A couple of months ago Lauren and I started playing games on Board Game Arena (BGA) and this was pretty much our first venture into digital board gaming. Do we feel it adds anything to the board gaming experience, or do we think it’s a gimmick that will soon be obsolete?

What is Board Game Arena?

Board Game Arena is an online platform where you can play board games right from your browser, with players all over the world, for free. There’s an exciting range of games including:

• Classics like Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride and Catan
• Modern favourites like Wingspan, Azul and Lost Ruins of Arnak
• Less well known titles like River Glass Works, Pond and Spots

Board Game Arena is underpinned by volunteers (Community Developers, Tutorial Writers, and Moderators). There’s something special about people giving up their time to provide games to the community. And that community spirit has followed through to the gamers, because from my experience BGA is a friendly welcoming space.

Whilst you can play for free it’s worth stating Lauren and I are premium subscribers, which is essential if you want to be able to play games with someone in your own household. It also means you can host premium games, as well as have access to some other interesting features. Whilst there is a cost for this, you can also trade 100 ‘gift points’ (earned to winning new games and contributing to BGA) for a month of premium membership.

It’s also worth pointing out that although we have used the web browser on the laptop to play some games, the majority of our plays have been through the mobile app.

What do we like about board game arena?

Unsurprisingly, one of the main positives of Board Game Arena is that you can play games! You can play games that are new, games that are new to you, play with new people, and try out games you don’t normally play. It’s a great way to try games before you buy them.

New games are added all the time – since we joined BGA in June, Harmonies, Cartographers and Mountain Goats have all been added to BGA (and many more!). There’s always something new to play! There are also over 800 games already on BGA, many of which I am yet to try.

Another positive aspect of Board Game Arena is that you can play games in real-time or in turn-based. This essentially just impacts the length of time between turns with turn based games being able to be spread out over days or weeks. This flexibility is great as it allows the players to decide what best fits with their lifestyle. It’s not all perfect though there are some additional thoughts around this in the things we don’t like below.

As a premium member you get access to your player stats for both the specific individual game but also summary stats for all the games of that title. You’re also shown how your stats compare to the average ‘winners’. I love looking at these stats as spending a few minutes here can give you  ideas as to where you might be able to improve. It’s worth noting that not all games have detailed information in the stats areas.

BGA also makes board games more accessible to everyone. It enables anyone with a smartphone or laptop and an internet connection to play board games together. This means even if you cannot afford the latest games, don’t have the time to go to board gaming groups, or don’t have any board gaming friends near you. You can still access board games on BGA. I love BGA as it allows me to try games before I buy them. Proof in point I recently bought Azul after playing it on BGA (let’s not discuss how I hadn’t played Azul until this point!).

What don’t we like about Board Game Arena? 

Our main issue when playing on Board Game Arena is that longer/heavier games (eg. Wingspan, and Terraforming Mars) can take a very long time when played turn-based. I recently played a turn-based game of Wingspan, and I was getting to play on average one turn a day. This made it harder to plan my long-term strategy as every time I was trying to remember what I had done in previous turns and what I’d wanted to do next. On top of that, I also happened to start the game badly and couldn’t really recover, so I was forced to play a game I knew I couldn’t win for around a month.

Whilst I could have quit the game, I didn’t want to do this because (i) quitting ruins the experience for the other player, and (ii) on BGA you are ‘punished’ for quitting games (or over running turn times), which affects your BGA reputation and may temporarily affect the games you can play (until your reputation recovers). I’ve also played a number of turn-based big box games where other players have lost interest halfway through and the game and just stopped playing. This inevitably ends with the player timing out and other players quitting, which makes the time you’ve invested in the game feel like a waste. In our opinion, the longer/heavier games work better played real-time, whereas quicker/lighter games (e.g. Azul) can be played more flexibly.

There’s also some variability in how the adaptations on Board Game Arena have been created. My pet peeve is that some games give you a final ‘confirm’ your turn/action button, but other games don’t. On the mobile screen it’s easy to hit the wrong thing and mess up your turn and it’s frustrating when there’s no option to undo it.

Final thoughts

Board Game Arena is a fantastic platform for playing board games online. For us it doesn’t replace physical gaming, but it compliments our overall board gaming experience. It gives us some additional variability in regards to what games we play and how we play them (eg. play count). At the moment, whilst life is so hectic (with a young baby and a young Labrador) BGA has made trying new games, and playing multiplayer much more accessible. I know that Lauren recently found it invaluable when she was recovering from surgery, as it allowed her to play games when she was unable to physically get to a table, or have the brain capacity to set up games. We want to thank all the people who are involved in BGA as they have done a tremendous job creating a fantastic resource for board gamers in the digital space.

Fancy a game? Add us on BGA!
My username: spoonfedbyaliens
Lauren’s username: ourboardgamelife