Wargames for Beginners: Where to Start
The intimidating corner of the hobby, in the order you should actually meet it — five games that teach you the genre one idea at a time, and the famous ones that will put you off if you start there.
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Notes on picking board games
Guides, shortlists, and explanations of what the numbers on a game's page actually mean — the context that does not fit into five dropdowns.
Solo Board Games: Where to Start
Playing alone is the fastest-growing corner of the hobby and the worst served by recommendation lists. What makes a good solo game, which ones to buy first, and why a bolted-on solo mode is usually a disappointment.
Board Game Gift Guide: What to Buy for Every Kind of Person
Organised by who you are buying for rather than by what is popular — the person who does not play board games, the family with young children, the couple, and the friend who already owns everything.
Cooperative vs Competitive Board Games: Which Is Right for Your Group?
One of these breaks some groups and saves others. What each format actually does to a table, the failure mode nobody warns you about, and how to tell which one yours needs.
Five games for Halloween night
Halloween is the one night of the year when people who never play board games will happily sit down at one. These five earn the evening — one for a big loud party, one for a group that wants to be genuinely unsettled.
The monsters already on your shelf
Every Halloween creature has a board game that does it better than the others — the vampire, the werewolf, the ghost, the cultist, the zombie and the witch. A guide by monster rather than by mechanism.
Halloween games that won't scare the kids
Spooky and frightening are different things. Five games that give children the ghosts, the monsters and the dark without the nightmares — plus how to check a box yourself before you buy it.
How we pick your top 5
A full walkthrough of the query behind the Find top 5 button — which filters do what, what we quietly exclude, and how to fix a search that returns nothing.
Five games to start with (and why)
The gateway games worth your first purchase — what each one teaches, who it suits, and the situation it is genuinely the best answer to.
What a game's "weight" actually means
Complexity weight is the most useful number on a game's page and the most widely misread. Here is what the 1-to-5 scale measures, what it does not, and how to use it.