Family Board Games Bucket List

Denmark to the Arctic for two or three players, with tunnels, ferries and a very long way north.

Build postal routes across Bavaria, drawing cities that fit end to end.

Expansion 10, now sold as Circus & Artists: the big top pulls a crowd across the map and followers stack into human pyramids for points.

Trams and U-Bahn lines across the city, with sightseeing stops that score at the end.

Sculpt something in clay and let the others guess it, slowly, with questions.

Pull ingredients from a bag and stop before your cauldron explodes.

Expansion 11 puts historic wonders on the map, each one with a rule of its own.

A cycling race with dice, drafting and a peloton that behaves like one.

Plan a route through a fantasy map using transport cards others also need.

Five detectives hunt Mister X across a London map; he surfaces every five turns.

Expansion 2 adds wine, cloth and wheat to collect off finished cities, the builder who buys you a second tile, and the pig who fattens a field.

Paddle steamers race downriver, picking up passengers and running out of coal.

Bid, steal and exhibit antiques; simultaneous card selection with a lot of bluffing.

Liar's dice under a cup: raise the bid or call it, and lose a die when you are wrong.

Lay tiles into a peaceful landscape, campaign by campaign; the digital game as cardboard.

Colours and shapes on wooden tiles; Scrabble without the words.

Carts through the canals of the Dutch Golden Age, with merchandise bonuses for the goods you deliver.

Roll dice, trigger buildings, race to finish four landmarks.

Domino-shaped land tiles and a five-by-five grid; a masterclass in small design.

The gateway co-op: grab four treasures before the island sinks.

Yahtzee monsters smash each other for control of the city.

The expansion that gives Catan a real mid-game and a barbarian clock.

The roll-and-write take on the tile-and-wildlife hit.

Card drafting so light you can teach it in ninety seconds.

Tunnels, ferries and stations on the best-loved map of the series.

Trick-taking where you must predict exactly how many tricks you will win.

A two-player quilt of Tetris pieces and a time track instead of turns.

The palace garden on hexes, where a tile has to share a colour or a plant with its neighbour.

Three rounds of the same names: describe, one word, then mime.

A dial between two extremes and a clue that has to land exactly right.