Board gaming is great in part because of the varitey of new options available nowadays. You'll find plenty to choose from, whether you're interested in family board games, strategy board games, or just about any other genre. But just because modern games are the best they've ever been, that doesn't mean older games are bad. For the best board games, there's good reason they've been popular for a really long time.
Modern games are mostly the product of a design trend that dates back to the mid-nineties. So it's of particular interest to go digging for gold in the years prior to that explosion. Here, in chronological order, are some of the best classic board game that stand the test of time. Some of these will likely also be on sale during Black Friday 2023.
TL;DR: The Best Classic Board Games
- Go
- Playing Cards
- Chess
- Liar's Dice
- Crokinole
- Othello
- Scrabble
- Yahtzee
- Diplomacy
- Acquire
- Can't Stop
- Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective
- El Grande
- Settlers of Catan
- Power Grid
Don't have time to sift through the blurbs below? Here's a cheatsheet for what games are included, from earliest to most recent.
Go (~2200 BC)
We're not including well-worn abstracts like Chess on this list. Go is huge in Japan and China, where it originated, but it's a little more obscure in the West. And that's a shame because Go is a thing of staggering genius. On your turn, you place a stone of your color atop an intersection on a grid of lines. If you can cut off all four adjoining spaces for a stone of the opposite color, it's removed. That's pretty much the entire game, yet the strategy beneath is so deep that only very recently has an AI challenged a top human player. Place one stone and you could be playing for a lifetime.
Playing Cards (~900 AD)
These also originated in China, and are also a game you can play for the rest of your life. Because, of course, it's not one game but thousands. Many you'll already know: Poker, Bridge and other popular titles constitute hobbies in their own right. But there are equally fun games played with slightly different decks across the world. You can play them fine with a standard 52 card deck: Jass, Scopa and dozens more. There are modern designers working with the deck to create new, strategically rich games like Ambition. Get a deck, get to Pagat.com, and it might be the only gaming equipment you ever buy.
Chess (16th Century)
Chess is one of the most well-known strategy games, but the Chess you know has origins all the way back to 600 AD. Modern Chess was born from an Indian game called Chaturanga in which the pieces, board, all look very similar. One of the first true masters of Chess didn't appear until that 16th century after the game had spread and evolved throughout Asia and Europe. Nowadays, the game of Chess is huge across the globe and there are a ton of great Chess sets worth adding to your board game collection.
Perudo / Liar's Dice (1800)
You'll see this sold under various branded names, but the game is always the same. Everyone shakes some dice in secret, under a cup. Then they have to bid a certain number of a particular value they think the combined dice hold: seven fours, for example. Next player either ups the bid or calls their bluff. This straightforward setup disguises a wealth of statistics, guesswork and outright chicanery. Making a bid high enough to put the next player in a quandary is a wonderful moment. Being in a quandary, calling the bluff and finding the fates have rolled in your favor is better.
Crokinole (1876)
Of all the many and varied dexterity games in the world, Canada’s Crokinole holds the crown. Boards aren’t cheap but they’re lovely objects in their own right. Particularly nice specimens can be mounted on the wall as a talking point. And when you get it down to play, you’ll find out what all the fuss is about as you navigate its treacherous mix of flicking skill and tactical positioning. Your goal is to get your disks into the highest scoring zones possible, but the catch is you have to flick them off existing disks to count. It’s all about trying to rack up the points while also hiding your disks behind the board pegs or other disks.
Othello / Reversi (1883)
This is often presumed to be a classic two-player ancient abstract like Chess and Checkers. In fact, it's much more recent and, bizarrely, two different men took credit, each rubbishing the other's claim. On your turn you place a disk of your color, black or white, onto a grid space. The aim is to fill the grid with your color. But the disks are reversible. If you can bookend a line or diagonal of your opponent's color with yours, all the disks flip to your side. Cue a fiendish battle of wits that can suddenly swing, even late in the game.
Scrabble (1948)
Yes, this well-known word game does take a bit too long between turns, especially with more players. But it's a fascinating and brilliant balance between vocabulary and spatial play. Sure it helps to know a lot of words when you're finding ways to lay out your seven random letters. But a player that can sneak a ten-point letter into an awkward bonus space will scoop the prize every time. And it's so well-known it's easy to find people willing to play. Grab your phone between turns, and get gaming.
Yahtzee (1956)
Roll and write games, where you scribble in the results of dice or card draws, are very much in vogue right now. But let's not forget their mass-market progenitor, Yahtzee, which is far more fun than you may remember. Sure, you're in the hands of fate when you're rolling the bones. But filling in the grid takes a lot more skill and statistics than many realize. There's nothing worse than crossing in a blank and then getting the right rolls down the line. Fast, furious and family-friendly, get the pencils out and take this classic for a roll.
Diplomacy (1959)
Wrecking friendships for over 50 years, Diplomacy is divisive in a way few other games are. Designed by a historian to examine the political geography of 19th century Europe, the game has no randomness. Players struggle to conquer the continent, with one unit simply eliminating another in combat. It's designed so that you can't win alone: you need allies to prosper. Yet only one player can claim victory, so betrayal and backstabbing is inevitable. Its clever catch is that movement is simultaneous. You write orders down in advance, and all players reveal them at the same time. So you don't know who's kept their promises and who's turned against you until it's too late.
Acquire (1964)
Some credit this game, by virtuoso designer Sid Sackson, as the progenitor of much of modern gaming. In an era where there were only mass-market titles and war games, Acquire was something new. It's a game about creating, merging and investing in companies. On your turn, you place a tile onto the grid, representing a company stock. If your placement joins two existing companies, the larger absorbs the smaller. Then, you can buy shares in any of the companies which you'll sell later for a profit, depending on the size. The result is a masterful mix of fiendish spatial challenges and economic wiles that remains fresh and thrilling to this day.