Whether you’re a board game enthusiast into deck building, dice rolling, or tile laying, you’ll find a collection of the best 4 player board games that will save your game night. We’ve done the hard work for you, though, and scoured the games around the web for the top-billing games worth our time and yours. Grab three friends (or kids!) and any of the following games for a fantastic game time with cooperative or competitive play themed around zombies, the art world, Medieval trade, or space exploration.
What are the Best Competitive Board Games for 4 Players?
Babylonia
Age: 14+ Players: 2-4 Time: 60+ minutes
Explore the ancient world of Babylonia, brokering peace under the imperial reign of Nebuchadnezzar II. New inventions of the time (think irrigation systems) helped to improve the lives of folks throughout the empire with healthier, more abundant crops, and new cities of thriving urban life. Or did it? The semi-abstract game ideally welcomes 4 players into the Neo-Babylonian empire with hexagonal spaces filled with rivers and land masses where players build their cities and fight for top billing.
The challenging game challenges players to gain strategies and learn their way around the rulebook. Working towards long-term goals throughout the game is the best way to mitigate the world of ancient Babylon through peasants and their farming and ruling with intent. Place your farmers and rulers carefully to navigate the world, survive, thrive, and spread rapidly to score points to win. The use of ziggurats, noble tiles, and score tiles culminate throughout the game to determine the winner. So, if you love a good cutthroat approach to gaming, you’ll love Babylonia as the tension builds all game long. Just keep your eyes open or your opponents will notice your weaknesses and steal the win.
Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game
Age: 13+ Players: 2-5 Time: 60-120 minutes
Ready for a little apocalyptic fun? Grab a Zombie-filled game called Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game for all the story-centric excitement you could have in a speculative world. This perfect-for-4 players game provides loads of gameplay opportunities, including storytelling, trading, bluffing, deduction, and dice rolling for your action points and scores.
Every gameplay is different on Dead of Winter, as decision-making shifts by every turn. Use secret objective cards, betrayal cards, survivor secrets, Police Station cards, and other resources to roll, deal, and play your way through the freezing world in this meta-cooperative and competitive board game. Work together to defeat zombies, find food, save each other from deadly nibbles, and deal with all that psychological angst – or opt for some betrayal and throw the other players to the wolves, er, zombies, and survive to fight another day.
Love Letter
Age: 10+ Players: 2-6 (best at 4) Time: 20 minutes
For a quick, fun game set in the Renaissance period, grab your bag of Love Letters to send out. The 20-minute run time makes this one a fun one for the whole family on a quick game night, a large game night party looking to take turns, or just a quick something to enjoy as a group. Love Letter is full of risk, deduction, and romance, as players try to outwit their companions to earn the trust of the princess.
Try to eliminate each other from the court by drawing cards, playing them, and resolving their abilities with the highest-value cards in this competitive game. Each card bears its own risks and rewards, so play carefully so that you may gain the princess’s attention in the right way, instead of driving a wedge between yourself and her noble heart. The subtle strategies are where Love Letter truly shines, despite the quick play time each bout carries.
This one is perfect for travel, camping, and similar settings, too, when you just want a little fun for a brief period.
Dune: Imperium
Age: 14+ Players: 1-4 Time: 90-120 minutes
Think worker placement game meets deck building meets Dune the film/book franchise. That’s what Dune: Imperium gives you, with explorations on the desert planet and battle for the planet. Use the leader cards and build your deck in this 4 player game without playing your whole hand at once. Draw a hand at each new round, take turns, and ultimately, take a reveal turn to play the rest of your deck. The trick with this game is keeping your eye on everything, with multitasking galore as each turn rounds the group.
Players of Dune: Imperium suggest the game has some of the best replayability on the market, as you can employ different strategies each time you get it out. The competition is close and usually comes down to one or two points, so there’s a great balance for equal footing among all players. Of course, for those who love the Dune franchise, the themes and artistry of the game are enough. For those who are less familiar, the game is equally challenging, fun, and beautiful to behold. The game ends when a player reaches a certain number of points, making every decision crucial.
Cosmic Encounter
Age: 12+ Players: 3-6 Time: 20-120 minutes
Countless worlds await in Cosmic Encounter, a space travel board game for 4 players in search of intelligent life across the universe. Ancient ancestors left behind clues – in the form of advanced technology and hyperspace gates – and your mission, should you and your gaming crew choose to play it, is to explore and build your outer space empire.
Learn to communicate, navigate space, and deal with alliances from across the cosmos, negotiating hope (or terror!) among your alien brethren. Build colonies and take over planetary systems, with five colonies on any planet in your own or another home system.
This incredibly re-playable game engages with various abilities of alien species and allows you to ally or attack so that you can conquer and play on. The game is incredibly social and interactive, making it perfect for game nights with friends and family, with ridiculously fun gameplay for players eager to have a great time with silly inhibitions blown away.
Modern Art
Age: 10+ Players: 3-5 Time: 45 minutes
For something a little different, check out Modern Art, the ideal game for 4 players with a penchant for the fine things in life. Imagine yourself in the art world, looking for your next great collector’s piece from Monet, Chagall, or van Gogh. But you’ve got to sell something less beloved to bring in that new masterpiece. In Modern Art, the classic game, you get to play bidder and auctioneer as you depict one of the great galleries of the world, buying and selling, making profits and losses along the way.
After four rounds of scorching hot play and wheeling and dealing galore, the winner with the most cash wins the day, claiming the greatest collection of Modern Art. Bid, bargain, harangue, and sell from the 70 cards from real-world artists in this fantastic game for the whole family (or small group of friends). But don’t be surprised to discover the game holds not the famous works of well-known masters, but rather the unknown works of up-and-coming artists you’ve never heard of before. Some folks choose to turn that originating $100 million into $100 instead, too, for upping the humor along the way.
Root
Age: 10+ Players: 2-4 Time: 60-90 minutes
Root is an ideal game for 4 players, running in total between 60 and 90 minutes. The action-queue game centers on the evil Marquise de Cat, who’s overtaken the region, stealing its resources and ruling maliciously, as any proper cat would. Players may choose from playing as the Marquise de Cat, the Eyrie of Dynasties, the Vagabond, or the Woodland Alliance in this battle of wits and dice rolls to see who will ultimately rule the day.
The fantastically fun board game, Root, uses cards, encounters, faction boards, wooden warriors, and a double-sided map to play out. Gamers take on the personas of their factions, battle out the war between birds, cats, and woodland critters, and learn a bit about real-world historical factions in the history-inspired animal game.
One of the best games for four players, this unique take on war game provides asymmetrical gameplay, with each faction wielding its own strengths and fighting through its own weaknesses. Each turn goes through the morning (Birdsong), afternoon (Daylight), and evening, with players choosing their actions for each phase, ultimately determining how players win.
Root has been likened a bit to Magic: The Gathering for some of the mechanics and a little bit of a learning curve. Most folks who love the game indicate this 4 player board game is best for folks who’ll love playing it over and over as the strategies will change and grow with each game. Yet, folks who only play once will still enjoy the game thanks to the luck of the draw, the overall mechanics, and, of course, the adorably fun motif.
The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine
Age: 10+ Players: 2-5 Time: 20 minutes
If your group is looking for some sci-fi adventures, grab a copy of The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. This game features cooperative trick-taking with 50 different mission possibilities through space. Each mission builds on the last, growing more difficult as you play – with options for pausing your mission to return later on if you find you’re in need of a few sessions to get through the same game.
Deemed as best played with four players, The Crew allows gamers to prove the existence of a distant ninth planet using colorful cards and tokens along the way. The key, though, is playing as teams to ultimately find the location and save the day.
Each mission begins with a dealing from the deck of five suits (green, blue, pink, yellow, and black trump). Each player chooses an objective and plays to that objective, seeking to take tricks and complete the objective (such as taking the hand containing Green 6). While it’s a cooperative game, The Crew permits no talking amongst players on objectives and strategy, so the cooperation becomes about reading each other’s silent cues and playing to each other’s strengths. It makes for a great icebreaker or a deeper dive as people get to know each other and their game-playing methods.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg
Age: 10+ Players: 2-4 Time: 45 minutes
One of the best games for 4 players involves a festival celebrating quack doctors in The Quacks of Quedlinburg. You read that right: celebrating quack doctors! This ridiculously fun, bizarre little game usually lasts about 45 minutes, making it a perfect short evening game for a group of four players.
Celebrate the festival by purchasing in-game goods for your healing ointments, and gain fame, fortune, and satisfaction untold in swindling the townspeople through your bag-building (similar to deckbuilding) strategies. Use the pots, bottles, bags, drops, and rat stones to play your way through this Medieval setting where con artists rule the day.
The easy-to-learn game opens with every player with a bag full of cherry bombs for their potion making. Use too many and your potion explodes, along with your fortune. So, mix wisely as you attempt to out-maneuver your fellow sham healers. Mix in cherry bombs, and unusual ingredients, and stir up the fun with this game ideally played by four players, where victory points determine the winner. Every game of The Quacks of Quedlinburg is different as players learn new strategies, chance their luck, or mix it up with bag-building glee.
Clank! Catacombs
Age: 13+ Players: 2-4 Time: 45-90 minutes
Another one of the best games for 4 players is Clank! Catacombs. The game features fantasy and adventure themes that lead players to explore via portals that take them into the depths of the dragon’s lair. The mysterious caverns of the dragon Umbrok Vessna contain prisons, ghosts, and much more in this perfect-for-four-player board game. Hunt treasures, avoid the dragon and sneak past each other to see who game wins.
Every time you play, your adventures shift and change, but if you do so choose, you can up your gameplay with expansion packs over time. Initially, the game comes with dungeon tiles, 180+ cards, dragon and cubes, and player markers, plus the boards and bag. The Clank! Catacombs uses the same core system as the other Clank! game series from Dire Wolf, with unique play as the catacombs are constructed through tile placements and decks. Long-time fans will love this stand-alone option as much as newbies to the system.
Conclusion
When it comes to 4 player borad games, you’ll find this list of the ten best board games will do the trick for your gathering or evening chillax time with the family. Explore the cosmos, learn about modern art, send some love letters or battle zombies. It’s all good fun!
Be sure to choose your games carefully, based on interests and enjoyed themes by all participants. Or, better yet, rotate through a few to hit everyone’s highlights as you play these awesome games for four players. You won’t regret the fun ahead with Babylonia, Dead of Winter, Clank!, The Quacks of Quedlinburg, Root, Modern Art, The Crew, Dune: Imperium, Lover Letter, or Cosmic Encounter according to avid game board players who’ve ranked them so highly.
FAQ About 4 Player Board Games
What Types of Board Games Are Best for Four Players?
This document features a diverse selection of board games perfect for groups of four, including strategy games, cooperative games, and competitive games. Each game comes with its own unique mechanics and themes, catering to various interests and preferences.
What Is the Typical Playtime for Each Board Game?
Playtime can vary significantly among different games, often depending on how the game ends. For instance, The Crew offers a quick 20-minute game, while Clank! Catacombs can take around 90 minutes. Check the individual descriptions for specific durations to find the right fit for your game night!
Are These Board Games Beginner-Friendly?
Absolutely! Most of the games listed here have a low learning curve, making them great for beginners while still providing enough depth for experienced gamers. Many games come with clear instructions to help everyone get started quickly and easily, even as the game challenges players.
Can These Board Games Be Played with Different Player Counts?
Yes, several games can accommodate more or fewer than four players. For example, The Crew is designed for 2-5 players, and Clank! Catacombs works well with 2-4 players. However, it’s recommended to stick to the suggested player range for the best gaming experience and balance in the same game.
Where Can I Buy These Board Games?
You can purchase these board games at most retailers, both online and in physical stores. Popular websites like Game Nerdz, Amazon, and local game shops usually have a great selection and may offer discounts or bundle deals, making it easier to find your next game night favorite! Some innovative and educational games are developed with insights from the games research lab, making them both fun and informative.