The last few decades have seen a board game renaissance, with a tremendous number of amazing games coming out. Even better, they have made their way online where you can play against folks from around the world.
When I was younger, there wasn't the same variety of board games we have today, especially in digital form. I remember learning a bunch of Risk strategy by playing TurboRisk bots and then using that later to work my way up through the ranks of conquerclub.com.
Now, with sites like board game arena, there are all sorts of games available to play! I'm currently playing seven different games at seven virtual tables.
In the order of when the games were released, here they are:
2004 - EKONOS. A simple game with three parts: (A) a stock market where you can buy and sell shares in stocks, (B) a Risk-style map where you can expand and take over other companies, and (C) a deck of cards that determines which companies you can expand each round.
2010 - 7 Wonders. A card drafting game where you build up your civilization. While taking simultaneous turns to draft (great for online games), you get points based on your military, science, and more. Cards can only be drafted if you have the right resources or have drafted prerequisite cards.
2013 - Sushi Go! Another drafting game with a similar playstyle to 7 Wonders. Instead of building a civilization (and needing to buy drafted cards), you instead earn points based on the types and combinations of sushi you draft.
2015 - Letter Tycoon. What if you could buy patents for the letters of the alphabet? In this game, you draw letters from a deck of cards to make words and get bonuses based on the letter patents that you've bought.
2016 - Kingdomino. This is a game of drafting dominoes to build up a 5x5 grid. Points are earned based on contiguous types of land (lakes, forests, etc) and the number of crowns contained on those tiles.
2017 - Azul. This is a game of drafting patterned ceramic tiles and using them to build a wall, scoring points based on matching colors and building rows/columns.
2019 - Wingspan. Tableau building game with birds. Probably my favorite new board game of 2022.