Been really into Azul lately. Pretty simple to explain to people, and the game pieces are very pretty and high quality

I really enjoy playing Hanabi. It's a collaborative card game.

I mostly play big campaign games with my partner, for example currently we're playing Frosthaven and Oathsworn (and have Aeon Trespass lined up). Other favourites are Aeon's End, Spirit Island, Terraforming Mars. Me and my friends have a strong preference for cooperative games!

Some more low key games that we tend to bring out with friends who don't game a lot are Isle of Cats, Thunderbirds, Namiji, and The Crew.

My SO is much more into boards games than I do, but I really like Kingsdomino. It's quick, requires a little bit of strategy, but not too much as I don't like thinking when playing, so that suits me. I also love Unlock, but that's the same genre :p

I’ve been getting into Go/Baduk lately, it’s a shame how few people there are playing it in the US! Would love to play in-person instead of always online

Magic Maze is a collaborative game that’s always fun. Everything is done in “silence” because you’re unable to consult with each other to escape the maze. Warning is that it could get quite chaotic

My best friend and I used to play SubTerra when we hung out every weekend. Company that originally made it is sketchy for a number of reasons, but they're also gone now and another company owns the games. It's a tile based game where you are trying to escape a cave system with monsters in it and you create the board as you play. Each character has abilities to help this and there's a turn limit you have to escape in. It can be really addicting.

I also really enjoy Campy Creatures and Space Park - they're pretty simple games (same creators) that a great for a group of 3-5. Campy Creatures is a little bit like War, where each player gets a hand of monsters and the highest number wins. There are "people" cards laid out and winning lets you pick who you take, with the people having point values assigned (which is what ultimately determines the winner). Hopefully I explained it okay. Space Park is very different - the goal is to get 20 victory points, which are mostly earned by completing tasks. There are 6 "locations" you travel to which give you various resources to help you complete the tasks.

I also love playing Quiddler - it's a fun word game, nothing super complex about it unless you play with people who make up words (we have a rule that half the table has to agree that it's a word).

These come out a lot at my game nights, hopefully I did them justice with my descriptions.

For several years we regularly played my roommates Battlestar Galactica Game. Sadly now I don't have the group for board games anymore.

We've really been enjoying Distilled a lot. It's really engaging. The irony is that it's really hard to play while drunk, but the theme of the game is distilling alcohol, so you have to drink while playing... Right?

I've also found a little indie card game called Wizards of the Grimoire that is absolutely fantastic. It scratches that Mtg itch, but without all the being poor part.

Unfortunately I don't play as much as I use too, there are only 2 of us now, so mostly we play card games now. When the kids were still living at home - I think the Classic Clue board game was probably what we played the most. Risk, and Monopoly were also in the mix quite a bit.

• I love pretty much everything by the "Italian Masters": Newton, Lorenzo Il Magnifico, Grand Austria Hotel, Tzolk'in, Teotihuacan.
• Ascension is my favorite deckbuilder but like Clank, Tyrants of the Underdark, Dominion and Star Realms a lot too
• War Chest is my favorite "abstract". It has randomness from the bag-building elemnt so not a true abstract but it fills that hole for me.
• Bunny Kingdom and It's a Wonderful World for drafting.
• A Feast for Odin, Fields of Arle and Nova Luna are my favorite Uwes
• Mottainai is my favorite small deck card game. Or Sea Salt & Paper if in the mood for something lighter but still very cutthroat

I am bad at making list so probably forgetting some of my very favorites.

I mostly play solo right now, usually digital ported one. I occasionally enjoy Small World 2, Imperial Settlers Roll & Write, and Star Realms.

But my favorite for all time is social deduction of Blood on the Clocktower. It fixes Werewolf/Mafia problem by having Storyteller controlling the game + all roles have powers or altering the game significantly + roles in game limited to several possible ones thanks to script. And it also has layers from official script; the most beginner friendly script Trouble Brewing has so much depth, I think I still learning new things after 1 year of playing. Try it out for social deduction, online playable. This is as great as discovering Two Rooms and A Boom.

We play all the dune games at work. The new remake of 1978, done betrayal and dune imperium. And sometimes twilight imperium.

With friends we have bought spirit island, which is fun but really difficult. We also play dead of winter and some DND spinniof games. My mate works at a Games Store so he has lots of games i haven't played yet. Oh and I've joined a poker home game.

My favourite is twilight imperium if we can ever find enough people who can spend their whole day playing a game.

We've been playing Camel Up a lot. It's nice because there is some skill and a good amount of luck involved, so no matter your board game experience, you have a shot at winning.

Agricola is my favorite but it is pretty complex so we don't play much.

Secret Hitler if that counts as a board game. Otherwise it’s an obscure game called Ankh-Morpork. Really good asymmetrical game whether you are a Discworld fan or not.

Machi Koro without a doubt! It’s like monopoly but it card game form.

Some of our favorites are Catan, power grid, ticket to ride, azul, and bananagrams.

I recently got the Stardew Valley Board Game for my birthday and it's a blast. I was never really in to board games, but I always wanted to play one that is cooperative rather than competitive. Stardew Valley still manages to be a thrilling experience and quite a challenge (at least for a novice like myself).

Since it doesn't seemed to be mentioned by anyone (or I missed it), I'm going to say Robo-Rally... Programming your robot through a racetrack on a moving factory floor using drawn command cards, bumping into others, knocking the off course and ending in a totally wrong spot yourself because you miscalculated a step...

For consistent fun: Codenames, The Resistance, Secret Hitler

Recent board game which I really enjoyed: Takenoko. I loved the change in game phases.

Most chaotic fun I had years ago: Captain Sonar!

A game which has been unexpectedly evergreen for my friends and I is called Infiltration. It's a cyberpunk heist game set in the same universe as Netrunner. It's cooperative and competitive, you enter a complex where the room order is random (determined by the placements of room cards which start face down) and you move through stealing data. You have to escape before the alarm dial goes off, only those who get out are eligible to win and the winner is the one with the highest value of data stolen. So do you press your luck and delve deeper, or make for the exit before your allies do?

I love it because it's a good length (about an hour), has enough randomness to feel different every time but enough tools for strategic lootin and shootin.

Related question, but are there board games Lemmy servers, or topics on more general Lemmy servers? (Not sure what they're called. Probably not sublemmies.)

7 Wonders Duel, Mage Knight, Aeons End, Pandemic, Batman Animated Series and DC Deck Building Game are some of my favorites

So, with the caveat that my "gaming group", more often than not, is my kids and therefore we're not up for a 6 hour rules-intensive cardboard-based cutthroat brawl, here are some that I like:

• Tiny Epic Galaxies: Blast Off : this is a fun little dice-based game with cute imagery. You need to get control of planets to gain points (21) and you have some resource-wrangling opportunities to get to, and then claim the planets before your pesky competitors get them. This also has the advantage that you can play it solo.
• Star Realms : a deck-builder from a couple of old-school M:tG Hall of Famers. It's really a two-player game, but it's got passable options for 1 to 4 players. Each player had a basic starting deck and a common randomised trade row is populated from a shuffled deck. Your need to knock your opponents life down to zero by purchasing spacecraft and bases from there trade row to augment your combat ability, whilst avoiding your opponents similar attempts. There are four card types that allow you to level-up your trading, health regeneration, combat or enemy-annoyance factor. I love this game, but recommend the Frontiers version as it's a little better balanced.
• Hey, That's My Fish! : a fast, surprisingly cutthroat and, to be fair, rather physically finicky game but it's a lot of fun! It's a hexagonal-tile based game with up to four teams of penguins competing to harvest fish from a rapidly dwindling ice floe, where each penguin leaves a trail of melted-ice destruction in their wake! This one can lead to fisticuffs if someone manages to bisect the ice, leaving an opponent stranded and fishless!
• Wreckland Run : this is definitely outside your preferences, it's solo-only. That said you asked for people's favourite board games, and this is one of mine currently 🙂 It's a Mad-Max-esque campaign theme in which you pick a vehicle and driver (giving you a set of core abilities) and attempt to fight your way through a series of vehicular brawls by judicious dice placement. And luck. Despite the fact that the initial rule book was an unmitigated disaster, I've really enjoyed playing this one and I'm currently battling Chapter 4 after not too many attempts at the previous chapters!

Ticket to Ride is our go to.

Not so much a traditional "board" game, but I've been a lifelong enjoyer of Munchkin! It's a whimsical dnd-esque card game with (almost literally) hundreds of different themed versions, from Space to the Wild West to Cthulhu even.

I mainly play abstracts nowadays for there quick setup/cleanup time - Yinsh, Hive, Blokus Duo are some of my favorites.

Alien Frontiers is always a popular one at my table.

Really enjoying Glass Road at the moment, want to check out more Rosenberg, but they're all out of stock and the big boxes seem extortionate on UK eBay

I really like BattleCon, a fighting game-inspired card/board game that did a really good job translating the mindgames and oki into a turn-based format. They had an online version of it but sadly halted development because they couldn't figure out how to monetize it.

My partner and I love playing Wingspan. A game about bird may not sound great but it's full of strategy without being too hard to pick up. It's competitive, but just total points at the end, you can't screw each other up during play.