Game nights are always a good time, especially if you enjoy playing board games. Here are 4 of the best board games you should learn to play to spice up your next game night with friends!

Board games are a fantastic way to spend some time, and an essential component of any decent game night. If you are thinking that you need to expand your board game repertoire, however, then you are not alone. There are actually plenty of board games that you might want to get into, some of them classic and others which perhaps you haven’t heard of yet, or only glancingly. In any case, learning more board games is always a good thing to do.

In this post, we are going to take you through a tour of the best board games that you should learn to play. All of the following are tried and tested favorites, some of which you have definitely heard of and some which might be new to you. They are all worth trying out at some point or another, however, so let’s take a look at them right now.

Splendor

This is a resource-building game, but it’s more exciting than that description might make it seem. In Splendor, the aim is to build up certain jewels until you have enough of them to trade in for even more valuable items. Ultimately, the winner is the person who reaches a certain number of points based on the values of all these items – which is determined by a few factors, including the number of players who are playing the game.

While being quite simple to explain, playing Splendor is another story, and it can very often become quickly complex as you try to figure out the best route to success. You are also aware of what everyone else is holding at all times, because the hands are open, so that adds another kind of intrigue to the process. All in all, it’s a really fun and deceptively hard game to master.

211B Baker Street

For Sherlock Holmes fans, there are quite a few board games out there based on our favorite literary detective. However, the best of the lot by far has to be 211B Baker Street. In this game, each player is a detective working to solve a murder case in foggy old London. At the start of the game, a case is picked and one person reads out its details – this card can be read in more depth later by any player at any time. During each turn, you will roll the dice and move around the board as you wish – which is laid out as a corner of London, with various stores and other places of interest you can go into to search for clues.

Essentially, you are moving around the city picking up clues and genuinely just trying to work out the murderer, the weapon, and the motive. It can be a truly hard game to win, and you will be delighted by how much you genuinely feel like a detective sleuth as you try to work out the solution. It’s well worth playing and great fun for all, so take a look and see if you can solve the case.

Chess

A true classic, and the King of board games even to this day. The thing about chess is that it is completely fair and chance-free: as long as each player gets an even number of turns being white, the chances of winning are completely equal. It’s all about skill and determination, and even patience. While it takes a while to learn chess if you haven’t already, it is a joy to do so, and it gives you the same kind of feeling as solving a tricky cryptic crossword or a sudoku.

The trick to improving in chess is to play with someone better than you, because you will pick up on their tricks and tips along the way just by watching them. If you want to really get deeply into chess, get your own chess set and set up puzzles to try and solve. Even this can be a fun use of your time.

Civilization

Fans of the Civilization PC game will be pleased to hear there is a board game version, although in fact the board game preceded the computer game by a good decade. Nonetheless, there are a lot of similarities, and it is a fantastic game to learn to play, if a little long – a good go of it will normally take around five to six hours. During Civilization, you will expand your society, gain knowledge, and trade in resources. It’s a great game and well worth trying out if you haven’t already.