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Have some screen-free fun with your family this year.
UpdatedTue, November 4, 2025 at 1:01 PM UTC
It's become cliche to say that we live in a golden age of board games, but to paraphrase the great stoic philosopher Andy Bernard, it's great to know you're in the good old days before you've left them. Great titles are still coming out by the thousands every year, from crowd-pleasing party games to genre-bending, theme-heavy Euros. Whether the gamer in your life is looking for a mind-warping challenge, a fun evening with friends or something in-between, we've got new releases or old favorites they'll love.
The best board games to gift (and play)
Formerly The Quacks of Quedlinburg, this game matches accessible rules with a delightful aesthetic. Each player is a charlatan trying to sell miracle cures at a street fair. To mix up their tonics, everyone pulls random ingredients from a bag, with each new additive making the potion more impressive. Take care, though, lest you pull too many of the dreaded "cherry bombs" and the potion explodes in your face! After each round, you get to buy more ingredients that let you cook for longer, while each day's fortune card switches up the rules in an exciting new way.
Have you ever come up with a weird story as a mnemonic to help you remember something? I love doing that, especially since the stranger the story, the better it works — I never forgot my license plate number again after coming up with Canadian 007 (long story). In Wilmot's Warehouse, a dementedly fun party game, you and your friends have to memorize a sequence of images by agreeing on a story that ties them all together. The more tiles that come up, the weirder the story gets. At the end, you only have five minutes to correctly pick 35 face-down tiles from the warehouse, so make sure your mnemonic is up to snuff!
If anyone on your list loves both board games and mysteries, the choice of Consulting Detective is… elementary. To play this cooperative Sherlock Holmes adventure-in-a-box, you'll read an introductory scene, then take turns racing around London to gather clues and interrogate witnesses. A detailed map, a fictional address book and several allies drawn from the Conan Doyle canon get you into the mood fast. Before long, you'll find yourself arguing with your friends over whether the killer could have gotten from the crime scene back to their box at Covent Garden without hiring a hackney, or checking every tobacconist in the city for the suspect's preferred brand of cigar.
Betrayal is a certified classic. For many years, gamers have gathered to send explorers into a creepy, labyrinthine manor to encounter terrifying specters and beguiling mysteries. One of them will betray the others and side with the horrors — but nobody knows who that will be until halfway through the game. Once the traitor is revealed, the "haunt" starts and all bets are off. You might have to battle a vampire, slay a dragon or (my personal favorite) fight each other to the death over the last parachute as a giant bird carries the house away. The new 3rd edition features scenario cards that explain why all these weirdos came to the haunted house in the first place.
This smash-hit game is the closest thing to a Catan killer we've seen in the last 10 years — chances are, if someone likes board games, they'll like Wingspan. Players compete to build the best bird habitat, luring in species from common crows and starlings to the majestic scissor-tailed flycatcher that adorns the box. You have four actions to choose from each turn, but every bird you place makes those actions more powerful, setting up satisfying combos by the final round. Two spinoffs, the aquatic Finspan and the fantasy-themed Wyrmspan, are both excellent in their own right.
Two-player games are great. Co-op games are great. What about both!? In Sky Team, two players represent a pilot and co-pilot trying to land a plane — and let me tell you, after a couple of rounds, you'll understand why some people applaud after landing. Each round, you'll both roll four dice and assign them to tasks in the cockpit. You'll need to reduce your speed, deploy landing gear, communicate with the control tower and make sure you have enough coffee. My favorite thing about Sky Team is how quickly you and your partner get into a rhythm: by the end, you'll be silently trusting each other to handle business, just like a real flight crew. There's also a ton of replay value as you work up to increasingly difficult airports, including the final boss of Paro, Bhutan (if you get the chance to go there IRL, just take the bus).
Way back in 2008, Matt Leacock upended the gaming world with Pandemic, a game where players played against the board instead of each other. Now that pandemics aren't as fun to think about anymore, Leacock has changed the game again — this time, with Daybreak, a cooperative game that challenges players to solve climate change. Each player represents a political faction (the United States, the European Union, China or the rest of the world) with cards allowing a different set of actions. You can do as many actions on your turn as you can pay for. By selecting the right innovations and working together, you'll face up to the curveballs the game throws at you, from natural disasters to political turmoil. Best of all, the entire game is made of wood and cardboard without an ounce of plastic.
One of my favorite trends in gaming recently has been the rejiggering of popular titles into tight two-player battles. I honestly prefer 7 Wonders Duel to 7 Wonders and Splendor Duel to Splendor — something about the two-person retooling has a way of smoothing out the flaws of the original. Now I've got a new favorite. Azul Duel retains the classic Azul series gameplay innovation: each turn, you take all the tiles of one color from one tile in the factory. However, instead of going into a central pool, those pieces now slide over to the "night side," where you can only take the top of every stack. The preset scoring pattern is also gone; instead, a new kind of tile determines how you can lay the colors and score points. Just like the original, it's a simple, joyful and constantly challenging puzzle.
In this party game, you'll turn up a row of five cards, each with a beautifully dreamlike illustration. One player, the "storyteller," gives a clue, and the other players guess which card it refers to. Each correct guess awards points to both the storyteller and the guesser, but beware: if everyone guesses correctly, the storyteller won't get any points at all. The best way to rack up points in Dixit is to be allusive, aesthetic and surreal, just like the pictures on the cards — or to fall back on inside jokes, but that's its own kind of fun.
Most of the games on this list are for everyone, but Inis is a real gamer's game — if the intended recipient doesn't immediately understand what you mean by "card drafting" and "dudes on a map," it might not be for them. As a chieftain in mythical Ireland, you'll manage your unruly tribesfolk as you fight to become the isle's first king. There are no dice and no victory points; you'll gain advantage through careful diplomacy and subterfuge while working toward one of three win conditions. Meanwhile, Epic Tale cards throw a wrench in the works, summoning the likes of Cu Chulainn and the Morrigan to swing the balance of power. And it's all surrounded by magnificent art evoking stained glass and illuminated manuscripts (fun fact: one of the artists, Jim FitzPatrick, is the original creator of the Che Guevara t-shirt).
Do you love adding cards to a deck until it becomes an unstoppable juggernaut, but don't have the time or money to get into Magic: The Gathering? Then Dominion is the game for you: a deckbuilder where all the deckbuilding happens during the game itself. At the start, you can play one action and buy one card each turn, but soon your powers will snowball until you're slinging chains of plays that make your opponents green with envy. The best thing about Dominion is its versatility — you pick 10 types of upgrade cards each game, but there are now so many expansions that the number of possible games is somewhere north of 12 hojillion. The most recent set, Rising Sun, adds new mechanics and cards with a Japanese flair.
Ark Nova was a surprise, pandemic-era sleeper hit that remains a blast today. Players each build a zoo by drafting cards from a common display, but you can't just fill a park with exotic animals. This is a modern zoo, so you'll also have to fund conservation projects, advance scientific research and make sure your star attractions have the proper environments to thrive. Though it seems complex at first, Ark Nova has a rhythm that makes every turn exciting — every time I play, I have so much fun building my zoo that I never care whether I win or lose.
The Crew is one of my gaming group's most evergreen co-ops — both its space and underwater versions mix limited information with trick-taking for a constantly changing and perpetually fun experience. But this isn't about The Crew. It's about The Gang, a whole new spin on the basic concept from the same creators. This time, instead of a trick-taking game, you'll be playing co-operative Texas Hold 'Em. Your goal is to correctly guess how strong your hand is compared to everyone else's. If everyone guesses the right spot in the ranking, you win that round. Can you and your friends win three rounds before you rack up three misses?
Check out the rest of our gift ideas here.
