12 Best Board Games For Hours of Offline Gaming Fun

© Siam2nite

Back in the days when online games weren’t as popular as today, board games were the way to go whenever there was a gathering or when it rained outside. You surely remember a round of classic Monopoly with your friends, right?

Now, even with the era online gaming well underway, board games still stand the test of time and even spawned new, more complex versions of themselves that you’ve probably never seen before.

Board games aren’t just about random dice rolls and drawing mystery cards anymore, but it now involves a lot more strategy, analysis, and even negotiation and teamwork skills. Some games remain a casual with a 10-20 minutes playtime while some have been taken to the next level of seriousness.

If you’re starting to feel bored from staying home and have run out of things to do, we’ve got for you a list of 12 legendary board games that will make your next gathering a very fun and competitive one.

(Sorted Alphabetically)

Carcassonne

Number of Players: 2-5 people
Game Duration: 30-45 minutes

It’s been almost 20 years, but a classic tile-laying game like Carcassonne by German board game creator Klaus-Jürgen Wrede remains on top many people's best board game options.

The gameplay involves players taking turns drawing new terrain tiles and placing them adjacently to tiles that are already faced up where the new tile must extend the feature of the tile it touches (roads must connect to roads, cities must connect to cities).

After placing each new tile, the placing player may opt to station a piece called a “meeple” on that newly placed tile (each player will receive 8 meeples at the beginning of the game).

According to the rules, once the meeple is placed, players are not allowed to move them anymore until the end of the game or use another meeple to claim any tile that extends or connect features already claimed by another player (both owned by us or by the opponents). The scoring system involves completing cities, roads, and cloisters.

The challenge of this game lies within balancing between being able to complete building the town as soon as possible while minimizing the intervention of other players and keeping your opponents from completing the roads, cities, and cloisters before you.

You can order this boardgame online on Shopee.

CATAN

Number of Players: 3-4 people
Game Duration: 60-120 minutes

The Settlers of Catan is considered globally as one of the legendary board games of all time. So much so that a championship tournament has been held now for many years. Inside the game, each player will represent settlers establishing colonies on the island of Catan with the goal of building and developing holdings when trading and acquiring resources to outgrow your opponents.

Players can build by spending resources such as wheat, wood, brick, and ore received each round to build roads, settlements, or cities or trade between each other or with the bank. The goal of the game is to reach 10 victory points that players can receive from building settlements and cities. Various other achievements such as establishing the longest road and the largest army will grant players additional points as well.

The game rules can appear to be quite complex and discouraging for beginners at first, but if you give it a try, we guarantee that you’d be hooked in no time.

You can order this boardgame online on Shopee.

Deception : Murder in Hong Kong

Number of Players: 4-12 people
Game Duration: 20-30 minutes

Deception is a murder-mystery type game where players will play a certain role including Forensic Scientist, Witness, Investigator in a murder case with one being the killer. Different roles are randomly assigned at the start of the play. As the investigators attempt to deduce the truth, the murderer's team must deceive and mislead.

Once all the roles are assigned, everyone then closes their eyes except for the forensic scientist, who instructs the murderer to open his eyes. The murderer does so, revealing himself to the scientist, and he points to one of the five murder weapons in front of them and one of their five pieces of evidence. The scientist will now need to express the clues only using special tiles while the investigators (and the murderer) attempt to interpret the evidence.

To succeed, the investigators must deduce the truth from the clues of the Forensic Scientist. The Murderer and his Accomplice try to secretly mislead the real detectives by picking the wrong weapon and clue. The Witness must try to help the detectives with useful information while avoiding the attention of the murderer and their accomplices.

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is quite easy to grasp and the more players there are the better because you’ll get to enjoy even more characters like Lab Technician, Clever Accomplice, and Inside Man.

You can order this boardgame online on Shopee.

JAWS

Number of Players: 2-4 people
Game Duration: 40-60 minutes

Based on the Hollywood blockbuster movie of the same name, the JAWS board game is all about strategy and planning. One player will that the role of the killer shark off Amity Island, while 1-3 players take on the roles of Brody, Hooper, and Quint to hunt the shark.

The game is dividing into 2 acts, one called ‘Amity Island’ and the other called ‘The Orca’. In the Amity Island phase, the shark menaces swimmers and avoids capture. Other players attempt to pinpoint the shark's location and save swimmers from shark attacks.

In the Orca phase, played on the reverse side of the game board, Brody, Hooper, and Quint are aboard the sinking ship engaging in a climactic battle against the shark, while using additional action and strategy cards to defend the Orca from targeted shark attacks. This is where the game is decided if humans kill the shark, they win; if the shark attack on the Orca succeeds, the great white shark wins.

You can order this boardgame online on Amazon.

Mansions of Madness

Number of Players: 2-5 people
Game Duration: 2-4 hours

Mansions of Madness allows players to explore a location filled with Lovecraftian horrors and solve a mystery. As a fully cooperative, app-driven board game, all players are on the same team and must help each other confront four scenarios of fear and mystery by collecting weapons, tools, and information while solving complex puzzles and fighting monsters, insanity, and death.

The situations will change and react according to the investigator's prior decisions so be sure to work out the best strategy and put on the best teamwork with the other players to win the game.

You can order this boardgame online on Shopee.

Monopoly

Number of Players: 2-4 people
Game Duration: 15-30 minutes

Most of us have played a certain version of this legendary board game at least once either as a classic board game or as an online game. The original Monopoly board game, however, was first made public back in 1935 or 85 years ago! Today, Monopoly is still one of the top board games and still popular even amongst the current generation.

The game is pretty straightforward, buy and trade as many properties as possible and drive your opponents in bankruptcy as soon as possible. Players will take turns rolling two six-sided dice and move around the board according to the total shown on them. If a player lands on an empty property, the player can buy the property for its listed purchase price.

If they decline this purchase, the property is auctioned off by the bank to the highest bidder, including the player who declined to buy. When a player owns all the properties in a color group and none of them are mortgaged, they may develop them during their turn or in between other player's turns. Development involves buying miniature houses or hotels from the bank and placing them on the property spaces.

There's also the Chance and Community Chest space where a player can land on. The player must draw a card from the respective deck which may prompt the player to either collecting or paying money to the bank or other players or moving to a completely new location on the board with various consequences. Things can turn from good to bad fast in Monopoly, and that's what keeps the game exciting and interesting every time it is played.

You can order this boardgame online on Shopee.

Pandemic

Number of Players: 2-4 people
Game Duration: 45-60 minutes

Pandemic is a cooperative board game where players assume a role on the disease control team to stop the spread and discover the cures to all the diseases before any of the several game-losing conditions are reached.

Each player will be randomly assigned a role as one of seven possible specialists including dispatcher, medic, scientist, researcher, operations expert, Contingency Planner, or quarantine specialist, each with a unique special ability. The usefulness of these abilities is fully determined by the decisions made by the players.

Based on the premise that four diseases have broken out in the world, each threatening to wipe out a region and the world, the player must attempt to find a cure by being in a city with a research lab and holding five Player cards of the same color (either blue, yellow, black, or red) before the pandemic goes out of control.

Pandemic is also a race against time where everyone must put their best foot forward continue to and brainstorm and plan among each other to win the game as a team. Things can get tough, but it's a challenge like this that makes the game a timeless one.

You can order this boardgame online on Shopee.

Risk

Number of Players: 2-6 people
Game Duration: 1-8 hours

Risk was invented back in 1957 and had since incarnated over 10 different versions and expansions. The game is still popular even today and had served as an inspiration to other popular strategy board games such as Axis & Allies and Settlers of Catan. The goal of the game is to occupy every one of the 42 territories on the board, eliminating all the other players in the process.

The game is all about diplomacy, conflict, and conquest where players must plan and organize their armies of playing pieces, balancing between defending their territories and attacking adjacent territories occupied by enemy armies.

Attacks are decided by dice rolls, with the attacker or defender losing a specified number of armies per roll. When attacking, a battle may continue until the attacker decides to stop attacking, the attacker has no more armies with which to attack, or the defender has lost their last army at the defending territory, at which point the attacker takes over the territory by moving armies onto it, and draws a territory card for that turn.

The turns will continue to rotate among players who control armies of playing pieces until one player achieves the ultimate goal.

You can order this boardgame online on Shopee.

Scythe

Number of Players: 1-5 people
Game Duration: 1-2 hours

Scythe is a board game that involves the 4X’s (Exploration, Expansion, Exploitation, and Extermination where players control factions in an alternate history 1920s which produces resources, build economic infrastructure, and use dieselpunk war machines called “mechs” to fight and control territories.

In each round, players take a turn choosing one of four main actions each turn, listed on the top of their player board, which cannot be the same as the main action they selected in their previous turn. They can also take a corresponding second action listed on their player board.

These actions allow them to move units on the board, trade for or produce goods, bolster their military, deploy mechs, enlist recruits for continuous bonuses, build structures, and upgrade their actions to make them stronger or cheaper.

The game will conclude as soon as a player has obtained six stars obtained through the completion of certain goals such as deploying all four of their mechs, building all four infrastructure types, winning two battles, etc.

You can order this boardgame online on Shopee.

Terraforming Mars

Number of Players: 1-5 people
Game Duration: 2 hours

Terraforming Mars is a sci-fi strategy board game where players assume one of the giant corporations sponsored by the world government to initiate huge projects to raise the temperature, the oxygen level, and the ocean coverage until the environment on Mars is habitable.

Players must acquire unique project cards that can represent anything from introducing plant life or animals, hurling asteroids at the surface, building cities, mining the moons of Jupiter and establishing greenhouse gas industries to heat the atmosphere. Players must carefully plan out their decision as buying cards can be costly and playing them can cost even more.

The game ends at the end of any generation as soon as the three terraforming conditions (temperature, oxygen, and ocean) have been met. The players will then count up their points based on the Terraforming Rating (TR) acquired achievements they have claimed throughout the game. The player with the highest score wins.

You can order this boardgame online on Shopee.

Ticket to Ride

Number of Players: 2-5 people
Game Duration: 45 minutes - 1 hour

Ticket to Ride is an all-time popular railway-themed board game known for its elegantly simple gameplay and easy-to-grasp rules that can be learned under 15 minutes, making to suitable for players of all ages and a must-have item for many households.

The overwhelming popularity of the game had generated over 25 spinoffs and expansions with different maps, but all of which have the same objective of connecting end-point cities dealt with them on the Destination Ticket cards at the beginning of the game. The longest continuously connected set of routes will also be awarded bonus points at the end of the game.

Each turn, the player has to choose to either draw two railway car cards, draw three additional destination tickets and keeping one, or playing their collected railway car cards from their hand.

The game ends when one player has only two or fewer of their supply of colored train pieces. When this occurs, every player then plays one additional turn, after which they each reveal their previously hidden destination tickets. The player with the highest score wins.

The tension comes from being forced to balance their greed with the temptation of adding more cards to your hand, and the fear of losing a critical route to a competitor. Routes, once placed, cannot be removed, so if you and another player are tasked with the same route, you'll need to be quick to not lose your opportunity. Aside from risk management and planning, you'll also need to be agile enough to take on the ever-changing landscape and situation.

You can order this boardgame online on Shopee.

Wingspan

Number of Players: 1-5 people
Game Duration: 40-70 minutes

Wingspan is a recently published card-driven board game that had just been awarded the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres for best connoisseur game of the year and praised for its artwork, accurate portrayal of its bird habitat, and gameplay.

Players assume the role of a bird researcher seeking to discover and attract the best birds to your network of wildlife preserves. With over 170 bird species, players will assign the birds to three different habitats (forest, grassland, and wetland) which are represented by rows on each player's board with space for five birds. Each bird card has a unique set of abilities and will help the player in earning points through different interactions with one of the habitats in the game.

Players can take a limited number of four types of action each round: drawing new birds, placing birds from their hand into their habitat, collecting food, and laying eggs, which have to be spent to play the birds. The player with the most points at the end of four rounds wins.

You can order this boardgame online on Shopee.

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