It’s discount city this Amazon Prime Day, which means it’s an excellent time to expand your board game collection. Whether you’re an old hat or a new face, there’s a tabletop title to suit your interests. But, with hundreds of pages of deals to sift through, how are you to choose? Well, why not listen to an expert?
I’ve been playing board games for most of my life, and I’ve been reviewing them professionally for almost five years. I’m constantly updating our guide to the best board games to recommend only the highest caliber titles. And, as it happens, many of those games are on sale for Prime Day.
Below are the best-value deals I’ve discovered. The games vary in age and genre, but all of them are top-quality plays, whatever your experience level. Each also comes with a sizable discount, and I’ve checked the price against other sites to make sure you really are getting a great deal.
Splendor
Splendor is a simple yet addictive game of merchant greed. Your goal is to earn the most prestige by acquiring businesses, gems, and other forms of wealth. Each turn, you’ll choose whether to collect gems, purchase and build cards, or reserve one from the public display.
As your treasury grows, your purchasing power improves. It’s an elegant, accessible gameplay loop with a surprising amount of bite to it – especially when you draft a card you know your opponent was eyeing. It’s 40% off at Amazon, so now’s the perfect time to invest (pun intended).
Harmonies
Harmonies released in 2024, and I’ve been playing it obsessively ever since. It’s a gorgeous drafting game where you turn tiles and cards into a vibrant natural landscape, stuffed with points-scoring landmarks and animals.
Each animal card asks you to provide a different arrangement of flora in exchange for points. Stack a few tiles on top of each other, and you’ve got a tall tree, or the beginnings of a mountain range. Each landmark type scores points in unique ways too, creating an ulta-satisfying, soothing puzzle to solve.
Check out our Harmonies review to learn more.
Azul
Azul is another tile drafting game, though it has a far more abstract theme than Harmonies. Here, you’re crafting the most pleasing mosaic by drafting a single pattern type from a public pool. Placing tiles adjacent to each other scores scraps of points, with complete rows and columns bringing in the serious numbers. Plus, if you can fill all squares of a certain pattern, you get a sweet bonus.
Azul features in pretty much every Amazon Prime Day Deals list, and it’s for good reason. This simple yet strategic game is surprisingly brutal thanks to how easy it is to ‘hate draft’ the tiles your friends need. It’s thoughtful yet tense. It’s gorgeous. Oh, and it’s cheap, thanks to Amazon’s 30% discount.
Here’s our Azul review for more detail.
Sky Team
If you like couples’ board games, Sky Team is a must-buy. This is a game of silent co-operation where, by strategically placing your secret dice, you and your co-pilot try to land a plane. It’s tense and challenging, but not in a way that alienates. Even when your plane goes down in flames, you’ll be itching to try again.
Sky Team gives you plenty of plates to spin. Switches must be flipped in specific orders, using specific dice values. The plane can’t tilt too far in either direction, and, as you descend, you’ll need to avoid other planes in the sky. It’s a game of prioritization and intuition – because once your secret dice are rolled, you can’t say a word to your partner until all dice have been placed.
See our Sky Team review to learn more.
The Gang
The Gang turns Poker into a co-operative bank heist. That’s right: you’re trying to spring the lock on a safe by playing Poker hands. To succeed, you’ll need to work out the value of everyone’s hands, from lowest to highest. You can’t reveal what’s on your cards, but you can silently grab a Poker chip representing how good you think your hand is compared with everyone else’s.
Guess right three times, and you’ve got away with the gold. Three failures, however, springs the alarms. Games are quick, punchy, and puzzling in the most delicious ways. A 22% discount makes this treasure even more tantalizing, too.
Want even more board game recommendations? We’re happy to chat in the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
