Which are the Top 10 Most Popular Board Games?

While following the crowd is not always the preferred path, it’s often beneficial to see which way the trends are going. I take a look at Which are the Top 10 Most Popular Board Games?

Introduction to Top 10 Most Popular Board Games

If you’re new to the hobby and don’t know where to begin, the most popular titles are a good starting point. The following list is summarized after the BGG’s most popular games, brought to you in simple words, that even non-gamers will understand. And if you don’t – just ask in the comments and I’ll be glad to elaborate.

Knowing the most popular board games (and perhaps playing some of them), you’ll have a decent base knowledge of board gaming and a good platform on which to build. I mean, those games are so popular for a reason, right?

While I wouldn’t necessarily mark them as essential, you can’t miss with most of them – especially since most of them do a very good job at introducing certain game mechanics (like deck-building, tile-placement, etc.), that you’ll meet so often in board gaming. For a new player, I’d be careful about purchasing Agricola and Terraforming Mars since they’re a bit heavier.

Table of Contents

Rank	Image	Title (click & jump to)	Tags	Price
10.		Puerto Rico	colonial, action-drafting	$$
9.		Agricola	farming, worker-placement	$$
8.		Terraforming Mars	sci-fi, engine building, card-drafting	$$$
7.		Codenames	party, hidden information, deduction	$$
6.		Ticket to Ride	trains, set-collecting	$$
5.		Dominion	deck-building	$
4.		7 Wonders	ancient civilizations, card-drafting	$$
3.		Catan	colonization, resource-management	$$
2.		Carcassonne	tile-placement	$
1.		Pandemic	cooperative, action points	$$$

Honorable Mentions Places 20-11

20. Dixit is a game about telling a story in pictures. It’s an action-reaction type of party board game.

19. Azul, an abstract tile-laying game. You can read more about it in my Best Abstract Board Games article, where it came out on top.

18. Love Letter is a small card game where you’re trying to pass a love letter to a princess. Simple rules, cute art, and quick gameplay. Read my full Love Letter review.

17. Power Grid. Published in 2004, this one is a modern classic and a template eurogame for many games to go. It’s about building an electrical grid and supplying cities. You can read more about it in our 10 Best Route Building Board Games.

16. Scythe is a mid-heavy strategy game, set in a 1920’s diesel-punk alternate history. Exceptional art, great components, and solid and engaging mechanics all make this game one of the essentials. Read the full Scythe review.

15. In King of Tokyo, each player plays as a giant monster (think of Godzilla). Destroy the city or other monsters, the choice is yours.

14. Ticket to Ride: Europe is a reimplementation of the original formula – read more about it below. It features a map of Europe and introduces a few new game mechanics.

13. Splendor is one of the most typical games when introducing (gateway games) players to engine-building. It’s about resource/set collection and it’s set in Renaissance Europe, although the theme is a bit pasted on. Read the full Splendor review here.

12. 7 Wonders: Duel is a two-player variant of its big brother (see below). Set in the ancient world, card drafting and set-collecting are a foundation for a very strategic game. You build your city economically, commercially, scientifically, and militaristic, while also keeping an eye on your opponent, who is trying to do the same. Read the full 7 Wonders: Duel review here.

11. Small World is an entry-level strategy game. Fantasy races (there’s a whole plethora of them and there are numerous expansions available) are battling each other for land and there can only be one winner. Read the full Small World review here.

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10. Puerto Rico

Theme and Objectives

Puerto Rico takes players back to colonial times to (you guessed it) the island of Puerto Rico. You play as governors to-be, building plantations, growing crops, erecting buildings, and shipping goods back to Europe.

Buildings and shipped goods bring you victory points, which is how you win the game and become the governor.

How to play?

What makes Puerto Rico special, is the action-drafting system. In each round, players select roles from those available, making appropriate actions. The player who chooses a role gets a discount on it, then all others can also perform that role.

• Builder allows you to build a building, worth victory points. If the building is manned it has an ability that can be used in play.
• Captain. Ship goods back to Europe for victory points.
• Craftsman. Produce goods from (manned) plantations.
• Mayor: Man plantations and buildings with colonists.
• Prospector. Gain income.
• Settler: Build plantations.
• Trader: Sell goods for money.

If a role is unused, it gets a doubloon bonus, making it more lucrative in subsequent rounds. The starting player token is passed on in the next rounds, allowing the next player to choose a role first.

The game ends when one of the players fills up all the places for buildings on his board, or the supply runs out of colonists/victory points.

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9. Agricola

Published	2007
Designer	Uwe Rosenberg
Playing time	30 minutes per player
Players	1-5, best with 3-4
Complexity	medium-heavy

Theme and Objectives

In Agricola, each player plays as an owner of a 17th-century farm. You build and renovate your house, plow fields, and herd animals. But most importantly, your goal is to feed your family and survive.

Agricola, while technically an optimization puzzle, also allows you to do things your way. Do you want a big family with a lot of children? Focus on grain and vegetables? Or perhaps ditch all that and just breed sheep, lots of sheep.

Even if you don’t play competitively, there’s a lot of fun and enjoyment to be had from managing your farm and moving animeeples around.

How to play?

Worker placement is the main mechanic in Agricola. That means each round you’ll have several workers available (you can increase this by having children), which you place on various spaces on the board. Actions like gathering resources, playing cards from your hand, adding animals, building fences and stables, and even having children are then performed.

To add diversity, you’ll receive a hand of cards for each game. These represent professions and improvements that you can play during the game and greatly influence how you approach a game.

In the end, everything you do is scored. A modern house, animals, and a well-fed family will yield you a lot of victory points, while hungry bellies will give negative points.

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8. Terraforming Mars

Published	2016
Designer	Jacob Fryxelius
Playing time	120 minutes
Players	1-5, best with 3
Complexity	medium

Theme and Objectives

In the 25th century, colonizing Mars has become the next big thing. But to make the Red Planet habitable, it has to be terraformed. Oxygen levels and temperature have to be increased. The surface must be filled with oceans, forests, and eventually cities.

Even though the project is sponsored by the World Government, different corporations see Mars as a great opportunity to profit and expand. You play as one such corporation. You compete with others in contribution to terraforming and other infrastructural and scientific advancements.

How to play?

Your chosen corporation begins with a budget. You can spend your money on any of the standard projects that change the surface of the planet or enhance your corporation: plant greenery, place oceans or cities, build power plants that increase heat production, and so on.

Each of these improvements increases the terraforming rating (giving you more income in the future) or your “engine” – the efficiency at which your corporation produces energy, heat, or greenery. This allows you to build improvement “for free” later on.

But having only standard projects would make the game pretty repetitive. What makes Terraforming Mars an immersive space game, are project cards. These are powerful special projects, but also expensive. If you choose carefully, they can really boost your engine – or can be just a drain if you reserve more cards that you can actually build.

The game ends when the planet is fully terraformed and points are added up. You can increase those if you completed some of the Milestones and Awards during the game.

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7. Codenames

Published	2015
Designer	Vlaada Chvatil
Playing time	15 minutes
Players	2-8, best with 6 or 8
Complexity	light

Theme and Objectives

Codenames is a spy-vs-spy game of hidden information. You are trying to guess the names of other teams’ agents that are somewhere among the 25 codenames on the board.

How to play?

Players are split into two equal teams and one of the players per team is named the Spymaster. The two spymasters have a secret Key – a map revealing all the secret identities of the spies on the table.

On his turn, the spymaster gives one-word hints to his team, trying to hint at as many codenames with it. The team can then debate the meaning of the hint. Of, course the rival team should take note of that – those are the agents they must avoid.

After the debate, a team must point out at least one codename (and can stop guessing after that at anytime).

• If they hit the right agent, it gets covered with their marker and they get another guess.
• If they hit an innocent bystander, their turn ends.
• If they hit an agent of another team, it gets covered with another team’s marker and their turn ends.
• If they hit the assassin, they lose immediately.

The game ends when all of the agents of one team have been revealed.

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6. Ticket to Ride

Published	2004
Designer	Alan R. Moon
Playing time	30-60 minutes
Players	2-5, best with 4
Complexity	light-medium

Theme and Objectives

The industrial revolution is in full swing and it’s up to you (and other players) to connect the cities with rails. You gain points for successful connections and also for the length of your trains. Who will have the largest network?

How to play?

Ticket to Ride is a prime example of a well-designed, easy-to-get-into board game. Each turn, you will either collect train cards (these come in various colors) or you’ll play cards of the same color to place them on a railroad of that color.

It’s this simple set-collecting that has made the franchise so popular. But there’s depth too. When to play your cards is probably the biggest decision. Keep collecting and risk that someone else takes your route or play it safe and place your train now?

You must also take into account objectives – cards that give extra points if you connect specific cities and you’ll get a game that anyone can play, yet it still has something to think about.

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5. Dominion

Published	2008
Designer	Donald X. Vaccarino
Playing time	30 minutes
Players	2-4, best with 3
Complexity	light-medium

Theme and Objectives

Dominion puts you in the shoes of a freshly crowned monarch, who decides not to rest on the laurels of his parents, but to expand his land, develop the economy and bring his dominion to the next century. Err, build up his deck of cards so that it produces the most victory points.

Although the cards come with beautiful illustrations and thematic names, the theme is not the strongest point of Dominion. It feels pasted on and does not contribute to the gameplay. But …

How to play?

Dominion is what made deck-building a game. Sure, you could build your deck in collectible card games, but that happened before you played a game. In Dominion, deck-building is THE game.

Each player starts the game with 10 cards. They are roughly divided into action (enhance other actions or have the abilities on their own), currency (used to buy new cards), and victory points cards (that’s how you win).

Turns fly by quickly by playing the cards from your hands, buying new ones, and discarding unwanted ones. The gameplay is straightforward, players pick it up swiftly, and it runs smoothly.

All the different actions take a bit to understand (roughly 500 cards are in the base game), but it’s not a big problem. You learn them as you play.

The meta revolves around balancing the three different card types – you need some to be efficient during the game, while you need others at the end to score the maximum amount of points. This allows for many different possible strategies and with short playtime, the game encourages experimenting.

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4. 7 Wonders

Published	2010
Designer	Antoine Bauza
Playing time	30 minutes
Players	3-7, best with 4-5
Complexity	light-medium

Theme and Objectives

The Pyramids, Hanging Gardens, Statue of Zeus, Colossus, Temple of Artemis, Great Lighthouse, and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus were the most prominent monuments of the ancient world.

Now is your chance to re-live that era. Develop your civilization, gather resources, build ever-advanced buildings, and finally construct one of the Wonders.

How to play?

7 Wonders is a card-drafting tableau-building board game.

In each era, every player receives several cards. You take one card and place it in front of you. The remaining cards are passed on to your neighbor and you repeat the process until only one card is left in your hand (which is discarded).

The whole process then repeats two more times (Era II and III) with stronger sets of cards. Between eras, military might is checked and victory points are given out. After era III, final scores are added together and the winner is declared.

There are several types of cards, such as resource cards, military, commercial, scientific and cultural buildings, that you stack in front of you. Many of them require resources or other prerequisites to be built (sometimes you can build for free if you have a prerequisite building).

7 Wonders of the World

That’s more prominent in later eras, where the buildings are increasingly more expensive, but also give out better rewards. This is particularly true for wonders, ultimate buildings, that can really turn the tide of the game.

To be able to afford those late-game buildings, you must build up your engine wisely. Choosing the right cards (and at the same time denying them to your opponents) is crucial and you’ll often want to go the other way. If your neighbor is going for the military, there might not be enough military cards left and you’ll be better off specializing in commerce, for example.

The average game lasts around 30 minutes (maybe a little more) and this is almost independent of the player count. Players take their turns simultaneously and the game scales really well from 3 and up to 7 players, without too much extra playing time.

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3. Catan

Published	1995
Designer	Klaus Teuber
Playing time	60-120 minutes
Players	3-4, best with 4
Complexity	light-medium

Theme and Objectives

The now-legendary game from 1995, which helped to kickstart the modern hobby, re-visits the theme of colonization. You land on a virgin island, with your settlers ready to exploit it. Build villages, roads, cities, and armies.

Your goal is to be better than your neighbors. But they are friendly, so there is no direct military battle, only trading and competing for land.

How to play?

The hexes that form the map, each produce a different resource. You’ve got wood, clay, sheep, ore, and grain. To get a resource, you need to have a settlement on the border of the hex, when the number of that hex is rolled on the dice.

You can trade your resources with other players or the bank, and build new infrastructure: villages, roads, and cities. Building new infrastructure requires resources – and the circle is complete.

What resources to focus on, which spots to start on, where to spread out, and who to trade with are some of the strategic questions you’ll ask yourself during the game.

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2. Carcassonne

Published	2000
Designer	Klaus-Jürgen Wrede
Playing time	30-45 minutes
Players	2-5, best with 2
Complexity	light-medium

Theme and Objectives

The medieval city of Carcassonne lies in a picturesque piece of France. It’s surrounded by fields, crisscrossed with roads and monasteries.

The game uses this template to create a similar world. You draw square tiles and place them next to the existing ones so that the features on them match. Features can be scored by strategically placing your people (meeples) on them.

How to play?

Each turn you draw a random tile and place it anywhere on the map. As said, the features must match, so you won’t have unlimited options. Usually, you’ll try to add to the feature you already have a meeple on, scoring more points.

After you place your tile, you have the option to place your meeple on a feature on that tile. You can place them on a city, road, monastery, or field. Your meeples are limited, so there lies the strategic part. You get them back when a feature is completed, except for the farmers on the fields, which are long-term investments and only scored at the game’s end.

When the tiles run out, the game ends and the player with the highest score is the winner.

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1. Pandemic

Published	2008
Designer	Matt Leacock
Playing time	45 minutes
Players	1-4, best with 4
Complexity	light-medium

Theme and Objectives

Not one, but four deadly diseases are threatening to overcome humanity. Can you and your team of various occupations keep the hotspots in check and develop the cures at the same time?

How to play?

On your turn, you can take 4 actions. Your options are:

• move,
• treat diseases,
• build a research station,
• cure a disease (certain conditions must be met for this one),
• or share knowledge (cards).

After your turn, you draw two new cards. Cards are used to travel faster or cure diseases if you have a completed set of them.

Then the infection phase starts. You draw cards from the infection deck, infecting more cities (adding cubes to them). If a city already has 3 cubes, an outbreak occurs, infecting all nearby cities.

Players win if they manage to cure all four diseases or lose if there are too many outbreaks or if they run out of cubes or cards. This results in a very tense co-op experience, where you’re constantly on the brink of losing. Players must use their special abilities wisely and work together.