Looking for a 5-player strategy game that has plenty of interesting decisions without getting too long or complex? Here are our recommendations.
⭐️ Top Picks
Our top recommendations in this category, and games that we personally own to fill this niche.
Heat: Pedal to the Metal
🟢 Ryan’s #23 All-Time 🔴 Daniel’s #22 All-Time
Summary: Manage your car’s speed to prevent overheating as you push to win the race.
You Might Like If… you want an easy-to-learn racing game that plays well across a wide range of player counts and has a really elegant deck-building system that is simple but full of interesting decisions.
7 Wonders
🔴 Daniel’s #48 All-Time
Summary: Simultaneously draft cards to develop your ancient civilization and build its Wonder of the World.
You Might Like If… you enjoy games where you strategically build up your own card tableau and want an option that plays well across a wide player range and has almost no downtime since players are always drafting cards simultaneously.
Space Base
🟢 Ryan’s #34 All-Time 🔴 Daniel’s #27 All-Time
Summary: Tune the odds in your favor as you assemble a custom fleet of spaceships that will trigger abilities on specific rolls of the dice.
You Might Like If… you enjoy the excitement of dice and want a game where you get to play with the probabilities and build a strategic engine out of a variety of possible card abilities.
Dungeon Fighter
🟢 Ryan’s #41 All-Time 🔴 Daniel’s #35 All-Time
Summary: Delve through the dungeon as a team, fighting enemies by bouncing dice off the table onto a target; often being forced to make challenging trick shots.
You Might Like If… you enjoy cooperative and dexterity games and want a funny experience that has the pure fun of trying to bounce dice onto a target wrapped within a dungeon crawler complete with character abilities, room effects, items, and more.
Wingspan
🔴 Daniel’s #40 All-Time
Summary: Strategically collect and play birds into your wildlife preserve to combo your way into higher efficiency.
You Might Like If… you enjoy games with comboing card effects and low confrontation and want a game that has a really accessible theme and great components.
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea
🟢 Ryan’s #49 All-Time
Summary: Use deduction and clever card play to achieve varied goals in this cooperative trick-taking game.
You Might Like If… you enjoy traditional trick-taking card games and want a fresh experience where you are all working together and have limited communication that adds some spicy new interest to the genre.
👍 Honorable Mentions
Games that missed being top picks, but that we still think are great choices for a lot of people.
Roll for the Galaxy
🟢 Ryan’s #44 All-Time 🔴 Daniel’s #49 All-Time
Summary: Tactically allocate your dice to develop technologies, settle worlds, and ship goods.
You Might Like If… you enjoy building up your own engine of effects and want a game that plays simultaneously with an interesting puzzle of using your dice results to most efficiently build out your personal tableau.
Architects of the West Kingdom
Summary: Strategically hire and build for the good of the kingdom in this variant on the worker-placement genre.
You Might Like If… you enjoy worker-placement games and want one that is a step up in strategic complexity from entry-level options, still plays in 90 minutes or less, and has a few interesting twists on standard worker placement.
👀 Worth a Look
Games we haven’t tried yet ourselves, but we believe could be a good choice in this category.
Smartphone Inc.
Summary: Strategically position yourself in the market and develop your products to sell the most smartphones around the globe.
You Might Like If… you enjoy economic games and want a really easy-to-teach, smooth, and interactive experience that has you vying for customer demand across the map by selecting actions using an interesting spatial puzzle.
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