Best Strategy Board Games for 2025 | Global News Avenue

Star Wars: Shattered Point takes all your favorite characters from the Clone Wars era and beyond, puts them into a classic squad-based tabletop combat experience, and lets your imagination do the rest. Miniatures comes in easy-to-assemble kits that require little guidance, and each model can be painted to your personal taste with relative ease. Like the miniatures, the game rules do a good job of balancing a low learning curve with the flexibility to change your play style to avoid a repetitive feel. Whether you’re new to the world of tabletop miniatures or a veteran of this classic gaming style, there’s a lot to like about this game.

It’s a Small World is one of my favorites because it’s a conquest game that feels different every time you play it. Essentially, players are vying for control of something like a Risk board, but with too little space on the board to accommodate everyone, hence the name. You bid on one of dozens of fantasy creatures, each randomly paired with an additional special ability, which could result in hilarious combinations like fireflies or peace-loving gnomes. You can then use your special abilities to spread, collect coins based on the territory you control, and then leave that race to find a new one. It’s an addictive gameplay loop that’s often fun and competitive, and you can learn it and play it in under 2 hours.

Set in the Cold War, Twilight Zone balances the strategic complexity of “big” games with the simple mechanics of traditional conquest games like Risk. One player takes on the role of the United States and the other takes on the role of the Soviet Union, vying for the existence, domination, or complete control of various battlefield areas around the world. Both sides race to put a man on the moon, reduce defense control through military operations while carefully avoiding the devastation (immediate loss) of nuclear war, and extend influence around the globe in a tug-of-war for global power.

Agricola is one of the best designed board games ever made and one of the best examples of worker placement mechanics. The concept is simple: as the seasons go by, players each use their farmers and wives (both called “workers”) to complete various actions, such as gathering wood or vegetables, upgrading their farmhouse, building fences, purchasing Animals, having babies, etc. More. Over time, players have children (with access to more workers) and expand their farm. The problem with all this, however, is scarcity: Agricola is a harsh game. Even without an opponent blocking you from certain actions, it often feels like you’re just getting by – getting just enough food to feed your family through the winter. Players will often get very few (or negative) scores on their first game, but once you start learning, it can feel very satisfying.

If you have a whole day and want to play a long and rewarding game, Food Chain Magnate is your best bet – it’s an extremely in-depth game that involves building and staffing restaurants, Design menus, pay for advertising and collect funds. What makes Food Chain Magnate so interesting is its sheer scope: you can hire dozens of different types of employees, sell dozens of different kinds of food, and use six types of advertising, all of which will work against you. Build your franchises, customers and have a unique impact on the city and your opponents. This fun game is an investment, especially if you get the expansion packs, but it’s one of the most fun and unique games to come to the strategy board game format in years.

Star Wars: Imperial Assault largely eschews the role-playing elements of dungeon crawlers like Gloomhaven, instead opting for solid combat mechanics that pit Imperial players against Rebel players. While different missions have different settings—the modular board keeps things fresh—as players learn about bonuses for certain groups, how they stack up against allies, and decisions about when to take cover and when to charge, they Will get better at fighting.

Conquest games have come a long way since Risk, and one of the best is Rising Sun – a game where players use samurai and other models to spread out and fight for control of various regions of feudal Japan of control. The fun of the game lies in the unconventional means and purposes of conflict: alliances can give your opponents more power, but betrayal can damage your honor; points can be earned by winning in combat, but ritual suicide, hostage-taking, and mercenary Historians erasing the honor of your warriors can actually lead to greater victories.

What was originally a simple game about conquering regions became one about clan development, maintaining honor, and forming strategic partnerships with enemies. If you want a game with lots of conflict, but rarely direct or obvious conflict, then Rising Sun is the perfect game for you.

Many of the best strategy games take hours to play, but satisfying strategy doesn’t need to take a whole day: Castle of Burgundy is a perfect example of a great game that usually only takes an hour or so You can play it – often less, once you know how – and it’s surprisingly replayable. Each turn, players roll a dice, and the numbers on the dice allow them to pick up certain tiles from the central board or place them on certain spaces on the player’s board as they expand their kingdom. Compared to some of the big European games mentioned above, the core rules only take a few minutes to learn, but Castle of Burgundy will make you make tough choices about how to deal with dice rolls that are beyond your control.

In Project Gaia, players seek to expand an alien race’s control of the galaxy, make planets habitable for their race, build structures on them, gain knowledge and further research. For those unfamiliar with European gaming, the learning curve for this strategy board game is quite steep, but once you get into your first game you’ll understand the basics within a round or two. The strategy is deep: you can play as more than a dozen different races, with unique abilities and research bonuses; modular boards mean the system you’re colonizing will never look the same; many scoring and building bonuses for each game is random, so the same strategy won’t win every time. Project Gaia is a masterclass in game design and a ton of fun to play.