Great First Board Games

I got started with board games the same way a lot of guys my age, fresh out of college, did: I went on reddit and asked what I should be buying, and I ended up with a wide variety of games that were a mixed bag. I love some of them and still play them! Others, well, look: I got Assassinated too many times consecutively in one game of Citadels to enjoy it. That’s just the way things are. But while I’ve been building out these content hubs, I’ve been wondering what kind of games I would recommend to someone just getting into things? This led to a few things that I thought were important:

  • Low rules overhead and quick setup: Millennium Blades is likely my favorite game. Millennium Blades takes 30 minutes just to set up. We’ve all experienced the nightmare of someone promising that a game is going to be fun and then it’s just you listening to the worst audiobook of a rulebook you could imagine, where the narrator is getting progressively more nervous. Let’s avoid that.
  • Engaging art or theme, preferably both: There was a meme going around for a while about beige games with a dour-looking medieval white man on the cover, and if that’s not a recipe for a fun time I don’t know what is. Thankfully, with literally thousands of board games coming out each year, we can do better.
  • Preferably an hour, tops. If you’re starting a game night with your friends, you’re risking a lot of social capital just to get them to the table. Let’s make their time (and yours!) worth it. You can slowly trick them into Twilight Imperium.
  • I’m going to recklessly slander some mechanics as “unintuitive”. I love trick-taking as much as the next guy (probably significantly more than the next guy), but there’s a lot to wrap your brain around to be “good” at trick-taking. Sorry, The Crew; I still love you. Similarly, you’ll notice a common “great starting game” is not on my list, and that’s Azul. I find the scoring to be super frustrating for new players, and, well, that’s a big chunk of the game. 7 Wonders has a tech tree? We can do better.

If you’re looking for gifts for a friend new to gaming, this is the hub for you. If you’re reading this from inside of a game store because you’ve never bought a game before, good luck! But more seriously, that’s a very exciting place to be, so just … have fun with it. This list gets longer every time I look at it because this is one of the funnest (and most competitive) spots in the industry. Everyone wants their game to be the first (or first ten, or first one hundred) on your shelf.

As far as complexity goes, Quacks, Realm of Sand, and Burgle Bros. are going to be at the high end of that curve, and Catch the Moon, ICECOOL, and Sushi Go Party! are going to be at the lower end of that curve. Plan accordingly, but mostly, have fun. If playing more makes you interested in more complexity, check out some of the other games I linked above! They’re good ones, also.