable at the three player count.

What are some of your favorite games that you think really work the best at three players?

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5. Marrying Mr. Darcy

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Let’s be honest — a good portion of my love for this game stems from my pre-existing love for all things Austen. But I happen to know from first-hand experience playing this game with non-Jane Austen fans that you don’t have to be into the source material to get a ton of enjoyment from it. The game allows for up to eight players, and you play as the ladies of Pride & Prejudice (or Emma, if you have the expansion). You are competing to (what else?) attract the attention of the eligible men of P&P, in hopes of securing an advantageous marriage. To do so, you collect cards with different types of points, such as charm, wit, and beauty. Different suitors value different things, naturally, so you’ll have to get the right combination to be attractive to the bachelor of your choice.

You can angle for any of the gents you like — however, true to canon, some matches are more advantageous than others. For example, Lizzy naturally receives the most points by pairing off with Mr. Darcy, but if she gets stuck with Mr. Collins, she’ll only get a few points. And if you don’t play your cards right (literally), your character could end up as an old maid, and you’ll have to roll the dice in hopes of getting the least dismal fate that comes with that result.

This game is quick to play through, the turns go around the table pretty fast, and it has that mix of strategy and luck that I find crucial to a good game-playing experience. Add to that the fact that the theme is one of my favorite worlds of fiction, and you’ve got a game fit for any sporting young lady or gentleman.

4. Splendor

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This lovely game first drew me to it for primarily aesthetic reasons — and no wonder. It’s an absolutely gorgeous game, with the painterly artwork on the playing cards and pieces, the satisfying weight and sheen of the gem chips (think poker chips, but with jewels on them), and the general historical feel. It’d be delightful to play just for tactile reasons alone, but the gameplay experience is well worth it, too.

The premise of the game is that you and your fellow players are gem collectors, doing business sometime around the Elizabethan era (judging by the costuming of the characters in the artwork). The object is to invest in smaller jewels in order to buy more and more precious ones, thereby becoming the wealthiest gem collector in the land. The first to 21 victory points is the winner — at first, the gems don’t cost much, and it’s easy to pocket several of them quickly. However, the gems in the early stages don’t have high point values, so in order to afford the higher-value gems and beat your fellow players to 21, you’ll have to do a lot of clever maneuvering.

Splendor also features the optimal (in my opinion) strategy/luck combo that Marrying Mr. Darcy has; it feels accessible and easy to pick up, while still being challenging enough to keep me thinking. It never feels beyond me in terms of strategy; I’m generally able to plan far enough ahead to be a real contender in the game, which I have to admit is pretty rare for me. This is one of those games I want to start playing again as soon as I finish a round — and if you know me, you’ll know that that’s about the highest praise I can give to a board game. It’s one I know I’ll keep coming back to again and again!

3. Sushi Go! Party

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I was introduced to this game a few months ago, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I was going to love it. Yet again, the exterior of the game is what first drew me in — the artwork features little cartoony sushi characters that are just so cute that it hurts. Beyond the surface, though, this game has almost everything I love most about my favorite board games — that luck/strategy sweet spot, a really fun theme, great artwork, and fast-paced gameplay.

I’ve only ever played the party version of this game, so I can’t speak to the original, but I can highly recommend this amped-up version. In the party game, you have a board with slots for the different sushi tiles, which you can switch out to either create one of the combos given in the rule book, or devise one of your own. These tiles show which cards are in play, which the players will combine in hopes of amassing the most points. SG!P is a deck-building game, with a card-passing mechanic similar to the one in Seven Wonders. As the card hands go by, you’ll have to choose wisely in order to gain the most points (and avoid losing any) when the totals are tallied up.

As I mentioned, this game is a delight in just about every way — it’s great for smaller groups and larger ones, and can be a great warm-up or cool-down game, or just a fun one to pull out when you feel like something snappy but still low-key. It has that addictive quality I mentioned with Splendor, and so much variety and possibility that I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it (or of looking at those adorable sushi faces!).

I have to say — the only real downside (though maybe it’s an upside, depending on your perspective), is that this game makes me crave sushi like nobody’s business!

2. Lord of the Rings: The Board Game

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From the title alone, I think it’s pretty obvious why I love this game. A board game modeled after my favorite fictional world of all time? Yes, please! Better yet, it’s cooperative, my favorite style of board game. I find that working together to win against the board rather than trying to beat your fellow players is a much more enjoyable gaming experience for me — it means that even if the game gets serious or tense, the players rarely take it out on each other, and that since all players are involved the whole time, nobody’s sitting around getting bored as they wait for their turn to come around again.

In the LOTR game, you play as one of five hobbits (the four from the Fellowship, with the addition of Fatty Bolger, a character from the books who didn’t make it into the movies). Your goal, naturally, is to travel through Middle Earth to Mordor, on the quest to destroy the One Ring. You’ll travel through Bag End, Rivendell, Lothlorien, and a couple of other spots to gather supplies, and you’ll move on to play through multiple scenarios staged on several separate boards — Moria, Helm’s Deep, Shelob’s Lair, and Mordor, in the base game; you may have others if you choose to pick up certain expansions. As you go, you must succeed in a series of events to keep moving, and to keep the eye of Sauron from spotting you before you get to Mount Doom.

Though I love this game dearly, it is almost punishingly difficult to win, with several ways to go down and only one narrow path to success. Many a gaming session has ended with us getting overtaken by Sauron, spelling the end for our characters (and turning Middle Earth into a land of subjugation and despair…*cries*). But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to re-set the board and try again every time that happens. I love everything about this game — the fact that it came out before the movies and is based only on the books (and features Alan Lee’s glorious artwork), its cooperative nature, the excruciatingly high stakes that manage to be serious and exciting at the same time, the mechanics of the game, and just the undeniable feeling that you’ve somehow been transported to Middle Earth and are now personally responsible for saving it. It’s a heart-pounding, exhilarating gameplay experience, and it’s one I plan to engage in many, many more times.

1. Pandemic/Pandemic Legacy

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It’s a close call between Pandemic (and its legacy spinoff, Pandemic Legacy) and the LOTR game when it comes to my top pick, but at least for now, Pandemic wins the day. It was my first foray into the world of cooperative gaming, and there was no looking back. Finally, I’d found my type of game — the type I could enjoy playing no matter what. Put simply, it’s one of the first games that showed me just how amazing board gaming could be, taking what I thought I knew about gaming from playing the tired old classics, and completely re-forming my perspective. Suddenly, board games were a world I not only could engage with, but wanted to.

Dramatics aside, Pandemic is widely recognized among gamer circles as one of the best co-op games out there. It’s been around longer than a lot of other currently popular co-op games, and it’s no wonder that it’s stood the test of time. The object of the game is simple — keep four deadly viruses from spreading across the world for long enough to totally obliterate them, thereby saving humanity. You play as a range of different medical, tactical, and scientific specialists (such as the medic, the dispatcher, or the researcher), and you must work together to keep the diseases at bay until you can cure them and clear them out.

Pandemic is a little more strategy-heavy than some of my other choices, but because of the cooperative aspect, I can bring whatever I’ve got to the table, and even if I’m not at the top of my game, I know the other players will fill in whatever gaps I can’t bridge.

Like LOTR, Pandemic is a super challenging game — there are many ways the world can be lost to disease, and only one way to save it. But due to the pacing and tight, well-laid out mechanics, it remains a ton of fun to play no matter how many times you’ve lost. This extends to the legacy version of the game, as well. In that version, you play through 12 “months” and increasingly difficult and complex scenarios, trying to beat back the diseases under narrowing odds. You’ll almost certainly make some grave mistakes and have your best plans go awry as you play through, but that doesn’t make it any less compelling and satisfying to play. I’ll definitely be returning to the base game for many more replays, and can’t wait to see what future version of the legacy game have in store.

So there you have it — my all-time (so far, at least) favorite board games. To close out, some honorable mentions: Five Tribes, Castle Panic, Ticket to Ride, Quirkle, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Dead of Winter, and Phase 10.

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Though I’m not nearly as much of a gaming aficionado as Peder is, I’ve gotten into board games in a big way during the last couple of years, and I’ve come across several favorites. As I’ve mentioned a time or two, I enjoy cooperative games the most, so those will feature prominently on my list, though a couple of my favorites will show that I do feel a little competitive from time to time.

Lord of the Rings: Board Game

This one is at the top of my list for many (obvious) reasons. Lord of the Rings is pretty much my favorite creative work of all time, and playing this game is basically just a great new way to take another journey through Middle Earth. And as a huge fan of the story, I always find myself getting ridiculously invested in the outcome of this game. Will I save Middle Earth, or will I doom it to be subjugated by Sauron?? Sadly, it’s usually the latter — as Peder mentioned, it’s one of those games in which things are going along swimmingly until they’re…not, and suddenly, all that’s standing between you and defeat is one unlucky dice roll. I love this game for its intensity, its high stakes, its collaborative strategizing, and its story immersion element. As soon as I finish a round, I’m ready to reset the game and play again!

Pandemic

In reality, this one is pretty much tied with the Lord of the Rings game for me. This is another game that I get hopelessly sucked into, no matter how many times I’ve played. The race against time as you try to save the world from being overrun by contagion will never not be exciting to me. Like LOTR, Pandemic ratchets up the tension quickly, and leads you to believe that you’re doing well just before everything falls apart. The difficulty level is *just* short of making this game nigh impossible to win, which, if it were a competitive game, would turn me off to it pretty quickly. As it is, though, this element forces the players to work together at all times, and while it’s important for all players to bring their best strategy to the table, the outcome doesn’t depend solely on one person. That spirit of collaboration and innovation is what keeps me coming back for more.

Pandemic: Legacy

On that note, that’s why I love Pandemic’s spinoff game, Pandemic: Legacy, as much as I do. This game is basically Pandemic on steroids, with even more tension, more possibilities, and more ways for everything to go wrong. Due to the changing nature of this game, it can be played a limited number of times, as the choices you make during each round of this game affect each subsequent round. Which is something I find both terrifying and exciting.

Splendor

As I noted in my post about this game a while back, one of the reasons I love this game is because it’s ~*pretty*~. However, I certainly don’t judge it on aesthetics alone. It’s my favorite competitive game for a reason — for me, it hits that sweet spot of just enough strategy to get my brain working (but not enough to make me feel overwhelmed), and just enough luck involved to keep me on my toes. The jewel-trading theme is unique, and I’m a fan of the Renaissance-y vibe. And as a round of this game is usually fairly short, it’s one that I can play several times through in one sitting — and generally, I want to do so when I play this one, which is a pretty rare occurrence for me!

Hanabi

I’ve written about this game already as well, so I won’t say much about it, but it’s still standing strong as one of my favorite card games. As a cooperative board game, it’s pretty unique, made even more so by the element that allows you to see everyone’s cards but your own. It’s a great example of a game that’s simple and elegant in concept but has a high level of difficulty when played. And like many on my list, it’s highly addicting, and always makes me want to see if we can beat our last high score.

Marrying Mr. Darcy

One thing I love most about this game is that it basically involves nerding out in like, three different ways at once. The premise is more or less what you’d expect from the name — you play as one of six female leads from Pride & Prejudice, and to win, you must make the most advantageous marriage by marrying the suitor who is best…well, suited to you! This is another competitive game that feels challenging without feeling cutthroat (though the zombie expansion pack makes it that way, I suppose??). As a huge P&P fan, I adore the theme of this game, and can’t wait to try out the Emma expansion!

Five Tribes

This one’s a recent addition to my list of favorites, and, like Splendor, has the perfect strategy/luck ratio for me. Also like Splendor, it has a great aesthetic; I love the Arabian Nights-esque theme. And as Peder mentioned in his recent post about this game, it’s about as European-style as they come, in that you’re trying to amass more victory points than all the other players through a variety of means, and in that no one knows how many points they have until the game has ended. I was able to quickly pick up a strategy that works for me with this game, which…may very well be unprecedented in my history as a gamer, actually. And that in and of itself is enough to make me thoroughly enjoy this game!

And that’s my list — for now, at least! Let’s hear from you — what are some of your favorite games? Are there any from my or Peder’s lists that you’d love to try?

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