Strategy Board Games Bucket List

Stack your pieces on top of your opponent's in an abstract Sid Sackson designed in 1963.

Central and southern Africa, where matching terrain cards double the value of the route you claim.

Say what you will do out loud, then decide whether to be brave or cowardly about it.

A twelve-game campaign west across nineteenth-century North America, where each session changes the board for the next one.

Haul freight across Europe by lorry, bidding for the contracts nobody else wants.

A double-sided board: India, where a loop of routes between the same two cities scores a mandala bonus, and the Swiss map for two or three.

Fill your zoo with animals from tile trucks without overcrowding a pen.

Move your merchant and his assistants around a bazaar, collecting rubies.

Your workers age and die, and the good deaths score; a worker placement about generations.

Stack blocks into skyscrapers and take over the ones already built.

The German map, with passengers who ride your finished routes to collect the goods sitting in each city.

A push-your-luck deck-builder about spirits putting out a forest fire.

A cooperative fantasy campaign where the clock is the real enemy.

Denmark to the Arctic for two or three players, with tunnels, ferries and a very long way north.

The version for six-year-olds: shorter routes, six tickets to win, and no points to count.

Double-decker buses around 1970s London, and the fastest game in the series to teach.

Spend carrots to move; the first Spiel des Jahres, and still a clean race game.

Expansion 9, now sold as Sheep & Shepherds: hill tiles sit on top of a second tile and break ties, and a shepherd grows a flock until the wolf comes out of the stack.

Build castles upward and score by the level your knight stands on.

Expansion 8 lets a road bridge a field, turns a two-tile city into a castle that cashes in on the next thing scored nearby, and auctions tiles at bazaars.

Expansion 7, and the only one with dexterity in it: a fair tile starts a round where everyone flicks tokens off a small wooden catapult to knock out or steal meeples.

Japanese chess, where captured pieces change sides and come back.

Expansion 3, now sold as Dragon & Fairy: a dragon walks the board eating followers, the fairy protects the one she stands with, and magic gates drop a meeple anywhere.

A river, cannons that jump to capture, and generals who may never meet.

Expansion 6 is the compilation box: The Count of Carcassonne, King & Scout, The River II and The Cult in one package.

Carts through the canals of the Dutch Golden Age, with merchandise bonuses for the goods you deliver.

Place settlements on the terrain your card allows and chase the scoring goals.

The Ring goes south while armies burn Middle-earth; the best Tolkien game.

Draw your own track on the map with a crayon, then race the trains you built.