THE KITCHEN TABLE
Welcome to Gamers Academy
Your guided journey through the world of modern board games—one fun step at a time.
We get it: walking into our game room with over 500 board games might feel more overwhelming than exciting. With so many boxes, genres, and titles, how are you supposed to know where to start—or what you’ll enjoy?
That’s where Gamers Academy comes in.
We’ve designed this program to help you explore the hobby at your own pace, one mechanic at a time. You’ll use a 5x5 game grid (that’s 25 curated games total), with each row focusing on a different core game mechanic—like deck building, tile laying, or cooperative play—and each column moving from the easiest games on the left to the most challenging on the right.
You can pick from one of four themed Gamers Academy cards, each with short mechanic descriptions right on the back (see card details below). These cards are your roadmaps—and your scorecards—as you make your way through the academy.
We’ll Help You Get Started
Our Gametenders are available to help get you started on most games in the first few columns, but may not be able to take the time to completely teach some of the more complex games on the far right of the grid. For these, we recommend doing a little research ahead of time. To make that easier, we’re working on posting links to our “best pick” videos for each of those games on our website (coming soon).
NOTE: while we think we’ve curated the best representation and progression in each category, we realize that some games don’t always appeal thematically to everybody—so please ask us for a substitution if/when that happens and we will be happy to make recommendations and give you “credit” for a similar game.
Earn Rewards as You Level Up
We believe every step of your gaming journey should be celebrated—so make sure our staff stamps your card as you complete games.
Here's what you'll earn along the way:
Complete a COLUMN (same difficulty level for all 5 mechanics) and you'll receive a free game pass, good for a future play session ($10 value)
Complete a ROW (one mechanic, all five levels) and you'll earn a custom “Expert” sticker designed just for that mechanic
Complete an entire CARD (all 25 games) and we'll take a picture of you holding your favorite game from the set and feature it on our Gamers Academy "Wall of Game"
