Mario Party is a series I put way too much time into, and as a result, have way more knowledge of than anyone I know. I can't exactly place why it is I love the series so much, but one of the contributing factors is definitely the board gameplay. I love strategizing around my situation, taking advantage of a board's unique mechanics, and outsmarting my opponents to win the game. I once played a game against my brother, dad, and grandma, all of whom were teaming against me to try and get me to lose; I won this game by a landslide.

To be fair, we did play on one of the most complicated boards in the entire series. And if that made a difference, that begs the question of how important board design is for enjoying a Mario Party game. Despite how little board design is talked about (many people choose their favorite boards based on how they look or singular aspects of their design), I would say that board design is fairly important for my enjoyment of a Mario Party game. I think the core gameplay, particularly the item system of a game is more impactful to my enjoyment, because a bad board with a good item system can still be fun, unlike the inverse. However, in a game with a good item system, a well-designed board can create a fantastic competitive party experience each time its played, improving my opinion on the overall game.

I can't make the assumption that every person reading this article has the base knowledge of how Mario Party plays, which is important for understanding why I like or dislike these boards. Therefore, I'll briefly go over the relevant things about the series prior to talking about the board design.

Mario Party has seen several different styles of gameplay over the years, but the only one I'll be referring to in this article are the games with the "classic" style of gameplay, which include games 1 through 8, DS, and the Nintendo Switch entries. I could include boards from other games in the article, but I feel those boards are strong for entirely different reasons than those from the classic games, so I think it just makes more sense to leave them out.

"Classic" Mario Party games place four characters on a giant game board, where they roll a die each turn to move. The goal of the game is to collect the most stars. On most boards, stars cost twenty coins and sold at a single spot on the board, which moves each time a player purchases a star (I will detail how stars work on the boards on the lists if they don't follow this format). Players are given ten coins to start, and can earn coins by landing on some spaces or winning the minigame played at the end of each turn.

The main difference between the gameplay of each classic Mario Party game is the game's item system. Starting with Mario Party 2, each game contained a certain number of items that were given out by spaces and/or purchasable at shops. However, each game approached this differently, in terms of the types of items and how items were given to players, leading to every game feeling unique (except 7, which copied 6's items, but added in items that could only be used by specific characters).

Mario Party is a game that seems incredibly luck-based at a glance, but the best games in the series have item systems and boards that allow the best players to strategize their way out of any situation, and mitigate the amount of luck involved.

As a whole, the first Mario Party game lacks a lot of strategy. Some boards are essentially straight lines with very few choices for the player to make. On the less linear boards, there are technically choices to make with their pathways, but there is rarely anything to actually consider. The optimal choice is generally just to pick the shortest path to the star. The exception to this is Bowser's Magma Mountain, which I think is easily the best board in the game (and is pretty much the only one I ever want to play on).

This might come as a surprise to anyone just looking at the map, since the board has no standard junctions where a player can choose where to go. The choice comes in the form of the three shortcut paths that players can take for the price of ten coins. However, that still doesn't seem like it would add strategy since the question becomes, "why wouldn't the player take the shortcut paths if they have enough to afford them as well as the star?" The answer: once you pay the ten coins, there's only a 50% chance you actually get to take the shortcut. Otherwise, you just wasted ten coins on nothing.

This may seem like something that could cause annoyance, but in Mario Party 1, there's no shop, meaning there is very little to spend your money on outside of stars. This makes the shortcut paths more appealing, since there isn't much else to use your money on. The board is largely modeled around the idea of "risk vs. reward", where players risk losing ten coins each time they try to use a shortcut, but they could win the coin flip and be put in a much better position than they were previously. Each time you arrive at a shortcut, you have to weigh the benefit of taking them against losing ten of your coins, and make the decision of whether or not that risk is worth taking.

The shortcut paths aren't the only 50/50 chances players are put into on the board. Upon reaching the top of the mountain, players must hit a dice block that will determine if they will take the higher or lower path. The lower path will send them to Boo, who appears on most boards, and can steal coins from other players, or for 50 coins, one of their stars. Boo is consistently one of the best places to visit on any board across the series, but if you are forced onto the higher path, you have to go to Bowser, who forces the player into another 50/50 dice block, and based on the outcome, he will take some the player's coins, or one of their stars. Because the third shortcut path skips this part of the board, many times a player who loses a star to Bowser actively decided to take that risk in hopes of being able to visit Boo.

Woody Woods is a fairly simple board in the grand scheme of things. The only real mechanic on the board is the signs that appear in three places and determine the direction players are sent from there. Some people find this gimmick annoying, thinking it just restricts how players are able to move around the map. I strongly disagree with this sentiment.

The signs force you in a direction, yes, but only once you arrive at them. If this were Mario Party 1, I could absolutely see why people found this board annoying. However, Woody Woods is a board from Mario Party 3, the game that is generally considered to have the most interesting and consistently useful item selection in the series. Prior to reaching the first sign junction, players will visit a shop that is guaranteed to sell an item that makes them roll two dice blocks, makes a player roll only 1-3, or makes a player move in reverse, for only 5 coins. Purchasing any of these will almost guarantee you get to go in the direction you want to upon reaching that sign.

This might seem like it takes away some choice on what to buy, but not only are Mario Party 3’s items incredibly useful, but also very cheap in comparison to other games. Players will often have enough funds to purchase the best items at all times. The extra utility Woody Woods adds to the cheapest items actually makes the item system more balanced, and it’s sometimes better to spend the negligible amount of coins on one of the Mushrooms and save up for something big like a star steal, than spend more money on a better item.

I’d like to highlight the specific comparison between the Poison Mushroom, which is the one that forces a roll from 1-3, and the Reverse Mushroom, which…I mean, take a guess what it does. Both of these items cost 5 coins and are always sold concurrently. On every other board, players will basically never buy the Poison Mushroom because the Reverse Mushroom usually just does its job better. Oh, and the Reverse Mushroom also happens to be quite possibly the single best item in the series on top of that. When moving in reverse because of this item, you also get to ignore most board mechanics that would force you in a specific direction. You also visit board events multiple times, such as Boo, meaning you potentially can steal three times with a single Reverse Mushroom. Yet, if your goal is to go the way you want at one of the signs, the Poison Mushroom is more consistent. Even on Woody Woods, I do think the Reverse Mushroom is still the better item, but unlike all the other boards in Mario Party 3, there are situations in which the Poison Mushroom is the better option.

Unlike most other boards on this list, Clockwork Castle has a few notable issues. The biggest, in my opinion, is the pacing. The board’s gimmick involves having a fifth person moving around the board at all times, and while their turns aren’t as long as the players’, the game still takes about 10% longer than on other boards.

The other issue with Clockwork Castle is its complexity; in fact, it might be the most complicated board in the entire series. Nonetheless, I’m choosing not to hold this against the board much for two reasons. First, this is the final board in Mario Party 6, and is the only one that isn’t unlocked from the start. By the time the average player is able to play a game on Clockwork Castle, they’ll likely be very familiar with Mario Party 6 already, decreasing the amount they would have to learn. Second, while all of the board’s mechanics make it more complicated, every single one of them improves the overall quality and uniqueness of the board. There isn’t a single other board in the series that’s anything like this one.

Mario Party 6 is unique in the fact that it is the only Mario Party game to feature a day-and-night cycle that is present on every board, where the time of day will switch every three turns. Out of them, Clockwork Castle gets the most out of it. During the day, Donkey Kong will move around the board, and if a player reaches him or vice versa, they can pay 20 coins for a star. At night, though, Bowser is the one roaming the board, and will take away a star if he comes in contact with a player. Stars are essential to winning the game, so I shouldn’t have to tell you how detrimental losing one can be.

Clockwork Castle gets its name not only from its theming, but also the way players move about the board. The board is mostly linear, with players going in a clockwise direction during the day, and counterclockwise at night. This alone would make it so players would barely move anywhere, but luckily there are also three Warp Pipes on each half of the board (two pairs of which are active at a time during the day; one pair is active at night) that transfer players to pipes of the corresponding color in the other half. The colors of the pipes will switch when players land on green “?” spaces (which I’ll henceforth be referring to as “event spaces”) on the respective side of the board. Each time the player has to decide to take a Warp Pipe is important. They have to consider where they will land if they take it or not, how close or far they will be from Donkey Kong or Bowser, and how close the time of day is to switching.

One final thing of note is the event space at the very top of the board: one of the best examples of an element of chaos. Landing here starts spinning a wheel that can be stopped somewhat-consistently. One side of the wheel has a sun on it, and the other side has a moon. Based on where the wheel lands, the current phase of the day-night cycle ends immediately and the next one starts. This can be a huge deal, such as when one of my opponents switched day to night right before I was about to reach Donkey Kong. He promptly turned into Bowser and stole one of my stars.

To quote my brother, Alex, on Clockwork Castle: “I think this board is really cool…I just have no idea how to play it.” This was the board I won that effective 1-vs-3 game I mentioned at the beginning of this article.

I'm not sure why there's an exlamation point at the end of the title, or why only this board gets one.

Seven of the eleven “classic” Mario Party games have a board based around the Mario series’ villain, Bowser, and out of them, Bowser’s Enchanted Inferno from Mario Party 7 sticks out as the best. Ironically, it’s the only board in the game not to feature any Bowser spaces, and is probably the most predictable and fair in the game.

The board is one of only two in Mario Party 7 to feature the standard way of obtaining stars. The spaces are laid out across four different islands, which each have two spots where players can move to a nearby island, and where players from nearby islands can come there.

This board’s gimmick comes in the form of Mario Party 7’s replacement for 6’s day and night cycle: Bowser Time. Bowser Time is present on every board, occurring every 5 turns. On the other boards, the events are randomly selected from a pool of three or four, with effects ranging from taking 20 coins from all players, or taking a star from the winning player and hiding it somewhere on the board. As a whole, I’m not the biggest fan of Bowser Time, as the effects usually just make the game slightly more annoying and nothing more.

However, on Bowser’s Enchanted Inferno, Bowser Time is entirely consistent. Every five turns, the island the star space is located on will sink, forcing all players on that island back to start and taking half of their coins. While not as detrimental as Clockwork Castle’s “lose a star” punishment, it is still a good incentive to stay away from the island with the star if it’s about to sink. But players also have to consider if they think they can get to the star and move it in time, and risk the island sinking with them on it for that chance of getting a star.

Additionally, the event spaces are some of the most fun out of any of the boards. They include riding and collecting coins on a Bowser-themed rollercoaster, partaking in a hopping challenge with a chance of winning a star, and challenging Koopa Kid to a wrestling match. This was Koopa Kid’s final true appearance in a Mario Party game to this date, and likely will be for the rest of time. May he rest in peace.

E. Gadd’s Garage doesn’t have any major board mechanics. The only thing that really qualifies is the center area, which rotates 90 degrees when the time of day changes, altering where the paths lead. While it’s a solid gimmick with some strategic value, it isn’t what makes the board special.

E. Gadd’s Garage contains ten event spaces, which totals to around 15% of the board’s total space lineup. Many of these have different effects, and all of which can be used to a player’s advantage. Though these effects only activate once a player lands on one of the spaces, which is usually unreliable. However, Mario Party 6 was the first game in the series to introduce an item that allows players to choose the number they roll, called the "Sluggish ‘Shroom" in this game. Using this item, which appears very often on E. Gadd’s Garage, players can land on the event spaces whenever they want, provided it is within ten spaces of their current position. This creates various opportunities, such as using the teleporters or conveyor belts to change location, or taking coins from all players via a giant…reverse fan? The various paths are also laid out very well, with many junctions forcing players to really think about which way to go, especially ones that lead to the rotating center area. 

In Mario Party 6, you can’t get every item on every board; boards only carry a specific set of the game’s items. Another significant change was made to items as well: they came in three different types. Some were used immediately on the player for an effect (such as the aforementioned Sluggish ‘Shroom), some were placed on a specific space and activated when an opponent landed on them, and some were placed on a space and activated once when an opponent passed by them. E. Gadd’s Garage has the largest selection of items out of the boards in Mario Party 6, and has the most interesting trap-style items. The “Zap Orb” is a great deterrent to moving far, being a roadblock that causes the player who activates it to lose 5 coins for every space they move until the end of the turn. The “Koopa Troopa Orb” will immediately swap the spaces of the first opponent to pass it and the player who put it down, and the “Piranha Plant Orb” will stay on a space for the entire game and steal half of the coins of any player unlucky enough to land there, giving them to the person who placed the trap.

Another board from Mario Party 6, and to spoil the list a little, it isn’t the last one. Which means despite being in my top ten boards in the series, I would put Clockwork Castle in the lower half of the six boards in the game.

Castaway Bay is considered a linear board. There are different paths you can take, but all of them eventually converge back together and lead to the same ending point, where the star space is located. If the goal was simply to get to the end, the board would be fairly uninteresting due to its linear nature. The thing is, players won’t always want to be going straight to the end. In the center of the board, both Donkey Kong and Bowser have boats, one of which determines who is at the star space. Much like Clockwork Castle, Donkey Kong will give you a star for 20 coins, but Bowser will take one away. It’s a shame these two boards are the only ones in the series with a give-and-take method of star gain, because in both cases it makes the boards a lot more tense and interesting.

The active boat will switch every time a player gets a star or when an event space next to a bell is landed on. This requires players to constantly adapt to their situation, especially in terms of paying attention to the order players are in and if they are able to reach the star. Adaptation in this way is extremely easy in Mario Party 6, due to the tools it gives you to do so. The Sluggish ‘Shroom from E. Gadd’s Garage returns on this board, often being used to swap the active boat at will. “Mushrooms” and “Super ‘Shrooms” give a player two and three dice to roll respectively, almost guaranteeing they reach the star space if they’re close. The “Warp Pipe Orb”, a largely overlooked item, really shines here, swapping the user’s places with an opponent. If the player knows how to time its spinner, they can take the position of someone who is right next to the star, and even if they don’t, it can be used to get out of a situation where you’re near the end and the Bowser boat is active, making someone else take the fall for you. 

On top of the constant competition and strategy encouraged by the changing boats, every single part of the board includes something interesting to do. The initial junction gives the players a choice between getting a random free item, or going to the shop, where they have to pay for one, but get to choose one of three. Around a third of the way down the path, players can pay ten coins to ride a raft to a point four spaces from the end. This would seem ridiculously good, except when Donkey Kong’s boat is active, Bowser will fire cannonballs at the raft, and if the player gets hit by one (which has a random chance of happening, but occurs fairly often), they will stop moving at the point the raft gets dropped off, making it unreliable if anyone is close to the end or the raft event’s entry point.

Due to how low stars generally are on Castaway Bay, because of the frequency of them being lost, this makes Boo and the bonus stars way better than on other boards. However, in Mario Party 6, Boo only appears at night, meaning to take advantage of her, players need to get there at the right time. Bonus stars are an optional feature present in every Mario Party game, where at the end of the game, players will get three (or two, in the case of the most recent entries) stars based on fulfilling specific criteria. There’s usually some randomness involved in who wins these, except for in Mario Party 6. The three bonus stars are the same every time, and all three can be obtained through skill (in the case of the Minigame star), or strategy.

While the day and night cycle was something used in every board in Mario Party 6, it was first introduced on Horror Land from Mario Party 2. And on Horror Land specifically, nearly every single aspect of the board is affected by it in some way.

One of the most notable things about Horror Land is the amount of Boos present. While most boards, if they have Boo, only have one, Horror Land has five. Each of them is only available during the day or the night though, lowering the amount of times steals actually happen and forcing players to think if they want to try and purposely get to one. A few of them are also blocked by one of the board’s other notable features, the Whomp junctions, where a Whomp will block one of the paths, requiring a ten-coin toll to get past during the day. At night, Whomps are frozen by magic, and can’t be moved past at all.

On top of that, Horror Land, despite being one of the largest boards in the series, never feels boring because of how much there is to do on it. There’s also events that change the time of day for a price, which can be used to the advantage of the player, or more often, due to their positioning, to the hindrance of an opponent. The time of day will also change when an event space is landed on, and the cycle is quicker than in Mario Party 6, lasting only two turns instead of three.

Finally, locked behind a gate in the top right corner of the board, is one of the most powerful and memorable events on any Mario Party board: Big Boo. For triple the price of normal Boos, he can steal coins or a star from every opponent. This is incredibly good, but also difficult to pull off. A triple star steal already requires everyone to have a star, and the activating player to have at least 150 coins, the latter of which isn’t too common. Then, they have to reach Big Boo with a Skeleton Key as their item to open the gate, during the night without any other players switching the time of day. This rarely happens, but if it does, will completely change the state of the game.

Waluigi’s Island is the embodiment of Mario Party chaos. Every gimmick on the board can result in something big happening, and while the board doesn’t exactly nail balance, it’s incredibly fun regardless due to the extremity of its mechanics.

The first one a player will come in contact with is the lower island, which contains a bomb in the center. The timer starts at five and ticks down by one every time a player lands on one of the nearby event spaces. Any player unlucky enough to be on the island when the timer hits zero will lose all of their coins. At the top of that area, players can leave the island and move in one of four directions, but they have to properly time a roulette to get the direction they want. The speed of the roulette is different each time, and at the fastest speed, it’s nearly impossible to time, trading strategy for entertainment. Luckily, getting back to the center is very easy with all the Warp Pipes scattered around the board that bring the players back to the start.

The island on the top left of the board might be my single favorite design on any board in the series. Besides the bank, every single space there will switch to the same randomly selected space type every turn. This can cause insanity to occur if the spaces become Bowser spaces, where generally unfavorable events can occur, Game Guy spaces, where players are forced to bet all their coins in a gambling minigame, or Chance Time spaces, where two players will trade coins and stars, up to one player giving all of their stars to the other if that’s what the roulette decides. Sometimes players will try to get on and off the island as quickly as possible because they only want the star that spawned there. Other times, they’ll decide to wait there for one of the previously mentioned spaces to appear, in hopes of swinging the game in their favor.

I’ve been exclusively talking about the design of the boards in terms of gameplay, since that’s how my opinion on them is formed in most cases. I have to mention the background design on Waluigi’s Island, though, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t improve my opinion on the board. From looking at the background, the player will realize that this area used to belong to Luigi, until Waluigi forcibly took it over and dumped trash all around it, which is hilarious. I particularly like the Piranha Plant that smashed Luigi’s house with a giant hammer machine, and the Goombas who erected a statue of Luigi in rebellion of the events unfolding. I would highly reccomend opening the top image in a new tab and just looking around at all the little details.

The reception to the various non-standard ways of getting stars that the series has introduced over the years has been mixed across board. However, one that has been acclaimed by nearly everyone is the investment-style board. Well, everyone except my grandma, who refuses to play on them.

On Koopa's Tycoon Town, there are five hotels stationed around the board that players can invest an amount coins in. The player who has invested the highest amount of coins into a hotel at any moment is declared the owner, and gets a star. If the owner switches, that star is taken away and given to the new owner. The number of stars each hotel is worth increases based on the number of total coins invested in it. When that number reaches 20, the hotel becomes worth two stars, and at 50, it is worth three. If a single player invests 100 coins in a single hotel, they lock it down, preventing any further investments until coins get stolen from them, via landing on a few specific event spaces, or a Bowser space.

Outside of that, there really isn't anything special on the board, but I think that's a good thing. The focus on the investment gimmick allows it to be what players are thinking about at all times, strategizing for which hotels they should hit next. Coins are so much more important on this board than pretty much every other board in the series, and at shops, the best choice is often to not purchase an item and instead save the coins for a later investment. That doesn't mean items are bad, though. With how small the board is, being able to cross most of it with a movement item can gurantee reaching a hotel with an intact wallet, especially due to the appearance of the "Cashzap Candy". Using that item will destroy half of the coins of the opponent selected by a dart wheel, that much like previous roulettes, can be timed. It's a shame that there are only two investment-style Mario Party boards, espcecially since the other one is terrible.

In standard top ten list fashion, I'd like to mention a few other boards that rank just outside my personal top ten:

• Bowser's Pinball Machine (Mario Party DS): My #11 pick. This board doesn't have any real mechanics, but is extremely chaotic due to its incredibly small size and insane event space effects, on top of Mario Party DS' already frantic gameplay. Of note are the spaces that send a player to the "Bowser Zone", where there's five spaces in a row that cause a player to lose all of their coins and stars, which is the only instance in the entire series I can think of where that happens.

• Towering Treetop (Mario Party 6): The best "beginner" board in the series. It doesn't have notable mechanics, but has a high frequency of giving players the most useful items in the game.

• Goomba's Booty Boardwalk (Mario Party 8): A linear board where stars a free, given at the end. This makes it so all coins on the board are to be used to loop around as quickly as possible, making the board feel very unique.

• Woody Woods and Horror Land (Mario Party Superstars): Mario Party Superstars is a collection of five boards and a hundred minigames from previous Mario Party games. Unfortunately, Superstars' core gameplay isn't as good as 2 or 3, making these boards a bit less fun to play, although still very good.

• Kamek's Tantalizing Tower (Super Mario Party): The smallest board in the classic series, containing only 29 spaces (for reference, the average space count in Mario Party 3 is 96.5). The board is linear with a star space at the end, where up to two can be bought at a time for a price that changes whenever someone buys them. The toll Thwomp and Toady Shop are really cool mechanics, too.

• Neon Heights (Mario Party 7): A board with a so-so layout and some of the biggeset pacing problems in the series due to players constantly playing solo minigames stationed around the board. But aesthetically, it's wonderful, and the gimmick where players have to buy treasure chests containing stars, coins, or a bomb that sends them to start, is random but extremely entertaining.

• Bowser Land (Mario Party 2): From the parade that chases players back to start, to the shop that forces you to buy an item, the Blooper wheel players can get stuck on indefinitely, and the bank that takes away a star if you land on it with no coins, Bowser Land seems like it would be an easy pick for the top ten if not the top five. As great as everything about it is, it's always felt less than the sum of its parts to me. It's undoubtedly very good, but it's never clicked for me the same way my favorite boards have.

Faire Square is my favorite Mario Party board of all time for a very simple reason: everything I love about Mario Party is present here, and it pushes it all to the extreme. This was the first board I decided to play in Mario Party 6, and I couldn't have asked for a better introduction to what would soon become my personal favorite Mario Party game.

Faire Square takes the shape of two concentric circles, a larger outer ring that leads into the middle one. Along the outside are some "games of chance", as the game calls them, despite being entirely skill-based. The center area houses the board's star space, which stays in the middle of the board. At the star space, players aren't restricted to buying a single star. Instead, they can buy up to five at a time. But that's not all. During the day, stars cost 20 coins, as per usual. However, once night rolls around, the price changes to a randomly selected number ranging from as high as 40 to as low as five coins.

The board disincentivizes staying in the center and waiting by forcing players to pay ten coins to stay in that area, and via the games situated on the outside area. The slot machine on the left can profit players up to thirty coins at night with little effort, particularly good with how much a few coins can get you on this board. The shell game on the right has players bet up a star, and if they can follow the hats around, they can earn an additional star, or even two during the night.

Few Mario Party boards, if any, can claim to have as balanced of an item selection as Faire Square does. The yellow "trap" orbs are basically never worth purchasing on other boards, as in any game of a reasonable length, getting a player to land on a single specific space is incredibly unreliable. Faire Square's center area is going to be constantly visited to get stars, though, meaning putting a trap down somewhere in there will usually result in some profit, especially if it's the "Piranha Plant Orb". The roadblock orbs can be devastating, greatly decreasing an opponent's coin count with the "Zap Orb", or stopping someone in place right before they reach the star space with a "Thwomp Orb". Every item is useful on Faire Square, and even the relatively modest traps and roadblocks have the niche of being common and cheap purchases. As amazing as some of the items on the board can be, spending twenty coins on an orb can be iffy due to the fact that that money could potentially go into buying four stars. Every option is viable, including making the choice not to purchase an item.

Easily the most memorable part of the board is the fact that it just throws stars at you like they're nothing. It's more than possible to pick up fifteen in a single turn, the daytime hat swap gives you a free star if you're even the slightest bit capable when it comes to watching moving objects, and the nighttime happening space on the top center building forces all players to bet up a star, which are then given to a randomly selected player. A few months ago, I played a 25-turn game on every board in Mario Party 6. I ended most games with somewhere from five to ten stars. I won this one with forty. Faire Square is the most true Mario Party experience, and the best board in the franchise.