Games

Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne for me. I play those with my wife and we don't really get in each other's way. She usually wins but I don't care.

micromacro crime city is fun. It's kinda like a giant Where's Waldo map except you solve mysteries as a team.

• Tiny Epic Zombies is a cooperate, often hilarious, always satisfying zombie survival simulator.
• Tiny Epic Dinosaurs is a mildly competitive, generally delightful Jurassic Park / Petting zoo simulator.
• Tiny Epic pirates is a crunchy but quick pirate simulator where most interactions are your human controlled pirates evading the automated Navy while racing for loot.
• The Fast and the Furious (board game) is a fantastic quick co-op romp.
• Here to There is a story driven light economy game ever the focus is on building your economy engine to unlock the next interesting story twist.
• Machi Koro lacks a co-op variant, but it's pretty chill and it's easy to house rule the aggressive competitive cards to pay out from the shared bank.
• The Book of Madness is a fantastic light Co-op deck builder with great positive interactions and a fantastic theme (students at Hogwarts trying to close an evil book)
• Caverna is a robust building game with chill interactions.

Already mentioned, but worth reiterating:

• The Crew
• Tokaido
• Ticket to Ride
• Forbidden Island/Skies/Dessert/Forrest
• Pandemic

And he sure to check out Rhado Runs Through for game reviews. He plays mostly with his wife, and so always reviews how the game feels to play together without backstabbing.

Here’s some suggestions, just games I find I get lots of play out of and people are always willing to play.

Dune Imperium is probably my favorite. It’s a deck builder with worker placement. It’s got a lot of different strategies you can take to win, there’s not one set way. Dune Imperium: Uprising is an updated (for the 2nd movie) version of the game that fixes some things from the first one, tho I think I still prefer the original. This one is a bit more serious, but I’m including it because it’s my favorite.

Everdell is a great game and very easy to get into. Mostly worker placement with some engine building. Cute theme and it looks great on the table. Definitely recommend giving it a look. Avoid the expansions when buying, they might add too much to the gameplay. There is an updated version Everdell: Farshore, which I’ve heard is better, tho I haven’t played it.

Clank! And any in that series are also super friendly and easy to get into. It’s a dungeon exploration deck builder. Personally I’d recommend going with Clank! Catacombs, which is the updated version that adds a tile based map so each play through is a little different. I have not played Clank! In Space or any of the others.

7 Wonders is a fun pick and pass type game. You build up your city and try to win via military, economic, or scientific power. Easy to pick up, and has more strategy in it than first glance. The 2-player version 7 Wonders: Duel has to be my favorite 2 player game. Note on Duel, if you get it, the only expansion I’d pick up is Agora, Pantheon just isn’t as impactful.

Black Hole Rainbows, absolutely ridiculous game, everyone scoffs at it at first and then has a stupid good time playing it. It’s stupidly colorful and definitely over produced but that’s part of the charm. If you can find a copy, buy it. Hard to get right now.

Key Flower,
Gaia Project, Brass, Dune Imperium, Ark Nova, Terraforming Mars

Tsuro is a very quick, Zen game. It's tile placement and stone movement.

Obviously if you don't like S.H., you probably won't like The Resistance or Avalon. But from the same publisher, there's Coup (a game of creative lying), and Grifters (an engine-builder made up of resource collection with a crime theme). I like them both and they're very quick.

I don't think Fluxx could lead to long term frustration, because it's just so wild.

Catan is a classic and it's never caused tempers in my group.

I don't know if I'd considered it a board game, but the Forbidden Island game (and the others like it) spring to mind. The idea is that you and the other players have to work together to gather everything you need including the treasure you came for before the island you're on sinks into the ocean.

It's fun working together and I always thought it did a good job of incentivising that.

The problem with monopoly is that it fits your description....BUT!!! nobody actually plays it the right way. House rules are so ingrained into monopoly culture, that I've incorporated my own house rule. Anyone who puts money under free parking gets stabbed with a knife. When they tell me that's not in the rules, I tell them to show me where money under free parking is in the rules. There's so many of these house rules that people legitimately think are in the rulebook. They aren't. So if you want to put money under free parking, I want to stab your hand with a knife. House rules and all.

One time I was playing monopoly with my mom. She had 53 dollars, and landed on boardwalk. It was unowned. I yhen said "I bid $54. She said "you can't do that....". I showed her in the rule book where I could, and she got angry at me.

So, the problem with monopoly is that most people assume they know how to play, and also assume they know the best stratagies. They don't.

The best stratagy is actually to buy 1 of each property that can have houses built on them. Prioritizing the low cost properties first. Make THEM buy 2 of each, thinking they'll get the monopoly, thinking they'll get a trade. Then drain them further with the railroads and utilities. Eventually they'll run out of money. Just NEVER trade them a property that would allow a path to them getting a monopoly.

Of coarse, all of that is easier said than done. That's what makes it a game. But it all falls apart if people aren't playing the same game.

Ticket to ride is really fun. You kind of do your own thing building train routes the whole time. Not too much overlap to block other people unless you know the routes super well, and even then you don't know what people are going for based on the routes they have to complete. All in all, it's one of my favorite board games.

Carcassonne.

I find it quite fun to play semi-collaboratively too.

Check out [email protected] in case you're not aware. Lots of discussion happening there.

Regarding your question, it's hard to say since you don't mention any mechanics, or complexity level, that you prefer. Based on the couple of examples you provide, you seem to like cooperative card games. If so, you should check out 'The Crew'. It's the most popular of that genre in my game club.

Ranked #1 in family games on bgg

I don't hear about this one often but it is always the first game I bust out for newbies.

Camel Up!

Players place bets on little camels that run around the track. The turns move quickly, people love gambling, and you some strategy will help you win, but it's random enough that everybody has a chance at coming out ahead.

Someone might get the bet you had your eye on, but there's no direct "attacks" on other players.

We love Wingspan. Meadow is pleasant.

Just One was a great game for 4 people. Three people have to get the fourth person to guess a particular word. They each write down a one-word hint. If any two (or more) players write the same word hint, they don't get to show that word to the guesser. It's a lot of fun when you see the different ways people interpret words to come up with hints and how two (or more) words can work together to make you think of the answer.

The pandemic board games, either one of them can give that feeling.

Cottage Garden is very satisfying. You Tetris together garden pieces to fill plots and you can cover a single spot with a sleeping kitty. There’s scoring and competition, but it’s not antagonistic in any way.

I’m also a big fan of cooperative games in general.

We got Tokaido for Xmas a few years back and it’s super chill to play with others

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/123540/tokaido

I think it really depends on how many people are playing. I'm not up on my board games but maybe someone more knowledgeable can chime in