Lunch time board games

Greetings board and card game experts. I work in a rather lax office, and my director and I have often discussed about doing a game day during lunch once or twice a week. Being a total noob, I look to the brain trust of GWJ for suggestions on good games that would be somewhat easy to learn, and 30-60 minutes max, and 2+ players (we would probably likely have at most 4 people playing any given day, so games tailored 2-4 people would be best).

Suggest away.

Dominion is the first one to come to mind. You could even get two games in. Forbidden Island is also fast and light.

Munchkin, Gloom are both pretty quick

Also check out this episode of Table Top: http://tabletop.geekandsundry.com/ep...

I would recommend Bohnanza or Bang!

Archangelrey wrote:

I would recommend Bohnanza or Bang!

Bohnanza is good. From my experience Bang! can get really long. It's a simple game but the symbols on the cards can get really confusing. Just to many card types to keep track of. Also the game is not very flexible with number of players you may have at the moment.

We've been playing Aquire a few times a week:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquire

A few employees I work with have a Friday board game thing during lunch that I've been able to attend. Here are some highlights...

Tsuro - I LOVE this game. I actually went out and bought a copy to play with my kids (6 & 4 year old) and its a blast no matter your age. Very simple concept where players are dragons riding air currents through tiles placed one at a time. The dragon that remains in the air the longest, without crashing off the board or into each other, wins. Requires careful planning in the later rounds. I'd avoid the newer Tsuro of the Seas release. They raised the price and added in some goofy sounding rules.

Nefarious - A phase based game where every player is a mad scientist inventing, researching or moving minions around trying to take over the world. The inventions you build can help or hinder yourself or the other players. There's also a very neat mechanic where you have major randomized rule changes that keeps the game fresh. You can play through it in 15 - 45 minutes easy.

Incan Gold - Kind of a cool "Press Your Luck" adventure game where you are exploring a temple. Encounter too many dangers and lose your loot. Or, maybe some treasure appears and you decide to run out of the temple early. The more players the better!

Kingdom Builder - I'll be honest, I wasn't a huge fan of this. Very luck based game where players claim hexes on a world map based on card draws or special abilities. There's no attacking mechanics so you basically have to build to maximize your score based on randomized options like building a horizontal row or building around a castle. It can take some brainpower to work through

Some honorable mentions... Citadels, Race for the Galaxy, Dominion, and Munchkin.

Battle Line, Mykerinos, Balloon Cup, Fairy Tale, Archaeology: The Card Game, For Sale, Iliad, Keltis (or Lost Cities: The Board Game), 7 Wonders.

Well I know what we will be discussing during lunch tomorrow. Thank you for all the suggestions!

For Sale! is a simple and quick game for 3-6 players.

I see MisterStatic already mentioned it now, so I'll just +1 it.

Yet another +1 for For Sale. Great game. 7 Wonders is a good choice too, especially once everyone knows how to play. I'm also a big fan of Kingdoms, and it just received a reprint from FFG. Roll Through the Ages is a really fun dice game with a Civ theme.

+1 for Citadels. That was our lunchtime game of choice for a while, and it's very flexible in terms of number of players. We instituted a couple of house rules eventually, but the base rules are just fine.

When you get some more experience, consider Neuroshima Hex. This game is awesome, though not very newb-friendly...

Battle Line is great, though it's for 2 players only. Totally recommended.

Blokus is also good, but only for 4 players. For 2 or 3 you might consider Ingenious.

Citadels, on the other hand, is best with 5-6 players. I've never played with 2, but I heard it feels kinda unnatural.

San Juan is another nice 2-4 player game, and then you can step up to Race for the Galaxy (more difficult, but also much more fun).

Cards Against Humanity!

Okay... I guess it depends on your office.

Work is dumb, play Twilight Imperium.

Can I add Resistance and Guillotine?

He actually joined the site, and we will be discussing all of the options. I believe he had some stuff on order that will be arriving today as well.

I'll echo Dominion, it's fast and easy to understand. If you want dice, Quarriors is similar, but dice instead of cards. Castle Panic is another good one.

Oh, alright!
Also want to add Dilbert Corporate Shuffle: Card Game and a viking card game that can't remember for the life of me. It not Hagar the Horrible based but I only played in Neutral Ground in NYC back in the day.

Lost Cities is a great, quick 2 player game. There is a four player variant if you have two sets.

Ticket to Ride scales pretty well, but it may be tough to finish in an hour unless the players are experienced.

Any update?

I'm gonna try and resurrect this thread somewhat...
I have the opportunity to go on $300 shopping spree at work to buy games we can play over lunch. I've perused through several of the GWJ #boardgame threads and scoured BoardGameGeek for a while and come up with a list of several candidates of relatively quick games (1-2 lunch sessions) that support 3-6+ players.

I'm soliciting feedback on which of these are favorites or are terrible, and if I've missed anything obvious.

  • King of Tokyo
  • Lords of Waterdeep
  • Forbidden Desert
  • Small World
  • Last Will
  • Letters from Whitechapel
  • Incan Gold
  • 7 Wonders
  • Rise of Augustus
  • Citadels
  • Bohnanza
  • Puerto Rico
  • Spartacus
  • The Resistance
  • Acquire
  • Ca$h 'n Gun$
  • For Sale!

Some games are omitted because we already have them:

  • Kingdom Builder
  • Dominion
  • Tsuro
  • Munchkiin
  • Smash Up

Thanks!