Next Level
Board Games

Information from someone who LOVES board games for those who are looking for more than the average board game!

Recent Blogs

Game Play First Impresssion - Cosmoctopus

Game Play Review - Power Plants

Game Play Review - Casting Shadows

Game Play Review - Pan Am

Recent Videos

Unboxing Botany

Unboxing Age of Inventors

Unboxing Avant Carde

Unboxing Alynthia

Unboxing Reviving Kathmandu

Unboxing Last Light

Unboxing EOS: Island of Angels & EOS: Island of Angels Expansion

Unboxing Fractured Sky Deluxe Edition

 



Games we are waiting on:

  • Bear Mountain Camping Adventure
  • Biohack
  • Biome
  • CLANK! Legacy 2: Acquisitions Incorporated - Darkest Magic
  • The Dark Quarter
  • Dead Cells
  • Diatoms
  • disrupt
  • Endeavor: Deep Sea
  • Fate: Defenders of Grimheim
  • Flock Together
  • FLOE
  • Forgeflame
  • Frozen Frontier
  • Nestlings
  • The Presence
  • River Valley Glassworks
  • Star Tycoon
  • Thiefdom
  • Tranquility: The Ascent
  • Undergrove
  • Weirdwood Manor
  • Wonderous Creatures

Expansions:

  • Merchants Cove: Master Craft

What we are about

The purpose of Next Level Board Games is to share information about the games we play to help fellow gamers choose the games they might want to try but perhaps have some questions about. To accomplish this, we will regularly blog about different games we have been fortunate enough to play and will discuss several aspects that we hope will help you make your decision. We do not sell games, we simply want to put a voice to some of the cool games we play and hopefully connect with other board gamers along the way.

One of our goals is to reach people who are looking for games beyond the ones they have been playing. Perhaps they want a greater variety but don't necessarily know if anything better exists, or maybe they have gone to a specialty game store and left empty handed because they felt overwhelmed. If that's you, you are in the right place!

It is possible you have already been playing some pretty fantastic games, but are curious about some you have not had the chance to play. Owning lots of games gets EXPENSIVE fast! You all know what I mean! So we hope anyone will find our content helpful, and that it is detailed enough for someone to be able to decide if a game is for their group or not.

Each blog will be comprised of several sections:

  • Summary - which discusses what we found fun and what was frustrating (if anything), how successful the theme is, what kind of replayability we foresee with the game, and if we purchased any of the upgrades (I'm a big fan of the upgraded meeples, tokens, etc., but sometimes I hesitate to purchase when I don't even know if we will like the game.)
  • Complexity - which discusses how complex the game is in several ways - the rule book (some of these can be quite hefty and intimidating), setup, player turns, and the overall learning curve of the game.
  • Player turns - which discusses if the characters are asymetric, how the game flows, any rules you might be likely to overlook or forget and possibly some player aides.

Upcoming games we will be blogging about

  • CuBirds
  • Pollen
  • Bird Watcher


  • Creature Comforts
  • Life of the Amazonia
  • Monsters on Board


  • Lunar Rush
  • Last Friday
  • Transmissions



How it all began


A few of the games we currently have.

You may be wondering why we are here, why spend hours writing a blog about a board game when we could be playing them instead. The truth is we just love playing board games and want to share our passion with others, the same way some friends opened our eyes.

A few years ago, probably close to 5 now though it hardly seems possible, we met some people who forever changed our gaming lives. I had always been a huge fan of board games, but unfortunately, my "vast" array of games consisted of those that can be bought in regular stores, and some remakes based on specific themes. I had long wished for more challenging games, even though our game group laughed and had fun. Playing was a great stress reliever, but I wanted more.

More depth. More strategy. More challenges. More twists. Enter my new friends who were board game masters of a sort, and all the sudden a whole new world of games was at our fingertips. They introduced us to all kinds of games like Dragonwood, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Mysterium, Nefarious and 5 Minute Dungeon, which trust me, we wore out!

Over the next year or so we played all kinds and types of games and we had a great time learning them. When we first started buying our own next level board games we had no idea what we were looking for, what an asymetrical or deck building game was, but we have learned a lot over the years.





Where we are now

Since then we found a local game store that carries a wide variety of better board games. We play board games several weekends each month because playing the right board games is a great way for us to unwind without turning our brains off and vegging out.

We consistenly back games on Kickstarter. To be honest, we try not to let the rulebooks guide our decisions. Instead we chose them for their theme or style. After you have tried enough types of games, you can often see how a game will function and get an idea of whether or not your group will connect with it. Sometimes it can be as simple as yeah, we like robots and that looks cool so let's give it a try!

Our biggest hope is that the blogs we write will help others who are looking for better games find them. We consider ourselves common players - there are most definitely people smarter than us, more analytical and more strategic, but our gaming has increased over time and now we play several games we would have previously found intimidating. And that's sort of the way with next level board games - the more you challenge yourself and play them, the better you get and the more you will want to try other new games!



A few more games.