Starting today, Amazon is offering a new board game promotion: buy two board games, get a third one free (or “three for the price of two”). The list of eligible board games include several popular and highly rated titles like Wingspan, Azul, Splendor, Pandemic Legacy, Dead of Winter, and more. We’ve sorted out our favorite picks below.
Wingspan Board Game
Wingspan from Stonemeier Games is an incredibly good board game. It came out in 2019, but it’s still one of the best board games to play in 2024. Wingspan looks like a deceptively simple game; the endgame goal is to attract as many birds as you can to your wildlife preserve and help them proliferate. There are only four actions you can perform: draw a bird card, play a bird card, get food, and lay eggs. Sounds simple enough, right? Well let’s just say these four actions mask an incredibly complex engine-building game with which you will have to juggle between bringing new birds into the fold and keeping your existing birds well stocked and in a breeding frenzy. Wingspan is infinitely replayable, and you’ll find yourself developing and honing new strategies with every subsequent playthough.
Azul Board Game for $31.99
This is one of the best board games for beginners. With colorful plastic tiles and a simple premise – collect sets of similar tiles to score points – Azul is a great game for folks who want to dabble in the hobby of board games. The goal is to fill up a small grid, earning points by completing lines and connecting filled-in spots on your grid to each other. It’s been said before, but it rings true for Azul: It’s quick to learn, but it takes time to master and figure out strategies. This makes Azul a great addition to any existing board game player’s collection as well.
Spendor for $31.99
Splendor is a 2014 release that’s still considered one of the best board games for all experience levels. Economic engine games, where you build an increasingly powerful economy to buy stuff to build it even more, are a popular gaming sub-genre. They don’t come much simpler than this gem about… gem dealing. On your turn you take tokens to pay for gems, and each gem gives you a permanent boost to your token bank. It’s a race to engineer the most efficient economy and grab the best gems. The trouble is, everyone wants the best gems too. So every turn you pump your engine, you risk losing prime resources to other players. Throw in a variety of finicky patrons to please for bonus points and you’ve got an engine that generates as much tension as it does tactics.
Dead of Winter for $49.61
Dead of Winter is one of the best horror board games. It’s like the board game version of The Walking Dead. The game is described as a “meta-cooperative psychological survival game,” which means that, while it is cooperative, there are elements of competition that carry through the game. Each player controls a group survivors during the zombie apocalypse, and all must work together in order to meet the shared goal. In addition, you’ll be working towards your own hidden goal as well. Sometimes that means hoarding the most medicine, or stockpiling the most ammo. Other times, you might simply want to betray the team and ruin group morale. No matter what, though, there’s no way to trust anyone at the table thanks to the group politics and interpersonal drama Dead of Winter brings.
Pandemic Legacy for $71.99
If competitive gameplay isn’t your thing, how about working together to purge the world of infectious diseases? Building on the success of the original Pandemic, the Pandemic Legacy series introduces “legacy” concepts to the game, in which components are added or removed as you progress through the game, based on your decisions, successes and failures. After a few plays, your copy will be a unique record of your group’s play. So in addition to offering a very personal tale to engage you, Pandemic: Legacy also individualizes your strategic experience. We picked the Pandemic Legacy series as one of the best cooperative board games of 2024.