Board games beyond Catan and Wingspan: the modern hobby landscape

Catan and Wingspan are the gateway drugs of the modern board game hobby, and both are great; they are also the games your non-hobbyist friends already own. This is a working syllabus for the next few years of hobby purchases: the heavy euros that reward multiple plays, the narrative games that scratch a novel-shaped itch, the two-player fillers that hold up on a weeknight, the legacy campaigns worth committing to, and the solo scene that quietly outgrew everything else. I have deliberately not included any 18XX title; that rabbit hole belongs on its own list and warrants a mentor, not a link.

Heavy euros for people who liked Wingspan

Games with the same 'plan a small engine, watch it hum' feeling, but deeper. Expect 90 to 150 minutes and reward for repeat plays.

  • Terraforming Mars
    The card-drafting engine game that ate the last decade of Wingspan-adjacent recommendations. Skip if you dislike variance; commit if you enjoy long-term plans compounding across a session. The Ares Expedition variant fixes some pacing issues without losing the point.
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  • Great Western Trail (Second Edition)
    Alexander Pfister's masterpiece. Route planning, deck management, and worker placement that stay untangled through 120 minutes. The second edition is the one to buy; earlier printings have needless friction the reprint smoothed out.
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  • Ark Nova
    The 2022 zoo-building game that finally displaced Terraforming Mars in the '90-minute heavy euro' slot for a lot of groups. Beautiful iconography once you learn it, and unusually replayable. Not friendly to your first hobby purchase.
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  • Brass: Birmingham
    Consistently the number one game on Board Game Geek for a reason. Economic railway-and-industry building where every decision is trade-offs. If Wingspan is a walk in a park, Brass is a chess match with money.
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  • Everdell
    Charming worker placement about anthropomorphic animals building a village. Rules teach in ten minutes, but the strategic depth compounds. Where a lot of Wingspan players naturally graduate to when they want more.
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Narrative games, the novel-shaped hobby

Games that tell a story you play through, not a system you optimize. Expect long sessions and legacy elements in several cases.

  • Sleeping Gods
    Ryan Laukat's open-world seafaring campaign game. You save the state and return to it over weeks; the story goes places most video games do not. Best played with two players who both take notes.
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  • Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile
    Cole Wehrle's asymmetric game about political history writing itself. State carries between games; today's rebellion is tomorrow's dynasty. The best example of a system whose story is entirely emergent.
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  • Root
    Wehrle again. A war game about woodland creatures where every faction plays by different rules. Notorious for a rough teach and a stellar third session. Skip until you have a group willing to play four times.
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  • Aftermath
    Plaid Hat's follow-up to Stuffed Fables. Adorable rodents on a scavenging campaign; kid-friendly presentation, adult-friendly decision space. The most under-discussed narrative game of the last three years.
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  • Frosthaven
    The Gloomhaven follow-up. A 100-plus session campaign that will occupy your table for the next year if you commit. Do not buy this if your group cannot commit to a schedule; nothing kills a Frosthaven campaign faster than three months between sessions.
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Two-player games that hold up on a weeknight

The most-asked adjacent question after 'we liked Catan'. Two-player is the hobby's most-served design brief; here is the canonical short list.

  • 7 Wonders Duel
    The undisputed answer if you want one game to own. Twenty-five minutes, drafts and card interactions, three win conditions to threaten. Every follow-up expansion has been additive; the Agora expansion is the pick if you want more.
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  • Patchwork
    Uwe Rosenberg's twenty-minute quilt-building puzzle. Deceptively simple; the buttons versus time trade-off is Tetris with an economy. Perfect for a couple who want a nightly ritual game.
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  • Watergate
    Political thriller as a card game. Editor versus Nixon administration, twenty minutes, asymmetric goals. Won a small legion of fans and never got the promotion it deserved.
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  • Undaunted: Normandy
    Deck-building wargame that made 'wargame' friendly to people who hated wargames. The Reinforcements expansion is essential; Undaunted 2200 (the recent scifi entry) is the best in the series to date.
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  • The Quacks of Quedlinburg
    Push-your-luck bag-building. Cheerful, quick, ruinously replayable. Works two-player through six-player and rarely gets its due on 'two-player game' lists because it plays at any count.
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Party and light games worth the shelf space

Games that survive contact with non-hobbyist guests. Under thirty minutes, easy teach, replayable enough to earn their box.

  • Just One
    Cooperative word-guessing that turned out to be one of the great party games of the decade. Everyone writes a one-word clue; matches are discarded. It teaches in 30 seconds and never wears out.
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  • Codenames
    The canonical modern party game and still the right pick if you have a group over. The Pictures variant is the version to own if your group has strong readers and weak wordplay instincts.
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  • The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine
    Trick-taking cooperative game where the trick isn't the trick, it is the coordination puzzle. Deep enough for a whole evening; teachable to anyone who has played Hearts. The Deep Sea sequel is a fine second purchase.
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  • Wavelength
    Estimating game about how strongly your teammate feels about a spectrum. Sounds abstract; plays hilarious. The one modern party game that beats Codenames for a certain kind of group.
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  • Cascadia
    Beautiful, calm, tile-laying puzzle for the not-quite-party slot. Two to four players, works with a mixed hobbyist and non-hobbyist group, plays in under an hour.
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Legacy and campaign games worth the commitment

Games designed to be played across many sessions with permanent state changes. Only start these with a group willing to commit to a schedule.

  • Pandemic Legacy: Season 1
    The game that invented the legacy category for a mass audience. Twelve to twenty-four sessions, state carries, boxes get destroyed. Still the right first legacy game for most groups.
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  • Gloomhaven
    The dungeon-crawl campaign that ate everyone's tabletop time in 2018 and never quite let go. Jaws of the Lion is the entry-point purchase; the digital app trackers make paper bookkeeping unnecessary now.
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  • Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood
    Boss-battler campaign game with the production budget of a video game. Third printing shipped in 2024 and reset the visual bar for the whole hobby. Not friendly to your first campaign game.
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  • Descent: Legends of the Dark
    App-driven dungeon crawl campaign. The app is genuinely good, not the resented crutch you feared. Fantasy Flight built the campaign experience they always wanted to build.
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  • The Search for Planet X
    Not technically legacy, but deductive-logic campaign in structure. Play sixteen scenarios, learn a real deduction system, close the box satisfied. The best 'campaign light' game in the hobby.
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Solo and cooperative, the quietly biggest scene

Solo board gaming is now bigger than most competitive categories. This is the map from beginner to advanced without wandering into wargame territory unless you want to.

  • Spirit Island
    The cooperative game that beat Pandemic on complexity and out-designed almost everything since. Plays solo through four players; the difficulty ramp goes as high as you want. Buy the Jagged Earth expansion when ready.
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  • Nemesis
    Alien-inspired hidden-agenda coop that plays great as a solo scenario against the AI. Long, brutal, cinematic. The Lockdown expansion adds a full second campaign box.
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  • Mage Knight Board Game
    Vlaada Chvátil's masterpiece. The reason a lot of people got into solo gaming. Three-hour sessions of dense strategy. The Ultimate Edition is the box to buy.
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  • Marvel Champions: The Card Game
    Living Card Game that hits both the solo scene and the two-player cooperative scene. New expansions keep landing quarterly and the campaign boxes are the current sweet spot.
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  • Under Falling Skies
    Solo-first dice-placement game about defending a city from an alien invasion. Twenty-minute sessions, campaign structure, tight enough to become a nightly ritual. The best cheap entry point for solo hobby.
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Thinkers, reviewers, and further reading

The reviewers and designers worth following, plus the places to keep up as the hobby moves. YouTube and podcasts dominate the medium.

  • Shut Up and Sit Down: Brass Birmingham review (video)
    The one board game review channel to subscribe to, reviewing the number-one-ranked game on Board Game Geek. Quinns and team built the review medium as it exists now; this video is both a purchase-decision aid and a demonstration of why they matter.
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  • No Pun Included (YouTube)
    Efka and Elaine make the second-most-important board game YouTube channel. More thematic, less irreverent than SU&SD. Their year-end 'best of' videos are the most reliable in the medium.
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  • The Dice Tower
    Tom Vasel's daily-updated review and rankings site. Volume over voice; use it for coverage of everything, not for the taste-driven recommendations you get elsewhere.
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  • Cole Wehrle (Wikipedia)
    One of the best living designers: Root, Oath, John Company, Arcs, Pax Pamir. Every one of his games is an argument about how history works. Read his interviews after playing Root at least twice; the design intent lands differently once you have been steamrolled by the Eyrie.
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  • Stonemaier Games blog (Jamey Stegmaier)
    Stonemaier publishes Wingspan and Scythe. Jamey's blog is a decade of transparent business-of-board-games writing and remains the best window into how the industry works.
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  • BGG 1 Player Guild
    The Board Game Geek guild where the solo scene actually organizes: annual People's Choice Top 200 solo games, ongoing challenges, and the deepest solo-variant discussion threads anywhere. The right entry point into solo board gaming's community layer.
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