Portland Area Board Games and RPGs

My neighborhood library, the Midland branch at SE 122nd and Morrison, completed a lengthy renovation in late 2024. Since the summer of 2025, I've been organizing a meetup focused on playing hobby and strategy board games in the new meeting rooms on the first Sunday of each month. These rooms are explicitly for community use and open to the public, so I'm quite proud of the welcoming, relaxed atmosphere we've been able to create. So far there's been a mix of interest in shorter/lighter games and longer, more involved games, and we've been able to organize pretty organically without anyone having to wait too long. Still, if you're interested in something longer or more complex, I'd suggest arriving at the beginning so we can get that going from the jump.

The next East Portland Tabletop Arcade will meet on Sunday, September 6th, 2026, from 1:00 to 5:00 PM in Community Room 1F of the Midland branch of the Multnomah County Library. I've been choosing a broad theme each month and bringing a few selections in that vein to have available. Playing these is hardly mandatory, of course - I'll have a number of other games with me, and I hope that anyone who attends will feel free to bring stuff that they're interested in getting to the table. For September, the theme is IN THE GARDEN, and I'll be bringing several gardening- and agriculture-themed games:

AGRICOLA (Rosenberg, 2007, 2-5 players, high complexity): In Agricola, you're a farmer in a wooden shack with your spouse and little else. At first, on a turn, your family gets to take only two actions, one for you and one for your spouse, as might be found among all the possibilities on a farm: plowing fields; collecting materials; building fences, and so on. There are numerous choices available, and while the game progresses you'll have more and more, as each round a new action card is flipped over, offering one more possible action. Agricola is a turn-based game, and the problem to be overcome is that each available action can be taken by only one player each round so it's important to be careful about your choices.

FLOURISH (Wilson & Wilson, 2021, 2-7 players, low complexity): Flourish is a beautiful, card-drafting, garden-building game in which players plan and build the garden of their dreams over the course of the growing season. With delightful imagery, players plan their gardens throughout the game to collect the most points. This easy-to-learn game offers both competitive strategy and co-operative game modes, and a 1-7 player count provides a high level of accessibility and replayability.

THREE SISTERS (Pinchback & Riddle, 2022, 2-4 players, medium complexity): Three Sisters is a strategic roll-and-write game about backyard farming. Three Sisters is named after an indigenous agricultural technique still widely used today in which three different crops — pumpkins, corn, and beans — are planted close together. Corn provides a lattice for beans to climb, the beans bring nitrogen from the air into the soil, and the squash provides a natural mulch ground cover to reduce weeds and keep pests away. In the game, you have your own player sheet with multiple areas: the garden, which is divided into six numbered zones, each containing the three crop types; the apiary; compost; perennials; goods; fruit; and the shed, which is filled with tools that have special abilities. All the crops, fruits, flowers, and hives are represented by tracks that you will mark off as you acquire these items. Many of the tracks are interconnected with other elements in the game, giving you bonuses along the way. After eight rounds, you score points for harvested crops, perennials, the apiary, fruit, and some shed items. Whoever has the most points wins.

The library itself is quite nice, especially after its recent facelift, and is just a couple minutes' walk from the 20-Burnside bus and a maybe a five or ten minute walk from the 122nd Ave Blue Line MAX stop. As far as food options, Bridge City Taproom is right across the street, there's Just Tea about a block away, and Los Francos Food Truck, Don Pedro, Victorico's, and Sisters (Ethiopian) all within a few blocks.

I hope we'll see you there!