Easiest Games to Table | Top 10 Board Games That are Easy to Table

0:00 i agree with most of these i think not all of them i guess we'll see which ones you're picking the ones that are circled because someone's gonna be like that's not an easy game to play well it's our list truth yeah hello everyone and welcome back to foster the meatball channel all about board games and more gaming things exactly we once did not too long ago a video about the hardest games to table so today we're going in the opposite direction we're talking about the easiest games to table what's happening you had a hair on your nose it was bugging me oh what is the definition of easiest games to table it just means that there is extremely minimal setup it doesn't mean that the game is super simple to play though most of these are if you want something you're like oh i just who's got the time for setup not me i'm a busy woman so you mean like box open pretty much minimal setup not no setup minimal minimal setup minimal minimal setup minimal minimal setup minimal is crocodile but that's not on here okay so we have 10 games to talk about i made this list and jeff doesn't really know what's on it except he's looking at it right now and i wanted to pick some games that we don't talk about as often so i'm not going to talk about silver bullet or fantasy rounds because we talk about those all the time you know that they're different exactly a little bit of different so we're going to be talking about 10 games these are in no particular order it's just 10 games to make your life a little bit easier so the first game that we're

1:30 going to talk about is called null and nishtig and i believe this is by amigo games this is a game that is a trick taking game and it is a german trick taking game jeffrey tell the people about null and nishteg so in nulla nishtig it's kind of a different take on trick taking you're going to have piles in front of you and the piles are all designated by different colors you score based off what the top most card is on your pile from 0 to 11. so during a trick regardless of color the highest number is going to win the trick for example if i started with an 11 yellow because i wanted 11 yellow to be in front of me to score off of that and everyone else put zeros so zero green et cetera et cetera et cetera i'm going to win the trick and take the 11 yellow but then i've just put three zeros on my other piles not great for an end score not great so it's just a really interesting take it's really mean it's a very mean trick taking game that i think is a bit unique because again it's not just about winning tricks it's about winning tricks but getting the right colors to put on your pile it's almost more beneficial to win like mid-range tricks where you get like a four and a five or you know a six of different colors that you add to your pile because it's all it the piles are always evolving with different cards being on top it's very mean it's very fun it's just put cards out and play it's just a deck of cards that's all it is so you can get this to the table very easily and you can play this with so

3:01 many people so it is also just an accessible game definitely i would say although i don't know how accessible it is to buy in north america i don't know either it's definitely one i would like to add to the collection i also think it's language independent which is great yeah there's it's just numbers it's just numbers and colors yeah now the next one is one that we have been playing all the time and how we know that a game is easy to table is if we can play it on the coach while we're sitting there doing other things so that game is boomerang australia this is like my new silver bullet jamie does like boomerang australia i love this game so much and it was just one that i bought on a whim this is a draft and right game where each player has seven cards and then you are picking a card pick and pass pick and pass pick and pass till you have seven cards and then you score accordingly based on a bunch of different scoring mechanisms so whether that be different areas pairs of animals flowers all of these things have different scoring objectives that's the entire game so the setup is literally just a deck of cards each player gets seven a little pad and a pencil that's it i love it it's super super fun if you love rolling right flipping rights whatever i think that you would definitely like this it comes in three different variations it comes in boomerang usa boomerang europe and australia i've only played europe and australia but australia is my favorite one very easy to set up does not take up a lot of table space we have played this on a ferry this will be a go-to travel game for us i think so we just played it

4:31 on the couch yeah easy peasy lemon squeezy yeah okay the next game that we're going to talk about is called strike and this is from ravensburger jeffrey tell the people about strike strike is really a dice chucking game in its purest form yes so a box of strike when you open it is going to be basically a bowl but it represents a gladiatorial arena and the dice are your gladiators and ultimately there will be dice in the arena that you're going to throw your dice into and you can choose how many dice to throw and yada yada ultimately what you want to have happen is your diced to be pulled out so if you throw your dice in and there's matches you can pull those dice out and add them to your pool your gladiators if nothing matches they have to stay in ultimately you're just trying to be the first person to have dice remaining the more dice you lose into the arena the more you bet on throwing in the more you lose the quicker you're going to be eliminated that's the game process of elimination it is so fun we played this in a huge group at pax unplugged and people were just watching it people were laughing it's it might be one of the simplest games to get non-gamers into yes it's so easy it's literally open the box that's your bowl that's your arena and your dice yeah that's the game and you're just throwing stuff in i really really enjoy strike probably of every game on the list the easiest to set up all you do is take off the lid yeah that's it

6:02 so the next game that we're going to talk about is called regicide from badgers from mars i almost said biker mice from ours which is a great tv show from walmart cartoon i loved that show bridge aside once again this is a 52 card deck essentially all you're doing is dealing out cards there's going to be some cards in the middle and there is an app component so you just have it on your phone and that you don't need to use the app but it's a scoring thing so you don't even need it and you're cycling through your cards trying to defeat the jacks kings and queens jax queens and kings throughout the game and each suit of card has different abilities that can affect how you attack it is a cooperative game but it is easy to table because it is just a deck of cards you could play this with a traditional deck of cards yes you don't even need the actual game you can print the rules from online you can have the rules on your phone look it up whatever i will say that artwork on the cards is incredible it's worth having the actual set of cards in my opinion but you could play it without it and it is so close to like traditional card games that it's also once again an accessible game that you could get non-board gamers to play perfect game for travel it literally is a deck of cards that fits in your pocket they didn't try to do some overly produced like large square box for a deck of cards which many games do yeah you just deal with the cards put your kids queens and jacks in the middle it's very challenging too it's a very challenging game yes but super easy to table and i really really enjoy it next

7:33 one we have is called cathedral world jeffrey cathedral world is a take on cathedral so i'll just lump them both here because they're basically the same just the components are a little bit different cathedral has wooden blocks cathedral world has you know resin i don't know if they're resin but like some other material buildings in cathedral world you have what looks like a chess board without the designated spots and you'll have a bunch of pieces on your side of the board that represent buildings that are different polynomial poly polynomial polynomial polynomial polyaminal that's the one jeff polyaminal shapes just like tetris pieces and the goal is to be the first person to get all their pieces on the board the cool mechanic with this is if you connect an area so let's just say in a straight line you had all of your buildings lined up you've blocked off an area for the your opponent to be able to place pieces let's just say i have created a square of buildings like this and this space is empty only i can place my buildings in that space you gotta watch it and ultimately again you're just trying to place out all of your pieces all you're doing is putting a board down and placing out pieces this is a literally a game that you would leave on a coffee table that's how easy it is to set up yeah all you need is the game the game and you can leave it out yeah you can leave it out you can pick it up and play it when you want which is probably what we're going to do with our copy yep one table is going to have crocodile one table is going to have

9:04 cathedral world and that's how we're going to live our lives next up we have a game called air land and sea or my preferred version critters at war same game different artwork basically so this game once again it's just cards all you're doing to set up is you are laying out three theaters of war airland and c in the middle they're like larger cards shuffling up the deck handing out cards to each player and playing so within this game you are trying to over a certain number of rounds i think it's three or four rounds you are trying to win two of the three the majority of the theaters of war by laying out cards that have different effects to affect either what you can do or what your opponent can do it's two player only game it takes up a little bit of space and like basically no time to set up and it is so good for what it is it's just cards it has a lot of strategy within it and you have pretty limited cards that you have access to so you really have to think about maximizing the cards that you have in order to win there's also an element of this game where you can withdraw in order to make your opponent gain less points than they would if they outright won i really love this game like i said critters at war is my preferred it's only because it's cuter they're the exact same game otherwise i always win this game jamie tends to win this game very frequently okay next up we have land versus sea not a air land in c very land versus c

10:37 similar in terms of names land versus c is it is it two player only no you can technically play with three and four oh but it's quite um it's teams at four and at three there's a cartographer element but we haven't played it at three land versus c is a very simple tile placement game where you are just trying to match up territory terrain one person is playing as the land one person is playing as the sea all the tiles have different terrain types on them there's iconography on the tiles that allow you to score bonus you know like there's caravans if you develop a caravan route that's the game you're drafting your tiles and you're placing them out into this sprawling map in order to basically build out the biggest land mass of your terrain type that you can and you do that by completing the borders around so really what you're trying to do is place down tiles that shore up your areas but also open up things for your opponent you know if i see jamie is one tile away from closing a big c area i could play a tile of mine to open it back up and she has to work again to close it back down but very simple it's just tiles all you need is a table and that's it that's it you have to pull out the center tile but the rest of the stacks you just kind of stack up and that's it easy play in under five minutes for sure what you can like be playing sorry you can be playing in under five minutes i was like speed land versus c that's a new version the next game that we're going to talk about is called deja vu this is a game that we

12:07 got to play at dagglecon and it is just a fun kind of dexterity-esque speed-esque memory definitely kind of game where all you're doing is you're setting cards in the middle that have images on them and then you have different cardboard tokens of all different shapes and pictures and things like ducks and life jacket and a lifesaver and maybe there is a cocktail or maybe there's a shoe and a compass and a clock a bunch of things set in the middle all you're doing in this game is at one at a time you're going to be flipping a card and you're going to be looking at what's on that card and if you think that it's the second time that you've seen that card you are going to try and grab that item from the ring of things if for some reason you thought you saw something twice and you grabbed it let's call it a shoe and then a card flips later and there's the shoe you're out because that means you have terrible memory and you're not allowed to play with us anymore you are at the end of the round you're trying to see like how many things you got right if you got any of them wrong you're out so whoever it is yeah whoever gets the most points wins that is the game so the setup is literally deck of cards in the middle sprinkle the different things around and that's it and you gotta be quick it is so much fun i personally love this game it is a very jamie game i'm very quick i got good memory

13:38 jeff maybe a little bit less i liked it you liked it i'm not great at them yeah like i remember when we played ghost splits yeah i got destroyed in ghost blitz so it's very similar to that though you're just kind of like everybody's got their hands it's all reaction and what happens is you're playing over various rounds so you start to think oh did i see that this round or was that last round and your memory starts playing tricks on you but super easy to set up another one that like anybody could play i like those moments where everyone sees a thing they're like oh and they put their hand over it but then everyone's like wait and then they're like they go back and yeah like was that last round and then someone like grabs it oh it's so my favorite is when we were playing we played with rodney and he would grab something and he'd be like i'm a little concerned that none of you also went to this yeah and it's like yeah because that didn't come up before yeah yeah if you're the only person grabbing something it's like oh god yeah oh what have i done the next game that we have on the list is called la boca laboca is a really fun little like puzzle game where it's wooden blocks and you'll have prompts you use the box as like a platform to build your little blocks up onto and so let's just say i'm sitting across from jamie we will have a two-sided prompt where it shows colors and blocks in a certain pattern i have to make that pattern show for me and jamie has to make her pattern show so we have to work together to place the blocks on this board in the correct

15:10 patterns and then we we're good yeah it's so fun it's on a timer so yeah it's basically like certain amount it's a real-time game if you complete it in under 10 seconds you'll get a crap ton of points you know the longer you take the less points you get essentially is what i'm trying to say it's just blocks it's just a little prompt card that you can cycle through and the box is the board and the boxes the board and you know you need a bit of a timer it's so funny when you're going back and forth because there's a really strategic way that the these blocks are all again like tetris type pieces there's always a solution i remember one time we were playing and i was like it's not lining up for me i think it was rodney was like well it's fine for me and i was like oh my god like how do how is it fine for you it can't be because there's no way and then we'd figure it out it's so fun and the very last game that we have on our list today is abandon all artichokes another game that's just cards and it comes in this cute little artichoke tin and all you're doing is you're laying out a garden row you start with a hand of artichokes and you're trying to get rid of all your artichokes by using the vegetable cards that are in the middle that you're going to be adding to your hand that help you to get rid of your artichokes before your opponent gets rid of theirs that's it the setup is literally here's your hand of seven artichokes and here's a garden row that's it it's super easy to play it's easy to travel with i love it i don't think you love it quite as much as i do no you definitely like i don't mind it if if people want to play it

16:41 i'll absolutely play it it's very cute that's the last one there's really not much more to say it's pretty simple that's literally it you're just gaining cards to get rid of your artichokes the first one with no artichokes wins and then you're done yep so those are 10 games that we find really easy to table but you know what the easiest games table are games on bga all you need is your laptop let us know down below what are some of your go-to games if you just don't really want to spend the time setting up a game like dinosaur world as an example you just want to get something to the table really quickly so that you can get playing really quickly let us know if you're interested in buying board games like any of the many that we mentioned today you should first start by checking your friendly local gaming store and for us here in halifax that is boardroom game cafe yes that's all we have for you guys today thank you so much for watching if you like what you see please subscribe we hope to see you again soon and now we say goodbye goodbye later it is um i'm sorry i you put me on the spot i gotta remember how to play this you have piles yeah the winning of the trick is the weird one regis regicide in the middle but here you're bouncing around here you sure am um another garden