2024 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide

Welcome to the official Bitewing Games 2024 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide! Few moments are better than gathering friends and family around the table for wholesome gaming — that’s why we started Bitewing Games as a way to create and share classy board games that bite. And there’s no better time for tabletop gaming than the holidays. As is tradition, we like to create and share a Board Game Gift Guide to kick off the holidays.

As always, our selection criteria for this guide include the following:

• The games have been tried, tested, and approved by us and/or trusted critics
• The games are generally available to purchase (links will be provided below to sites where you can purchase them—click the $)
• We won’t recommend anything from our past Holiday Gift Guides, but we still fully endorse those previous guides, so if you need even more recommendations then check out our 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 Guides.

For your information, we receive no financial compensation, sponsorship, or advertisement money for this guide or these recommendations except for 6 of the 21 games which Bitewing Games directly publishes — noted below. At the end of the day, these are simply 21 games we genuinely believe are great Holiday gifts. If you find value in our content, then we’d love to have you join our Bitewing Games newsletter! We use our newsletter to send regular updates regarding our latest content (like this gift guide) and publications (such as our 2024 releases featured below).

This guide is divided into five sections for your convenience (scroll at your leisure or click to jump straight to the section that interests you most):

• Gifts for the Casual Board Gamer
• Gifts for your Significant Other
• Stocking Stuffer Games (small & cheap!)
• Perfect Games for you Holiday Party
• Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer
• Black Friday Deals

---

Gifts for the Casual Board Gamer

Fairy Ring | 2-4 Players | $35

Fairy Ring is a simple but interactive drafting game of adding a mushroom to your row of cards and then moving your fairy across everybody’s cards. Whatever mushroom your fairy stops on will trigger scoring for that player plus scoring for yourself if you have a matching mushroom in your own row. The trick is to decide whether to build your mushrooms tall (for bigger scoring opportunities) or wide (to force more players to stop among your mushrooms and trigger scoring for you).

---

Courtisans | 2-5 Players | $25

As a 20-30 minute card game, Courtisans delivers with funny and cutthroat moments. Each turn your hand of three cards must be split up: Play one to yourself, one to another player, and one to the table to influence the end-game value of a suit. In addition to manipulating the incentives of the group, there are plenty of opportunities to nail each other either out of petty revenge or cunning calculation.

---

Wilmot’s Warehouse | 2-6 Players | $35

Wilmot’s Warehouse is a cooperative story-telling memory game that ends up being more fun and magical than it has any right to be. The box is loaded with over 100 unique tiles with abstract images on them. Together, the table looks at one tile at a time and decides where to place it facedown on a huge game board grid. After placing down 35 different tiles, they then race through the matching deck of cards to recreate the exact arrangement of tiles all from memory. It’s a truly bonkers premise, but the magic of Wilmot’s Warehouse lies in the storytelling of the group (inspired by the abstract images) that helps everyone commit this mess of tiles to near perfect memory.

---

MLEM: Space Agency | 2-5 Players | $30

I love a good push-your-luck game, and MLEM is one of my favorites. It keeps the entire group invested in each turn and each roll of this rocket launching romp. The decisions of which dice to use, how far to travel, when to jump off, and when to take risks are often subtle yet impactful. On top of the engaging challenge that players must navigate, there is plenty of amusing table talk as you try to coax each other into stay or bailing, helping or sabotaging, advancing the ship far or advancing just a little.

---

Gifts for your Significant Other

Agent Avenue | 2 Players | $21

Agent Avenue is a dead-simple bluffing game that is intended for 2 players (although I hear the 3-4 player variant is fantastic as well). Here, two spies are racing to catch each other on a circular track. They will move forward or backward according to whatever card you take each round. Why would you ever move backward and your opponent the chance to catch you? Well, on your turn you must play 2 cards to the table: 1 face up and 1 face down. Then, your opponent decides which one to take. This is where the mind game shenanigans commence.

---

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth | 2 Players | $35

One of the highest rated 2-player games of all time — 7 Wonders Duel — was just barely reimagined and redesigned as The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth. And while I haven’t personally played this one yet, I have played its predecessor (which I like), and I’ve heard many people say that Duel for Middle Earth is even better. The peoples of Middle Earth face off against the forces of evil where 2 players draft cards and activate abilities to help them win the war.

---

Marabunta | 2 Players | $22

Marabunta was the very first 2024 release I got to play this year, and all these months later it remains one of my favorites. 

As competing ant colonies, you’ll be fighting to claim territory and cut each other off from further invasion. You’ll take turns rolling the dice, splitting up the rewards, and letting your opponent choose and execute an option first. The decisions are agonizing and the depth is a joy to uncover. 

---

Stocking Stuffer Games (small & cheap!)

Cascadito | 1-4 Players | $19

From Bitewing Games

There is an inherent satisfaction to scribbling on your own play sheet in a quick little game, and that satisfaction seemingly sparked the recently popular trend of roll and write games. But where most games of this genre only provide one sheet or map to explore over and over again, Cascadito provides 4 wildly different sheets and maps for players to sink their teeth into. Each turn you must decide which of the dice to draft from the middle, and the dice help you to connect groups to towns on your map which can trigger satisfying combos.

---

The Gang | 3-6 Players | $15

The Gang is a small box of cooperative poker, or more specifically cooperative Texas Hold ‘Em. As your hand takes shape, you’ll be grabbing chips from the middle of the table that communicate how good your hand is compared to other players. Outside of those chips, you can’t reveal what you are holding, but you’ll have to rank all of your hands perfectly to succeed. So the game is obviously easier with experienced poker players or with less players in general.

---

Klink | 3-5 Players | $13

Klink is a silly game of deciding whether to keep two facedown cards or pass them along. Luckily, you can peek at one of the two cards before you make your decision. But usually it is a bad idea to keep the cards because they’ll score you points, and points are bad in Klink. Luckily it’s not all bad to end up with cards, because sometimes they will cancel out or grant you powerful abilities. We’ve gotten a lot of laughs out of this swingy filler game.

---

Cat Blues: The Big Gig | 2-4 Players | $19

From Bitewing Games

Cat Blues is refreshingly clever auction game where you bid with your hand of cards to try and build a better hand of cards. The goal is to assemble quartets of cat musicians which will help score you points. The freedom to meld, save, or bid cards in different ways reveals way more strategic depth than anything you’ll find in most small box card games. This is one of my all-time favorite card games that I’m proud to have worked with Reiner to evolve and resurrect. 

---

Perfect Games for you Holiday Party

Strike | 2-5 Players | $25

Strike is a riotous dice game where you chuck a die into a gladiator pit in hopes of it surviving the gauntlet so you can get it back. You are aiming to knock the dice in the pit around and bring about matching values because anything that matches enters back into your personal dice supply. Players are eliminated as they run out of dice to toss into the ring, and the last player standing wins. It’s simple, it’s quick, it’s pure dice-chucking fun.

---

Fairy | 2-10 Players | $9

Like Strike, Fairy is another loud game where the real winner is Lady Luck, but it’s generally fun for all participants to watch her perform. In Fairy all players will simultaneously throw out a hand signal to predict whether the next card in the deck is higher value, lower value, the same suit, or a fairy. Each correct prediction will score you points, and an incorrect prediction will lose you one point. The group keeps making predictions and flipping cards until a player crosses the 15-point finish line. Fairy is both incredibly dumb and wonderfully captivating all at the same time.

---

Link City | 2-6 Players | $19

Link City is a cooperative social game where one player, the Mayor, secretly assigns three locations to open sites in the city. Then, all other players must figure out where the Mayor intended for each new location to go. Does the day care fit better next to the school or next to the gym? Should the train station go next to the airport or next to the shopping district? Like all social games of this type, the fun lies in discussing with your teammates as you try to read one player’s mind.

---

Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer

Cascadero | 2-4 Players | $49

From Bitewing Games

Legendary, elegant, interactive tile placement gameplay meets addicting, combotastic, crunchy track considerations. Cascadero is a refreshing twist on the strategic tile laying genre from the King of the Tiles, Reiner Knizia. I’ve played Cascadero dozens of times now and still have a blast every time. The two maps and the advanced mode also add in a nice bit of strategic variety that is fun to cycle through.

---

Galactic Renaissance | 2-5 Players | $85

Galactic Renaissance is a sci-fi deck builder where players race to 30 points by cycling through their deck of action cards. These cards help you to spread across the galaxy with your emissaries, interfere with rival plans, and compete for majority influence in key locations. If you’re looking for a unique and interactive deck builder to dive into, then Galactic Renaissance is a great choice.

---

Spectral | 2-5 Players | $45

From Bitewing Games

Spectral is a thinky haunted manor treasure hunt. It is hands down my favorite logic deduction game thanks to everything that makes this design so unique within its genre: particularly the spicy interactive bidding, area majority competition for treasure, thrilling climactic reveal, and spooky thematic vibe. Somehow Ryan Courtney fit all of this into game that plays in under 30 minutes — making it far too enticing to run it back again after the first session.

---

Arcs | 2-4 Players | $60

Arcs is an epic space opera that combines political area control with fascinating trick-taking interactions. You’ll start each chapter figuring out what the heck you can possibly do with your new hand of cards and your current position on the map. Fortunately, there is a lot of flexibility within the rules where you can copy the suit of the lead player, pivot to your own suit, or even seize initiative by burning a card. This element is balanced beautifully against the ambitions system where only the lead player has the power to declare a scoring objective, but they give up their leading power in doing so. 

This solid core is supplemented with more tasty features including a thrilling combat dice system, a Leaders and Lore module of asymmetric abilities, and an epic 3-act campaign expansion.

---

Bebop | 2-4 Players | $59

From Bitewing Games

Earn the highest ratings and book the best seats for music fans at the jazz festival! I’m a sucker for strategic tile placement games on a shared board, and Bebop does it in a way that I’ve never seen before. The two layers — placing tiles and inserting dice — are paired beautifully with the three ways to score points. I love how the game provides a dynamic arc in a quick playtime. You are doing the same simple actions the entire session, but the focus and pressures shift dramatically from start to finish. Add in jazzy art from Weberson Santiago, clackety dice from a draw bag, and a variety of festival maps… and I’m a happy boy.

---

Tower Up | 2-4 Players | $50

If your group enjoys streamlined gameplay with tense decisions, then Tower Up should hit the spot. It’s your turn… do you take resources, or build a building? While that decision sounds simple, your opponents are building in the same area, and you’ll feel the pressure from them to make the right call and come out as the best architect. If you’re looking for a new game with a classic board game feel, look no further.

---

Shuffle and Swing | 2-4 Players | $59

From Bitewing Games

Those who follow my blog or podcast know that I often complain about modern Eurogames. In particular, I’m tired of the trend toward more complexity, more added fluff, and less player interaction. Thankfully, there are notable exceptions in this genre every now and then that still hit the spot for me. Shuffle and Swing is one such exception that provides a satisfying medium-weight economic challenge in a focused and streamlined design. The shared incentives of using each other’s rondel dice and building the instruments together are the standout features for me.

---

Black Friday Deals

With Black Friday right around the corner, you might be holding off your holiday board game spending until the biggest deals of the year crop up. Nothing like the thrill of the hunt. Well allow me to make your hunt a little bit easier and give you a heads up about one particular deal:

Starting Black Friday and continuing through Cyber Monday, you can look forward to a massive Allplay & Friends Sale that will feature many games from Bitewing, Allplay, and more partners. You can subscribe to our newsletter to be notified when the sale goes live.

Happy Holidays!