As you know, you can always count on BoardGameCountry to find the best selection of games and, on this occasion, we bring you the Top 15 Best 4-Player Board Games for every difficulty.
Four is the sweet player count in board games: There are enough slots in worker placement games, the time between turns is just right, the rivalries can flow in couples, and is an easy number to make teams.
It can be a small number for party games or fillers, but the best mid and heavy-weight tabletop games significantly improve with four players.
Continue reading to discover our top picks for those games that are considered to be better to play among 4 players, according to the board gaming community.
Contents
Best 4-Player Board Games
You might think that a 15-item list might be a bit long. And you are right.
¿How can you decide about your next 4-player board game with so many options on the table?
Don’t worry, we don’t want to overwhelm you, so we’ve divided our list into 3 different Top 5 depending on the game’s difficulty based on their complexity weight.
That’s right, you get three Top 5 lists in just one post. Great.
This is how we have structured our list:
- Light Games: In board gaming, light does not mean easy to win. Here you’ll find games with easy-to-understand rules that you might teach to someone new to the hobby.
- Intermediate Games: These are best suited for players with previous experience in board games. If you are already familiarized with different board game mechanics and want to challenge yourself, go for these.
- Advanced Games: Complex mechanics. Advanced strategies. High competition. These are some of the features shared by the games here. Recommended for hardcore board gamers.
Want to fast-forward to your preferred category? Go ahead and use the table of contents above.
Best 4 Player Board Games: Light Games
5. Bohnanza (1997)
| Designer | Uwe Rossemberg |
| Players | 2-7 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 45 min |
| Category/Mechanics | Negotiation, Hand Management, Set Collection |
The first entry on our list is the “Opera Prima” of the great Uwe Rosenberg, designer of Agricola, A Feast for Odin, Le Havre, Caverna, and many others.
In this game, players are in charge of sowing some bean seeds in their fields and harvesting the when the price is right.
But you are forced to sow the first beans in your hand without a chance to reorder them, and this can ruin a beautiful (and valuable) field just before the harvest.
To overcome this, the player whose turn is can negotiate with all their opponents to plan the next turn sowing phase.
This is an excellent negotiation game with fun art that has many editions and implementations.
4. No Thanks (2004)
| Designer | Thorsten Gimmler |
| Players | 3-7 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 20 min |
| Category/Mechanics | Push Your Luck, Set Collection |
This is a very simple yet thrilling game: Taking cards is bad, you lose as many points as the value of the cards you take.
In your turn, you can take the face-up card or pay 1 victory point from your resources to the pot.
The person who takes the card will lose the points depicted on the card BUT will gain the VP accumulated on the pot.
Also, if you take consecutive cards, you only lose points from the lower one and ignore the others, making you want to build “straights” with the cards you have been forced to take.
To add some spice to the game, nine cards (from the 32 available) are removed secretly at the set-up, ruining some plans of completing a “straight”.
Many reviewers have listed “No Thanks” as one of those gateway games to introduce your family to the hobby.
3. Hanabi (2010)
| Designer | Antoine Bauza |
| Players | 2-5 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 25 min |
| Category/Mechanics | Cooperative, Communication Limits, Hand Management, Set Collection |
We tip our hats to the incredible Mr. Bauza for inventing an innovative mechanism.
One of the problems cooperative games have is the communication and the “alpha player” effect, where one (or more) player wants to tell always what the others have to do.
So the “communication limit” enters the scene and, the way this game resolve it is simply genius.
In Hanabi, players are traditional families of fire workers giving a show for the emperor, but your assistants mix the powder accidentally and you have to improvise.
The twist here is that NO ONE KNOWS their hand of cards, but other players can give them clues regarding the numbers and colors in their hand.
When anyone thinks they have enough info, he/she must play the cards of the same color in ascending order.
The game ends when all 5 colors reach the number 5 or when 3 mistakes have been made.
The base game comes with an additional 6th color suit with different rules you can implement to bring variety from play to play.
2. King of Tokyo (2011)
The designer of games like Magic: The Gathering, Android: Netrunner, and The Great Dalmutti, puts on the table a really interesting Kaijus game, the playable avatar of the King of the Hill concept.
In King of Tokyo, players are giant monsters, mechas, aliens, and really weird things fighting to conquest the city while fending off the opponents.
We love the strange alliances and betrayals during each game.
When one monster takes over the city, it gains a few victory points, but if it can defend the position a whole round, it will gain more VPs.
When this monster attacks, it damages all the other monsters, but when a kaiju outside Tokio attacks, it only harms the beast inside the city.
If this player thinks his monster will be defeated, he/she can step down so the attacking player will take their position.
You can win the game eighter by killing all the opponent monsters or amassing 20 victory points.
1. Love Letter (2012)
| Designer | Seiji Kanai |
| Players | 2-4 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 20 min |
| Category/Mechanics | Deduction, Take That |
An enjoyable filler of deduction and luck in which players try to sort out the court labyrinths to make their love proposal reach an elusive princess.
Love Letter is almost a microgame that you can carry in your pocket and play with anyone, due to the simplicity of the rules.
Everybody starts the game with a card (with values from 1 to 8) with a character and an ability.
The higher the card, the scarcer and more important it is.
In your turn, you take another card and decide which of the two you play (and discard) and which you keep as your “identity”.
Those abilities eventually cause player elimination, until just one is standing winning the round. Then the cards are shuffled and a new round starts.
The first player to win three rounds will be the winner to deliver the love letter to the princess’s hands!
Maybe you are looking for a longer and more robust experience, one that you can play one or two times in your friend’s gathering, so look ahead for the…
Best 4 Player Board Games – Intermediate Games
5. Blood Rage (2015)
| Designer | Eric M. Lang |
| Players | 2-4 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 75 min |
| Category/Mechanics | Area Influence, Action Points, Simultaneous Selection |
The most beautiful game on this list. If you are a fan of miniatures, this is the game for you!
In Blood Rage, players must take their Viking clans to glory incarnating the warriors, leaders, and ships of their respective clans.
Ragnarök has arrived and it’s the world’s end! It’s the Vikings’ last chance to descend in a blaze of glory and secure their place next to Odin in Valhalla.
The ways to glory are varied. Players get rewards by invading land, engage your opponents in glorious battles, accomplish quests, improve their clans, and die fierlessly in the battle or in Ragnarok,the ultimate doom.
It also has a counterintuitive mechanic that you must let go of some territories to advance in your conquest only the smartest strategist will find logic.
Although the game has a Japanese reimplementation (Rising Sun, 2018), many critics call Blood rage the superior one.
4. Puerto Rico (2002)
| Designer | Andreas Seyfarth |
| Players | 2-5 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 120 min |
| Category/Mechanics | Action Drafting, City Building, Engine Building |
Puerto Rico was considered the best game in Board Game Geek for years. Currently, it sits high in the top 100 games ever and it deserves it.
Here, players take the role of island governors in 1500 – 1600 in charge of building cities while shipping valuable goods to Europe.
The gameplay is simple to learn, but hard and satisfying to master, transforming an easy relaxing euro game into a highly competitive one in just a couple of minutes.
At the start of every round, there are 7 or 8 actions available, each player chooses one in turn order and all players resolve their ability, but the player that chooses it gains a benefit for doing it (like gaining 1 VP more shipping goods to Europe).
When an action is chosen, no one can take it until the next round. Unplayed actions gain 1 silver as an incentive to be chosen on the next round.
The game goes on until the resources, the workers, or the victory points are depleted, or a player fills all the building spaces on their board.
BoardGameCountry seal of approval.
3. Orleans (2014)
| Designer | Reiner Stockhausen |
| Players | 2-4 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 90 min |
| Category/Mechanics | Bag Building, Simultaneous Selection, Tech Trees |
The game that inspired Altiplano, Orleans Stories, and Joan of Arc: Draw and Write. Here you’ll find an excellent executed bag-building game.
In Orleans, players are medieval french families gathering power by recruiting followers and controlling key points of the city.
The followers may be knights, farmers, scholars, or merchants and you put them in a bag.
Each turn, all players randomly take a number of those and locate them on their boards to make specialized actions and put the engine to work.
This is one of those games when you can feel the progress you make every turn.
Also, the game has a deck of events happening during some of the playing rounds, giving you a sense of playing different games every time.
2. Concordia (2013)
| Designer | Mac Gerdts |
| Players | 2-5 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 100 min |
| Category/Mechanics | Movement Points, Deck Building, Hand Management |
We have mentioned “each game is different” in the past, referring to some set-up elemments that make it feel this way, but Concordia is the king on this!
All players will be in charge of expanding and developing the Roman Empire, exploring and connecting cities by sea or land, and taking advantage of the resources each city produces.
Every turn, players will choose actions or locations to activate, and (maybe) all players benefit from that.
They can also buy some action cards that double as religious victory points if a determined condition is fulfilled. These cards and the distribution of the cities achieve the game-to-game variation we mentioned earlier.
So gather resources, expand your army and pray to the gods to build the bigger and lasting empire on earth more efficiently than your opponents!
1. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (2015)
| Designer | Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock |
| Players | 2-4 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 60 min |
| Category/Mechanics | Cooperative, Set Collection, Legacy Game |
If you like Pandemic, you will love this one.
If you like legacy games, you will love this one.
If you like compelling storytelling, you will love this one.
If you like puzzle-like challenges, you will love this one.
Well, you get the feeling. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is the best four-player board game on this list.
Is in the top two on the BoardGameGeek ranking, only bested by Gloomhaven, and it deserves the praise.
Here you have the traditional Pandemic formula (cooperative game, each player has 4 actions, they have to collect specific sets of cards to find the diseases cures) and transform it into a thrilling adventure of (SPOILERS AHEAD) zombie apocalypse scenario.
It has tragic plot twists, the challenges are top notch and the character’s progression has to be well planned if you want to save the world.
It also has two sequels: Season 2 (where you have to rebuild the world) and Season 0 (an origins-like setting).
So, if you have 3 reliable friends, you have to play this game!
But the list continues for those of you looking for the deepest strategic experience, advance at your own risk.
Best 4 Player Board Games – Advanced Games
5. Barrage (2019)
| Designer | Tommaso Battista, Simone Luciani |
| Players | 1-4 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 90 min |
| Category/Mechanics | Action Drafting, Network Building, Worker Placement |
It’s the dystopian 1930s and the only power source capable of supplying the electricity demand of powerful machines and massive engineering are river-powered hydroelectric plants.
During the course of five rounds, players must meet power requirements and fulfill requests from specific contracts.
Players must also upgrade their machinery to acquire more efficient construction actions by placing engineers in the game, while building and activating buildings, providing special effects to improve their strategy.
The game components are very well crafted and it has an interesting Scythe or Gaias Project vibe.
4. Root (2018)
| Designer | Cole Wehrle |
| Players | 2-4 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 75 min |
| Category/Mechanics | (Very) Asymmetric Game, Area Control |
We want you to visualize this: Four friends gather at a table, and on top of it rests the map of a forest with some villages drawn, some cards, and various wood pieces for each one.
Each player plays a different game, with different actions, abilities, and victory conditions.
Even each player gets different information from the same cards! The only thing in common is how combat goes.
And it goes a lot!
In Root, players control an animal faction fighting for control of the forest.
Each faction plays uniquely and (please, believe us) although we want to tell you how the game is played, it would take a whole article to do, due to the asymmetrical nature of the game.
The art is one of the best out there, the combat and competition are brutal, and you can even get some expansions for more asymmetrical flavor.
3. Terra Mystica (2012)
| Designer | Jens Drögemüller, Helge Ostertag |
| Players | 2-5 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 105 min |
| Category/Mechanics | Network Building, Tech Tree, Conquest |
Terra Mystica is an excellent XXX game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, you dirty-minded) where 14 different factions (4 at a time) duel to colonize and adapt territories to their individual needs.
Each faction has a unique tech tree, abilities, and territories with a favorable environment.
All this may seem simple, but don be deceived, this is a game for hardcore strategy fans (why else have you gotten this far?), maybe the most complex euro from this list, but a truly rewarding one.
This gorgeous game got a sci-fi reimplementation (Gaia project, 2017) that truly honors the original, but there is a nostalgic feeling in Terra Mystica that make us bring it to the table more often.
2. Brass: Birmingham (2018)
| Designer | Martin Wallace |
| Players | 2-4 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 90 min |
| Category/Mechanics | Network Building, Hand Management, Market |
Martin Wallace hit the right spot in this beautiful reimplementation of the original Brass, a game of industrial development in 1800 England.
Here, players are entrepreneurs looking to construct trading routes and factories to provide resources, sell manufactured goods (even the old good booze), or evolve previously constructed buildings for more victory points and cash income.
The game has two different elements that set it apart from the rest:
- First, you can only access zones depending on the cards you were dealt.
- Second, halfway through the game, most constructions and routes (yes, almost all your empire) are removed from the game, leaving you with your developments and income (or debts) alone.
It is our favorite Wallace game and a delight to delve into.
1. Scythe (2016)
| Designer | Jamey Stegmaier |
| Players | 2-4 (Best: 4) |
| Playtime | 100 min |
| Category/Mechanics | Area Control, Tech Trees, Movement Points |
In an alternate post-first world war world, the remaining Europe countries try to gain dominance of the continent, but now with giant steampunk-like robots.
It may seem like a wargame but don´t be fooled, is an asymmetric race to unleash your technologies, gain the heart of the population and conquest the biggest area of continental Europe.
The combat part is very small but with hard implications and rewards, and we recommend you to think twice before shipping an aggressive strategy.
In the best complex game for 4 players, you have two personal boards, one with your faction, with unique abilities, and the other with a specific order and cost of tech developments to bring new flavors to each game.
In each turn, you can make a simple action and then, if you want, a complex action on the same row as the simple.
The game goes on until a player gains its sixth achievement star, then a series of points (money) are awarded according to how much the population likes your faction and the player with more money at the end is the winner.
This is the game that catapulted Jamey Stegmaier. And it deserves it.
There You Go!
These were our recommendations on the best 4-player board games (although they are not exclusive for 4 players).
We hope you enjoyed reading through this as much as we enjoyed compiling and writing it. Now you know better which game can suit you best for your next game night with your other 3 friends.
However, if someone cancels just before starting your game session and you are left with only 3 players, you can check our lists of the best 3 and 5-player board games:
- Best 3 Player Board Games – Top 7 Light Games
- Best 3 Player Board Games – Top 7 Intermediate Games
- Best 3 Player Board Games – Top 7 Advanced Games
- Best 5-Player Board Games
Last Updated on 17/10/2022 by ARU
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