this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025

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Board Games

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Let's Play a Game! A place to discuss all things board game, regardless of genre. Everything from Scrabble and Catan to Ark Nova, 1830 and beyond is fair game! That means we have blackjack. Bring your own hookers, sorry.

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Online Board game (boardgamearena.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I just wanted to share this amazing platform for playing board games online.

It has a huge selection of games, with good translations to many languages.

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[–] donio 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Make sure to check out Yucata.de too. They have about 200 games with some overlaps with BGA. The site UI takes some getting used to and matchmaking is not as well featured as BGA's but the in-game UI is actually very nice once you grok it and it has an excellent undo/replay/log system.

Some of my Yucata favorites:

Bonfire
Carpe Diem
Cartographers (also on BGA)
Fields of Arle
Grand Austria Hotel
Lorenzo Il Magnifico
Mottainai
Mountain Goats (also on BGA)
Mystic Vale
Newton
Rajas of the Ganges
Rajas Dice
Red Cathedral
Renature
Taverns of Tiefenthal

And I am currently practicing Skymines.

[–] JoeTheSane 4 points 1 day ago

Fucking. Love. BGA.

Super cheap and gives access to SO many games.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I love bga, I should really be more active on there instead of doom scrolling.

But playing against strangers is scary 😄

Btw my username on bga is Marcel80

[–] Iheartcheese 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Hi I'm a stranger let me touch your face

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

I also heart cheese 👉👈

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Ewww cheese, nooooo! 😄

[–] pdxfed 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Love the concept; are they open source? Would love to get gaming further away from the big companies. If it's "free" now, how are users paying for it, with data? Ads? We've seen a well documented history of enshittification so before I dump time into a platform that's my 1a question.

[–] donio 2 points 23 hours ago

In general, no the site is not open source. There are however some games whose implementation is public under various licenses. A few examples:

https://github.com/AntonioSoler/bga-santorini https://github.com/micahstairs/bga-innovation https://github.com/bga-devs/bga-heat https://github.com/quietmint/bga-hardback https://github.com/bga-devs/bga-memoir https://github.com/Syarwin/bga-kingdombuilder

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

There's a bunch of games that are premium, and require at least 1 player in the game with premium membership to be able to start playing. There's also various other benefits for premium members, like allowing multiple players from the same IP

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

i usually only play on tabletop sim because it's so easy to make your own games, but maybe bga would be good for more "serious" games.

idk, for me board games are an inherently social activity and the ability to fuck around with the pieces really helps tts feel social.

[–] Rhynoplaz 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I'm a HUGE fan of BGA!

I always keep it open in the background at work just in case my turn pops up.

Feel free to send me a friend request or game invite! Same username as here.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I want to use this, but I don't want to play without my wife and you need to pay to play with someone who has the same IP address as you. No way I'm paying them just to try it out. I get why they do it, but it's complete and utter BS from my perspective since I want to play these games to try them out before buying.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Maybe one of you could use a VPN or something

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah, we'd have to. I just don't really care enough to get one just for this because I prefer to play board games IRL. I literally would only use this to try out games with my wife to decide whether to buy them, but they want cash up front for that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

A home VPN, to be clear. Basically to connect to your home network from away.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

I tried caverna and learned caverna there before buying it. It's a fantastic platform, wish it had more solo and games where tou can play against ai though.

[–] MegaUltraChicken 5 points 2 days ago

I prefer physical games, but I like using BGA to test a game before I buy it. It's awesome.

[–] LesserAbe 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My friend and I like playing Carcassonne and turning on every single expansion pack.

[–] roofuskit 3 points 2 days ago

How's the catapult in BGA?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

It's great, I have an asynchrone terraforming mars game running with some friends

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Interesting but I don't see any dungeon crawlers.

[–] donio 1 points 22 hours ago

Hm, yeah I can't think of any from the top of my head. I guess the site's format works best for euros and the audience seems to be geared towards that too.