Best Board Games for Fantasy Nerds

Welcome, Fantasy Nerds! This week we want to talk about our favorite fantasy board games! If you don’t know, our family is really big on playing board games together. In fact, our parents actually own a game store called Pair A Dice Games (you can find them on Facebook). Of course, we are very excited to bring you the best board games for Fantasy Nerds!

Heroscape

Heroscape is a build your own terrain as you go kind of game; you pick factions and each character figure has its own card stats. For example you can get Elves, different types of Dragons, various magic wielders and much, MUCH more! Each faction has their own stat cards for each character, as well as their special abilities. The objective is to completely wipe out your other opponents, and you can play with as little as two people. If this isn’t the perfect Fantasy Nerd game, we don’t know what is! 

Betrayal at House on the Hill 

This is WTF’s all-time favorite board game she’s ever had the pleasure of playing. In fact, she owns two copies and the expansion. This is technically a horror game but they make a Dungeons and Dragons version called Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate, which has a more fantasy feel. This game is, like Heroscape mentioned above, a build the terrain as you go game. Each character has different stats, which can help or hurt later in the game. 

Each time you play is different, and each time you play one of your fellow comrades becomes the “traitor” which is triggered later on in the game after you’ve built up a pretty decent map. Every time a traitor is revealed there are two sets of rules, one goes to the traitor and the other to the survivors. Depending on how the traitor was revealed, you will embark on one of fifty scenarios. If you have the expansion it adds another fifty scenarios! It’s impossible to get bored of this game because it is ever-changing, always new, and full of fun and excitement. 

Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle

This is Clever’s favorite game because it combines two things she loves: Harry Potter and collaborative deck-building games. You play as one of your favorite Harry Potter characters and battle with your friends to defeat the villains and rescue locations around the wizarding world. What’s really awesome about Hogwarts Battle is that as you play through each game you get to open new boxes with additional cards and rules, making the games progressively harder and adding new elements. 

The first level is very simple and allows you to learn the basic gameplay. You start out with a small deck of basic cards, and each character has different special abilities that affect your strategy and what cards you will want to add to your deck later on. You can use your influence tokens to purchase better cards for your deck, which you can then use to get more influence tokens which will buy you even better cards. What makes this game so fun is that it keeps changing every time you play, adding harder villains and cooler cards for you to acquire.  There is even a Monster Box of Monsters expansion where you can venture into the Forbidden Forest and play as Luna Lovegood!

Smallworld

In this game, you play as different magical factions and the goal is to take over as much territory as you can in this small world. All the players choose from different fantasy races; such as elves, dwarves, giants, and wizards, and combine them with various special abilities to make the strongest faction possible. You then use these races to conquer as much territory as you can before going into decline. At that point, you choose from the newly available combinations and go forth to fight the other magical races for the remaining lands. There are a lot of strategies involved in this competitive game of conquest.

Talisman

This is a slightly older board game, but easily one of the best Fantasy games. You start out by picking a character, and each character has different attributes and stats that will have certain advantages. The basic goal is the get a Talisman to pass the Valley of Fire, get to the Crown of Command and kill off the other characters. The only way to kill another character is to trigger the Crown of Command, and if they die once it is triggered they are permanently dead. Now you can carry items, level up your character, get gold to buy items, and gain fate tokens. You can use said fate tokens to re-roll, so they are vital to getting ahead. 

There are three “levels”, so to speak, on the game board. To move you simply roll a die, and you can choose which direction you would like to go on the board. In most spaces, you would draw a card, which may trigger an event or be an item, etc., or roll a die for the area you are in to see what happens in that area. Every time you play this game it is always a different experience, it’s almost like an open-world board game. We even found this Batman version for all the Batman fans out there!

HeroQuest

HeroQuest is also an older board game, in fact, it came out in 1989!! But nonetheless, it deserves to be on this list. One reason this game is so incredible is it was made in conjunction with Games Workshop, who helped make the character figures and the 3D board, so it’s visually astonishing, even today. Kind of similar to Dungeons and Dragons you have a Game Master, while up to four other characters embark on an epic board game adventure. There are fourteen sequential quests the party can play through, therefore it’s not just a sit-down and play once kind of game, but rather a continuing game with your party. 

You can level up your character, gain better gear, and increase your stats. The 3D board is similar to a maze that you venture through to complete various quests and fight enemies. There is a Quest Book for the game master, and text outlining each quest, as well as where to place enemies, furniture, and obstacles. Another amazing addition to HeroQuest is the blank map that’s included so players can even build their own quests, as well as blank character sheets for the player to personalize their character. There are also character templates that give a basic layout for each hero’s Attack, Defence, Movement stats, and Health. There are four types of characters to choose from; Dwarf, Elf, Barbarian, and Wizard. Basically, HeroQuest is Dungeons and Dragons come to life in an incredible board game.

Potion Explosion

So for this last one, we included it because it’s a very simple and fun game that you can play with anyone, whether they are seasoned board game players or have never touched one in their lives. This is a 3D game with real marbles and almost reminds us of those match games you can play on your phone. Each player has potions that they need to complete. You take turns removing a marble from the dispenser, and any marbles of the same color that connect are yours to take and place in your potions. Completing potions earns you points, and you can also use the potions to help you in the game. The person with the most points wins!

What Do You Think?

Did you find a new board game that you are interested in playing? Do you have a favorite board game that we forgot to include? All these games make great gifts, so just click on the photos to find them on Amazon. You can also check your local game store. If you live in Tennessee, you can even head over to Pair A Dice Games! If you are looking for more fantasy-related gifts, check out our post Best Christmas Gifts for Fantasy Nerds!

If you found this post helpful, we would love for you to leave a comment, or even buy us a cup of coffee! We promise to share!

Thanks so much for reading! 

Clever and WTF