Best Board Games for Couples

Too Many Bones comes loaded for bear by breaking into a new genre: the dice-builder RPG. This game takes everything you think you know about dice-rolling and turns it on its head. Dripping with strategy this fantasy-based RPG puts you in the skin of a new race and takes you on an adventure to the northern territories to root out and defeat growing enemy forces and of course the infamous baddie responsible.Team up or go it alone in a 1-4 player Coop or Solo play campaign. With over 100+ unique skill dice and 4-7 classes to choose from every battle is its own mini challenge to figure out. Your adventure will consist of 8-12 battles before you reach your final destination and face off against one of a number of possible kingpins in order to win. Along the way you will be faced with storyline decisions that will quickly have you weighing risk/reward odds and logic - with dice woven into every aspect! Your party will also be faced with other decisions: when to rest when to explore or even which fights to pursue! The Encounter cards offer fun plot twists and some comic relief all while setting the stage for your next battle.

This War Of Mine: The Board Game is the tabletop adaptation of the award-winning video game that pictures the drama of civilians trapped in a war-torn city. You will enter this experience as a group of civilians trapped in a besieged and conflict-ridden city enduring many hardships that often test the essence of humanity. During your struggle as the survivors you will experience dramas connected with making extremely difficult decisions and choices and have to face the consequences of your actions sooner or later.TWOM: The Board Game features a multiplayer experience for up to 6 players as well as a solo variant. You will be able to personify one of the well-known characters from video game and face hundreds of new challenges and difficult choices. The boardgame significantly broadens the original game’s universe and emphasizes the depth of plot yet its main focus will be on human interactions driven by survival instinct and group decision-making. TWOM: The Board Game is an instant play game with no need for reading the manual before starting the adventure.During day time you will take shelter in a ruined tenement house which you will care about and manage by: removing rubble searching through various rooms (often behind barricaded doors) you will build beds improvised workshops stoves tools water filters small animal traps you will cultivate an improvised vegetable garden fix the tenements’ shelled facilities reinforce the security of your shelter and should winter come you’ll try to keep it warm.Upon nightfall your main duties will consist of guarding your shelter and what little possessions you can accumulate against bandits and raiders. Those in your group fit for such a task will use the cover of the night to carefully explore dozens of the ever-changing locations scattered throughout the dangerous city in search of all the things that a person needs to survive (materials food meds equipment etc.). On your way you will meet tens of characters each with a unique story (residents of the locations you visit thieves bandits soldiers war victims refugees neighbors traders and members of local communities) each encounter is a potential unique adventure. To guide you through all these events you will have the special SCRIPTS mechanism responsible for implementing the deep and complex story and a coherent plot (each game will be unique and different than the previous).Your goal is to survive until the cessation of war hostilities. However survival itself will often prove not to be enough. The price each of you will decide to pay might be too high in the final outcome. So the goal is really to survive in a way that will let you live on with the decisions you made. The EPILOGUES mechanism will kick in here.

Rippling rivers rustling forests wheat fields swaying in the wind and here and there a cute little village - that's Dorfromantik! The video game from the small developer studio Toukana Interactive has been thrilling the gaming community since its Early Access in March 2021 and has already won all kinds of prestigious awards. Now Michael Palm and Lukas Zach are transforming the popular building strategy and puzzle game into a family game for young and old with Dorfromantik: The Board Game.In Dorfromantik: The Board Game up to six players work together to lay hexagonal tiles to create a beautiful landscape and try to fulfill the orders of the population while at the same time laying as long a track and as long a river as possible but also taking into account the flags that provide points in enclosed areas. The better the players manage to do this the more points they can score at the end. In the course of the replayable campaign the points earned can be used to unlock new tiles that are hidden in initially locked boxes. These pose new additional tasks for the players and make it possible to raise the high score higher and higher.—description from the publisher

Legends of Andor is a cooperative adventure board game for two to four players in which a band of heroes must work together to defend a fantasy realm from invading hordes. To secure Andor's borders the heroes will embark on dangerous quests over the course of five unique scenarios (as well as a final scenario created by the players themselves). But as the clever game system keeps creatures on the march toward the castle the players must balance their priorities carefully.At the heart of Legends of Andor is its unique narrative the linked scenarios of which tell an overarching story as the players successfully complete objectives. For each scenario or Legend a legend deck conveys the plot of an ever-unfolding tale...one in which the players are the protagonists. A wooden marker moves along the board's legend track at key points during each scenario triggering the draw of a new legend card the introduction of new game-altering effects and the advancement of the story's plot. In the end the players must endeavor to guide the fate of Andor through their heroic actions bringing a happy ending to their epic fantasy tale.Will their heroes roam the land completing quests in the name of glory or devote themselves to the defense of the realm? Uncover epic tales of glory as you live the Legends of Andor!—description from the publisher

Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is published by Stonemaier Games as part of a collaboration with Bezier Games.The king demands a castle! You are a world-renowned master builder who has been asked by the Mad King Ludwig to help design his castles. Projects of such significance require the expertise of more than one person so for each assignment you are paired with another master builder to execute your grandiose plans. Will your planning and collaborative skills be enough to design the most impressive castles in the world?Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is a competitive tile-drafting game in which each tile is a room in a castle. You work together with the player on your left to design one castle and with the player on your right on another castle. On each turn you select two tiles from your hand reveal them then work with your partners to place them. To win you have to share your attention and your devotion between two castles.This game includes 147 regular room tiles with unique art 83 other tiles 20 bonus cards 7 custom wooden castle tokens 1 full-color double-sided scorepad and a 4-piece Game Trayz custom insert that reduces setup time to less than 60 seconds.—description from the publisher

It is the early 1800s a time of immense construction and urbanization. You are a world-renowned master city planner who has been asked to redesign two different cities. Projects of such significance require the expertise of more than one person so for each assignment you are paired with a partner with whom to discuss and execute your grandiose plans. Will your planning and collaborative skills be enough to design the most impressive city in the world?Between Two Cities is a partnership-driven tile-drafting game in which each tile represents part of a city: factory shop park landmarks etc. You work with the player on your left to design the heart of one city and with the player on your right to design the heart of another city. On each turn you select two tiles from hand reveal them then work with your partners separately to place one of those tiles into each of your two cities before passing the remaining hand of tiles around the table.At the end of the game each city is scored for its livability. Your final score is the lower of the livability scores of the two cities you helped design. To win you have to share your attention and your devotion between two cities. The player with the highest final score wins the game.The game features play for 3-7 players in 20-25 minutes a 2-player variant for head-to-head competition as well as a solo variant (Automa).

In the multiplayer puzzle game Railroad Ink your goal is to connect as many exits on your board as possible. Each round a set of dice are rolled in the middle of the table determining which kind of road and railway routes are available to all players. You have to draw these routes on your erasable boards to create transport lines and connect your exits trying to optimize the available symbols better than your opponents.The more exits you connect the more points you score at the end of the game but you lose points for each incomplete route so plan carefully! Will you press your luck and try to stretch your transportation network to the next exit or will you play it safe and start a new simpler to manage route?Railroad Ink comes in two versions each one including two expansions with additional dice sets that add special rules to your games. The Blazing Red Edition includes the Lava and Meteor expansions. Try to confine the lava coming from the erupting volcano before it destroys your routes or deal with the havoc brought by the meteor strikes and mine the craters for precious ore. These special rules can spice up things and make each game play and feel different.Each box allows you to play from 1 to 6 players and if you combine more boxes you can play with up to 12 players (or more). The only limit to the number of players is the number of boards you have!

A deceptively cute deceivingly challenging abstract strategy game for two players.Every time you place a kitten on the bed it goes “boop.” Which is to say that it pushes every other kitten on the board one space away. Line up three kittens in a row to graduate them into cats… and then get three cats in a row to win.But that isn’t easy with both you AND your opponent constantly “booping” kittens around. It’s like… herding cats! Can you “boop” your cats into position to win? Or will you just get “booped” right off the bed?

SHOBU is a beautifully crafted abstract strategy game for 2 players. The game features 4 square wood boards (2 of each color) and 16 natural river stones for each player in two colors with a rope dividing the play area in half.Your turn is in two parts. First a player may move one of their stones up to two spaces in any direction including diagonally in what is called a passive (or set up) move. Second they take a more aggressive move which must be the same direction and number of spaces as the first move. It is this second move that allows you to push stones across the board - or off the board's edge. Remove all four of your opponent's stones from just one of the four boards to win.SHOBU evokes the feeling of GO or CHESS but provides its own unique challenge. It feels immediately familiar and yet is wholly distinct and engaging.-description from publisher

Decorum is a cooperative hidden information game where you and your partner share the same objective: decorate your home in a way that makes you both happy. The problem is different things make each of you happy and nobody says exactly what they need. Can you find a happy compromise or is it time to move out?!-Play through 30 unique scenarios each introducing new twists and challenges. -Keep your conditions a secret they say how you want the house decorated. -Add remove and swap objects or repaint rooms to make the house look just right… for you. -Respond with “Love it” “Hate it” or “Fine with it” to work together toward a perfectly decorated home. -There is a solution for each scenario the trick is figuring it out in time.At its heart Décorum is a pretty straightforward logic puzzle. There are a small number of ways to arrange the internal pieces that meet all the requirements listed on the player’s rule sheets simultaneously. The twist of Décorum is that it’s also a hidden information game. No player has all of the rules. While playing the players will have to watch their partner’s moves just as carefully as they’re planning their own. Even more crucially they’ll have to communicate why they’re making the moves they’re making–using the very limited means we’ve provided them.Décorum might be about solving a puzzle but it’s really a game about communication and compromise. The real challenge isn’t just solving the problem with the limited information you and your players have; it’s dealing with the frustrations that will inevitably occur when your partner does something that messes up your plan. In order to be successful in Décorum there will come a point where both players will have to let go of their initial strategy for how they were going to finish the board and start paying attention to what their partner is doing instead. By introducing and providing an incentive to resolve conflict Décorum mechanically encourages (or even requires) a positive form of compromise.Each player draws a Scenario card that lists a set of criteria of what types of décor a room must have or cannot have. For example No room may contain a lamp or Every room must contain a wall hanging. Players keep their criteria secret.The play surface is a board displaying various rooms in a house. Each room has multiple items that can potentially be placed in the room. Players take turns placing moving or removing colored tokens on the board where each token represents an item of home décor. Each token placed may conform with or violate the other players' criteria. After each token is placed other players may state they like the item of décor as placed or they do not like the item of décor as placed. Further discussion or explanation is not allowed.The game ends when all players' criteria are satisfied.