Top 10 Replacement Board Games

Are you tired of playing that worn our copy of Monopoly with your family?

Are the only board games you choose from old games collecting dust on your self – like The Game of Life, Sorry, Scrabble, Stratego, and Risk?

You’re not alone.

Having just a few old board games in the closet is typical of so many families around the world. But we have great news – there’s a myriad of fantastic board games to choose from out there!

This week we saw a great list on Gaming Trends that suggests replacement games for many traditional board games (Play This, Not That – Dozen Better Board Games). We love their list. But we also have our own recommendations.

Here are 10 great board games to replace your worn out old games and inject more fun into your family game time.

1. Monopoly – replace it with: Ticket to Ride
There’s no rolling to move around a board in Ticket to Ride. But there IS set collection of colored cards and monopolizing routes to earn more points than your opponents. Instead of random luck in dice rolls, you get to plan how to best use your options. And instead of forcing others bankrupt, you can block their routes to thwart their plans.

2. The Game of Life – replace it with: Pandemic
This replacement game recommendation isn’t a commentary that our lives are all about ridding the world of horrible diseases (as is the theme of Pandemic). But rather switch out the competitive Game of Life for a cooperative game. The best way to go through life is working along side each other. Grab the great cooperative game of Pandemic and work together to win!

3. Sorry! – replace it with: Fast Flowing Forest Fellers
Sorry! is essentially a race game where you’re trying to get all your pawns to the end line before your opponents do. Along the way you may have a chance to bump your opponent’s pawns back to their starting spot. Fast Flowing Forest Fellers is also a race game where you may get a chance to bump your opponent into a water flow that sends them back a bit. But rather than relying on random card draws to move, you get to choose which cards you play from your hand for movement. A bit more strategic and the theme is definitely more fun.

4. Clue – replace it with: Inkognito
If you like moving around making deductions, then grab a copy of Inkognito. Instead of moving around the board to solve a murder, players move around trying to figure out the identities of the other players. Once they figure out who their teammate is, they need to find a way to meet up in the same location to complete their mission.

5. Stratego – replace it with: Lord of the Rings the Confrontation
Simply put, Lord of the Rings the Confrontation is a fantastic 2-player board game. A hidden character battle on the board is so cool when each character has unique abilities that keep each player guessing what their opponent will play next. Tense every time and uses the Lord of the Rings theme so well. Just writing this makes me excited to play it again.

6. Scrabble – replace it with: Word on the Street
Replace the quiet game of individuals making words with letter tiles with a raucous game of teams making words with letter tiles. Word on the Street has teams competing over the use of letters to build words. Use the letter enough and your team will win it to your side of the street and be one step closer to winning.

7. Risk – replace it with: Risk Legacy
The folks at Gaming Trends would like you to switch out Risk with another great conquest game – Smallworld. We LOVE Smallworld too and may have suggested it a year ago. But that’s before we played Risk Legacy. Risk Legacy is a great game that changes along the way.

8. Yahtzee – replace it with: King of Tokyo
Here we definitely agree with Gaming Trends – King of Tokyo is the way to go. Like Yahtzee, players roll the dice 3 times and choose which dice to set aside and use. But in King of Tokyo players are battling each other. What dice you keep affects the other players. Get your battle on! (Our runner-up choice on this one is Roll Through the Ages.)

9. Checkers – replace it with: Yinsh
Yinsh is a fantastic mental challenge pitting one player against another. And there’s a mechanism built-in that helps the player falling behind and further challenges the player in the lead as the game progresses. Scoring a point requires taking a ring off the board – rings that are needed for movement. Great balance that keeps you thinking and strategizing the whole time.

10. Trivial Pursuit – replace it with: Wits & Wagers Party
If you want everyone to enjoy a trivia game, then Wits & Wagers is the only way to go. Most people shy away from trivia games because the game makes them “feel dumb”. But in Wits & Wagers, you don’t need to know the answers to win. The pressure is off and everyone can have a great time. There are multiple versions and we like the scoring in the Party version the best.

What board games or card games would you recommend for replacing many of these traditional games?

Or what would you recommend for replacing board games such as: Battleship, Uno, Rack-O, or Connect 4?