A Board Game Playlist: Playing Online
Let the internet do all the setup and cleanup
During the pandemic, our library hosted some adult game nights using the site Board Game Arena (boardgamearena.com). The game night fizzled after a few attempts, but not before DJ and I realized what a boon BGA was. It’s now part of our lives. Whether we’re sitting in our comfy spots in the living room, or voice-chatting over our laptops hundreds of miles apart, we can jump into a game anytime we’ve got half an hour. And BGA is always ready to set up a game, keep score, and clean it all up afterward. Here are a few of our favorite games to play online. The various types of game mechanics, as I understand them, are listed below.1
Viticulture: worker placement. You are an Italian family renowned for your wine... but so is your opponent. This game takes place in phases of summer and winter over several rounds, during which you plant vines, harvest grapes, make wines, and fulfill orders. You can do certain actions only during the right season, which makes reaching your goals a little trickier. DJ almost always wins this game, but on the occasions that I beat him, I’m very gracious about it. I just do a small victory dance.
La Granja: worker placement. Build your farm into prosperity, as you sell your crops in the marketplace, recruit helpers, raise pigs—and don’t forget to take siestas. Each turn of this game has three separate phases, and there’s a lot to keep track of. But it also provides different avenues to winning. DJ usually focuses on benefits from cards, while I go hard into fulfilling marketplace orders. Playing it online means we don’t have to handle all the little pieces, the dice, and the cards.
Feast for Odin: worker placement, tile laying. This game has it all. You place workers, lay tiles, play cards, roll dice… it’s a lot. We’re happy to let BGA automate much of the movement and keep track of all the pieces. That said, this is a fun game with many, many different things to do. As a Viking community, you can hunt, go whaling, weave cloth, raise livestock, colonize other islands, and go on the occasional raid-or-pillage for treasure. But be sure that, in all your gathering and accumulating, you’re able to offer a proper tribute to Odin at the end of each round. The BGA version even allows you to play solo, which is how I learned this game well enough to routinely beat DJ and my son.
Challengers: A fast and fun card game. It consists of seven rounds of what is basically a souped-up version of the classic card game War (or Battle): each person plays a card, and the highest score wins. Yet most of the cards have some benefit or ability, and sometimes you hit on the perfect synergy among your cards and can dominate the field. This game also has a solo mode.
CuBirds: set building. I lose this game a lot. I’m not even sure why; it’s not very complicated. BGA lays out several bird cards in rows. Players “capture” birds they want by bookending a line with matching cards and taking all in between. In order to win, you have to collect seven of the eight species of birds, or three sets of two different birds. It’s not a very tense or taxing game, and the art — which features cubist versions of various birds — is cute.
The Lost Treasures of Arnak: worker placement. Based on the Indiana Jones type of explorer adventure, this game has many different goals to keep track of. You build a better deck throughout the game, but you also advance on a track that gives you benefits, but you also uncover treasures and defeat monsters. Letting BGA keep track of all the cards, pieces, meeples, and scoring allows us to play this game in a reasonable time. It’s fun, and can cater to different playing styles.
Chocolate Factory: engine building. In this game, you literally build a better engine. You’re improving your factory to produce the chocolate you need to supply to various shops. The competitive version and the solo version are rather different in gameplay, giving you a different experience depending on how you play. The digital version of this game is a little less charming than the physical version, where you handle actual wooden pieces of chocolate and manually move them along a conveyer belt of tiles. But you also don’t have to clean it all up at the end.
Centuries: Spice Road. deck builder. You are spice merchant in search of exactly the right spices to fulfill orders and earn money. The spices (turmeric, saffron, cardamom, and cinnamon) are represented by cubes, and the orders are a row of cards available to whichever player collects the correct combination first. Meanwhile, each player collects engine cards, which allow them to exchange and upgrade their spices in order to get exactly the right combination to fulfill an order. This game requires strategy and forethought, as you decide exactly which order to play your cards to gain the spices you need. The artwork is lovely, a consolation if you happen to play with a husband who wins this game more often than is socially acceptable.
Hardback. word-building, deck-building. You are an author who is paid by the letter, and you want to combine your cards into words that will get you the highest payment. The more money you make, the better cards you can buy, and the more points you can score. There are a few innovations which make this Quiddler-type game distinctive. For one, nearly any card can be used as a Wild card. For two, the cards are one of four “genres,” and the more of a single genre you play in one word, the more money, points, or benefits you gain. This game also allows for competitive play, cooperative play, and solo play. I enjoy building my deck with different genres to see how their particular benefits can work to my advantage. And sometimes I throw away my opportunity for better points or money simply because I want to play this really cool word.
This isn’t a complete list of all the games we play and enjoy on BGA. But it’s February and my motivation is running out. I’ll leave you to explore the site yourself. For a very reasonable Premium membership, there are hundreds of games available, and most of them (not all) are adapted well for online play. I think I’ll go make myself some of the chai mix that DJ recently introduced me to, then play some solo rounds of Hardback or Feast for Odin and wait for spring.
Various Game Mechanics, as I understand them:
Cooperative: All players work together to “beat the board.” They either all win, or all lose.
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.
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.
Set-building: Collect cards of matching or diverse suits in order to fulfill a certain goal.
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.
Trick-taking: Classic card game mechanics. The first player “leads” with a certain type of card. Everyone else must “follow suit” or automatically lose. The highest number wins the “trick”—unless someone has played a trump card that beats all other cards.
Worker-placement: You accomplish goals by designating your markers (“meeples,” usually) 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.