👈🏻 Back to Low-Medium Complexity
Looking for a 4-player game that is accessible and light on rules but still has meaningful strategy? Here are our recommendations.
⭐️ Top Picks
Our top recommendations in this category, and games that we personally own to fill this niche.
Ticket to Ride
🟢 Ryan’s #36 All-Time 🔴 Daniel’s #25 All-Time
Summary: Collect cards to build your railroad across the United States, connecting cities to complete your destination tickets.
You Might Like If… you enjoy collecting cards to play sets and want a game that is a proven modern classic with a great balance of player interaction and easy-going gameplay with room for experienced players to enjoy pushing their luck.
7 Wonders: Architects
🔴 Daniel’s #39 All-Time
Summary: Race to build your wonder and collect points by selecting either of the cards next to you, or testing you luck with a blind draw from the deck.
You Might Like If… you enjoy simple games that have some nice strategic decisions and want a game that covers a really wide player count, is fun across the spectrum of non-gamer to heavy gamer, and plays in half hour.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg
🟢 Ryan’s #33 All-Time 🔴 Daniel’s #24 All-Time
Release Year: 2018 Complexity: Low-Medium
👥 2-4* Players
⏰ 45-60 min
💸 ~$50
🎬 Review
🔗 Buy
* 5 players with the Herb Witches expansion
Summary: Strategically buy and then randomly pull ingredients from your bag to build the best potion, but be careful to stop before it explodes!
You Might Like If… you love the excitement of pushing-your-luck, enjoy the strategic customization that comes from deck or bag building games, and want a game that is accessible enough to teach to most people.
Marvel United
🟢 Ryan’s #28 All-Time
Summary: Cooperate as Marvel superheroes to stop the villains’ master plans!
You Might Like If… you enjoy working as a team and the Marvel theme, and want a quick and easy cooperative game that still has a nice amount of variety and depth, especially if you pick up the X-men set or other expansions for additional content.
Horrified
Summary: Work as a team to try to stop the classic movie monsters that are terrorizing the town.
You Might Like If… you enjoy cooperative games and want an accessible one with a fun theme that has nice replay value since you use a random combination of monsters in each game.
Cartographers
🟢 Ryan’s #40 All-Time
Summary: Fit shapes of various terrains into your map, doing your best to fill in space efficiently while also meeting the scoring conditions for that game.
You Might Like If… you enjoy spatial puzzles (think Tetris) and want a game that plays great across a broad range of players with a nice amount of variety from game to game with randomized objectives.
Cascadia
🔴 Daniel’s #29 All-Time
Summary: Create the most harmonious ecosystem as you puzzle together habitats and wildlife.
You Might Like If… you enjoy spatial puzzles and want an easy-to-teach game that has a really accessible theme while having plenty of interesting decisions as you choose which combination of habitat tile and wildlife token to take each turn.
Fantasy Realms
Summary: Build the greatest fantasy kingdom by constructing the best hand of seven cards.
You Might Like If… you enjoy games with card combos and interactions like Magic: The Gathering or Dominion, and are looking for a quick and easy-to-teach game that works well across a wide range of player counts.
SCOUT
Summary: Try to be the first to get rid of all your cards by playing stronger sets and finding the right time to scout other players’ cards — however, you can never change the order of the cards in your hand!
You Might Like If… you enjoy traditional card games where you are managing a hand to try to play all your cards but want a game that puts a new twist on the genre that leads to some really fascinating new decisions.
Las Vegas Royale
Summary: Roll and place dice as you try to win the payouts from various casinos. The “Royale” version of this classic game adds some new twists and variability with casino abilities.
You Might Like If… you enjoy rolling dice and want an interactive game with a lot of excitement and laughter as players fight over control of the different casinos. Has the flexibility to keep really simple with the base rules or spice things up with the “Royale” casino abilities.
👍 Honorable Mentions
Games that missed being top picks, but that we still think are great choices for a lot of people.
Splendor
🔴 Daniel’s #37 All-Time
Summary: Race as Renaissance merchants to grab gems and use them to acquire property and please nobility.
You Might Like If… you enjoy games with a sense of progression and want a quick and easy-to-teach option that has players racing to a final point total.
Welcome to the Moon
Summary: Strategically place numbers and activate abilities across eight unique boards in this flip-and-write game that has you traveling from earth to the moon.
You Might Like If… you enjoy working on your own puzzle and trying to plan ahead and want a game that has a variety of maps with different twists to keep the game fresh. Also includes a campaign mode if you can consistently gather the same group.
Tiny Towns
Summary: Plan well as you puzzle each round’s selected resource into your grid, trying to create patterns to construct buildings.
You Might Like If… you enjoy puzzle games that require careful planning and want a game that is easy to teach, covers a wide player range, and has almost no downtime since everyone places a resource on every player’s turn.
That’s Pretty Clever!
Summary: Draft dice to mark spaces on your scoresheet, comboing your way to a high score.
You Might Like If… you enjoy working on your own puzzle and want a game with tons of exciting combos and bonus actions and a dice-drafting mechanism that produces a lot of interesting decisions.
Spots
Summary: Perform different tricks to place dice on adorable dog cards as you push your luck and race to complete six dogs first.
You Might Like If… you enjoy rolling dice and want an accessible game with a fun theme that has exciting moments and nice variety due to the randomized trick abilities used in each game.
Lovecraft Letter
Summary: Use clever deduction and guesswork to be the last player in each round in this Lovecraftian variant of the popular game Love Letter.
You Might Like If… you enjoyed Love Letter but are looking for a little bit more depth. Some ambiguities in the rulebook make this hard to fully recommend, but it has replaced Love Letter in our groups and is a perfect game for closing out a game night with some light tactics and laughter.
King of Tokyo
Summary: Battle to the death as giant monsters with Yahtzee-like dice rolling and the acquisition of special ability cards.
You Might Like If… you enjoy dice rolling and games with some conflict and want an easy-to-teach option that plays quickly and across a wide range of player counts.
The Quest for El Dorado
Summary: Build your deck to race through the South American jungle and reach the legendary city of gold first.
You Might Like If… you enjoy deck-building games and like the idea of racing across a modular map while customizing your strategy along the way.
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