Board Games
Ancient abstract-strategy games and modern designer classics — Monopoly, Catan, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Chess-adjacent abstracts and hobbyist masterpieces from Twilight Imperium to Wingspan and Gloomhaven.
62 sports in board games.
7 Wonders
Modern card-drafting civilization game. Designed 2010 Antoine Bauza (French designer). Repos Production. 3-7 players, 30 min. Won 30+ awards including Kennerspiel des Jahres 2011 (first ever). Players build one of the 7 Ancient Wonders civilizations across 3 ages via simultaneous card drafting. Duel 2-player version 2015.
Abalone
French sumo-on-a-board — push your opponent's marbles off the hexagonal grid.
Acquire
Classic mid-century business game — found hotel chains, merge them and cash in your stock.
Advanced Squad Leader
The gold-standard tactical WWII wargame — squad-scale, hex-and-counter, with 400+ pages of rules.
Aggravation
Marble race game — get four marbles home while sending your opponent's back to base.
Arimaa
Chess-piece game designed to be harder for computers than for humans — move up to four steps per turn.
Arkham Horror
Cooperative Lovecraftian horror board game. First edition 1987 Chaosium; second edition 2005 Fantasy Flight Games; third edition 2018. Set in H.P. Lovecraft's fictional 1920s Arkham, Massachusetts. 1-8 investigators battle to prevent Ancient One from awakening. Extensive expansions + spinoffs (Eldritch Horror, Arkham Horror LCG, Mansions of Madness).
Axis & Allies
Second World War strategy game — control the Allies or Axis and win the war on a map of 1942 Europe and the Pacific.
Azul
Abstract tile-drafting board game. Designed 2017 Michael Kiesling (German designer). Plan B Games. 2-4 players, 30-45 min. Won Spiel des Jahres 2018 (Germany's game of the year). Players are Portuguese tile-layers decorating royal palace walls with Moorish-style zellige tiles. Elegant, beautiful components, easy to learn.
Bao
Complex East African mancala-family game. National game of ZANZIBAR + TANZANIA. Uses 4 rows × 8 pits (32 pits total) + 64 seeds. Considered ONE OF DEEPEST MANCALA GAMES — vastly more complex than Oware. Two forms: BAO LA KISWAHILI (competitive, deep strategy) + BAO LA KUJIFUNZA ('learning bao', simplified). Long tradition Swahili coast + Great Lakes.
Battleship
Two-player naval guessing game — each player secretly places a fleet of ships on a 10×10 grid and takes turns calling coordinates to sink the opponent's fleet; first to sink all opponent's ships wins.
Carcassonne
Modern German tile-laying board game (2000) — players draw + place terrain tiles building a shared medieval landscape of cities, roads, monasteries, and farms; place 'meeples' to claim features and score points; 2001 Spiel des Jahres winner.
Catan
Modern German-style strategy board game for 3-4 players, in which players collect resources by rolling dice on their hex-tile settlements, then trade and build to reach 10 victory points first.
Chaupar
Ancestral Indian cross-and-circle game — the classy elder cousin of Pachisi and Ludo, played with long dice.
Connect Four
Two-player vertical strategy game — players drop colored discs into a 7-column × 6-row grid, aiming to be first to connect four of their color in a row (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally).
Dam
North African draughts variant — 10×10 board (Turkish Dama has 8×8), pieces move orthogonally, kings 'fly'.
Diplomacy
Diceless negotiation game set in 1901 Europe — the outcome depends entirely on the alliances you make and break.
DVONN
Stacking game from the GIPF project — build towers on top of red 'DVONN' pieces or watch them vanish.
Fanorona
Madagascar's national board game — capture by approach or withdrawal on a 5×9 diagonal grid.
GIPF
The flagship of the GIPF Project — push pieces onto a hexagonal grid and form four-in-a-row to capture.
Gloomhaven
Cooperative dungeon-crawler campaign board game. Designed 2017 Isaac Childres. Cephalofair Games. 1-4 players, 60-120 min per scenario, 95+ scenarios in 200-hour campaign. #1 BoardGameGeek ranked game for years (2017-2021). Kickstarted for $4M+ (record at time). Includes 17 unlockable character classes + retiring characters + world map + legacy elements.
Hex
Two-player connection game on a hexagonal grid — connect your two opposite sides to win.
Hive
'Chess without a board' — build a growing hive of hexagonal insect tiles and surround the enemy Queen Bee.
Hnefatafl
The most famous Tafl game — 'King's Table' — the strategy game of the Viking world.
Kalah
Modern mancala variant — the version most Westerners think of as 'mancala', with a large 'kalah' store on each side.
Ludo
Beloved family race game — 2-4 players race 4 tokens each around cross-shaped board from home to center goal. Derived from ancient Indian PACHISI (~6th c). British 'Ludo' patented 1896; global adaptations: Parcheesi (USA), Parchís (Spain), Mensch ärgere Dich nicht (Germany), Ludo King mobile app (2016) reignited global craze during COVID-19.
Memoir '44
Card-driven Second World War tactical game — command squads across historical battle scenarios in 45 minutes.
Monopoly
The world's best-selling property-trading board game — buy, rent and mortgage streets until you bankrupt every opponent.
Morabaraba
Southern-African Nine-Men's-Morris variant — 12 pieces per side, diagonal lines, and 'cows' captured on mills.
Nine Men's Morris
Ancient 2-player abstract strategy game — dates to Roman Empire (200 AD Egyptian rooftop carvings). Players place + move 9 pieces on 24-point grid; form 'mills' (3 in a row) to capture opponent pieces. Solved as draw (2003); still played worldwide. Featured in Shakespeare (Midsummer Night's Dream).
Onitama
Two-player chess-lite — each player holds two move cards, swapped every turn with a shared fifth card.
Oware
West African MANCALA-family board game. National game of GHANA (Akan people). 2-player strategy game using 2 rows of 6 pits + 48 seeds. Ancient — possibly 4000+ years old. Considered solved mathematically (2002) — first-player win with perfect play. Popular Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Caribbean.
Pachisi
Ancient Indian cross-and-circle race game — the direct ancestor of Ludo and Parcheesi.
Pandemic
Iconic COOPERATIVE modern board game by Matt Leacock (Z-Man Games, 2008) — 2-4 players work TOGETHER as disease specialists racing to cure 4 diseases before outbreaks destroy the world. Revolutionized cooperative board gaming; Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (2015) is BoardGameGeek's #1 game of all time. 8M+ copies sold.
Parcheesi
American brand-name version of Pachisi — two dice, four home tokens each, and a classic 'blockade' rule.
Power Grid
Heavy Eurogame — build power plants, buy resources, connect cities on the grid, and power the most cities.
Quoridor
Race your pawn to the opposite side of a 9×9 board while placing walls to block your opponent.
Renju
Professional refinement of Gomoku — five in a row, but with opening restrictions to balance the first-player advantage.
Reversi / Othello
Abstract strategy game invented 1883 in England — 2 players place black/white discs on 8×8 board; flanking opponent's discs converts them to your color. Simple rules ('A minute to learn... a lifetime to master'); huge in Japan; WOF World Othello Championship since 1977; computer-solved for perfect draw (2023).
Risk
Classic strategy board game of global military conquest for 2-6 players in which armies dice-battle across a stylized world map of 42 territories on 6 continents.
Root
Asymmetric wargame with cute forest animals. Designed 2018 Cole Wehrle. Leder Games. 2-4 players, 60-90 min. Each faction plays completely different rules (Marquise de Cat controls territory; Woodland Alliance uses guerrilla revolts; Eyrie birds have programmed decrees; Vagabond adventures solo). Kyle Ferrin's cute art masks brutal wargame. Cult favorite; multiple expansions.
Royal Game of Ur
4,500-year-old Mesopotamian race game — pieces travel a 20-square track, propelled by tetrahedral dice.
Santorini
Build the Greek island — move a worker one square, add a block, and climb to the third level to win.
Scythe
Alternate-history 1920s strategy board game — 5 factions in dieselpunk Eastern Europe compete for territory + resources + stars. Designed 2016 Jamey Stegmaier (Stonemaier Games). Artist: Jakub Rozalski. 1-5 players, 90-120 min. BGG Top 20 game; multiple Dice Tower / Golden Geek awards.
Senet
One of the oldest known board games — race pieces along a 30-square board, decided by throwing sticks.
Snakes and Ladders
Universal children's board game — 2-4 players race tokens from square 1 to 100 by rolling dice; ladders shortcut up, snakes drop you down. Originally ancient Indian MOKSHA PATAM (~2nd c BC) with SPIRITUAL/KARMA themes teaching virtue vs vice. British Victorian adaptation 1892; Milton Bradley 'Chutes and Ladders' 1943.
Sorry!
Card-driven race game — move pawns from start to home, and say 'sorry!' when you bump an opponent.
Spirit Island
Cooperative anti-colonial strategy game. Designed 2017 R. Eric Reuss. Greater Than Games. 1-4 players, 90-120 min. Players are SPIRITS defending native Dahan from European colonizers. Reverse-Colonial theme — you're the resistance. Complex + heavy game. TOP-10 BGG ranked cooperative game. Multiple expansions (Branch & Claw, Jagged Earth, Nature Incarnate).
Stratego
Hidden-information war game — set up 40 pieces, hunt the flag, and don't step on a bomb.
Sugoroku
Japanese race-game family — 'ban-sugoroku' (backgammon-like) and 'e-sugoroku' (illustrated race boards).
Surakarta
Indonesian strategy game with looping corner tracks that let pieces spiral around to capture on the far side.
Tabula
The late-Roman backgammon — the immediate ancestor of the modern game.
Tafl
Family of asymmetric Norse strategy games — a king and defenders must escape, attackers must trap them.
Tak
Fictional game brought to life — build a road of your pieces from one side of the board to the other.
Terraforming Mars
Modern strategy board game — players play corporations terraforming Mars by raising temperature (-30°C → +8°C), oxygen (0% → 14%), and creating oceans (0 → 9). Designed 2016 Jacob Fryxelius. FryxGames + Stronghold Games. 1-5 players, 90-180 min. Multiple award winner. Top BGG-ranked strategy game.
The Game of Life
Spin the wheel and live a life — college or career, marriage, kids, retirement. Whoever ends richest wins.
Ticket to Ride
Modern strategy board game for 2-5 players in which players collect train cards to claim railway routes across a map, connecting cities for points and completing hidden destination tickets.
Trouble
Roll the die under the Pop-O-Matic bubble — Ludo-style race with a snap-domed built-in die.
Twilight Imperium
Epic 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) space-empire strategy game. Designed 1997 Christian T. Petersen; Fourth Edition 2017 Dane Beltrami. Fantasy Flight Games. 3-6 players, 4-8 hours. Featured on stream shows, cult classic. TI4 sold 200,000+ copies. Top-3 BGG ranked game. Considered pinnacle 'epic' board game — dedicated all-day event.
Wingspan
Modern engine-building board game about birds. Designed 2019 Elizabeth Hargrave (first prominent female Kennerspiel des Jahres winner). Stonemaier Games. 1-5 players, 40-70 min. 170+ North American birds; expansions add Europe (2019), Oceania (2020), Asia (2022). Sold 1M+ copies; Kennerspiel des Jahres 2019 winner.
YINSH
Fifth game in the GIPF project — form five-in-a-row rings on a hex grid to score.
ZÈRTZ
Give-away game from the GIPF project — force your opponent to hand you the marbles you need.