Regardless of whether you are just dipping your toes into board games or are a long-time fan looking for a big, crunchy match to fill a whole day with, there is, without a doubt, a game that perfectly suits your needs. Throughout the years, we’ve seen that there is simply no limit to the types of games that people designers cook up. This, alongside the ongoing trend of pairing popular board game franchises with properties like The Lord of the Rings and Marvel, ensures there is always something new to try. 2025’s new releases are no exception, as they cover an extensive range of aesthetics, styles, and topics, from The Elder Scrolls to the queer scene of eighteenth-century London.
In determining this list of the 10 best new board games of 2025, I looked at aesthetics, mechanics, and most importantly of all, how fun they are to play. It should be noted that while there have also been some spectacular board game expansions this year (looking at you, Thunder’s Edge and SETI: Space Agencies), captivating TTRPGs (Stormlight fans sound off), and TCGs like Riftbound and Gundam, this lineup features only the base board games themselves. Let’s take a look at some of the best cardboard had to offer in 2025.
The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship
Players: 1-5
Time: 60-150 min
Designed by Matt Leacock and based on the system from the modern classic board game Pandemic (also designed by Leacock), Fate of the Fellowship lets you retell the story of J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, as you try to deliver the One Ring into Mt. Doom before the hope of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth is lost.
This cooperative adventure puts 1-5 players in the cloaks of the Fellowship of the Ring and their allies, with each player taking control of two characters from a pool of 13 possible options, including the likes of Gandalf, Legolas, and of course, Frodo and Sam. With Ring Wraiths in the skies and the forces of Sauron spreading across the land, you and your friends will need to fend them off while sneakily moving Frodo from the Shire to Mt. Doom, while avoiding the gaze of Sauron. For fans of tense cooperative games and of Pandemic, Fate of the Fellowship wonderfully adapts the tried-and-true gameplay of Pandemic while sprinkling some elven magic of its own to deliver one of the best tabletop experiences of 2025.
The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of The Second Era
Players: 1-4
Time: 120-240 min
Developed by Chip Theory Games, a studio known for its high-quality board games full of playing chips and dice, The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era is its latest behemoth that does a fantastic job at capturing the series’ sense of scale and player choice. From the moment you and your friends create your characters, choosing from a wide variety of races, classes, skills, and other specialities, you will embark on quests and explore your favorite regions of Tamriel, including Skyrim, Blackmarsh, High Rock, Morrowind, and Cyrodiil, exploring dungeons and rolling dice to vanquish monsters, bandits, and worse.
Where most campaign games require you to spend tens, if not hundreds of hours to complete, a full campaign in Second Era is composed of three acts and can be finished in a weekend. While its high price tag and massive table presence may be imposing, with some wonderful learning resources available from Chip Theory, Betrayal of the Second Era is one of the most approachable games of this scale and provides more player options and goodies to tinker around with than any other board game released this year.
Unstoppable
Players: 1-2
Time: 30-90 min
For fans of playing board games by themselves, one of the best solo board games of the year is Unstoppable, designed by John D. Clair. In this card-crafting deck-building entry in Renegade Game Studios’ “Solo Hero” series, you will pick from 12 possible characters to play as you try to stop a looming world-ending menace. Each “run” of Unstoppable puts you against a challenging boss whose demise is your end goal, but in order to get there, you will need to upgrade your deck of cards with both brand-new ones and also enhance the ones you already have.
Unstoppable’s cards feature a clever design with a cutout that allows you to see the different upgrade effects granted by the various cards you slot in behind it in the included sleeves. Further setting itself apart, each of your cards is double-sided, with one face showing off your allies, gear, and upgrades, and the other being an enemy. Further differentiating the game, the only way to draw new cards is by defeating those that have been played as your enemies for the round. Unstoppable is a great game for solo players who enjoy a good challenge, and with four possible characters, three bosses, and multiple difficulty levels all in the base box, it gives plenty of ways to replay it. It even has a cooperative two-player mode, which can really ratchet up the challenge, all in a convenient box that won’t take up much space.
Nemesis: Retaliation
Players: 1-5
Time: 120-180 min
Awaken Realms’ games are known for their massive games with over-the-top production and a table presence that is among the wildest out there; The latest title in its Nemesis series, Nemesis: Retaliation, continues this tradition. Historically, the Nemesis games are basically Aliens: The Board Game in all but name and likeness. However, this third iteration changes things up considerably over its predecessors while maintaining the unsettling tension that players adore.
Retaliation puts 1-5 players in the boots of soldiers this time around, decked out and prepared to face the threats ahead of them, with guns, ammo, and abilities that are tailored more to combat than simply survival. Instead of taking place on a static board with randomized rooms, you will now be growing the map as you go, placing hallway corridors and connecting rooms together, giving Retaliation almost a Betrayal at the House on the Hill vibe. That said, this is still Nemesis, with randomly pulled aliens spawning in, rolling for noise, and the potential for a traitor to be among the group. However, there is a special deck of objectives that removes that risk for those who want a purely cooperative experience. For anyone looking for a highly atmospheric board game with plenty of sick-looking alien miniatures–and has the space to set it up–you can’t get much better than Nemesis: Retaliation this year.
For more information on Nemesis: Retaliation, check the game’s page over on Awaken Realm’s website!
Molly House
Players: 1-5
Time: 60-120 min
One of the great things about board games is that not only can they be set anywhere from the deepest reaches of space to a vineyard in France, but they also can allow for creative exploration into difficult and unsettling moments in history. That enables them to provide some context about and exposure to events that many players may have been unaware of, thereby allowing for some thought-provoking discussions and education. Molly House, designed by Jo Kelly and Cole Wehrle (designer of games including Root, Oath, and last year’s mega-hit Arcs) at Wehrlegig Games, is a hand-drafting game set in early eighteenth-century London.
As a mollie, 1-5 players will navigate the streets of London and throw lavish parties and festivities to create joy in this set-collection game. Simultaneously, you deal with the risk of drawing the attention of the Society for the Reformation of Manners and having their members infiltrate your group, shut down the Molly Houses, or arrest you. Molly House also includes a potential hidden traitor mechanic, where players can secretly decide to join the Society and try to bring about the arrest and collapse of the Molly Houses instead, earning victory for themselves. Molly House is a game with strong gameplay, but it also provides a look into a grotesque, unsettling, and oft-forgotten moment in history as well. The themes won’t be suitable for everyone, with references to lynching and death within the queer community, but the overarching concept of wanting to spread joy, throw parties, and have a good time, along with historical context and information provided within the included manual, makes this both a wonderful game and history tool.
Tacta
Players: 2-6
Time: 20 min
Whether you are looking for a stocking stuffer, something to throw in your bag to take with you, or just fill that small hole on your shelf, Tacta is a small card game that is quick to learn, easy to set up, and doesn’t take long to play. Each player has a specifically colored deck of cards with lines and pips on them, and your goal is to have the most pips showing when the last player plays their final card. Where Tacta really gets crafty is that you are able to cover other players’ cards, matching up the lines on your cards, which can overlap with corners and edges of opponents’ cards, and any pips that are now covered will not be tallied up when the game ends.
From a visual standpoint, Tacta adopts a slick, neon look with the bright green, red, purple, blue, pink, and orange symbols that seem to glow against the black background of the cards. Watching the game expand over your table as you play is entertainment in and of itself, with cards twisted, turned, and flipped into a strange display that you could imagine finding in a modern art exhibit. Each of the colored decks also features a corresponding symbol that is present on their cards, making it a colorblind-friendly title as well. Tacta is one of the most stylish games of the year and a great card game to keep with you to pull out whenever you have a few minutes to spare.
Magical Athlete
Players: 2-6
Time: 30 min
Sometimes you just need a silly roll-and-move game, and Magical Athlete manages to deliver and then some. This game sees 2-6 players assemble a team of four zany characters from a roster of 36, with the goal of winning the most out of four races. Roll your dice, move your piece, and first to the goal wins the race–it’s that simple.
What makes Magical Athlete one of the best board games of 2025, though, is all those characters. Each of the 36 racers features an ability that breaks the rules and can impact not only themselves but everyone on the board, such as Stickler’s “Other racers can only cross the finish line by moving the exact amount they need. If they overshoot, they don’t move” or Party Animal’s “Before my main move, all racers move one space towards me. Each other racer on my space gives me +1 to my main move.” It’s a game that lives by the law of “if every character is broken, then the game is balanced.” And besides just being a great party game with some art that feels like it was pulled out of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, it can be quite funny as you see the wild effects of characters’ abilities interacting with each other.
Critter Kitchen
Players: 1-5 (1-7 w/ expansion)
Time: 60-90 min
Full of puns, animal chef meeples, and a full menu of tasty-looking food, Critter Kitchen from Cardboard Alchemy, creators of 2022’s equally fantastic Flamecraft, puts players in the aprons of competing teams of chefs looking to please the palettes of visiting food critics and score the most victory points.
On your turn, each player sends out their chefs to collect ingredients needed to cook dishes or gather intel on what the arriving critics prefer. The order and type of chef you send out matters, too, as the small and quick mouse chef may be able to pick first but can only carry one good, while the large and slow boar chef may pick last but can carry three ingredients, with the lizard chef balancing the two.
For even more variety and strategy, you can draft special executive chefs to work for your restaurant, granting special perks and bonus scoring potential. These restaurateurs are based on famous chefs, including the likes of Goat’n Ramsey (Gordon Ramsey), Jamie Owliver (Jamie Oliver), and Anthony Boardain (Anthony Bourdain), among others, giving a bit of asymmetry to the gameplay. Underneath Sandara Tang’s gorgeous artwork lies an intricate and wonderful worker-placement game that stands out among board games this year.
Toy Battle
Players: 2
Time: 5-15 min
T-Rexes that shoot fire, little plastic green army men, and a rubber duck Viking are just a few of the toys you will be taking with you in Toy Battle, a simple yet strategic area-control game designed by Paolo Mori and Alessandro Zucchini. In it, two players are equipped with identical armies of units with special abilities, and must then take turns placing their units on one of the game’s eight included maps, working to collect special victory points or create an unbroken chain of units going from your base to the opponent’s. You are able to overtake locations held by enemies, but instead of a complex combat phase or rolling dice and following some procedure, it is simply the higher-number tile wins.
There is a bit of randomness to Toy Battle, as you will blindly pick your unit tokens and will have to choose wisely when to restock on troops, but there is a surprising amount of strategy involved, too. You can generally only place a unit on a space that is directly adjacent to another one, so knowing when to push forward to cut off your opponent’s supply lines or when to take a turn to just restock on your army is more important than what you draw. Toy Battle is approachable and a great option for kids, but also adults, and the quick game time makes Toy Battle a potato-chip board game: It’s hard to play just once, making it a great option to bust out when you have a half hour to kill.
Ayar: Children of the Sun
Players: 1-4
Time: 60-90 min
Ayar: Children of the Sun marks the third game in the series designed by Mandela Fernandez-Grandon, Fabio Lopiano, and published by Osprey Games. In Ayar, 1-4 players recreate the myth of the origins of the Inca Empire as the sons and daughters of Inti, the sun god, and Mama Quilla, the moon god, known as the first clans, journey across the Andes to settle the Inca civilization.
Ayar features a surprising number of methods that you can use to earn victory points, including set collection, tile laying, and more. Ayar requires you to stay on your toes because at the end of each round, the clan that has progressed the least along the map will be removed from the game, reducing the number of actions that each player can take on each turn, and potentially requiring you to pivot from your plan. The final twist Ayar pulls is that the lowest value between your sun god and moon god favor tracks determines how many points you have at the end of the game. Ayar offers a creative, clever board game with surprises that will keep even the most experienced tabletop players on their toes.
