Let’s get one thing out of the way: nothing replaces the tactile joy of sitting at a table with your friends, shuffling cards, rolling dice, and pushing cubes. Or the sense of satisfaction you get when you make the game winning move and everyone at the table reacts to the stunning conclusion (more on that in a later post). But sometimes… sometimes… playing a board game on Board Game Arena (BGA) is just better.

Obviously, I’m not talking about every game. Some games lose their soul when you take away the physical components. But for a surprising number of my favourite games, BGA isn’t just a convenient alternative, it’s become the preferred way to play. Why? Automation. Speed. Clarity. No setup or tear down. No rules mistakes. No cheezies fingers mucking up my cards. Let me elaborate down some of the reasons why BGA elevates the game playing experience.

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Why BGA Elevates Certain Games

1. Automation

Setup? Immediate. Scoring? Instant. Shuffling? Never worry about someone with sleight of hand techniques again. Have one friend who insists on rolling dice ON the board, knocking tokens around everywhere? Gone. For games where the fiddly upkeep of tracks and chits can bring your game to a crawl, BGA does the heavy lifting. Memoir ’44, for example, is notorious for its elaborate setup. On BGA, you just click “Start.” The same goes for Sushi Go, where shuffling and managing hands as you draft can slow things down IRL. What about 7 Wonders and trying to figure out how many guild cards go into age 3, or how many points you earned with 12 green science cards? Online, it’s as smooth as butter.

How do the tiles get refreshed in Applejack? Don’t know. It just happens.

2. Enforced Rules and Quick Turns

Games with short turn structures or simple mechanics absolutely shine on BGA. Sushi Go, Azul, and Can’t Stop are pick-up-and-play affairs that run lightning-fast when the platform handles the admin. Want to knock out three games under half an hour? BGA is the way to do it! The platform can also be helpful when learning a new game, from having scripted tutorials, to letting you try to click on everything and ensuring you aren’t accidentally cheating by holding extra resources when you try to undo a turn. As the rules teacher for my group, it is a nice break to have something else keep everyone else’s game in check, so I can focus on my own strategies.

3. Visual Aids and Accessibility

One of the best features of BGA is hover-over explanations. No more searching indexes and appendices for specific cards only for the index to say the exact same thing on a card. Hover over a card in Race for the Galaxy and boom, you know exactly what it does. In Castles of Burgundy, you don’t need to flip through a player aid to decode building effects, It’s all right at your fingertips.

4. Asynchronous Play = Board Games Every Day

Honestly, this is the reason I’m on Board Game Arena in the first place. I generally only have one game night a week, making the rest of the week a slog when I can’t engage with my favourite hobby. Board Game Arena lets me play board games all week long with asynchronous games. At this moment I have 9 games on the go with different groups, meaning throughout the day I get happy little emails letting me know that it’s my turn and I get a tiny board game hit throughout my day.

One of my friends really loves the asynchronous play, as it lets them sit and puzzle over the board state without other players heckling you to take your turn faster. Being a moron, I don’t benefit from this feature, but if you’re of average intelligence, perhaps this is a boon for you too.

It’s also worth mentioning that for a lot of heavy games, they don’t hit my table very often. So many complex games competing for table space with my one game night a week means that a great, but heavy game like Carnegie or Praga Caput Regni can go years between replays. But on BGA, there’s no time limit, so I’m content to take my one turn each day and still get to play with some of my favourite systems.

5. SO MANY BOARD GAMES & So Many Players

At the time of writing there are 1087 games available to play on Board Game Arena. With another 150 in alpha and at least one new game hitting the platform every week, you’ll never be wanting for games as long as you’re on the platform. Sure, specific games are missing, such as Splotter’s Food Chain Magnate (but it’s available online at Online Board Games) or Stephan Feld’s The Oracle of Delphi (available on Yucata though). As long as you’re willing to pony up the $48 (CAD) per year for the premium membership (or have a friend who’s subscribed start all your games for you), you’ll always have something new to play.

Alongside those 1,000+ board games, there are over 10,000 members connected at almost any time. Of course the players online ebbs and flows as the sun sets on the North America region, there are a lot of very active communities on BGA, offering opponents on almost any game.

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Hot Picks: Games That Truly Shine on BGA

Let’s run through some specific examples where the digital version arguably outperforms the physical one.

Race for the Galaxy

• Symbology cheat sheet built in.
• Zero shuffle fatigue.
• Games finish in under 10 minutes. Seriously.
• Active player base

Ticket to Ride

• Destination tickets auto-highlighted.
• Instant route scoring.
• Trains tracked visually and accurately.

Can’t Stop

• Dice roll mechanics are 100% automated.
• Just click and go. No math, no mistakes. No staring at the dice searching for something that you can use.

Memoir ’44

• Setup and scenario prep handled for you.
• Dice rolls animated but quick.
• Great for casual or solo play without the hassle.

Azul

• Fast turns, clear interface.
• No need to track discarded tiles.
• No cleanup afterward, redistributing tiles is instant.

Praga Caput Regni

• Firehose of resources and benefits? Auto-calculated.
• Notoriously long and complex games feel almost breezy when you don’t need to manage all the rules on your own.

Lost Ruins of Arnak

• No more sprawling piles of resources, or trying to fit the giant board on a small table.
• Resource tracking, deck management, and hover-over tooltips are a dream online.

Railroad Ink / Welcome To

• Drawing and smudging your previous turns? Not a problem with you just click
• Play a full game with multiple players in 10 minutes or less.

Castles of Burgundy

• Full board visibility at a glance.
• Hover for explanations on every building tile.
• Clicking a die highlights everything you can do with that die
• Pick your art version! Different players can have different art sets applied.

Feast for Odin

• No more bits flying everywhere (especially if you have cats).
• Pieces on your board don’t accidentally shift one space to the left because you have sausage fingers (might just be a me problem)
• Great for large-table games in small-table homes.

7 Wonders Duel

• BGA does all the resource calculations for you
• Never be confused if a card shifts slightly in the pyramid and wonder which other cards it’s supposed to be covering up.

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Final Thoughts

Look, I love my physical games. I love punching tokens from their cardboard sprues, re-boxing expansions, and pushing cubes up tracks with friends in person. Given unlimited time and money, I’d choose to play in meat space every single time, every single night. Unfortunately, I live in reality, and so given the opportunity to not spend 45 minutes setting up Carnegie, I’m going to take that chance. I love not doing math in my head every round of 7 Wonders Duel. And I especially love not sweeping up tiny cardboard chits after a cat decides the Feast for Odin board is her new bed.

So here’s my hot take: for many games, especially those with heavy setup, math, or intense iconography, BGA isn’t just a backup, it’s the proper way to play.

Try it. You might just find your favourite game plays even better when the computer handles all the boring and tedious bits.