25
votes
Board game recommendations to replace Monopoly?
Like the title says, every Christmas when my family gets together we play board games traditionally Monopoly. Last year I got tired of playing it and after some research I found Concordia and we had a blast playing it. I'm trying to jump the gun and researching ahead for this year, what are ~games recommendations for a good 2+ player game that isn't too convoluted to pick up and is a good time?
The standard intro game for the "new" boardgames (ie: not Monopoly, Sorry, Life, Parcheesi, etc...) is Settlers of Catan. 3-4 players, but if you have more people there are expansions that can increase that number.
Edit: I just want to throw a few other board game "staples" out there
I'm just chiming in to vouch for Settlers as well. It is a great game for 3-4 people, and as @Hypersapien mentions you can buy an extension to allow for up to 6 players. There are also expansions that add new game features and mechanics, so if you end up liking it there's a lot of extendability so that you don't get bored. I had a lot of fun nights in college playing this game.
Ticket to Ride is a great family game, especially if your family enjoys the "block their route!" aspects.
Seconding 7 wonders! There's also 7 wonders duel (2 players) that's pretty good.
I really want to try Dominion, it looks like a lot of fun. But I suspect it's not one that my usual group of gaming friends would go for. They have concentration issues at the best of times, and I think engine/deck builders like that would not go over well.
Maybe give Valley of the Kings a try. It's sorta Dominion light.
One of my favorite games is Carcassonne, it’s easy to learn but fairly deep in strategy. I recently learned Suburbia and I think it might be a good choice too (it’s also thematically closer to Monopoly). You might also take a look at the Ticket To Ride games, which are pretty solid and fun.
I'll second Codenames, it's so much fun and when a team works together it feels so awesome and you feel like you know the other people on the team so good. In other words, it doesn't ruin relationships like Monopoly, it strengthens them!
Also it's made by a Czech guy which is pretty cool.
Yeah, this game is really good. Even people that don't usually like to play boardgames seem to really enjoy it. I've got friends calling me so that I wouldn't forget to bring it when we gather.
Settlers is fantastic, as has been covered. You should also check out Carcassonne, Sheriff of Nottingham, and Ticket to Ride (or one of its many variants... the European map is brilliant).
I would also highly encourage you to look into co-operative games, which are quite the eye opener to a lot of people. It was playing co-op games that really got me into the hobby in a big way, and admittedly has led me down the path of tabletop RPGs quite heavily as well. Pandemic is the obvious suggestion here, but worth trying as well are Forbidden Desert, Mysterium, and Five Minute Dungeon.
My friends and I have recently gotten into board gaming in a big way, and we're always on the look out for new games to try. Honestly, we live in a golden age of board games right now, I'm very excited by how much variety there is out there (not all of it great, to be sure). Board Game Geek is a decent website that collates a whole lot of information together, though the website can feel a little unwieldy at times. Another great resource is /r/boardgames over on reddit.
Definitely going to second Sheriff of Nottingham. It's a bluffing game where you take it in turns to inspect or attempt to smuggle goods (or even just run a legitimate trading operation), with all the random searches, negotiations, and bribery you could want. Games only last about a half hour too, so there's less burnout.
It's a lot of fun, but amongst my family it's known as the game that caused us all to stop seeing my little sister as the baby of the family, and as... Well, a calculating grown up. It was quite disturbing.
Wil Wheaton had a web series called Tabletop (playlist link) featuring a ton of different board games. You'll be able to get some idea of how the game is played, although they occasionally fudge the rules a little. Many of the games suggested here appear in the show.
Depending on what aspects of Monopoly you like, Agricola, might be fun. It has a bit of a learning curve though. It totally captures the feeling of not having enough resources...
Are you looking for something like monopoly, or just board games in general?
If the latter, azul has been one of my favorites lately. It's fairly easy to learn, very quick to set up, but has a lot of fantastic mind games, plays, counter plays, and strategies that can be employed.
If you're asking about games like monopoly, it depends on what you like about the game. King of Tokyo is another very popular board game that I think captures most of the fun parts of monopoly (dice chucking, light engine building mechanics) while doing away with the un-fun parts (long, drawn on player elimination mechanics, slow death spirals). Also you get to play as giant kaiju.
Dixit is a very easy game to get into, and it has a high replayability. The gist of the game is that everyone gets six cards that have a picture of something (the art is all great). One person in the round is the "clue giver" who selects a card and gives a clue for people to guess that card. Everyone else puts in a card as well. The clue giver gets points if at least one player, but not all players, finds the correct card, so you need to give clues that are evocative of what your card is, but that don't explicitly state the card's contents.
Splendor is another game that's very easy to get into. The rules are simple, and the actions that you can take in a turn are relatively limited, but the strategy between games can change significantly. It's a current family favourite in our house.
I've picked up Superfight and it scales pretty well to two or more. It's a card game that has white Character Cards, and Black Attribute cards, you draw three of each, and make heroes from one white and two black cards and decides which one would prevail. There's also Villain rules where the dealer makes a Villain with one white, one black, and one random black card from the box, and the other players make heroes with one black and one white card, and the villain decides which hero is the best to defeat them.
I think most of the best indoctrination ones have been listed already, but these have also been effective for me in the past:
Bang: Very social. It can handle up to 7 players, and doesn't get bogged down with high numbers. Rules are also pretty easy to understand so it's easy to get new people to play. Theme is american westerns.
Ra: Good strategy game with bidding mechanics. Theme is egyptian-ish, but it's pretty abstract.
Bohnanza: Another social one. Trading and negotiation, works with 3-5 people. Theme is bean farming... and it's way more fun than that makes it sound.
If you're open to something that's not strictly a board game, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is perfect for holiday fun with family. Anyone that can use a mouse can play it, and it can get pretty intense.
Dwarves: Delve, Dig, Die is a blast and quite simple.
Oregon Trail is also fun and simple. I haven't played the expansion in the bundle, though. The game is pretty hard to win, you can die, or get a quick disruption, and somebody else will overtake you, which is part of the fun.
Evolution is a pretty good one. Basically 2-6 players compete to get the most food and population by building their sets of species. It's a cleverly designed game, not too tricky to get into, and decently paced, though I haven't yet had the chance to play the expansion.
Caverna - Worker placement with dogs and sheep and donkeys and dwarves! Super fun and supports 1-7 players.
For a 20-30 minute great dice game I'll recommend Zombie Dice and Las Vegas. Easy to learn an just fun.
Since you played Concordia and liked it i will not recommend you get Settles of Catan because it's a almost a downgrade.
If you are looking for economic games with good interaction, check out Power Grid. It got a new release called Power Grid Recharged recently with some rule changes.
It's not good with 2 players. Needs 3 or more to shine.
Risk is a slog. Long (with players getting knocked out at variable times and waiting, not fun), slow, quite a bit of luck, often reach the point of a foregone conclusion with a while left to play out. It's got the nostalgia factor, but that's about it when the library of available and varied boardgames has exploded in the years since then.