Board Games That End Friendships

Ten boxes that turn a pleasant evening into a grudge with a rulebook.

Entries
10
Category
Games
Updated
  1. A world map with red disease cubes piled on cities and a pointing hand-shaped game marker on top.

    10. Pandemic

    Matt Leacock · 2008

    A cooperative game: everyone works together to cure four diseases. In practice one player tells everyone else exactly what to do on their turn, a habit gamers call quarterbacking. It ends no rivalries. It creates one bossy friend and three quiet ones.

  2. A swirling cosmic vortex in the middle of a table, colorful plastic flying saucers circling it.

    09. Cosmic Encounter

    Eon · 1977

    Each player is an alien race with a special power that breaks one of the rules, and every battle invites allies who may or may not show up. Designed by the Eon group in 1977 and in print, on and off, since. It turns your friends into aliens, which is a fair start.

  3. A huge sprawling hex map of planets and plastic spaceships covering a dining table, empty pizza boxes underneath.

    08. Twilight Imperium

    Christian T. Petersen · 1997

    A space empire game from the founder of Fantasy Flight, with a box that weighs as much as a small dog and sessions that commonly run eight hours or more. Betrayal is cheaper here than in most games, because by hour seven nobody can remember what was promised.

  4. A round pawn knocked back into a start circle on a colorful race-track board, a card face down beside it.

    07. Sorry!

    Parker Brothers · 1934

    A British take on the ancient game Pachisi, sold in the US by Parker Brothers from 1934. The Sorry card lets you bump an opponent back to start and then say the name of the game at them. An apology delivered as the attack itself.

  5. Wooden letter tiles scattered beside an open dictionary and a tile rack, a pencil scorepad crumpled nearby.

    06. Scrabble

    Alfred Mosher Butts · 1938

    An out-of-work architect invented it during the Depression, counting letter frequency in newspapers to set tile values. Every game since has paused for a dictionary dispute over a two-letter word nobody has ever spoken aloud. QI is legal. Feelings are not.

  6. Four colors of poker chips stacked in tense columns on a green felt table under a single lamp.

    05. So Long Sucker

    John Nash, Lloyd Shapley, Mel Hausner and Martin Shubik · 1950

    Designed in 1950 by four game theorists, two of whom later won the Nobel in economics. All deals are nonbinding and the rules effectively require betrayal to win. Nash's original title was ruder. Peer-reviewed proof that your friends will sell you out.

  7. Hexagonal tiles of wheat, sheep pasture and mountains, a single sheep card left lying alone at the table's edge.

    04. Catan

    Klaus Teuber · 1995

    Klaus Teuber, a German dental technician, built a game where everyone must trade with everyone, so every turn is a fresh chance to refuse your friend a sheep. The robber exists purely to be placed on someone you love. Over 40 million sold, so far.

  8. A world map covered in tiny plastic cannons and soldiers, with a pile of dice heaped on Australia.

    03. Risk

    Albert Lamorisse · 1957

    Invented as La Conquête du Monde by the French filmmaker who made The Red Balloon, a gentle film about a boy and a balloon. His other legacy is a cousin holding Australia for three hours. Dice decide everything, and you will still blame the person.

  9. A map of early 20th-century Europe covered in wooden army blocks, a sealed envelope and a pocket watch beside it.

    02. Diplomacy

    Allan B. Calhamer · 1959

    Seven players, no dice, no luck, just negotiated alliances and the order sheets that reveal who lied. Games run four to twelve hours. Avalon Hill marketed it as JFK's favorite and Kissinger reportedly liked it too, which is the most honest ad copy ever printed.

  10. A row of tiny red hotels on a game board corner, a stack of paper money and a jail cell in the background.

    01. Monopoly

    Lizzie Magie / Charles Darrow · 1935

    It began as Lizzie Magie's Landlord's Game, patented in 1904 to show how land monopolies ruin everyone. Parker Brothers sold it from 1935 and later paid her $500 for the patent. The lesson stuck: someone hoards the orange properties and nobody speaks until spring.

Honorable mentions

  • A spotted mat of colored circles on a living room floor with a spinner board and a knocked-over lamp.

    Twister

    Milton Bradley · 1966

    The first popular American game to use people as the playing pieces. Competitors accused it of selling sex in a box, then Eva Gabor played it with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in May 1966 and it sold three million by 1967. Mostly it ended backs, not friendships.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A winding candy-striped game path through gumdrop hills and peppermint trees, a single card face up at the start.

    Candy Land

    Eleanor Abbott · 1949

    Designed by a teacher recovering from polio in 1948, for children who could not yet read. Players never make a single choice, yet a six-year-old who draws the card that sends them back to the start will still look at you like you did it.

Every list.
On tap.

No newsletter. Point your AI at our public MCP server, or follow the RSS feed. New lists show up in both.

Get the MCP RSS