Welcome to the Nashville Public Library Board Game Collection! Our games have been around for a while, and we want to make sure you're in the know about them.

I’m Chase, and in 2021 I got our board games circulating by beginning with a small collection of 20-30 games gathered from a few of our program supply storage spaces in the building.

Today, we have more than 200 games in the collection for you to choose from! 

Getting started in this kind of hobby can be a daunting prospect; there are so many game options and ways to start! There is really no single right choice for everyone. 

To kick things off I’d like to share a couple of classic games in the hobby plus a couple of my personal favorites!

Ticket to Ride is quick and easy to learn, but still engaging once you get started playing! It’s themed around connecting railway lines across North America. Your main goal in the game is to earn points by completing “destination tickets,” cards that task you with objectives like connecting certain cities together and building the longest railway line.

Carcassonne is a tile placement game where players collectively place their tiles to build a southern French landscape. When significant features of the landscape are completed players may claim the points they offer with an iconic “Meeple” token, a small person shaped token popularized by this game.

In Kodama Forest players work with their neighbor to cover their shared board with as many plants and animals as possible. I played this game recently and had to check out a copy for myself just to keep playing. I found the main system of this Competitive/Cooperative game to be so engaging. A lot of games either have you playing entirely for your own self-interest or entirely together to complete a goal. Kodama Forest asks you to balance those elements in order to win!

Betrayal at House on the Hill is one of my personal favorite games. It’s a game that is easy to teach as you play and feels different every time you play it! Every game of Betrayal starts exactly the same: 3 players, at minimum, work together to explore a haunted house, solving events, collecting items, and finding omens. At a certain point the haunt begins and the whole game changes! There are seemingly limitless scenarios for the second half of this game: I’ve probably played the game 20 times or more over the years and have never played the same scenario twice. 

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We are always looking for more games to add to our collection, so let us know what games you would like to see by making a purchase suggestion!

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Or if you need to make space in your closet for all those new games you’ve been buying, we always appreciate any board game donations that you are willing to offer!

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