Best Miniatures Games of 2026

A turn in Blood Rage is a small argument with yourself: draft a hand of cards, then decide how much rage to spend proving you were right. We expected the 46 miniatures to be the draw and found the draft is what pulls us back — every age you're choosing between a monster, a quest, and the clan upgrade that changes how you score.

The figures earn their place anyway. Studio McVey sculpted the clans, the longships, and the legendary monsters, and the coloured bases let you read four armies across a crowded board without squinting. Summoning a monster into a province is the best moment in the game precisely because it changes what everyone else is willing to contest.

Where it gets sticky is the first game. The box says 60 to 90 minutes, and two-player games land at the quick end of that, but everybody spends their first age learning that a card you pass is a card your neighbor will play against you. Play one age, then restart — the second run is the actual game.

What keeps it near the top of this set is that there's more than one route to victory. Points come from winning battles, from dying gloriously, and from quests, so the player who loses every fight can still take the night. Point it at a group that will play it monthly; a one-off games night spends most of its time on the teach.

Seventy-four miniatures in a single box is the headline: 32 snowtroopers and three AT-ATs on one side, 24 Echo Base troopers, nine snowspeeders and two artillery pieces on the other, with Imperial probe droids thrown in. Add a double-sided board, 19 double-sided terrain hexes, and command cards for each army, and it's the least expensive way here to put two full forces on a table.

The rules are a streamlined descendant of Memoir '44. You play a command card, order the units on that flank, roll custom dice, and apply hits — which means the whole turn fits on one card and a scenario wraps up in around half an hour. A scenario book and four campaign books come in the box, and more scenarios are published online for free.

This is the box we reach for when there are exactly two of us and an hour to fill. It sets up in minutes, fits on a coffee table, and doesn't demand a dedicated room the way the campaign games do. The scale is tight and the miniatures are small beside a full wargame's, but that's the trade for a complete tactical game you'll actually get to the table.

It's also the most kid-friendly box in this group. The manufacturer lists it for ages 8 and up, and a card-and-dice turn means a young player can run the Imperial side without being taught a hundred exceptions. Groups of four and anyone hunting a narrative campaign should look at HeroQuest or Stranger Things instead.

A two-player starter that also plays solo is an unusual thing to find in a miniatures box, and the AI deck is where most of our time with this one went. Draw the right cards and the Super Mutants push across the board on their own, which means a single player gets a real skirmish instead of a puzzle about guessing the designer's intent.

That flexibility is what earns it a spot. Most boxes here want a fixed number of people and a fixed evening; this one scales from a solo scenario to an eight-player afternoon and asks you to build a crew and a list rather than pick a side. If you already love the Fallout setting, the factions, perks, gear, and loot all carry the tone of the video games rather than a thin license pasted onto a ruleset.

Inside the box you get two substantial books, a set of 32mm figures spanning Survivors, Brotherhood of Steel, and Super Mutants, scenery, and paper play mats instead of a board. Games run from half an hour to a full afternoon across three modes — head to head, co-op, and solo — with points-based battles, random missions, and narrative campaigns to string them together.

Two things to check before ordering. The miniatures line has shifted materials over the years, so confirm what a specific box contains if you plan to paint a matched force. And this is a gateway rather than a closed box: it's a starter for a large range, which is either the appeal or the warning, depending on how much shelf you have.

The board is the reason to own this one: it's double-sided, one side for Season 1 and one for Season 2, so a licensed tie-in becomes two campaigns instead of one evening's novelty. Flip it and the whole map of Hawkins changes, which is more than most show tie-ins bother to do.

Play is fully cooperative. The kids work together to clear token stacks around town before time runs out, with 11 miniatures — the Demogorgon and Demodogs among them — 131 cards, six character dashboards, and fear trackers pushing the pressure up each round. It's a puzzle with a theme rather than a combat game, and the theme lands.

The rulebook is the weak link. Setup and the first round eat most of the first evening, and someone at the table needs to arrive having read it properly — this isn't a box to open cold with a young group. Get the loop into your head, though, and it moves quickly, with the clock doing the work of keeping a co-op table tense.

For a household that has watched the show, that's a reasonable trade, and 12 and up is a fair listing, since the horror is implied rather than graphic. If your group wants a cooperative crawler with more figures and no prior knowledge required, HeroQuest is the easier sell.

Read the contents list before you buy this one: 10 plastic miniatures — six heroes and four zombie heroes — plus 50 zombie standees and six bystander standees. That mix is deliberate and it's what makes this the least expensive box on this page, but if a horde of painted figures is the whole point of a miniatures game for you, this isn't it.

What you get instead is the Zombicide engine at a smaller scale: one to four players, Batman, Harley Quinn, Robin, Poison Ivy, Bane and Batgirl in plastic, four sturdy double-sided tiles, and 83 mini cards of missions and gear. Turns are quick, the rules are the lightest co-op read here, and it works with a mixed-age group because nobody has to hold a strategy in their head for ten minutes.

That's the slot it fills: it's the box we hand to a group who has never played a co-op game and doesn't want a three-hour first night. Mission variety keeps it from feeling like a demo, and there's enough Zombicide in it that a table which enjoys it can graduate to a full box later — or bolt these heroes onto Marvel Zombies, which the rules explicitly support.

Set against the rest of this list, it treats miniatures as a component rather than a hobby. No assembly, no painting required, and the whole thing goes back on the shelf in ten minutes. Buy it to play, not to build.