It can happen to anyone: a friend of a friend joins for the evening and suddenly Catan is not an option.
What are your goto games in those situations?
I really like 7 Wonders, for 3-7 players and one round is also not too long with about 20 minutes ^^
With the Cities expansion it goes up to eight too. Pretty simple to explain and as turns are simultaneous the extra player doesn’t add any time (unless they are particularly slow)
Scythe has an expansion that goes to 6 or 7, I think. Some versions of Smallworld may as well. Formula D plays 10. Dixit can go high too if you have enough cards.
Deception - Murder in Hongkong - for up to 12 people
The Thing: The Boardgame is a really nice game that works well with larger group (up to 8 people). You are basically playing out the move.
Wingspan can scale up to 6 or 7 players.
Werewolf is fun for even more.
Big fan of The Resistance, as well as Blood on the Clocktower, though the latter is a bit of an investment. If you don’t want social deduction, there’s also 7 Wonders and Citadels.
These are the games my friends and I prefer currently:
- 7 Wonders
- Dominion
- Catan
- Anno 1800
- Fallout
Mysterium - identify the suspect by looking at abstract cards given by a ghost (goes up to 7 players I think; use the original Ukrainian rules!)
Shikoku - interesting movement game, goes up to eight players
Eclipse - epic space exploration and battles, nine players with the expansion (I’ve never played it nine players, it would probably take about a week and need a banqueting table to put it on)Cash n Guns - 8 players: Players get to have a standoff with foam guns pointed at one another trying to take out each other either with a loaded gun or bluffing that your gun is loaded to gain the most loot that was gathered from a prior heist.
For 8-12 players, I like Green Team Wins.
Ethnos - area control/ set collection/ push your luck with very short turns; hard to get to the table with my group because of the art, but once we play, everyone liked it so far
Cosmic Encounter - classic game with a lot of diplomacy
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18/roborally - chaos & mayhem, aka. a lot of fun; can drag a bit if players don’t get the mechanics
For larger groups, we’ve had success with these:
Diamant
Bang:The dice game
Citadels
Skull
CamelUp
Just One
Fake artist goes to New York
Sushi Go:Party
At 6 players we mostly switch to party games.
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Just One is by far our favorite, works great with all sort of crowds.
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Secret Hitler is another we tend to play, doesn’t work well with the more casual folks.
Always interested in expanding this list, it’s hard to find something outside word games and social deduction that don’t have a ton of downtime.
My go to would have been Deception: Murder in Hong Kong which I think needs between 6 and 9 players to really shine, but discounting social deduction, I’d look at Captain Sonar. The downside there is the player count is brittle… I do agree with @Zipheir that Bohnanza works well from 4-7. If 6 is acceptable, Point Salad is fine and that means you don’t have to sort cards as you use them all.
Really, after 6 people, we break up into two groups. I mean, sometimes we break up at 6…
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We default to Munchkin when nothing else seems obvious. Games get long with 7 or more people because someone can always sabotage the leaders victory. But the game is still hilarious and gleefully fun to us after all these years.
