Please recommend teenage appropriate board games

[whataboutbob]

In an attempt to get my 2 boys (14 and 17) off their screens once a week I’m hoping to start a board games night. We’ve exhausted the charms of monopoly, cluedo and trivial pursuits. Any recommendations would be really welcome.

Oh god Monopoly is awful.

Good boardgames are too numerous to count but some favourites are:

For abstract point-scoring strategy - Azul and Sagrada

For peaceful scenario development - Isle of Skye, Carcassonne, Puerto Rico

For cooperative situation resolution - The Captain is Dead, Pandemic

For violent world domination - Risk 2210AD

A brilliant game with elements of most of the above categories - Terraforming Mars

Another vote for ticket to ride, I have all of the versions in one format or another! You need to get either Europe or U.S, then if you like it you can get other areas of the world as add on expansions. Our favourite is 'Rails and Sails', it's stand alone but has a double sided board, one for North America the other for The World and it's unique in that you not only make routes using trains (like all of the other versions) but this one has boats too!
Also, can strongly recommend Zombie Dice, it's really fun. And a time traveling card game called Chrononauts. Good luck!

Rummikub gets very heated in our house with pre-teens and grown ups, though not a board game as such - I love it!

A Mah Jong set?

Our favourites at the moment are

Pandemic legacy
Ticket to Ride
Settlers of Catan
Exploding Kittens

We also played an escape room game over Christmas which was very good (play once only).

Scrawl.

Rummikub and labyrinth both good

Our favourite currently is settlers of Catan! Also love risk

We play a lot of the ones listed above, Catan, Carcassonne and Pandemic have been played the most recently.

Smaller format games (cheaper) that go down well round here include Fluxx (get one that matches your own kids' interests), Port Royal, Mapominoes.

We also like the escape room/investigation-type games.

Agree with ticket to ride, risk, carcassone, settlers of catan and pandemic.

We got Mafia this year and the teens enjoyed that. And also chameleon. And they love Cards against Humanity too.

But also we got a chess set! My children have all played it - I was such a proud parent when my son texted me a picture of a move on the board when I was on a dog walk!

Wow! So many recommendations, thanks everyone.
Now to choose. The eldest likes world domination type games and gets quite competitive. The youngest is more strategic. I don’t mind what I play as long as everyone is engaged. I need to look into the games but maybe Risk, ticket to ride, Mafia ( a fascination of DS1’s) would fit the bill. Exploding kittens sounds intriguing! We have Crazy Cat Lady (aim: collect as many kittens as you can) but the boys have outgrown it. I think I need to read up on the games but thanks again. More suggestions welcome!

Our favourites are catan, Pandemic, splendor and bananagrams.

There are lots of versions of Risk and I think it's really worth getting any of the "non-basic" versions rather than the original. The original one can go on absolutely for ever as there is no way to finally actually win except by totally eliminating all opponents. This can take ages and get very dull, because when a player gets a large number of territories they tend to be spread too thin and be easy to attack so the tide of being nearly-victorious can turn several times.

We really like Risk 2210AD because it is limited to 5 rounds (each notionally a "year" - each turn takes longer because you have cards to play and additional actions to take compared to the normal game, but after 5 rounds you tot up the points and declare a winner)

We also have Game of Thrones risk, which has the basic "game play" structure of the normal game rather than all the extras of the above, but the "end of game" is triggered by a specific card which is shuffled into a pack at random, and when that card is revealed it is the end of the game and again it's a case of totting up the points - this is good because a disadvantage of 2210AD is that your strategy is heavily influenced by knowing when it is going to end (e.g. the person who is having the last turn in round 5 doesn't need to leave themselves in a defencible position) whereas with the random ending you never know when the judgement will happen so you need to be constantly as ready as you can be)

In Star Wars Risk each faction has a different specific objective so that makes it more interesting, but it can only be played by 3 players I think whereas the other versions can be up to 5.

Linkee is a big hit in our house with everyone apart from DH who doesn't have a lateral brain: four questions per round, the answers to which all have a link. Guess the link, get the card, aim to spell out Linkee with the letters on the back.

cards against humanity

We play articulate without the board, just as much fun and a bit faster.

exploding kittens and obama llama are awesome! the family version of cards against humanity looks awesom too!

My teenagers have been loving Dungeon Mayhem - D&D monsters figuring out how to take out each other out - and Cockroach poker lately - really card games have been much bigger than board games with mine.

Ok I have ordered exploding kittens, cards against humanity (DS17 said family would be babyish ) and Obama llama. Looking forward to games night!

I have the full version of Cards Against Humanity and I went through the card decks pulling out the ones that I thought should be 18+ rated. These have been marked on the edge with a red sharpie so that we can pull them all out of the pack, and just play with the ones that are merely purile and disgusting rather than actually disturbingly offensive, which means that I can play with 11-15yos without feeling too guilty about it.

Great tip @KihoBebiluPute

Chess...made relevantand glam again by Queens Gambit.plus good for the brain.

Mine like UNO

another vote for exploding kittens