You'll find plenty to choose from, whether you're interested in family board games, strategy board games, or anything else. But just because modern games are the best they've ever been, that doesn't mean older games are bad. For the best ones, there's good reason they've been popular for a 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 gems you might have missed.
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.
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.
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