You're expecting something for kids: Despite being based on the iconic, family-friendly movies of our childhoods, Villainous is actually a competitive strategy game with oodles of depth. It's not a good fit for children as a result, and won't jive with family-members who are expecting something very casual either.

The bottom line: So long as you're happy to do a little homework in terms of its mechanics, you'll find that Root has a lot to offer. It's essential for strategy fans thanks to spotless asymmetric gameplay, and being able to boost the experience with a number of expansions keeps that spark alive. How it works: Jaws of the Lion casts you as a mercenary looking for work in the grungy metropolis of Gloomhaven (imagine the world of The Witcher and you won't be far off). As is only right for fantasy RPGs, said 'work' involves swords and/or sorcery. These jobs lead you through a grand narrative where your choices matter, so tread carefully - decisions can, and will, have consequences. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ You don't like pressure: Tensions run high in Pandemic (you are saving the world, after all), so anyone that doesn't like pressure in games won't enjoy this one. It's a gripping but intense experience. The challenge comes from some clever optical illusions. Icons are jumbled up, resized and just generally hard to identify at speed on the circular cards – so you can spend ages staring at them thinking there’s no match to be seen. Then you spot it with a whoop of joy and scrabble to claim the point before anyone else.Deception and misdirection are the names of the game here; the better the fascists are at lying, the better their chances of electing Hitler. For starters (and as explained in the GamesRadar+ ' how we test' guide), we always spend as long learning, playing, and living with board games as possible. Besides helping us understand how it all works so that we can provide a better commentary on whether those mechanics are fun or not, this is crucial for exposing any gameplay shortcomings... or elements that still delight after multiple sessions. We also do our best to play with varying numbers of players to gauge how or if the experience differs. Do you like your board games to be almost impossibly epic and complex? Do you like the feeling of steadily crushing your opponents into paste over the course of several hours? Do you like constant opportunities to reference the HBO TV series and epic novel collection? Then Game of Thrones is for you. Not that this is only for kids, of course. It'll be a hit with all ages, and is a great warm-up game before moving on to something with more depth.

How it works: Your aim here is simple - make it out of the mansion alive after completing one of 50 missions. That isn't to say it's predictable, though. Betrayal isn't set up like traditional board games, and that's part of its appeal. Your character has been drawn to the house for mysterious reasons (they're following a friend who's gone missing or received an invitation from parties unknown, for example), and it's revealed turn by turn as you try to solve that case. However, each room is selected at random when you enter it. The items or events encountered within are randomized as well. In other words? There's no way of telling what lurks behind those doors.

You don't like randomness: This game relies on randomly-drawn board tiles and cards that'll dictate what happens next. If this kind of unpredictability doesn't appeal, Betrayal probably isn't for you. How it works: Much like the Redwall novels, each player commands a tribe of anthropomorphic creatures that must fight to control the forest's clearings (in practical terms, that means collecting 30 'Victory Points'). The base game gives you control of four factions: the 'Marquise de Cat' that must cement their rule by putting down rebellion, feudal birds who operate via espionage, an insurgency of 'peasant' animals (mice and hedgehogs) called the Woodland Alliance, and an adventuring racoon who sneaks around the board. Each one has its own unique playstyle, and although that's a lot to take in, it encourages you to think creatively and dream up wild strategies. In much the same way, another title that's turning heads is Apiary. Because this is a game from the publisher of Wingspan about space bees, that's probably not surprising. This is followed by Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, an adaptation of the classic team game where your actions have consequences that carry over from session to session. Actually, those 'legacy' mechanics seem to be a common feature for many of the top board games according to users; fantasy dungeon-crawler Gloomhaven comes in third, for example, and that one sees you working your way through an ever-evolving story. It's not overly aggressive, either. Unlike so many entries on this list, there's less emphasis on screwing each other over. Although it's frustrating when a rival claims a route you were going for, there's usually an alternative with which you can salvage all that time and effort. As such, this is an option we're more than happy to break out if things can get heated on game night. Like our review mentions, it's "the perfect option for newcomers and tabletop veterans alike."