There are lots of ways to score, so part of the game is finding a path to points that your opponents aren’t following. You do this three times, playing 18 cards, building a little engine that gives you the resources and coins you’ll need to play more buildings or complete your Wonder. Each player gets a hand of seven cards per round, plays one, and then passes the remaining cards to the next player, who selects one from his or her hand and passes the remainder around … so that everyone plays six cards per round (discarding one), but the cards you get to choose from keep changing as the hands move around the table. 7 Wonders itself is one of the best board games we’ve seen because it condenses the city-building theme into a consistent 30-minute playing time. The 7 Wonders app appeared in November after years of anticipation, delays, and testing … and it was worth the wait. Photo: Repos Production/Outer Zone Entertainment 7 Wonders (Repos Production/Outer Zone Entertainment) There’s also a version for younger players, Ticket to Ride First Journey, as a separate app, which is also quite good.ġ. (You’d be surprised how often board-game apps screw that last part up.) The Ticket to Ride app offers Europe, Switzerland, Nordic countries, England, Germany, Asia, India, and Pennsylvania maps as expansion options, as well as new card sets like the 19 sets for the U.S.

The app’s tutorial is good, the animations and graphics are excellent, and the user interface is intuitive. The base game is my go-to recommendation for readers who ask for a game that they can play with their kids because the rules are simple, the scoring is easy to understand, and QED train games are awesome. This was the original model for how to build a great board-game app, complete with an active player community, and it remains one of the best, thanks to an overhaul a few years ago and regular releases of expansions. There are four AI opponents: a “focused” AI, a builder, an aggressive opponent, and a “conqueror.” There are six in-app purchases available, including what I think is the best expansion for the board game itself, Traders & Builders. The iOS app is cleaner to look at, while the Asmodee version offers more animations to give it more of the feel of a video game. This version offers players an isometric view instead, which gives the tiles some texture, although you can switch to top-down if you prefer that. In the meantime, you can play Asmodee Digital’s version on Android devices and Steam. Its license for the game expired at the beginning of March, however, and it’s no longer available to purchase there is currently no iOS port of this game, although I assume one is coming soon. Photo: Coding Monkeys on iOS, Asmodee Digital on Android/SteamĬarcassonne was one of my top apps of the last decade because the iOS port, from Coding Monkeys, was the best of breed from the day it was released. Games against AI players take 20-plus minutes, more than anything else on this list, but there’s very little downtime involved. The false 3-D perspective also helps them cram a lot of buildings onto your screen without crowding it. It also has built-in warnings if your workers are going to riot or you’re going to lose resources before the next turn. There is a lot going on in this game, and too much accounting for my tastes, but the app takes care of that stuff for you, so you can focus just on playing the game itself. Through the Ages is a 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) style game played out with cards, where you try to build a civilization, complete wonders for points, beat opponents with your military, improve your government, and ensure that your workers don’t riot. It even has a legitimately funny joke buried within it. Here’s a game I haven’t played on tabletop because it’s so long and fairly heavy, but the app is stunning, featuring by far the best tutorial I’ve seen.

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