Best 3 Player Board Games of 2024 – Review & Comparison

Does your gaming group, be it your friends or family consists of three people? Perhaps you are wondering what the best 3 player board games to buy are?

In fact, picking the top board games for three players is pretty tricky. It is one too many for a head to head encounter and one too few for a game rich in negotiation, auction mechanics or team vs. team play.

It is true that most board games are designed for four, two or even single player games. At the same time, most of them would also work with three. Often, games introduce special rules to make a three-player gameplay balanced which provides a subpar gaming experience most of the time.

Conversely, only a few board games make three players a ‘sweet spot’. As a result, finding the best three-player board games out there is not a simple challenge. The good news is – we’ve done the hard work for you. Below is our top 10 three player board game shortlist. Let us know what you think!

Best 3 Player Board Games – Top 10 Detailed Review

1. Best 3 Player Board Game In Space – Gaia Project

Building development follows a specific path in the game where you first need to build a Mine to colonize. The mine can later be upgraded to a Trading Station or other more powerful structures.

The game goes for six rounds where players acquire Ore, Credits, and Knowledge produced by their structures and spend it constructing more buildings.

The unique feature of the game is its forth type of resource called ‘Power’. In essence, it represents a resource management challenge. Every time a player gets to build or upgrade buildings in proximity to other players, he can choose to gain ‘Power’ at a small cost of victory points. As a result, the location and timing selection for building new structures becomes both crucial and fun.

Gaia Project is a complex game, and there is much more happening on the board than I will ever be able to put on paper. If you would like to learn more about the rules, check out the online version here.

The game looks, plays and feels like a true galactic experience. The board, plastic miniature buildings and the alien races themselves create the best space theme immersion we have ever experienced. Conversely, it does require a full table to lay out the board. Some may find it excessive, but in my view, it contributes to the overall epic space experience the game manages to deliver.

2. Best Light Civilization Board Game – Suburbia

Every time you expand your borough, your income and reputation levels change. Additional income allows you to build more buildings whereas increased reputation attracts population growth.

Growing the city at a sustainable pace is a delicate balancing act and an ultimate key to winning the game. Ideally, you want to keep the infrastructure, and population growth aligned. Bigger cities have higher maintenance costs, so you need a sufficient population to support it.

The game is easy to set up and simple to learn.  Streamlined rules almost eliminate the downtime between players and keep the momentum going for everyone. The game also encourages plenty of player interaction which feels natural and fun.

If you ever wanted to be an urban planner and build a metropolis from its humble beggings or perhaps enjoyed playing Sim City in the past, Suburbia will not disappoint.

3. Best Dungeon Crawler For 3 Players – Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure

On your turn, you get to draw up to five cards from your deck and use their abilities. Cards allow you to move around, buy goods or fight monsters. At the end of the turn, cards get discarded, and you get to re-do the process by drawing five more cards.

Moving is crucial as it allows you to explore the dungeon and find treasures. It happens that it also makes the dragon chase your tail, so the trick is to get the balance right.

Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure has taken the classic deck-building mechanic and cleverly integrated a push-your-luck aspect into it. This combination delivers an enjoyable, fun and engaging gaming experience where both greed and modesty kills.

Timing the game is key to winning as you always seem to juggle between getting too many treasures and not making it out or getting too little treasure and someone else beats you.

Also, it is worth mentioning that one of the game’s variations has made it to the top board games for families list. It follows the same gaming principles, but it sets the stage in space.

4. Best 3 Player Board Game Ever – Through the Ages

There are three main ways to acquire culture points – through military, religion, and science. If you like aggressive play, you can emphasize on military development above all else. It will drag you into battles where you need to prevail and impede the progress of other players. If you tend to favor the peaceful side more, betting on art and religion can take you a long way. Alternatively, you can focus on exploring the world by making breakthroughs in technology and science.

Your early turns will not earn you many points, yet everything you build and develop will have a compounding effect throughout the game. You also have relative freedom to make mistakes without getting punished for them on the spot. At the same time, making too many will set you back in a pit that is extremely difficult to escape as this is not the game that encourages catching up.

5. Best 3 Player Board Game For Casual Play – Splendor

The game board consists of one row of noble cards, three rows of development cards (increasing in price) and gems that are used to purchase the development cards.

On your turn, there are three options to choose from – pick up gems from the supply, reserve one of the development cards (for future purchase) or purchase a development card. That is pretty much it.

Picking the right card to play and getting the order optimized is key to winning the game. At times, triggering a positive effect for yourself can also benefit the opponent. So which card should you play and when?

Splendor is the simplest and the shortest game in our review which makes a perfect getaway game. It is also friendly for new players as the board setup is simple, rules are straightforward, and the gameplay is fun.

6. Best 3 Player Euro Board Game – Great Western Trail

Upon the successful arrival in Kansas, players get to sell their cattle and gain money. The acquired funds can be used to hire staff, breed more animals or build supporting structures throughout the trail.

At the beginning of the game, players receive an objective card. Achieving the objective secures additional victory points and adds a good ‘side mission’ variety into the game.

Moreover, players can get gain victory points from buildings, acquiring ‘hazard’ tiles, hiring workers and station masters. With so many options to consider, the game offers one of the broadest ranges of strategies we have seen in board games.

Great Western Trail is a unique game as it manages to incorporate multiple board game mechanics in one game elegantly. You will find aspects of hand management, deck-building, tile placement, building, and worker management, to name a few. All of which, work together in a surprisingly cohesive and non-overwhelming manner.

7. Best 3 Player Dice Game – Roll for the Galaxy

Each round, players roll their dice simultaneously and secretly allocate each dice to one of five actions in the game. You can choose from exploring, developing, settling, producing, or shipping actions.

The dice you roll comes in different colors, where each color determines the group of actions it favors. For examples, the red (i.e., Military) dice predominantly contains Develop and Settle actions, and no Produce or Ship actions. 

Each selected action now has a potential to be triggered this round. Then, the player chooses one action he wants to ensure to get executed this turn and secretly marks it. Once all players have selected their preferred actions, the selections are revealed and actions are executed.

If you have actions selected that are triggered by other players, you also get to execute them. The idea is to try and guess what actions other players have chosen as preferred. It allows you to trigger additional actions as long as you have placed a dice on them before.

Overall, the game can easily produce a wrong first impression due to the sheer number of dice in the box. Some may conclude that the game is all about luck, but that could not be further from the truth.

It can also feel confusing and more complicated at first than it is. Yet, your first couple of turns would set things quickly in all the right places.

8. Best Three Player Deck Builder Game – Dominion (Second Edition)

The concept of a deckbuilding game is that all players get to start with the same set ten cards. Throughout the game, players get to buy additional cards and add them to their play deck. As your deck expands, so do your options. New cards allow you to trigger more powerful actions and most importantly, trigger additional action cards.

Overall, it is not the quantity, but the quality of your cards that make a difference. If you get it right, you can cause a chain reaction of multiple cards resulting in powerful and sometimes deadly combinations.

When buying new cards, there are three different types to choose from – Action, Money and Victory cards. Action cards trigger events and chain reactions, money cards improve your buying capacity, and victory cards win the game.

Victory cards are essential at winning the game but are counterproductive in the beginning. Money cards are used to be able to purchase other cards but don’t count at the end of the game. Action cards deliver deadly strikes that put a smile on your face and gloom on the face of your opponent.

9. Best Three Player Board Game for Family – Five Tribes

There are simple rules that govern the meeple placement process. In general, you can place meeples on adjacent tiles, one at a time. You need to ensure, however, that your last meeple gets on a tile with the like-colored meeple.

At the end of the turn, all meeples of the same color get removed from the last city tile. If the tile happens to be empty, you get to claim it by placing a camel on it.

Play continues until there are no more camels to be played or no more moves to be made. As with most classic Eurogames, the player who manages to score the most victory points wins the game.

Placing meeples and triggering special abilities may seem extremely simple at first. In reality, when those two mechanics overlay each other, the number of options and strategies to consider is enormous.

10. Best Light Quest Board Game for 3 Players – Lords of Waterdeep

On their turns, players can either assign an agent to a location or optionally complete a quest. To designate an agent, you need to place the agent in one of the free dedicated spaces on the map of Waterdeep.

Most spaces can only hold one agent. Hence, to trigger the action you want, you need to make sure other player’s agents do not occupy the location.

Once assigned, the agents can build structures, hire adventurers (Fighters, Rogues, Clerics, and Wizards), collect and complete quests as well as play intrigue cards.

Building structures could be both beneficial and detrimental to your strategy. All buildings, even the ones you’ve built, in the game are open to all players. This means that when you are not using it, your opponent can use it for a small rental fee to you.

Although Lords of Waterdeep is using a Dungeons & Dragons theme, it is a classic worker placement game at heart. I must admit that the game designers have managed to dress it up quite nicely. At the same time, swapping the cubes for proper miniatures would have taken the game to a whole new level in my view.

The game is easy to learn and new player friendly. I had many non-gamers picking up the game in a matter of 15 minutes. Winning the game, however, requires timing, planning, action placement and perhaps some luck.

There is also a good level of player interaction. Players get engaged with each other by taking other player’s desired locations on the map. Additionally, players can use intrigue cards to force other players to take adverse actions that slow them down.

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