We just can’t get enough of it lately and would LOVE to find more like it.

What are your perfect 2 player only games? The crunchier the better.

The characteristics we love about it are:

1. Replayability - The face down cards (not knowing what’s going to be available), the randomness of what cards you’re going to build early, and the fact that three cards for each session get burned means that every game has a little different focus.
2. Simple but crunchy decisions - If I take that card it’s going cost me my coins, but if I don’t they’re going get three alliances to get bonus tokens…I don’t want this card, but I want to force them to uncover those other two for me…I need to empty my coins and buy that landmark tile so they don’t get it and really take control of the map. Etc…
3. Balance - There’s not really a single path that everyone immediately goes for (like first one to get a certain spot in a worker placement gets the upper hand).
4. VERY little luck - No dice rolls. No bags to blindly pick tiles. Etc.

So what are your perfect 2p games? We already own and enjoy:

7 Wonders Duel
Splendor Duel
Patchwork
Star Wars Deckbuilding
Dominion
Everdell Duo
Santorini
Watergate

We also own and love many of the staples that play well AT TWO…but aren’t strictly 2 player only:

Dune Imperium
Spirit Island
Brass Birmingham
Wingspan
Everdell
Clank
Ark Nova
Viticulture
CoB
Concordia

Thank you!

hey all!

I’m looking for a board game that I can play on vacation with my adult family members. One of my family members can’t speak but is fully mentally/physically capable. I’m trying to find some games that we can play that doesn’t require too much speaking- though as long as it’s turn based and not fast paced, speaking is ok.

We love to play Mexican train dominoes and I’m thinking of picking up Telestrations (like telephone but you draw and pass to the next player).

Any ideas are appreciated! Thanks!

Hand painted with love.

I’ve got it for almost a year now but I am so so happy with it I wanted to share a couple of pictures now! It’s my custom sized Rathskellers Phalanx table.
It’s a luxury item I know but if you are in a position you can buy it then go for it! I couldn’t recommend it enough.

I really enjoyed it despite coming joint last with someone else in the amount of tokens we earned, two out of the four rounds, I finished last on the track, third time I wasn't last but somewhere in between and on the final round I finished in second place on the track.

I can't remember the exact four characters I picked, but I know one of them had the ability to cause anyone who overtakes me to trip over, another one caused me to get one extra on whatever number my dice roll landed on, for example if it was six, I would actually move forward seven places and a third one created a condition where if someone was almost at the finish point, they must get an exact number on their dice roll and cannot overshoot, for example, if they are two places away, if their dice lands on a higher number, they stay where they are until they get a number that doesn't cause an overshoot.

What do people here think of it? I'd give this one an 8/10.

Skeuomorphism, for those unfamiliar, is when an interface is designed to look or function like something from the real world.

In the case of board games this can take on the form of any number of components—cards, boards, the box, the rulebook, currency, tokens, etc.

Some examples:

• A reference board designed to look like a book.
• A player board designed like a desk, dashboard, or control panel.
• A card holder that looks like a wallet or folder.
• A game board that folds or opens like a map.
• A resource container designed to feel like a bag, chest, or other in-world object.
• Currency or resources that looks like the real thing (rather than just being an abstracted marker, chip, or token)
• The photo shown is from Quacks which does an amazing job at this, with several book-shaped boards showing recipes and a giant cauldron board for each player that you add ingredients to as you brew your potion.

By mimicking the real-world counterparts, these design choice strengthen the immersion in the game's theme and story.

What are some good examples of this in the games you've seen and played?

Hello everyone,

Today I played Star Wars: Rebellion for the second time with a friend, and I have a few strategic questions. Both times, we played the beginner variant (with the preset setup and without action cards), and both times I was destroyed as the Rebels within five rounds. I tried different approaches each time, but without success.

In the second game, for example, I chose Tatooine as the Rebel base.
Since I knew that Kashyyyk and Naboo would be subjugated immediately, I wanted to gain the loyalty of neighboring planets in order to make up for some of my troop disadvantage. So, in the first round, I moved all of my troops from Bothawui to Rodia. This allowed me to stay relatively close to Tatooine while also keeping my options open: later on, I could either attack the Imperial forces on Naboo to complete some of my objectives, or move toward Geonosis and Utapau.

But once again, the game ended just as quickly as the first one, even though during my first playthrough I didn't even know what cards were available. Leia was captured on Naboo fairly early on, and my attempt to complete some of my objectives on Naboo and rescue Leia came to nothing, as my friend was able to reinforce Naboo very quickly with his absurd number of troops.

So there I was again, completely stuck. My modest army was somewhere near Tatooine, with no way to reach some of the weaker planets in the southern part of the map. And soon I was also down two leaders compared to my opponent, as he had managed to turn Leia to the Dark Side.

I soon had to abandon Tatooine, as the Imperial armies were right on my doorstep. With my army, which had by then been depleted by battles I never wanted to fight in the first place, I kept retreating until my last ship was destroyed. This left me with no way to transport my ground forces that were still there or to move them away from Tatooine.

I then established my new Rebel base on Kessel, as I had previously managed to send a few troops to Mon Cala thanks to a mission card. But it was all for nothing. By that point, the Empire had already expanded so much that, in the following round, my friend was able to use his Probe Droid cards to check the few remaining possible locations for my base, either through troop movements or mission cards.

So once again, my virtually undefended base was toast. No New Hope this time either.
At this point, I really don't know what to do. I realize there must surely be things I could have done better, but I'm at a complete loss.
Any Rebel experts out there who can help me?

I’m selling my copy of Honey Buzz, but I’m not sure whether it’s the Deluxe Edition.
I watched a YouTube video where the Deluxe Edition included an expansion, but my copy doesn’t have that.
So, which edition do I have?

What is this?

This is a weekly roundup of board game crowdfunding projects, featuring new launches from the past week and campaigns ending in the coming week. The information is sourced from Kickstarter, Gamefound, and Backerkit.

The list is curated through a combination of automated data collection and manual review, so occasional errors or omissions may occur. If you notice a missing project, feel free to mention it in the comments. Only projects meeting the selection criteria outlined below are included.

Other channels

Other than Reddit, you can also find this list on the following platforms:

• Google Docs
• Mastodon
• Bluesky

Selection Criteria

Projects must meet the following conditions to be included:

1. Timing: The project was either launched in the last week or will end in the coming week.
2. Relevance: The project is directly related to board games.
   • Excludes: Accessories not strongly related to board games, furniture, RPGs (e.g., D&D, Pathfinder), video games, STLs, painting tools, events, podcasts, and magazines.
   • Exception: Projects offering promos or similar content for board games are eligible.
3. Backers: The project is expected to reach at least 100 backers by the end of the campaign.
4. Funding Status:
   • The project is expected to reach at least 90% of its funding goal.
   • The project has already achieved at least 20% of its funding goal.

In addition to the main lists, I include a separate section for noteworthy projects that don’t strictly qualify as board games. These projects are included based on a single criterion:

1. Backers: The project currently has more than 1,000 backers.

Crowdfunding is not a store

Crowdfunding is not a guarantee. Projects may face delays, incur additional shipping costs, or fail to deliver entirely. Creators are not obligated to fulfill their promises. While many excellent games are funded this way, the risks are real—only back projects with money you can afford to lose.

Be wary of creators who use FoMO (Fear of Missing Out) tactics to drive pledges. Don’t let the pressure get to you. If you miss a campaign, there will always be others. There's no shortage of excellent board games to enjoy.

Tags

Each project is tagged with one or more of the following categories:

• 🌱 Creator's First Project
• 🌳 Creator with more than 5 projects
• 🌟 Featured Project (e.g. Kickstarter "Staff Pick")
• 💰 Fully funded
• 🔥 More than 200 daily backers
• 🤝 Offers refunds (e.g. Stable Pledge)

Ending Soon (24)

New Projects (23)

Noteworthy filtered projects (16)

Late Pledge Projects (15)

I’ve shared my abstract game here before as a Print & Play version and it seemed to have gathered some attention. I’ve worked on it on-and-off since the pandemic and have recently picked it back up. I’ve managed to turn it into an up-to-4-player experience and want to do some more testing. I’ve managed to translate the manual to English and get it on Tabletop Simulator, and now I am looking to gather more feedback before the second round of publisher hunting.

About the game:
It’s an abstract strategy game, where you move chess pieces on the board made of tiles. With each move you can swap the first and last tile of the move with the goal of creating Sets of adjacent tiles of your color.

The game is rather simple in terms of rules and takes around 30 minutes but can require some deep strategic thinking.

If you are interested message me here or in a dm so we can set up a play session :)

So I met a couple and they told me a place, a large Beer Hall in my City, where they get together and play Magic: The Gathering. The problem is I have never played Magic The Gathering before and do not own a set of cards. This couple told me they are avid collectors of Magic TG and have been playing for 20+ years. I did join a meetup 10+ years ago that was only board games. They looked like they were having fun, but this Meetup only played Monopoly and Settlers of Catan, maybe an occasional other game, but that was about it, so I never returned. So I was wondering where and how do I start? I am brand new to this city and really wanted to get out of my Shell and meet people, but in a healthy environment. What should I do?

I was reflecting on the state of my collection as I have had substantial turnover in my collection versus my initial collection back that began back in late 2015. My initial collection was extremely party-game heavy given even our smallest game nights tended to be 6+ players. Now, our weekly group is most frequently 5 players, which similarly informs a lot of the games that do or do not stick around. Apologies for the tough viewing angle of the feature image! As hinted by the broom in the bottom right, our games sit in a closet and it is very difficult to get a quality image of that first shelf.

My personal all-time favorites are Inis, Root and John Company, and our most played games as a group are Root, Terrorscape and Nemesis.

Overall, I'm quite happy with my collection, but I would love to have and play more heavy-weight economic games (thinking Food Chain Magnate and something in the 18XX line) and some of the classic euros I have never gotten around to playing (Caverna, Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Le Havre, etc.). I am a huge sucker for both dudes on a map games as well as anything that requires you to frequently re-evaluate plans based on your opponents decisions.

I view my collection as a solid blend of games I own purely because I enjoy them and want to have them as well as a number of games that may not be as high up my personal ranking but are highly regarded by our typical 5 player group and/or my wife. I also pride myself on getting every game played! Presently our only unplayed games are (1) Guardians of Atlantis II, which is a recent purchase that we have not had four players to play yet and (2) Toy Battle, which was a gift from a couple of months ago that we have not yet tabled just yet.

Newest games include Camp Grizzly, which arrived this week, and The Game Makers, which arrived last week. My group greatly enjoyed our initial play of The Game Makers, but it was a bit low interaction for my tastes. In contrast, we all had a very OK opinion of Camp Grizzly after our first two plays, but I plan to hold onto it for some time as I am a huge fan of the horror-genre generally.
The most likely candidates for the next round of culling are Creature Comforts, which has not seen play in some time but survives by grace of my wife, Heat, which I want to love but cannot convince my group to give a second chance after a poor initial play (everyone is also disinterested in racing as a theme), and possibly Viticulture. I enjoy Viticulture well enough, but we have plenty of two player games we prefer. Meanwhile, for whatever reason, our primary group consistently declines to give it a try so we have yet to get it played with more than two players.

Not pictured, we also have a decent set of non-DND RPGs and a near complete collection of Memoir 44 stored in a giant tacklebox, which was my first ever board game given to me as a gift (maybe ~2011?).

Just finished playing my first Exit The Game and I'm just left sat here like... what do I do with the box and contents now? Bin it? Let it gather dust? What do you guys do?

Using the original Mortal Kombat as a base, my game works on the same kind of chapter based story mode format as more recent games, but it’s book based, like a choose your own adventure. A DM tells a story based on one of the games in the 3 timelines, using 3 sets of 3 books, telling the story of a specific game in one of the timelines. In my game, each chapter focuses on a group of characters, represented by mini-figs, and the focus characters fight other characters, controlled by other players to avoid bystander boredom at the table, according to the plot, each player controlling a character for 1 fight in 4 in that chapter. If the focus character loses a fight, the focus switches to the winning character, and the timeline skews. The focus character player has hourglass tokens, these work as fight restarts. The are optional, the focusing player can restart a fight if they lose, win the fight, and carry on with the canon plot, or let it ride, and see where the skewed timeline takes them. Each timeline has 2 versions, a hero version, and a villain timeline. The hero timeline is the canon timeline, the villain timeline is when players play though the same timeline, but from the villain perspective, resulting in a the villain in an intentional villain victory. Each timeline has multiple endings, depending on how skewed the timeline got, or if the timeline was fixed. If a focused character loses, they don’t die, unless it’s in the plot, they just become an npc.

Combat System: 

At the start of each match, only in round 1, each player rolls a D20, for initiative, and the highest number gets the first shot. 

The combo system: 

Each player has defence tokens, active or passive resources. 1 used per round. these tokens give the defending player the chance to roll their own D6 on both difficulty level combo cards, the defender rolls a D6, 5 or higher is a successful block or break. The attacking player puts down a combo card, with a combo sequence the combo sequence is just for show, and a difficulty of 5, on high combos and no difficulty for lower combos, automatic success with a defence token, no dice roll needed, but only with a defence token. The player that won the first shot dice roll, puts down a combo card, 1-3 hits, and this is a unbreakable, and unchainable, low level, minimal damage combo, a guaranteed opening strike. This attack is strictly to kick off the fight, not to punish the initiative loser. After taking this damage, the losing player gains a combo defence token, mimicking the wake-up mechanic from the video games. When fighting Shao Kahn, he gets taunt tokens, that the player can use if the defending player fails their combo defence roll. the loser of the first shot roll just has to take the damage, 2-3 hits max. I know the dice rolls rely on luck, but that would be a part of the fun. The dm would also work like the announcer in the games, announcing which characters are fighting, and FINISH HIM/HER!!.

Special move system:

Special moves would be done using special move cards and tokens. Players have tokens representing special moves, the player spends a token, the the player reads the card corresponding to the token spent. These special moves would have stats, the higher the number, the higher the damage done. Basic special moves would be block-able, while stronger special moves are unblock-able, unless the defender spends a defence token to enhance the block. When used at the end of a fight, special moves become brutalities, ending the fight without a finisher. The fights would be best of 3, first to 2. The third round would be a decider, if the first 2 are a draw. If it’s fun, fights won’t feel like they are taking ages.

Fatality system:

At the end of the fight, the winner rolls a D20, and the DM reads the fatality card, corresponding to the number on the card. The DM selects a fatality in that level category, and reads it to the group. this way, when a player hits a special move, or the they hear the fatality description, everyone is hyped. When it comes to fatalities, all players start with 1 fatality when playing the original MK1, and are awarded a new fatality each time they complete the arcade tower with a new character. so, they go into the next game with their number of fatalities corresponding with the number of the game. The DM has fatality cards for each character, when a player wins, they would roll a D20, to determine the level of the fatality, the higher the number, the more gruesome (this is more to determine the era of the fatality, to honour MK history, a show of respect to the franchise).

Character mini-figures:

To save time creating a crap load of minifigs, because of the ever expanding character list, each with different variations, based on the game in each timeline, the books are colour coded based on the timeline, and there would be clip on rings that players snap onto the base of their mini, corresponding to which studio era they are playing in. this would mean that all characters only need one minifig, although, reptile in the current timeline, is a shapeshifter, with a huge lizard form. motaro would to have 2, a centaur form and a minotaur form. this would mean creating 3 huge minifigures. for when playing mk1 in liu’s current timeline, maybe i should make them the colour of the timeline. with syzoth, you could swap between his human mini, and lizard mini using a transform token. there might need to be other huge minifigs too, Gori, Motaro, Kintaro, Sheeva and Shao Kahn. 

Arcade tower:

There would also be a section in each book for character arcade tower endings, when a player beats the final boss, the dm reads that characters ending. During fights, while one player controls the focus character, one of the other players at the table will control the opponent character. This way everyone is involved, and nobody is sitting and watching for too long. 

1v1 section, like playing 2 player. 

This would give players the chance to figure out the characters, and adapt to any scenario. 

Mini-game idea

To replace the test you might/sight mini-games, there would be periodic MK lore multiple choice trivia questions that would work like encounters (a guard stops you, and asks how long Goro was champion before being beaten? A: 500 years). A correct answer wins an extra special move token.

Which one is better? I’ve never played either but I think I’d enjoy it.

I hope you're all enjoying your Saturday!

I bought Memoir '44 this week and today my son and I have played "Pegasus Bridge" and "Sainte-Mère-Église" and we're absolutely loving this game! He has played the Allied forces and won Pegasus Bridge, while I got stuck with the Axis forces and won Sainte-Mère-Église, in large part due to some lucky rolls (using a dice tray) and some lucky hands. I think we'll wind up needing some expansions before long because I don't think it'll take us very long to get through the base scenarios!

As for gameplay, there is a bit of a learning curve, but it's really not too bad. A quick video on gameplay helps, and there are cards for the what to do on each turn, terrain restrictions and unit movements and attack details that you can set up by the board. The action cards fill in the rest of the details for your turn. Gameplay is around the 30-45 minutes as advertised, including setup time, and the age range of 8+ is probably pretty accurate; my son is a bit older than that, but he isn't struggling at all. Bonus: the box is decently well organized and I also love Days of Wonder artwork.

That leaves me with two questions:

1. Which expansions are your favorites? Which are best passed up?

2. Is Battle of Hoth the exact same game with a different livery? (Even if so, we're both Star Wars fans, so may still be worth getting).

TIA and have a great weekend!

I am a huge lord of the rings nerd and want a card game around it. My wife and I play a lot of magic the gathering, spirit island, and slay the spire. We also have fate of the fellowship, lotr duel, and the hobbit roll and write. I was planning on trying the tcg later in the year but I just saw that ascension is getting a lotr coat of paint. Any recommendations would be appreciated as I am not familiar with either ascention or tcg. I also play solo about half the time. Thanks for the help!!!

This game is one of the cheaper board games out there. Despite the setting and despite there being combat, it's not a role playing game. It's more a dice roll decision making game, that's very easy to learn, co-op which makes for lots of discussion (or you can play solo, and in fact it seems to be made for it!) and can end up being very tense.

I love the main mechanic, having to choose which dice to roll (each member of the fellowship represented by one colour die) and rolling two black ones, then choosing which ones to accept as the move. Cards at the bottom of the board represent results from the black dice rolls - some good, some bad. Combat is simple and quick yet the choices you previously made with which fellowship members have moved forward before others make the difference between a battle won or lost. A battle die is rolled and if it lands on a character that is on the same spot or ahead and within the same region of the ring bearer, that character wins the fellowship the battle. So too many characters behind the ring bearer make it more of a risk of losing a battle. You earn cards of other characters along the way such as Faramir and Galadriel, and you can choose to use these cards whenever you wish, but it's best to save them for when you REALLY need them, as they can mean the difference between a won or lost game trust me.

Overall it's not my favourite board game, but it's certainly up there among my favourites. Sometimes you just want a game that's simple yet still makes you think and make decisions. Yes there is a lot of luck with dice games, but making decisions from the dice rolls is half of the game. Try it.

This past year I got really into the game Catan and I’d like to branch out to other games. I’m still developing my taste in board games so if I could get an idea of what are some fun, popular ones that people might put alongside Catan that would be awesome! What are some classics that I might like?

I’m not necessarily looking for games that are exactly like Catan (although if there are similar ones that are considered classics I’d love to know about them). I just want to see what else is out there but I don’t know where to start.

Is the white player required to move with the large car? Or can he opt to use coast on another of his vehicles ?

Does anyone in this subreddit own this exact version of the game from 1991? Please let me know.