Top 10 Family Board Games – 2021

0:00 these are the three criteria for the family board games on this list number one it must be something everyone can enjoy these are family board games not children board games and believe me i have a five and a seven-year-old daughter i own a game called disney princess enchanted cupcakes that game will not be on this list also because siblings and even spouses can have rivalries when they play board games there will also be no games involving player elimination or sabotage number two it must be something that everyone can play that means that there are no games that depend heavily on reading so even though wingspan may be the number one family board game on board game geek wingspan is not on this list and finally number three as i was trimming down the list i prioritized games that were more enriching furthermore while party games are excellent games for families to play i decided they felt more like a category on their own and i omitted all party games from this list now with those three criteria in mind let me show you the top 10 family board games we start at number 10 with an alternative to popular games like catan and ticket to ride i'm starting with a game that still fits the same sorts of mechanics such as gathering resources and building routes but is a lot more skill based enriching and

1:30 far less frustrating this game is via nebula via nebula involves building a route but instead of building it with train tracks you're building it through the clouds and many players can use the same route in order to pick up resources to build buildings and gain points it's an approachable game that even my young kids can play also the artwork and components are absolutely adorable and that makes it very inviting as well number nine is the oldest game on this list it's sushi go it came out in 2013 and i put sushi go on here because it's the most approachable card drafting game for kids to play like all card drafting games this mechanic involves selecting the best card from your hand that will suit your collection my kids like it because the scoring is simple enough that they understand how the cards are related and they like being able to select a strategy like getting the most puddings or getting a bunch of maki and really focusing on that even though they're young they can actually beat their parents number eight is reef which came out in 2018 in reef you play cards in order to build a three-dimensional reef every card gives you two pieces that you can add to your reef and a scoring opportunity the scoring opportunity is available when you play the card whether or not you have fulfilled the requirement so it requires you to prioritize your cards saving cards that you know you can score until

3:01 later and getting cards that you can't score out of the way earlier so that you can build a reef to maximize your points this is a great game because it involves very simple arithmetic it's something that everyone can understand and because of the element of luck in the card play it's not as strategic as a game like santorini for example which plays more like chess this one is more challenging and more engaging and while the younger members of the family might enjoy the tactile pieces they'll probably need a little help in order to play the game fully number seven is new york zoo which came out in 2020 and was designed by uva rosenberg who made patchwork and agricola in so many amazing games new york zoo is a tile placing game where players race to fill up their zoo boards with zoo enclosures and attractions what makes the game one of the best family games though is the breeding phase in which the zoos all breed little baby animals and unlike other tile placing games which are much more abstract which by the way if you were looking at isle of cats i very carefully considered isle of cats for this list but i ended up not putting it on there because of what new york zoo offers that isle of cats doesn't my girls love this theme and this mechanic and they get really excited about playing new york zoo as an adult i find the strategy really engaging although for my youngest daughter who began playing the game when

4:32 she was four years old i did make an accommodation where during the game she was allowed to move her pieces after they had been placed that isn't allowed in the official rulebook but for a girl so young that actually made it a lot more fun for her and it gave her something to do while she was waiting for her turn with that accommodation this game fits all ages number six is andor family and or family is actually the only cooperative game on this entire list it came out in 2020 and in it players work together to save a family of baby wolves they do this by completing different missions and the missions are different every single time they have to complete all of the tasks before the dragon invades the castle the thing that i like most about andor family is the storytelling theme and the cooperative gameplay there's a lot of dice rolling and it seems like there's a lot of rules my kids didn't really bother going through the rules because they found the missions very engaging and fun number five is mighty monsters which came out in 2016. mighty monsters is a competitive game where players compete for treasure by playing monster cards in a castle being defended by various heroes before the battle phase players won't know exactly what the strength of the hero is so there's a little bit of betting on whether or not it's going to be a strong enemy or a weak enemy and players play cards accordingly to try to fit within the

6:03 range of possibilities if another player isn't satisfied with what some other player has placed they can pay that player in order to put their card there instead what i love about the game especially as a dad is that during the reveal phase the monster cards are flipped over their strength is added and the players must determine whether the combined strength of the monsters is greater than the strength of the heroes in order to be victorious if the monsters are victorious then the treasure has to be split up equally all together there are several small little math problems that keep my kids thinking and again my kids are really young so they really get engaged in that process let's reveal it kk do the first one i wanna do the next one who's going to win he's not he's stronger wait none of us win it's a tie yeah it's a tie and i think the monster is fun let me see now for older kids there's actually a lot more strategy involved about playing the cards and trying to bait somebody to pay you to replace your card number four is a game that i initially thought was going to be too strategic for my kids but ended up going over really well the game is calico which came out in 2020.

7:18 calico is another tile placing game where you scored points for the arrangements in your tiles based on their pattern or their color if the patterns are arranged in a certain way a cat will come and visit your quilt which my kids of course are really excited about if the colors are arranged a certain way you can get a different button and if you get every color button you get a rainbow button which again you can imagine kids getting excited about that but then there's one more level of strategy where you build patterns around the tiles on your board the tiles can be switched out every game which adds to the replay value now here's where the game gets a little too much for the kids when i played with them they didn't consider that third level of strategy at all they were entirely focused on getting cats and getting buttons which is actually fine and having played the game myself i realized there's enough points to be earned in collecting cats that you might be able to play the entire game without doing any of the other patterns so there's a really nice accommodation here if you're playing with adults and young children you can have all of the kids play and compare who wins based on just cats and buttons you can have the adults play on another level where they're also adding that third element of scoring and in so doing you have two results one winner for everybody including the kids and another winner for just the adults either way this game is going to be fun

8:49 for everybody i'm going to get this every time you do something you get to get an extra tutorial because every single time in the game you need two through the um so the only way you have to get two is to keep on getting those so you can have them again and again thank you for teaching me how to play we're getting into the top three now and all three of these games is amazing number three is planet which came out in 2018 planet is a three-dimensional game where you're placing magnetic tiles onto a globe and that globe attracts animals at the end of every round every animal is attracted to whoever has a globe that has the most grassland area or the most water area or the most mountains that are not touching deserts or something like that i think it's an amazing game for spatial reasoning as at the end of every round i have to ask my kids okay who has the most mountains and the kids have to manipulate this three-dimensional object to count all of their mountains the kids like it because at the beginning of the game they pick their favorite animals and then they strategize in order to earn those animals which is something they focus on for the entire game and any game that involves a big objective that kids have to plan for is a huge success in my book

10:22 by the way there is an advanced rule where players are given objective cards and scored points based on how many tiles of a certain type they can collect needless to say when i'm playing with younger kids i don't use the advanced rule and we only focus on the animals number two is king domino which came out in 2016 and is honestly one of the most brilliant mechanics i've ever played the game involves bidding on both turn order and the tile that you want to place into your 5x5 grid players place their tiles like dominoes with similar terrain types touching each other and at the end of the game if the dominoes can fit in a 5x5 grid players score based on the number of crowns in an area multiplied by the number of adjacent terrain types matching that area so taking the score involves both multiplication and addition so i make my seven-year-old take everybody's score which is great for her and it also helps kids plan for how they're going to maximize areas by taking the ideal domino as far as accommodations are concerned everyone in my family can play this game however sometimes the young one uh plays dominoes in such a way that they don't fit in the 5x5 grid so we allow her to adjust in order to get them to fit back into that square aside from that one accommodation this is one accessible to everybody number one is

11:53 karuba which came out in 2016. koruba is a game like sushi go where all players can play at the same time there's one player who draws tiles and announces the number on the tile to everybody else so everyone is playing the same tiles at the same time they play their tile on their personal board in such a way that the explorers can get through the island and up to the treasure if the caller names a piece that you don't need you can discard the piece in order to advance your player a number of spaces equal to the number of exits on the title so the game is a race to see whose explorers can get all of the treasure first this game is number one for so many reasons one i love how it involves planning and how you have to accommodate for future tiles i love how nobody has to wait for their turn because everyone's playing at the same time i love how whichever child is most easily distracted they can be given the job of being the caller which keeps them a little bit more occupied i love the decision making that's involved when you have a tile you might be able to use or you're not sure if you should discard it and you have to really figure out what's the best choice for right now kruba has so much going on and the fact that i learned it i played it with adults the first time and it went well with grown-ups so whether you're playing with kids whether you're playing with adults or you're playing with your whole family koruba is a fantastic family game all of these games have links in the

13:23 description and if you'd like to check out more games or if you'd like updates on what the best deal is currently on amazon for family games check out the theperfectboardgame.com that's my personal site that i've coded myself in order to allow people to organize games by categories that are interesting to them and find excellent deals thank you so much for watching i really think that these are the 10 best board games for families and i've played a lot of games but if you think i left something out or you have a recommendation maybe something that i've never even played before will you please let me know in the comments because i'm always looking on building my collection and making more video content about recommendations for families and other board game players so go ahead and drop me a comment to give me a direction on where i should go next and i'm thinking that maybe next year i'll just update the entire list anyway thanks again and i hope to see you next time bye