HUUHtastic

Sheriff of Nottingham

3-5 Players

A simple bluffing game. The goal is to make the most money by bringing valuable goods to market; however, you're limited to 1 type of good each time, and definitely NO contrabrand. To enforce this rule, players take turns as the titular Sheriff, inspecting goods to see that they're all as declared.

And of course, as a public servant, he'd never be vulnerable to bribery, right?

Puerto Rico

2-5 Players

In this "worker" placement game, the goal is to earn the most victory points by shipping crops back to the Old World and building the largest plantation. On each player's turn, they pick an action the whole table will do, like producing crops, selling them to the local store, getting more "workers," and so on.

The trick of the game is to know when to pick your actions, so that it benefits you the most and the other players as little as possible.

Flash Point: Fire Rescue

2-6 Players

As a member of Flash Point, the goal is to work as a team and rescue at least 7 victims from a burning building, fighting fires along the way. With each player picking a different specialist and the fire raging more and more with each turn, teamwork is a must if you want to get everyone out before the building collapses.

In addition to the base game's 2 maps and 8 specialists, a multitude of other locations and characters can be added via the game's multiple expansions.

Munchkin

2-6 Players

The classic backstabbing card game: Munchkin features a race to level 10 by selling loot and killing monsters. While you can help each other in your journey, only one Munchkin can win, so expect to see a lot of spells and traps start to fly when anyone gets ahead.

The game also famously features dozens of expansions and boosters that are all capable of being mixed in together, so those who like Munchkin can find near-endless entertainment with it.

Boss Monster

2-4 Players

Flip the script on the typical dungeon crawling RPG, becoming the evil monster that lures heroes into their deadly lair. Each room contains a treasure that heroes are after and an effect that will hopefully help you kill them. Game ends once a player gains 10 souls, but be careful: if you attract more than you can handle, you'll easily stack up 5 wounds and instantly lose

The Red Dragon Inn

2–6 Players

The perfect game to test your adventuring party's mettle, Red Dragon Inn is a card game that depicts the rowdy tavern fantasy experience. Pass booze to each other from the shared drinks deck, and play cards from your personal stash to gamble, bash heads, and otherwise be a drunken nuisance. Whatever you can do to get your fellow players drunker and weaker until they pass out, or at least go bankrupt when it comes time to buy another round.

And don't forget to tip your waitress.

Citadels

2–8 Players

Citadels is a game that mixes both city building and deduction, as you and your friends race to see who can build the greatest kingdom in the land. In addition to drawing cards and spending gold to build, the game is shaken up by the use of mystery roles, which can either give you bonuses or shut down other players and their buildings for the turn.

Mystery roles are switched every turn and also decide the order of play, so the game has this great strategic element in trying to deduce which players would pick which roles and when.

King of Tokyo

2-6 Players

The giant monsters have gone into all out attack, as only one can be crowned the King of Tokyo. Your goal is to either demonstrate this by earning enough Victory Points or being the last monster standing. Play is conducted through the use of symbol dice, with each one dertermining what action you have available, and you gain VP through either dice combos or withstanding all attacks from would-be usurpers while inside Tokyo.

Cash n' Guns

4-8 Players

The loot's back at the warehouse and the heist is over, which means that fighting over it has just begun. Cash n' Guns is like a mix of Dirty Harry and Reservoir Dogs, where each turn consists of a Mexican Standoff (with REAL foam guns) to see who's going home with some loot and who's getting shot. Know when to shoot, duck for cover, or bluff your way with a blank to walk home with the most cash.

Ticket to Ride

2–5 Players

Become a railway tycoon and scramble to snake your way across the land in this classic route building game. Turns are simple: draw train cards that each depict a railway's color, then trade them in for that route once you have enough cards. The trick is to know when to save and when to play, as waiting to claim a 6-train megarail might give your opponents enough time to steal all the routes it'd connect to.

On top of this, it wouldn't be crazy rich tycoon games without an extra slice of betting: play is spiced up through the usage of contracts. Can you manage to stretch all the way from California to Florida, or will you stick to more meager expanses. The daring might win big, but watch out, as each contract deducts points if not fulfilled.

Tiny Towns

1-6 Players

Tetris, but with urban planning. On each turn, the current Master Builder picks a material cube that everyone will add to their Town Board. The goal is to be able to make a building with these cubes, based on the shapes depicted on each building's card. Each one has its own bonuses and combos, and leaving a space empty is worth -1VP each, so you best do well to plan your town out.

...and to adapt when everyone else ends up picking the same material multiple turns in a row, screwing with your building plans.

Betrayal

2-6 Players

Darkness haunts every corner in this scenario-driven game of, well, betrayal. The first half is simple, as you and your compatriots explore hallways and alleys looking for secrets and artifacts, building strength in the process. Take heed though: once enough omens have been found, one of your fellow players will be twisted into a traitor. What it can be varies from session to session, but the remaining players will face countless horrors trying to find their way back out again.

What's pictured is the Baldur's Gate variation, but play is roughly the same between the different versions. There's just a few suble changes between each one that result in large differences, like map generation and their overall pace.

Carcassonne

2-5 Players

The premise of Carcassonne is straightforward: you gain points by placing tiles to build roads, cities, and monasteries. The trick is that, to claim a structure, no other tokens (even your own) can be attached to it already, but you can place and claim an entirely separate tile and build it into someone else's structure.

While this sounds like it's hard to steal structures away, the amount of time it takes to complete one and the risk/reward nature of building larger and larger structures makes it a higher probability than you'd think. Then the tables are flipped, as you struggle to reclaim what you've lost. It's a highly strategic yet simple game of trying to maximize points while defending your investments.

The Castles of Burgundy

2-4 Players

While most city builders are concerned with buying materials and planning several turns ahead, Castles of Burgundy simply asks you to chuck dice and decide what to do with them. Roll a 4? Take a token from the 4 pile, sell a good with a 4 on it, or place a token onto a 4 zone. While the effects and choices you can make with those actions have a magnitude of depth to them, the actual way the game is played makes this one of the easier builders to get into.

Condottiere

2-6 Players

In a certian light, Condottiere is a card game that basically brings war to the game War. Play is simple enough: I play cards, you play cards, whoever played cards of a higher total value wins a territory on the map. There's additional bonus cards, like ones that double your cards' point values or lets you withdraw one back to the hand, but the core of the game is just adding up the numbers printed on the cards.

What makes the game interesting is that your hand doesn't refresh until only a single player has cards left, and victory is determined by how many territories you own (3 adjacent or 5 overall). This means that the game has quite the large betting element, as you need to play big to win a territory, but you might leave an opponent uncontested in a much more critical battle. It's a system that does well to capture the sense of getting your opponent to overcommit in a fight.

Settlers of Catan

3-6 Players

The most iconic mix of strategy, luck, and complete and total masochism. On each turn, you roll dice to see what zones on the map provide resources to adjacent settlements. You then use those resources to build roads to establish more settlements and get even more resources. The game ends once 10 Victory Points are earned, which are acquired through bulding settlements, upgrading them into cities, or alternatively purchasing development cards.

The issue is that the entire game is built around getting screwed over. Build a road a certain way? Now it's blocked off by another player. Saving enough resources to build all the way to the cost? Somebody activates the Robber and you lose an nigh-untenable amount of cards.

Mysterium

2-7 Players

A killer is on the loose, and only the spirits can peel back the veil and reveal who it is. The problem is, the connection through the veil is rather shoddy, so visions are all the investigators will get. One player sits in as the channeled spirit, who selects a set of killer, location, and weapon for each of the living players. They then attempt to convey which it is through a series of vague vision cards.

Killer's a fisherman? Maybe the ghost will play a card steeped in blue. Maybe they'll play a cyclist to point you towards a park. Of course, that's assuming there's remotely any reasonable logic behind the vision card choice. That's where the real meat of the game is: while it's a cooperative title, the fun is primarily in just finding out how your fellow players think.

Deep Rock Galactic

1-4 Players

Board Games