15 gifts for those who miss board games with friends
From the The ultimate 2020 holiday gift guide: Here's something for everyone on your list series
If board games are you thing, 2020 was an epic fail.
Sure, there are digital alternatives, but nothing beats getting together with friends or family to play a game. If you need something new to play with those you are quarantining with, or a game for when life returns to normal, this list has you covered.
Games include links to Amazon, but support your local game stores, if possible.
Fort
From the creators of Root comes Fort, a 2-4 player card game about building forts and following friends.
In Fort, you're a kid! And like many kids, you want to grow your circle of friends, collect pizza and toys, and build the coolest fort.
By doing this cool stuff, you'll score victory points, and at the end of the game, the player with the most victory points wins! Your cards not only let you take actions on your own turn, but also let you follow the other players' actions on their turns. Will you devote yourself to your own posse, or copy what the other kids are doing?
But be careful as your carefully constructed deck might start losing cards if you don't actually use them. After all, if you don't play with your friends, why should they hang out with you anymore?
Wingspan
Wingspan is a competitive, medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building board game from Stonemaier Games. It's designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and features over 170 birds illustrated by Natalia Rojas and Ana Maria Martinez.
You are bird enthusiasts—researchers, bird watchers, ornithologists, and collectors—seeking to discover and attract the best birds to your network of wildlife preserves. Each bird extends a chain of powerful combinations in one of your habitats (actions). These habitats focus on several key aspects of growth:
- Gain food tokens via custom dice in a birdfeeder dice tower
- Lay eggs using egg miniatures in a variety of colors
- Draw from hundreds of unique bird cards and play them
The winner is the player with the most points after 4 rounds.
Hocus Pocus
In this cooperative card game, players work together to protect Salem’s children and stop the Sanderson sisters from completing their wicked potion before the sun rises. Play potion ingredients to the cauldron and match all the colors or ingredients.
Binx will offer a helping hand, while Winifred, Mary, and Sarah cast spells to thwart your plans. Use tricks like Burning Rain of Death and Billy Butcherson to help you along the way!
Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion is a standalone game that takes place before the events of Gloomhaven. The game includes four new characters — Valrath Red Guard (tank, crowd control), Inox Hatchet (ranged damage), Human Voidwarden (support, mind-control), and Quatryl Demolitionist (melee damage, obstacle manipulation) — that can also be used in the original Gloomhaven game.
The game also includes 16 monster types (including seven new standard monsters and three new bosses) and a new campaign with 25 scenarios that invites the heroes to investigate a case of mysterious disappearances within the city. Is it the work of Vermlings, or is something far more sinister going on?
Wizard Kittens.jpg
Wizard Kittens is a semi-cooperative set collection card game. Players are wizard kittens who have accidentally released a few curses from the library's restricted section. Now they must defeat the curses before they're caught by the librarian, Professor Whispurr.
Each turn plays quickly but offers interesting decisions, most often around which spell to use and how to use it. Spells allow kittens to draw extra cards, sling cards at other players, discard cards out of their own play areas, or trade any two cards in play. No player can use the same spell two turns in a row, either.
The game ends when either the last of the six curses is defeated, or when the Professor Whispurr card is drawn from the ritual component deck. If the kittens defeated the last curse, then they tally up points (including a secret objective Extra Credit card), and the highest score wins. If they are caught by Professor Whispurr, then the Cleanest Paws Clause applies. All kittens with 10 or more points lose, and from those who are left, the kitten with the fewest cards in their play area wins.
Alma Mater
Alma Mater has players serving as a headmaster of one of the independent universities in the 15th century. Players seek to strengthen their school's reputation and standing. To achieve these goals, players need to recruit the best staff and students, exchange knowledge with other schools, and become experts in the school's four disciplines!
Mariposas
Every spring, millions of monarch butterflies leave Mexico to spread out across eastern North America. Every fall, millions fly back to Mexico. However, no single butterfly ever makes the round trip.
Mariposas is a game of movement and set collection that lets players be part of this amazing journey.
Mariposas is played in three seasons. In general, your butterflies try to head north in spring, spread out in summer, and return south in fall. The end of each season brings a scoring round, and at the end of fall, the player with the most successful family of butterflies — i.e., the most victory points — wins the game.
Cake Duel
A two-player game that is a current favorite. Cake Duel is a fast paced card game. Players play the role of opposing Sheepie generals in the grand tournament of cakes.
Players start a round with several cake tokens each and take turns playing Sheepie cards to steal cakes from the other player. The first player to take all the cakes wins the round. The first player to win three rounds wins the duel. The catch is that all cards are played face down, so any card can be bluffed as any other card, and all plays can be challenged, instantly ending the round. Each round comes with new opportunities to make tricky plays and mind game the other player. Experienced players can also keep track of which cards have been played and bluff strategically to strengthen their attacks.
Dice
Gamers can always use additional dice. Find the perfect set.
New York Zoo
In New York Zoo, you are designing an animal park. Build enclosures, introduce new animals, and raise their offspring. The first player to cover all the construction spaces on their zoo board with Enclosure Tiles and Attractions wins the game.
Gameplay is straightforward as you have only two options on your turn: build a new enclosure in your zoo, or populate your zoo with more animals. But be sure to time your actions well since you want your zoo to participate in as many animal breedings as possible.
Parks
PARKS is a celebration of the US National Parks featuring illustrious art from Fifty-Nine Parks.
In PARKS, players will take on the role of two hikers as they trek through different trails across four seasons of the year. While on the trail, these hikers will take actions and collect memories of the places your hikers visit. These memories are represented by various resource tokens like mountains and forests. Collecting these memories in sets will allow players to trade them in to visit a National Park at the end of each hike.
Each trail represents one season of the year, and each season, the trails will change and grow steadily longer. The trails, represented by tiles, get shuffled in between each season and laid out anew for the next round. Resources can be tough to come by especially when someone is at the place you’re trying to reach! Campfires allow you to share a space and time with other hikers. Canteens and Gear can also be used to improve your access to resources through the game. It’ll be tough to manage building up your engine versus spending resources on parks, but we bet you’re up to the challenge. Welcome to PARKS!
Unmatched: Battle of Legends, Volume One
In battle, there are no equals.
Unmatched is a highly asymmetrical miniature fighting game for two or four players. Each hero is represented by a unique deck designed to evoke their style and legend. Tactical movement and no-luck combat resolution create a unique play experience that rewards expertise, but just when you've mastered one set, new heroes arrive to provide all new match-ups.
Battle of Legends, Volume One features four heroes. King Arthur sacrifices cards to power up his attacks and gets some timely assistance from Merlin's magic. Alice is back from Wonderland with a giant vorpal blade and the Jabberwock by her side as she grows and shrinks to gain advantages on attack and defense. Medusa is happy to attack from range and let her harpies hound you, but just one devastating glance could end the battle quickly. Sinbad grows in power as he gains experience on each of his voyages.
Cosmic Frog
Cosmic Frog is a game of collection, combat, and theft on a planetary scale. Each player controls a two-mile-tall, immortal, invulnerable frog-like creature that exists solely to gather terrain from the Shards of Aeth, the fragments of a long-ago shattered world. The First Ones seek to use the lands from the Shards to reconstruct the world of Aeth, and your frogs are their terrain harvesters.
Beyond the Sun
As Earth begins to die, it is time for humanity to look Beyond the Sun
The faction leaders that once ruled the planet separately, now work together to develop cutting-edge technology and explore the depths of space. However, only one leader will truly reign supreme in these new worlds. Will it be you?
Pandemic
Four diseases have broken out in the world and it is up to a team of specialists in various fields to find cures for these diseases before mankind is wiped out. Players must work together playing to their characters' strengths and planning their strategy of eradication before the diseases overwhelm the world with ever-increasing outbreaks. For example the operation specialist can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases. The Scientist needs only 4 cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal 5. But the diseases are out breaking fast and time is running out: The team must try to stem the tide of infection in diseased areas while also towards cures. A truly cooperative game where you all win or you all lose.
In this Series
The ultimate 2020 holiday gift guide: Here's something for everyone on your list
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Updated
Under $10: 50 great gifts that fit into any budget
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Updated
20 great gifts under $25
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Updated
25 gifts under $100
- 27 updates
Jason Dean
Data reporter
The holiday shopping season is in full swing. Here's an idea for almost everyone on your list — whether your budget is less than $10 or unlimited.
The retailer announced Monday that it will pick up items shipped and sold by Walmart.com from customers' homes through a new partnership with FedEx.