The 22 best board games

The board game renaissance shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. As more titles leap from hobby stores into the mainstream it can be hard to know where to begin your personal journey into this fandom. You could just put money down on every hot new title that goes the crowdfunding route, but even then you’d run out of shelf space before long. That’s where Polygon can help.

Just as we’ve done for PC and console gaming, streaming television, and books, we’ve assembled here a comprehensive list of the very best modern board games currently available on the market. Ours is not an aspirational list filled with out-of-print classics and hard-to-find titles, but a living catalog that we update on a regular basis. We’ve done our best to touch on all the major genres as well, from hardcore strategy games to lighter family fare. The mix will change from time to time, so check back often.

For now, dive in and let us know your thoughts — and recommendations — in the comments below.

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Azul

Azul is a great game to keep around for chill game nights. This tile-laying game brings the history of decor to life. It is said that King Manuel I of Portugal was so inspired by the beauty the Alhambra Palace in southern Spain that he brought the tile decor back to his own palace. As a player, you’ll be similarly inspired to draw and design patterns of colored tiles to display around your palace (aka your game board). Specific patterns and complete sets earn you points, but wasting tiles can set you back. Once all the tiles are gone, the player with the most points wins.

Azul’s simple rules, straightforward turns, and endless strategy make it a fan favorite. Players of all ages enjoy the pattern building, plus it’s easy to hold a conversation and keep the game going. —Sarah Johnson

Blood Rage

The end of the world is here. Strategies are endless, but doom is inescapable. Can you strike a balance and adapt to your foes before the end of the third age? Guide your Viking clan to victory by going down in a blaze of glory!

The range of strategies and randomness of closed drafting — which helps to even the playing field at the start of the game — truly sets Blood Rage apart. Fans of area influence can choose to invade and pillage to gain control of neighboring territories. Combat-happy players can crush opponents in battle. Pacifists can even complete quests or lose fights to gain rewards. Drafting also occurs at multiple points throughout the game, allowing players to adapt and react to enemy tactics. In short, this game has something for every player and definitely deserves space on your shelf. —SJ

Cascadia

Cascadia isn’t just popular with Pacific Northwest natives. Everyone can enjoy the gorgeous game art and natural themes of this tile-drafting game. From the first draft, you have decisions to make about how to balance your ecosystem. Match terrain and wildlife to gain the most points and earn bonuses at the end of the game.

The appeal of Cascadia goes beyond the great art and popular ecological theme. Strategies are endless. Creating corridors, focusing on area control, and cornering endgame bonuses are all options. Plus, the hexagonal grid and random starting board generation help keep gameplay fresh. Keep it on hand for a relaxing night in, or to impress your friends from Portland when they visit. —SJ

Cthulhu: Death May Die

Imagine the climax of a Cthulhu mythos tale: a group of cultists chanting in unison as their malevolent ritual summons the hulking presence of a Great Old One. Cthulhu: Death May Die is exactly this, although here the players get to kick in the door and disrupt the ritual wielding Tommy guns and forbidden spells.

This game is over the top. It embodies the extreme of pulp Lovecraft that has become popular in recent years and on the tabletop. This absurd theater is where Death May Die lives, urging players to push their investigators to the brink of madness in order to thwart the machinations of evil and punch Cthulhu in the face. It plays out as one big finale, never letting up or slowing down. —Charlie Theel

Decrypto

Nothing starts the party like a little espionage, and that’s where Decrypto comes in. Your mission? To deliver a message to your team. You’ll have four cards with words on them in random order; these create the code. Put them together in a phrase to help your team guess the code. The opposing team will be listening to crack your code and intercept the intel. Think fast, and don’t give too much away, as two interceptions mean game over.

Not only are team games great for parties, but it’s always a blast to see word association in action. The number of ways my teammates can describe a pig always leaves me snorting. Decrypto is my go-to game to liven up parties and family gatherings. —SJ

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Dune: Imperium - Uprising

Based on the look and feel of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, Dune: Imperium - Uprising is the heir to a long and storied lineage of fantastic and ponderous Dune-themed tabletop games.

Like several other titles on this list, including Frosthaven and Undaunted: Stalingrad, the game centers around managing a small deck of cards that you’ll cycle through multiple times over the course of the game. Purchasing the best cards to go into that deck has everything to do with your own personal strategy, which can vary depending on what side of the galaxy you’re sitting on. Its battles are massive and brutal, with multiple sides vying for control of the eponymous desert planet in the field. But those fights are sometimes just a distraction.

This is the rare conflict-heavy strategy game that can be won without much conflict at all. Becoming an economic powerhouse is just as viable as mastering spycraft, and either approach is easily the match of even the largest sandworm. Compatible expansions include Dune: Imperium - Rise of Ix and Dune: Imperium - Immortality. —Charlie Hall

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El Grande

Rereleased with a shiny new edition in 2023, El Grande is the seminal work that came to define the area control genre. This is a cutthroat game where players are vying to succeed the faltering king in medieval Spain. You draft caballeros (knights) through clever card play to sprinkle the board with your influence and attain area majorities.

It’s insufficient to call this game influential. It’s one of the most popular Euro-style designs in the German wave of the ’90s. Nearly every subsequent area control game, from Blood Rage to Root, owes a debt to this classic. After nearly 20 years, this title is still wholly relevant with highly engaging gameplay. —CT

[Ed. note: As of March 2024 the reprint of El Grande is currently sold out, but we recommend dropping your email into the Asmodee storefront to be alerted when more copies become available.]

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Frosthaven

People love to play tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, but Dungeon Masters are hard to find. That’s just one of the reasons why Gloomhaven became a rising star in board gaming circles when it was released in 2017. The other reason? Its easy-to-learn yet hard-to-master deck-building mechanics. Its sequel, Frosthaven, refines the formula while adding loads of additional new content.

Frosthaven puts players in the role of hardy adventurers trying to bring a bit of civilization to a frigid and dangerous border town. As players level up they can retire from the game, opening up new options for character creation that expand the storyline as well as the mechanical options in-game. As you journey through the game’s story-driven narrative campaign, you’ll explore many different branching quest lines and more than 100 meaty encounters. It’s a more than 34-pound box of fun, packed by a literal submarine engineer to save space on your shelf — one that’s absolutely teeming with spoilers and surprises. —CH

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Heat: Pedal to the Metal

Heat: Pedal to the Metal burst onto tabletops in 2022 and immediately created an uproar. While a number of modern racing games have found some success, none have landed so hard and so fast as this excellent title.

Everything flows through your hand of cards. Each player is driving a sleek automobile from the golden age of Formula 1. You play a number of cards each turn depending on your current gear setting, and then scoot along the track a total amount of spaces equal to the sum of values played. If you push too hard or too fast, your vehicle will accumulate the titular heat. This jams up your deck and slows you down, creating a strategic conundrum as you analyze the risk and reward of burning through corners at high speed. Managing your deck is a delightful little puzzle that is streamlined and easy to understand. Combine this stellar system with fantastic components and a generous amount of content — including four tracks and several expansion modules — and we have one of the best racing games ever designed. —CT

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Monikers

Monikers is good rowdy fun. It incorporates elements of Charades, Taboo, and Catch Phrase. But it’s so much more than all of those. Played in teams over three rounds, the stakes rise progressively. In the first, you can say whatever you want to coax your team into guessing the right name. In the second, you can only say a single word as your clue. In the final round you can only pantomime.

The crucial quality holding it all together is that you use the same set of names each round. So even if you struggled to guess Count Chocula in the opening act, if you simply recall what occurred in the previous round you will have a leg up on the competition. Cleverly, the player behavior can form a throughline from beginning to end, as strong clue-givers will begin acting out certain gestures early in the game so they can reincorporate those specific tells in the third round. It’s a genius design and one which always produces laughter and mirth. —CT

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Nemesis

Every essentials list needs a blood-chilling game. Our pick is Nemesis. The gameplay focuses less on killing and more on finding ways to escape, avoid, or outwit danger. It is truly a survival-horror experience brought to life on your tabletop.

You and your crewmates each have unique skills and weaknesses. Working together is the only way to make it out alive. This mechanic drives cooperation but also leaves you open to the traitor’s deception. Time is of the essence, and the hostile organisms hunting for you get more difficult to defeat as you play. With a variety of scenarios and a great narrative arc, Nemesis will never sit on your shelf for long. —SJ

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Pandemic Legacy: Season 1

The original Pandemic, designed by Matt Leacock and released in 2008, is one of the best gateways into modern board gaming. Players must work together to quell diseases across the globe, carefully moderating their limited pool of actions to save as many lives as possible. Meanwhile, they must also take care to research a series of cures, in the form of suits of cards that, when combined, hold the clues to put these plagues into remission.

The Pandemic Legacy series, on the other hand — created with the help of Rob Daviau — turns that blissfully challenging cooperative game into a white-knuckled action movie. The 12-game arc included with Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 carries forward into a post-apocalyptic extravaganza in Season 2 before rolling back the clock for a prequel in Season 0. Any one of the trilogy will be well worth your gaming group’s time. —CH

Race for the Galaxy

This classic 2007 design from Thomas Lehmann has been incredibly influential. It helped define the tableau-builder genre, a style of game where cards are played to a personal area on the table. Cards are played to build a space empire that either leans into peaceful trade and economic development or military strength and aggressive expansion. Fused with this approach is interesting and synergistic technology development, resulting in a fantastic game with an expansive card pool and a great deal of subtle strategy.

Despite its small footprint and reasonable 40-minute playtime, Race for the Galaxy does present an initial challenge. While it’s not a complex game, it relies on a dense iconography system to convey the effects of each card. This cuts down tremendously on text, but it poses a hurdle for newcomers. Once learned, this game provides countless hours of gripping entertainment. —CT

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Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right

Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right did something extraordinary, smuggling a thorny wargame into the view of a large mainstream audience under a cute animal facade. The aesthetic is wonderful, leaning into a Redwall vibe that is gorgeously illustrated and paired with a perfect set of modest yet characterful components. The gameplay, however, is more elaborate and deep than the innocent surface.

The base game includes four distinct factions whose goal is to seize control of the woodland and establish their sovereignty. Each functions under their own unique systems. Separate components and rules govern their processes, making for an exceptionally difficult game to teach new players. The overall feel is that of a conflict-heavy area control experience, but each player must grapple with their faction’s unique demands and mechanisms in order to accomplish this. Over multiple plays, the emergent strategic depth is incredibly compelling, making for one of board gaming’s top wargames. —CT

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Sleeping Gods

Sleeping Gods has been on a roll. Quickly following the original title in 2021, Red Raven Games crowdfunded stand-alone sequels Sleeping Gods: Distant Skies and Sleeping Gods: Primeval Peril in 2023. The original is still the high-water mark, as this is one of the few tabletop options that has been able to capture the feel of open-world video games such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Players work together to control a crew aboard a steamboat that has become lost at sea. They wander a group of islands and visit locals to glean information about their mystery, solve problems, and acquire new items. You quickly learn that your crew must unearth a collection of dormant totems in order to awaken the slumbering gods and find your way back home. The overall experience plays out as a huge swath of side quests, with the game boasting enough content to support several playthroughs. Each individual campaign will take 20 to 30 hours to complete. This is a fantastic adventure game worthy of deep exploration. —CT

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Terraforming Mars

Terraforming Mars marries a delightful science fiction setting with sophisticated strategy. It puts players at the head of the various corporations intent on terraforming the Red Planet, raising the oxygen and temperature to foster growth and ultimately create a second home for humanity. It’s a visually compelling space as the barren planet slowly begins to adapt to your will before capitulating entirely in the endgame. The final result is a surface teeming with life, not altogether foreign to the environment of Earth.

What has cemented Terraforming Mars’ legacy is a gripping card system. Participants alternate playing cards to their personal area of the table, called a tableau, gaining ongoing bonuses and setting up synergies for the future. It’s a lengthy affair that rewards long-term planning and subtle strategic considerations. For all the effort it requires, it certainly rewards with a gratifying arc and spectacular conclusion. —CT

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The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

Mission Deep Sea is the sequel to 2019’s award-winning The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. Both are cooperative trick-taking card games where players collect cards of the same suit to score points. One of the most fascinating aspects of these two releases is how they teach the core concepts and strategy found in classic titles such as Hearts, Spades, and Euchre. Additionally, they broaden the reach of the genre by embracing a cooperative format, allowing players to puzzle out randomized challenges as a group with limited communication.

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea is the stronger of the two games, offering a completely revised and expanded set of task cards. This enormous deck of cards dictates the group’s objectives, such as requiring a specific player to win the trick with the blue nine or one player to win all of the tricks containing cards with a red suit. The creativity in the sequel is strong, and the breadth of challenge is extraordinarily satisfying. —CT

Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition

Now in its fourth edition, Twilight Imperium is the premier space empire epic. Based on the popular 4X video game genre, players control one of 17 unique factions in a bid to control the galaxy. This is ostensibly a wargame, as large fleets are constructed and battles are fought. However, much of the experience is posturing and negotiation in order to shore up borders and carve out an area of space worth defending.

This is a massive game. In addition to being quite expensive, it also will eat up a solid chunk of a day, clocking in at roughly six hours. You can expect an evocative narrative as alliances are formed and foes are crushed over the extended playtime. Twilight Imperium is an event, not something you pull off the shelf on a whim. When everyone is properly prepared, it’s unequaled. —CT

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Undaunted: Stalingrad

The Undaunted series by Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson has covered quite a lot of ground since Undaunted: Normandy was first released to rave reviews in 2019 — including its leap into the heavens with Undaunted: Battle of Britain in 2023. But the most fulsome experience in the entire range is Undaunted: Stalingrad; you’ll just need to hold your nose a bit to fully commit to its subject matter.

Undaunted: Stalingrad tells the story of the battle between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia during World War II, but it does so in an unconventional way. The core of the game is a short stack of cards that each player tends to on their side of the table. Only by playing cards from this deck can their units move and fire on the battlefield, and the number and type of cards in that deck must always be something that players pay close attention to. Get too many Fog of War cards and your best units can become pinned down, unable to either advance or retreat in the face of withering enemy fire.

Best of all, the game’s novel tile-based battlefields have been built from period reconnaissance imagery. It’s a landscape that players themselves will work to change over the course of a lengthy, yet easily repeated, legacy-style campaign. —CH

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Votes for Women

While games like Risk and Axis & Allies came to represent wargaming around the turn of the 21st century, the niche genre has moved on in quite a few ways. One of the best additions to the space are card-driven wargames, pioneered by titles such as Twilight Struggle, that used randomized decks off historical figures and events as wild cards that can shift the balance of power from one side of the table to another. But while that game can be a challenge for newbie players, Votes for Women provides a much smoother on-ramp by keeping the same armies-on-a-map conceit as its predecessors. Basically, it looks like Risk but plays like something completely different.

Votes for Women goes even further by delightfully subverting expectations. Instead of exchanging broadsides or artillery barrages, players will take on a social battle from the turn of the last century — that is, the battle for women’s suffrage. Just as in Twilight Struggle, here the cards are key. How will a late-breaking Union victory in the American Civil War impact the rise of suffragette Ida B. Wells-Barnett? How will Woodrow Wilson deal with the issue of women voters during the Red Scare? What if the 21st Amendment never gets repealed, and Prohibition remains the law of the land? The presentation is also buoyed by a collection of colorful, deeply charming suffragette-shaped meeples. —CH

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Welcome To...

Become the ultimate suburban architect in Welcome To... The paths are endless, but the goal is simple: Create the perfect neighborhood. Will you focus on building public spaces, duplicating houses, or elevating to estates? Find your favorite strategy and race fellow architects to the finish line.

Why keep a roll-and-write (or in this case a flip-and-write) in your stash? They’re easy to learn and support dozens of players at a time. Welcome To... also features simultaneous action to keep games moving. Random card draw and the variety of strategies add replay value to this retro game. Add it to your table for a fun, light strategy option. —SJ

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Wingspan

Elizabeth Hargrave’s critically acclaimed masterpiece Wingspan is one of the most satisfying ways to introduce friends and family to the world of modern board games. The nonviolent experience, created by an avid bird watcher, is bursting with Audubon-grade art by Ana María Martínez and Natalia Rojas. The components, courtesy of Stonemaier Games, include charming little wooden eggs and handy trays to keep all your bits in order.

While it may take a little handholding to get newbies up to speed, it’s one of those games that will stick around on the table long after you’ve finished your first playthrough. It’s also available digitally, including on Nintendo Switch and Windows PC. —CH

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Past Winners

• 7 Wonders
• Cash’n Guns
• Catan Junior
• Crokinole
• Codenames
• Descent: Legends of the Dark - Act 1
• Gloomhaven
• Hive
• Kingdomino Origins
• Klask
• Machi Koro 2
• Marvel Champions
• Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile
• One Night Ultimate Werewolf
• Quacks of Quedlinburg
• Rhino Hero Super Battle
• Snake Oil
• Splendor
• Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game
• Secret Hitler
• Space Base

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