One question I constantly see in board game forums is this: “What are the best travel-friendly board and card games?”  Whether you’re headed out on a business trip, visiting friends and family, or simply taking a vacation, it’s always nice to have something to entertain the group.  Yet board games typically come in huge boxes that don’t always fit in a backpack, purse, or suitcase with your other belongings.  This is the perfect time to have a travel-friendly board or card game that comes in a small package and/or takes up minimal space on a table.  

With those needs in mind, I’ve assembled a list of the Best Travel-Friendly board and card games for any occasion:

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Best Wallet Game – Sprawlopolis

 

Let’s get this one right out of the way.  Wallet games are perhaps the most travel-friendly games that money can buy.  One publisher, Button Shy Games, specializes in this type of bite-sized fun, and one of their best titles is Sprawlopolis or Agropolis.  This is a design we’ve recommended extensively between our Top 10 Quick & Easy Solo Games as well as our Top 10 Spatial Puzzle Games because it takes 18 cards and turns them into a delightful challenge best suited for one or two players.

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Best Standard Deck Game – Regicide

Even if you don’t own an official copy of Regicide, this is one that you can technically track down anywhere and everywhere because the design uses a standard deck of playing cards.  Then, all you have to do is download the rulebook and you are off to the races.

Of course, buying the official Regicide deck is a great way to support the creators for making a fantastic cooperative experience for 1-4 players where you struggle to take down the Jacks, Queens, then Kings.  This is one that comes with me to basically any game night because it slots so easily into my game bag and never fails to entertain for 10-30 minutes.

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Best Trick-Taking Game – The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, Ghosts of Christmas

 

Trick-taking games are a dime a dozen, and the cream of the crop always hits the spot at our table whether I’m playing with hobbyist gamers or non-gamers.  I’ll offer two suggestions here, both excellent and relatively new.  The Crew: Mission Deep Sea was just crowned as one of my Top 15 Games of 2021 for being an addicting crowd-pleaser where you work together to complete wacky round objectives.  Meanwhile, Ghosts of Christmas puts a twist on the formula by allowing players to play tricks into the past, present, and future in any order they wish; plus it’s the perfect game to take home for the holidays.

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Best Pub Game – Skull, Art Robbery

 

I constantly hear folks online asking about the “best game to take to the pub.”  My answer?  Skull.  Skull takes simple bluffing and makes it a riot of a time… whether you are inebriated or not.  Each turn is as simple as placing a disc facedown onto your stash or bidding how many of everybody’s discs you think you can flip without revealing a skull.  Just make sure your bartender doesn’t confuse the discs for coasters.

That said, many folks already own Skull.  So for those of you who want something new and fresh, my follow-up recommendation is Art Robbery.  This one features double-layered thievery—art robbers are splitting the loot with each other via forceful, sticky-fingered methods.  The card play is simple enough that there is no chance of overwhelming your brain, yet the gameplay features some clever twists and funny moments making it perfect for a casual, raucous atmosphere.

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Best Party Game – Insider, A Fake Artist Goes to New York

 

Need a small game for a big, boisterous group?  Look no further than Insider and A Fake Artist Goes to New York by Oink Games.  Oink Games are the masters of putting big, memorable moments into cute, tiny boxes.  Insider is their take on 20 questions with a twist: What if the 20-question limit was replaced with a sand timer, and what if one questioner was secretly a traitor who already knew the answer and wanted you to guess it without you noticing that they guided you to it so they can steal the victory for themself?  Meanwhile, a Fake Artist also has a traitor in that one person does not know the secret topic of the round and is trying to get away with artistic fraud and deception!  

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Best Table-less Game – Trophies

Portable party games are great for casual trips or gatherings, but what if your gathering place has no table to play upon?  In that case, your best bet would be something like Trophies.  Trophies is the simplest, most approachable game on this list, yet it’s also the loudest.  One player clutches a stack of trophy cards and displays one card at a time to the group—each card displays a single large letter.  The lead player then selects and reads aloud a category on the back of the deck such as “Something blue,” “Something slow,” or “Minor Ailment,” and the first person to call out a word that starts with the big letter and relates to that category earns the trophy card.  Once the deck is gone, the player with the most trophies wins.  Whether you’re the lead player judging and awarding the group’s words or a competitor wracking your brain for the first word that comes to mind, you’re bound to have funny time.

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Best 2-Player Game – Schotten Totten 2

This next recommendation is for those of you who think this list is starting to sound more like a party list than a travel-friendly curation.  Schotten Totten 2 is a recent release from one of the greatest 2-player (or any player count, for that matter) game designers of all time, Dr. Reiner Knizia.  Featuring asymmetric strategy, a delightfully zany theme of chickens vs. scotsmen, and characteristically elegant rules, Schotten Totten 2 is the excellent standalone sequel to one of the most widely revered 2-player games (Battle Line / Schotten Totten).  To top it off, the box isn’t much larger than a hen’s egg.

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Best Family Card Game – Startups, SCOUT

 

We’re back with more adorable Oink Games, namely Startups and SCOUT!  Both titles have been effortlessly approachable and addicting for my family members including siblings, cousins, parents, and more.  Both games possess the simplicity of evergreens such as Uno or Phase 10, yet they also provide a superior strategy and tension that will keep you satisfied throughout.  Startups is all about investing just a little bit more in companies than your opponents, while SCOUT sees players recruiting performers into their hand to help them put on a good circus show.

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Best Cooperative Game – The Mind, The Game, Hanabi

 

If your family or friends shy away from competitive settings, then perhaps a cooperative game is in order?  The Mind and The Game (yes, that is its title) are two peas in a pod of being games where players must collectively discard cards from their hands in ascending or descending order without saying anything.  It doesn’t sound like much of a game at all, but somehow it works and it’s thrilling!  Meanwhile, Hanabi is a beloved classic of holding your hand inside-out, meaning everyone can see your cards except you, and giving each other hints about the cards you can see.  Hanabi has had such an impact on me that it inspired the creation of our upcoming publication, Gussy Gorillas, which takes the inside-out hand concept and turns it into a competitive game of trading and bluffing.

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Best Social Deduction Game – Scape Goat, Durian

 

Speaking of bluffing, animals, and not seeing every card, Scape Goat and Durian have proven to be excellent games of deduction and deceit at our table.  Durian is another Oink Game, yet this one comes with a tiny bell and a whole bunch of fruit cards.  Every turn you and your fellow storefront apes must face a difficult decision: take another fruit order or tattle tale on an opponent?  If you think your fruit orders exceed your inventory, then you can call the boss with the ring of a bell and hope that your theory is right, because if you’re wrong then he’ll get mad at you instead!  Meanwhile, Scape Goat is all about throwing a fellow criminal under the bus without them even realizing it… the only problem is that poor sap might actually be you!

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Best Solo Game – Under Falling Skies

I fully admit that Under Falling Skies is the largest box and thus the least travel-friendly game on this list, yet I wouldn’t hesitate to toss it into my backpack or suitcase if I knew I’d have downtime for a great solo session.  This one has been featured a fair amount recently between my Top 10 Quick & Easy Solo Games as well as my Revisiting the Best Board Games of 2020.  To put it plainly, there is much to love about this solo game featuring difficult dice decisions and pesky alien invasions.

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Best Game to Take on Outdoor Adventures – Trailblazers

Now I could argue that Trailblazers also belongs in the Best Solo Game and Best Family Card Game categories, but today we’ll just focus in on its Outdoor Adventure compatibility.  When Ryan Courtney and I were initially hashing out the production plan of his puzzly card game, Trailblazers, we found ourselves facing two clashing possibilities.  On the one hand, Trailblazers could feature various modules or expansions that mix up the core gameplay and bring charming animal and traveler figures to the experience.  On the other hand, we could make a travel-friendly version that features purely cards and focuses on the rock solid standard mode gameplay.  The solution we settled on: Both? Both. Both is good.

While the Standard and Deluxe Editions of Trailblazers are best tailored for hobbyist gamers who want the most variety and content from a standard game box, the Travel Edition became our chance to really lean into the theme of hiking, biking, and kayaking with the packaging and material selection.  We’ve seen many creative packages for board and card games from button shy wallets and pseudo book covers all the way to banana pouches and stuffed monkeys, yet there is one type of package that I’m surprised has been largely overlooked by publishers up to this point.  To me, nothing says outdoor adventure and travel-friendly like a small clamshell case and carabiner, and thus our Trailblazers: Travel Edition was born.

Ryan admits that Trailblazers is his first published design that will appeal to casual and hobbyist gamers alike.  With the help of artist Seth Lucas, who as worked on everything from hiking patches to John Muir books, we knew we could craft a game fit for both friendly local game stores as well as national park gift shops.  

Beyond the ability to attach the Travel Edition to a backpack, we wanted to make sure the cards could hold up under endless plays and rigorous conditions.  So for those who buy the Super Travel or Deluxe editions of Trailblazers, your game will come with 100% PVC cards (durable, water-resistant, plastic cards).

So whether you want an affordable, portable game or a box crammed with content, you’ll be able to acquire the travel-friendly clamshell case, carabiner, and PVC cards via the Trailblazers Super Travel or Deluxe edition when our Kickstarter project launches this August.  You can subscribe to the Kickstarter pre-launch page here. And we absolutely need your help!  Bitewing Games is only made possible and kept alive by the support of backers and fans of our published games.   Thanks for your support!

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the upcoming Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

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So how is this board gaming industry still even a thing?  Is there more to it than… winning?  Of course there is!  You know that, I know that.  Perhaps in games of pure luck, there really is nothing fun about losing.  But when we begin to mix other elements into the game… the interesting friends, the dynamic strategies, the dramatic moments… that’s when the finish line fades and the journey prevails.  Let’s take a look at some of the many games that hurt so good.  In other words, let’s explore games that are fun to lose, and most importantly, why:

Close, Intense Battles for Victory

These kinds of losses are perhaps the most fun, at least for me.  When I feel that victory is within all of our grasps, and even when I’m not crowned champion, I love a good battle to the death.  I’ve encountered it time and time again in tightly designed titles including Inis and Pax Pamir (2nd Edition).  It’s what puts these games among my all time favorites.  You can never count a player out, because there is always a route for them to make a wrecking-ball comeback.

Competitive Races

Along the same lines, I love a close race.  When the winning objective is clear—reach El Dorado first in The Quest for El Dorado, or fill your mat first in New York Zoo—yet the competition is tight.  The games I just mentioned have provided multiple instances where opponents were one good turn away from claiming the victory.  It’s the kind of roller coaster of tension that I love taking again and again.

When You Are Proud of what You’ve Built/Accomplished

I love it when a game allows the players to approach its challenge in unique and creative ways.  Often times, the path you pave can be even more satisfying than reaching the finish line first.  You see this all the time in games like Junk Art, where players must stack wildly different shapes as they build their own teetering works of art.  Men at Work is another obvious example, as one player may not win the overall game, but they’ll pull off the most challenging task of all (to the “Ooos” and “Ahhhs” of their opponents).  More recently, I experienced this with our first play of Curious Cargo.  My wife ended up kicking my trash (nearly doubling my score), yet I was still mighty proud of the tricky network I had built and the maneuvers I had pulled off.

When the Strategy you Execute Plays Out Beautifully, and Somebody Still Outwits You

Pax Pamir (2nd Edition) is one of my absolute favorite games.  It quickly rose to the top of my list despite me losing the game over and over again.  I believe it took me 6 or so plays (even with less experienced people) to actually win the dang thing.  Despite my struggle, I loved every session of it.  Pax Pamir is the kind of game where the strategies and tactics are seemingly endless, and I’m always scheming up new plots to swoop in and win a dominance check (a scoring phase).  Often, I can get at least one of these schemes to pay off each game, and thereby position myself in the lead.  Even when my crafty opponents manage to snatch the victory from my salivating jaws, I still have a satisfied belly from the tasty schemes I hatched.

When an Opponent Shoots for the Moon and Wins Against All Odds

You have to respect the moon shooters of our hobby and the games that give them those tiniest of windows to hope and victory.  When I see an opponent, fresh out of reasonable options, shooting for the moon, I always give them an internal salute.  Everyone knows that they have the slimmest shot of victory, but the key is that they still have a shot… and you can’t help but root for the underdog.  Speaking of Root, this game’s Dominance Cards are a great example of shooting for the moon.  You’ll see one player just barely cross the 10-point mark as their opponents are closing in on the 30 point victory.  Suddenly, the 10-pointer plays out a Dominance Card, removes their score marker from the track, and declares that they will win on their next turn if everybody else doesn’t stop them.  Respect.

My utmost respect also goes to those folks who bet on the camel in last place winning the race of Camel Up.  To those in Lords of Vegas who choose to gamble all of their money at the enemy’s casino in a desperate attempt at a comeback, we salute you.  To that one wild Space Base card that is extremely hard to complete, but when completed it automatically declares its owner the winner (throwing out the whole points-based objective), I tip my hat to you and the player who lassos you up and rides you into the sunset of victory.

When You Set a Perfect Trap and They Still Manage to Escape

Two of the greatest dexterity games on the planet include Crokinole and Klask.  Perhaps one of the most underrated features of these games is the ability to set traps for your opponent.  In Crokinole, that involves planning and positioning your discs in the hardest to reach spots for your opponent, who must at least touch your disc in order for their shot to not be a scratch.  For Klask, that involves nudging the magnetic biscuits onto your opponent’s half of the board, surrounding them with booby traps that are hungry to latch onto their pawn.  Putting my opposition in these situations never ceases to delight me.  Yet I’ve seen people pull off mission: impossible by executing the perfect shot and turning the tables on me.  Touché, good sir/madame.  

When the Players are the Most Entertaining Part of the Game

It’s hard to be mad about losing a game when your friends harnessed its mechanisms to surprise and entertain you.  Games such as Wavelength (my all-time favorite party game) and A Fake Artist Goes to New York never fail to provide this type of experience.  Even when our team is falling hopelessly behind in Wavelength, I can’t help but laugh when our group ranks black licorice only slightly less unpopular than child labor.  Even when an innocent teammate is epically failing at proving their innocence in Fake Artist, I can’t help but appreciate their pitiful attempt at drawing a meaningful line.

When a Game Lets You Feel like a Genius

Deep down, I think I only ever wanted to be a wheeler and dealer.  Chinatown gives me what I’ve always wanted.  Chinatown is game where I get to dangle carrots in front of my opponents, carefully selecting the right carrot at the right time, to lure them in to my schemes.  Those moments when I can use the hot garbage under my ownership and convert it all into golden geese through crafty trades and clever negotiations make me feel like an absolute genius.  After that, it doesn’t matter all that much whether I win or lose the game, because in my heart, I’ve already won.

The same can be said of Decrypto, a game where players must give clues to their teammates that are neither too easy for their opponents to crack nor too hard for their comrades to misunderstand.  As the rounds march on, players are forced to be increasingly creative to keep the opposing team swinging and missing, and this game of cat and mouse can be even more satisfying than the victory.

When You Feel Yourself Improving

I love a great cooperative game that teaches and strengthens a group through their failures.  Games like The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine and The Mind are perfect examples.  Typically, when friends gather around the table to give one of these a go, everybody is out of sync, inexperienced, and/or rusty.  But after fumbling through a few rounds, the collective skill level at the table rises and the team finds a nice groove.  Things get even more interesting as the challenge ramps up and the players must increase their focus and determination to succeed.

I get the same feeling of growth and improvement from sprawling titles such as A Feast for Odin and deep puzzles such as Curious Cargo.  These games provide plenty of new paths to explore to help keep one from getting too comfortable.  Even when the scores are tallied and my total isn’t at the top, I love seeing the progress in my strategies and abilities from one game to the next.

When Rounds are Quick and Addictive

It’s hard to get salty about a loss when you only have a minute or two to wait before you’re back into the next round of play.  This is what makes Love Letter and Skull such addicting fillers, aside from being great fun, of course.  Shortening the playtime is one of the best ways to compensate for a high-luck or high-punishment mechanism (such as player elimination or luck-of-the-draw).  Eliminations and poor hands become funny instead of painful.

When Losing Earns You a Meaningful Pity Prize

Nobody likes being the loser of the group, but everybody likes prizes.  A meaningful pity prize can be a great way to dampen the blow of losing.  In My City, a competitive, polyomino legacy game, the player(s) who lose the round are often awarded with a bonus that permanently improves their board or tiles.  This functions as both a catchup mechanism and an exciting opportunity.

Tournament at Avalon takes a similar approach, but in a much more dramatic way.  This is the type of trick taking game where one person usually becomes the piñata of the round that everyone else takes a big swing at.  Only when this player-piñata is struck in Tournament at Avalon, instead of spewing out candy from their gaping wounds, they end up spewing out vengeance.  You can explore my review of the game for further details, but the long story short is that whoever is in last place (or close to last) from round to round gains more abilities and powers for them to gleefully unleash on their enemies.  Sometimes it pays to be in last.

When You Take Down Others With You

We’ll conclude this topic by looking at two more games: one that is still in the oven and one that has stood the test of time.  Bristol 1350 is a game that I had the pleasure of previewing through many play testing sessions during its development.  It’s a roller-coaster of a social deduction game where a few select players secretly start with the black plague, doomed to succumb to its wrath, and they are striving to bring down every other healthy player with them.  While it is absolutely thrilling to make it through the game healthy and unscathed, the opposite end of the spectrum is plenty of fun as well, even when you catch the plaque mid-game and must pivot to a new objective.  This is one form of losing that I look forward to experiencing more when it officially releases next year.

But when I think of losing with dignity—going out with bang, if you will—perhaps the best example that comes to mind is the battle mode in Mario Kart 64.  Yes, you know what I’m talking about.  That moment when you lose your last balloon and transform into a mobile bomb.  Few things in life are as good for the soul as when you kamikaze your bomb into an unfortunate player and their last balloon.

This concludes our exploration of games that are fun to lose, and why! Which games do you enjoy, despite your losses, and what keeps you coming back for more pain?

Article written by Nick Murray. To learn more about his tabletop gaming tastes and preferences, check out his blog series: Tabletop Tastes: My Favorite Flavors in Board Games. To follow his designs as they come to fruition, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

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