👽 Best (Strategic) Game: Terraforming Mars

In Terraforming Mars, players play as corporations trying to make Mars habitable for humans by raising the heat, increasing the oxygen levels, and creating oceans. The main mechanics of the game include managing your resources (and their production) with cards, standard projects, or tile placement. I love this game because it has some player interaction (competing for tile spaces, milestones, and awards), but still lets you focus mostly on what you want to do with the resources you have.

Tip: We’ve noticed that the following base-game corporations are better than others, so we try to distribute those among the players:

1. Ecoline: placing a greenery tile only needs 7 plants (great for the Gardener milestone and Landowner award)
2. Tharsis Republic: player gains money production every time someone places a city (great for the Mayor milestone and Banker award)
3. United Nations Mars Initiative: if the player has increased their terraforming rating this round, they can pay 3 money to increase it once more (great for the Terraformer milestone)
4. Helion: player can use heat as money (great for the Thermalist award)

⚔️ Best Cooperative Game: Slay the Spire: The Board Game

The first time I played this game, I enjoyed it so much that I still woke up in a good mood the next morning. It feels like this is the “encounter” mode of role-playing games like Pathfinder (or D&D), which is always my favourite part. The rules are easy to grasp, and they simply make sense. The cooperative nature makes everyone enjoy the evening, and the difficulty keeps you on the edge of your seat while not seeming impossible.

The only complaint I have is that since it’s a campaign game, I can’t just play it whenever I want.

🚂 Best Family Game: Ticket to Ride: Europe

Building trains and connecting cities, Ticket to Ride is easy to explain and play. I enjoy it most with 3 players, since that causes competition for certain tracks, but doesn’t completely ruin your chances. I do sometimes get nervous when playing, worried someone will snatch my card or track before it’s my turn again… I’m told that’s part of the magic.

Tip: If you value your nerves, play this with people who won’t do things on purpose, just to prevent you from completing your objective.

🐉 Best Deck-Building Game: Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure

Usually, I hate any kind of element of luck in a board game, but the way it’s incorporated in Clank! is wonderful. The premise of this game is that you are a thief trying to steal treasures from a dragon’s lair. Certain actions make you Clank!, generating noise, and making it more likely that the dragon will harm you in its next attack. You can still be unlucky when you get drawn to receive damage, but hey, it’s your fault you made so much Clank!

This game really feels like a video game brought on the table, and it made me love deck-building as a mechanic.

🙆 Best Social Game: Activity

Activity has been a part of my extended family for ages, and it’s a game that we always played on ski holiday evenings or at family gatherings. I think this particular version is specific to my part of the world, but there are many games with a similar premise: you explain, act, or draw a word for your team and get points when they guess correctly. A popular alternative with a fun twist is Poetry for Neanderthals.

🏎️ Best Real-Time Game: Ligretto

Faster than fast, quicker than quick. I am Lightning.

Ligretto is a real-time game, where everyone plays at the same time, trying to place cards in ordered stacks in the centre of the table. This game really brings out the competition in my family, and is the only one where trash-talking is tolerated and even enjoyed.

1️⃣ Best Card Game: UNO

The OG friendship-ruining game, UNO is perfect for evenings with friends.

There is, of course, only one correct way to play it, called “Olympic UNO”. It is played over multiple rounds of UNO games and works the following way:

• Everyone starts with 5 cards. Each time you lose a round, you start all following ones with one card less.
• There are no winners, only an ultimate loser. All rounds are played until the last man standing. If you have no more cards to start with, you become the ultimate loser. The Olympic game ends - no more rounds are played.
• The most recent loser shuffles and deals, and they start the next round.

Other correct rules include:

1. The effects of the starting card are ignored - it only indicates the colour / symbol that can be played.
2. If the starting card is black, the card at the bottom of the drawing pile indicates the starting colour.
3. You may finish with a special card.
4. If you have multiple cards of the same symbol in your hand, you may play them at the same time.
5. If you cannot play a card and must draw, you may play the drawn card immediately if it can be played. If you have another card with that symbol in your hand, you may add it immediately!
6. You may play a skip card to propagate your own skip onto the next player. In case a player plays X skip cards at once, the following X players are skipped. The skipped players can all play their own Y skip cards, and propagate them to the Y players after the originally skipped players. Yes, you can even skip yourself this way.
7. You may play any number of +2 cards to propagate any +2s played at you.
8. You may play any number of +4 cards to propagate any +2s and +4s played at you.
9. You may play any number of +2 cards to propagate any +4s played at you only if the first +2 matches the colour chosen by the player who played the +4.
10. If you have to draw cards due to a +2 or +4, your turn is skipped.
11. You can be brought back into the game after placing your last card in two cases:
    1. If you are part of a +2 / +4 chain that loops back to you. In this case, you have to draw all of those cards.
    2. If there are two players left, and it is the other player’s turn (so not if they are skipped, but yes if they skip you back). In this case, the other player may play a +2 or +4, and you must draw those cards.

🃏 Best French-suited Card Game: Americký Žolík (Rummy)

A game I learned to play with my grandma and the go-to small game of my family, this version of rummy has the following rules:

1. Deal 5 cards to each player.
2. Each player takes a turn in clockwise order and must either
   • add at least one card to the table OR
   • draw a card.
3. All cards on the table must be placed in groups of at least three (3) as either
   • a sequence of cards in the same suit (max size is 14 when Ace to Ace) OR
   • cards of the same value with each suit different (max size is 4).
4. Players can rearrange the cards on the table as long as the placing in point (3) is respected upon rearrangement.
5. Cards that have already been placed on the table cannot be taken up into anyone’s hand.
6. The first cards any player lays down at the table must be a “clean” sequence, i.e., it cannot contain jokers. After that, the player is “unlocked” and can place any number of cards on the table during their turn. This usually results in the start of the game just being many consecutive rounds of drawing for everyone.
7. The first player to have no cards left in their hand wins. We usually play until everyone has finished. If any player finishes in the same round as the first winner, they share the victory.

Note: My family always plays this game without jokers (even though the game is literally called “Joker” is Slovak). While this means that the game completely depends on the luck of the draw, we all just enjoy the challenge of puzzling out how to add a card.

♥️ Best German-suited Card Game: Srdcia

In this case a 4-player game, “Srdcia” definitely has similar versions in other cultures, with different decks of cards. It’s played in multiple rounds, until a certain player reaches a pre-defined amount of points and loses (yes, points are bad).

A game works like this:

1. All players are dealt 8 cards (the whole deck is dealt). The person left of the dealer starts.
2. The first player places a card of their choice in the centre of the table. This card may not be a heart.
3. Each other player must in turn add one card to the pile in the centre, according to the following rules:
   • If they have a card from the starting suit, they must play it.
   • If they have multiple cards from the starting suit, they may decide which of those to play.
   • Else, they can play any card they wish.
4. The player who put down the highest card from the starting suit takes all four cards and sets them upside-down in front of them.
5. The player who last took the cards from the centre starts the next round. That player may now start with a heart, if they wish.
6. After 8 rounds (when all cards are gone), points are counted:
   • Every card with a heart is worth 1 point.
   • The green Over Knave (third-highest card in the suit) is worth 5 points.

There are a few extra rules you can add to make it more interesting:

• If a player gets all the points in a game, they get zero and everyone else gets 13.
• If a player gets zero points for a third consecutive round, they get -10 points on their overall score.
• If a player’s score is in the last 10% before the losing score, their score only increases by 1 every round, regardless of how many points they gather.

Tip: To play this with 3 people, just remove all the 7s and 8s from the deck.