What is your most replayed board game?

Questions to ask before buying a new game

TL;DR Knowing which board games you play often will help you make better choices when buying new games.

A few years ago, if anyone had asked me to recommend board games, I would simply have rattled off a few of my favourites. This would have made for some insightful, eclectic, but not very helpful suggestions. They would have been based on my own preferences and experience; I doubt I could have articulated why I found those games enjoyable. Today, if I’m asked to recommend games, one question far outweighs others: How often do I get this game to the table? Do I actually play it, and how often?

It’s not just about enjoying a game. To give yourself the chance to fall in love with a game, you need to play it multiple times. Even if you like a game’s mechanics, theme, or gameplay, you won’t experience its strategic and tactical depth unless you play it a lot. A game’s design may be exceptionally clever, but you’re unlikely to discover its full greatness in one playthrough. Besides, what’s the point of owning an excellent game you never play?

So let’s take a tour through our most-played games to find out which factors makes it more likely for a game to hit the table — and less likely to languish on a shelf of shame.

Player count: Ark Nova

Since the first time our group played this game in June 2022, Ark Nova has been one of my favourite games. In my end-of-year review, I wrote:

The game is fantastic. It’s absolutely, unquestionably my favourite game of the year. Considering how dense the information is, it’s impressive that the game never feels heavy. Turns are quick and fun, [it’s] not hard to teach or learn, and the components are stellar… As far as I’m concerned, this is the new gold standard in game design.

Needless to say, I was an instant fan. However, Ark Nova proves the truism that every game is not for every table. It also illustrates the importance of player count — how many people can play the game.

In total, five people from our group played this game, but only two of us fell in love with it. I was one of them — fortunately, so was the game’s owner. As a result, Ark Nova managed to become one of my most replayed games this year, despite our group only playing it twice. Instead, the two players who loved the game played it often — simply because we liked it more than everybody else.

Which goes to show that even if a game is critically acclaimed, that doesn’t mean you (or your friends) will like it. Hopefully, if you do like a game and want to play it more often, you’ll find enough other people who share your opinion.

How does this help you? When considering which games to buy, ask yourself if you know enough people who enjoy this type of game to justify several plays. In this example, Ark Nova has a very defined theme, and it’s aimed at experienced board gamers who are comfortable with a certain level of complexity. It also resembles other popular games, and while it impressed reviewers it wasn’t universally beloved. On the plus side, it supports one to four players, and we’ve played it at all those player counts. The game’s owner played several solo sessions of it before introducing it to the group and loved it. So even if he had been the only person who enjoyed it, he would still have been able to play it.

Solo mode: Cascadia

See also: Calico.

This brings us to solo mode, and what was by far my most played game of 2023. Our 2022 review mentioned some of the reasons Cascadia became a regular feature in my gaming life. Many games have a solo mode or variant, often asking you to chase an increasingly higher score. What sets Cascadia apart is its fun but challenging campaign-like mode which the game calls “Achievements”. This consists of a series of scenarios you need to beat. Although you can include challenges when playing in a group, it gives solo players a lot of reasons to keep playing. That includes the different scoring cards, the large number of scenarios, and the increasing complexity and difficulty as you complete achievements.

Solo mode is a great feature to look for if you don’t have a lot of friends who like board games, or if they simply prefer different types of games than the one you want to buy. It’s worth checking reviews to find out what people think of the solo mode, though: as mentioned above, not all solo variants are created equal. Ideally you’ll also be able to play the game with friends, in which case you’ll want to look for games with a player count from 1 and up. You may also want to consider games that are intended for a single player only. Several board game reviewers on YouTube focus exclusively on solo games. So if you think this kind of game might be for you, it’s worth seeking those out.

A quick note: If you already own games you love but don’t get to play often, it’s worth looking up the game on BoardGameGeek. You may find fan-made solo variants for the game, or even official variants published after the game was printed.

I played Cascadia so often I stopped counting once the number reached double digits. The quick setup and tear-down times let you play several sessions every sitting. That’s useful if you’re struggling with a particularly challenging scenario. This was also a crucial part of its replayability — but let’s look at another game that illustrates this nicely.

Setup, tear down, teach, weight: Cthulhu: Death May Die (C:DMD)

See also: Horrified (any version); Sleeping Gods.

In this case, setup refers to the time and effort it takes to get all the components of the game out and ready to play; tear down refers to how long it takes to pack away the game after you’re done.

Think about the longest game you’ve played. Of all the time you spent interacting with the game, how long did it take to set up and tear down? Compare that to how long you spent playing the game. Was the setup and tear down worth the enjoyment you get out the game? If the answer is yes, it’s likely the game has good replayability.

Cthulhu: Death May Die (C:DMD) is a cooperative game for up to five players, which means it’s great at higher player counts. You can play it solo but it’s much more fun to work with others to discuss the scenario, come up with suggestions and solutions, and implement strategies, before succeeding or failing as a team. And where older, similar games often required a long setup, C:DMD does an excellent job of getting this out of the way so you can get to the fun bits.

You know what isn’t fun? Trying to teach someone a set of convoluted rules, only to constantly look them up during the game because you can’t remember. That brings us to the two next factors that make or break a game’s replayability: teach and weight. The teach refers to the process of teaching a game to new players. How easy is it to teach the game to new players? Weight refers to the complexity of the game itself. (See this entry in the Board Game Jargon Primer, Part 9.) It’s worth noting that not all board gamers like simpler or more complex games. Or they might only like specific types of games if they are more complex or less complex. Unfortunately determining this will take some trial-and-error unless your gaming friends are especially self-aware and honest about their preferences.

Here’s a quick way to test how a game’s weight will affect its replayability. Once you’ve finished explaining how to play, will they understand what to do or will the game defeat them almost immediately? Will the players enjoy themselves or get frustrated and confused? That’s also where C:DMD excels, especially compared to other games with similar themes. (More about these under Counter-examples, below.)

Actual playing time: Ra

Speaking of trial-and-error: Ra was one of the biggest surprises of 2023. Our group played several very different auction games in 2023, but this was the only one we played more than once. Why was Ra such a hit? Partly because it rewards a clever strategy and because it requires a fair amount of luck. Could we have predicted that everyone would like Ra so much more than the other auction games we played? Possibly, but the combination of a quick setup, simple teach, reasonable playing time, and a high maximum player count were all a big part of why we played it so often.

The game was designed in 1999, but a deluxe re-release brought this to our group. Unlike Ark Nova, it soon became a hit with everyone, despite the fact that few of us really like auction games. (For the record, I’m a big fan.) Ra shares a lot of the benefits of C:DMD: easy setup and tear down, easy teach, and a manageable complexity. It also plays in a very reasonable amount of time (around 2 hours). This brings us to another characteristic of highly replayable games: actual playing time.

Some games are infamous for overstaying their welcome by taking half an hour’s fun and dragging it out for much, much longer. Fortunately, Ra is a competitive game with lots of interaction between players. This game got to the table at least five times in the space of a year, which is exceptional for our group. It’s also unusual in that it remains enjoyable for the whole time you’re playing it, even at the highest player count.

Next time you think of scheduling a board game, ask yourself: How long does it take to play one session of this game? How much time am I asking people to give up playing this game when they could be doing something else? And out of all that time, how much of it qualifies as fun?

Time and place: Kluster

Returning to the question of weight and teach. Sometimes the most important part of playing a game multiple times is figuring out under which conditions the game will shine.

Kluster deserves mention in this context. All you’re trying to do in this quick, simple game is to put down all your magnets in a circle. (That’s it. That’s the setup and the teach.) In this case, the game’s portability and simplicity is what sets it apart. It’s so fast to set up, teach, and tear down, and there are no complex rules to remember. It’s by far the simplest game we’ve mentioned, so people who want more strategic depth from their game might grow tired of this game quickly. But it’s the perfect thing to take a pub quiz night or the corner table at your favourite coffee shop, or to break out between other games.

You probably don’t want to build your entire collection out of board games this simple. But I’ve also had more fun playing four games of Kluster than more complicated but well-respected games.

Counter-examples

Speaking of which: let’s turn to a few games I’ve loved in the past, but no longer play. The first game that comes to mind is Arkham Horror, 2^nd edition. I loved that game. Or at least, I loved the idea of that game. I loved the theme, and I love cooperative games. But tear down was long; setup was even longer. The teach took forever, the rules were super complicated, and the lack of player aids made it very easy to forget the rules while you were playing. A single game took hours, and there was no guarantee you would succeed. So although I loved it, my friends did not. (The same goes for Eldritch Horror to a lesser extent, and Mansions of Madness: Second Edition to a lesser extent again. I don’t know when I’ll get anyone to play those again, either.) I’m glad I own it and learnt how to play it, but I know I won’t get it to the table again soon.

Another example is Gloomhaven, which is a highly rated game — higher rated than any games on this list. But we stopped playing it after six sessions and I doubt we’ll ever pick it up again. Yes, it’s cooperative, supports solo play, and includes a lot of game. But the setup and tear down simply outweighed the amount of fun we were having. I’m glad I got to play it, but I don’t feel the need to revisit it any time soon.

Conclusion

Board games can be an expensive hobby. This is especially true for physical board games, which require a place to play and a place to store them. Digital games let you test out games without buying them, and may solve specific issues discussed in this article. But as we discussed before, digital games have their own set of issues. Regardless of how you consume board games, ask yourself:

• Supported number of players: How many people can play this game? How many people do you need to play with? And if you don’t know someone who wants to play the game, does it have a solo mode?
• Setup and tear down: Is setup and tear down for the game quick and easy? Does the amount of fun you’ll have justify the amount of time spent getting it out of the box?
• Teach: How difficult is it to teach the game to new players?
• Weight: How much complexity do players need to manage while playing?
• Actual playing time: What kind of time commitment are you asking for?

As we discussed on Episode 1 of Nerdverse Unshuffled, there are more board games than you could play in several lifetimes. Even if you never did anything else, you couldn’t play all the board games produced every year. So rather than attempting to “collect ‘em all”, give yourself permission to buy fewer games and play them more often. There’s no point forcing anyone to play a game they won’t enjoy — and that goes for yourself, too.