Tabletop 101
10 Best Party Board Games to play with your friends
by Serban, Quartermaster @ The Guild Hall
September 8 2020
I hear what you’re saying: “I’m not a party person. Why should I buy a party game?” You asking that question is the exact reason! If you want to have a better atmosphere at any and all parties, all you have to do is bring some fun board games along! It’ll instantly spruce things up and take away from the usual boredom. Here are 10 board games that we 100% guarantee will make your party experience way more fun!
Codenames XXL
Codenames is that game that there’s always praise about, not just from partygoers, but also from boardgame enthusiasts. This game will rock your socks off, because it is as fun as it is simple. All you have to do is give some coded glues to reveal some undercover spies’ identity, as simple as can be and as exciting as it gets!
Spyfall
Speaking of spies, we have Spyfall (in no way related to the great Skyfall)! This game has a special place in my heart as it is by an old school improv exercise I used to take part in! In every round, players will receive matching location cards, except for one player, who’ll get the spy card! Players will then take turns asking questions about their location and figuring out who the spy is. As a spy, you’ll have to fake it ’til you make it, making this game an intense experience with simple rules and player interaction loads!
You’ve Got Crabs!
What makes for a good game? If you were to ask me, I’d say a single thing: the shout-o-meter. Will the game allow you to shout at the top of your lungs like you’re in the middle of a medieval bone-crushing contest? If the answer is yes, then it’s a good game. You’ve Got Crabs is quite a simple game, but the amount of intensity and loudness it can provoke makes for the ideal party experience!
Sheriff of Nottingham
Sheriff of Nottingham tiptoes on the border between a party game and something more, but does so in an elegant way filled with bluffing, bribery and black market goods! The bulk of the game is just that: trying to bluff your way into getting black market goods into Nottingham. This is done in a fun card game that rotates the sheriff’s role around, boasting a party game’s quickness and an element of strategy to boot! There’s nothing we’d recommend more for someone who is not originally into party games but is willing to try some.
Red Dragon Inn
Red Dragon Inn highlights the best part of the adventuring life: the afterparties. In this wonderfully silly game, you’ll spend your hard-earned adventurer money on bets and drinks, just like any other schmuck! It goes to show how similar ordinary people are to adventurers! Although it might seem like this game is not the best choice for parties at first, you’ll quickly notice the number of extensions that can be combined with the base game, drastically increasing the number of players with each. Not just that, even more fun mechanics can be added, making the experience different and diverse every time you play.
One Week Ultimate Werewolf
Nothing screams “party” quite like medieval castles filled with rampaging bloodthirsty werewolves. Well… Quite a few things do, but none are as fun as One Week Ultimate Werewolf. This game perfectly combines the old school secret identity games with a fun and ever-changing map. If you’d like to bring a game with an air of familiarity to the party, this game is the perfect choice! And unlike those boring old games of Mafia, the structure system doesn’t allow room for cheaters!
One Night Ultimate Alien
Some games have boards, others have gigantic rulebooks, but One Night Ultimate games are different from them all! This series of secret identity games all center around an easy-to-use mobile app. This app will guide you through your play, which serves as a massive encouragement for party scenarios (since no one has to spend time learning rules). The other enormous quality of these games is the high player count and the fact you can combine them. For these reasons, we can’t help but tell you to bow down to our alien overlords and get your hands on One Night Ultimate Alien. There’s no game more accessible for your non-gamer friends to play.
Llamas Unleashed
Next up on our list is a game that has won our hearts through sheer cuteness. It is, of course, Llamas Unleashed. While this game does have entertaining and straightforward mechanics, the main reason we’ve chosen to highlight it is how abundantly adorable it is! Every time you’ll lay eyes on a card, you’ll end up either laughing your heart out of having a cuteness overload. If you ask us, this is enough to make a game worth buying, but luckily, this game has even more than that! It has polished set collection gameplay, brought to you by the same team behind other cool card games, such as Exploding Kittens.
Meeple Party
Last but not least is a game that is, quite obviously, perfect for parties! We’re talking about the fantastic game Meeple Party. The biggest compliment I could give this game is that it perfectly represents the nature of house parties. There’ll be plenty of rowdy guests to please, disasters to avoid, and pictures to take, all in good fun! If you’d like to play with low stakes, yet great puzzles, Meeple Party is precisely that. It is perfect for parties from start to finish, name and all! And it’s all done with a fun modular map and a collection of meeples, giving plenty of personality.
If any of these games have brought out your inner party animal, you’re in good luck! As it just so happens, the Guild Hall is also in the party mood, as during September 2020, we’ll be celebrating our 2 year anniversary. For this reason, most of these games will be 20% off. Join the fun and buy one while you still can!
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