The Best Board Games That Channel the Spirit of Anime

Fast-paced matches with hot-looking anime characters, each with dynamic and unsocial mechanics? Sign maine up! Re;Act from Brother Ming Games puts players successful the roles of artists who've been granted powers based connected their respective creation forms and are pitted against 1 different successful a 1v1 showdown. Described arsenic “Yugioh meets chess” by the creator Ming Yang Lu, wherever the value of positioning from chess crosses implicit with the interrupts and actions of Yugioh, wherever you volition state your intentions by playing a paper earlier allowing the hostile to play a reaction, acting akin to a trap card. From super-powered Calligraphers to Dancers, Animators, and Painters, Re;Act: The Arts of War is shonen anime successful a container and a blast to play.

Crack packs, physique decks, and outfit yourself with the coolest deckbox retired determination successful Millennium Blades – a committee crippled astir competing successful a paper game. Players are pro TCG players who are each vying to triumph the astir points by doing good successful the game’s 3 tournaments. Outside of the existent tournaments, which spot you playing cards to people points, determination are real-time trading and buying phases wherever you volition commercialized cards with different players oregon the store, and bargain packs of cards utilizing Monopoly-esque money.

Just similar the existent world, the meta of the crippled volition alteration arsenic the crippled progresses and unit you to set your attack and swap retired cards. There are truthful galore clever nods and homages to different games and anime that springiness Millennium Blades a fantastic identity, but don’t fto its silliness fool you – it's a tense and highly strategical crippled with plentifulness of content, truthful you'll ne'er play the aforesaid crippled twice.

This whitethorn beryllium splitting hairs a spot since TECHNICALLY, Power Rangers, aka Super Sentai, isn’t anime, but their motif and thought tin beryllium recovered successful plentifulness of anime, and Super Sentai and its sibling Kamen Rider are conscionable arsenic overmuch a portion of Japan's amusement past arsenic anime, and truthful Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid is connected this list.

Heroes of the Grid is simply a cooperative brag battler successful which the Ranger players effort to instrumentality retired the chosen monster of the week and large atrocious similar Rita Repulsa earlier their forces overwhelm Angel Grove. Each Ranger has a unsocial platform and the respective zords they play with to get the occupation done, and with the plethora of expansions this crippled has, you tin usage your favourite ranger teams and villains. Heroes of the Grid is simply a large co-op committee crippled with teamwork and strategy being beforehand and center. It's definite to delight Power Ranger fans.

One of the astir stylish anime warring games of the modern video crippled procreation is the Guilty Gear bid by Arc System Works. The aforesaid anime flair carries implicit into the committee crippled adaptation, Guilty Gear Strive: The Board Game, which was released past year.

This 1v1 dueling crippled features 20 characters from Strive, each with their ain decks to play that item the styles and moves from the video crippled counterpart. It uses the Exceed paper crippled system, truthful positioning of your quality is important successful Strive with attacks requiring antithetic spacing to propulsion disconnected and rewards keeping the momentum and unit on. Set-up is accelerated and matches are implicit quickly, making this a large speedy committee crippled to enactment arsenic a filler betwixt bigger ones oregon playing a clump of rounds. Like we said successful our review, this crippled captures not lone the look of the root worldly but besides what we emotion astir warring games. Fans of Guilty Gear oregon of fast-paced paper games volition find thing to similar with Guilty Gear Strive: The Board Game.

Perfect for anime conventions oregon parties with friends, One Piece: Luffy’s Bento Panic is simply a silly enactment crippled based connected the deed anime featuring Luffy, Nami, Zoro, Sanji, and the remainder of the Straw Hat Pirates. In Bento Panic, players instrumentality connected the relation of their favourite Straw Hat and observe a caller triumph successful the champion mode they cognize however – with a feast! Sitting successful a circle, utilizing their hands, each astatine once, players amusement a antithetic motion to state their enactment from their turn, either pulling nutrient tokens from the unsighted bag, stealing nutrient from a neighbor, blocking a steal, oregon eating food. Points are scored by eating sets of nutrient tokens, with the crippled lone ending erstwhile Luffy wakes from his nutrient coma a 3rd time. Luffy’s Bento Panic makes a large enactment committee game, since everyone takes their crook astatine once. And similar we mentioned successful our review, adjacent folks who aren’t needfully fans of One Piece volition person a bully clip with this one.

For astir arsenic agelong arsenic anime has existed, ace robots and combining robots person been a portion of it. AEGIS Combining Robots: Second Ignition lets players assemble teams, led by almighty Commanders with peculiar abilities, of mecha from 5 antithetic classes – Assault, Evasive, Guard, Intel and Support – and duke it retired to effort and beryllium the squad that comes retired connected top.

While the mechs are beardown by themselves, things truly vigor up erstwhile they commencement combining, turning the crippled from a strategical tactics crippled into thing reminiscent of the fights retired of GunBuster oregon GaoGaiGear. Manage your vigor and prime the close clip to harvester your bots and grasp victory. For folks who similar a much cooperative approach, further modes are included, letting you and a person instrumentality connected buffed brag bots that volition enactment your teamwork to the test.

With 100+ mecha, each with its ain accomplishment loadout and standee, AEGIS gives you plentifulness of options for however to marque your team, and Second Ignition is compatible with the archetypal game, AEGIS: Combining Robot Strategy Game, which conscionable saw a reprint, giving you adjacent much options. Fans of mecha and maneuver games should springiness AEGIS a look.

As unit members of the spaceship Bebop, successful Cowboy Bebop: Space Serenade, you play arsenic bounty hunters racing to instrumentality down nefarious criminals, each based connected the legendary anime Cowboy Bebop. Space Serenade is simply a semi-cooperative platform builder that's reminiscent of games similar Star Realms, wherever you play cards for their resources and effects to bargain caller ones to adhd to your platform oregon to effort and seizure your targets.

Each of the 4 playable characters from the amusement – Spike, Ed, Faye, and Jet – comes with a acceptable of cards peculiar to them successful summation to the generic ones that constitute your starting hand. From there, it's a contention to cod bounties and gain triumph points to beryllium that you are the champion bounty huntsman successful the galaxy. This crippled features integrative miniatures of your characters and cards depicting scenes from the anime, creating an authentic and amusive platform builder for fans of the genre and root material.

Adopting the shoot-’em-up genre of video games for the tabletop, the Bullet bid puts you successful the relation of antithetic anime-like heroes arsenic you debar rapidly approaching bullets and past agelong capable to beryllium the past 1 standing. The Bullet bid is simply a real-time, pattern-matching puzzle game, and alternatively of shooting astatine the different players, you frantically effort to region the incoming bullets from reaching their ain beingness points.

Over the people of three-minute rounds, players blindly propulsion slug tokens from their bags and walk enactment points to assistance rearrange the tokens connected their boards into patterns that let bullets to beryllium destroyed. At the extremity disconnected each round, the destroyed bullets are moved to the subordinate connected their near to beryllium added to the mix, akin to dropping Tetris blocks connected your opponent. Bullet is simply a fast-paced crippled whose real-time countdown constituent and puzzle-based gameplay marque it a refreshing anime summation to your committee crippled shelf.

Scott White is simply a freelance contributor to IGN, assisting with tabletop games and usher coverage. Follow him connected X/Twitter oregon Bluesky.

Originally posted:

Jan 20, 2026 9:02 pm