2024 Tabletop Game Holiday Gift Guide

This holiday season, we asked our 3 main tabletop writers to recommend 3 games so we can give you, dear readers, 12 solid recommendations. The stipulations are simple: each writer will recommend a lightweight game, a midweight game, and a personal favorite, which could be lightweight, midweight, or heavyweight. Moreover, each of these games should be readily available and released in the past 2 years.

Happy holidays, and we hope you find a good gift or 2 on this list for your board game-loving friends and family!

Andrew’s List

Monkey Palace — Monkey Palace is a game that is easy enough for kids to pick up, but since it’s building with LEGO it’s still a joy for adults as well. Players get pieces on their turn, then use them to build off each other’s latest efforts as they all add to a growing “Palace” of arches, columns, and special pieces. With minimal setup it would be a lightweight crowd-pleaser with almost anyone who’s a fan of board games or LEGO.

Tesseract — Tired of losing at Pandemic, again? Tesseract sees you and up to 3 other players trying to solve the mysteries of the alien cube before you run out of time (and dice) and the human race is cancelled. With great table appeal and rolling and re-rolling dice each turn, it has meaty strategy for both casuals and uber-nerds to sink their teeth into. Players will try to get runs or sets of dice in their labs to try and lock in one of them on the shared tableau, all while avoiding setting off chain reactions that see multiple dice being lost from the board. While it has nothing to do with Marvel, you can still feel like a hero in under 90 minutes.

Unfathomable — Many Arkham-based games have attempted to simulate the growing dread and mistrust in your surroundings in a tabletop game, but Unfathomable takes the cake for adding traitors. Not fully knowing who to trust (or if you can trust anyone) makes every interaction that much more interesting, and keeps players engaged at the table. No time to look at your phone when you’re wondering who added the 3rd card that made you fail that last skill check. Even seasoned investigators will continue to point fingers and second-guess themselves until the last round, as the fully human characters try to bring the ship into port in one piece.

Spencer’s List

Champions! — If you’re intrigued by the idea of filling out a bracket for March Madness but haven’t every gotten around to it because a 64-team bracket is scary or you hate basketball, allow me to introduce this party game gem. Each player will submit 2 or more Champions, who are randomly placed in a bracket. Each game of the bracket is based on a silly competition: “Most likely to brush their teeth once a week,” “Thinks the earth is flat,” etc. Fill out your bracket, vote on the winners of each game, and laugh at the preposterous arguments used to justify why Gandalf leads more of a double-life than Batman.

Star Wars: Unlimited — Usually, I am not a fan of Collectable Card Games (CCGs) on account of never knowing what you’re getting when you buy an expansion pack, but this CCG is different, and not just because of its Star Wars them (which I love). The gameplay is streamlined, smooth, and quick; A myriad of artists contributed to the wonderfully cartoony artwork; and the 3 starter sets currently available are affordable ways to get into this exciting corner of the Star Wars galaxy.

Dungeon Legends — Far too many cooperative dungeon-crawlers take too long for most people to play. I love them, and I wish I had more time to play them, but it can be a beast getting everyone together for the 10th time to hit the halfway point of a campaign. Dungeon Legends provides the dungeon-crawling campaign experience wight light deck-building in 5 1-hour chapters that are both exciting for veterans and accessible for newbies. It won’t satisfy your strategic RPG self like Gloomhaven, but it is a fantastic introduction to the genre, and it’s much easier to get to the table.

Stephen’s List

Sky Team — Thematic integration in a game is a huge selling point for me, and Sky Team just oozes it. Not only does this game beautifully marry theme and mechanisms, it is also full of tension, strategy, and humor. The core game by itself is excellent, but the extra modules spice it up even more. Bottom line, Sky Team is one of the best 2-player games ever made.

Faraway — One small twist makes this card game — which might otherwise be forgettable — into a fabulous and addictive experience. Playing Faraway is an exercise in mental gymnastics, as players try to plan for cards they may get in the future. The game also scales very well, playing smoothly at any player count. That said, it may be difficult for a non-gamer to wrap their head around, so I recommend it primarily for more experienced folks.

El Grande — After many years out of print, the grandfather of area control games is back in an all-new version. Despite being almost 30 years old, El Grande remains a master-class in game design. It is highly strategic and brutally cutthroat, so it is certainly not for everyone, but if you have a group of 4 or 5 experienced players who don’t mind heavy interaction, it is superb.