8 fun board games for couples

Turn off the TV, stop scrolling, and play a game! Today I’m sharing some of our favorite fun board games for couples that we love playing together when it’s just the two of us! 

sun shining on a wooden chess set creating a shadow off of the pieces

Photo by Tono Graphy on Unsplash

Ok, we’re going a little out of the box today, both figuratively and literally.

Let’s start with figuratively…Off the Eaten Path is a blog about food and travel. I share recipes for easy entertaining and travel guides.

You want cocktails? This Raspberry Gin Seltzer is incredibly popular right now and I love making a classic margarita at home (or learn how to make a bunch of basic cocktail recipes using what you have at home.).

And you need snacks to go along with your cocktails, so a simple cheese platter is definitely the answer. 

Once we are able to travel again, maybe you’ll want to plan a trip to the mountains (I have all the details about where to stay, what to eat and what to do in my Asheville Travel Guide and also have a post that highlights some of the best Hendersonville restaurants), or maybe you’ll be beach bound (plan your beach trip with my Outer Banks Travel Guide!)

This post is not a post about food or travel…in the blogging world (or the world in general) we’d say that this post is outside my niche.

silver horse monopoly piece on the chance space on a monopoly game board

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels

While I sometimes share some more lifestyle content that is out of the food and travel box, it’s pretty rare (the most recent ones were a few years ago where I wrote about celebrating a cat’s adoption anniversary and a day in the life of a public defender.) 

And we’re out of the box literally here, because you have to take a board game out of the box to play it.

Ha. Are you loving my dad joke?

So even though we’re out of the box today, we’re going to keep on trucking because I cleaned out the closet where we keep all of our games today and now they are all neat and organized and I had the idea for a blog post. 

game of life board with two blue pieces and two pink pieces in a white car

Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

I loved playing cards and board games as a kid.

My sister and I played all the standards like Monopoly, The Game of Life, Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Guess Who, Sorry! and more.

We often traveled with an Uno deck (and once played at epic game with some kids we met while we were stranded at the Milwaukee airport), I love a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit, and my aunt taught me how to play cribbage while on a beach vacation when I was nine or ten.

(More on cribbage below, but my skills came in handy when my friend Emily would bring her cribbage board to the bar in college. Cribbage and cocktails is a great combo.)

two people holding red, yellow, green and blue uno cards and playing together on a green wooden table

Sometime between when I became an angsty teenager and a somewhat functioning adult, board games were put on the back burner (but for college cribbage), but I’m happy to report that my love was rekindled when AJ and I moved in together and it has been steadily burning now for the past few years.

We love hosting friends over for game night and playing board games has become a tradition on major holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve when we are hanging with our families (we got AJ’s grandma to play a rousing game of Heads’ Up a few years ago and it was hilarious.)

We also love playing just the two of us to give us a chance to unplug and have some fun.

Since we’ve been at home for the past few weeks, we’ve found ourselves playing more often that we normally do.

That, and also cleaning out closets, yard work, and even sprucing up a basement fireplace!

There’s just so many hours in the day where you can be glued to the TV and sometimes you just have to turn the damn tv off.

So I wanted to share some of our favorite fun board games for couples that we love playing together when it’s just the two of us! 

Ticket to Ride

Ticket is ride is my current favorite, and has been for a few years.

It’s a cross-country travel game where you collect and play matching train cards build specific train routes between different cities, and points are awarded for all the routes you complete (the longer the routes the more points you get)..but your opponent can block your progress.

ticket to ride game board with blue and yellow trains and a hand grabbing a game piece dave-henri-FdTmaUlEr4A-unsplash

Photo by Dave Henri on Unsplash

They have a ton of different maps, including USA, Europe, Nordic, Germany, Heart of Africa, Asia, India, United Kingdom, Rails and Sails, and two specific cities, New York and London.

We also have a special house rule for Ticket to Ride (that we picked up from our friends Tina and Dan when the introduced us to the game): you have to say layin’ track every time you play your train pieces.

Risk

Risk is probably AJ’s favorite of all time and it’s probably because he always wins.

When we celebrated our first wedding anniversary (as an aside, if you’re into love stories, read about our Charlotte wedding!) we spent a long weekend at a cabin near Boone, and I spent most of that weekend getting my ass kicked over and over and over again by AJ in Risk.

Risk is one of the OG strategy games where you’re trying to achieve world domination.

Each player controls different colored armies that start in different territories and attempt to capture more land from other players by attacking and rolling the dice.

It can take a pretty long time to play the entire game, especially if you’re stubborn and prevent your husband from winning the one or two territories he needs to have control of all six continents.

Cribbage

Cribbage is a card game played with a standard card deck and a distinctive wooden board to keep score (our cribbage board was a gift from my sister and brother in law made with Hawaiian Koa wood…before that we played using a board I’ve had since childhood where we’ve lost all the scorekeeping pegs so have a couple of old matchsticks instead.)

a spread of cards with one jack and three different 5 cards in black and red with a cribbage board, 10 of hearts playing card, and green red and blue cribbage pieces

Each cribbage hand goes through three steps, the deal, the play and the show.

Players are dealt six cards, and everyone must discard two into “the crib” and keep the other four to score points with.

Points are scored for combinations of cards that total fifteen, runs, pairs, flush, and having the “nob” (a jack that is the same suite as the starter card.)

Highly recommend playing cribbage with a Whiskey Old Fashioned or Whiskey Apple Cider Cocktail.

It makes it feel very midwestern.

Dominant Species

Another strategy game (can you tell we love strategy games?) my biggest feedback about this one is that you’ll need to carve out a lot of time to play this one…it’s complicated, but fun!

Each player assumes the role of one of six major animal classes and tries to adapt to the ever changing world…think of it as survival of the fittest.

Each turn involves multiple steps so it took us a while to get everything straight…but slowly and steadily we got the hang of it. Would definitely recommend for a cold, rainy or snowy winter afternoon when you have a lot of time to focus!

Pandemic

AJ just bought us this one and when it showed up at our door I thought he was playing a sick joke on me!

We’ve played it now twice and what I liked is that it didn’t take too much time to play with just two people (some games, like Dominant Species, you need to invest four to five hours in!). It probably didn’t take us too long to play because we were playing on the easy level (the game directions give you different levels and we started on easy because we were learning!) so we will definitely try next time on the harder level.

I also loved that it was a strategy game but rather than working against each other, you work together to try to cure the world of four different plagues.

Totally get if this one is too close to home for you right now, but thought it was fun!

Scrabble

scrabble board with letter tiles spelling out the word love jude-beck-OF5OOnWH10Y-unsplash

Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash

I feel like basically everyone knows what Scrabble is. The classic games caters to wordsmiths and I think its just fun to see how people get so competitive over words.

PS: there’s a Scrabble app so you can play online against friends or family who are spread out across the country.

I’ve beat my mom two times so far and it is the greatest accomplishment of my life.

a pile of scrabble tiles on a white background clarissa-watson-0aLt3QExk3Y-unsplash

Photo by Clarissa Watson on Unsplash

Backgammon

Our backgammon board has seen better days.

(I have no idea how old it is, but I do know that it traveled with us to Mexico on family vacation in 2007…we found the scorecard tucked inside when my mom brought it to our house a few months ago.)

wooden backgammon board

Backgammon is another classic that has been around for centuries.

The Internet says more than 5,000 years!

Each player has fifteen pieces (they look like checkers) and the goal of the game is to be the first one to move all of your pieces off the board through a combination of strategy and luck with the roll of dice.

Yahtzee

On a classic kick here! My love for Yahtzee was reignited a few years ago by my boss, Tony. You score points by rolling a set of five dice to make certain combinations, like aces, twos, threes…as well as three and four of a kind, full house, straight, and of course, Yahtzee!  (All five dice the same.)

white-dice-on-a-white-yahtzee-scorecard

By far, the most fun part of Yahtzee is yelling Yahtzee.

Quiplash

I’m including two games on this list even thought don’t have boards and need more than two people.

They made the list because they are super easy to play online, so pair up with friends or family members and play with them no matter how far away they live!

Quiplash is our favorite!

It is so much fun and always has me doubled over in laughter.

We have played it with friends and our parents, and everyone is always cackling! (Literally this game will make you LOL).

We also get lots of requests from people when they come over to our house to visit, so its not only popular with us, but with our family and friends (and since we have no one coming over for the near future, we’ve just been playing online!)

You can download Quiplash on your computer or gaming system (we have it installed on our PlayStation) and then players use their cell phones to play (no extra controllers or anything else needed.)

Players answer funny prompts as creatively as they can…the catch is, there are no real rules or correct answers!

After individually answering prompts on your screen, each player’s answers are pitted against another player’s answers in a head-to-head battle, and everyone votes for their favorite. 

We’ve played a few time with friends by setting up a Zoom meeting, we do video chatting and then share the screen so everyone can see the game!

House Party

House Party is actually a social network where you can video chat with your friends and family, but then play games with each other while you hang out in the app.

They have games like Heads Up, Trivia, Chips and Guac (which is like Apples to Apples) and Quick Draw. We’ve been playing House Party with different people once a week and its so much fun!

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Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels

A few other fun games for two or more we have our eyes on but haven’t tried yet…

It sort of feels like so many games, so little time, but I wanted to highlight a few other games that we’ve been recommended but haven’t tried yet:

  • Carcassonne (we actually own this and have played it once…and it was ok. Everything I’ve read said it’s so fun so we have to give it another go)
  • Through the Ages (we own this too but haven’t played it yet. There is a 45 minute YouTube video on how to play that I haven’t successfully stayed awake through)
  • Hive (kind of like chess, but with tiles and bugs)
  • Guillotine (a card game and that’s all I’ve got!)
  • Jaipur (A card game that is a quick learn and quick to play)

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2 Comments

  1. Check out Chickapig too. It can be played with 2-4 players and is like a cross between chess and Chinese checkers. We love it and its challenging enough for adults but can also be played with kids.

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