5 Board Games to Bring to Gen Con

Each one of the games is going to be for a specific situation. Some might overlap what they can cover but you want a variety of games. The other big thing is that they need to be small enough. They might not all fit in a backpack at once. But if you know your plan for the day, you’ll know which ones to have in a backpack.

The Drop In And Out Game

This game is one that people can join or leave as they come and go between events. One that could really be set-up on a table and as people are able, it just continues throughout the day. But, again, it needs to be a small enough game to easily fit in a backpack.

My choice for this game is Just One. This is not the smallest box on the list. But, and this might be sacrilegious to you, you don’t even need the box. All the components could fit in a Ziploc bag half the size as the box.

But Just One works well for people to drop in and out of. You play cooperative in this party game of trying to guess the word. Rounds take three to four minutes. And at the end of the day you’d just have a pile of words that you got, or didn’t throughout the day.

Waiting by Yourself Game

Sometimes, though, you have a few minutes where you have downtime. Normally I just wander a random part of the dealer hall. But that’s not always an option. And you want to play a game that takes the five minutes between when one event has ended and your next one starts. That is what this game is for.

Grove is the solo game that I recommend. A lot of people would say any Button Shy Game as well. Which that’d be high up there for me because Sprawlopolis fits into a pocket better. But I always have a backpack at Gen Con, so Grove fits in there and it’s a fast solo game of layering cards. There are other small games, so it’s more, what small solo game do you like.

Everyone Can Play Game

Next up is a game that everyone can play. Doesn’t matter if you have two players or fifteen players or thirty players, everyone can play. For this I want a game that isn’t too difficult but there is no requirement that this game is short or just a party game. Something like Wits and Wagers works well as a team game. That is if you want to go the party game direction.

But I am think that Cartographers (though owning the big box makes it harder) is a great option. This is more of a game and a bigger roll and write experience. You are making a map, as the name would suggest, and scoring based off of the season that it is. The cool thing with this roll and write style game is that there is player interaction. A monster card is flipped, we all pass our sheets and you put that monster on my sheet. That way you can mess over your opponents as you can.

Brain Burning Filler

This category is probably an overlooked done. And I think some of that is for fair reason. But last year I got to play a game that probably should have been a crunchy filler length. This is a game that won’t take too long, doesn’t need to play a lot of people, but it has meaningful and tough decisions.

My brain went to a roll and write game where everyone is playing stuff out at once. But one with a higher complexity and shorter time than Cartographers. But I ended up with Hanamikoji as the game. This won’t always work as it’s a two player game, So an honorable mention is Ganz Schon Clever or one of the games in that type. But either game can play fast, there are good decisions. And with Hanamikoji it’s a ten minute game or a twenty minute game, rarely more. And it’s a brain burner with the amount to read your opponent and what they want.

The Let’s Play A Game Game

Now, the final category is a game where you just want to play a game. One that doesn’t need to take twenty minutes or less. One that doesn’t need to handle a large crowd of people. This is for when, in the evening, you want to play a game, you don’t want to learn new rules, so you pull this one out of your backpack and you’re good for an hour or so.

My choice is Floriferous a set collection, card drafting game. It’s a small game, smaller than some of the other ones on the list. In it, you are collecting flowers and scoring cards to see who can score the most points. It’s not a complex game, but there are some fun twists on it. When you draft a card from a row that determines what order you draft next turn. And you choose between drafting or maybe more when you draft scoring cards. So you might not have many and just flowers that work well, or will you get higher scoring?

Games at Gen Con

Now, you might be done with gaming by the time your day ends. So you might not need more games for playing at Gen Con. But I find that I often have that group to play with in the evening, though, not every evening. And some evenings are just earlier to bed, because, well, sleep is needed.

The other reason you might not want as many games is that you’ll buy games. Maybe this is more of a buy list for you at Gen Con to fill in those categories. That way, as the weekend goes along, you find more and more games to play with people. I know that’s some of what happened last year. I played Mythic Mischief was a game game because someone picked it up that day. And I played Ready, Set, Bet as a bigger group game as someone had that one.

So, determine what you need. Determine, if you meet up with a group who is bringing games. It’s a little bit awkward to be at a gaming convention and for no one to have a game on them.

What games do you find work well to carry and play at conventions?

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5 Small Box Board Games

Say Bye to the Villains

I think that I’m about the only champion for this game. Alright, that’s an exaggeration, the person who taught me the game really likes it too. Say Bye to the Villains is a small box card game where you play as Samurai who are trying to take down villains. I talked about it in my Top 100 2022 Edition recently.

Some people will find this a frustrating game. It is not an easy game to win. If I were to guess, I’ve played the game 15 times and I have yet to win. But it’s a lot of fun. Each Samurai plays differently, so they train differently. You spend time researching the villains and trying to get everyone set-up. But the game is just tight enough that you always feel like you just need a tiny it more information or time. One of these days I will win.

Mesozooic

Mesozooic is really cheap to find right now. I don’t remember when it came out, but there are copies floating around out there at a good price, and I see it on sale often. But I like this drafting and timed game, it just feels different.

In this game you draft cards to build a dinosaur zoo. This is not that unique. But then you put out the cards you drafted and create a sliding puzzle with them. You have 45 seconds, I believe, to get them shifted around, like a sliding puzzle, to score the most points possible. And the player with the most points after three rounds wins.

I don’t like real time games. But Mesozooic works for me. You get your points from drafting and the real time puzzle aspect is important, but also just light and fun. The real time works because it doesn’t feel like a pressure on the game.

Patchwork Doodle

Out of all of them on the list, this is the most likely to be heard of. Board Game Geek even did a video play through of it on their Game Night show. But I really enjoy Patchwork Doodle as a roll and write game. Mainly it is a very simple game. You are making a quilt in it by filling in Tetris polyomino style shapes.

I think that makes this one better for them than something like Second Chance, which I believe came out first, is this one offers you a few more choices. You use up to 4 powers throughout the game. And those can really save you from having to pass on a shape or to get that big square of your quilt. Fun and family friendly small box game.

Floriferous

This is a newer game on the list, but from a smaller publisher. And I want more people to know about it and play it because it does some cool things. Plus it’s a very pretty looking game with all the plants in it. But let’s talk about the two things that I like.

Firstly, I like that it’s drafting and drafting where you draft your scoring cards. So you can decide to get more flowers which might score you points for their symbols or other scoring cards you’ve drafted. Or you can draft another scoring card that might give you more points. It’s a fun puzzle.

I also like deciding when to draft something that’s less ideal. Why would you do that? Because there is an order that gets set by how far down the column you go for the next round of drafting. If I’m below you on the column you go before me next time. And maybe that scoring card or a planet is perfect for me in that next column. So do I hold out and take a worse card to make sure I get that really good one.

Age of War

And the last of the five games we have Age of War. This one is different from all of the others. It’s basically a Yahtzee style die rolling game where you are trying to collect different castles of fortresses. The ones you collect give you points.

This also has two different things that I really like. Firstly, you can steal buildings from others, it makes it a very in your face game. But it’s light and turns go fast, so it doesn’t feel as bad as a big game. I also like that you can try and collection castles of the same color. If you do, you flip them, they are worth a few more points. But the big thing is once you flip a full set, they can’t be stolen anymore. It’s simple but fast and fun.

Final Thoughts

There are always going to be small box games that are overlooked. There are a lot of reasons for that. Sometimes it’s just because you don’t notice them on a shelf. Put Age of War next to Wingspan and Wingspan is immediately going to catch people’s attention. That’s just because of the size of the box, so it’s naturally going to happen.

Other times and this is more just on some gamers, they ignore small games. The idea is that a small box can’t pack a big punch. Well, some of these games do pack a good challenge and a punch. So don’t just assume that a small box game is bad or simple because it’s in a small box. Give them a try too.

What are you favorite small box games? Which ones would you say are often overlooked?

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The Games

You’ll have to watch the video to find out what they are, but all games that I really love and all of them are in small boxes, I think the largest box was still smaller than the Just One box for size comparison. I also did skip all the roll and writes in my collection. I can and will do a Top 10 of that overall on Malts and Meeples coming up here, because I have played more than ten roll and write games, so I didn’t want to create that overlap.

Okay, I will at the very bottom put down all the games that were in the Top 10 list, and you can see if you can guess the order. Also, let me know in the comments what some of your favorite small box games are. We had a few one ones tossed out there on the live stream with Tiny Epic Galaxies, Mountain Goats, and more. I like games that come in smaller boxes because they are easier to take places, so finding about more is good.

The Beer

Of course there was a beer, this time it was Aqua Fuzz by Indeed Brewing Company out of Minneapolis. Aqua Fuzz is a hazy IPA that has a nice balance of tropical flavors to it. Hazy IPA’s are a hit or miss beer for me. While I love IPA’s, the hazy IPA’s can often end up being too sweet. This comes from some breweries adding in fruit juice to give it more of that tropical flavor. It also provides more of the hazy look that they are going for. However, for me, that causes them to be too sweet. And as we have talked about before, I do not like sweetness in my IPA’s, at least to finish.

Actually The Games

If you don’t have time to watch through the video, save it for later, and you want to see the list now, here are all the games on the list in no particular order.

• Parade
• Claim
• Say Bye to the Villains
• Silver Amulet
• Hanamikoji
• Point Salad
• Cross Clues
• Skull
• Ohanami
• Onirim

Take a stab at what order you think I put them in and watch the video and let me know how close you got to being right.

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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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