Strategy Board Games Bucket List

A two-player market duel of camels, commodities and bonus tokens.

A two-player quilt of Tetris pieces and a time track instead of turns.

Workers ride giant rotating gears; the longer they stay, the more they earn.

Harbour economics: buildings, ships and a food clock that never stops.

Nineteenth-century Scotland: cheese, whisky and a market that moves as you sell.

The aquarium expansion to the modern zoo-building heavyweight.

Renaissance patronage, dice-driven and unforgiving of a bad round.

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

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

The first big expansion to the island-defence game, adding events and beasts.

A twelve-card engine duel: mages, artifacts and essence, in thirty minutes.

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

A ten-hour space opera of diplomacy, war and treachery; the biggest game most groups ever attempt.

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

A twelve-month campaign that tears up, writes on and permanently changes the board.

Dice, tiles and the purest small-decisions-add-up Euro ever printed.

The first expansion, and the one that makes long roads worth the risk.

Run a Viennese cafe and hotel, serving guests dice can never quite supply.

Hike a trail through the US National Parks, collecting memories and photos.

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

The expansion that gives Catan a real mid-game and a barbarian clock.

Factions reshape terrain into their own home ground and race for shared cult tracks.

Worker dice grow as they move, building a pyramid one tier at a time.

No dice, no cards; just seven players lying to each other about 1901 Europe.

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

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

Dwarves farm, mine and furnish a mountain home; Agricola without the starvation.

A brutal fast-food economy where the first player to hire a manager usually wins.

Squad-level Second World War combat with hidden movement.

The original industrial-revolution canal-and-rail game, meaner than its Birmingham sequel.