Weekends are about relaxing with friends and family, hanging out in shorts and flops while drinking a fresh cold one. Listening to “Let Me In”’s extended version by Mike Francis while one waits their turn in a friendly board game blissfully peeling the stress away.

Here are my recommended games for those weekend unwinding moments:

Kulami – Don’t be fooled by its name, it’s a beautiful abstract gem designed by Andreas Kuhnekath. I stumbled upon this game while browsing a local bookstore. Two players take turns placing one of their shiny red or black marbles while following certain constraints.

The glass ball can be placed on any of the organic wooden tiles as long as it is vertically or horizontally aligned to the previous player’s marble. It can’t be placed on the same tile of the aforementioned bead, and can’t be placed on the current player’s preceding location.

With the vast options, one resorts to simple quick decisions on where to place their spheres. The modular board forms into a gorgeous modern mosaic as players move along their turns. Eventually it ends either by finishing off all available marbles or a player has no more legal actions.

The scoring works by counting who has majority for each tile, ties count as zeros, the big rectangle tiles count as 6 points, the square tiles are worth 4, there are two slender tiles that are worth 3 and 2. The players also count their longest contiguous set of marbles, whoever has the higher value gets to add the difference between their totals.

Pleasing to the eyes and delightful to the mind, definitely check out the game called Kulami.

Tsuro of the Seas – A relaxing game of sailing around the lakes of Mt. Fuji, originally designed by Tom McMurchie. In summary, players move their ships along the lake using pathway tiles. These paths can affect any boat it comes in contact. As a general rule, boats must follow their paths to the fullest extent. This can lead to situations where some boats can be pushed to shore in one swift move. Whoever is last to stay afloat wins. On their turn players would also roll the Kaiju dice to see if any of the sea monsters would move or appear, possibly eat tiles or boats along the way.

Tsuro of the Seas has a larger board compared to its predecessor, I normally play without the Kaiju’s mucking about; in effect it then becomes a pleasant tile-placement ride.

Yardmaster Express – This is Yardmaster game’s smaller brother, designed by David Short. It’s a drafting game that works well even with just 2 players. On a turn one gets to add an additional card to their hand and chooses which to play. The chosen card must connect to the previous card of that player’s train either by color or number. There are times when one may flip the card to its grey side to block other players from getting that card or they do not have the matching card to work with.

Once a player is done with their turn, they pass their whole hand to the player next in line.

Players draw and play a card, then pass their hand to the next player until a certain number of train cards are collected for each player. Players then tally up their score for each cabin card in their train as well as add the points if they have the longest color sequence.

Very simple to teach, fast to pickup and play, minimalist in design and tablespace yet still provides engaging moments of strategy, perfect for coffee dates providing more time to enjoy the table banter.

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What games do you have in your collection that just makes you calm and relaxed? Post your pick on the comments below. Don’t forget to like our facebook page as well as share our articles to your friends and family. Until next time, make your games count!