Black Friday is the best time of the year to buy a board game or two. Not only are they on sale, they’ll arrive just in time to take advantage of the hours of lazing around the holidays bring. So this year, give the gift of board games and be a hero to your family and friends.
Amazon has a ton of interesting board games on sale for Black Friday this year: everything from classics like Catan to future-classics like Mysterium, so no matter what kind of player you are, there’s a board game for you, and it's probably cheap as hell. Check out the best board games on Amazon for Black Friday below.
This game about building railways across America is best-of-all-time tier for family game night. It’s simple enough for little ones to grasp, but interesting enough to engage adults. A game can be finished in about 45 minutes, give or take, so even the short-attention-spanned will dig it. It’s $27.47 too, half off the regular price.
I’m a huge fan of deduction-based party games, and Werewolf is a classic. It’s a game for people who are good at social skills like deception and deduction instead of strategy. While you could play a basic game of Werewolf with just some paper and a pen, Ultimate Werewolf has added game elements and an app so that no one has to act as referee. It’s on sale for $19.96, a 20% saving.
If you want to make the holidays a little spooky, check out Mysterium. This cooperative ghost-hunting game casts one player as the spirit of a murder victim and the rest as psychics, with everyone working together to solve the mystery of Warwick Manor. If you remember the mystery-solving fun of Clue fondly, Mysterium seriously blows it out of the water.
If you take a look at Herstory and think “Oh, great, an educational game,” then stop limiting yourself: Herstory is that rare game that will teach you something and is also very fun. It combines strategy, engine-building, and set collection in delightful ways, and you’ll learn something about historically important women, too. It’s $19.19, too, less than half the normal price.
Catan is one of those “you will always go back to it” board games—it’s among the best resource-gathering strategy games ever made. Catan can be learned in minutes, but it’s deep enough that you could play it for years and still not master it, and It’s half-off at $27.47. If you’re already a fan of the base game, check out an expansion or two. They’re on sale too.
Is it too soon to play a game about a global pandemic? Whatever; do it anyway. Pandemic is a cooperative game in which players work together to save humanity from a rapidly spreading disease. If you like pitching-in to solve problems, Pandemic is a great game, and a steal at $28.49 (down from 39.99.)
Wavelength bills itself as “The Party Game Show in a Box,” and I don’t disagree. This is an hilarious social game where players try to read each others’ minds and figure out unexpected connections to arrive at the answers to puzzles. It’s hard to explain, but trust me: it’s among the best party games ever.
Some families and friend groups are about socializing and carrying-on, but if your peeps are about quietly thinking through complex strategies, you can’t go wrong with Axis & Allies, the classic war game that re-enacts World War II. It’s complicated--the rule book is like a novel! There’s a million pieces! It takes hours to play! (That’s all fun to some people). It’s $50.99, a 30% saving.
If you’re like, “Axis and Allies is for dirty casuals;" give Diplomacy a try. It’s ridiculously complicated, and it’s interminable—a typical game takes more than four hours to complete. Set in the geopolitical nightmare of pre World War I Europe, Diplomacy’s focus on betrayal and skulduggery ensures that at least one friendship will end each time you play it. All that for only $29.49.
This card game’s twist is that cards don’t have suits until you play them, so it’s like Schrödinger card game! A cool twist on classic card dynamics with really attractive and cool looking designs, Cat in the Box is only $16.99. That’s 43% off the regular price.
If you’re in a family of two, and you don’t like competition, this clue-giving game is perfect. Codenames Duet takes the four-player co-op fun of Codenames and retools it for a couple. It’s the kind of game that rewards creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.
