Top 10 Licensed Board Games

boardgamequest.com:

Everyone has licensed games. Nowadays there are licensed games for practically everything, and they are getting better. Gone are the days when licensed games were highlighted by such gems as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Heroes in a Halfshell Card Game, X-Men: Crisis in the Danger Room, Batman: The Animated Series 3-D Board Game, Star Trek The Next Generation: Game of the Galaxies, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Pizza Power Game. It used to be hard to find a licensed game that was any good, but no longer. There are no shortage of good options. Spoilers: this list does not include Battlestar Galactica by design… I can’t stand it! Sorry, BSG fans!

Starting off the list is one of several deck-building games. This one, based on Harry Potter, is a cooperative game for 2-4 players (a 5th is possible with the second expansion). What this game does that caught my eye right away is it takes a page (pun intended) from the books and has a set-up for each of the seven books in the series, which become progressively more complex and difficult. Book 1 is very simple, and not too difficult, while book 7 has multiple tasks it asks of you and more obstacles in your way to defeat the forces of Lord Voldemort. The gameplay can get a little long in the later books, and sometimes you can really get walloped. The game is very thematic though, and when you successfully build a powerful deck, the results are incredibly fun.

This was my introduction to asymmetric games. It is pretty simple, and true rules nerds will bristle at some of the ambiguities, but the game is fun and it is so thematic. Five expansions in and there are 21 different villains you can play as, with all of them feeling like they fit their scheme from their respective