What are the best board games to play in 2024? As tabletop game specialists, we at Wargamer play a lot of classic and new board games, day in, day out, as well as reviewing the latest titles rigorously – so we can confidently bring you this ultimate list of our 15 top board games, selected to cover multiple genres, group sizes, age ranges, and experience levels.
The best board games of all time look different for everyone, so we’ve put a lot of thought into our selections – click here to find out how we tested and chose the winners. If you specifically want a game for two, try our expert guide to the best board games for couples – or branch out with our updated list of the best card games.
Why you can trust us ✔ We spend hours testing games, toys, and services. Our advice is honest and unbiased to help you buy the best. Find out how we test.
The best board games in 2024 are:
9.
Azul – best drafting game
Scrawl
The best party board game.
Scrawl specifications:
Players |
4-8 |
Recommended age |
17+ |
Play time |
30 minutes |
Complexity |
1/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Guaranteed hilarity every time
- Dead simple rules and quick setup
Reasons to avoid
- Not suitable for children
- Included pens aren’t great
Why it’s great
Imagine a wild hybrid between Pictionary and the game of Telephone, and you’ve got Scrawl – a superbly simple party board game that we’ve found ourselves bringing to friends’ houses more than any other. You and your pals will be drawing pictures to match weird and wonderful prompts, then trying to guess just what in the heck your neighbor’s manic, er, scrawl is supposed to be. More than any other party board game we’ve played, it generates non-stop laughs from start to finish.
How to play
Each player gets a clipboard, several wipe-clean drawing cards, a marker pen, and a prompt card. This prompt provides the object, person, action, or abstract concept that they have to draw (often ordinary, but occasionally NSFW, too).
You have just one minute to create your masterpiece, before passing it on to the next player, who then has another minute to work out what they think it is, write that on the next card, then pass their guess to the next person, who must then draw that, and so on.
This cycle continues until everybody gets their original clipboard back, at which everybody shares the bizarre journey from their original prompt, through all the group’s drawings, to the final product. Just like in Telestrations, expect it to match the prompt less than 1% of the time – and it’s all the more brilliant for it.
The best beginner board game.
Ticket to Ride specifications:
Players |
2-5 |
Recommended age |
8+ |
Play time |
30-60 minutes |
Complexity |
1/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Easy to learn
- Adorable train components
Reasons to avoid
- Limited replay value
- Less appealing to experienced gamers
Why it’s great
Ticket to Ride is positively the first modern board game you should play, the absolute best gateway game to the board gaming world. The rules are simple, making it quick and easy to teach and learn – but there’s enough player interaction to create a bit of drama, and just enough strategy to get your teeth into as a newbie. Most importantly, it really can be played with mixed groups of all ages and skill levels – perfect for families, or inducting non-gamer friends into the tabletop hobby!
How to play
The core premise here is simple: collect train cards with matching colors and play them to claim a particular route on the US map. Every player starts the game with a secret series of city-to-city journeys they must map to score points, and a bonus for completing the longest route is also up for grabs. You can either draw train cards, play train cards to claim a route, or draw new routes to aim for on your turn.
To begin with, Ticket to Ride is calming and non-confrontational, but there’s only a certain number of routes to claim, and competition between players quickly starts to heat up as you realize where your pals are trying to get to, and race to cut them off.
Read our Ticket to Ride review.
The best cheap board game.
Scout specifications:
Players |
2-5 |
Recommended age |
9+ |
Play time |
15 minutes |
Complexity |
2/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Satisfying, innovative rules
- Quick to learn and play
- Fantastic value for money
Reasons to avoid
- Setup takes getting used to
- Circus theme is a bit thin
Why it’s great
Oink Games’ breakout hit Scout has deservedly won tons of awards. It’s a smart, quick-playing card game that delights the eye and tickles the brain by twisting accepted tabletop norms on their head.
Its core premise might seem confusing at first, but once you’ve spent 15 minutes getting to grips with it, you’ll want to play this easy card game a lot. Which is convenient, because it’s dead cheap, well designed, and extremely portable.
How to play
On the surface, Scout is similar to classic playing card games like Rummy or Whist. Your goal is to collect and play matching or sequential sets of numbered cards. On your turn, you can gather cards by ‘Scouting’ or play a set by ‘Showing’. You’ll earn points if other players Scout a card you previously played or by showing a stronger set than previously played.
The twist is that you’re not allowed to change the orientation or order of cards in your hand – so if you want to play down that lovely set that could win you the round, you’ve got to find a way to get all those cards together first. This means you’re not just playing against your opponents, you’re also fighting the cards you’re holding, trying to plan ahead to get the big plays you need.
Learn more in our Scout review.
The most popular board game.
Catan specifications:
Players |
3-4 |
Recommended age |
10+ |
Play time |
1-2 hours |
Complexity |
2/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Accessible strategy gameplay
- Simple, lovable theme
- Loads of great expansions
Reasons to avoid
- Experienced players may grow bored
- Luck can strangle your strategy
Why it’s great
Ah, Catan – a.k.a. The Settlers of Catan. First released in 1995, designed by beloved German designer, the late Klaus Teuber, this medieval-themed game about settling a desert island has survived and thrived for decades because, at its heart, it’s just reliably good fun for so many people.
Because it’s so simple, it’s incredibly easy to go from not knowing the game at all to keenly working out your tactics and plotting how to outmaneuver your rivals. Once you’ve topped out with the base game, you can tack on some great Catan expansions, too. Strategy aficionados may sneer at Catan, but they’re wrong to – this famous game has a place in every collection.
How to play
Players compete to dominate the island by building settlements near key resources – grain, ore, wool, lumber, and brick – so they can rake in resource cards every turn and spend them on expanding their empire. Things start off benign, but there’s only room on this little island for one player to build the roads, cities, and extra buildings they need to win – so it gets competitive fast.
Read our Catan review to learn more.
The best strategy board game.
Arcs specifications:
Players |
2-4 |
Recommended age |
14+ |
Play time |
1-2 hours |
Complexity |
4/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Unique mechanics
- Huge replayability
Reasons to avoid
- May be overwhelming for beginners
Why it’s great
One-part space strategy and one-part trick-taking game, Arcs was hyped up to an incredible degree when Leder Games first released it. Happily, we can confirm that the hype is well-deserved.
Arcs is a compact yet complex strategic experience, where every turn can dramatically change the tide of play. New players may succumb to analysis paralysis thanks to Arcs’ immense, interlocking systems. However, once you’ve understood its mechanics, Arcs is as tense and exciting as any space opera.
How to play
Everything you do in Arcs is determined by the cards you are dealt. The suits decide what actions you can take in a round, from aggressive movement and combat to careful construction jobs. The numerical value of your card decides how much influence you have in the great space race – the highest-value card played lets its player take the maximum possible actions, leaving opponents to best their number or take a turn with reduced efficiency.
Players can also sacrifice the value of their card to declare an ambition. You lose your lead in the race, but playing an ambition you’re likely to achieve is a great way to score points. Stockpile resources to score end-of-round points, and you’re even more likely to steal the win.
Learn more in our Arcs review.
The best board game for couples.
7 Wonders Duel specifications:
Players |
2 |
Recommended age |
10+ |
Play time |
30 minutes |
Complexity |
2/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Surprisingly deep game design
- Easy to learn
Reasons to avoid
- Two players only
- Not as much strategy as 7 Wonders
Why it’s great
7 Wonders Duel is a streamlined, fast-playing game for two that has you building your own ancient civilization from scratch. It’s a highly satisfying, tightly designed experience that packs most of the strategic welly of the main, multiplayer version, but converts it perfectly to suit two players.
How to play
Choosing fresh cards from a shared selection each turn, you’ll add them to your city to either generate more resources to pay for later card plays, or build your way through one of various paths to victory. You can win by cultivating the best city overall; building a great wonder of the world; excelling in scientific advancement; or dominating your opponent with superior military might.
Like its big sibling – the original 7 Wonders – this game uses rivalry over the cards on offer to create competition – you could pick the card you need, or you could discard something you think your opponent fancies, and collect some coins as a payoff.
The best family board game.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg specifications:
Players |
2-4 |
Recommended age |
10+ |
Play time |
45 minutes |
Complexity |
2/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Funny and unpredictable
- Family-friendly complexity level
Reasons to avoid
- High randomness can feel unfair
Why it’s great
The Quacks of Quedlinburg offers some of the most outlandish fun you could possibly have with a board game. It’s a chaotic push-your-luck game where bravery could net you big wins – or blow up in your face.
Its subtly thoughtful design choices mean no bout of bad luck is ever too punishing, and the thrills of a well-played round will fill a room with energy. Better yet, it’s simple enough that players of any age can enjoy it.
How to play
In Quacks, everyone takes their turn at the same time. You’ll randomly draw chips from a bag to add to your swirling cauldron, hoping for the most valuable picks that will increase the points and cash you can claim. But if you pull too many white tokens from your bag, the concoction explodes, severely limiting your yield for that round.
Between brewing sessions, everyone will have a chance to spend their hard-earned money on new, more useful chips for their ingredients bag. While this exquisite family board game plays out across nine rounds, ‘fortune teller’ cards impose special rules that further disrupt play. With so many changing variables, Quacks of Quedlinburg is anyone’s game to run away with – the question is how much are you willing to bet on your brew?
Read our Quacks of Quedlinburg review.
The best coop board game.
Pandemic specifications:
Players |
2-4 |
Recommended age |
8+ |
Play time |
45 minutes |
Complexity |
2/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Approachable but still challenging
- Interesting decision-making
Reasons to avoid
- One player can make all the decisions alone
Why it’s great
Coop board games have taken off in recent years, but to our minds none has yet surpassed the 2008 smash hit Pandemic, which does such a good job of nailing board game teamwork that we still play it regularly over a decade later (even though some world events in 2019-2020 kind of made the theme a little dicey for a while).
How to play
In this game, four deadly, brightly colored diseases have each simultaneously infected a large part of the world map. You and your pals each play one of a variety of disease-fighting specialists – with every player granted one specific, powerful ability to use. Every turn, the diseases will spread quickly across the planet, and – as a team – you must plan out your limited actions to contain their growth and develop cures for all four as quickly as possible.
Be warned: while the rules aren’t complicated – we stand by our 2 / 5 complexity rating – the game is a genuine challenge, you’ll have to learn to make the most of all your characters’ abilities in combination with each other, while racing against disease outbreaks that can come at any time. Luckily, working together to achieve that is endlessly satisfying, and Pandemic is a genuine thrill every time we play.
Read more in our Pandemic review.
The best drafting board game.
Azul specifications:
Players |
2-4 |
Recommended age |
8+ |
Play time |
30-45 mins |
Complexity |
2/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Delightful components
- Easy to learn
- Surprisingly strategic
Reasons to avoid
- Also surprisingly aggressive
- Abstract theme
Why it’s great
Azul is possibly the most tactile board game that we’ve ever played. It’s all about placing clack-y mosaic tiles in the most aesthetically pleasing – and highest-scoring – pattern. The gameplay loop is oddly soothing, but the strategy hidden underneath quickly grows competitive. Although Azul is an abstract board game of low complexity and short runtime, its core premise is so strong that we find ourselves returning for multiple games.
How to play
Each player has their own board, which they want to fill up with certain combinations of mosaic tiles. To obtain these, you’ll need to take turns drafting from several pools of tiles in the middle of the table.
When you draft a particular color tile, you must take all matching tiles from that pool at once. These are then placed in a row beside your mosaic, which must be filled with matching tiles before one can be added to the final piece (and scored). But draft carefully, as any tiles you don’t have room for spill over and become minus points.
Completing rows and columns on your mosaic is the best way to rack up points, although there are bonuses for collecting all the tiles you need of a certain color. And don’t forget to keep a close eye on your opponent while drafting – half the fun is anticipating their moves and drafting the exact tile they need to take the lead.
Read our Azul review.
The best engine builder board game.
Wingspan specifications:
Players |
1-5 |
Recommended age |
10+ |
Play time |
40-80 mins |
Complexity |
3/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Unique theme
- Beautiful components
- Satisfying strategy
Reasons to avoid
- Lacks complexity
- Lacks player interaction
Why it’s great
Wingspan is as satisfying as it is stunning. Gorgeous art and components, combined with its surprisingly laid-back mechanics, make this a perfect game for thoughtful, quiet nights in. When you manage to pull off a combo and get all your eggs in a row, the strategy is immensely rewarding. And even if you missed out on drafting a crucial card, it’s hard to feel stressed when gathering food and discovering new birds.
Plus, the consistently excellent Wingspan expansions give this game plenty of replayability. It might not be complex enough for hardcore engine builders, but for us, it sits perfectly between gateway game and intense strategy session.
How to play
Wingspan requires you to draft cards and resources, then play these to trigger increasingly powerful abilities on future drafts. The main goal is to score as many points as possible. Food and eggs (which you spend to play birds) have value as points when hoarded, but the more consistent way to score is to play lots of birds with large wingspans.
Your player board has three habitats in which you can place birds. Each habitat also has an associated action – gain food, lay eggs, or draw birds – which grows more powerful as you place more birds there.
A particularly efficient player can fill their entire board with birds, but the drafting mechanics often throw a bit of randomness into the fray. This means that, most of the time, you’ll need to carefully choose ways to specialize your ‘engine’ in order to maximize points.
Read our Wingspan review.
The best travel board game.
Gloomhaven: Buttons and Bugs specifications:
Players |
1 |
Recommended age |
14+ |
Play time |
30 minutes |
Complexity |
3/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Engaging, compact RPG adventures
- Adorable components
Reasons to avoid
- Parts are easily lost
- Not much of a story
Why it’s great
Gloomhaven: Buttons and Bugs takes the expansive dungeon-crawling mechanics of Gloomhaven and squashes them into a travel-sized solo board game. Despite its teensy components, Buttons and Bugs is still jam-packed with strategic depth – perfect for puzzling over while playing on a moving train.
You lose some of the majesty of the real deal game, of course – miniatures are swapped for teeny colored cubes; many rules are slimmed down; and the story writing isn’t as inspired as the original. But in exchange you get a cheaper, more convenient board game that’s much easier for newbies to learn, and doesn’t need a forklift to carry around.
How to play
Buttons and Bugs is played in scenarios, each with its own tiny hex map, filled with monsters and hazards. You’ll control the most adorable, pinky-sized mini, who can hack, slash, and spellcast their way across the field thanks to your hand of cards.
You’ll play two cards each round, selecting the top ability of one and the bottom from the other. Many allow you to attack enemies, and a modifier board determines whether you deal more or less damage than usual (or miss entirely). These modifiers are open information, so they encourage careful planning.
The cards too take some wisdom to play effectively. Once you’ve used a card twice (front and back), that card is removed from the game. Lose all your cards or hit points before completing the objective, and that’s game over.
Read more in our Gloomhaven: Buttons and Bugs review.
Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective
The best murder mystery board game.
Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective specifications:
Players |
1-8 |
Recommended age |
13+ |
Play time |
1-2 hours |
Complexity |
3/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Well written, immersive mysteries
- Superb, authentic feeling materials
Reasons to avoid
- A little expensive
- Long play time won’t suit everyone
Why it’s great
Like escape room games, but want a mystery that properly immerses you in real detective work, with a proper whodunit to unravel via detailed, in-universe clues? Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective is simply the best. The game has far more in-depth storytelling than other murder mystery board games, with lengthy introductions to each case, and a variety of pleasingly authentic-feeling newspapers, police documents, and other clues you’ll have to pore through to get to the bottom of things.
How to play
Each case plays a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure book: you’ll pick a lead to follow, and turn to the relevant page of the case book to find dialog with in-game characters to read out, which changes depending on how much of the truth you’ve already uncovered. There’s an optional element of time pressure, as you try to unravel the clues in as few moves as possible – but you can ignore that and take it at your own pace (which we prefer).
There are four different ‘Investigations’ you can buy, and each contains multiple cases to solve. The Jack the Ripper box above is our favorite, but they’re all excellent.
There are some niggles. Sherlock Holmes superfans might find nits to pick here or there; the ‘adventure gamebook’ element can be distracting as you try to look up the right page without seeing spoilers; and if we’re honest these boxes are a touch overpriced for the materials you get. But all things considered, Consulting Detective is the best detective board game around. The game, as Holmes says, is afoot!
The best social deduction board game.
Blood on the Clocktower specifications:
Players |
5-20 |
Recommended age |
15+ |
Play time |
1-2 hours |
Complexity |
3/5 |
Reasons to buy
- The ultimate secret role game
- Gives every player a unique power
- Luxurious components and box
Reasons to avoid
- Wildly expensive (but worth it)
- Very long playtime
- Needs 8-10 people for best results
Why it’s great
If you like social deduction games with more meat on their bones, we can’t recommend Blood on the Clocktower enough, based on our extensive experience (that’s Wargamer and Network N staff playing in the picture above).
This beefy box expands on the ever popular ‘hidden roles’ genre, marrying cheeky bluffing antics with complex mechanics in a way that’ll please casual party game lovers and fans of brain-warping strategy board games. It’s a lot pricier than other social deduction games on the market, but there really is nothing else like it out there.
How to play
The core rules are essentially the same as any other hidden role game. One person among the players is a demon who kills innocent villagers in a ‘night phase’ where everyone has their eyes shut. They and their minions win the game if they can cull the majority of good players, while the noble players win if they can execute the demon before their numbers deplete.
Here’s how Blood on the Clocktower takes that formula and makes it even better. Firstly, everyone in town has a unique power which can help (or hinder) efforts to solve the mystery. This means no one is left twiddling their thumbs, and all players (even the storyteller who organizes and facilitates gameplay) have plenty to mull over. Different combinations of roles give the game endless replayability.
Secondly, when you die in this game, you can keep playing. Most social deduction games get boring fast if you’re killed on the first night, but murdered villagers can still speak, vote, and help their team.
All these features are packaged in a luxury box which helps set the grim, Gothic tone of the game. We recommend playing with a tense background soundtrack, and relishing in the reveal as everyone learns what really happened once the game is over.
Read our Blood on the Clocktower review.
Undaunted Battle of Britain specifications:
Players |
2 |
Recommended age |
14+ |
Play time |
45-60 minutes |
Complexity |
3/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Fast-moving strategy gameplay
- Great rulebook makes it easy to learn
Reasons to avoid
- Campaign rules are underwhelming
Why it’s great
War board games are very much our cup of tea around here, so it’s no mean achievement that 2023 release Undaunted Battle of Britain comes out top of the pile. It’s a thrilling WW2 aircraft dogfighting game that pits squadrons of British RAF and German Luftwaffe pilots against each other in a beautifully designed dance of death where every plane is a constantly moving target.
Since the series’ debut game, Undaunted Normandy, came out in 2019, it’s been celebrated for translating the authentic tone and detailed tactical gameplay of traditional tabletop wargames into an accessible board game that anyone can play and enjoy. For our money, Undaunted Battle of Britain is the pinnacle of that formula, and an essential play for any wargamer.
How to play
Built on the core of previous games in the series – some of the best WW2 board games ever created – Battle of Britain has you direct your warplanes across the hex-grid board using tactical card plays, but every hit you take knocks vital cards out of your deck and hand, making each turn feel like life or death.
Clever mechanics around Commander and Communications cards can recall some of those losses and bring you back into the fight, but every move has a cost – and while you’re pulling your squadron back into line, your opponent could be carefully repositioning to line up their next pinpoint attack.
Read our Undaunted Battle of Britain review.
Frosthaven specifications:
Players |
1-4 |
Recommended age |
14+ |
Play time |
1-2 hours |
Complexity |
4/5 |
Reasons to buy
- Huge amount of content
- Refined, challenging gameplay
Reasons to avoid
- Expensive
- Setup and games take a long time
- Needs a regular player group
Why it’s great
As a sequel to the already-enormous Gloomhaven, Frosthaven is an expensive, expansive dungeon-crawling RPG that requires a lot of commitment to complete. Despite these barriers to entry, it still deserves a place among the greats.
Its combat-focused gameplay is challenging yet satisfying, it offers a variety of player classes to unlock and explore, and its legacy-style base-building mechanics make you feel fully immersed in the snowy world. We’re completely addicted.
How to play
We don’t have space here to explain the huge number of modifiers, conditions, hazards, and minor rulings you’ll encounter in Frosthaven. What we can do is break the game down into two key phases: dungeon-crawling and returning to base.
Each dungeon has a unique map, monsters, and objective (though expect to see ‘kill all monsters’ pretty often). Your chosen class gives you a hand of cards, and you’ll play two each turn – one using its top ability, the other the bottom.
Combat is made less random by a eurogame-inspired deck of cards that modify your chances of dealing damage. Completing a dungeon is a careful dance of maintaining your dwindling hand size and hit points until the objective is complete.
Whether you succeed or fail, you’ll return to home base with a bit of gold and experience. Spend these fortifying your home to survive story events, leveling up your character, or unlocking new adventures to go on.
Read our Frosthaven review.
How we choose the best board games for our guide
This buyer’s guide brings together the elite board games Wargamer’s journalists genuinely think are the absolute best in the world – and explains why we think they rule. Our number one goal here is to help you find a game you’ll love, whether you’re after wholesome fun with the kids, a raucous casual party experience, or something more nerdy and involved.
The categories in this guide are spread over different tastes and genres, so there’s something to suit every reader – but also so our writers can highlight their personal expertise and passions. We’re not soulless AI aggregators; we’re a small squad of real, human journalists. And we’re incurable, 24/7 tabletop game nerds with our own tastes and favorites – so when we recommend a game, it’s because we really love it.
We’re constantly testing new board games to cover on Wargamer, and every new release could smash its way onto this leaderboard. Every month, we review whether any new board games should replace any of the winners on this guide, or whether we should switch up some of the categories to make our recommendations more helpful to more people.
Rest assured: we’ll only recommend a game in this guide if one or more of our writers has personally, properly put it through its paces. For some games, this can be as simple as a few full playthroughs with different groups; for others (like the monster Frosthaven) it can mean months of intensive testing to get to grips with deeper elements of story and long-term value.
For more detail on our process and priorities when evaluating games, read our How we test page.
How we break down each board game in our guide
For every board game, we aim to explain two important things in clear language: what’s so great about the game; and how you play it. With that information, and our insights, you can hopefully judge whether each one is for you.
We don’t pack out our guide with a huge fact file of stats and numbers for each game. However, for each game, we’ll include a few quick facts that are vital to pick the right game for you:
- Players – how many people can play?
- Recommended age – how old do kids need to be in order to enjoy playing the game?
- Play time – how long does one full game session take?
- Complexity – on a 1-5 scale, how complicated is the game to learn and play, relative to others?
On age recommendations and play time, we usually quote the publisher’s official guidance – unless our tests have found something different.
What does ‘complexity’ mean in board games?
We want to give you a rough idea of how hard it is to understand the rules, strategy, and mechanics of the game and get stuck into playing – which is what our complexity rating is for.
Being high or low complexity isn’t good or bad – but, before you drop your hard-earned cash on a board game, you should know how much it will strain your brain.
For us, a board game’s complexity is about three main factors:
- How many systems and rules you need to understand in order to play, and how complicated the interactions between them are.
- How well the game teaches you those systems and rules, including physical design choices, manuals, and player aids.
- How much ‘admin’ is required to make the game function – are there lots of pieces, tokens, and trackers in play, or a big board with lots of important information?
Now, this guide may be the absolute cream of the crop, but there’s a wide world of board games out there, and we’re on a mission to profile the top-tier choices of every genre, scale, and type.
If you’re looking for something more niche, check out our picks of the best strategy board games, or get martial with the best war board games.