10 Most Beautiful Board Games

8. Inis

I’ve made no secret of the fact I love Inis, the celtic game of area control and magical powers.

The gameplay itself is stellar, tense multi-tasking, you need to constantly be aware of what everyone’s doing at all times, but what made it an essential purchase for me at the time was this beautiful theming.

In a marketplace so often dominated by greco-roman or arthurian myth, irish mythology is such a breath of fresh air, and look at these cards, depicting legendary celtic figures like Balor, the Fianna Warriors, Deidre.

All of these cards are beautiful, but there’s actually two art styles are play, the hyper detailed, dazzling coloured style of the cards, but also a simpler more serene style for these awesomely-designed interlocking territory tiles, creating this occasionally calm, occasionally eerie shifting landscape, a backdrop for these conflicting tribes, chieftains and legendary heroes.