Mine is Ludo: A solid 2 to 4 Player board game.
Fun Fact: It causes a war in Hindu Mythology.
Second is Chess because dev abandoned their game.
I’m a big fan of The Campaign for North Africa, personally.
Clue.
I never got into Clue myself, though I blame Clue DVD for that. The premade cases led to a limited replay ability, sure, but due to these cases involving background narratives made you feel like a detective as you piece together alibis through story snippets.
It’s a shame they aren’t producing it anymore for quite some time now.
It’s complex yet very simple. Can be played by a small or large group easily. Teaches logic, reasoning, and deduction over “outscoring” your opponent. Being the dealer doesn’t give you any advantages if you play it right. And because of all the various permutations of the cards, it’s always a new game each time vs a number of set scenarios/strategies.
Great board game for 3+ people. Best with a full crew. You and your mates explore a mansion. As you explore a new room you place a tile and something can happen.
It’s meant to have a lot of replayability as each time you play there’s a booklet full of potential end games that you can trigger. Such as the mansion is burning down and you need to escape.
I love the idea of that game. But in practice, I hate it.
Exploring the house is fun. And then the haunt usually ends up with a lopsided win. I can’t remember a time where the haunt didn’t feel like a forgone conclusion once revealed. Basically, I’ve never felt like I had any way to impact the outcome outside of potentially just throwing it.
Edit: in my mind, it’s less of a game and more of an experience or story generator.
Dixit is one of my favorites, and very fun to play with a group of people you know well. Sort of like Pictionary with cards instead of drawing, but you try to only get one person to guess correctly.
Small World was my introduction into alternative board games, and still one of my favorites to help introduce new board games to people who have only played Monopoly.
I like Root, its like an asymmetric Risk.
