Board games have come a long way from roll-and-move luckfests. Many board games today feature serene art, calming themes, and components so delightfully tactile you feel you should be sipping herbal tea while playing. But don’t be fooled - sometimes that soothing aesthetic is camouflage for mechanics designed to unleash the most diabolical version of everyone at the table. These are the kinds of games that smile and offer a cozy theme while quietly sharpening a knife behind their back.
Best Strategy Games For Players Who Believe They Suck At Them
For players who aren't particularly good at strategy games, these excellent titles offer great onboarding to immerse players in their mechanics.
Here are five board games that look wholesome and gentle, but underneath their soft exteriors lie vicious, friendship-straining mechanics that can make even the most cutthroat Eurogames blush.
Wingspan
“A Peaceful Bird Sanctuary Builder,” They Said.
- Player Count: 1-5
Wingspan’s pastel colors and wonderful illustrated bird cards can make players feel guilty even thinking about strategy.
But when the actual gameplay gets going, players soon realize that beneath the bird sanctuary exterior is a stone-cold competitive engine-builder.
While the player’s main focus is to build their own sanctuary, they can also screw over their opponents in multiple ways, such as snatching food someone else needed from the bird feeder or dipping into the card tray for a bird that would benefit an opponent’s strategy, even if it’s only going to be used as prey for one of your predator birds.
Wingspan gives players fewer turns each round, which can lead to an intense final round of deep strategy as players place birds, lay eggs, and try to disrupt their opponents further, especially if they’ve figured out an opponent’s bonus cards.
Patchwork
Quilts, Buttons, and Knives Behind Backs
- Player Count: 2
Patchwork tasks two players with competing head-to-head to create the best patchwork quilt. Players take turns to spend buttons to buy patches, and then try their best to fit the Tetris-like shapes together to fill their quilt board as much as possible by the end.
Travel-Friendly, Compact, and Most Importantly, Fun: 8 Best Mini Board Games for Long Family Trips
Board game enthusiasts have amazing mini board games for family trips to check out on Amazon.
Like Wingspan, though, there are multiple ways to negatively affect the other player’s strategy. Such blocking tactics include taking patches that the opponent needs from the shared pile in the centre, racing to get bonus patches before they do, and competing for the one and only 7 Point Special Tile that rewards the first player to fill a 7x7 square on their quilt.
Takenoko
A Zen Garden to Cause Strategic Destruction with a Cute Panda
- Player Count: 2-4
The first thing that stands out about Takenoko is the artwork bursting with colour and charisma, before players gawk at the Bamboo, Gardener, and Panda pieces. The game puts players in a Japanese Imperial Court, and tasks them with cultivating land plots, irrigating them, and growing Bamboo. This is easier said than done, however, as the 2-4 player game gives players numerous ways to screw over their opponents.
As well as battling to place Improvement tiles in a desired pattern while stopping opponents from doing the same, players can also use the Panda to chomp away at Bamboo, quite literally eating away at an opponent's progress, earning some glares across the snack bowl in the process.
Carcassonne
Passive Countryside Building or Aggressive Tile Warfare?
- Player Count: 2-5
Carcassonne is a tile placement game based on a historic French city with the same name that is known for its double-walled medieval citadel and its acres of green fields.
10 Best Cozy Games to Play in Short Bursts
These cozy games are great for resting in short bursts. They provide peaceful gameplay, excellent vibes, and feel-good moments whenever you want.
In the board game, players draw a random tile from the pile and place it with the intention of forming roads, farms, cities, and more in some expansions, so that they can place their meeple on one of the tiles in the formation to claim it. Over time, the tiles will form beautiful rolling hills and colorful medieval cities begging to be lived in.
However, placing a meeple on a space doesn't claim the entrie city or field being built around it forever, as while opponents can't put a meeple on the formation as an opponent, they can put two meeple on their own formation, and then merge it with their opponent's creating an even larger formation that they control, snatching an opponent's points and seeing a huge increase to their own if they can hold it unitl the end of the game.
Arboretum
A Botanical Bloodbath
- Player Count: 2-4
A game about creating spectacular garden paths can’t possibly be cutthroat, right?…
Dan Cassar’s Arboretum features a deck of 80 cards with ten different colors, each representing a species of tree. Players take turns laying cards to form their arboretum, aiming to create sequences of cards in ascending numerical order. The key to scoring is that a sequence of a particular species only counts if the player holds the highest value of that species in their hand at the end of the game. This creates a strong hand-management component: players must carefully decide which cards to play, which to keep, and which to discard in order to maximize their scoring potential while preventing opponents from completing high-value paths.
On each turn, players draw two cards from either the deck or the discard piles, then play one card to their arboretum and discard one. Strategic placement and discarding are critical, because discarded cards are visible to all players and can be taken by opponents to use or block sequences. Arboretum is a game of careful planning and optimization that soon delves into each player calculating who betrayed them and by how much.
8 Best Games With Cottagecore Aesthetic, Ranked
Cottagecore games offer cozy vibes and tranquil gameplay, perfect for those seeking relaxation and a charming countryside aesthetic.