Good Board Games

So I recently played the game Gravwell  and quickly fell in love with its at least semi-realistic quirky game-play. The game is older and had fallen out of print, but the rights were sold, and a new company has it and it running with it, or that's at least what I'm told but I digress. Gravwell , is a game that can be both fun and educational. The object of the game is to escape from a blackhole. The game board is setup in a spiral, and you're working to go from the center outwards. You draft movement cards from piles of cards, one face up and one face down, (to enter some element of chance) and these cards have a number on them indicating how far the movement will be. After the first round, in which all movement moves you out of the spiral, the game mechanics take full effect. What does that entail?  In space, you're always atracted to the nearest form of gravity and in this game, the same mechanics apply. What provides the gravity? Your enemy ships, as well as ...

In the world of deck builders and resource gathering games Splendor is, without a doubt, top notch. The mechanics are simple, gather resources in the form of colored chips. Then turn them in to acquire permanent resource cards that can be paired with the chip in further rounds in order to acquire cards that give you points. First player to the target score wins. That's Splendor in it's simplest explanation. Going more in depth, there are also ways to reserve cards that you do not yet have the resources for, (which also permit you to attain a "wild" chip used in place of any color) in order to prevent your opponents from getting the card first or to ensure you get "dibs" before anyone else. Game-play is balanced, you can prioritize one resource, or diversify and collect more resources in the process. In addition to the cards and resources, there are noble cards that you receive as a bonus action whenever you have the resources to claim them. These cards ar...