How the Board Games bracket works
Board game tier list without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — Monopoly or Settlers of Catan? Chess or Scrabble? — and after 23 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. A straight list invites you to hedge. A matchup does not, and that is what makes the final 24-deep order worth screenshotting.
This bracket runs 5 rounds at the default 24-slot size (Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship), with every one of the 24 options in the field. 24 is not a power of two, so 8 of them draw a first-round bye — spread evenly across the draw rather than handed to whoever happens to land at the top of it. Because the draw is shuffled, two people playing the same bracket rarely face the same matchups. You can also play it at 8 or 16 slots for a shorter or longer run.
23 picks, 5 rounds
- Round of 248 matchups
- Round of 168 matchups
- Elite 84 matchups
- Final Four2 matchups
- Championship1 matchup
Roughly 2-3 minutes start to finish.
All 24 entrants
All 24 entrants are listed below, including Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Chess and Scrabble.
Monopoly
Real estate trading
Settlers of Catan
Resource trading
Chess
Strategic classic
Scrabble
Word building
Risk
World domination
Clue
Murder mystery
Ticket to Ride
Train routes
Codenames
Word association
Pandemic
Cooperative disease fighting
UNO
Card shedding
Cards Against Humanity
Party card game
Jenga
Stacking blocks
Trivial Pursuit
Trivia game
Battleship
Naval combat
Connect Four
Line up four
Checkers
Classic board game
Sorry!
Slide pursuit
The Game of Life
Life simulation
Pictionary
Drawing guessing
Boggle
Word search
Apples to Apples
Comparison party game
Backgammon
Ancient strategy
Wingspan
Bird-themed engine building
Azul
Tile-laying pattern
Would rather group them than rank them? Open all 24 in the tier list maker and sort them into S, A, B, C, D and F tiers instead — same entrants, no matchups.
How everyone else ranked them
Aggregated from 5 completed Board Games brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
UNO
8W - 1L · won 2 brackets
89%
win rate
- 2
Ticket to Ride
5W - 2L · won 1 bracket
71%
win rate
- 3
Connect Four
6W - 3L · won 1 bracket
67%
win rate
- 4
Settlers of Catan
4W - 2L · won 1 bracket
67%
win rate
- 5
Checkers
6W - 3L
67%
win rate
- 6
Battleship
7W - 4L
64%
win rate
- 7
Chess
6W - 4L
60%
win rate
- 8
Clue
6W - 4L
60%
win rate
- 9
Jenga
5W - 4L
56%
win rate
- 10
Pictionary
5W - 5L
50%
win rate
Getting a ranking you actually agree with
- 1Trust the first instinct. Overthinking a matchup usually produces a ranking you do not agree with later.
- 2The default run puts all 24 options in the draw. Short on time? Drop to 16 slots — a quicker run over a random 16 of them.
- 3Use undo the moment you regret a pick. One reflex answer in an early round can knock out a favourite before it gets going.
Board Games bracket FAQ
How many options are in the Board Games bracket?
The pool holds 24 options. A default run puts all of them in the draw and takes 23 picks across 5 rounds: Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship. 8 entrants start with a first-round bye, spread evenly through the draw. Other field sizes are available too — 8, 16, 24 slots.
Which options are included?
Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Chess, Scrabble, Risk, Clue, Ticket to Ride, Codenames, Pandemic, UNO, Cards Against Humanity and Jenga, plus 12 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the board game tier list take?
About 2-3 minutes — 23 choices at the default size, or 7 if you drop to a 8-slot bracket. It works the same on a phone as on a desktop, and no login is involved.
How does this compare to a drag-and-drop tier list maker?
Both are here, and the bracket is closer to a tier list than it looks. It ends with a champion, a runner-up and then every other option grouped by the round it went out in — which is exactly a set of tiers, decided by 23 direct comparisons rather than by your first guess at a layout. What it deliberately does not do is claim a precise gap between two options that never met. If you would rather place the options into S through F rows yourself, the tier list maker loads all 24 of them at bracketranker.com/tier-list-maker.
How did everyone else rank these options?
Every completed bracket feeds the Board Games community results page, which aggregates win rates across all plays and tracks how often each of the 24 entrants takes the title. It updates continuously, so it moves as more people play.
Can I build my own board games bracket?
Use the bracket maker: add your own options, name it, and share the link so other people play the same field. That is the route to take when this pool of 24 is missing something you would have picked, or when you want a version scoped to one era, label or franchise.