About
Why a ladder?
Some of the best board games ever made sit unplayed because the first play is brutal. Teaching Brass or Spirit Island to a table of newcomers means an hour of rules and a first game that feels like homework.
ladder.games works backwards from the game you want to reach. We decompose it into its core mechanic families, then pick one or two lighter games that teach each one — so every concept in the big box is something you've already played. The rulebook stops being a wall and becomes a recap.
How a ladder is built
Ladders are generated algorithmically from a curated pool, then validated before publishing. For each target's core mechanics, candidate teachers are scored:
| Signal | Share | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Teaching fit | 45% | How cleanly the game teaches the mechanic. This dominates — pedagogy is the product. |
| Weight fit | 20% | Ideal teachers sit near BGG weight 1.6 — light enough to learn in one evening. |
| Rating | 20% | BGG community rating. A teacher should also just be a good game. |
| Availability | 10% | In print beats out of print — you should be able to actually buy the rung. |
| Curator boost | 5% | A small human thumb on the scale, used sparingly. |
Rungs are ordered strictly by complexity. When the jump from the heaviest teacher to the target is still steep, a mid-weight bridge game that combines several of the target's mechanics is inserted before the summit.
Honesty rules
Three things we do that make the ladders look less polished, on purpose:
- Gap rungs. If nothing in the pool teaches a mechanic well, the ladder shows an explicit "no teacher yet" gap instead of quietly padding the list.
- Relaxed picks. When a teacher covers a mechanic only through a secondary role, it's labeled as such, with a note saying exactly that.
- Verbatim data. Game descriptions, weights, and ratings come from BoardGameGeek and are shown unmodified. Our editorial voice is visually separate — the "why this game" lines are ours.
Disagree with a pick? That's half the point. Every ladder page has a downloadable skill tree — post it, argue, and if you're right the ladder gets better.
Affiliate disclosure
Buy links appear in retailer priority order — specialist board-game shops first where we have coverage. Links to retailers are marked sponsored, and a search-tier link (labeled "Search") means we don't have a direct product listing yet.
Data
Game data (descriptions, complexity weights, mechanic tags, ratings) is sourced from BoardGameGeek and displayed verbatim per their terms.
The site's underlying data is public: games.json and ladders.json are static, cacheable JSON — the same files that power the search box and the shelf tool. Everything runs client-side; there is no server and no account.