13. Zombie Dice: Horde Edition
Zombie Diceis an extremely simple push-your-luck game that packs a lot of fun into such lightweight rules—and it involves nothing but a handful of custom dice, so it’s extremely portable as well.
InZombie Dice, on your turn, you roll three custom dice that can show either Brain, Footstep, or Shotgun: a Brain is worth 1 point, a Footstep can be re-rolled, a Shotgun ends your turn if you’ve rolled three of them.
When you’re done, you can choose to take threemoredice and continue rolling OR you can stop rolling and score what you’ve rolled. If you ever roll three Shotguns, your turn immediately ends and you lose all the Brains you rolled that turn, meaning zero points.
In other words, how many Brains can you roll before you roll three Shotguns? How far will you push your luck?Zombie Diceis fast and fun, making it a great filler for any group size.
Note:While baseZombie Diceis available on its own,Zombie Dice: Horde Editionincludes two expansions that add more kinds of dice to shake things up. I recommend it.
Related:The Best Push-Your-Luck Board Games and Card Games
12. No Thanks!
No Thanks!is a simple card game where you wantas few points as possible. The deck consists of cards with point values from 3 to 35. Players also start with a handful of “refusal” chips.
Each round, one card is flipped over, then players take turns taking one of two possible actions: either place a refusal chip if they don’t want the card, or take the card and all refusal chips that have accumulated on it. If you run out of chips, youmusttake the card.
When the deck runs out, whoever has the most points loses—and each chip you possess reduces your score by 1, so they’re good to amass. But there are two more twists that really makeNo Thanks!shine.
If you collect a sequence of numbers (e.g. 24, 25, and 26), then the entire sequence is scored as the lowest value in the sequence (in this case, 24 points). Also, at the start of the game, nine cards are randomly removed from the deck, so the numbers you want may never show up.
No Thanks!is a fun blend of luck and strategy, where any given game may be decided by luck but the better player wins in the long run.
Related:The Best Board Games for People Who Hate Board Games
11. Similo
Similois a cooperative deduction game where one player is trying to get the other players to correctly guess a secret suspect from a grid of 4x3 cards, with each card representing one character.
On each round, the cluemaster plays a character card from their hand and states whether it’ssimilar toordifferent fromthe secret suspect. Similarities and differences can be for any reason—maybe they both wear glasses, maybe they’re opposite genders, maybe the cards share colors.
Using the given clue, players will choose to eliminate potential suspects from the grid. After five rounds, if the last remaining card is the secret suspect, then everyone wins.
Related:The Best Travel Board Games You Can Play Anywhere (Even on a Plane)
10. Timeline
Timelineis a great card game for any collection because it’s fast, it’s simple, and it’s educational—but not in a boring or stressful way.
Each player starts with a hand of four cards, with each card representing a particular event in time. For example, “Invention of the printing press,” “First step on the moon,” or “Discovery of planetary motion.” On the back of each card is the year of that particular event.
Players take turns playing a card to a shared timeline, trying to place their event in the proper spotrelativeto the other events in the timeline.
If you get it right, it stays in the timeline; otherwise, the card is discarded and you draw another to your hand. The first player to get rid of all the cards in their hand wins.
The great thing aboutTimelineis that you don’t need to know exact years to succeed. Since you only need to know how events relate to each other, you can reason your way to victory.
Related:The Best Board Games for Drinking (That You Can Play at a Pub)
9. Sushi Go Party!
The originalSushi Gois a classic card game that uses a simplified card drafting system: everyone starts with a hand of cards, picks one card, then passes their hand to the left, which gives you a new hand of cards, from which you pick another card, then pass, then pick, etc.
There are various card types, which each have different scoring mechanisms. For example: nigiri cards have fixed point values, wasabi cards increase the value of nigiri cards, maki roll cards only grant points to whoever collects the most maki rolls, etc.
Sushi Go Party!is the definitive version ofSushi Go.It adds several more card types that expand gameplay, improve replayability, and increase the max number of players from five to eight.
Related:The Most Beautiful Board Games With Charming Artwork
8. Point Salad
Point Saladis a set collection card game where players take turns drafting vegetable cards from a shared pool. Here’s the catch: the back of every vegetable card also has a unique scoring condition.
ThroughoutPoint Salad, you aren’t just drafting vegetable cards, but also flipping vegetable cards into scoring cards (or vice versa, flipping scoring cards into vegetable cards).
There are six vegetable types, but because each player has their own collection of scoring cards, the vegetables are worth different amounts to each player. There are over a hundred different ways to score.
When all the cards have been drafted, everyone tallies up their points based on their scoring cards, and whoever has the most wins.
Related:The Best Cheap Budget Board Games That Pack a Ton of Fun
7. Mint Works
If you’re looking for a meaty game that packs a serious punch in a 15-minute average play time, thenMint Worksis the game for you.
Mint Worksis a compact worker placement game, in which players place their “mint tokens” on different location cards to take a card’s action.
Possible actions include gaining more mint tokens, acquiring plans, building acquired plans, exchanging plans, etc. The goal of the game is to earn points by building plans, and the first to earn seven points wins.
It sounds really simple—and it is!—but the structure ofMint Worksmeans you’ll be making lots of interesting decisions. In terms of ratio between depth and play time, few can beatMint Works.
The cherry on top of it all is the game’s packaging, which looks exactly like a tin of mints. It’s extremely portable, meaning you can take this excellent game with you anywhere you go.
Related:The Best Starter Board Games That Are Essential in Any Collection
6. Love Letter
If you’re looking for a lighthearted card game that blends simple hand management with a small dose of bluffing and deduction, then you absolutely have to tryLove Letter.
Love Letterconsists of 16 cards with face values 1 through 8. (The lower-value cards have multiple copies.) Players start with one card in their hand, and on their turn, they draw one card and play one card. That’s it!
Each card, however, activates a special effect when played. For example, if you play the King, you must trade hands with someone. If you play the Guard, you pick someone and name a card—if they have it, they’reeliminated. If you play the Princess,you’reeliminated!
If everyone else gets eliminated, you win that round. If the deck runs out and there are multiple players still playing, the player with the highest-value card in their hand wins the round.
Each round ofLove Letteronly takes a few minutes to play. The goal is to be the first to win a certain number of rounds.
Love Letteris a true modern classic of card games that’s perfect for so many occasions. It’s fast, it’s simple, it’s engaging, and it’s portable.
Note:WhileLove Letteris fine for 2 people, the game really kicks off with 3 players and truly shines with 4 players. It’s still fun with just 2, but keep this in mind!
Related:The Best Board Games for Three Players, Ranked
5. For Sale
For Saleis the ultimate short-length auction game, in which players will be buying and selling real estate to become the richest player by the end.
In the first half of the game, all players start with the same amount of money. A set of property cards are flipped up in each round and players take turns making increasingly larger bids.
When a player wants to drop out of the present auction, they take the lowest-valued property card that’s still remaining and then payhalfof their current bid. The last person to drop out takes the highest-valued property card, but they pay theirfullbid amount.
When all property cards have been auctioned—there are 30 property cards, valued from 1 to 30—the selling phase of the game commences.
In the second half, a set of money cards are flipped up in each round and each player plays a property card in secret. They’re all revealed, and players—in order of highest-valued property to lowest—get to choose which of the money cards they take.
For Saleis a lot simpler than it sounds and it plays a lot faster than you might expect. It’s particularly good for groups of 4 to 6 players, and the two halves make for an entertaining rise of tension from start to end.
Related:Where to Buy Used Board Games Online: The Best Sites
4. Fuse
Fuseis a solid contender for greatest filler board game ever made, primarily for one reason: it always plays in 10 minutes, exactly.
That’s becauseFuseis a real-time cooperative dexterity game where players roll a bunch of dice, then take turns drafting those dice to solve their individual bomb cards.
There are 25 different dice inFuse, five each of five different colors. The bomb cards have limitations on what kinds of dice can be placed on them, and some bomb cards are harder than other (e.g. one bomb card might require you to build a stack of dice in a very particular order).
And don’t forget:Fuseis a real-time game. There’s a countdown timer that ticks in the background, and you’re all collaboratively trying to resolve all the bomb cards before time runs out.
It’s a high-tension game that demands you make good decisions under time pressure. The fact that it has a fixed play time of 10 minutes ensures you can always slot this into whatever time gap you need to fill.
Related:The Best Dice Games to Round Out Your Board Game Collection
3. Just One
Just Oneis one of my top picks for cooperative large-group party games, but it’s also surprisingly solid at player counts as low as three!
InJust One, players take turns being the guesser. As guesser, you draw a card (without looking at it) and pick a number—that number determines which word on that card you’ll need to guess. Everyone else secretly writes a one-word hint to help you guess the word in question.
The twist? When everyone’s done, they reveal their hints to each other—and if any hint appears more than once, they all cancel out and can’t be used. From the remaining hints, you’ll need to guess the answer word.
Just Onetakes place over 13 cards, and the group is trying to succeed together on as many of those cards as they can. It plays fast and it’s highly entertaining as players try to be helpful but not obvious.
Related:The Best Party Board Games for Larger Groups (8 or More Players)
2. The Crew: Mission Deep Sea
The Crew: Mission Deep Seais the ultimate filler card game for groups who love trick-taking games—because this isn’t just a trick-taking game, but acooperativetrick-taking game.
Every game ofThe Crew: Mission Deep Seastarts with a set of task cards that are distributed to players. These cards have goals for players, such as “Win the first three tricks” or “Win fewer tricks than everyone else.”
If everyone can complete their task cards, everyone wins. But if even one player fails, it’s failure for everyone.
The Crew: Mission Deep Seaalso provides everyone with a communication token, which can be used to provide information about one card in their hand. Otherwise, no communication is allowed.
The best part? The task cards have different difficulty ratings on them, and you can adjust the difficulty of the game for your own group by changing the difficulty target, which changes the number of task cards in play.
Each hand ofThe Crew: Mission Deep Seaonly takes 5 to 10 minutes, but it’s so addictive. You’ll want to play just one more hand, one more hand, one more hand… until the whole night passes you by.
Related:The Best Cooperative Board Games of All Time, Ranked
1. Ticket to Ride: London
Ticket to Rideis one of the most popular board games in the entire world, with several variations released over the years that each introduce different gameplay elements that twist the game.
Well,Ticket to Ride: Londonis the express version ofTicket to Ridethat distills the entire experience into a 15-minute play session.
The map is smaller and the routes are shorter, but the core gameplay is the same: collect cards, play those cards to build routes, and make sure your routes are connected to fulfill your destination tickets.
Ticket to Ride: Londonis the best way to enjoyTicket to Rideif you prefer several short sessions versus one longer session, or if you mainly play with two or three players. Plus, it’s extremely affordable!
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