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Hello all I usually never play board games other then the classic monopoly...change my mind! can somebody list a few board games modern that I can try maybe horror or fantasy themed

We've really been enjoying the horror-western themed Shadows of Brimstone, and also the sequel game set in feudal Japan, Forbidden Fortress. There's a learning curve and some assembly required, but we've had dozens of hours of fun immersed in supernatural horror-themed quests.

I've also heard good things about the D&D horror-themed boardgame Castle Ravenloft.

What kind of an experience are you looking for?

I'm not sure just something fun to play with my friends we are older in our 30s

How dedicated would they be? Perhaps Munchkin might be better if they aren't likely to get into a game where you build up your character and progress through almost a light RPG.

Terraformin Mars.

You take on the role of corporations leading the charge to make mars habitable. There are lots of ways to earn victory points and lots of ways to steal a win out from somebody else if you play your cards right.

The game has several tracks on the board including oxygen % and temperature and the game ends when conditions have been met to make mars habitable.

People compare the feel of the game to settlers of catan but the truth is its much better and different because katan has dice rolls that dictate who and when people get resources and terraforming mars is 100% player agency. You will win or loose by your own choices.

Settlers of Catan and 7 wonders are the games me and my friends greatly enjoyed. Also, Risk.

Betrayal At House On The Hill, if you're after something horror themed.

Zombicide is a great co-op game with a quick set up and simple to pick up rules, prefect for a easy going gaming session. I'd also second Shadows of Brimstone, but it requires assembly and takes a bit of time to set up before each session.

The Doom boardgame which came along with the release of the new video game really rocks. It´s game mechanics even resemble the gameplay of the game in silico in which you are forced to run at the enemy and blast them at point blank.

RIP & TEAR!

Zombies!!! is a good game, I acquired it this weekend and it's really good fun. It's not campaign based, has several gametypes and has at least 10 expansions, including one called "send in the clowns". They have also made games called "Martians!!!" and "Humans!!!" (in which, it sounds like you play as the zombie!).

Oh boy, where to begin? The world of Boardgames has pretty much exploded, and there are now subgenres within subgenres.

Some good games that I have found that none gamers like are:

Azul,
Dragon Castle,
Veggie Garden,
Rhino Hero,
Kingdomino,
Hey, that's my Fish!,
Raptor!,

For more complex games things like:
Concordia,
Great Western Trail,
Scythe,
Mansions of Madness,
Root,
Feast for Odin,

In all honesty you are far better off checking out Boardgamegeek. There you can look at the very long list of games, and also see reviews/how to plays.

I will warn you, it is a deep rabbit hole... but, a very fun one!

I recommend the Axis and Allies series.

like the movie ALien, love sci fi , Nemesis is awesome and can accommodate 5 players https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/167355/nemesis

a pic of last nights game, poor sod was surrounded by the queen and some adult aliens

Monster Slaughter.
Horror themed - Each player is a monster family trying to eat the teenagers in the cabin in the woods.

It’s easy enough for mass market gamers, has the theme you want, but campy and fun, and looks drop dead gorgeous.

+1 for Settlers of Catan and the Ravenloft board game.

Last Night on Earth is also fun.

Well, not a board game, but a mini game; Zombie dice.

All you do is roll dices, first player to collect 13 tasty human brains wins. But dont get too greedy, else you might get a shotgun blast to the face.

Last Night on Earth is a fun Zombie board game.
Blood Bowl would count
Space Hulk is one of GWs best games ever IMO
My new obsession is War Room by Nightengale Games. AMAZING.

Check out Quacks of Queddlingburg. For the best board game review site, Shut Up and Sit Down is just the best https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/

I enjoyed....

Last Night on Planet Earth
Betrayal at the House on Haunted Hill
Space Alert

Kinda depends on how complex you and your friends like your games, so more or less in order of complexity:

Ticket to Ride is lots of fun, with fairly simple rules (but not necessarily a simple game).
Britannia (and it's India-based spin-off Maharadja) are good if you enjoy Risk.
Slightly more complicated, Dominion is kind of fun.
7 wonders as mentioned is again lots of fun.
Also a big fan of the even more complicated Arkham games.

Another vote for Terraforming Mars.

Dear God, that game can destroy whole weekends.
Shall we have one more game? We've only played it four times today. You put the kettle on and I'll shuffle the cards.

Catan and Ticket to Ride are both cool, simple in concept and are rewarding of thoughtful play, but Mars feels more mature in its themes and decision making.

Check out Galaxy Trucker, evwen my wife enjoys it a lot.

You must build a spaceship from basically crap, by picking pieces from the table, turning them around to find out what they are. Then you can either attach them to your ship or put them openly back on the table where it can be snatched by anyone else.

After the first one finished building his ship, a timer starts running, and at the end of that timer, you leave for space no matter if your ship is..well, finished

Random cards then determine what happens to during the space travel, there are asteroids, space pirates, aliens attacking, planets with ressources, abandonded space stations, junk yards,...

Mission by mission, you enlarge your ships and after 3 or 4 missions, you check who has made the most profit.
You can earn money with commodities collected during flight, bounty for space pirates, paymnets for the transportation of VIPs, for the longest distance flown compared to the others, and how "beautiful" your ship is at the end of the round (the one with less open holes in the hull wins!).

Basic set is fine, expansions contain new tiles for your ship, new basic plans, alien specialist crew and so on. All very recommended, but if you shy spending too much in the first place, go for the basic set.

I live a lot of games, but for ease of play and entry costs I'd suggest:

For ease of learning and play:
Zombicide
Zombicide black plague
Zombicide Invader
Massive Darkness
Wander, Cult of Barnicle Bay
Terminator Salvation
All the D&D adventure system games
Blood Rage
Assasinorum execution squad
Ninja Turtles city fall series

More complex to learn and play:
Shadows of Brimstone
Cthulu Death May Die
Ffg Gears of War
Conan
Batman
Warhammer Underworlds
Blackstone Fortress

Wow, not even a single Euro-style game on your entire list 455_PWR! Looks like a very one-dimensional collection.

For me the essential ones you can play with anyone and are incredible state-of-the-art designs :

Concordia - so simple and so difficult to win when played against solid opponents! Very satisfying.

Imperial 2030 -an excellent randomness-less take on Risk...which isn't really Risk, because it's all about money! Only 6 possible actions create incredibly complex game states.

Neuroshima Hex - perfect "knife fight in a phone booth" quick 2-player game. Elegant and still can get mind-bogglingly complex with a crowded board.

Agricola - evergreen. Everyone loves those wooden animals and than they play and end up with a hungry family living in a ditch Difficult for first-timers but defintely worth it.

Aeon's End - very neat design which adds more decision making and removes quite a lot of randomness from a standard Deck Building formula. Can get quite exciting!

Age of Empires 3: Age of Discovery (new ed. just called Age of Discovery) - a perfect mix of area control and worker placement that is still, after almost a decade and dozens of games my group's favourite. It nicely spices up peaceful worker placement mechanics with fierce interaction.

There are a lot of more complex games I would recommend, like fantastic Gloomhaven with its mechanics full of player agency just throwing those old-fashioned dice-based games (poor boring Descent) out of the window. Or Terra Mystica being the pinaccle of difficult strategic planning for me. Or the Game of Thrones with an absolutely masterful combat system - 100% deterministic yet with all the excitement and tension coming not from tedious RNG but from player decisions.

But those above are more universal - beginners can grasp the concepts easily, but you still need experience and great problem-solving skills to win against solid opponents even if you're a board game vet.

Cyel wrote:

Neuroshima Hex - perfect "knife fight in a phone booth" quick 2-player game. Elegant and still can get mind-bogglingly complex with a crowded board.

I've still got this on my phone - an amazing game to play.



Just got Brass Birmingham. It's not a game to get the blood pumping and you wouldn't want to play more than one game in a day, but it's a real work out for the brain if you like problem solving style games.

 Henry wrote:

Cyel wrote:

Neuroshima Hex - perfect "knife fight in a phone booth" quick 2-player game. Elegant and still can get mind-bogglingly complex with a crowded board.

I've still got this on my phone - an amazing game to play.



Just got Brass Birmingham. It's not a game to get the blood pumping and you wouldn't want to play more than one game in a day, but it's a real work out for the brain if you like problem solving style games.

Having played Brass on a couple of occassions I have to agree, it's an extremely neat design and a very satisfying game. Definitely recommend this one. There are some tricky aspects in the rules and it is surprisingly as much about spatial awareness as it is about economy, but an average gamer should grasp the underlying concepts after 1-2 gameplays. Actually winning is another story altogether

I also hope to play Arkwright one day ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVKRqF0kQB0&t=8s ) and consider Brass a step in this direction

ballzonya wrote:
Hello all I usually never play board games other then the classic monopoly...change my mind! can somebody list a few board games modern that I can try maybe horror or fantasy themed

Good lord, not even on catan yet! Well, pretty much any modern game is going to be quite a bit more complex than the classic monopoly in terms of the basic gameplay, even if the minutia has been a bit reduced.

Horror themed games: Betrayal at the House on the Hill has been mentioned here, I would put that forth as the single best horror board game purchase you could make. Fairly easy to pick up, extremely replayable, it starts as kind of a "spooky scooby-doo haunted house simulator" and ends with (usually) one of the players becoming some sort of traitor and trying to destroy the others. But the fun part is, it depends on the combination of "what spooky thing did you find' and "what room were you in"

Did you trigger the Haunting with the spooky thing "Bite" in the "Crypt"? Well it's a vampire game now!

"Bite" in the "Garden"? You're a werewolf!

"Knife" in the Parlor? Slasher movie, you're Jason!

It's a very fun little mechanic. The downside I've found in my experience is that it's usually very fun and exciting, but very often not balanced, because there's just no way to plan who's going to be the traitor and what the non-traitors will already have access to. If you draw "Ghost" and one of the non-traitors already happens to have found the spooky bones and they're right next to the chapel and the graveyard tiles? Well, it's gonna be one turn and you'll put those old bones to rest with a quick muttered hail mary, problem solved! If you get "Werewolf" and the werewolf is the big strong dude and everyone else is playing the little kids and old man character....gooood luck!

Fantasy: If you like playing "Risk" type "everyone sits around the table and tries to kill each other" style games with your friends, I would look no further than Smallworld. Smallworld is essentially "fantasy risk" where you play civilizations of various fantasy races with random adjectives assigned to them. So you'll get a setup like

Swimming Elves
Underground Goblins
Migratory Vampires
Mighty Halflings
Merchant Ratmen

and everyone picks one of those combinations, which give you two special rules, and you start colonizing the map and beating each other up. At the beginning of your turn, if you've lost a bunch of your tokens and you feel like The Time of the Pogo-Sticking Humans is Over, The Time of the Flying Orks has Begun, you can choose to put your current fantasy race "in decline" and pick up a new one to charge in from the edge of the map with. Basically, take the fun parts of risk (Taking over the map, fighting your buddies) and remove the tedious parts (Rolling 50 billion dice, players getting eliminated and not being able to play out the whole game) and you've got Smallworld.