Fantasy – a word that conjures up magic, swords, and, hopefully, bear-riding warriors of doom. That last one might just be me, but this series, much like the one we did on science fiction, is for everyone looking to grow their collection while growing the players in their group. This piece explores lighter Fantasy-themed board games, the ones great to break out with new and veteran table-toppers alike, that have accessible rules, play in an evening (and, often, an hour), and bring you to a world far away from this one.
We’ll cover four main categories in these pieces: Euro games, defined broadly here as titles built around scoring victory points rather than destroying other players, war games, defined as almost the precise opposite, miniatures games, where the game is built around either collecting or drafting ‘armies’ to defeat your opponent or achieve objectives, and campaign games, generally cooperative titles built around consecutive sessions with an overarching narrative structure. But you probably knew these already, because you’re reading this.
Anyway, if you’re looking to add some magic to your collection, read on.
Light Fantasy Euro Games
Draw, discard, and build your, er, fantasy realm. Since 2017, Fantasy Realms has personified the pure joy of seeing your nascent land grow into a combo-scoring 
collection of familiar critters, artifacts, and people. The gameplay here is as described – on your turn, you’ll choose to either draw from the deck or from the discard display, which serves as both a market and the ticker to the game’s end once it holds 10 cards. At that point, you’ll lay down your hand and score points based on how well your cards sync up with one another. We’re talking bonuses if you have a bell tower and a wizard, or a queen and a king. You can knock out a round in under half an hour, or spend the evening running it back while enjoying some Dwarven ale, seeing as Fantasy Realms won’t stress you out.
There are numerous fantasy-themed worker placement games, from Oak to Bitoku to Everdell and more, but when I’m breaking in someone new to the genre, Lords of Waterdeep remains my go-to. Dungeons & Dragons provides an immediate, compelling setting for dropping action cubes and fulfilling recipes (i.e. contracts in this game). You’re not just recruiting workers, you’re building up an adventuring party of Fighters and Clerics. You’re going on quests to stop diabolical evil and gaining rewards, not randomly scoring points for spending resources. The board is a thriving city, and space to use its services is tight, keeping everyone engaged and adjusting plans even when it’s not their turn. Each player has a unique lord, lending light asymmetry and a soft direction for where to focus. After an hour or two it’ll wrap up, each player having told their own story through those quests, their recruited agents, and their fame.
The best part, though, is that once you’ve wandered Waterdeep a few times, you can grab its expansion, The Scoundrels of Skullport to mix things up. It’s compelling, interactive, and a great addition to a sturdy game that rarely fails to deliver a good time.
Blend deck-building with a race and you’re cooking. Clank! in just about any of its formats delivers the gaming goods, chucking players into a dungeon (or spaceship) and asking them to decide just how far they’re willing to go for sweet, sweet treasure. Movement on the board comes by way of playing cards, which also serve to buy more from a market. Yep – it’s deck-building, but when this market refills, you might get attacked, with cubes generated by the titular clank drawn from a bag. For every cube drawn, you take a hit. Suffer too many and you’re dinner (this, though, speeds up the end game, ensuring eliminated players get a short, gleeful break while everyone else panics).
Like with Waterdeep, you’ll find Clank! expands easily, no matter which version you wind up with. Clank! Catacombs is its newest incarnation, which twists the concept with a tile-laying board to ensure no play is exactly the same. I’d probably start there unless the original or its sci-fi partner hold a particular appeal. Regardless of where you begin, Clank! is a great entry into deck-builders and race games in general.
Light Fantasy War Games
Command and Colors is a venerable system that’s spread across historical eras from the Ancients to Napoleon and WW2. It’s also spread, like most things inevitably do, to demons. Battlelore brings the system to Fantasy Flight’s Terrinoth universe (RIP?), where magic and mayhem sprawl across a tight hex board. You’ll pick a
scenario or create one with the random generator cards, pick your faction’s army then array your forces on the board. Draw a hand, play a card to activate either unit types or board areas (among others), move and attack with dice. It’s a fantasy brawl with simple rules and enough luck to keep things even between players of different skill.
Battlelore is a great introduction to hex and counter war gaming with a fantasy twist – you’ll get tactics, strategy, cover, unique units, and special scenario objectives all packed in a colorful box. The bevy of expansions add tons of variety too, making Battlelore an easy choice for evening at war.
Summoner Wars feels a bit like zooming in on a Magic game. Rather than abstracting the combat and making the player an invisible god thing (who can nevertheless be struck), Summoner Wars drops creatures and spell effects on a big grid and says, go get’em. The objective, slay the leader, is familiar. The combat, where you’ll chuck dice based on your unit’s stats, is weighted for damage, and as destruction gives you energy to spawn more monsters, you’d best honor the mantra from the nightmare version of Glengarry Glenross: Always be killing.
Start with the 2nd edition master set (1st edition is still fun, but they’ve cleaned things up since) and expand as you get addicted.
Last year’s Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth turned 7 Wonders: Duel, a tense euro, into a combo war game. While the structure of picking cards from a revealing set remains (as does the tense decision about when and what to let your opponent access), bringing the war to the board rather than abstracting it as points going one way or another. Now Sauron takes a red card and thunders his orcs across the land, while Frodo scurries away in fear. It’s a compelling area control dynamic added to what’s already a back-and-forth card picking battle. That it plays in less than half an hour, packing in so much action, and with a small, travel-friendly box size only add to its compelling package.
Light Fantasy Miniatures Games
When venturing into the wide world of tabletop miniatures games, it’s best to play what your friends are already playing. Their enthusiasm will hopefully see you through any rules grit (and you might get a head start on an army from their spares). If that’s not the case, Moonstone’s my pick for an excellent introduction to the 
genre. First, it has a great name. Second, it’s delightful. You field a ‘troupe’, not an army, and you’re venturing about fields and farms trying to find (you guessed it) moonstones.
At less than a couple hours per match, a victory condition that isn’t just murder the other team, Moonstone is a great, innovative introduction to miniatures tabletop games.
If you’ve amassed a collection of D&D minis or bought into a couple games with bunches of fantasy plastic, Rangers of the Shadow Deep is the solo-cooperative adventure to get those figures to the table in a totally fresh way. You’ll embark on an adventure as a ranger, throwing dice to swing swords, shoot bows, and cast spells all on your tabletop as it’s transformed into a fantasy realm through your own terrain and imagination.
For newer players, the cooperative approach lends itself to teaching the ins and outs of miniature games without pressure (or the certainty of a coming crush by an expert opponent). Rangers is unique, fun, and one of the best ways to keep your miniatures collection coming to the table.
And yet, not everyone wants a cooperative game. Frostgrave provides a complement to Rangers with a competitive setup that, again, is miniatures agnostic. You and your opponents play mages venturing forth in search of treasure either in one-off scenarios or campaigns wherein you’ll level up, hire mercenaries, and see your powers increase. Gameplay is familiar dice-chucking combat, with miniatures line of sight and movement measuring, but beyond those staples, the rules themselves are easy to digest, leading to more adventure.
Expansions (again coming in book form) add fresh factions and campaigns too. Frostgrave lets you bring players into the world of miniatures combat just about anywhere, and with anything. Then, when they’re hooked, you can start whispering about Sigmar.
Light Fantasy Campaign Games
We mentioned the expansion to Leviathan Wilds in our best games of quarter 2, 2025 recently, and the whole experience remains a fantastic jumping-on point for cooperative campaign gaming. Good, frills-free rules coupled with a unique game – climbing all around giant monsters to smash crystals is, uh, not the usual! – done up with a colorful, easy to set up production (books with the battle laid out on a page are so nice). Heroes feel different, with decks reflecting their story, so every player has to learn how to best use their talents to contribute. You’ll play those cards to dance around a point-to-point board, helping allies move up and
down, smashing those crystals, or dealing with other threats. The dance continues until you’ve pacified the giant monster, usually done within 90 minutes, a great length for a two-session game night or a single hit on a Tuesday evening.
It’s a gentler introduction to party dynamics in a co-op space, lessons that’ll come in handy when you take Middara or Drunagor for a spin.
Running on a similar vibe but with different mechanics and a great story is Tales from the Red Dragon Inn. A branch off the popular party game series, Tales offers a more traditional dungeon crawler experience. Monsters, a hex grid, dice, classes, and adventure. What separates Tales from the pack, and makes it a great jumping off point for newer tabletop gamers (and experienced ones who’re tired of giant rulebooks), is its dedication to joy. From the outset, Tales pops with vibrant color and zany humor. Side or ‘bonus’ actions are called ‘shenanigans’. One character has a vengeful familiar called ‘Pooky’. It’s all in service of making you smile, laugh, and enjoy beating baddies together.
Tales isn’t brain dead easy, but neither is it a gritty, tough-as-nails gauntlet. It’s a game that’ll have your group building their dungeon crawler credentials with grins on their faces the whole way through.
If Leviathan Wilds and Tales from the Red Dragon Inn are more combat/board focused, Roll Player Adventures strives to put an emphasis on narrative. As you might expect from the title, and if you’ve played any of the Roll Player games, you’ll be manipulating dice as you grow a character (and a party) throughout a story-driven campaign. You can, in fact, literally import a character created during a Roll Player game session, which is pretty darn cool. That the classes feel different and have unique abilities that make an impact helps make every player feel necessary (e.g. your wizard and their rogue are going to approach enemies and their dice very differently). The difficulty can be adjusted to suit, so if you find play too easy, you can try ‘legendary mode’ if you want to give those goblins more of a punch.
If you’re just looking to crack some skeleton skulls, Roll Player Adventure might take a back seat to the other two games here, but for those groups wanting a more full-fledged RPG experience, this is a great choice.
