9 Fun Board Games Designed by Richard Garfield

The award-winning game designer Richard Garfield is most famous for the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. But there are also some fantastic board games designed by Richard Garfield.

What board games are designed by Richard Garfield? Richard Garfield is a named game designer for: Bunny Kingdom, Treasure Hunter, King of New York, King of Tokyo, Stonehenge, Rockville, Pecking Order, Filthy Rich, and Robo Rally.

Find out more about each of these board games in this article, including the special 5-in-one game collaboration between 5 game designers.

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king of tokyo dice — Me ready to roll King of Tokyo dice

1. Bunny Kingdom (2017)

Number of players: 2-4
Time to play: 40 minutes

Your challenge in this game is to collect resources, build cities and grow the influence of your rabbit colony. You and your opponents compete for the best positions to build on the 100 squares available on the board.

Where you place your colony determines what type of resources you can grow – water by lakesides and fields for carrots for example.

While you collect resources and build, you’ll also complete secret missions for the Bunny King to boost your position in the game. These may involve influencing rabbit masters. You keep them secret until the end of the game when they add extra points to your cities and resources.

The game is played over 4 turns. Points are given at the end of each turn for cities and resources. A final round of scoring happens at the end of turn 4. The player with the most points wins.

Look at the cute bunnies in Bunny Kingdom on Amazon.

2. Treasure Hunter (2015)

Number of players: 2-6
Time to play: 40 minutes

You are on a quest to collect the most valuable treasure and coins. At the start of the game, treasures are placed on the board across three of the seasons: spring, summer, fall, and winter. Some treasures are highly valuable and some are completely worthless.

Players are then given a hand of cards and need to select one and then pass them to the player on their left or right depending on the turn.

Using your insight into the cards available, you try to select the cards that help you get the treasures you want while blocking your opponents from getting what they want. This card drafting continues until each player has a hand of 9 cards.

Now the turn begins. You and every other player must play all the cards you can for each season. Even if it means picking up treasure you don’t want!

After five rounds, the player with the most valuable treasure and coins wins. Take a look at the cool art style on Treasure Hunter on Amazon.

3. King of New York (2014)

Number of players: 2-6
Time to play: 40 minutes

In King of New York, you compete to be the giant monster ruling over the city.

Each giant monster plays in the six boroughs of New York and can hit monsters in other boroughs to take control of them. Being in one of the three districts of Manhattan (lower, midtown, and upper) gives you victory point bonuses so they are hotly contested.

On your turn, you can smash buildings, hit military units, bash other monsters, and even try to be famous – all for bonuses.

But what you can do depends on what you roll on the six dice. Each six-sided dice contains a symbol for damage, heal, destroy, celebrity fame, military damage, and energy to buy power-up cards.

Be careful to balance your hits with healing and don’t leave yourself too vulnerable. If you really need to heal and you don’t roll any healing hearts you could be in big trouble!

You win by being the first to collect 20 victory points or by being the last monster standing. Raarrr!

Check out what people are saying about King of New York on Amazon.

4. King of Tokyo (2011)

Number of players: 2-6
Time to play: 30 minutes

King of Tokyo is like King of New York. You play as a huge monster who wants to rule Tokyo City.

Taking control of Tokyo City gives you victory point bonuses and allows you to hit all the monsters outside Tokyo. But be careful. While you’re in Tokyo, all the other monsters will be hitting you and you can’t heal while ruling the city!

Each turn you roll six dice. On each six-sided dice there are symbols for damage, heal, energy points to buy special powers up cards, and the numbers 1, 2, and 3. Rolling three of a kind of the numbers gets you that many victory points.

You can roll your dice up to three times per turn. On each roll, you decide which dice to keep and which dice to roll again. So if you roll 2x3s and you want to try for another 3, you can reroll your remaining 4 dice twice again and keep any threes they land on.

Just like King of New York, you win by being the first to collect 20 victory points or by being the last monster standing. King of Tokyo is usually available at a reasonable price because it’s popular.

Check the price of King of Tokyo on Amazon.

For tips and tricks on how to improve your chances of being the King of Tokyo, check out my article: How to Win King of Tokyo – Strategies and Tactics.

5. Stonehenge (2007)

Number of players: 2-5 players
Time to play: 60 minutes

Stonehenge is a really interesting game. It’s actually 5 games in one, each game designed by a different award-winning game designer. All the games are set at Stonehenge.

While all the games use the same game components, the games each have their own theme and set of rules and they play very differently. The 5 games are:

A magical assembly game by Richard Garfield (Magic: The Gathering)
An Arthurian showdown game by Richard Borg (Citadels)
A druid election game by Bruno Faidutti (Liar’s Dice)
A fire sale game by James Ernest (Kill Dr. Lucky)
An alien chariot race game by Mike Selinker (Axis & Allies Revised)

Players are encouraged to make up their own games and share them with the board game community on the publisher Paizo’s site.

Amazon usually has copies of Stonehenge available.

6. Rocketville (2006)

Number of players: 3-5
Time to play: 45 minutes

In Rocketville, you want to be the new Mayor. And you’ll do whatever it takes to get there.

You take your campaign to the skies on your rocket and travel from district to district persuading people to vote for you. You get endorsements, make promises, and recruit robots to help you get the most votes and win the position of Mayor!

Rocketville is usually available on Amazon. There are a couple of different publishers – Avalon Hill and Fantasy Flight, but the game is exactly the same.

7. Pecking Order (2006)

Number of players: 2
Time to play: 20 minutes

A co-designed game between Richard Garfield and George Elias, Pecking Order is a game where two players compete for the best feeding locations.

Each player has 12 birds numbered 1-12 and one tiger. But there are only 10 feeding spots on the board and only one bird can be at each space.

Using bluffing and clever placement of your birds and tiger, you want to win the best feeding locations on the board. Do that, and you win.

See if copies of Pecking Order are available to buy on Amazon.

8. Filthy Rich (1998)

Number of players: 2-5
Time to play: 60 minutes

In Filthy Rich, players compete to build up their billboards businesses, get rich and buy luxuries.

The game includes 4 ring binder plastic sheets made by the card sleeve protector manufacturer Ultra Pro. (For more about card protector sleeves check out my article, 28 Must Have Board Game Accessories and Upgrades).

When players launch a business billboard they place a card in a slot on these sheets. Players roll business dice. If the business dice result matches the position of your billboard, you earn money. The more money you earn, the more luxuries you can buy.

Random events and action cards make the game more than just dice rolls. As does the randomly occurring tax round where everyone must pay tax on all the business and luxuries or sell off their business. The first player to own three luxuries wins.

Because it was first printed in 1998, it’s hard to get hold of a copy of Filthy Rich, but sometimes they are on Amazon.

9. Robo Rally (1994, updated 2016)

Number of players: 2-6 players
Time to play: 20-120 minutes

You play as a robot who works in a factory building supercars. It’s Saturday night and you and your robot colleagues are having fun racing the supercars around the factory.

But the factory is full of moving conveyor belts, computer SPAM and lasers which you need to avoid! You also need to look after yourself – your energy, your SPAM damage, and your physical damage.

Each turn has three phases: Upgrade, Programme, and Activate. In Upgrade, you can pay to upgrade your robot. In Programme, you must select 5 action cards and play them face down on your player mat.

In Activate, the robots carry out the actions in card order. Everyone around the table does action 1, then action 2, etc. Depending on what the other robots do, this might mean that you bash into other robots, get pushed into obstacles, get spun around, hit lasers, etc. It is chaos!

Be the first to reach all the checkpoints in numerical order to win!

Check out the cute Robo Rally robots on Amazon.

More games designed by Richard Garfield

There’s my quick introduction to 9 awesome board games designed by Richard Garfield. He has designed some fantastic card games too which have been hugely successful. To find out what they are, check out my post: 4 Popular Games Designed by Richard Garfield.