Now is the perfect time to pick up a great board game, whether you're looking to buy your gifts early, or just want something to while away the winter hours with family or friends. And the best Black Friday deals have kindly provided you with the perfect opportunity: Amazon has up to 47% off a selection of board games, including three games that feature in the top of our guide to the best board games!
• Splendor board game: was £33.65, now £17.99 at Amazon
• Pandemic board game: was £33.54, now £19.56 at Amazon
• Ticket to Ride board game: was £30.95, now £23.91 at Amazon
• 7 Wonders: Duel board game: was £26.10, now £15.71 at Amazon
Those are the four I wanted to specifically call out from Amazon's sale, because they cover a great range of game types – including the fact that 7 Wonders: Duel is specifically a two-player game. Meanwhile, Splendor, Pandemic and Ticket to Ride are all in my guide to the top board games, and play with 2-4 players (or 2-5 in Ticket to Ride's case).
Splendor is maybe my top pick here at this price. Yes, it has the biggest discount, but it's also such a simple and satisfying game to play. In it, you use gems (represented by weighty poker-type chips) to buy mines that produce more gems, and you then use more gems to buy even better mines that give you victory points. The game just builds and builds – early on, you're carefully saving to get just a single mine, and then at the end you're combining ridiculous piles of gems to take whatever you want. And this creates a smart sprint to the finish line that can be tight and exciting. You can read more in our full Splendor review.
Pandemic is the only game here that's cooperative, so is ideal for groups or families where competition maybe gets too heated. You're all scientists and aid workers trying to prevent the spread of four diseases across the world and find the cures. Each of you has a unique power to contribute to this fight, but the twist is that the same resources that make it easier to fight the outbreaks are also the resources you need to find cures, so you have to decide how best to use them…
Ticket to Ride is the game that kids might enjoy most here, because you get to build train lines across America from colour plastic train pieces. It's extremely simple to play: on your turn, you can either pick up resource cards that enable you to claim tracks; you can claim tracks; or you can pick up new points cards that tell you where to lay tracks. You only do one per turn, so the game goes round the table faster than a TGV.
