9 Best Grid Movement Board Games for Top Strategy Fun
Hey there, fellow board game enthusiasts! If you’re on the hunt for a gaming evening filled with strategic movements and nail-biting tactics, you’ve come to the right spot. We’ve scoured the land of tiles and tokens to bring you the 9 best Grid Movement board games out there. When picking the gems for this list, we focused on variety, strategic depth, and how well they create nail-biting moments. The listed games deliver everything from mythological clashes and territorial conquests to sci-fi skirmishes and fantasy adventures. Prepare yourself, because we’re about to embark on a journey through games that have left us and our friends eagerly moving from one square to another in anticipation of our next cunning move!
Games on this list:
9 Onitama
Whenever we want a quick, yet rich tactical duel, we turn to Onitama. With its ever-changing move possibilities governed by cards, every game feels distinct. As we maneuver our pieces across the grid, capturing the opponent’s master or reaching their temple arch space to win is intricately satisfying. Accessible for newcomers, yet deep for strategists, it deservedly holds a spot among the 9 best grid movement board games.
8 Santorini
Santorini’s appeal lies in its 3D playing field that evolves as you square off against your opponent, trying to build towers (and, vitally, be the one to top one off). The challenge is balancing your building work with the essential board maneuvering. It makes every game a delightful spatial puzzle. Its sheer elegance stands out, serving as an excellent window into the potential world of grid movement board games for newcomers.
7 Terra Mystica
Terra Mystica is a larger investment in time and brainpower but an excellent specimen of strategy grid movement board games. Players choose from varied factions, aiming to expand their territory on a map that emerges as its own entity each game. As we strategize our takes on construction and domination, Terra Mystica never fails to test our forward-planning and adaptation. It shines as a complex and deeply involving game suitable for more experienced players.
6 The Duke
When we’re in the mood for head-to-head grappling with a chess-like vibe but crave something fresh, The Duke swiftly takes center stage. Each piece’s movement abilities nimbly flex after every move, delivering an enthrallingly unpredictable dance upon the grid. It challenges us to stay tactile in our approach and adapt our strategies round-to-round, situating itself adeptly among the best grid movement board games.
5 Scythe
If we want epic battle and intrigue played out on a lavish board, Scythe never ceases to impress. It’s the complexities—how our mechs maneuver to seize territories, produce resources, and engage or evade enemies—that bind us time and again. It strategically employs its grid pattern to propel narrative and mechanical depth, cresting as a gratifying behemoth among grid movement board games.
4 Inis
For a dose of Celtic lore within our grid movement experiences, Inis is our go-to. We revel in the drafting of action cards and ruminative maneuvering among the game’s modular hex zones. Its intertwining of positional strategy with power plays forms a remarkable tension that keeps us engrossed. Inis rightfully finds its place in the 9 best grid movement board games for its balanced blend of forethought and sporadic, yet meaningful combat.
3 Star Wars: Imperial Assault
Us board game adventurers often return to Star Wars: Imperial Assault. It’s a world where bustling skullduggery and kinetic battles leap out from the grid-lined maps. We maneuver Rebelling heroes or Empire forces with captivating miniatures, diving deep into customized campaigns. It offers not only that classic grid movement but also wraps us in another galaxy’s worth of adventure and tactics, securing its luminary spot on this list.
2 Magic Maze
For those occasions when we lean toward high-octane, mutual pandemonium on a time crunch, Magic Maze proves absolute. Tasked with steering heroes through a maze-like mall—concurrently, no less—for equipment before time expires, we’ve never laughed more at our non-verbal miscommunication disasterpieces. It’s this quirky, original take that lands Magic Maze among the crème de la crème of cooperative, real-time, grid movement escapades.
1 Gloomhaven
There’s one simple reason why Gloomhaven is the game we’d choose to place at the apex if we were talking about the 9 best grid movement board games: it perfectly encapsulates strategy, adventure, and the joy of long-term cooperative play within its vast, monster-filled world. As seasoned gamers or curious initiates alike, we found ourselves immersed in its story-rich scenarios, customizable quests, and intricate decision-making that evolves with each played-out encounter on the grid. It stands as the exemplar to which we compare all other experiences in this niche.
