What Do My Ratings Mean

The baseline that we should get started with is looking at what the numbers means. Obviously a 10 is the best and a 1 is the worst. However, it is more nuanced than that. I do use the half point scale as well. So right now I have everything from 10’s to 1’s, but no 0.5’s in there.

A 10 is a game that is as close as perfect for me as you can get. And I say for me, some board games are objectively good and some are objectively bad, but when rating games, so much as to do with taste. So a 10 is a game that is as close to perfect for me as you can get.

A 9 is a game that I love, and I’d always want to play it. 8 is a great game for me and I’d likely not say no to playin that game. 7, I like and I’d play, but I won’t seek it out. 6 is a decent game but I probably am not that interested in playing it often. 5 is okay and I’d play it if people want to. 4, I’ll try and recommend another game to play. 3, I don’t want to play it. 2, I actively don’t like the game. 1, I wouldn’t play that game again ever.

The Breakdown

10’s –

I have 12 games that I rate a 10. That is 4% of the games that I’ve played and rated. I’m sure that I’ve missed a few games, but likely not tens. There is also a wide variety of games in there, I have a massive dungeon crawler with Gloomhaven and then I also have a dexterity game with Ice Cool. But 67% of the games really immerse you in the story and world of the game, which I think will be a trend for these high spots.

9.5’s –

21 fall into the 9.5 category, this 7% of the game that I’ve played. We again stick with a lot of story with games like TIME Stories and Arkham Horror: The Card Game. We also get some lighter games like Sushi Go Party and The Lost Expedition and our first party game with Just One in this category.

9’s –

38 games fall into the 9’s, all the way up at 13%. I wonder if this might be one of the higher percentile groups out there. This is where we start to hit a lot of roll and writes with games like Clever Hoch Drei, Doppelt so Clever, and more. We also get a lot of games that aren’t as story driven anymore. More games like Letter Jam and Super Fantasy Brawl that give you more of a classic board game experience. We also get A Gentle Rain in this section.

8.5’s –

16 out of 283 are rated as 8.5’s. That is about 6% of my rated games. The trend holds pretty steady from the 9’s with a lot more of the classic board game experience. Another party game with Wits & Wagers makes the list. And we have a new game that I just played recently a few times with Merchant’s Cove.

8’s –

We likely have it the big number here, 50 games that are 8’s, which is 18% of my collection. So as you add up the percentages, keep in mind I am rounding up or down so it might not equal 100% in the end. But I feel like in the 8’s we get a number of games that are in that lighter category, more filler games. Things like Skull and Fruit Picking are easier to play and teach than a lot games earlier.

7.5’s –

At 20 games in the 7.5’s, we are at 7% of the collection again. While other sections have had games that were previously owned, with the 7’5’s, I definitely noticed a few more. Machi Koro, Winter Tale, Krosmaster: Arena and at least one more were in my collection and have left. It’s not because they are bad games, but I have other games that do it better. And with Krosmaster: Arena, I got rid of that before Super Fantasy Brawl, but I just didn’t have anyone to play it with.

7’s –

Sitting at 12% with 34 games out of 283, we again see a number of previously owned games. But we also see games that I grew up playing. Set, Dutch Blitz, and Scrabble all make it into this category as well as the party game Scattergories. I obviously have some level of nostalgia with these games, but at the same time, I’d still play them again right now.

6.5’s –

13 games in this number, for 5%. I think this is where we’ll start to see the numbers dropping off in terms of number of games rated in the area. It is also a lot of games that I don’t own but have played in this area. I guess that means that I buy games that I like a lot. Donner Dinner Party and Flapjacks and Sasquatches are two that I’d definitely play again, but I have games that I like better that do something similar, especially with Donner Dinner Party.

6’s –

A tick up here with 24 games which is 8%. Most of the time the whole numbers seem to have more than a half numbers ,I guess. I own a few games in this section, though some of that is nostalgia, or with a game like Splendor, it’s because I know other people who like it a lot. I probably won’t ever pull Splendor off the shelf to play myself, but I know my wife likes it, so I won’t remove it from the collection.

5.5’s –

5 games make up the 5.5’s which is just barely 2%. We are reaching the social deduction game area, I feel in the 5.5’s, and 5’s. Where I would play them again, but I won’t seek them out. They tend to be the very simple social deduction games like Secret Hitler, While that game does have a little double blind fun going on with it, the theme doesn’t interest me, and it’s just a fine game.

5’s –

Down in the 5’s we have 21 games at a whopping 7% again. Again more social deduction games like The Resistance and One Night Ultimate Vampire. These two really do what I don’t like about a lot of social deduction games, they don’t give you anything go on right away or in general much to go on at all. We also have all of Red Dragon Inn, a fun game but often is played with too many people. I think 4 is about my max for that game, maybe 5.

4.5’s –

1 out of 283 which is 0% for those keeping track at home. And it’s Seafall. I feel like it’s fair that Seafall falls into this spot by itself. It is a game that I want to like more, it is a game I can see the potential of it. It just ends up being a flop. The story doesn’t play out as it should, it is a just a bit too random, and the games are way too long. And the more you play the longer the games get. Yet, it’s just on that cusp of I’d play it again without an AP players.

4’s –

9 games or 3% of what I’ve played. This is where we get into a lot more of a mass market or mass market adjacent games. Not that there haven’t been some before, but we have stuff like Guesstures, Forbidden Island and Dominion. Yes, I have Dominion as a 4. It is a game that I’d play if you twisted my arm, but it is also a game that if you know the game extremely well you will win, and it’s not interesting enough for me to know it that well.

3’s –

You might be wondering where my 3.5’s are, the answer is there were none. Instead we have 10 3’s. That is 4% of what I’ve played. Again a lot of mass market games, and a lot of games I grew up with. This goes back to growing as a gamer, stuff like Malarky and Pit had their place getting me into the hobby, but I don’t need to go back to them.

2’s –

3 games or 1%. Monopoly falls into this group. It isn’t the worst of the worst, but it is very bad. Another super popular or at least well sold game, Exploding Kittens lands here as well.

1’s –

Finally, I have 5 1’s, or 2%. I really don’t like these games, and most people won’t like most of them. The two that will probably surprise people are Cards Against Humanity and Concept. Cards Against Humanity at one point in time I would have rated higher, but now I consider it a worse version of Apples to Apples because the jokes are created for you and often not funny. Concept is one that I know a lot of people like. It just didn’t work for me. It has this group feel to the game, but ends up just being boring.

Alright, there we have it, all the games in my collection rated. What do you think should be rated better? Or what do you think that I should rate lower?

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Cooperative Games

Now, I’m not going to put together a list of all the games and talk about them again. Well, I won’t talk about them again, I’ll have a list at the bottom if anyone wants to find it that way. But I want to talk a little bit about why I like cooperative games.

It is something I touch on just briefly in the video. Cooperative games are a good way to bring more complex games into people’s lives. When I play a cooperative game, I am on the same team as you. That means that I want to help us win. Now I can take it too far and basically play your turns for you. But in the best cooperative game plays, everyone at the table is discussing ideas, working together, and as a new player, you don’t need to worry about getting beat up in the game.

There are a lot of competitive games where the player who knows the game is most likely to win the game. But with a cooperative game you are purely playing against the game. This, again, makes it something that is more palatable to new players, but also when playing with too competitive players. I don’t love playing with someone who must win and must win by as much as possible. While I always try and win, the point of gaming for me is to spend time with people and do something that I love, which cooperative games give me more of that.

But enough about cooperative games. Let’s move onto what I had to drink and then the list.

The Drink

Last nights drink wasn’t a beer. It was in fact a whiskey since yesterday was National Bourbon day. The one that I had was pretty smooth and while wasn’t as flavorful as some bourbons that I’ve had, it was a nice sipping drink. Did you know that bourbon is a whiskey that can only be made in the US? Also, for a whiskey to be consider a bourbon it must also be 51% corn. That corn is what gives it a sweeter taste compared to other whiskeys.

Top 10 Cooperative Games

1. Gloomhaven
2. Mansions of Madness
3. Marvel Champions
4. Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon
5. Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game
6. Aeon’s End: War Eternal
7. Xenoshyft: Onslaught
8. T.I.M.E. Stories
9. Letter Jam
10. Pandemic (and Legacy)

What’s Coming Up Next?

Well, I am streaming again on Wednesday. And I might get back to Arkham Horror: The Card Game, or we might be back to a roll and write and that schedule just through Disney+ having Loki on Wednesdays. There are other smaller games as well that I can see about getting to the table, or playing less of a bigger scenario. As for another Monday stream, that’ll happen on June 28th, at least that’s my plan. I plan on covering a topic as well as maybe some quick reviews.

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Cooperative

A cooperative board game is where everyone is working together. You have a singular objective that you are all working to complete. This could be something like killing monsters in Gloomhaven to curing diseases in Pandemic. But whatever it is, you are working together to complete that goal.

This is done in two different ways. The first one has open information and the second is hidden information. However, with both of them, you still are trying to complete an objective together. A few games do put a little twist on this. Uprising, a 4x fantasy game coming from Kickstarter, has each of you building your own group and playing them. You all need to beat two AI enemies though for the game to be won. But let’s talk about open versus hidden information.

Open Information

Open information means what it says. All the information that each player has is out in the open. Everyone can see what cards everyone else has. This allows the group of players to make decisions more optimally and cooperatively. Pandemic is an example of that. You can see who has what city cards and what colors so you can work most effectively to cure a disease.

The upside and when this works really well is when the group can collaborate as you go. Now, there is the downside because it can also lead to more of an alpha player problem. If everyone can see everything, that means that one person can have an opinion on everyone’s turn. So when playing a cooperative game with open information it’s something to be aware of.

However, with that said, I do still really enjoy open information. It really does lead to more of a collaborative nature of the cooperative game. If I, and others, can keep from stepping on other players toes on their turns and we work together, it is a very different experience. I think that Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game is a great example of this working well for me.

Hidden Information

Hidden information is the opposite. I have cards or information that I have and I can’t share. Gloomhaven is an example of this where I can give an idea of what my plans are, but I can’t tell you how fast I’m going or exactly what I’m going to be doing. Other games like Lost Expedition and Say Bye to the Villains as well do this.

The idea behind this is to keep the choices more in the hands of the player on their turn. You can’t see what I am doing or what my options are, so that means that you can’t tell me what to do. This is meant to alleviate some of the alpha player problem and I would say that it does to some extent. An alpha player will likely still have their own ideas to add, but it should help reduce that tendency.

Semi-Cooperative

This one is a bit trickier to define because it some ways it is competitive and in some ways it isn’t. I’ll give Dead of Winter as an example. All the players have one main objective that needs to be completed, finding a cure for zombies is one on of them. However, each player also has their own objective, and if you don’t complete that by the end of the main objective you don’t win. And there can be a traitor. That traitor might not need that main objective to be completed for them to win.

So you can see how it could be confusing. I think the main thing to note is the main objective and the player objectives. The main objective is really going to be cooperative in nature. All of the players, unless there is a traitor, will want to get that one done. But they will then be acting selfishly to complete their own objective as well. It really throws a different mix into how the game is played.

Also, a lot of these games will have a traitor in them, but not all of them. Dead of Winter might have a traitor but it might not. Something like Nemesis is going to not have a traitor, but everyone’s objectives might be at odds with each other to mean that if one person wins another person might not be able to win.

Competitive

Finally we end on competitive. This is really where most board games lie. Everyone is out for themselves and the winner is the person who has the most points, takes over all the areas, whatever it might be for that particular game. No one will work together for a long period of time because you want to win yourself. Some competitive games an alliance might be useful for a little bit but for a lot of them it’s always about yourself.

There are two different types of games that I could qualify under competitive. Some competitive games fall into a solitaire competitive game and more of a cutthroat competitive game. Each has it’s place and some people will gravitate more towards one or another. When I was just getting into gaming I probably preferred more cutthroat competitive games, but now I don’t mind that, but I don’t want a game to be only that.

Cutthroat

So cutthroat sounds very aggressive and it is. It can be something like Risk where you will get attacked if you are weak. Or Munchkin which as a lot of take that in it where you can make an opponents character worse or the monsters harder to beat. Those are extremely confrontational games.

But it can be simpler than that. I can just take the last worker placement spot or a card that might be better for you in a deck building game. Those are still mean or hurt you, but it is less of a direct take that element to the game. But it is a bit more than the solitaire which I’ll be talking about now.

Solitaire

It is often called multi-player solitaire as well. Because I am not talking about playing games solo. That is a separate thing. This is when you are playing against other players but what you do won’t affect them that much. This can be that deck building where you pick cards that mainly help your self. That might mean that you hurt someone else but it isn’t the goal. It is to improve what you are doing.

Something like Dominion or Ascension are generally this sort of game. You don’t want to bloat your own deck with cards that are bad for you, but some cards that might be better for someone else are also just good for you as well. So there is almost no interaction between players, especially in base Ascension, but a card that allows you to draw another two cards, that is good for everyone.

What is the Best Or Do I Prefer?

I probably prefer cooperative of any type. I don’t think that there is a best type of game. I enjoy a quick cutthroat competitive game, but I used to like longer ones, like Munchkin. Now I don’t like them as much anymore. And I think I like cooperative the most because I can help control that alpha player issue and because working together is just a lot of fun.

But what do you prefer? Do you like competitive games of a certain type of cooperative games? Let me know in the comments below.

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10 – Marrying Mr. Darcy
As I was creating the list, I was surprised to see this game make the list. It’s down a ways in my top 100, no spoilers for this fall when I do my top 100 again, but it is really an interesting theme. First, there’s the Pride and Prejudice theme, I’m actually a little bit surprised that we don’t have more games based off of Jane Austen, I’m not sure how they’d work, but I’m surprised. Then it’s a game about marriage, now there are some party games about marriage, but this one isn’t about guessing trivia between married couples, it’s about marrying off your character from Pride and Prejudice to your most preferred suitor. It’s a light hearted game that is pretty simple but enjoyable and pretty good at not going too long.

9 – Hanabi
Hanabi has an interesting them of fireworks. That’s not one that you really see in board games, but beyond that it is a fun game because it has some really interesting mechanics. You are trying to create lines of fireworks by color going from one to five. But you can’t see your cards in your hand, they are facing away from you, using clues, you have to work together to discard the right cards, to get more clues, put down the correct number on the correct color, and give clues. The trick is giving good clues because your clues need to be either pointing out all the cards in someone’s hand of a color or of a number and hope that they infer the right order. It’s a fast game, but it’s very challenging.

8 – Photosynthesis
Now, some would argue that this isn’t a completely unique theme, there are other games out there that are about trees, but it’s still a pretty uncommon theme. And how it handles trees is really interesting and the pieces are cool and board is amazing. In Photosynthesis, you are trying to grow trees to harvest to get points. The theme is fairly abstract, but it works, because there is a sun that rotates around the board. So you get light points to spend to plan seeds, grow trees, and score points, and how you get points if based off of how many of your trees are getting sunlight and the size of those trees, because if you have a larger tree behind a smaller tree, both trees get sunlight, but smaller tree or same size tree, they can be blocked in the shadow and not get you any light points. It’s an interesting strategy game that offers a lot of tough choices and has a bit of a cutthroat element as you try and position your trees to get light and block off other people. Really fun, easy to teach, and has a lot of depth.

7 – Hats
The hat part of the game Hats is what gives it a more unique theme. There is also an Alice in Wonderland theme on it with the Madd Hatter’s tea party, but that’s a pretty common theme in games. But the idea of hats and which hats are on the table scoring points is unique. It’s also very clever. In most card games, you are using your hand of cards either to give yourself points if they are good or your opponent points if they are bad. Here there’s a middle step. When you play a card, you are putting it onto the table in one of six spots and taking the card that was already put there and placing it in front of you for scoring. So you’re giving your opponent a potential card for scoring, but it’ll only score if there is a card of that color out on the Madd Hatter’s table. So you have to think about how your opponent can use the cards that you have to set-up their scoring and hopefully play them in such a way that the table ends up favoring you at the end. A lot of strategy in this game, though some luck especially at higher player counts. It is really quite abstract, but it works for a theme because of the Madd Hatter and hats.

6 – Cartographers
So there are a lot of games out there where you’re building a world or a city. Something like Carcassone pops into my head or a game like Suburbia where you are building a city. In Cartographers, you are making a map, not to build out a land and score points by putting people on it like Carcassone, but because you are mapping the far off reaches of the land. How it works is interesting as well, this is a flip and write game where each player is filling out their own map, so at the end it looks different for everyone. But you are either given one type of land with one of two shapes to put it in, or two types of land with one shape to put one of those two land types in. Or, there are monsters. Filling in the land is pretty normal, it has a Second Chance vibe to it, but monsters are very different as one of your opponents will decide where the monster goes on your board. It’s very clever that way, and the scoring is good as well. You score two things each season and it rotates, so in Winter you’re scoring one thing that you scored at the beginning of the game in spring. Not the only game to do this, but does it well, and the map making theme is great.

5 – Century: Golem Edition
This one was interesting to put on the list, mainly because Century: Spice Road, exists, and that has the most generic theme of moving cubes around and trading spices, this literally 90% of Euro games right there. All Century: Golem Edition is, is a retheme of that game. So it goes from a very generic theme to a unique theme about golems just by a retheme. In this game you are going out and mining gems and then trading gems around various market places (all by playing cards from your hand), in order to get certain combinations of gems to be able to power up golems and get points. The game is really simple and slick to play. It’s like Splendor in some ways but a step up in complexity. You are doing one of a few things on your turn, you can play a card to get or swap gems, you can get more cards for your hand, you can take all your played cards back into your hand, or you can get a golem. The game ends when someone has 5 golems, and everyone adds up their points, and most points wins. The art and the gems just make this pop on hte table though.

4 – Homebrewers
There are a few games out there about brewing, but it’s a very small number, so I picked the one that I have had a lot of fun with. Homebrewers is all about brewing your best beer so when it comes to Summerfest and Oktoberfest, you are ready to wow the judges and take home the gold, and get the most points. To do this, you’re rolling dice to take actions. What really makes this game so much fun to play, though is brewing the beer. You could brew a generic beer and it wouldn’t do that much for you, but you can add in flavors to make your beer better and that might give you more points, more money, or even help help improve the quality of another beer with the techniques that you’ve learned. But, as a player, would you really want to drink a nutmeg and cherry IPA? So it’s always fun to see what weird beer you can make. This game is also a lot of fun because it’s a good engine building game, but it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.

3 – Sagrada
Stained glass windows, seems like there wouldn’t be many games out there on this, and there aren’t, but there is another. Sagrada is my preferred one, though as it just pops on the table and offers a good puzzle as you try and draft the right dice in order to be able complete your stained glass window. Each round someone draws two times the number of players, plus one, dice and rolls them, then going around, you draft dice and put them into your window. However, there are rules as to how they can be placed, you can’t have the same number orthogonally adjacent to the same number (up down, left right) nor can you do that with color. Beyond that, there are certain spots where you have to put a color or a number, so you have to think about that as well. Sagrada looks amazing on the table and is actually really easy to teach and play. I’ve had great success with this game with all sorts of groups of people.

2 – Hanamikoji
Hanamikoji was one of the first games I thought of when doing this list. Mainly, there aren’t many games that would dare handle a theme such as Geisha. But Hanamikoji does, and even though this a very abstract game, it handles it well. Hanamikoji is all about the winning the favor of various Geisha by giving them gifts. To do that, you and your opponent each have a had of cards and have four actions per round you can take. You can either save a hidden card for winning favor at the end, you can discard two cards that won’t be used to win favor, you give your opponent the choice of three cards, and they pick one to place on their side for winning favor and you play the other two, or you create two sets of two cards and your opponent picks one of those for their side to win favor and you get the other. This game really is all about making your opponent make tough decisions for you so that you are able to manipulate the cards you can see to win the favor of the Geisha. You either want to win the favor of 11 points worth of Geisha or of four Geisha. The game is really fast, very thinking, and it forces a lot of tough decisions. I’d highly recommend this game as a two player game.

1 – Icecool
Penguin High School, I dare anyone to find a game that has that theme on it, besides Icecool 2. In this game you are flicking around student penguins who are skipping class in order to get fish to eat. Each round, someone is also the hall monitor. If the hall monitor catches, runs into, a student who is skipping class, that student has to give the hall monitor their hall pass, which gives the hall monitor points. But for each fish that the student gets they get a point as well. A round ends when either the hall monitor has caught all the students or a student has gotten their three fish. Then after every person has been the hall monitor once you count up your points, most points wins. It’s fun though because of the silly theme, but also because you’re flicking around little penguins, and not only that, you can jump them over walls if you flick them right, or spin them and ricochet through multiple doors, if you line it up right, there are just lots of fun things you can do.

So, this list dug further into my top 100 than most. I like a lot of games that have a fantasy or sci-fi theme, but even games like Lost Expedition which is about exploring or Point Salad which is about food, those are themes that are done pretty often. I think with that I did a solid job of finding games that have out there themes. If you’re not a big sci-fi or fantasy fan, these games might tick that theme box for you. What are some interesting, unique, themes that you’ve found? Are there any from the list that you want to try?

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So what are my top 10 cooperative games?

10 – The Lost Expedition
Number ten on the list is the smallest game of the group but also one of the easier ones to teach and get to the table. In this, you are your fellow players are trying to lead your team of adventurers on hikes twice a day so that they can get to the Lost City of Z, but the jungles are dangerous, and you never know what might be coming up next. But that’s for you to decide as players, without discussing, you put down cards for a morning and evening hike that might get you more food or cause you to find bullets or maybe you get hook worms, and no one wants that, but there are difficult decisions to make on each card, and you can discuss that part. One of the games that really has something built into to stop alpha gamers from being able to run the game. It’s a lot of fun, and it plays fast as well, which some of the games further on the list won’t.

9 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
The first, but not the last Lovecraft Mythos game on the list from Fantasy Flight, this one is the smaller or the two, though it packs a lot of punch. In this one, like all of Fantasy Flight’s Lovecraftian Games, you are an investigator working together with the other investigators trying to stop whatever horror is being called through by cultists. But in this you can be fighting, but much of it is investigating, and the game is just basically cards and a bunch of tokens. You don’t need a bit board to tell a big story or change up the game. The different things that the cards can do and how they can use them to create a town or house or other locations and it feels different is impressive. Now, with the base box, it’s only a 1-2 player game, but with another core box you can play up to 4, so if you have a larger group it’s something to consider. And Fantasy Flight does a great job of supporting this, as they do with all their living card games, so there is always more story coming out.

8 – Aeon’s End: War Eternal
When it comes to deckbuilding a lot of them do similar things, you add cards, you maybe buy more cards or attack, and then you draw a new hand until you can’t fill the hand and then you shuffle up your discard and repeat the process. Aeon’s End: War Eternal is unique because you never shuffle, when you discard cards, you choose the order they go so that you can create, if you’re good at card counting, a hand or combo that you want to get because it’s going to be strong. It’s a lot of fun to see how that piece of the puzzle fits together. Plus, you’re all trying to take down a nemesis who is bent on taking out the town of Gravehold. And each nemesis plays differently. I have really enjoyed both plays of this game, and it’s a good challenge, there are a lot of mages, who play differently, and there are expansions galore for the game with even more nemesis and breach mages to choose from.

7- T.I.M.E. Stories
One of the most unique games on the list, T.I.M.E. Stories has an element of an escape room game, it has some role playing aspects, and there’s a good amount of narrative to it. You are all part of a time agency who is trying to stop unwanted time incursions from happening and messing up the timeline. This means you might be going to the earth in the 90’s, or another dimension where there is magic and dragons. And it can change that wildly in each of the expansions and each time you play. Now, each scenario can only be played once, but to get through and beat the story it is at least a couple hours of excitement for 4 players, if not up to 3, and it’s cheaper than a movie at that point. Plus, the upside, and sometimes downside, is that because it’s such a sandbox, you can do anything in the games, and the creators have done a good job of doing that, creating interesting puzzles and mechanics to test out along the way.

6 – XenoShyft: Onslaught
You and your fellow crack team of marines, scientists, and medics have been tasked with protecting a mining facility from hordes and hordes of giant monstrous bugs. Why did they build a mining facility on this remote planet, money of course, but now you’re about to overrun with bugs, can you fend off the waves they’re throwing at you? This is a very tough game, even though it makes it’s deck building easier than a lot of others. You can help other people, you can give them troops or weapons that you’ve bought for your deck to help them shore up their defenses, they can give you stuff in return, or use stim packs and grenades to help you when it’s your turn to face a wave of monsters. This game is clever in what it does, and it creates a good amount of tension, plus I like that the game is basically all simultaneous so there isn’t downtime for anyone.

5 – Pandemic Legacy Season 1
Seems a bit on the nose to be playing right now (article written 4/13/2020 during Covid-19 Pandemic), but it is a really good cooperative game. I could have put down either season of Pandemic or base Pandemic on the list, and any are great options. Can you prevent the spread and find the cures to four diseases before they run across the world and destroy everything? This game is pretty simple compared to the other ones, but still offers a lot of good choices and you always feel like there are 1-2 more things that you need to do on your turn and you hope that you’ve picked the right things so that you don’t have an outbreak on your hands. Also, do you have a good combination of characters that are able to fight it off and can you use it to the best of your ability. A lot of questions, but it’s a good game, a simpler game, and one that you can play faster and with more people than some because it an easier game to pick up.

4 – Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon
When Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table came to the lands of Avalon, they were wild and untamed and the Wyrdness and Foredwellers twisted the land, but they forced it to their will, creating Menhir, but now that was long ago, and the Menhir are starting to go out and the Wyrdness is coming back over the lands. You and your fellow adventurers are only going out because those who were supposed to have saved you and your village have gone out and not come back. Can you survive the twisted lands of Avalon? This game works really well as it’s a very tough game where survival is the goal but not a guarantee, and you spend so much time exploring and discovering new things about Avalon and you might not have wanted to know. Then you go from the exploration piece of the game and jump into combat which can be tough as monsters aren’t always meant to be beaten and diplomatic encounters can turn violent if you’re not careful. There are chunks of the game that are pretty well split up where you can do daily actions separately or explore while someone else fights, but this is a grand free flowing game that tells an interesting story.

3 – Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition
You, and your fellow paranormal investigators have been called to a mansion to explore some unnatural goings on. This might be a crazed cultist leading a band of cultists and trying to summon a deep old one. It could be you’ve made it to late and a town has been overrun with Deep Ones and you need to figure out how to escape. You and your fellow investigators could get split up in two different timelines and need to work together to solve the mystery and get the one who time traveled back. There are a lot of different scenarios, and an app that helps you keep track of everything. The game is set in the Lovecraft Mythos, but it has more of an investigative feel to it, than leaning into as much horror. If you want a game that is fairly big but doesn’t feel as daunting as some dungeon crawlers, Mansions of Madness is a good option.

2 – Marvel Champions: The Card Game
This game has made it on a lost of lists and it’s working it’s way up to being one of my favorite games of all time. The game just feels like you’re in a comic fighting a villain. And you get the full comic feeling as you can team up superheroes as well as flip back and forth between an alter-ego and superhero side in order to rest and recover if the villain knocks you around to me. The game does a lot of clever things, and you can create the team-ups that you always wanted, or at least some of them, eventually Fantasy Flight will come out with more heroes so you can create any team-up you want. And they’ve managed to make the villains feel different as well as the heroes, so you can get a lot of unique games.

1 – Gloomhaven
No surprise here, though there are some slight semi-cooperative elements of the game, mainly having specific goals that you need to do in a given scenario depending off of some card draw, but for the most part it’s working together, and those goals are just perks and don’t make or break the game if you don’t get them. Gloomhaven is an epic dungeon crawling and character leveling game where you and a group of fellow mercenary adventurers go through and try and figure out what strange things are happening in Gloomhaven and the surrounding areas. The story is fun but it really shines with a puzzly sort of card based combat that makes everything work together. And it feels like there’s always more to explore in the game.

I think that one thing I really like about cooperative games is that you get so many great shared stories out of them. Even the ones that aren’t just storytelling heavy can still have great moments in them as you roll the right number to get what you needed or draw the right card. It’s such a shared victory and moment that they often stick out to me. And I know that I have so many more cooperative games sitting on my shelf that I like and that are waiting to be played again or for the first time. What are some of your favorite cooperative games or cooperative gaming experiences?

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10 – Second Chance
The first of several roll (flip) and write games on the list. They just work really well for packing a punch in a small box. In Second Chance, you’re trying to fill in as much of a grid as you possibly can with a bunch of Tetris like shapes. The trick is that the next shape you add, from two cards flipped, must touch one of your previous shapes somewhere. Now, smaller shapes would generally be ideal because you can fill it in more solidly, but there are a limited number of one or two square cards in the deck, so you have to hope that they come up at a time that you can use it. If you eventually can’t use either of the two shapes flipped, you then get a second chance, a card that only you can use, however, if you can’t use that, you’re out of the game and you count up the empty squares and that’s your points, the person with the fewest empty squares wins. It works really well because you don’t have down time since everyone is using the same cards, just with a different starting card.

9 – Criss Cross
Smallest game on the list, it’s barely larger than a deck of cards, but it offers a whole ton of fun. In this game, you are rolling dice and placing those dice on a 5×5 grid, trying to get like symbols next to each other to score points in both the rows and columns. The tricky bit is that you need to put those two dice faces for a round next to each other, orthogonally, or like a domino would fit into a grid. Adding to that, the fact that it’s scoring both rows and columns means that you need to think hard about getting points both ways, because while more like symbols in a row gives you more points, being able to score in more directions might be better. Plus, you can put the dice faces anywhere, so you have to worry about not giving yourself two single spaces not next to each other, because that means you can fill in the last roll. A lot of fun and plays fast with no downtime.

8 – Say Bye to the Villains
A really tough game for the list, one that you’ll lose way more often than you win. In Say Bye to the Villains, you are Samurai who are going to be taking on various villains and you have ten days to prepare. That can be done by increasing your stats or by figuring out a villains cards and how tough a villain will be or by giving someone else a card. However, all of these things cost time, and the better ones might cost multiple days, and you only have ten days to prepare. So while the game is cooperative, you always feel like you haven’t prepared your stats well enough or that you haven’t figured out enough for a villain so you just need to try at the the end and hope it works. Thus far in around ten plays, I have yet to win the game, but in the vast majority of them, we’ve been really close, so one of these days it’ll happen. The game can overstay it’s welcome just a tiny bit if someone spends their time really fast they then have to sit around, and in a higher player count, that could be a little bit.

7 – Just One
This party game works perfectly on this list because it packs a punch for a small package. First, it’s a fully cooperative party game, which is pretty rare, but it’s also clever, borrowing some from Scattergories and Taboo and other older party games that maybe don’t hold up as well. One person is “it” and they flip over a card and show it to everyone else and pick a number from 1 to 5, that corresponds with a word, then the other players write down a one word clue for that word. However, then the players have to compare their words, and any duplicate clues aren’t shown to the person who is it. The clues are then revealed and that person needs to guess what word it was, if they get it, you get a point. If not, you lose a card, limiting how many points you can get. Now, it is a party game, so scoring is optional, in my opinion, but the game itself is a really fun time.

6 – The Lost Expedition
This one has shown up on the adventure list, but it’s a small box game that’s a lot of fun. In this game you’re trying to navigate from the start of the trail all the way to the Lost City of Z. However, there are creatures, native tribes, rivers, and more that need to be traversed to be able to get there. So as a group you’re playing down cards that will allow you travel further down the trail, but they’re going to cost resources and you have a limited supply of those, so you have to balance wanting to push ahead as fast as possible with gathering more resources as well. The game does a nice thing as it’s a cooperative game, it helps alleviate a situation where there is an alpha player who wants to tell everyone what to do because when playing down cards for the morning or evening walk, you can’t discuss the cards in your hand, so the biggest decision can’t be alpha gamed.

5 – Sushi Go Party!
I really like this game because of the variability to it. In regular Sushi Go, you have a fixed pool of cards, but in the Party version, you can swap out your appetizers, desserts, and specials, and more so that it is a different combo most of the times. You can make it as challenging or as easy as you want to score points. And the game is just a really good drafting game that doesn’t give you down time. You’re mainly just trying to draft sets, but some of them offer a lot more points if you get a large number of them, whereas, others you can split into smaller sets, or others will give you negative points if you have to many of them. The artwork is very cute in the game as well, which helps it hit the table with a wider variety of players.

4 – Point Salad
So there’s a joke about games where they can be a point salad, meaning that they give you a million different ways to score in the game, like you can put a million toppings onto a salad. In Point Salad, it gives you a million ways to score, but you have to decide which ones you want to take, and which veggies you take to build up your salad. The game is great because it plays fast, it offers interesting decisions and its tongue in cheek naming. Overall, it’s a pretty simple game, but offers good replayability and you can’t have the same strategy every game because the scoring cards you can draft will vary based off of what cards are actually being used and what pile those cards might be in. A fun and fast game.

3 – Welcome To…
The highest roll (flip) and write game on the list, as it’s my favorite that I’ve played thus far. In the game you’re building your perfect Stepford neighborhood, with it’s white picket fences, parks, and pools. Will you be the best at developing your neighborhood. The great thing about this one is that you can play basically an infinite number of people because everyone is using the same three pairs of cards each round, well, picking one of them to use. It’s a challenging game as you’re trying to complete specific neighborhood layouts but also focusing more on one of the things, parks or pools, can net you more points, but you’ll also be missing out on points as well. The game plays fast and everyone is involved in the whole game, so a lot of fun, and one that if people have access to a printer to print the sheet or has the game, works really well online.

2 – Hanamikoji
A great small box card game where you are trying to win the favor of various Geisha. To do that, you need to give them gifts, one might want a comb, while another might want a flute, it depends on the Geisha. To get them those gifts, you and your opponent, it’s only a 2 player game, are going to take turns doing one of four actions. Each person can do each action once per round. It might be that you discard a card face down that won’t be a gift for any of the Geisha. Or you play two face down that you’ll use as gifts later, or there is a play three face up, your opponent picks one and you get the other two, or two groups of two face up, your opponent picks one and you get the other. It offers a lot of strategy, but there’s enough hidden information to keep the game challenging every time you play it.

1 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
When I was thinking of this list, I kind of forgot that this would apply, but it’s probably my favorite “small box” game. I put it in quotes, because the more expansions that you get, the larger a box you’ll need, but if you just get the base game, and that’s all you’d need for a while, it comes in a small box. And it gives you a bigger gaming experience than some as you’re playing through scenarios in a greater story just using cards and a few tokens. The downside to that scenario based story is that once you’ve played it once or twice, you’ll know the story, then you’ll want to get the cheap expansion packs, and eventually it’s not that small a game anymore. Still, you can get a lot from that small box.

I have a lot more small box games that pack a lot of punch that just missed the list. Things like Hats, Letter Jam, Homebrewers, Century: Golem Edition, Not Alone, Onirim and more just missed the list, and I think when boar dame night in person starts up again, some of them will go higher up the list, because a lot of smaller box games play faster and are easier to pick up on.

What are some of your favorite games that come in a small box?

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10 – Dead of Winter
The zombies have taken over and you need to find a cure, get enough fuel to move, or one of several more scenarios, but can you trust everyone in your midst? Probably not, and should they fully trust you, probably not. In this game you play as survivors of the zombie apocalypse who are just trying to survive against the horde of zombies in the town, but there might be a traitor in your midst. There’s a sense of adventure in this game as you feel like you’re playing through The Walking Dead or other zombie time story where it is more focused on the survivors and if you can really trust them. Plus, the crossroads cards offer you a lot of tough decisions to make as well, maybe you can save someone and add them to your team, but will there be enough food to feed them? You’ll end up having to make choices like that throughout the game, and often times with no easy answers or right choices for the colony.

9 – Star Wars: Rebellion
A massive around three hours long game, Star Wars: Rebellion pits the rebels against the Empire in a battle for the fate of the galaxy. Taking from the original trilogy, you feel like you’re playing through it but shaping it your own way. Can you crush the rebel fleets and find where there base in hidden? Or will they be able to sow enough descent around the galaxy that the Empire crumbles away. And you get to send major characters out on missions to places, maybe Han Solo will get captured by the Emperor or Darth Vader will lead troops into battle against Admiral Ackbar on Tatooine. You can rewrite the original trilogy in this adventure and you won’t know how the story will end up until you’ve played.

8 – Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game
I was debating about this one on the list, is it really an adventure because it’s fairly abstracted away with trying to solve cases and fight bad guys just by putting tokens on them. But I feel like the puzzly nature of how you have to do that, and the fact it brings me back to the books and series, there is that sense of adventure for me as I get a chance to relive and play through those books myself. And there’s always a struggle to win in this game. Sometimes you can just win without getting into the final confrontation, but that’s extremely rare. Instead, so often you are hoping for a lucky last roll to take out the bad guy, which is thematic to the books, because through sheer stubbornness and sometimes force of will, Harry can prevail, and that’s how it works in the game as well. Less of a grand epic adventure than some, but still a fun one, especially for fans of the series.

7 – The Lost Expedition
Now, this is probably not a game that a lot of people would have thought of when they were thinking of an adventure game. It’s a small game, it’s only cards and very few tokens, and all you’re doing is going on a hike each morning and evening trying to make it to the Lost City of Z. However, there’s a sense of adventure to it as you are all cooperatively trying to play down cards in a way that makes sense without being able to communicate. But then, once the cards are down and your path is ready, you can all discuss as how to best go through it. It always feels like a close game and you have to decide when it’s worth it to sacrifice a guide in order to move ahead or to keep another guide alive. This game isn’t going to give you a big adventure, but it’s a fast adventure in a little package that won’t break the bank.

6 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
The first of a couple of Fantasy Flights Arkham Chronicles games, this one has a very interesting adventure feel from what I’ve played, which admittedly isn’t a ton of it yet, but you get the sense of exploring, just from the first scenario in the first box, a house that is being twisted and warped around you. Then in the second one, you get a chance to run around the town and look for cultists who might just be hiding in the shadows. And all of this builds, so depending on what you do, scenarios or perks you’ve gotten will change, so it feels like a big unfolding adventure. And I like that it doesn’t come in a massive box, it’s just cards with a few tokens and you can have an epic adventure.

5 – T.I.M.E. Stories
This one is interesting because there’s a smaller level of adventure in the game since each scenario is it’s own mystery or puzzle to solve, but it always feels like something new as you unpack what’s going on. You could be in a mental hospital at the start where a time incursion is about to happen or maybe a town that has been quarantined for some reason or in ancient Egypt. While you might know where your adventure is going to take you, you don’t know how it’s going to unfold or what body you’re going to be put into. I really enjoy this as an escape room type of engine where you have to figure out the puzzle in the box, but it’s not as straight forward as a lot of the Unlock and Exit style games are, because why they might be fairly consistent in what they do, T.I.M.E. Stories is not.

4 – Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
I need to play more of this adventure, but what I’ve played thus far has been great. There is just so much story happening, and it gives you a different sense of adventure because it adds in such a strong survival element as well. So not only are you going out into the land of Avalon and searching for ways to keep the land from falling into the Wyrdness, you have to figure out when to fight, when to run away, what path you want to go, the fact that there’s a branching story in a game that is so long and so big is pretty amazing. It’s also a really good solo experience. When a game offers you so many choices as to where to go, what to explore there, what you might run into, who you can help and side mysteries that you might want to check out as well, it’s very much an adventure game, and it’s one of the best I’ve come across.

3 – Betrayal At House on the Hill
Now, I know this game isn’t for everyone, but I love it. And for me it’s a great adventure game because I get to see what horror film I’m in. Am I going to be the final one standing in the end or the person who betrays everyone else. Will I have to play chess with death or maybe it’ll be the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I never know. Plus, I get to explore the house and have it unfold before me, and I never know in what room the haunt might happen, so I can basically always play a new scenario. I have Betrayal Legacy waiting for me at some point in time coming up here when we can start to get together in groups again, because I want to have the adventure of playing through a house year after year and watch the house change and unfold a new adventure. Now, I know that this game isn’t for some because it’s not always the most balanced, but I like that aspect as it works well in a horror setting because some horror movie monsters are just better than the college students.

2 – Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition
Adventure games don’t have to be on a super grand globe trotting scale, they can be in a small town or even in a mansion that is full of madness. But you’re unfolding a story and a mystery that gives me a sense of adventure because playing a scenario once, I don’t know what is going to happen and where cultists might show up or what my main goal is even sometimes. As the game unfolds that and explains it to you and as you unravel the mysteries, it just makes a great gaming adventure experience. And even if you play a scenario once, because of the app, you can go back and play it again and things might end the same, but the house will be set-up differently and there will be still be some adventure to the game. Mansions of Madness just really gives you that immersive experience of exploring and solving a puzzle/mystery unlike so many other games.

1 – Gloomhaven
I believe that this was left off someone’s list on the Dice Tower top 10, because it didn’t have enough exploring, though, I feel like Forgotten Circles expansion definitely has more of that feel. But I would argue that there is a sense of exploring through the story as you complete the various dungeons and you unlock more story and more places to go. Plus, even though you’re a mercenary team who keeps retiring, you still feel the progression of story and adventure that I’m looking for and love in a game. It has that RPG-lite feel to it with leveling up your characters and getting better at what you can do, so the whole thing feels like you’re taking those characters on epic adventures. While the mechanics for combat can be a bit crunchy as you figure out what tops and bottoms of cards to use and what order to play them in, the whole thing just works really well for me.

Now, I could have gone with more as well, Sword & Sorcery just missed the list. The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth or Lord of the Rings board game would work as well. Even something like Pandemic Legacy I considered for the list, but that one doesn’t give me as much sense of adventure. And I have more adventure games waiting for me to play, Apocrypha, Folklore: The Affliction, Aeon’s End Legacy and more are waiting for me to give into, plus more coming in the mail at some point in time like Oathsworn, Dice Throne Adventure (it says it in it’s name) or Frosthaven next year. So clearly I love these big epic sort of games.

How about you, what are some of your favorite adventure games? Are there any on the list that I should checkout?

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Most of these games are going to be pretty simple and easy to play with a range of ages and are often called introductory games. While, if you are a seasoned gamer, these might be a little bit lighter than you’d want to play all the time, but it’s a good compromise with family who might only want to play very light games or “classic” games like Uno and Monopoly.

Carcassonne – This game can actually be a bit more challenging for new players when it comes to placing out their meeples. When do they do it, where should they do it, how do farmers even work? But the tile playing piece is something that is very easy for people to pick up on and fun for people to do. It’s a fun game for that tile laying aspect, and once they have down the basics of the scoring, and scoring at least towns and monasteries are easy to understand, Carcassonne is a good game for the whole family.

Castle Panic – This game skews a little bit younger, but maybe you have a younger sibling or niece of nephew who you want to get into gaming or a grand child. Whatever the relationship might be, Castle Panic is a fun game. It’s simple as to how it works, it’s cooperative, so you can all plan out things together and that makes it easier to teach as well. Definitely, once they start to get the idea of the game hang back and let them take the lead, but this tower defense card game is a lot of fun, and easy for younger kids to pick up. There is also My First Castle Panic for even younger kids.

Century: Golem Edition – I picked this one over the normal version, Century: Spice Road, because the gems in this game are cooler than cubes in Spice Road. It’s a pretty simple game of collecting gems, getting cards, using those cards to get other types of gems, and turning in gems for golems. This game has a bit more going on to it, but the turns are very fast, and since you can only do one action per turn, it makes it easier for people to figure it out as they go along. The table appeal is great for this game as well.

Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger – Now, this one is completely different and might be too silly for some people in your family. But in Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger, you are going through chapters of this story, making choices and rolling dice once in a while to see if you can complete a challenge. This is really a story telling game, and it would be an easy one to play just sitting around a living room without needing a table. This game is light, easy and cooperative.

Dice Throne Season 1 – This game is just silly in a very different way than Choose Your Own Adventure. This one is also about the opposite of a cooperative game as you’re having different contestants fight against each other in a dice chucking game. But it is also familiar because it’s yahtzee style rolling, just with more added onto it. It would be a fun one to face off different characters against each other and see who can do the best. The games also play fast, so you could do a small tournament if you wanted and had the right group. The art in the game is also fun, and the dice are great. I’d recommend the first season of the game though, as the second season has more complicated characters.

Draftosaurous – Draftosaurous is a game that I’ve only played once, but it was a ton of fun when I did. In it, you are drafting dinosaur and scoring them in different ways. The ways are simple and you can easily explain them as often as you want in your game without slowing down the game. Plus, the dinosaurs are meeples, which look amazing. So it has a cute factor going for it as well. The game also plays very quickly, so you might end up playing a few in a row. But the game isn’t so simple that people will get board with it fast.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle – People will be drawn to games with an intellectual property (IP) that they recognize. And Harry Potter is a very popular IP that most people are at least familiar with, even if they haven’t seen all the movies or read all the books. This is a deck building game, so it has a little bit to teach with deck building if people aren’t familiar with it, but the first few games, which have bad guys from the first few books, keep the game simple so that people can understand it. Eventually you get more complex things, but by then, people should be familiar with deck building enough that more won’t complicate it for them. It’s a good fun game, and has a little bit more than some other games.

ICECOOL – This one, if you’ve followed my top 100 and my thoughts on the game, shouldn’t be a surprise to you. Icecool is a great family game that anyone can play. Even younger kids can play with only possibly needing to make the rules simpler just for scoring, and go with more of a tournament rule style. This game is just about flicking penguins around and having a silly good time. If you want to play it on a table, you can, if you want to play it on the floor you can. Adults might find it a bit too simple, but it is meant to be silly fun more than a strategic match.

Just One – Yes, it showed up on the stocking stuffer list, but it works well here also. It’s a cooperative party game, and instead of just pulling out the old ones at your parents or grandparents place, Just One offers something new. The game play is easy and the components are nice. The concept of the game is also easy to teach. This game should work well in most settings and with a wide age range, from Grandma and Grandpa to your 10 year old cousin.

Lost Expedition – Another cooperative game, but I really think that for family weight games, cooperative games are great. They are good introductory level and for people who might not like conflict in games, they work well. Lost Expedition is all about going and trying to find the lost city of Z. However, there are plenty of challenges you have to get through each morning and evening as you hike. If you don’t ration out your resources, you might die before they get there, but with some clever path construction, you can rush to the end before you run out of resources. The game is quite easy to explain and the artwork is nice. This game also helps keep alpha players from running the table.

Machi Koro – I’m not going to suggest any Machi Koro in particular, but if you think people will like the game, I recommend the legacy version. For me, that game seemed to play faster than the base game and being able to make the game unique to the person who is getting it, that’s something that is cool and most games don’t do. This is a tableau building game, but you can more easily explain it that you are trying to build up the best town by getting buildings and building monuments. Turns are pretty fast in Machi Koro, especially when people start to become familiar with the cards. And the cards are pretty simple, so it shouldn’t take too long. While not my favorite game, it’s a good one that is easy to teach to a lot of different levels of players.

Pandemic – I’m sure you expected this one to be on the list, but it’s a good and straightforward cooperative game. It’s also one that even if people aren’t gamers, they might have seen before. It’s also challenging enough that the person you give it to won’t get bored with it or beat it too often right away. And when they start to, there are expansions that can be added to change up the game to make it more challenging. This game of player powers and curing diseases also has a theme that people will be able to understand quickly, even if the game is fairly abstract.

Potion Explosion – The toy factor to this game is high with all the marbles in it, but the game itself is pretty simple. You are collecting marbles to complete potions to help you get more marbles. The game play is simple just pulling out a marble, if like colored marbles hit, you get those marbles, and it can cascade onward. These marbles you then use to complete potions, and the potions give you more things that you can do to get more marbles. But the game is really about pulling out those marbles and letting them hit and getting a whole bunch of marbles when they keep on doing that. Turns are pretty fast, and the concept is easy to grasp, especially with so many app games doing something similar.

Sagrada – A game about making stained glass windows, this looks great on the table with translucent dice that actually help make it look like stained glass. Another drafting game, this one you are taking dice that match specific colors or numbers to try and fill in your stained glass windows. The scoring for the game is pretty simple, and while there are some powers that are a bit tricky, there are plenty of simple ones you can start with, and I often choose those for the first game. The concepts are simple, like numbers and colors can’t go next to each other orthogonally (in rows and columns), and you have to place the die you drafted next to another one, diagonally or orthogonally. Definitely one that most people will pick up on fast.

Second Chance – Another one from the stocking stuffer list, but this is my roll and write (or flip and write as the case might be) for the list. Second Chance just works well because of the Tetris like shapes and people understand trying to fill in an area as much as possible. It is pretty solitaire as what other people are doing won’t affect you, but the game is pretty when it’s completed and a fast game to play. Generally I don’t see people only playing a single game of it, you at least play two, one for each side of your sheet before being done.

Small World – Another classic modern game, Small World is an area control game where you get points for all the areas that you have and other scoring, such as what type of area you are in. It’s a silly game that can be a bit mean, but the nice thing about how this game can be mean is that if you are almost kicked off the board, you can go into decline, get a new race next turn and go onto the board. That’s the only tricky part about the game, in my opinion, knowing when to go into decline and understanding that it is your whole turn. The combinations of races and powers are what then make the game stand out, because who doesn’t want flying halflings or maybe seafaring dwarves. You never know what combination you might get or want.

Sushi Go Party! – Now, this is a bit more complex than just normal Sushi Go, but because of that complexity, if offers variability which will keep it coming to the table longer. In the game you are drafting different types of foods to create the best meal and scoring points over three rounds. Depending on what type of food it is, it’ll score you points in various ways. Maybe you want three sashimi to get 10 points, but will get three of them, whereas tofu scores you points for two of them, but if you get a third, you don’t get any points, because you don’t want to fill up on tofu. The game can take a little bit to get into, but if you play a pretty basic set-up to start, people will catch on fast.

Ticket to Ride – The Train Game, as a lot of people call it, is a classic family weight game where you’re trying to complete various routes. This game has a little bit of strategy in it, mainly in picking your routes to help create the longest route, but beyond that, it’s collecting sets of cards and building your train routes. What works well in this game is that the rules are simple and you only do one thing on your turn. This helps people not be bogged down by all the options available. While this game doesn’t have a ton of variety in the base box, there are other maps you can get for it that’ll change up how the game works once you’ve played through the base game enough. But this one is a good one to add to parents or grand parents collection and play once or twice a year around the holidays.

Wits & Wagers – Final game on the list, and other party game. This one is my favorite trivia style party game, because you don’t need to be great at trivia. You just have to know, who in the group, might know the answer or be closest to the answer, without going over. All the questions have answers that are numbers, so you put down your answer and then bet on what answer you think is right. If you are correct, you get your money back plus some, depending on how close to the middle it was, so you can bet on your answer, if you think you are right, or you can go with the person who you think might know more about it than you do. It’s a fun and sometimes funny game that is good for a whole family and because of how it works, can play with younger kids.

Now, there are so many more family games out there. I left some off the list that I like, simply because I had something similar on the list. Dice Throne could have easily been left off the list for King of Tokyo that has a similar mechanic, but I also wanted to provide some different options as well. Hopefully you can play some of these with family or friends over the holidays, and maybe give them to them as a gift so that they can introduce them to their friends and grow the board gaming hobby.

What are some of your favorites from my list? Is there a game that you’ve found works well as a gift?

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