Really complicated board games

Environmental changes, glaciation, migration, and speciation will affect your entire species. This is the kind of game you can get really sucked into for the long haul.

Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization is all about building the best civilization possible. At the same time, the other players are trying to do the same, which leads to some interesting land grabs. Related: The best collaborative board games with friends. It has all the complexity and engagement you seek. You play as one of four Mage Knights as you explore the world, build an army, acquire items, battle enemies, and conquer cities.

Mage Knight can be played competitively, cooperatively, or even on your own—which some consider the best way to play. If you want a rich and complex board game with deck-building mechanics, RPG mechanics, and lots of depth, then Mage Knight should absolutely be on your list.

Related: The best single-player board games. It carries a staggering 8. That plus steep difficulty make it the perfect game for board game players looking to play something a little more intense. At its core, this is a territory game, but it has tons of depth and an incredible amount of balance that makes it a cut above most games in the category. You should expect games to take a minimum of an hour, but it could get longer depending on the size of your group and how they play.

This game is a bit of throwback since it initially came out in Best enjoyed late at night under nothing but candlelight, ideally over a bottle of rum. You might like Diplomacy too, sticking with the historical theme.

Set in the early 20th century, this is the only game that I know of that avoids luck and chance altogether. No dice, no card drawing: just pure, balanced warfare.

Fascinatingly, this lengthy epic involves private, organised meetings among players between rounds. These clandestine meetings involve bartering, lying, promising, bargaining and otherwise maneuvering to get ahead. Just like in global politics, the snakes will quickly get culled so it becomes truly gripping to witness the game unfold.

I could go on. I wrote about Victory or Death before. Glenn wrote about the fantastic Spartacus. I love them. Anyone want to join me?

Remember Me. He had no idea what he was getting into. The thing he remembers best is the way the fuel reserves worked. We apologize for the error. The pasta rule is funny, but this is what the game is about. Just doing tedious calculations all the time.

His reasons were clear: the game is fastidious, non-intuitive, and it forces some seriously awkward fractional equations. But nearly 40 years later he still daydreams about the experience. Jake was enchanted in a similar way. Like most people in the board game hobby, he learned of The Campaign For North Africa as a fable - that it was long, that it was rare, that it was occasionally silly.

As he pored over the rulebook, his curiosity was piqued by the stringent regulations on the treatment of POWs, and how they could defect into their own militia and potentially plunge the campaign into an unwinnable state.

Last month he emailed the rulebooks to each of his recruited friends before their first session. Together they sat down in the family dining room to make their first moves. Jake has two years left before college, which is already cutting it close. I love the structure, I love the complexity. But North Africa never got that memo. It is ornery and intentionally difficult, its commercial release feels like a grave miscalculation or an ultimate dare issued by a hysterical publisher.

But its audacity touched a special few.