How to Choose a Board Game Gift Without Knowing Their Collection
The request arrives in mid-November, usually by text: they love board games, you have no idea what they own, and the gift exchange is in three weeks. You…
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Board game reviews & buying guides
Every review is based on real play sessions. Browse the newest picks, deep dives and practical guides for your next game night.
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Teaching Games to Mixed-Experience Tables
Six people sit down. One has played the game thirty times, one plays something light a few times a year, and one has not touched a board game since childhood…
Read More →How to Build a Game Night Rotation Your Group Won't Abandon
Every group has a game that got played to death. It was the right game for a year, maybe two. Then the person who always taught it moved across town, the host…
Read More →A Beginner's Guide to Painting Your First Miniatures
The first miniature usually sits on the desk for a week before anyone opens the paint. The box art looks impossibly clean. The faces are tiny. Every guide…
Read More →Cozy Games for Rainy Autumn Afternoons
It is a wet Sunday in October. The light is gray, the windows are streaked, and nobody wants to drive anywhere. Someone puts the kettle on. The group chat is…
Read More →How to Choose a Deduction Game for Your Group
Someone loved a murder mystery dinner, so the group buys a deduction game. It arrives, six people sit down, and it collapses in twenty minutes. Two players…
Read More →Hosting a Halloween Game Night That Isn't All Horror
The invitation says Halloween game night, and three people quietly decide they will leave early. One does not like jump scares. Another has a child asleep…
Read More →Digital Board Games vs. Physical: What Each Does Better
The debate over digital board games versus physical ones usually starts as a false choice. Someone insists that nothing beats …
Read More →What Makes a Cooperative Game Actually Cooperative?
Four players sit down to a cooperative game, and within ten minutes one of them is running the table. They have read the rulebook, they can see the whole…
Read More →The Quiet Joy of Two-Player Abstract Games
The board is small, the rules fit on a card, and neither player has anything to hide. Twenty minutes later the position has become a knot of small obligations…
Read More →Why Track Your Board Game Plays (and How to Start)
Most board game players keep a mental ledger of their hobby: the games they love, the sessions that got away, the friend who …
Read More →How to Store Games in a Small Apartment
The shelf arrived, the boxes went on it, and within a month the collection had spread to the top of a wardrobe, under the bed, and one precarious stack beside…
Read More →Rebuilding a Game Group After Everyone's Schedule Changed
For two years the group met every other Friday at seven. Then one player had a baby, another took a job with a rotating shift, and a third moved forty minutes…
Read More →Your First Board Game Convention: A Complete Survival Guide
There is a particular feeling that hits you the first time you walk into a board game convention hall: dice, laughter, cardboard …
Read More →Why Convention Demos Are the Best Way to Learn New Games
It is Saturday afternoon in a convention hall, and a demonstrator slides a handful of cards across the table. She explains three rules in about ninety seconds…
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