A Board Game Playlist: Big Games

Lots of tabletop real estate

Well, it’s February — the longest shortest month of the year. Since hibernating isn’t an option — why not? WHY NOT? — I make a conscious effort to pursue joy in midwinter. It makes me happy to write about things that make me happy, so I’m facing February head-on with multiple posts about some of our favorite board games.

I’m launching off with a few of our “bigger” games, in no particular order. These are games that require some setup (and, alas, corresponding cleanup). They also tend to have a steeper learning curve at first. Some look like the madness of a gamer gone badly wrong. Eventually it all makes sense, and you find yourself immersed in a world of bird watching, interplanetary exploration, or even paranormal investigation—finding your best path to victory against your husband who usually wins everything. (Or is that just me?)

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Wingspan: Engine-building.¹ Wingspan is a new game that has swept through the gaming world. It’s beautiful, from the watercolor playing mats to the hundreds of cards with original art of birds. Like any good modern game, Wingspan provides various avenues to victory, from your bird cards to your bonus goals, and it’s a very well-balanced game. It’s rare (although by no means impossible—looking at you, Atlas Daughter) to crush your opponents with an outsized victory. Several expansions bring in even more birds and even more mechanics. We have played this game so often, both in person and online, that I gave myself a midwinter break to preserve my love for it.

Clank!: Deck-building.² DJ really loves this game, and he hasn’t won a single time. That’s how fun it is! The premise of Clank! is that you’re an adventurer delving deep underground to collect treasures. You build a deck that allows you to fight monsters, escape ice caves, win money, gain health—and sometimes generate clank. And since there’s dragon in these depths who doesn’t like noisy, clanking adventurers, you risk losing health during the next dragon attack. It’s a fun, replayable game that our two boys dominate.

The Castles of Mad King Ludwig: Tile-laying.³ You are King Ludwig, and you are buying “rooms” to build your castle. Some tiles give you money, some points, some allow you to take extra turns — it all depends on which tiles are next to one another, and what your bonus cards grant you. There are many ways to score points. The tiles are all based on actual rooms in actual German castles, and are fascinating and beautifully illustrated. The Christmas I bought this game, we left it out on the table for the entire holiday, so we could just sit down and replay it anytime we wanted to. It’s still a favorite.

Between Two Castles: Tile-laying, multi-player. This game is, apparently, a mashup of Between Two Cities and The Castles of Mad King Ludwig. We’ve never played the former, while we’ve played the heck out of the latter. You are once again building a castle… well, you’re building two castles… each one with a different opponent. Where you lay your tiles determines your score at the end. The game is an unusual mix of competitive and cooperative, and manages to balance the two pretty well. Because it works best with four players, it’s a lesser-played game in our library.

Above & Below: Worker-placement,⁴ role-playing. What I mostly love about this game is the sheer volume of creativity that went into it. You are part of a small village and must increase your harvest, your buildings, and your population throughout the game. That’s the “above” part. But you also can choose to venture into the underground cave system, the “below” part. Here, you’ll meet new characters or new enemies and have to choose how to resolve the encounter. These encounters give out very good rewards, but can also end in penalties. An accompanying booklet details each of the encounters, and the “right” way to resolve them isn’t always cut-and-dried. The encounters are randomized, so you can play the game many times without repeating the encounters too often. This game is best played with three or more people, and it takes a pretty long time. Not ideal for an after-supper game night, but a good rainy afternoon game.

Orleans: Worker-placement/deck-building. This is one of those mad-gamer setups. Four personal player mats, three central player mats, five progress tracks, a stack of wooden houses, two stacks of tiles, and about a million tokens — this thing must be a beast to learn and play! No, just to set up. Actual gameplay is pretty straightforward once you get the gist of the game. You live in 13th-century France, and you are increasing your fortunes through trading, increasing technology, scholarship, and working the land. Each turn, you draw your workers out of a bag and then decide how best to use them. Placing workers gets you more workers and more benefits. Watch out, though — there are taxes and harvest tributes, and three times during the game, the plague roars through and could take one of your workers. There is a lot to keep track of at first (not the least of which are the progress tracks), but it’s a good time.

Space Base: Engine-building. This game combines good card placement with the luck of the dice. With nearly every roll, you gain some benefit; but the better cards you buy and place in your “base,” the better your benefits. It even has an insta-win card with a seemingly far-fetched chance of working… except that my younger son has managed to build his “engine” to insta-win this game at least twice. (There was also a card that unfairly penalized all opponents by removing 4 points every time its number was rolled. I gave that card to our pet bunny, who ate it.)

Terraforming Mars: Engine-building. The bulk of this game depends on the cards that you buy, ideally that work together to benefit you the most. It takes a lot of decision-making and hoping that what you’ve set up now pays off later. This is another game that has many avenues to victory, thereby catering to different playing styles. It’s also one of those long games; you have to clear out a good chunk of time to play it all the way through. It’s fun. But I’m still annoyed that the currency, instead of having a cool Martian-sounding name, is called “mega-credits.” So boring.

Mysterium: Asymmetrical cooperative.⁵ This is twist on the classic game Clue, but with less deduction and lot more intuition. A group of mystics and mediums gather at an old house where several murders took place over the years. They want to know who, what, and where. Lucky for them, a ghost wants to help them solve the mysteries. The problem is, the ghost can communicate only through strange, confusing visions. The player who is the “ghost” hands out cards with surrealist art to each player, hoping that certain details or vibes will stand out clearly enough that the player will choose the correct culprit, weapon, or room. The other players can discuss possibilities, but the ghost can’t join in. What this means is that the ghost sits behind her cardboard screen and internally screams as the players overanalyze each card and miss her point. But sometimes—sometimes it clicks! I really love this game, but it’s definitely for a certain type of personality and gamer.

These are great holiday games, the ones you break out when you’ve got an afternoon of leisure. But for those occasions when you don’t have time to lay out eighty-four food tokens or shuffle two hundred bird cards, there are smaller games that are just as fun. But that’s for another post. And maybe even another post after that! Whatever it takes to get through February!

1. Engine-building: Usually a card game. Each card has a certain ability that is activated on each turn. The more cards you play and the better you synergize their abilities, the longer and more productive your turn becomes.

2. Deck-building: Each turn, you draw a certain number of cards, each one of which gives you some ability or benefit. Throughout the game, you buy better cards and get rid of lesser cards, so you build a better deck as you go.

3. Tile-laying: Instead of cards or tokens, these games depend on tiles. By laying them in certain places, or next to certain other tiles, you build your playing area and earn points.

4. Worker-placement: You accomplish goals by designating meeples to “do” certain actions. Because you have a limited number of workers, you have to choose your actions carefully so that you’re able to reach your goals.

5. Cooperative: All players work together to “beat the board.” They either all win, or all lose.