Five board games you should play

Board Game Awards

IN THE PAST 12 months, I played as many new board games as I could get my hands on. And I’m not particularly picky, so if it was popular, I played it. If it had a fascinating theme or novel game mechanic, I played it. And if other reviewers said they loved it, I played it. I only avoided games that required any sort of phone or app.

In total, I tested just shy of 40 new games. I played most of the games in Rwanda, where I work in international development. There are no personal mailboxes in the country, so I had the games ferried over in suitcases, one visitor at a time. Often, they were the only copies in the entire country.

I’ve played several hundred board games in my life, but these five are the new ones that I can’t stop playing. So here are some of the absolute best in recent times, either for yourself or as a gift for the tabletop gamer in your life.

1/ NEMESIS: THE BOARD GAMER’S BOARD GAME ±R2 800

Think Ridley Scott’s Alien, but with even more dread. You and four friends wake from cryosleep to discover something horrible lurking aboard your starship.

You’ll need your teammates to fight, flee, and hide from this astral terror, but a heavy fog of mistrust lies among you all – because one of your friends may be trying to kill you.

I’ve played Nemesis now for about a year, and I’m convinced it’s a once-in-a-decade game – it’s altogether tense, riveting, beautifully cinematic, and terrifically difficult. You take control of a single character, and in each turn you’ll be immersed in dozens of hard choices about who to trust and what to do, which you hope will lead to mere survival. It rarely does.

If you’ve got cash for Nemesis’s steep price tag, hours to spare, and enough patience to wade through a heavy rule book, don’t allow yourself to miss this game.

2 / WINGSPAN: BEST FOR REPLAYABILITY ±R1 000

Breathtakingly illustrated and exceptionally easy to learn, Wingspan has you and several friends competing to coax flocks of birds into private nature reserves. Each new feathered friend gives you a special ability

or bonus, and the heart of Wingspan lies in finding interesting ways to combine these birds’ special abilities into long, clever chains of well-laid actions.

Wingspan was another early 2019 debut that started the year off strong. It’s easy to teach to new players, and I love the room for discovery and creating new winning strategies. With more than 160 unique birds, it feels like there are countless avian engines that will lead you to victory.

3 / PAX PAMIR, SECOND EDITION:

BEST FOR HISTORY BUFFS

±$85 + SHIPPING

It’s 19th-century Afghanistan. From the ashes of the Durrani Empire, you are fighting to form a new reigning court of real-life historical figures and forces. But you are not alone. To win, you and your friends will have to forge and break alliances among three coalitions: the interloping Russian and British empires and the nativist Afghanis.

Pax Pamir is striking – and not just because of the gorgeous components and artwork. Of the hundreds of games I’ve played,

I’ve never experienced anything like Pax Pamir. It’s a war game where none of the soldiers are yours. You are free to switch alliances at every turn, and it requires tons of strategic ingenuity. I love how cunning it feels when you deftly navigate among the three coalitions, like marching your British soldiers out of Herat before swapping over to the side of the incoming Russian Empire. It’s delightfully insidious.

4 / TINY TOWNS: BEST

FOR FAMILIES ±R800

Tiny Towns is a simple strategy game with just a handful of rules. Players take turns calling out resources – cubes of wood, wheat, brick, glass or stone – for everyone to place within their personal 4×4 grid of a town. Once you’ve got the

popularmechanics.co.za right resources in the right shape, you’ll replace the little coloured cubes with buildings and then spend the rest of the game working around your increasingly congested hamlet.

Tiny Towns is great for families (with kids at least 12 years old), but the game rewards geometric foresight and strategy that makes it a total blast for adults as well.

5/ RES ARCANA: MOST GAME FOR THE LEAST AMOUNT OF TIME ±R800

Here’s a fantastically dense strategy game that you can pull out, play and pack up in as little as 30 minutes. In Res Arcana, you and your friends take on the roles of various practitioners of the occult and alchemical arts. With hands of complex but easy-tounderstand cards, you’ll weave magic, monsters and machinery together in clever combinations to rapidly increase your stock of magical essences. By spending those essences, you’ll take control of mystical realms that will quickly win you the game.

It’s no surprise that a game about alchemy has found a way to transmute heaping mounds of strategy into such a compact and speedy game. I especially love how Res Arcana’s brevity creates a level of unshakable tension that’s easy to love. Each turn feels important, and each decision feels potentially game-ending.

Imagine waking up from cryosleep only to have this Queen from Nemesis staring you down. No thanks.

We played dozens of new board games in the past year to find the five best.