Worms Board Game: How to play and what to look forward to?

The Worms board game takes you back to the nineties, where you spent hours at your monitor obliterating armies of worms with bazookas, dynamite, and grenades. This time, you'll be strategizing right on your table. Does it look like a simple game? Maybe, but don't be fooled! Beneath the colorful, almost childishly cute facade lies a tense strategic battle where every poorly timed decision can mean the end of your army. So, if you thought playing board games was less stressful than video games, Worms will quickly prove you wrong.

At the start of the game, each player receives one hex map tile, and you begin building the game board together. Once the map is built, you place the worms, supply crates, dangerous mines, and explosive barrels. You have no idea which team you'll be playing for yet! You only draw your team at the very end of the setup, which takes the tactics to a whole new level. You never know if you've just placed your future team strategically or left them at the mercy of your opponents.

In the weapons and equipment deck, you'll find classics like the bazooka, grenade, or the sheep, which will cause absolute mayhem on the game board. It's great that each of these weapons has a specific effect, and you need to time their use just right. The game is built on constant destruction—whether it's the worms or the game board itself. It's all about crushing your opponents as efficiently as possible, with the greatest dose of schadenfreude.

What makes Worms incredibly fun is the huge dose of chaos and unpredictability. Every match is different, and every weapon can completely change the course of the game. Remember the joy of blasting an entire team to bits with a bazooka in the digital Worms? Now you can experience that live! You place the dynamite, send a sheep into a cluster of worms, and just wait for everyone around to explode. And if an action doesn't go as planned? No problem! It's even funnier when a worm blows up its own team. This is exactly the kind of game where every attack can backfire on you. Either you'll gleefully cheer at the tragic fate of your opponent's worms, or you'll be clutching your head and cursing your own decisions.

The Worms board game will entertain you not only with all sorts of ways to cause destruction but also by reminding you how treacherous the wind can be—just like in the video games. You're about to aim your bazooka right at an opponent, but at the most inconvenient moment, a crosswind blows, and instead of the opponent, you blast your own worm team. Or, out of nowhere, a gust hits during a mighty jump, and you end up as fish food. Sure, the wind and everything else is determined by dice, so even the best skill won't save you here, but that just makes it more fun. As for barrels and mines, watch out for their chain reactions! A single bad shot can send a whole section of the map flying, which can decide the entire battle.

Every game is completely different—thanks to the variable game board and the variety of weapons, it never gets old. Plus, that moment when you realize you set up the whole board wrong because you ended up playing for a different team is priceless. And once you understand how the different weapons work, you'll start thinking about entirely new tactics, which gives the game endless replayability.

What you're guaranteed to love about Worms is the constant interaction. No sitting in silence thinking about what you'll do. Every turn is about sabotaging your opponent, watching their desperate attempts to survive, and savoring the joyful moments when your opponent's worms explode or meet some other tragic end. The game encourages the right mix of tactics, schadenfreude, and luck, where neither player knows if victory is within reach. And when you pull it off? The joy is twice as big!

The board game version of Worms isn't just a nostalgic memory of the old days, but a full-fledged game with a ton of tactical options, malicious joy, and explosions. The game retains its cheerful and slightly wacky atmosphere while offering enough depth for strategy fans. If you like games where you can blow up not only your enemies but also their grand plans, you shouldn't miss out on Worms.

author Honza Kohoutek