Board games top 10: the ten best board games to start with

Everyone who starts with modern board games runs into the same question: where do you begin, when there are thousands of boxes and everyone shouts something different? This board games top 10 is our answer. Not the list you see on every site, but the ten games we would hand to a friend who is just starting out.

Most of them can be explained in fifteen minutes, almost all of them are played within an hour, and we sell all ten ourselves. The well-known names from the past are not on it; you can read why further down.

We count down from ten to one.

How this board games top 10 was put together

Three questions shaped the list.

Can someone who does not know the rules yet simply join in after ten minutes? That was the first. On BoardGameGeek, the big database where players worldwide rate games, every game also has a score for how heavy it is. Eight of these ten sit at around 2 or lower on a scale of 5. Wingspan and Everdell Duo are a little heavier, which is why they are at the bottom.

Then we looked at how often a game comes back to our own tables. A box that impresses for one evening and then disappears into the cupboard does not belong in a list of the best board games for beginners.

And finally, we wanted variety. There is a racing game, a game for just two, a calm puzzle, something for a full table at a birthday party. That way almost everyone finds a way in. We stock a few of the games in the English edition; we mention that each time.

The top 5 board games at a glance

Short on time? This is the top 5 board games from the list below.

5. Scout. A card game in which you are not allowed to rearrange your hand. Few rules, surprisingly many choices.

4. Magical Athlete. A race in which every runner has its own unfair power. Lots of laughs, few rules.

3. Harmonies. Stacking tokens into mountains, forests and rivers, and letting animals live there. Calm and beautiful.

2. Heat. Car racing with cards, for one to six players. Taking the bend too fast costs you.

1. Cascadia. Laying tiles, placing animals and building your own patch of nature. The best first step.

Below is the full list, from ten to one.

10. Everdell Duo

Woodland animals building a city, and you and your partner deciding what that city looks like. Everdell Duo is the two-player version of Everdell, made by James A. Wilson and Clarissa A. Wilson, and it is the heaviest game of these ten. That is why it is here.

With your workers you collect resources from the board, and with those you play cards into your own woodland city. The special part is the meadow in the middle. You may only take a card from it when the sun or moon token touches it, and those tokens move along every turn. So it is all about planning and timing, for four seasons.

You can play against each other or together against the game. That makes it a nice second step for couples who already know Patchwork and want more. You can read what we thought of it in our Everdell Duo review. The cards have English text, because we stock Everdell Duo in the English edition.

9. Wingspan

Every bird you play does something for the birds that are already there. Seeds, eggs and new cards go back and forth, and towards the end your row runs like a little machine you built yourself.

Elizabeth Hargrave won the Kennerspiel des Jahres with it in 2019, the German award for slightly heavier games. That also explains why it is at number nine: your first game takes longer and needs more explaining than the rest of this list. Anyone who has already played a few games will make the step effortlessly.

What makes it so special are the 170 cards with real bird species, illustrated by Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas and Beth Sobel, among others. The cards have quite a bit of text, so mind the language: we stock Wingspan in the English edition as well as the Dutch edition of Wingspan.

8. Hot Streak

Dubious mascots, including a hot dog and a bag of chips, run down a ridiculously long track, and you have put money on one of them. Hot Streak by Jon Perry is the game on this list for a full table: up to eight players, and from as young as six.

Everything you want to do, you arrange before the start. You place your bets, set up secret actions and then the starting gun goes off. From that moment on you can do nothing but watch, shout and hope. That is exactly what makes it so loud around the table.

It is not a game to think about for long, and it does not need to be. If you are looking for something for a birthday party where half the people never play board games, this is the box you bring along. Hot Streak

7. Sagrada

A grid of squares on your board, a bag full of coloured dice, and the task of turning it into a stained-glass window. The same colour may not sit next to the same colour, the same number not next to the same number. Sounds easy, until you notice that the die you take now is exactly in the way three turns later.

Adrian Adamescu and Daryl Andrews turned it into a calm puzzle for one to four players in 2017. Each round, everyone takes turns picking a die from the middle. Tool cards let you bend the rules for a moment, but they get more expensive as soon as someone else uses them too.

Sagrada is the game for people who love puzzling and are not keen on arguments at the table. You barely interfere with each other, except when you take the very die someone else needed. We stock the English Refresh Edition of Sagrada.

6. Patchwork

Two people, one pile of patches, and who makes the most beautiful quilt? Patchwork by Uwe Rosenberg dates from 2014 and is still the first game we recommend if you mostly play as a pair.

Every patch costs buttons and time. That second part is the clever idea of the game: whoever is behind on the time track takes the turn, so sometimes you do something three times in a row. A big patch costs a lot of time and might earn you buttons. A small patch fills just that one gap.

At the end, every empty square on your quilt counts against you. And whoever is first to complete a full seven-by-seven square gets a bonus. A game takes half an hour, and the box we stock is the Dutch edition of Patchwork.

5. Scout

In Scout, one rule changes everything: you may not rearrange your cards. You play runs of matching or consecutive numbers, and they must already sit next to each other in your hand. If that does not work, you take a card from the table and slot it in somewhere.

Kei Kajino made it for the publisher Oink Games. In 2022, Scout was on the Spiel des Jahres shortlist, in the year Cascadia won. A round takes twenty minutes.

What makes Scout so good for beginners is that there are only two things to do, while every choice feels like it matters. After one round everyone gets it; after ten rounds you are still discovering new tricks. There is more about how it plays in our Scout review. Scout is in stock in the English edition.

4. Magical Athlete

A centaur, a rocket scientist, an egg. You put together a team of the strangest runners you have ever seen, and each of them has its own power that, frankly, is not fair. Then you roll the die and watch the race go completely off the rails.

Richard Garfield, the designer of Magic: The Gathering, made it together with Takashi Ishida. On BoardGameGeek it is in the top 10 of party games, and with us it is currently one of the best-selling games.

You are in the lead, and two turns later something with magical powers overtakes you. That is the whole joke, and it works just as well with six-year-olds as with adults on a Friday night. We stock the Dutch edition of Magical Athlete, and also the English one. You can read why it makes us so happy in our Magical Athlete review.

3. Harmonies

Taking turns, everyone picks three coloured tokens from the middle and places them on their board. That way fields, forests and mountains appear, and a mountain is worth more the higher you stack it. Then you choose animals that want to live in your landscape, each with its own wish for what lies around it.

Johan Benvenuto came up with it, and it was released in 2024 by Libellud, the publisher of Dixit. You can tell from the components. On BoardGameGeek, Harmonies reached the top 60 of all board games within two years.

It plays calmly, with one to four players, and nobody takes anything away from anyone else. Still, there is enough in it to make you think after every game: should I not have put that mountain over there? We sell Harmonies in the English edition.

2. Heat

Grand Prix racing in the sixties, for one to six drivers. Your gear decides how many cards you play: two in second gear, three in third. The numbers on those cards are your speed.

And then comes the bend. Every bend has a speed limit, and anyone who takes it too fast gets heat in their deck. Those are cards you cannot do anything with, and you only get rid of them when you ease off the throttle. That is exactly where the tension lies: who dares to keep their foot down the longest?

Asger Harding Granerud and Daniel Skjold Pedersen made it for Days of Wonder, the same publisher as Ticket to Ride. Heat is in the top 50 of all games on BoardGameGeek, and it is the best racing game we know. Also read our Heat review, or go straight to Heat: Pedal to the Metal in the English edition.

1. Cascadia

Every turn in Cascadia goes like this: you take a tile with a piece of forest or river, with an animal token alongside it. You add the tile to your landscape and put the animal in a spot where it fits. That way, during the game, your own patch of nature grows in front of you, with bears, hawks and foxes in it.

Randy Flynn won the Spiel des Jahres with it in 2022, the biggest award for games you can play with anyone. You understand why as soon as you play it. It is explained in five minutes, and yet no two games are the same: there are different goal cards for the animals on the table every time.

Why number one? Because it has everything a first modern board game needs. You can play it solo or with four. Nobody gets picked on. And afterwards you lay your landscape next to everyone else's and immediately see who did what differently. We stock Cascadia in the English edition.

The classics you come across everywhere

Perhaps you were looking for Catan, Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne in this list. On most top lists they are at the top, together with Pandemic, Azul, Splendor, Dixit, 7 Wonders and Codenames. They are good games: all nine won the Spiel des Jahres or the Kennerspiel, or were on the shortlist.

Still, they are not here. You can find them at every big online shop and high-street chemist these days, and you do not need anyone to help you choose. This list is about what came after: Cascadia and Harmonies do what Carcassonne did, with more to choose from each turn. Heat comes from Days of Wonder, the publisher of Ticket to Ride. Matt Leacock, the man behind Pandemic, made The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship, a new cooperative game, although it is a good step heavier.

Codenames remains one of our favourite games for a group; what makes it so good is in our Codenames review. If you want more about the games of the past, they are in old board games. And if you are looking for something for the kitchen table with children around, take a look at the family games.

The most beautiful board games on this list

If you chose purely on looks, the order would be different. As far as we are concerned, the most beautiful board games in this top 10 are Harmonies, Wingspan and Sagrada.

With Harmonies it is in the tokens: you really build something that grows taller, and a full board looks like a small scale-model landscape. Wingspan has 170 birds that are each illustrated separately, plus a birdfeeder tower the dice roll through. And Sagrada gets more beautiful as the game goes on, because your window fills up with colour.

Anyone giving a game as a present to someone who knows nothing about board games yet rarely goes wrong with one of these three.

Where do you start?

If you have never played anything more modern than Monopoly, start with Cascadia or Magical Athlete. The first is calm and puzzly, the second loud and chaotic, and both can be explained in ten minutes.

If you mostly play as a pair, Patchwork is the first box and Everdell Duo the second. For a big group at birthday parties, grab Hot Streak. If you are after working together instead of against each other, those games are listed separately in the best cooperative board games.

If you find these ten too tame and want to see what the hobby itself votes for, that is the BoardGameGeek top 100 board games. What has come in this month is under New arrivals, and if you are looking for something that will not cost you much, those are grouped together under cheap board games.

If you want something shorter and lighter than this list, take a look at our fun board games. If you are after a step heavier, those are in board games for adults and after that in the top 10 for experts.