Best Board Games for Grownups: Bounce on Your Thumb
I tried writing a regular post with some of these SEO phrases bolted on the front end and it looked so offensive that I thought maybe a top board game for adults would be bouncing up and down on your thumb.
You’d think best board games for grownups would be John Daly Irritable Bowel PGA Shootout or Settlers of Catan, but Settlers has been out of print for years and JDIBPGAS is notoriously difficult to win. Bouncing on your thumb is a party game you can’t pass up!
You’ll need:
• Yourself
• Thumb
Like UNO, it’s something you can do if you hate yourself and don’t have friends who say interesting things. I also yell when I see colors and numbers, but I’ve never needed cards for that. Believe me, you’ll look a lot smarter bouncing on your thumb.
Cool Board Games Ever for Adults: Phrases Like These Are Why the Internet Was a Mistake
The best way to do cool board games ever for adults is to remember not to spit on the pieces. I had a friend who auditioned for Wheel of Fortune once. He didn’t get to play on TV because he spit on the wheel when it stopped because he didn’t like the prize. He turned it into an allegorical novella that got picked up by an indie press and did pretty good for a while, but now he sleeps hanging upside down on one of his towel bars and shits down his own back at night.
Now it’s game night! For adults!
Here are some more board games to try if you decide your group has mastered bouncing on your thumbs:
• Hey, That’s My Cornea!
“I have not been so transported, so riveted by a game since Thunderbolt Apache Leader over the winter. The sign’s it’s sticking? Getting it on the table for at least one play is #1 on the list when the first pourover carafe is ready. I put off meals. I’m going to repeat this for the few that know me: I put off meals to play this. Hunger is a rude interruption to what I am experiencing. I’m on that Chinook Salmon and Red-Tailed Hawk rock. The scorepad is filling up with solo games as my mind dances with the thing, susses out small tipping points and synergies in the scoring cards, learns to track the relative species, terrain balance simultaneously.”
• Slapping and Biting Deluxe Kickstarter Edition
• Mentos: The Pointmaker
• The Stupefaction of Paper Boats
• Star Wars Outer Rim Review
“It was also super annoying when, on about his third turn, he passed waypoint checks between planets that won him extra turns. It was even more annoying when he just pulled the infamous Kessel Run job—which is not easy for a starting character—and aced it. There multiple stages of skill checks for this one that require some tough rolls. I try to warn him about the odds on some of the checks he’s trying, but…with stoned gunslinger eyes, Rygar calmly says “I’m gonna crit it,” reaches for the dice, doesn’t shake them hardly at all, just picks up and chucks in one fluid motion, almost contemptuous in its off-handedness, and hits it. It was some real cowboy shit and the defining moment of the game.”
• Liquid Emoji Kingdom
• Finding a Turd While Frolicking in a Pile of Leaves
Sometimes when you look for best board games for adults, people will say Cards Against Humanity, but that game is for the kind of person who backs you into a corner at a barbecue and recites Deadpool quotes while you nod and try to fashion a noose from the cord of some nearby string lights. You’ll be climbing up on a plastic lawn chair to make it stop and they just keep saying Deadpool quotes.
People are always claiming you can “write for people and the search engines,” but that is a lie. I had to pick. I could do my voice and march doggedly toward the green beacon of my insanity or I could research the most boring possible post so I could be the third first-page search result that, despite claiming to solve a problem, starts with 500 words of anti-information before you pick up your laptop and see how far back that screen will really bend against its hinges. Sometimes it’s pretty far! People at the food court will be like, “Hey! You can’t read best strategy board games for adults inside-out!” Then you can make their face inside-out.
Best Board Game Podcasts: Bicycle Horn Sound
If you are a baby who likes sounds that last a long time, a board game design podcast is probably a good place to start. You’ll learn about:
• Worker Placement
• How to Interrogate Troubling Historical Themes in Ludic Settings
• Importance of Trimming Your Thumbnails Regularly
• How Many Points is it for a Building? Why?
• The Story of Why I Closed the Tab at 4:48 Because These Two Chuckleheads are Still Over the Moon About a Joke They Made Last Episode
Otherwise, you can listen to the hands-down best board game podcast: Breakup Gaming Society. The first 70 episodes are a Guernica of self-loathing and poorly considered riffs, but I decided to make this show the chariot in which I would take the field once more. Wrote scripts instead of trying to extemporize off bullet points. Stopped recording drunk. Improved the sound. Got rid of “other people” in the creative process because external dependencies are horseshit, you’ve got to pick something you can wake up and make with your own two hands when “other people” realize the venture involves more “trying.” I re-approached the whole thing with a little more patience and humility. But not too much, because I’m angry and I turn my best phrases when I’m swinging two-fisted against boredom, which is everywhere.
Best Board Game Podcast That You Can Listen to Right Now
• Board Games for Dinner: A lady who liked to drink tea and who would eat an entire board game, piece by piece, and review the components. She died after the third episode, but I’ve been binging those early efforts. The one where an Arkham Horror Second Edition turn marker catches sideways in her throat is memorable for both its bathos and relatability.
• Hit in the Face With a Board: It’s just a regular board game show with compartmentalized shelves and violet accent lighting, they just couldn’t think of a title. The best board game podcasts should do more to deliver on their promises of violence.
• Dork Parade: Three rosy-cheeked dinguses fight over who gets custody of the group’s four adjectives
• Roll ’n’ Write, Sounds ’n’ Lights: 32K subscribers! Maybe these people know something I don’t.
• Good Job, Boardo: This guy still thinks he can do an English accent.
Other podcasts are there aren’t any.
Well, I fell like that’s enough SEO for today.
Grease it up and bounce, board gamers!