Top ten Boardgames I Have Currently and Sometimes Play With My Wife

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Ok, gross call to action aside, I think I've mentioned before that I met my wife at a local board gaming meetup. We used to play exciting new games on a weekly basis. Then we spawned.

Now though we maybe play one or two board games a week and at least one is a roll and move. The kid is getting closer to being able to actually play real games (he was remarkably close to winning Machi Koro this weekend) but in the mean time we've mostly just been trying to fit them in where we can.

SO! Here's the games we often play in order of goodness, ascending:

Not good, but different I guess so we play it sometimes (also the kid likes it)

Shut the box is barely a game, but on the plus side it's got math! It's just a box with a pair of dice and numbers in it. You roll and then flip down numbers to add up to what you rolled. You're trying to get as low a score as possible.

My biggest annoyance with this game is that there is no real competition in it. Also, IT IS JUST A BOX AND A PAIR OF DICE. You could play this with a pad of paper and a smart phone. Actually, just the smart phone I guess. Bah, forget the whole thing.

A pretty good game when I haven't played it for a while until we start and then I draw all stop cards and 200 kilometers DAMN IT YOU ARE NO DRIVING ACE

Mille Bornes is like if a road trip was a card game. A road trip with two cars that pop each other's tires, siphon their gas, and run them into lampposts. Oh and I guess bribe civil authorities to post speed limits and install stop lights that only apply to the other car.

When it's working it's a fun take that card game. When it's not working it's a horrific slog. The biggest problem is that there are very few close games of Mille Bornes. Every game is a ridiculous blow out where I end up dead impaled on a lamppost in a ditch with a flat and no gas while my opponent has impenetrable tires and a police and fire escort with a dedicated tanker truck and was a really good driver that can somehow avoid lampposts.

A cool theme with a game that is not too obtrusive attached

Fluxx is one of the simplest games possible. The game starts with two rules, draw one card and play one card. The cards have new rules on them as well as keepers that you use to achieve the goals that determine how you win. Ok, that sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is. This is a game you can play just by following those basic rules, draw how many it says, then play as many as it says. Things tend to get nuts quick and you end up drawing and playing most of the deck on your turn.

Anyway there are a bunch of these. Hat Fluxx. Border Collie Fluxx. Flux Fluxx. The Flux themed Fluxx. Weld your way to victory. The best one though is TNG, because I dunno I like TNG ok?

The best game on the list so far. Yes I know that is definitionally true. Yes I also know that definitionally is not a word

Hive is like chess if it was about bugs and didn't require a board. It's very easy to transport and play anywhere there's a table as a result. It's also very pretty with a simple but effective art style and the pieces are weighty and make very satisfying clinks as you bump them together.

Basically you are the queen bee of a hive of spiders, grasshoppers, ants and dung beetles. Yes that does happen in nature. Read a book.

The goal is to capture the opposing queen by surrounding her.

The kid can actually play this one pretty well though he's much more interested in the clicking.

The game where it actually is getting hard to pick the worst game in the list. Well actually it's the second one where that's the case but I made a different joke on the last entry name so meh

As a relatively new purchase Sagrada might rise or fall in rank later. I'm still learning it.

You roll colored dice then assign them in a grid pattern. It's all done with drafting, in other words, with two players you roll five dice and then you alternate choosing dice until you both have two, then discard the last.

That and some powers that are cheaper the earlier you use them are the only inter-player interactions but it really does just work really well and the puzzle is intriguing. I don't do sudoku and this is nothing like sudoku I don't think except that there are numbers in a grid but if you love sudoku, check out Sagrada! You may be disappointed, again I don't do sudoku.

Strong contender for worst/no theme. Best theme to quality ratio on the list. Seriously only a hair off of being completely abstract

Love letter has a story. You are courting a Princess that will fall in love with the first person to hand her four letters, one at a time. You do this by having a card in your hand that is meant to represent someone you can give your letter to, I think, but then somehow you still have the letter to give to someone else the next round. I dunno.

Each of the cards has a power that goes off as you play it and if you end up with the highest number card at the end of the game without going out (either by being guessed by a guard which what the holy hell could this possibly be representing? Am I having that role jailed while they have your letter? How!? Did I have dirt on the handmaiden? Or by the other player discarding the princess which makes them immediately lose. Ladies of good quality hate being discarded).

Point is it plays super fast, has some rudimentary hidden role fun, and is THIS CLOSE to being playable by a four year old.

Best game about sewing that...well I guess period. Prove me wrong

Patchwork is multiplayer anti-tetris. You're doing your best to fill as many squares as you can.

Um...that's it. But it's really precious. You use buttons for currency, people!

Best game with a mountain on the box (sorry fireball mountain)

Machi Koro has you building a town and trying to be the first to complete some special buildings that each have super powers.

Each turn you roll a die, then you and the other players collect money if any of your buildings have that number (err..unless...well you know what, no unless, I'm not actually teaching you the game, people, crack the instructions yourself, cripes). You then can buy one new building.

It's Catan if there was no board. Plus no trading. Ok it's not a super apt comparison, fine.

The game suffers a bit for randomness and for being a bit solitaire..y, but the sheer number of options and the comparatively simple set up for the game weight make it a winner for us.

The second best game, IN THE WORLD! Of ones I have recently named and put in list form

Designed by magic pros and it shows, Ascension is a deck builder where there is one long row of randomly pulled cards that players can purchase from by spending runes to add them to their deck or by just punching them into submission. Well, ok, so you can't choose on a card to card basis. There are enemies for you to punch and friends for you to teach how to read old norse.

With lots of players it gets hard to make any kinda of plan or effect others, but with two you can actually dare to hope that you'll get a certain card, just to have it snatched from you.

RACE FOR THE GALAXY!!!!! Sorry, I got excited.

Simply the best. You are trying to...you know, do that thing from the title. You explore the galaxy, develop technology, settle space colonies, trade goods and build more goods. You both secretly select actions and what you choose happens for your opponent as well.

The symbology can be tough to decipher, but once you get it all down you can't do better. Well I can't.

So that's my list, what are some of your favorite games for me to play with my wife, and why do you care at all what I play anyway? Let me know in the comments!