Best Strategy Board Games of 2024

Star Wars: Shatterpoint takes all your favorite characters from the Clone Wars era and beyond, puts them into a classic squad-based combat experience, and lets your imagination do the rest of the work. The miniatures are available in easy-to-assemble kits with little guidance required, and each can be painted to your personal taste with relative ease. Like the miniatures, the game rules do a very good job of balancing a low learning curve with flexibility to change playstyles to avoid feeling repetitive. Whether you’re new to the world of miniatures or a veteran of this classic game style, there’s a lot to like about this game.

Small World is one of my favorite games, simply because this invasion game feels completely different every time you play it. Essentially, players compete for control of a stake-like board with too few spaces to accommodate everyone, hence the name. You’re bidding for one of dozens of fantasy creatures, each randomly paired with an extra special ability – which can lead to hilarious combos like Were-Will-o’-the-Wisps or peace-loving Homunculi. Then you spread out using your special abilities, collect coins based on the territory you control and leave that race behind for a new one. It’s an addictive gameplay loop, with often funny and competitive parts, and you can learn and play it in under two hours.

Twilight Struggle, set during the Cold War, balances the strategic complexity of a “big” game with the simple mechanics of a traditional invasion game like Risk. One player takes on the role of the United States, and the other takes on the role of the Soviet Union as it struggles for presence, dominance, or complete control over various combat zones around the world. Both sides race to put a man on the moon, reduce DEFCON’s status through military operations, while avoiding the devastation of nuclear war (an immediate loss) and spreading their influence around the world in a tug of war over global power.

Agricola is one of the best board games ever designed, and it’s also one of the best examples of worker recruitment mechanics. The concept is simple: each player uses his farmer and his wife (both called “workers”) to complete various actions as the seasons progress, such as gathering wood or vegetables, upgrading the farm house, building pens, buying animals, having children and much more. more. Over time, players have children (more workers to use) and expand their farm. But the problem through all of this is scarcity: Agricola is a tough game. Even without your opponent preventing you from taking certain actions, you often feel like you’re living a simple life – getting enough food to feed your family for the winter. Players often end up getting very few points (or negative points) in their first game, but when you start learning, it feels incredibly satisfying.

If you have a full day and want to play a long, rewarding game, you can’t do better than Food Chain Magnate – an incredibly deep game for building and hiring restaurants, designing menus, paying for ads, and raising money. What makes Food Chain Magnate so fun is its huge scope: you can hire dozens of different types of employees, sell dozens of different types of food and use six types of advertising, all with unique effects on your franchise and customers. In the city and your opponents. This fun game is an investment, especially if you get the expansions, but it’s one of the most fun and unique takes on the strategy board game format in years.

Star Wars: Imperial Assault largely eschews the role-playing elements of dungeon crawlers like Gloomhaven, opting instead for robust combat mechanics that pit the Imperial player against Rebel players. While different missions have different settings – the modular board keeps things fresh – players will improve as they understand the rewards of certain combinations, the ways in which they can play against their allies and the decisions about when to find cover and when to attack. battle.

Conquest games have come a long way since the release of Risk, and one of the best is Rising Sun – a game in which players vie for control of various regions of feudal Japan, using samurai and other miniatures to spread out. What makes the game interesting are the unconventional means and ends of conflict: alliances give opponents more power, but betrayal can damage your honor; Points can be earned by winning a battle, but committing ritual suicide, taking hostages, and hiring historians to write off your warrior’s honor can actually net you a greater victory.

What could be a straightforward game about conquering territories becomes about developing your clan, maintaining their honor, and strategic partnerships with your enemies. If you want a game with a lot of conflict – but that conflict is rarely direct or obvious – then Rising Sun is perfect for you.

Many of the best strategy games take a few hours to play, but satisfying strategy doesn’t need to take a whole day: Castles of Burgundy is a perfect example of a great game that usually only takes about an hour to play – often less, once you know how to play – and can be replayed Surprisingly. Each turn, players roll dice, the numbers of which allow them to capture certain pieces of land from the central board or place them in certain spaces on your player board as you expand your kingdom. The central rules can be learned in a matter of minutes, compared to some of the larger Eurogames mentioned above, but Castles of Burgundy will have you making tough choices about how to respond to a dice roll that’s beyond your control.

In Project Gaia, players seek to expand their alien race’s control over the galaxy, making planets habitable for their race, building structures on them, gaining knowledge and continuing research. This strategy board game has a fairly steep learning curve for those who aren’t familiar with Eurogames, but once you start your first game, you’ll understand the basics in a round or two. The strategy is deep: you can play as dozens of different races, with unique abilities and research bonuses; Standard painting means that the galaxy you colonize will never look the same; Many of the scoring and building bonuses are randomly distributed in each game, so the same strategy won’t win every time. Gaia Project is a great lesson in game design and gives you complete fun to play.