Ideas for a High School Board Gaming Club

I know you only really asked for game suggestions, but I'm going to go all in anyway! =P

My club runs at an elementary level, and I'm lucky enough to currently have my own room (until we get cleared out in March for renovation work!). I think the most important things to consider are your available time, and available adult help.

First of all, time. You're probably not going to be able to run a game across multiple weeks due to the lack of space for leaving things set up, so you may have to house rule early endings for games to avoid severely restricting your options.

Second, available assistance. At high school you're going to have way more flexibility than I do at the elementary level, but you're probably still going to want to have someone watching over the first play of each game. My wife helps out at my club most weeks, so we can have two games running with 100% supervision. I don't know how many kids you're expecting, but I would try to limit it to a 1:6 ratio at the most to begin with, allowing for expansion as your older kids get experienced with the games and become more independent.

Beyond those considerations, I think the most important thing you need to be sure of when setting up is that you make your expectations extremely clear. It is likely that most of your kids won't be familiar with the styles of games you're providing, so you need to address that in advance. The letter I send home explicitly states that we won't be playing games like Candyland and Chutes and Ladders. Without that, I think our first sessions would be a lot rougher. I also include a sample list of items in our library with brief descriptions.

If at all possible, I would try to do some grouping by estimated ability. Obviously many of the games will be tugging on parts of their brain not easily assessed in other subject areas, but I think it's worthwhile to try grouping to some degree regardless. The reason is that it really isn't fun to be beaten over and over by someone far and away more skilled than you are, and it's likely that some of the kids with the biggest barriers to learning would be the kids benefiting most from attending. You don't want to put them off! The way that I approach this is to have a rotating set of pupils who attend - we split the year into three parts, roughly 9 weeks each, and have one ability group attend for the duration of each part.

Finally, some games!
Citadels was a surprise hit with my 3rd and 4th graders, so I'm glad I gave that a shot. We had a fantastic game of Mysterium this week, although that took the full 90 minutes of our session so I don't know if that translates to your needs! Echoing other posters, Codenames has been a success, but really needed the clue-giving modeled first, and in a similar vein Concept and Dixit work very well with a bigger group. (I have made extra voting cards for the latter, and we score on a whiteboard). Splendor was also a big hit, with the kids getting extremely invested in the last few turns as our session time ran out! We have also played Ticket to Ride, Sheriff of Nottingham, King of Tokyo, Forbidden Island, Snake Oil and Tokaido. Among many others!

Our only real flops so far have been Gravwell (too abstracted and confusing in mechanics for their ages), and Machi Koro (just too much to keep track of, even with my oversight).

Good luck!

I run an after-school gaming club at the middle school where I teach. Popular titles are: Carcassonne, Bohnanza, Codenames, Camel Up, Evolution, Formula D, Forbidden Desert, Tsuro, Coup, Stone Age, and Love letter.

Codenames or Codenames: Pictures would be a great pick. They have very easy rules and play fairly quickly. They will also foster some abstract thinking and communication skills. There are also lots of abstract strategy games (like anything in the Gipf project) that are relatively inexpensive, but might be a good step up from checkers, etc.
EDIT: Just remembered Math Fluxx that recently came out. No reason why your kids can't practice math skills while they play.

Don't be afraid to get games that are not popular on reddit. These kids will have different tastes than us. My students love the following:

Exploding Kittens

Munchkin (We play Marvel Munchkin)

Fluxx (we play Star Fluxx)

DC deck building game

Flashpoint

These are the ones that get pulled out of my bag most often. I try to let the kids pick the games we play.

Carcassone is a title I'm seconding. It's inexpensive, easy to teach yet challenging, not a ton of pieces, it's lovely and it's the game that got me into the hobby and that I still play. I'm very fond of Power Grid more complex and mathy (addition and subtraction) it's a bit longer, but very rewarding, it's also not particularly expensive. Forbidden Island is cheap, cute, fun and quick to play.

My seniors and juniors love Secret Hitler, not to mention you can talk about the historical aspect, too.

I would suggest games that you can easily substitute the pieces with either dice or playing cards. A bluffing game like Skull and Roses does not need to be purchased if you have a deck of playing cards. Just be familiar with the rules, choose one of the suits as the Skull, and away you go! Liar's Dice needs nothing more than five 6-sided dice per player and a cup to cover the dice with (or you can use your hands if you don't have cups on hand.) Ultimate Werewolf: Ultimate Edition can also be played with a deck of cards if you write the roles on the cards, or you use specific cards for specific roles (hearts for villagers, spades for werewolves, diamonds and clubs for special good and evil). I'm sure there are many other games that can be substituted with simple components, but these immediately come to mind.

The other reason why I would suggest incorporating these substitutions is that once kids know the games, they can go home and have access to the same game, without having to buy a real copy. These games also teach some good social skills (bluffing, deduction, being able to read people), and they can get a lot of mileage without having to shell out cash.

Wits and Wagers is a trivia game that you also don't need to buy to be able to play with kids. Just look up a bunch of trivia with numbers for answers, and whoever gets the closest without going over gets a point. First to ten points wins. They learn trivia, they get excited about doing well in a game show, it can be a lot of fun.

If you want to play with the idea of a meta-game, Mao is the way to go. I personally hate the game because of the meta, but in the right setting, it can be a lot of fun and sort of an inside joke with the players "in the know." The only reason I did not enjoy the game was because I was unfamiliar with the game when I was introduced to it, and I didn't grasp the concept of the game until after I researched what the game was all about.

Poker chips are also a good component to have on hand, if for no better reason than to use instead of cardboard or paper money.

BTW, all of these games play under an hour, and with substituting decks of cards and dice, it should be easy enough to keep these games in stock, even if dice and cards go missing.

Hope that helps!

As far as board game suggestions go, you should have games that can take a beating, since they will be used quite often by younger folks. Wooden, metal, heavy plastic, or marble pieces stand up well, don't get chipped if they are dropped, and feel good to play with.

Chinese Checkers, Backgammon, Quoridor, Tumblin' Dice, PitchCar, there are lots to choose from. A cribbage board and a Crokinole board are other solid gaming items that can last for quite some time.