If you are new to the board gaming hobby, it can be overwhelming. I’ve been neck deep in the hobby for years, and even I have a hard time keeping up with everything. Games that could only be found at a game store are now widely available on Amazon, as well as major retailers like Target, Barnes & Noble, and Walmart. This is happening in tandem with overall production values rising and an many games choosing to use gorgeously sculpted, but costly, miniatures. So when you’re staring at a shelf filled with games you’ve never heard of with price tags between $50-$90, how can you choose wisely?
The best way to be efficient with your spending is to do your homework beforehand. In an ideal world, everyone would be within a short distance of a friendly local gaming store where they could demo games, ask for advice, and get recommendations that will accommodate their tastes and needs. While I dream of that world, we’re not there. Thankfully, though, there’s the internet. Here’s a collection of useful sites and content creators that you need to get acquainted with to help you dig through the mountain of options to find the gold.
Board Game Geek:
Imagine if there was a place you could go that could not only tell you what the game was, but provided a full breakdown of the game down to the size of the box, links to reviews and videos about that game, forums discussing issues and rules questions, and the ability to search for similar games by genre, theme, game designer, etc? Such a place would be a magical land, would it not?
Alright, you get the joke. It’s Board Game Geek (BGG). I am on BGG almost every day. Whenever someone asks me about a game I’ve never heard of, it’s my first stop. The site is infamously not user friendly, and the home page can be intimidating when you first get into it, but they’ve made some significant improvements. Even if you only use the site to search for a game by name, this site is well worth your time. And that doesn’t even count the InnRoads Ministries Guild.
Video Reviewers:
We’ll occasionally tell you about the things we think about when playing games, but we’re not a review site. Reviewers break down a how a game is played and its theme(s). While it’s impossible to have a completely objective review, reviewers try to break down the positives and negatives of a game and explain why they do or don’t like it. Even when you don’t agree, the good ones will still give you enough to go on for you to estimate whether or not you will find it interesting.
The internet is filled with reviewers worth watching, but for the purposes of this post, I’ll keep it to some of the best ones if you’re getting started.
The Dice Tower – The Dice Tower is a must on a handful of levels. They are far and away the most prolific, and also have some of the best access to the games industry. They are at almost every convention, have a cadre of great reviewers, and put up multiple videos a week.
Shut Up & Sit Down – These guys are hilarious, not just providing their thoughts on their favorite games, but doing so in the context of entertaining scenarios. There was one where one of the reviewers was a temp working as a genie in a table lamp. It’s a thing.
Game Boy Geek – Dan King, aka the Game Boy Geek, is a solid reviewer. I’m specifically adding him to the list because he has a special segment called allegro reviews where he takes one of his full reviews and breaks it down into what you need to know in just a couple minutes.
Watch it Played:
Earlier I said that BGG was the first stop I make when approaching an unknown game. Rodney Smith over at Watch It Played is the second. A combination of rules explanation and game play videos, Rodney and the rest of the Watch it Played team break down what can be confusing rules issues and points out how it looks on the board. These folks will let you know what you’re in for in the box you’re looking at without you ever being able to crack a rule book.
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This list is hardly an exhaustive one. The internet is an amazing place to be a tabletop gamer and this is only scratching the surface of the resources available when helping you determine which games you should add to your collection. However, this should give you a solid foothold in the search.