Board Games Bucket List

App-guided Lovecraftian investigation in a house that rearranges itself.

The best of the Azul family, with wild tiles and a gentler penalty for what you cannot place.

Rescue polyomino cats from a sinking island before Vesh Darkhand arrives.

The role-selection classic that defined two decades of Euro design.

Dam the Alpine rivers, and steal your rivals' water on the way downhill.

A hidden-role parliament game about failing to spot a fascist in time.

The great partnership card game: bidding, declarer play and a lifetime of study.

The one real expansion: double-sided boards and a plastic overlay that lets you choose where the pattern goes.

A co-operative card game where each hero deck plays completely differently.

Two hundred years of pegging fifteen-twos on a wooden board.

The gateway wargame: the whole of the Second World War on one board.

Real casebooks, a London directory and no dice; you solve it or you do not.

Viking Tetris: fill your board with goods, raid, and settle Greenland.

Loyal servants and hidden minions of Mordred, five rounds of accusation.

Broken telephone with sketchbooks; the fun is entirely in the reveal.

A gentle legacy game: twenty-four chapters that stick stickers on your board.

The two-player animal-farming distillation of Agricola, in an hour.

Deck-building married to worker placement on Arrakis, with combat that bluffs.

The village sleeps, the wolves wake; the ancestor of every hidden-role game.

App-timed escape-room decks that hide their puzzles inside the artwork.

Borrow resources from your future self and pay them back through a time rift.

The friendlier way into Gloomhaven, with a tutorial campaign and a printed map.

Ten ages of technology in cards, with combos that rewrite the rules mid-game.

Build a stained-glass window from dice, obeying colour and shade rules.

A bag-building medieval trade game where your workforce is the deck.

Domino-shaped land tiles and a five-by-five grid; a masterclass in small design.

Fantasy races overrun the map and then go into decline on purpose.

Panes instead of tiles, and a glazier who only ever moves clockwise around the factories.

Two cards, constant lying, and a table that can call your bluff at any time.

Fourteen alien species terraform a hex galaxy in the sharpest Euro engine on the shelf.