Best Sci-Fi Board Games In 2024 – TheGamer

Everything gets better if you put it in space! Well, okay, maybe not everything, but entertainment products generally do, including board games.

Part of the point of gaming is to escape, to leave this world and escape to another, and theres no setting better suited to that than a science fiction one, where you can literally leave the earth. If youre looking to blast off, to leave this dull world and escape to the stars, then these are the games for you.

Best Deception Game

A great bluffing game

This elegant and fast social deduction game tasks players with managing the intrigues of a bunch of futuristic aristocrats as they try to outmaneuver one another both financially and militarily.

The simplest and quickest game on this list, Coup is a satisfying bluffing game that puts players in charge of a group of sci-fi aristocrats reminiscent of those living in the Dune universe. In this game, youre dealt a couple of cards, each with different character types on them, such as a Duke, a Captain, or an Assassin. Each of these characters allows you to use different abilities, and its your job to figure out how to use the ones you get to outmaneuver and kill off your opponents.

Except, youre not really restricted to the cards you have. Your cards are hidden, and youre free to pretend you have cards you dont have. If someone calls you out, youll be punished for it, but if someone calls you out when you really do have the card you say you have, they get punished instead!

Best Hidden Identity Game

Try to Identify the Traitors

Set in the same dystopian sci-fi universe as Coup, The Resistance is a social deduction game where a group of rebels work to accomplish missions while trying to sus out the identities of the corporate spies working to sabotage them.

Another deception game, set in the same universe as Coup, this slightly-longer and slightly more intricate game is still a very fast, simple, and newbie-friendly take on the hidden-identity genre. In it, players are members of a resistance, whose self-appointed duty is to stand up to the corporations and aristocrats that control their world (whose intrigues were explored in Coup!)

The rebels must have some of their number to go on a variety of missions for the resistance. Unfortunately for them, not everyone at the table is a loyal rebel. A couple of the players are enemy spies, and if they get sent on missions, they have the option to sabotage them. Of course, the traitors risk revealing themselves by sabotaging missions, so they must balance the need to hide their identities with the need to prevent the rebels from succeeding in enough missions to win the game.

Premium Pick

One of the grandest games ever created

Among the most ambitious strategy games ever created, Twilight Imperium is a staggeringly deep game that has players compete against each other for rulership of the stars as one of seventeen unique alien factions.

We started with a couple of fast and simple games, and we hope you got your fill of those, because Twilight Imperium is anything but simple. It is one of the most ambitious and finely crafted tabletop games ever created. This 4-8 hour epic for 3-6 players casts everyone as the head of a different sci-fi civilization. Each civilization has different abilities and offers a completely different play experience, and their different abilities and tactics interacting with one another in different combinations makes for an incredibly rich experience.

This game has all the tools you need to find your own approach to becoming the dominant civilization in the galaxy. Trade, warfare, diplomacy, its all here, and its up to you to make the most of it as you struggle to become the undisputed master of the stars!

Spiciest Game

Thats not just a pun. It can be brutal.

Another complex, deep, strategic game of astral dominance, Dune casts its players as the noble houses and other factions from Dune, the titanic classic of science fiction, and has them competing against each other for control of Arrakis.

Just as its source material is a classic of science fiction, this board game is more than forty years old, making it a classic in the science fiction genre of tabletop gaming. Like its source material, Dune follows the intrigues of several factions, including the houses of Atreides and Harkonnen, as they vie for control of the planet Arrakis, and the spice mlange that it produces.

This game is old-school and very unforgiving, but if youre smart and a bit lucky, there are numerous ways to get ahead. Every faction plays differently, so this game has a wide variety of experiences to offer, and youll be challenged not just by the other players, but by the harsh environment of the planet itself, including its ceaseless storms and giant sandworms. If youre a fan of this classic science fiction franchise, its intrigue, and its characters, or if you just want a brutal but rich strategic experience, this game is for you.

Best Star Wars Game

Reenact one of the greatest stories ever told

Star Wars: Rebellion is a strategic game of sci-fi combat and military dominance that places its players in the role of either the Galactic Empire or the Rebel Alliance and has them reenact the epic struggle between these factions over the course of the game.

Another game based on a classic science fiction franchise, Star Wars: Rebellion is a strategic miniatures game about retaining, or toppling, the Galactic Empires control over the galaxy. The galactic empire commands a superior military force, but the Rebel alliance has loads of tricks and secrets up its sleeve. Only they know the location of their hidden base, which the Empire must find and destroy in order to win the game. All the while, both sides are sending their factions leaders on missions to accomplish a variety of goals, and if the Rebellion completes enough of them, they win the game.

Best Classic Game

This game has stood the test of time

Another strategic game of galactic dominance, this game casts its players as different alien races vying for control over the stars through a combination of diplomacy, warfare, and their unique powers.

In many ways, Cosmic Encounter is an older and somewhat less complex version of Twilight Imperium. We say somewhat because its still a relatively complicated game. Like Twilight Imperium, it casts its players as aliens of different factions, each with different abilities, and has them competing for galactic power. This time, the winner is the first race to hold five colonies at once, though some factions also have alternative victory conditions they can pursue instead. The races will engage in diplomacy and warfare with one another to establish colonies and destroy those of their enemies.

This game is heavy on shifting alliances. Players will need to negotiate with each other in order to accomplish their short-term objectives, but only one of them can win in the end. If youre looking for a strategy game of galactic dominance thats stood the test of time (and that wont have a chance of taking you eight hours to play through) this is the game for you.

Best Tile Placement

Turn Mars Green!

Terraforming Mars is an engine-building and tile-placement strategy game that casts the players as corporations who have taken on the task of terraforming mars into a habitable planet, competing with each other to make the greatest contribution to this endeavor.

Terraforming Mars is a strategic tile-placement and resource management game that casts every player as a different corporationand there are dozens of corporations to choose fromcompeting for the biggest role in terraforming Mars and resulting control over the planet. Each corporation has its own flavorful backstory and personality. While most of them are still fundamentally out for profit, they have their own plans for the Red Planet, and a few of them have plans beyond making money.

Terraforming Mars takes place over a long period of time, with each round corresponding to a generation, during which corporations will work to modify the planets environment to place lively green and watery blue tiles and use their various cards strategically to achieve victory.

Best Campaign

An enormous long-term campaign

ISS Vanguard is a cooperative space exploration campaign game with heavy RPG elements. Over the course of a long campaign, you and your friends will control the crew of the ISS Vanguard and the many heroes aboard it, who must explore planets and accomplish missions to complete this epic story.

ISS Vanguard is a cooperative space exploration game meant to be played in a long-term campaign. In this epic story, you and your friends will take control of the titular starship, including the large cast of playable characters onboard. Each session, these characters will use their skills to explore one of many, many planets this game has to offer. They level up and gain skills over the course of the campaign, and its good that they do, because theyll need all the help they can get to accomplish the tasks before them. Beware, characters can also accumulate injuries over the course of this game, and if they take enough, they will permanently die.

Playing this game is a massive undertaking, but if you have the right kind of friends and the time to spare, you can get as much out of this as you would out of any fantasy dungeon crawler or Tabletop RPG.

The most popular board game of all time is monopoly, so the most popular sci-fi board game is likely to be one of the more sci-fi monopoly variants. Alternatively, many of the games on this list are among the most popular sci-fi games of all time. Cosmic Encounter and Dune are both decades-old classics, and Twilight Imperium is regarded by many as one of the greatest games ever made.

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Best Sci-Fi Board Games In 2024 - TheGamer