My partner and I love playing Wingspan. A game about bird may not sound great but it’s full of strategy without being too hard to pick up. It’s competitive, but just total points at the end, you can’t screw each other up during play.

Been really into Azul lately. Pretty simple to explain to people, and the game pieces are very pretty and high quality

Might be a slightly separate category, but I still think of it as a board game. I really like Call of Cthulhu. Tabletop RPG systems in general are typically good fun as long as you have a good group of people to share the time with, but mechanically I think CoC is particularly good. It is simple to learn and the mechanics really assist in the tense storytelling.

Not so much a traditional “board” game, but I’ve been a lifelong enjoyer of Munchkin! It’s a whimsical dnd-esque card game with (almost literally) hundreds of different themed versions, from Space to the Wild West to Cthulhu even.

Ticket to Ride is our go to.

Gloomhaven came out at the perfect time in my life- after my party days but before my marriage/kid days. I had a friend group that would play at least one scenario per week, and sometimes we’d just spend an entire Sunday playing. That’s been my best experience so far.

I wish I could play Frosthaven with them but we’ve all moved away and I don’t have a group that would ever be consistent enough right now.

Since it doesn’t seemed to be mentioned by anyone (or I missed it), I’m going to say Robo-Rally… Programming your robot through a racetrack on a moving factory floor using drawn command cards, bumping into others, knocking the off course and ending in a totally wrong spot yourself because you miscalculated a step…

We’ve been playing Camel Up a lot. It’s nice because there is some skill and a good amount of luck involved, so no matter your board game experience, you have a shot at winning.

Agricola is my favorite but it is pretty complex so we don’t play much.

Machi Koro without a doubt! It’s like monopoly but it card game form.

I mostly play big campaign games with my partner, for example currently we’re playing Frosthaven and Oathsworn (and have Aeon Trespass lined up). Other favourites are Aeon’s End, Spirit Island, Terraforming Mars. Me and my friends have a strong preference for cooperative games!

Some more low key games that we tend to bring out with friends who don’t game a lot are Isle of Cats, Thunderbirds, Namiji, and The Crew.

We have a wider circle of friends who are boardgame enthusiasts, so we go through a rather lot of them. Some stick, some don’t. These we play regularly and have a lot of fun:

• Brass: Birmingham
• Codenames
• Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
• 7 Wonders: Duel
• Race for the Galaxy

There are more that made an impression on me, I remember playing them a few times, but do not want to play them again (Do you know that feeling? :D ), eg. Eclipse (the galaxy-wide battle 4X preparation-takes-as-long-as-playing-and-playing-takes-a-whole-day strategy), Agricola, Mice and Mystics…

Hive is a modern, fun take on chess with a dynamic board. Its super fun and unlike chess its not figured out and people just don’t bother to throw a “book” at it. Every board game convention I try to find someone wirh Hive and it’d awesome!

So, with the caveat that my “gaming group”, more often than not, is my kids and therefore we’re not up for a 6 hour rules-intensive cardboard-based cutthroat brawl, here are some that I like:

• Tiny Epic Galaxies: Blast Off : this is a fun little dice-based game with cute imagery. You need to get control of planets to gain points (21) and you have some resource-wrangling opportunities to get to, and then claim the planets before your pesky competitors get them. This also has the advantage that you can play it solo.
• Star Realms : a deck-builder from a couple of old-school M:tG Hall of Famers. It’s really a two-player game, but it’s got passable options for 1 to 4 players. Each player had a basic starting deck and a common randomised trade row is populated from a shuffled deck. Your need to knock your opponents life down to zero by purchasing spacecraft and bases from there trade row to augment your combat ability, whilst avoiding your opponents similar attempts. There are four card types that allow you to level-up your trading, health regeneration, combat or enemy-annoyance factor. I love this game, but recommend the Frontiers version as it’s a little better balanced.
• Hey, That’s My Fish! : a fast, surprisingly cutthroat and, to be fair, rather physically finicky game but it’s a lot of fun! It’s a hexagonal-tile based game with up to four teams of penguins competing to harvest fish from a rapidly dwindling ice floe, where each penguin leaves a trail of melted-ice destruction in their wake! This one can lead to fisticuffs if someone manages to bisect the ice, leaving an opponent stranded and fishless!
• Wreckland Run : this is definitely outside your preferences, it’s solo-only. That said you asked for people’s favourite board games, and this is one of mine currently 🙂 It’s a Mad-Max-esque campaign theme in which you pick a vehicle and driver (giving you a set of core abilities) and attempt to fight your way through a series of vehicular brawls by judicious dice placement. And luck. Despite the fact that the initial rule book was an unmitigated disaster, I’ve really enjoyed playing this one and I’m currently battling Chapter 4 after not too many attempts at the previous chapters!

There is a board game I played years ago at a comic shop, and I can never remember the name of it. I only played it once but it was super fun. Kind of like if Freelancer were a board game. You had a huge game board with a bunch of planets and you picked up missions. I dont remember what the win conditions were, but I remember I had a lot of fun with it.

I recently got the Stardew Valley Board Game for my birthday and it’s a blast. I was never really in to board games, but I always wanted to play one that is cooperative rather than competitive. Stardew Valley still manages to be a thrilling experience and quite a challenge (at least for a novice like myself).