It can happen to anyone: a friend of a friend joins for the evening and suddenly Catan is not an option.
What are your goto games in those situations?
A good question and an interesting thread. At five, our group sometimes tries a substantial game like Viticulture or Power Grid. Knowing the game is critical, however, since many complex games are not at their best with five players. When our group hits six, we’ve recently been playing Mysterium, which is an excellent, simple investigation game with evocative art and a great deal of replay value. It’s surprisingly accessible for new players.
With even larger groups, we sometimes play Mascarade. This Bruno Faidutti social deduction game is similar to his later Citadels, but easier to get started with. Another hit has been Bohnanza, although its wheeling-and-dealing style may not appeal to quieter folks.
When we have players who are easily overwhelmed by lots of rules, we tend to fall back to Sushi Go. This is entertaining enough–though beware of playing it with hate-drafting Magic players.
EDIT: It’s “Mascarade”, not “Masquerade”.
I love draft games (Magic player here, but I don’t hate draft a ton). Been thinking about picking up Sushi Go but my current living situation severely limits my ability to play board games.
I’ve just read the rules of Masquerade, it seems really good. Also, being able to play with up to 13 players makes it really flexible.
EDIT: Have you played the expansion as well?
No, but I would like to. I have not seen either game at our local stores, sadly.
Hi, just wanted to say that we tried it yesterday, and we loved it! Great game, great mechanics and even if it was our first there have been some great deceptions. Thank you for the suggestion!
You’re very welcome. I’m glad to hear it was a success.
I really like 7 Wonders, for 3-7 players and one round is also not too long with about 20 minutes ^^
With the Cities expansion it goes up to eight too. Pretty simple to explain and as turns are simultaneous the extra player doesn’t add any time (unless they are particularly slow)
Cash n Guns - 8 players: Players get to have a standoff with foam guns pointed at one another trying to take out each other either with a loaded gun or bluffing that your gun is loaded to gain the most loot that was gathered from a prior heist.
For larger groups, we’ve had success with these:
Diamant
Bang:The dice game
Citadels
Skull
CamelUp
Just One
Fake artist goes to New York
Sushi Go:Party
Scythe has an expansion that goes to 6 or 7, I think. Some versions of Smallworld may as well. Formula D plays 10. Dixit can go high too if you have enough cards.
We default to Munchkin when nothing else seems obvious. Games get long with 7 or more people because someone can always sabotage the leaders victory. But the game is still hilarious and gleefully fun to us after all these years.
For 8-12 players, I like Green Team Wins.
Ethnos - area control/ set collection/ push your luck with very short turns; hard to get to the table with my group because of the art, but once we play, everyone liked it so far
Cosmic Encounter - classic game with a lot of diplomacy
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18/roborally - chaos & mayhem, aka. a lot of fun; can drag a bit if players don’t get the mechanics
Deception - Murder in Hongkong - for up to 12 people
These are my go to games for larger groups:
- Codenames: A modern classic! Works best with 6 or 8 people.
- Decrypto: For a more gamey version of Codenames.
- Wavelength: Fun party game that spikes interesting conversations
- Concept: Don’t play to win, just play to have fun guessing
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Fluxx
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Codenames
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Munchkin
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and if you’ll believe it, most people haven’t played in so long that it is usually a huge hit: Scattergories
I love light party games with a huge crowd.
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Mysterium - identify the suspect by looking at abstract cards given by a ghost (goes up to 7 players I think; use the original Ukrainian rules!)
Shikoku - interesting movement game, goes up to eight players
Eclipse - epic space exploration and battles, nine players with the expansion (I’ve never played it nine players, it would probably take about a week and need a banqueting table to put it on)Quest, which is an evolution of Avalon. It’s a quicker game, because the voting phase has been eliminated. Instead, if the evil team win, the good team have a final chance to find the bad people. If you do play this game, I highly recomment playing with the “Director’s Cut” rules. It can take 4-10 players.
Libertalia can go up to 6 players, and it’s one of my favourites. I slightly prefer the new Winds of Galecrest version from Stonemaier Games, but any version of this game is fine.
Another game I’m on the lookout for is Feed The Kraken, which seems to be an improved version of Secret Hitler, but with a pirate ship.
Big fan of The Resistance, as well as Blood on the Clocktower, though the latter is a bit of an investment. If you don’t want social deduction, there’s also 7 Wonders and Citadels.
