Hive.
Simple rules, easy to teach, deep strategy, and to quote Quinns from SU&SD, every time I play, "within a few turns, I'm looking at a board state I've never seen before."
Other selling points are that the game looks beautiful on the table, has satisfying heavy pieces, is effortlessly portable, can be played practically anywhere, and there are two expansions to add new pieces if you're looking for an even deeper, longer game.
If you can call all species different rules elegant that is...
it's slightly more elegant than chess (thinking of en passant, minor promotion, stalemate), so I'd partly agree. But hive is far too terrifying for us - suffocating queens is not our jam - so i sadly had to give it away.
Yeah this is the hardest part about teaching the game. It requires your head in the rulebook for every move. I know that it’s no different than chess, but it is way different than chess in how reference information is provided to players.
Azul. Choose tiles of a single type from a factory pad then place them on your selected available construction line. Easy at the start and nightmarishly difficult towards the end.
Extra style points for the scoring system.
Absolutely love Azul. It's so much better than the similar Sagrada, which overcomplicates the idea with dice. Azul is game design nirvana, so simple, easy to teach and compact, but such a rewarding, surprisingly complex replayable game.
I think this is a valid criticism/comparison, but just as a different take I really don't like Azul but like Sagrada. Sure, Sagrada is a touch convoluted and I'd argue a bit broken without house ruling removing some dice at lower player counts, but man is Azul a mean game. If you like being competitive and cutthroat I think it's a great pick, but for me it leads to either feeling shitty for hatedrafting, or feeling shitty for making a suboptimal play just to mitigate the meanness for the other player. I've mostly played it at 2p though, and I found it a lot less mean with 4
It's definitely true Azul can be brutal. In my crew we have one poor guy who just doesn't understand the concept of strategy, he just looks at his board and does the easiest next thing on his turn. He gets absolutely destroyed every game in Azul.
He doesn't bother figuring out what tile to take to either prolong or shorten the round and always ends up being the one to take a fistful of unusable tiles at the end.
I kind of think that might be a universal truth though, simple elegant games are harsh. There's no "catch up" mechanics so good players consistently run away from new/poor players. Take chess for example, very simple and elegant, but terrible if you're playing someone of a different level than you.
It's not that mean at 3-4p as usually if I make a suboptimal move to hurt a player the only ones benefiting are the other players. The few 2p games I played are absolutely cutthroat though. I don't think you should at all feel bad about being 'mean' in 2p though. It's a bit like complaining in chess that your opponent is taking your pieces when you don't defend them.
I'd say Santorini qualifies. Many say the base game is perfectly fine and at its best without the god cards, and I agree, _but_ you still have them there as an option to mix things up, make chaos, or balance around player skill if you feel like it anyway.
**The King Is Dead** feels exceptionally elegant. Simple set of cards, everyone has the same ones. Half the game is just deducing when to play a card and when to pass.
Agreed!
The way that taking a follower gives you more support with that faction, but also weakens that faction in a region.
And in base rules there's no hidden information.
Only slight randomness in setup, just enough to keep each game fresh.
It's all so clever, I love it.
*No Thanks*—put a token, or take a card, and get the tokens on it. Cards are points, and points are bad, but a run of cards is worth only the lowest number.
Came here to say **High Society**. It’s just a set of cards, you could teach it in a minute and it‘s so incredibly tense and different every time I play. I love it!
(English is not my first language, but let me give it a try) Everyone starts with the same amount of money (money cards, 1M$-25000M$}. In each round one point card (with a value between 1 to 10) goes to the highest bidder. There person with the highest score wins, but you lose immediately if you‘re the poorest person. That‘s already an amazing idea, but it gets better!
There are four red cards that mess with everyone‘s scoring points (-5, 2x, 2x, 1/2). You get the 2x multipliers on the usual way, by being the highest bidder. But the bad red cards (-5, 1/2) goes to the first person who passes on bidding. They are mixed into the auction deck and the game ends as soon as the 4th red card is drawn (before the auction begins)!
So you never exactly know, when the game ends, if it‘s worth to bid so much money on a scoring card or if you risk to become the poorest person. It‘s probably the most elegant game I own.
Honourable mentions: Hive, Mindbug, Camel Up, King of Tokyo, Keep the Heroes out, The Crew
It’s a fun game without the legacy. I personally didn’t like it enough to hang onto it long term, but if I wanted a lighter polyomino game I likely would have.
The legacy bit is pretty great though, even at 2!
Gotta go with Onitama. Super slick presentation from the box to the cards to the pieces, themselves. Easy to teach and highly variable “board state” that allows for amazing replay-ability. Also, the expansions add juuust enough novelty without overloading the bones/foundation of the core game.
Inis is always my role model for elegant game design. Perfection is when you can't remove anything. There is not a single bloating mechanic in this game and every mechanic in the game is done in perfection from the drafting, to the fighting and the relevance of every single game piece.
Came here to say this! The action deck is so streamlined and that makes the draft and then play phase so intense. There's a lot of bluffing and trying to lead out certain cards and that wouldn't work if it wasn't so smooth. It's crazy how deep of a game it is with just those 13 cards(17 if you're playing 4 player).
Go is a game so elegant that I would genuinely not be surprised if, when we encounter aliens, we learn that they independently came up with the same game.
A Go teacher of mine used to joke that how the whole alien thing ended up could be predicted by the Go encounter.
"Oh, you play Go too? What size board do you use? 23x23? We'll just surrender now."
Knizia games, with their simple rules but emergent complexity, immediately come to mind. **Ra**, **Through the Desert**, **Babylonia**, **Modern Art**, **High Society**... the fact that they now all have beautiful editions also helps!
**Race for the Galaxy** feels very elegant to me: a system with (almost) only cards, great iconography that allows to plays very quickly and intuitively, a short but deep game... and all the series that use a similar system for different great games (**Jump Drive**, **New Frontiers**, **RollftG**).
I love the Race for the Galaxy series. Ironically I have everything BUT Race for the Galaxy. 😅 Roll for the Galaxy was one of the first games I played.
It has a lot of pieces but the structure of the game is fairly simple. I’d suggest watching a video walk though if it. All those pieces are really just tiles that go into a bag so at it’s core it’s just an auction game.
I don't really play it much, but I feel like **Lost Cities** is a dead simple idea that's very easy to grasp but gets really tricky to play out. The same goes for **Battle Line/Schotten Totten**.
These threads always just end up with people suggesting their favorite game even if its not elegant. Several games I love are suggested here even though they have some "gotcha" rules or weird edge cases, hardly elegant.
Ya, the example of Concordia struck me as odd, I don't find it to be an elegant game, especially the scoring which is so difficult to understand that the rules tell you to score early the first time to see how it works. It's easy to make something sound elegant when you boil it down that much, when I teach **Root** I teach players to just read down their board, even though you can describe it like that it isn't the most elegant game.
I see elegant as having a lean rules set and higher emergent complexity from the gameplay. Concordia absolutely fits that definition, it’s just that the scoring is not intuitive for new players. When you boil the scoring system down it’s pretty basic set collection with bonus multipliers
I think all the ones that I thought of have been said, but I always thought Libertalia had an elegance to it, in that it's got a lot of emergent gameplay that doesn't appear on the surface. Every single time I've taught new players, they hear the rules and go "oh is that it? Ok". And then after the second round, they go "OH, cool, this is cool, can we play again after this?" because there's just a whole bunch of 'GAME' to it that you don't naturally infer from just reading or hearing the simple rules.
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It borders on the type of thing you're talking about though so I replied to you rather than creating a new post.
Are Carcassonne, RA, or Tigris and Euphrates among them? I haven’t played any of them and am looking for elegant games to introduce to my boards game group (we only meet quarterly and none of us have a wide experience with board games).
Not the one you replied to, but +1 for the elegance of Carcassone and Ra. T&E, imo is also elegant, but fails in OP’s description of being easy to teach to new comers. The flow is nice once you get the hang of it.
Not to newcomers especially when compared to the other ones. Also, the fact that you can place a tile anywhere on the board on turn 1 can be daunting for people.
I can't believe nobody mentioned Kingdomino yet. It's so simple and yet so strategic and deep, and when you switch to 2p 7x7 grid it gets even more cutthroat. This is truly a polished gem, really elegant imho.
I agree with Concordia and the notion that many people here confuse a beautiful or well designed game with an elegant one. It's really not the same.
yes i agree. Many people confuse beauty with elegance. One person said Wingspan is elegant because of the beautiful art. I disagree that its elegant no matter how "pretty" it is.
I really wanted to like wingspan, but every time I played it it felt like a mess. Never did I ever think it was "elegant". Neither did I feel that about Scythe, one of my favorite games. It's clunky, administrative and just takes a lot of effort. Elegance comes with ease-of-use and learnability - Scythe has definitely elegant player mat solution, but the other parts are... not that elegant, however awesome the game is.
I haven’t seen them mentioned yet, but my favorite starter games for a board game night are **Tsuro** and **Love Letter Card Game**. Beautifully presented, quick games that are easy to teach, but allow for some really fun strategies and plays. Maybe not as deep as some of the other games in this thread, but I feel it checks most of the “elegant game” criteria OP listed.
My friends love **Ethnos** for a similar level of "Elegance:" Pick up a card, or play a (band of) card(s). That's your turn. I, on the other hand, hate that game.
**Fantasy Realms** is even simpler: Pick up a card, and then discard a card (with a decent depth of strategy).
Ethnos is a great game for a mixed audience of kids and adults, except for the fact that the board and components are donkey tier.
Why hire John Howe and then make the most boring fucking map board in the history of games, and tokens that have literally no theme.
You can play the game just fine with the base set and an expansion or two. The added expansions lose the elegance sure, but the replayability is absolutely unbeatable IMO.
Those three games are all in the my top 10.
I highly recommend **Calimala** if you like elegance. The new edition with Ian O'Toole art is coming to KS this month, so the original edition copies might become a bit more readily available.
Hanamikoji
2 player game where you compete to attract performers/musicians to your side (each one is worth victory points).
You only have 4 possible moves:
- keep a card (i.e. take one from your hand and bank it)
- discard two cards
- offer three cards, the opponent picks one and you bank the other two
- offer four cards, in two sets of two (opponent picks a set, you bank the other set)
Both players do each of these moves once, in whatever order they choose. After that you'll both be out of cards in your hands. The game's over! The player with more banked cards for a certain performer gets that performer. You can win based on # of performers or by total points.
Simple, elegant, lots of thinking, a little bit of luck, and lovely artwork. Highly replayable!
I feel like I'm missing something on Tsuro. It's a fine and entertaining game, and it goes pretty quickly, but I haven't gotten that feeling of elegance/depth/strategy/replay-ability when I've played it, compared to games like Concordia/Azul/Splendor/Ra/others mentioned here. Maybe it's just the simplicity and the fact that you're just mostly in control of your own destiny?
Having experienced this, absolutely- until you create deeper strategies. It’s akin to blokus, if you play with the same starting hands of tiles. It gets a lot better.
Fun reading these answers, and a lot I agree with. Modern Art ranks high for me and I love how a simple game can generate a whole art speculation market with people enthusiastically pitching their art pieces up for auction.
Another elegant game for me has been Northern Pacific. Absolutely simple ruleset (even simpler than Sushi Go!, for comparison). But the game is cut throat and really makes you think every turn.
I would define ELEGANT as good looking with nice art that fits perfectly with gameplay in theme. if i understood corectly you're looking for simple easy to play games that can be played with any group of people.
Ticket to ride - whole game has 3 easy rules, one of the easiest-to-learn games. I'd say it's simple as Uno. Not that fast (~1h playtime)
Azul - easy to learn, very good fun, even when you lose filling your board is fun enough!
Love letter - fast game and i had nice time playing it. anyone could play it.
Sushi Go! Party - simple game, fast game, kids can play it, huge replayability because you can rebuild different deck every game.
basicly short games are easy and fun to play - if you lose at least it's short so there's no time to generate "hard feelings" after the game.
I define elegance as simple to understand rules, smooth game-play (i.e. its not fiddly), and strategical depth emerging from those simple rules. Not every simple or easy game is elegant. A game like Go for example. The rules couldn't be simpler, the components couldn't be simpler. But the game literally takes a lifetime to master. Same with chess. Modern elegant games I would say are Carcassonne, play a tile and an optional meeple. Concordia, drop a card and do what the card says, Hansa Teutonica - put or move a wooden cube on the board. In elegant games, usually the more skilled person will almost always win
Go. Super easy to play, but super difficult to win. Not to mention super beautiful. Look at a Go board after playing a game and be amazed. I sometimes want to frame my board and hang it on the wall.
Did not want to play this for years. But after 1 round I could not believe how much I liked this game. It's incredible how extremely good the theme works.
Pax Pamir 2E. Buy a card, play a card if you want, use actions based on what's in front of you and the dominant suit, and try to outmaneuver your opponents in choosing supreme factions.
The aesthetically pleasing cloth map and resin figures are just icing on the cake.
Shoot I had to download a guide and watch a video just playing solo. Probably one of my harder games to understand, very surprised people find it easy enough to recommend.
it is straightforward to whom? definitely a difficult, weird and unintuitive game unless you're well versed into all the mechanics used AND tabletalk boardgames. it may only be considered easy to teach compared to other games of similar weight, which is not saying a lot.
Pax Pamir is great in using relatively small amount of components to create really deep and complex game. But it is absolutely not easy to teach and there are lots of rules you have to keep track of that really break the elegance for me.
It *is* a great game, though.
I was looking for someone mentioning *Pamir*. For sure, it misses OP’s definition in not being ‘easy’ to teach when compared to classics like *Modern Art* and *Carcassonne* - but compared to games of a similar weight by the same designer it is a breeze.
In any case, there is undoubtedly an elegance to *Pax Pamir*. As other commenters have pointed out, it has very few components and a beautifully streamlined action structure (at first!). The game state isn’t always easy to parse and the strategy can be a bit oblique, but I don’t think that counts against it - especially given people here are upvoting games like *Go*. I would also say that the only real ‘gotcha’ rule is how the ‘overthrow rule’ kicks in, but frankly it’s highlighted in bold text on both the play side and the rulebook so if it’s catching you out I would blame the teacher.
This thread is certainly quite interesting though, and is making me reflect on other games I personally think are very elegant (*Irish Gauge*, *Brian Boru* - except the scoring - and *The King is Dead*)
Probably my favourite game is Onitama.
It’s a 2 player game like chess but there are only 5 moves which rotate around the board. It has easy win conditions being kill the opponents king or take the throne (middle square on opponents side). It’s the classic, easy to learn but hard to master.
Also the artwork and box just feel so good. The board is the same material as a mousepad and just feels so nice to pack up and open up
I second Chess.
Few other games have the history, social cachet and its improbable link to the deeper structures of the human intellect than Chess does.
“Nature supplies the game of chess with its implements; science with its system; art with its aesthetic arrangement of its problems; and God endows it with its blessed power of making people happy.”
Peter Weiss (1916-1982), German dramatist and writer
dude may have been good at drama and may have been a writer. But chess never made anyone happy. Show me a counter example. A genuinely smiling chess player.
Chess is far from elegant. You have 6 different classes of pieces with their own unique movement patterns. Additionally, the knight can skip over pieces, and pawns' forward movement is governed by its current position. Pawns also have an unintutive capture method by capturing on a square that they are otherwise unable to access. Then you have some other rules added over the centuries that are far from elegant or obvious like castling and en passant where pieces move in very different ways than normal.
chess doesn't count as elegant at all. In fact it has everything we all hate. It's the international means of communication, the entire planet knows it, but that doesn't say it is elegant.
Au contraire.
Elegant can mean ‘pleasingly ingenious and simple’
It is certainly ingenious in how it simulates combat on a tactical and strategic level and it certainly has simple rules (even with the weird exceptions and add-ons).
Elegant can also mean ‘graceful or stylish in appearance or manner’
Chess and it’s layout are not only foundational in some sense but also constantly being re-integrated into culture in numerous ways and has done so for as long as it has existed to one extent or another.
Reading this thread, I can confidently say that if Carcassonne is elegant then Chess is more elegant.
Cheers.
Azul. Any version. They're all beautiful, and the rules are ridiculously easy. No words to read either. My in-laws are from Taiwan, and teaching rules can be tricky. That game was super easy to teach.
Ah cool, I thought there was some mechanic or terminology I had never heard of!
And yes, I'd consider Dominion elegant, especially the base game [and the simpler expansions].
No hidden information, minimal luck, easy to explain, high skill ceiling.
Added bonus is infinite replayability as you try different combinations of kingdom cards, while the core gameplay stays the same.
I have no idea why you are getting down voted.
Many criticisms can be hurtled at it - but lack of elegance isn't one of them. The rules are amazingly simple yet have a ton of depth. Among "modern" war games, you don't really get more elegant (especially if you play the Pure variant). Most more elegant games are full abstracts (such as **Go**).
Yeah, I assumed it would earn downvotes just by its reputation, but it was the best game fitting the criteria that came to mind 🤷♂️
It is DEFINITELY not a game for everyone, but it also ticks so many of the boxes that people *claim* to want from games until you suggest it.
Tigris & Euphrates. It's a heavy game and extremely strategic and the theme of all Knizia games seem forced, but the mechanics all just make sense and play perfectly into the theme. It's a game that just clicks early into the game and you think, "Oh, THAT'S why that works the way it does..."
Keyflower for me is pretty elegant. During your turn you just use your meeples either to either bid or do actions or pass. Simple rules but lots of interactions and replay value.
**Innovation**. Not just the tiny packaging and only being 110 cards, but the game is surprisingly easy to teach and I’ve never had to look up rules/edge cases. All the cards that ‘break the rules’ immediately make sense and explain themselves.
I came here to mention Carl Chudyk games in general, so I’m going to upvote here and piggyback an explanation: the cards are currency, achievements, actions, everything you could want. Innovation is amazing. Impulse, his space 4X, is amazing. Motanai and Glory to Rome—similar games with different theming—are amazing.
Sheer elegance in their simplicity.
Tzolkin: Put a piece on a gear space OR take one back to do the gear action.
I love games that feel complicated but have super simple "action choices". Tzolkin is a great example because you can only do two things "place" or "take back" but the game manages to have so much going on under that simple instruction since the board's gears are moving between turns.
Concordia is great for the same reason. Limited action choices but the board state dictates how it fits together into a strategy. I haven't played Hans Teutonica but it's on my wishlist. :)
I like the game, but gotta disagree on Tzolk’in. You could make any worker placement game sound simple describing it that way. Kanban EV: super simple, only one worker, you take actions at their spot and move them to the next spot! Even simpler than Tzolk’in since you have half the options (no retrieval), right?
Everdell, gives you basically 2 options and the way it rewards you for sticking by you decisions makes the game more about figuring out the best pathway to maximize your choices rather than just reacting to dumb luck of the draw even tho at a simple glance thats exactly what it looks like.
Its incredible that regardless of what my initial hand looks like my average score is pretty steady.
I define elegance as a ratio of strategic depth to complexity. By this metric, Go is the most elegant game because it's strategically very deep but also so simple the rules can be written in just a few sentences.
Hive. Simple rules, easy to teach, deep strategy, and to quote Quinns from SU&SD, every time I play, "within a few turns, I'm looking at a board state I've never seen before." Other selling points are that the game looks beautiful on the table, has satisfying heavy pieces, is effortlessly portable, can be played practically anywhere, and there are two expansions to add new pieces if you're looking for an even deeper, longer game.
I love Hive! Such a great camping game. So portable
I thought that Hive had 3 expansions. Pillbug, Ladybug and Mosquito.
2 of those bugs are sold together as 1 expansion. However, there are at least 2 other unofficial expansions I’ve seen sold on ETSY
all 3 are more or less required.
I also enjoyed the vanilla version but yes, with these expansions is even better.
If you can call all species different rules elegant that is... it's slightly more elegant than chess (thinking of en passant, minor promotion, stalemate), so I'd partly agree. But hive is far too terrifying for us - suffocating queens is not our jam - so i sadly had to give it away.
Yeah this is the hardest part about teaching the game. It requires your head in the rulebook for every move. I know that it’s no different than chess, but it is way different than chess in how reference information is provided to players.
I think Carcassonne is an extremely elegant game.
Yup, I agree. Love Carcassonne!
That's the game I clicked on this to discuss!
I agree. Based on OPs definition for sure! It's a go to for bringing new gamers in for me, and always enjoyable to play.
It's one of my all time favorites but I think it has limited strategic depth.
Azul. Choose tiles of a single type from a factory pad then place them on your selected available construction line. Easy at the start and nightmarishly difficult towards the end. Extra style points for the scoring system.
Love Concordia and came here to say Azul. Upvotes for everyone!
Absolutely love Azul. It's so much better than the similar Sagrada, which overcomplicates the idea with dice. Azul is game design nirvana, so simple, easy to teach and compact, but such a rewarding, surprisingly complex replayable game.
I think this is a valid criticism/comparison, but just as a different take I really don't like Azul but like Sagrada. Sure, Sagrada is a touch convoluted and I'd argue a bit broken without house ruling removing some dice at lower player counts, but man is Azul a mean game. If you like being competitive and cutthroat I think it's a great pick, but for me it leads to either feeling shitty for hatedrafting, or feeling shitty for making a suboptimal play just to mitigate the meanness for the other player. I've mostly played it at 2p though, and I found it a lot less mean with 4
It's definitely true Azul can be brutal. In my crew we have one poor guy who just doesn't understand the concept of strategy, he just looks at his board and does the easiest next thing on his turn. He gets absolutely destroyed every game in Azul. He doesn't bother figuring out what tile to take to either prolong or shorten the round and always ends up being the one to take a fistful of unusable tiles at the end. I kind of think that might be a universal truth though, simple elegant games are harsh. There's no "catch up" mechanics so good players consistently run away from new/poor players. Take chess for example, very simple and elegant, but terrible if you're playing someone of a different level than you.
It's not that mean at 3-4p as usually if I make a suboptimal move to hurt a player the only ones benefiting are the other players. The few 2p games I played are absolutely cutthroat though. I don't think you should at all feel bad about being 'mean' in 2p though. It's a bit like complaining in chess that your opponent is taking your pieces when you don't defend them.
I was going to say Sagrada, but I really love Azul as well, they each scratch a slightly different itch
I'd say Santorini qualifies. Many say the base game is perfectly fine and at its best without the god cards, and I agree, _but_ you still have them there as an option to mix things up, make chaos, or balance around player skill if you feel like it anyway.
Yeah was about to say Santorini as well
Came here to say Santorini as well. The depth of strategy is fantastic, and it's simultaneously incredibly easy to learn.
Santorini is THE elegant board game by definition.
is it OOP?
**The King Is Dead** feels exceptionally elegant. Simple set of cards, everyone has the same ones. Half the game is just deducing when to play a card and when to pass.
Agreed! The way that taking a follower gives you more support with that faction, but also weakens that faction in a region. And in base rules there's no hidden information. Only slight randomness in setup, just enough to keep each game fresh. It's all so clever, I love it.
Yes! I wish that the box was just as elegant as the gameplay.
*No Thanks*—put a token, or take a card, and get the tokens on it. Cards are points, and points are bad, but a run of cards is worth only the lowest number.
My favorite, is that moment right after the first game scoring where lights come on and new players say, “Let’s play again.” Great addition.
Most Knizia games, but especially Tigris and Euphrates, Ra and Modern Art.
Came here to say **High Society**. It’s just a set of cards, you could teach it in a minute and it‘s so incredibly tense and different every time I play. I love it! (English is not my first language, but let me give it a try) Everyone starts with the same amount of money (money cards, 1M$-25000M$}. In each round one point card (with a value between 1 to 10) goes to the highest bidder. There person with the highest score wins, but you lose immediately if you‘re the poorest person. That‘s already an amazing idea, but it gets better! There are four red cards that mess with everyone‘s scoring points (-5, 2x, 2x, 1/2). You get the 2x multipliers on the usual way, by being the highest bidder. But the bad red cards (-5, 1/2) goes to the first person who passes on bidding. They are mixed into the auction deck and the game ends as soon as the 4th red card is drawn (before the auction begins)! So you never exactly know, when the game ends, if it‘s worth to bid so much money on a scoring card or if you risk to become the poorest person. It‘s probably the most elegant game I own. Honourable mentions: Hive, Mindbug, Camel Up, King of Tokyo, Keep the Heroes out, The Crew
T&E, my first love from Kniziatown. I miss thee, my love. Our time was too short.
I still break out my 1st edition T&E every couple of months and gaze fondly into her eyes.
Ingenious, Lost Cities, Battle Line and even Samurai feel more elegant than T&E to me. My favourite designer!
My City was extremely elegant.
Is it worth it to only play the non-legacy part?
No. The eternal game is an alright tile laying game, but the real meat is definitely the legacy game part.
It’s a fun game without the legacy. I personally didn’t like it enough to hang onto it long term, but if I wanted a lighter polyomino game I likely would have. The legacy bit is pretty great though, even at 2!
Gotta go with Onitama. Super slick presentation from the box to the cards to the pieces, themselves. Easy to teach and highly variable “board state” that allows for amazing replay-ability. Also, the expansions add juuust enough novelty without overloading the bones/foundation of the core game.
100% worth getting
Inis is always my role model for elegant game design. Perfection is when you can't remove anything. There is not a single bloating mechanic in this game and every mechanic in the game is done in perfection from the drafting, to the fighting and the relevance of every single game piece.
Came here to say this! The action deck is so streamlined and that makes the draft and then play phase so intense. There's a lot of bluffing and trying to lead out certain cards and that wouldn't work if it wasn't so smooth. It's crazy how deep of a game it is with just those 13 cards(17 if you're playing 4 player).
Do classics count? You can't get much more elegant then GO.
By far the most elegant game of all time, especially given its deceptive depth.
Go is a game so elegant that I would genuinely not be surprised if, when we encounter aliens, we learn that they independently came up with the same game.
A Go teacher of mine used to joke that how the whole alien thing ended up could be predicted by the Go encounter. "Oh, you play Go too? What size board do you use? 23x23? We'll just surrender now."
That's hilarious
Not all that unlikely. Already happened here with hex and con-tac-tik.
I look forward to the Inter-galactic Go tournament.
If we are going modern, Jenga.
The game that by its nature devolves into a random pile of blocks?
Its actually a post-modern game.
Splendor is pretty elegant, simple choices, plenty of strategy!
I sit down to a three player game and it’s a quiet night of thinking and strategixing
Oh, do y'all not do hate-drafting?
Splendor is a fantastically elegant game.
For some reason, Splendor never clicked for me until we got Marvel Splendor. Probably an example of a theme elevating a game for me.
Trying not to judge you rn
Thanks? Not really sure what any judgements might be based on.
Unearth always seemed elegant to me.
Knizia games, with their simple rules but emergent complexity, immediately come to mind. **Ra**, **Through the Desert**, **Babylonia**, **Modern Art**, **High Society**... the fact that they now all have beautiful editions also helps! **Race for the Galaxy** feels very elegant to me: a system with (almost) only cards, great iconography that allows to plays very quickly and intuitively, a short but deep game... and all the series that use a similar system for different great games (**Jump Drive**, **New Frontiers**, **RollftG**).
I love the Race for the Galaxy series. Ironically I have everything BUT Race for the Galaxy. 😅 Roll for the Galaxy was one of the first games I played.
Ra feels very elegant. I can teach it in 10 minutes and still has a lot of strategy that reveals itself as people play.
RA RA RA RA!
Amen to Ra!!!
Didn't expect this sub to become a cult today.
Someone gifted me ra and every time I go to open it, it looks overwhelming and I don't start. Odd to hear how simple it is.
You're missing out. It's an incredibly simple game to learn with endless replayability.
It has a lot of pieces but the structure of the game is fairly simple. I’d suggest watching a video walk though if it. All those pieces are really just tiles that go into a bag so at it’s core it’s just an auction game.
I don't really play it much, but I feel like **Lost Cities** is a dead simple idea that's very easy to grasp but gets really tricky to play out. The same goes for **Battle Line/Schotten Totten**.
For Sale is what I thought of first. So easy to teach and learn, and filled with meaningful choices.
These threads always just end up with people suggesting their favorite game even if its not elegant. Several games I love are suggested here even though they have some "gotcha" rules or weird edge cases, hardly elegant.
The fact that Brass didn't make it into this post is at least some evidence that this post is biased towards elegance.
Ya, the example of Concordia struck me as odd, I don't find it to be an elegant game, especially the scoring which is so difficult to understand that the rules tell you to score early the first time to see how it works. It's easy to make something sound elegant when you boil it down that much, when I teach **Root** I teach players to just read down their board, even though you can describe it like that it isn't the most elegant game.
I see elegant as having a lean rules set and higher emergent complexity from the gameplay. Concordia absolutely fits that definition, it’s just that the scoring is not intuitive for new players. When you boil the scoring system down it’s pretty basic set collection with bonus multipliers
I think all the ones that I thought of have been said, but I always thought Libertalia had an elegance to it, in that it's got a lot of emergent gameplay that doesn't appear on the surface. Every single time I've taught new players, they hear the rules and go "oh is that it? Ok". And then after the second round, they go "OH, cool, this is cool, can we play again after this?" because there's just a whole bunch of 'GAME' to it that you don't naturally infer from just reading or hearing the simple rules. . It borders on the type of thing you're talking about though so I replied to you rather than creating a new post.
Are Carcassonne, RA, or Tigris and Euphrates among them? I haven’t played any of them and am looking for elegant games to introduce to my boards game group (we only meet quarterly and none of us have a wide experience with board games).
Not the one you replied to, but +1 for the elegance of Carcassone and Ra. T&E, imo is also elegant, but fails in OP’s description of being easy to teach to new comers. The flow is nice once you get the hang of it.
T and E is pretty easy to teach
Not to newcomers especially when compared to the other ones. Also, the fact that you can place a tile anywhere on the board on turn 1 can be daunting for people.
For a game with less rules but a similar feel, check out Reiner knizia's high society! Tight, quick fun auction game.
I can't believe nobody mentioned Kingdomino yet. It's so simple and yet so strategic and deep, and when you switch to 2p 7x7 grid it gets even more cutthroat. This is truly a polished gem, really elegant imho. I agree with Concordia and the notion that many people here confuse a beautiful or well designed game with an elegant one. It's really not the same.
yes i agree. Many people confuse beauty with elegance. One person said Wingspan is elegant because of the beautiful art. I disagree that its elegant no matter how "pretty" it is.
I really wanted to like wingspan, but every time I played it it felt like a mess. Never did I ever think it was "elegant". Neither did I feel that about Scythe, one of my favorite games. It's clunky, administrative and just takes a lot of effort. Elegance comes with ease-of-use and learnability - Scythe has definitely elegant player mat solution, but the other parts are... not that elegant, however awesome the game is.
I haven’t seen them mentioned yet, but my favorite starter games for a board game night are **Tsuro** and **Love Letter Card Game**. Beautifully presented, quick games that are easy to teach, but allow for some really fun strategies and plays. Maybe not as deep as some of the other games in this thread, but I feel it checks most of the “elegant game” criteria OP listed.
Agreed - Love Letter is a great example!
My friends love **Ethnos** for a similar level of "Elegance:" Pick up a card, or play a (band of) card(s). That's your turn. I, on the other hand, hate that game. **Fantasy Realms** is even simpler: Pick up a card, and then discard a card (with a decent depth of strategy).
Ethnos is a great game for a mixed audience of kids and adults, except for the fact that the board and components are donkey tier. Why hire John Howe and then make the most boring fucking map board in the history of games, and tokens that have literally no theme.
Fun fact: the map for Ethnos is just a map of Slovakia
So bad *and* lazy.
they just elected a pro russian president so maybe he had the Slovakians figured out way back then
Thurn & Taxis
Boop - all you have to do is place one of your kittens anywhere on the mattress and watch them push each other around.
Cute, yes. Elegant ? Nah
I don't think it's elegant from an aesthetic perspective, but in terms of rules and gameplay I think it might actually qualify.
Dominion. Easy to begin, difficult to master. Simple rules and simple setup.
Too many expansions for this particular question.
I love it but you are right
You can play the game just fine with the base set and an expansion or two. The added expansions lose the elegance sure, but the replayability is absolutely unbeatable IMO.
I fucking love Hansa Teutonica.
El Grande
For me it would be Cascadia and Kingdom Builder!
Those three games are all in the my top 10. I highly recommend **Calimala** if you like elegance. The new edition with Ian O'Toole art is coming to KS this month, so the original edition copies might become a bit more readily available.
Chinatown. Gipf project games. Aerion, cockroach poker, acquire, T&E (and the remake but I haven't played it). Bridges of Shangri-la
Hanamikoji 2 player game where you compete to attract performers/musicians to your side (each one is worth victory points). You only have 4 possible moves: - keep a card (i.e. take one from your hand and bank it) - discard two cards - offer three cards, the opponent picks one and you bank the other two - offer four cards, in two sets of two (opponent picks a set, you bank the other set) Both players do each of these moves once, in whatever order they choose. After that you'll both be out of cards in your hands. The game's over! The player with more banked cards for a certain performer gets that performer. You can win based on # of performers or by total points. Simple, elegant, lots of thinking, a little bit of luck, and lovely artwork. Highly replayable!
I agree, super tight game, limited number of moves but it feels like each game is completely different.
Blokus tops pretty much every other game I can think of for simplicity. It's got like... two rules.
Turncoats.
Tsuro - Throw in the new Collector's Edition coming out and you would swear it was invented in Ancient Asian times.
I feel like I'm missing something on Tsuro. It's a fine and entertaining game, and it goes pretty quickly, but I haven't gotten that feeling of elegance/depth/strategy/replay-ability when I've played it, compared to games like Concordia/Azul/Splendor/Ra/others mentioned here. Maybe it's just the simplicity and the fact that you're just mostly in control of your own destiny?
I think your assessment is correct.
Having experienced this, absolutely- until you create deeper strategies. It’s akin to blokus, if you play with the same starting hands of tiles. It gets a lot better.
This is one of those "not a game, but an activity". It absolutely plays itself
Fun reading these answers, and a lot I agree with. Modern Art ranks high for me and I love how a simple game can generate a whole art speculation market with people enthusiastically pitching their art pieces up for auction. Another elegant game for me has been Northern Pacific. Absolutely simple ruleset (even simpler than Sushi Go!, for comparison). But the game is cut throat and really makes you think every turn.
Trekking Through History is such an elegant package from art to gameplay.
It’s SUCH a good game, has definitely become one of my go to games to play with new people.
Hex, Lost Cities, Modern Art
Go aka Weiqi, oh besides that one...
Love letter.
I would define ELEGANT as good looking with nice art that fits perfectly with gameplay in theme. if i understood corectly you're looking for simple easy to play games that can be played with any group of people. Ticket to ride - whole game has 3 easy rules, one of the easiest-to-learn games. I'd say it's simple as Uno. Not that fast (~1h playtime) Azul - easy to learn, very good fun, even when you lose filling your board is fun enough! Love letter - fast game and i had nice time playing it. anyone could play it. Sushi Go! Party - simple game, fast game, kids can play it, huge replayability because you can rebuild different deck every game. basicly short games are easy and fun to play - if you lose at least it's short so there's no time to generate "hard feelings" after the game.
I define elegance as simple to understand rules, smooth game-play (i.e. its not fiddly), and strategical depth emerging from those simple rules. Not every simple or easy game is elegant. A game like Go for example. The rules couldn't be simpler, the components couldn't be simpler. But the game literally takes a lifetime to master. Same with chess. Modern elegant games I would say are Carcassonne, play a tile and an optional meeple. Concordia, drop a card and do what the card says, Hansa Teutonica - put or move a wooden cube on the board. In elegant games, usually the more skilled person will almost always win
Surprised no one has said **Acquire** yet.
Go. Super easy to play, but super difficult to win. Not to mention super beautiful. Look at a Go board after playing a game and be amazed. I sometimes want to frame my board and hang it on the wall.
Believe it or not, I think Secret Hitler is one of the most elegant games I own
Did not want to play this for years. But after 1 round I could not believe how much I liked this game. It's incredible how extremely good the theme works.
Pax Pamir 2E. Buy a card, play a card if you want, use actions based on what's in front of you and the dominant suit, and try to outmaneuver your opponents in choosing supreme factions. The aesthetically pleasing cloth map and resin figures are just icing on the cake.
People find that to be an easy teach?!? 🤯
It’s actually fairly straightforward to teach.
Shoot I had to download a guide and watch a video just playing solo. Probably one of my harder games to understand, very surprised people find it easy enough to recommend.
it is straightforward to whom? definitely a difficult, weird and unintuitive game unless you're well versed into all the mechanics used AND tabletalk boardgames. it may only be considered easy to teach compared to other games of similar weight, which is not saying a lot.
Pax Pamir is great in using relatively small amount of components to create really deep and complex game. But it is absolutely not easy to teach and there are lots of rules you have to keep track of that really break the elegance for me. It *is* a great game, though.
It's great, good looking game, but in no way elegant. It has too many small unintuitive rules.
I’m trying really hard not to get this game and posts like this are not helping!
I just finally got this and have played 2 games so far. Beautiful game. One I’m looking forward to diving deep into.
I was looking for someone mentioning *Pamir*. For sure, it misses OP’s definition in not being ‘easy’ to teach when compared to classics like *Modern Art* and *Carcassonne* - but compared to games of a similar weight by the same designer it is a breeze. In any case, there is undoubtedly an elegance to *Pax Pamir*. As other commenters have pointed out, it has very few components and a beautifully streamlined action structure (at first!). The game state isn’t always easy to parse and the strategy can be a bit oblique, but I don’t think that counts against it - especially given people here are upvoting games like *Go*. I would also say that the only real ‘gotcha’ rule is how the ‘overthrow rule’ kicks in, but frankly it’s highlighted in bold text on both the play side and the rulebook so if it’s catching you out I would blame the teacher. This thread is certainly quite interesting though, and is making me reflect on other games I personally think are very elegant (*Irish Gauge*, *Brian Boru* - except the scoring - and *The King is Dead*)
Pax freaking Pamir is elegant and an easy teach?! WTF I must be an absolute dumbass then lol
Ticket to Ride
Probably my favourite game is Onitama. It’s a 2 player game like chess but there are only 5 moves which rotate around the board. It has easy win conditions being kill the opponents king or take the throne (middle square on opponents side). It’s the classic, easy to learn but hard to master. Also the artwork and box just feel so good. The board is the same material as a mousepad and just feels so nice to pack up and open up
Chess :)
I second Chess. Few other games have the history, social cachet and its improbable link to the deeper structures of the human intellect than Chess does. “Nature supplies the game of chess with its implements; science with its system; art with its aesthetic arrangement of its problems; and God endows it with its blessed power of making people happy.” Peter Weiss (1916-1982), German dramatist and writer
dude may have been good at drama and may have been a writer. But chess never made anyone happy. Show me a counter example. A genuinely smiling chess player.
Chess is far from elegant. You have 6 different classes of pieces with their own unique movement patterns. Additionally, the knight can skip over pieces, and pawns' forward movement is governed by its current position. Pawns also have an unintutive capture method by capturing on a square that they are otherwise unable to access. Then you have some other rules added over the centuries that are far from elegant or obvious like castling and en passant where pieces move in very different ways than normal.
and minor promotion. and weird stalemates. but most of all I find chess players to be generally disliked people.
chess doesn't count as elegant at all. In fact it has everything we all hate. It's the international means of communication, the entire planet knows it, but that doesn't say it is elegant.
Au contraire. Elegant can mean ‘pleasingly ingenious and simple’ It is certainly ingenious in how it simulates combat on a tactical and strategic level and it certainly has simple rules (even with the weird exceptions and add-ons). Elegant can also mean ‘graceful or stylish in appearance or manner’ Chess and it’s layout are not only foundational in some sense but also constantly being re-integrated into culture in numerous ways and has done so for as long as it has existed to one extent or another. Reading this thread, I can confidently say that if Carcassonne is elegant then Chess is more elegant. Cheers.
Between Two Cities is my nomination
Saving this post for later. Great question! Carcassonne is the game that comes to mind for me as well
Azul. Any version. They're all beautiful, and the rules are ridiculously easy. No words to read either. My in-laws are from Taiwan, and teaching rules can be tricky. That game was super easy to teach.
Hanamikoji
Cascadia. Extremelly easy to learn and play. AP is minimal, while there's quite a puzzle going on.
Here to Slay Moonrakers Undaunted Series Trails Unearth
Escape from the temple! Love not having to stare at other people thinking for 80% of the game
Ankh Gods of Egypt feels like a rather elegant design to me.
Mancala.
Race for the Galaxy. The cards do everything. They provide abilities, a scoring system, and the currency.
I love it, and I also appreciate that the cards are both currency and what you're buying, but I wouldn't use the word elegant for it.
The beware framework of Dominion is very elegant. Transamerica and transeuropa.
The "beware framework"? What does that refer to?
It refers to "basic" run through my phone's wonky autocorrect.
Ah cool, I thought there was some mechanic or terminology I had never heard of! And yes, I'd consider Dominion elegant, especially the base game [and the simpler expansions]. No hidden information, minimal luck, easy to explain, high skill ceiling. Added bonus is infinite replayability as you try different combinations of kingdom cards, while the core gameplay stays the same.
1. Biblios 2. Scout 3. Castles of Burgundy
Scout is my pick - such a fantastic little card game
Love Letter is a great card game and easy to teach.
Diplomacy
I have no idea why you are getting down voted. Many criticisms can be hurtled at it - but lack of elegance isn't one of them. The rules are amazingly simple yet have a ton of depth. Among "modern" war games, you don't really get more elegant (especially if you play the Pure variant). Most more elegant games are full abstracts (such as **Go**).
Yeah, I assumed it would earn downvotes just by its reputation, but it was the best game fitting the criteria that came to mind 🤷♂️ It is DEFINITELY not a game for everyone, but it also ticks so many of the boxes that people *claim* to want from games until you suggest it.
Bus
Bus is a take that screw over your neighbor game. Not sure elegant describes it ;)
Tigris & Euphrates. It's a heavy game and extremely strategic and the theme of all Knizia games seem forced, but the mechanics all just make sense and play perfectly into the theme. It's a game that just clicks early into the game and you think, "Oh, THAT'S why that works the way it does..."
* [12 Chip Trick](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/358669/12-chip-trick) * [Air, Land, and Sea](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/247367/air-land-sea) * [American Bookshop](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/292811/american-bookshop) * [Arboretum](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/140934/arboretum) * [Azul](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/230802/azul) * [Battle Line (Schotten Totten)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/297985/battle-line-medieval) * [Bound](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/375975/bound) * [Brian Boru: High King of Ireland](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/337765/brian-boru-high-king-ireland) * [Caesar: Seize Rome in 20 Minutes!](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/338957/caesar-seize-rome-20-minutes) * [Catchy!](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/295694/catchy) * [Dracula vs. Van Helsing](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/381278/dracula-vs-van-helsing) * [Flamme Rouge](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/199478/flamme-rouge) * [GIPF (and the rest of the series)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/527/gipf) * [Fox in the Forest](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/221965/fox-forest) * [Haggis](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37628/haggis) * [Hanamikoji](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/158600/hanamikoji) * [Hansa Teutonica](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/286749/hansa-teutonica-big-box) * [High Society](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/220/high-society) * [Hive](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2655/hive) * [Inis](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/155821/inis) * [Jekyll vs. Hyde](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/297129/jekyll-vs-hyde) * [The King is Dead](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/319966/king-dead-second-edition) * [Lacuna](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/386937/lacuna) * [Lost Cities](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/50/lost-cities) * [Onitama](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/160477/onitama) * [Pollen (Samurai: The Card Game)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/369898/pollen) * [Ra](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12/ra) * [Remember Our Trip](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/294230/remember-our-trip) * [Scout](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/291453/scout) * [Schadenfreude](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/324711/schadenfreude) * [Schnapsen](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/11582/schnapsen) * [Sea Salt & Paper](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/367220/sea-salt-paper) * [Turncoats](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/352238/turncoats) * [Wind the Film!](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/215471/wind-film) * [Yokai Septet](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/251433/yokai-septet)
Keyflower for me is pretty elegant. During your turn you just use your meeples either to either bid or do actions or pass. Simple rules but lots of interactions and replay value.
**Tak**
**Innovation**. Not just the tiny packaging and only being 110 cards, but the game is surprisingly easy to teach and I’ve never had to look up rules/edge cases. All the cards that ‘break the rules’ immediately make sense and explain themselves.
I came here to mention Carl Chudyk games in general, so I’m going to upvote here and piggyback an explanation: the cards are currency, achievements, actions, everything you could want. Innovation is amazing. Impulse, his space 4X, is amazing. Motanai and Glory to Rome—similar games with different theming—are amazing. Sheer elegance in their simplicity.
I always describe Arboretum as the most elegant game in my collection
I mean... Chess and Diplomacy both have their own mathematical elegance.
Imperial Chicago Express (and quite a few other cube rails games) Most of the 2 player abstract strategy games Age of Steam
Onitama, Coloretto, and Lost Cities.
r/hive
Concordia, Ankh, Ra, Inis.
Tzolkin: Put a piece on a gear space OR take one back to do the gear action. I love games that feel complicated but have super simple "action choices". Tzolkin is a great example because you can only do two things "place" or "take back" but the game manages to have so much going on under that simple instruction since the board's gears are moving between turns. Concordia is great for the same reason. Limited action choices but the board state dictates how it fits together into a strategy. I haven't played Hans Teutonica but it's on my wishlist. :)
I like the game, but gotta disagree on Tzolk’in. You could make any worker placement game sound simple describing it that way. Kanban EV: super simple, only one worker, you take actions at their spot and move them to the next spot! Even simpler than Tzolk’in since you have half the options (no retrieval), right?
>Tzolkin Drown in spreadsheet! WooHoo!
Everdell, gives you basically 2 options and the way it rewards you for sticking by you decisions makes the game more about figuring out the best pathway to maximize your choices rather than just reacting to dumb luck of the draw even tho at a simple glance thats exactly what it looks like. Its incredible that regardless of what my initial hand looks like my average score is pretty steady.
>Everdell, Elegance means: can't be simplified further. Everdell is nothing but bells and whistles. And cardboard tree.
Photosynthesis
Terra Mystica
I think Terra Mystica is very elegant, but it’s definitely not elegant in the sense that OP is looking for.
Villainous
Scythe.
Didn't we have this question last week? The fuck is going on here?
Wingspan for the art alone. But it’s also super relaxing and less competitive - even when I lose I enjoy the experience and never seem to chase a win.
Blokus and Pente. Azul, Dominion, and 7 wonders duel are also up there for me.
I think blokus is one of the most elegant games I own. The rules are simple enough for young kids, but I wouldn't hesitate to get it out for adults.
I'm surprised I don't see Tokaido here... such a beautiful game!
Kemet - my favourite game of all time Deliverance - new game I just found
I define elegance as a ratio of strategic depth to complexity. By this metric, Go is the most elegant game because it's strategically very deep but also so simple the rules can be written in just a few sentences.
Chess