Games that play well with a wide range of different numbers of players [closed]

Question

Many times, I have limited space to pack games, and don't know how many players there are going to be. I frequently end up in a situation in which we have 5 players, but games that only work with 3 or 4 players, or something of the sort. In these situations, games which are flexible in the number of players they support are useful; one or two such games can cover most situations you end up in.

One problem is that while many games nominally work with a given number of players, they are really best played with a narrower range of players. For instance, there are many multi-player games that have a two-player variant, but the two-player variant is quite different than the multi-player game, and couldn't really be called the same game.

So, what games support a wide range of number of players well? Since there are many games which support 2-4 or 3-5 players, let's limit it to games that support at least 4 different player numbers well, such as 2-5 or 3-6 or any odd number from 7 to 15.

edit to add: Let's limit this to non-party games; party games as a genre tend to be fairly flexible in the number of players, so it's not all that interesting to list each one.

Answer 1

Once again I can't recommend Dominion enough.

The base set supports 2-4 players and really plays the same for all of those, and if you also get Dominion: Intrigue (or a second copy of Dominion, or just some extra copies of a few of the victory cards) you can play with anywhere from 2-6 players. 4 players is probably the "sweet spot" that the game was balanced around, though.

A few basic rules are adjusted based on the number of players - the amount of available victory points and the game end conditions scale with the number of players.

Game times will be affected most, naturally - in a 6-player game you'll be waiting longer between turns. The other factor that changes is competition for cards - in a 2-player game you will mostly be able to get whatever cards you want, while a 6-player game will require more adjusting of your strategy on the fly to respond to cards going to other players.

All that said, the core gameplay works very well for any number of players from 2 to 6 without excessive special-case 2-player rules or dummy players.

Answer 2

7 Wonders

• Plays 2-7
• Doesn't slow down with more players because turns are simultaneous
• Bonus: Highly portable

Answer 3

When I have a group of unknown size to bring a game for, I always bring Formula D. It plays up to 10, and while I haven't played that many, I have played 7 and it works just great. There's a little more downtime, but everyone remains interested throughout everyone else's turns because of the risk of collision, and just because you want to follow the race!

I know it seems impossible for a boardgame to create a tense and exciting race, but Formula D manages the trick! The rules are light enough to explain to even a new group in a short time and it has just the right mix of luck and significant choices to make sure that smart play makes the difference and sometimes a big gamble can pay off.

Answer 4

I've played Fluxx in groups from 2 through 10; Zombie Fluxx seems to work even better at the ends of that range. With too many people, though, you need to have a good conversation going while people wait for the turn to come back around.

Answer 5

Citadels (the later editions, or first edition plus expansions) supports 2-8. Once people get the hang of it, it goes pretty quickly. An 8-player game typically takes around an hour.

Answer 6

Bohnanza is a very fun multiplayer trading game. It's a bit more fun if you understand the German word plays on the cards but that's far from necessary. The core game is for 3-5 players and there are numerous expansions that add new twists or simply additional cards for more players.

The basic idea is that you grow beans. Every card is a bean of a particular sort. You and only grow two sorts of beans at a time and you have to plant your beans in the order you receive them. So in order to turn a profit you need to plan ahead and trade well. It's a very social game that involves a lot of haggling.

Answer 7

Can't believe nobody's mentioned Cosmic Encounter yet. Works very well for 3-6, and the old 'kibitzer' variant from Mayfair adds a 7th moderately well. (But don't play Cosmic for two. In two-player Cosmic the objectives change for each player: they become 'go find another player first'.)

Robo-rally works well from 3-8.

Most of the Talisman-esque games work for a wide range too, but they're not exactly small to pack.

Icehouse pieces are small, portable, and support several good multi-player or wide-ranging games: Volcano/Mega-volcano, IceTowers, IceHouse, Zendo come to mind as good examples.

If you can still find it, Duel of Ages is a team game, is one of the few 3-6 player games which works just as well for 2, and it doesn't matter if the teams aren't balanced. (In theory you could play it with any number on each team, but in practice more than about 3 players per team is slower without being more fun.)

Played right, Twilight Imperium works for 3-8, but it's definitely strongest with 5-6. And it's an FF big box game, so it's not small to pack.

Answer 8

There's always Settlers of Catan, with a 5-6 player expansion pack on hand. That covers 3 up to 6 fairly well.

Carcassonne is good with 2-5, and the Inns and Cathedrals expansion takes it up to 6.

I'm also a big fan of Scotland Yard which can adapt reasonably well to 2-6 players (although ideally with 3-6):

• 2 players: one player is Mr X, the other takes 4 detectives 3 players:
• one player is Mr X, two players take 2 detectives each 4,5 and 6 players:
• one player is Mr X, the rest take 1 detective each

Scotland Yard is quite a bit of fun too.

Answer 9

You get a lot of flexibility with a game system like Stonehenge or Icehouse. There are some games that are good for 2 all the way up to party games for 100. The downside is that you have to sift through a lot of weak games to find the good ones. There's an excellent article on Game Systems in the Game Journal.

Answer 10

Small World is for 2-5 players and is very entertaining for each size. There are four different boards that come with the game (2 physical boards printed front and back) with the larger player groups having more spaces and fewer turns on the turn counter.

Answer 11

I'm not sure if this would qualify as a party game, but Pit starts to work well at 3-4 players and works up to at least 10 players.

You might need to use different cards than the original, though, which does not always have support for very many players (depending on the edition). What I have done with great success is take three decks of regular playing cards and use as many numbers as there are players, with nine cards of each number (necessarily selecting across all three decks).

Answer 12

Struggle of Empires is a good game that supports 2-7, though I think you need at least 4.

Answer 13

If your looking for a game that plays well with a lot of people, I would suggest Apples to Apples. It's word association game, and it lets you play up to 10 people. I've played it with more then ten people myself, although I do have the expansions to the game which adds a lot more cards. It's not very strategic though, and a party game at heart.

Also, check out the related question Recommendations for 6-player board game. On that post I recommended Citadels, a really good game that plays well with larger crowds, but only up to 8 people.

Answer 14

For word games, I like playing Taboo in large or small groups. It's fairly flexible because you can pair off, or have varied sized teams.

Answer 15

The Icehouse Game System can handle variable amounts of players. There is a list of N-player games at the Icehouse Game Wiki. It may not be the most strategic game, but I've played a lot of Martian Coasters (2-5 Players). It scales well up to 5 players. There are tons of other games that support many different amounts of players so there is much to choose from in this game system.

Answer 16

Battlestar Galactica with the Pegasus expansion supports 3-7 players, and works well anywhere in that range. This is one of my all-time favorite games. It's a cooperative game using a traitor mechanic.

Answer 17

It depends on your requirements. Uno may be a terrible or a brilliant choice, depending on what you want. There's little strategy: it's something to do with your hands while you chat with a bunch of friends. That means the gameplay tends to be fast, so turns come around fairly quickly. And, playing in a large bunch, there's always the chance that the +4 cards go around the table, and someone ends up picking up 16 cards, which is always sweet (when it's not you). When the +2s go around, the pick ups can go into the twenties.

If you're looking for clever strategy games, you don't want Uno.

Uno works well with 5-9ish people, and perhaps more, and also works well with 2 people (though that's an entirely different game, really). I find it awkward with three or four people.

Answer 18

Civilization (base or Advanced) plays well with 5-7 players, not a very broad range but better than nothing. Yes, 6-7 is ideal, but playing in 5 people is still good enough to be almost the complete game.

Hacker plays well with 4-6 people. You may like it or not, since there are a few design flaws - I find it mostly fun anyway.

Answer 19

Arkham Horror

The game supports 1-8. I've played 1-6 and all work well. With 3 or less you may want each player to control 2 characters, but that isn't necessary.

I suspect that with 7-8 there will be a fair amount of downtime between turns. However, if the group enjoys the game and gets into it I don't think the problem is insurmountable. I find that reading the event cards aloud really brings everyone into the game.

Answer 20

There's a great book called Super Party Games that describes a bunch of games that can be played by groups of 10 or more. I generated a set of puzzles for one of the games described in the book. Each player is given a sheet of paper that they tie to their forehead where they can't see it. On each sheet of paper are three letters, and you have to arrange yourselves to spell out a secret quote without telling anybody what letters are on their heads. You can download the puzzles and print out one of the puzzles for your group size. There are currently puzzles from 4 to 95 people, although I've never tried it with a group larger than 13.

Answer 21

I have played Le Havre with 3, 4 and 5 players, and although the dynamics of the game change, the game is designed to deal with the differing number of players effectively in the way that the end of round 'feeding' phase determines how much food is required. The more the players, the less food required, ensuring that that the game is well balanced regardless of the player numbers.

Excellent consideration has gone into this game to deal with the problem of some games being best for a certain number of users.

Answer 22

The card game "Split" or "Speed" scales very well with slight modifications. Be creative about the arrangement of the shared cards and add more decks of cards and players to your hearts content. The only limiting factor is arranging the shared cards such that everyone can reach them.

Answer 23

A little bit amazed that no one has mentioned Agricola yet. This (my favourite game, not coincidentally) plays supremely well with any number from 1 to 5, by dint of having a different, carefully thought-out board setup for each of those different numbers. In addition, the Occupation cards subdivide into ones appropriate only for solo or 2-person play, for 3+ players, and for 4-5 players; thus, effects that would be silly for two players (auctioning things off, to pluck an example out of the air) can be limited only to numbers of players that accommodate them well.

A lot of games are accidentally good for both small and large numbers of players. Agricola's designers have spent a lot of time making sure it's good for different-sized groups - and the pretty decent solo option has got to be the icing on the cake. It really is an amazing feat of game design, regularly coming near the top of all-time-best-boardgame lists: if you haven't tried it yet, what are you waiting for?

Answer 24

Shadow Hunters plays 4-8 well.

However, I would also suggest that a deck of regular paying cards can service a wide variety of needs. Rummy variants for 2, Specially designed 3 player games like Ninety-Nine for 3-players, Hearts/Spades/Bridge for 4, Specially designed 5 player games like Rook, etc.

Pagat has a list of games by # of Players, which can be useful.

Answer 25

Racing Demon / Pounce / Nertz / Nerts

An excellent (if very hectic) game that I used to play often in large family groups is "Racing Demon" or "Pounce", although Wikipedia suggests that it's more commonly known in North America as "Nertz". As long as you have one pack of cards per player, and those decks have distinct backs, it certainly works well with 3 to 7 people, although as you add more players the number of limbs rushing to place cards down in the centre of the table increases - how you feel about that additional chaos probably dictates the maximum number of players. :) The rules of the game are at pagat.com. Essentially, you have to run through the cards in your deck solitaire-style while trying to keep an eye out for opportunities to move your cards onto the piles in the common area.

Answer 26

Les Mousquetaires du Roy ("The Musketeers of the King" in old French, "Roy" being now spelled "Roi"), that just came out last year is good for that. The story is based on Alexandre Dumas' novel The Three Musketeers.

In the game, a players takes the part of Milady de Winter, the ennemy of the heroes. All the other players are a team and incarnate the musketeers: Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan.

When played with:

• 5 players, each one has a character.
• 4 players, somenone takes Milady and the three others each take a musketeer. The musketeeres have a slightly longer turn.
• 3 players, someone takes Milady and the two others each take two musketeers.
• 2 players, one plays Milady and the other one plays all the musketeers.

Note that the game can be played differently, for Milady is a character that can be simulated by random actions. The game loses a bit of fun though. Theoretically, you can play the game alone.

Note also that there is a fifth musketeer in the box, Tréville, which is the captain, that can be played by an extra player. The pieces needed are included in the box, but the rules for the character can be found online.

Conclusion: this game is supposed to be for 2-5 players, but you can practically play it with 1-6 players.

I tested it with different number of people including alone, it's not the same game, but all of them are equally interresting.

Answer 27

Spot-It

Spot-It supports 2 through 8 on paper, but I've played it with many more players than that. The best part about Spot-It is that there are so many different modes of play, and you can even come up with new ones. We came up with a mode called two-fisted bomb mode which is similar to the mode in the instructions only each player has two cards they have to get rid of until one person is left holding everything.