The best games in which you can enclose a territory or area 2026

Embark on a noble quest to expand your kingdom in Kingdomino. As a lord, your mission is to explore vast lands filled with wheat fields, serene lakes, and towering mountains. Competing with fellow lords, you must identify the choicest plots to claim as your own.

Cartographers: A Roll Player Tale transports players to a realm where they take on the roles of mapmakers, tasked by Queen Gimnax to chart the northern territories for the Kingdom of Nalos. This game combines elements of strategy and creativity, challenging players to create the most efficient and aesthetically pleasing maps.

Carcassonne is a renowned tile-placement game set in the picturesque landscape of Southern France. This game is beloved for its simplicity, depth, and the beautiful mosaic players create on the table.

Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition is a unique and innovative quantum trick-taking card game that challenges 2 to 5 players to think strategically about color and number. This deluxe edition of the game enhances the experience with high-quality components and new features.

My First Carcassonne, also known as Carcassonne Junior, introduces the iconic tile-laying gameplay of the classic Carcassonne to a younger audience. This game captures the essence of the original while simplifying the mechanics to make it accessible for children, making it a wonderful entry point into the world of board games.

Calico is a delightful, tile-laying board game that combines the art of quilt-making with the charm of cats. It's designed to offer a relaxing yet engaging puzzling experience for players.

Travel back to the prehistoric era of Kingdomino. Players will experience familiar gameplay with new components that introduce additional actions and scoring opportunities. Regions in your territory earn points when they contain fire, which can be gained either through terrain or by adding dominoes with volcanoes. The game features three play modes that incorporate fire, wood resources, and cave people tiles, allowing for varied strategies and rewards.

Polyssimo Challenge is a tactical game for 2 to 4 players featuring a 12x11 square board and 24 game pieces, including 12 pentominoes and 12 hexominoes. Players take turns selecting pieces from the center of the table, and once all pieces are claimed, they alternately place them on the board. The winner is the player with the fewest remaining squares. The game emphasizes strategic thinking and allows for handicaps to level the playing field between varying skill levels.

Chinatown is a dynamic negotiation board game where players engage in the strategic acquisition and development of city blocks to establish profitable businesses. It emphasizes trading and deal-making to succeed in a competitive urban landscape.

Blokus is an abstract strategy game known for its simple rules and deep strategic gameplay. It features colorful Tetris-shaped pieces that players aim to place on the board.

Hive is a highly strategic two-player game that stands out for its versatility and unique gameplay mechanics, involving a variety of insect-themed pieces.

Samurai is a strategic board game set in medieval Japan. It immerses players in a contest of influence and power among three key factions of the era: samurai, peasants, and priests.

Through the Desert is a strategic board game where players guide caravans through the desert to claim oases and territory. Often compared to the classic game Go, it combines strategic planning with a visually appealing setup featuring colorful plastic camels.

Blokus Duo, also known as Travel Blokus, is a two-player version of the popular abstract strategy game Blokus. It offers a compact and travel-friendly design, perfect for on-the-go gaming sessions.

Blokus Shuffle: UNO Edition is a wild twist on traditional Blokus. The goal remains the same: players must place as many of their pieces on the board while following the rule that pieces can only touch at corners. Each player has a set of action cards inspired by UNO, allowing for a variety of moves, including skipping turns and drawing cards, as well as unique abilities like Warp and Edge-to-Edge. The game ends when no players can make a move, and the player with the fewest unplayed pieces wins.

Battle Sheep, formerly known as Splits, is a light-hearted yet strategic board game where players aim to spread their flock of sheep across the pasture to occupy the most territory. The game is known for its simple rules, quick gameplay, and fun theme, making it a great choice for families and casual gamers.

Explore a breathtaking landscape that even a Viking would admire. Players lay down hexagonal tiles to create a game board, then traverse the landscape from their starting longhouses to claim as much land as possible. The winner is the player who has conquered the most territory through clever placements and strategic planning.

The Kingdom Builder: Big Box includes the first four expansions: Nomads, Crossroads, Marshlands, and Harvest, along with three Queenies: Capitol, Caves, and The Island. Players create their own kingdoms by strategically building settlements to earn the most gold by the end of the game. With a variable board featuring nine different types of terrain, players play land cards and place settlements while aiming to fulfill specific conditions outlined by the game’s cards to maximize their gold earnings.

Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small offers a specialized, two-player experience derived from the popular Agricola game, focusing exclusively on the aspect of animal husbandry.

You and your brother are peaceful farmers... or at least you used to be! In "Brothers," your herds always become too large for a shared pasture. Outsmart your brother by placing your pens in a way that makes it difficult for him, proving you're the one in the family with a knack for cattle.

As the leader of an international archaeological team, you must establish camps worldwide and uncover the long-lost golden scarabs. Scarabya is a puzzle game where the goal is to find scarabs by positioning your game pieces to form closed zones of 1 to 4 squares. Each scarab in a closed zone is worth points equal to the number of squares in that zone, and players take turns playing the same pieces simultaneously, ending the game once all 12 pieces are drawn.

Blokus 3D, originally known as Rumis, is a spatial puzzle game where players engage in building ancient Inca structures using uniquely shaped, three-dimensional pieces. Each player aims to cleverly place their pieces next to those of the same color on the board, with the challenge of accommodating different shapes to maximize space and block opponents.

Blokus Trigon evolves the classic abstract strategy game Blokus with a twist: the introduction of triangular pieces. This change adds a new layer of strategic depth, as players must navigate the hexagonal board to fit their pieces in the most efficient way possible. The objective remains the same as in the original Blokus: to place all of your pieces on the board while blocking your opponents from doing the same.

Era: Medieval Age positions itself as a groundbreaking evolution in the realm of roll-and-build board games, inheriting the legacy of Roll Through The Ages but carving out its own niche with a unique build mechanic. Players are transported to the medieval era, tasked with rolling dice to assemble a flourishing city using tangible, 3D components such as walls, keeps, and farms, making each cityscape a distinct creation by the game's conclusion.

Honey Buzz is a whimsical game where players delve into the world of bees, embracing the concept of economics and entrepreneurship. In this worker bee placement game, players are tasked with expanding their beehives, foraging for nectar, making honey, and even venturing into sales at the bear market.

The goal is to have the fewest number of groups of stones on the board by the end of the game. Players take turns placing one of their five stones on a 9x9 grid and then drawing another stone to replace it. Players can capture an opponent's stone by placing a legal stone in its place if it does not split their own stones into more than one group.

In war-torn feudal Japan, soldiers are restless and question their loyalty amid endless battles, betrayal, and broken promises. Players take on the role of Daimyo, planning military advances and deciding whether to gain victory points or save for fortifications. Throughout the game, players must also keep an eye on their opponents to prevent them from growing too strong at their expense.

Players develop their own unique islands using interconnected hexagons in a competitive legacy format inspired by a previous game. Over 24 sessions, they will uncover the story and secrets of their island, with each game introducing new rules and materials that permanently alter the landscape.

Players compete in a majority game using dominoes, suitable for 2-4 participants. Each player has a game board with wooden tiles depicting grass, bushes, pines, and oaks, which are used for majority scoring on a central board. Throughout the game, players can place dominoes and plants, earn points based on their placements, and strategically acquire resources to maximize their scores. The game concludes when all players have used their dominoes.