5 Funtastic board games to jump-start your date nights

For a while in the first few years of our marriage we pulled out the laptop in the evenings to watch a show together. But that got old fast. We were usually overwhelmed by scrolling through options, and never fully agreed on what to watch, and it caused more tension than it was worth. So, one day, we decided it had to stop -- we would no longer watch shows as a way to connect and spend time together in the evenings. Instead, we decided to slowly start researching and collecting board games or card games that worked for two players.

If you are ready to forgo dinner and a movie on your next date night, please take advantage of our years of research and have some good old-fashioned board game fun!

A game we discovered early on, this whimsically illustrated strategy game has kept us entertained many a night. Chickapig is similar to a classic strategy game like checkers or chess, where the goal is to get all of your pieces into their pens across the board. It requires both offensive and defensive strategy, which means that the game’s only downside for date night is that the better you get at the game, the longer it can take to end.

(2 or 4 players may play and a game takes about 40 minutes.)

Azul is a particularly beautiful game where gameplay involves choosing and placing colorful tiles strategically over a number of rounds. This game is fairly simple to learn and easy to set up. There are many variations out there, but the original is wonderful and still entertaining after many evenings.

(2 to 4 players may play and a game takes about 30 minutes.)

This is one of our favorite games. Wingspan is a celebration of birds, and the beautiful pictures combined with interesting information make for a lovely and varied experience every time. The game is competitive but not in a cutthroat way. There aren’t really ways to impede your fellow players. While there is a definite winner and strategy is important, the game play itself lends to a peaceful and relaxed environment. The only potential downsides to this game are that it does take more commitment -- learning, set-up and clean-up are a little more involved, and gameplay is at least an hour. It is also a pricier game to invest in. But we’ve found it is worth it!

(1 to 5 players may play and game takes close to an hour or a little more to play.)

Only one of us in our marriage loves word games. Bananagrams is much quicker than Scrabble -- and relies less on an extensive vocabulary and more on flexibility and quick thinking. All of that is to say, if you aren’t usually a fan of word games, this one might interest you. 

(1 to 8 players and it generally takes 15 minutes to half an hour to play.)

Battlesheep is easy to learn and quick to play. Our six-year-old got it for Christmas this year and enjoys playing it. But it turns out that his dad and I also enjoy playing it -- especially when we don’t have the energy for a longer, more involved game. You can play best two out of three and add on more rounds if you’ve found a second wind and would like a few more chances to end the evening as the victor.

(2 to 4 players may play and a game takes 10-15 minutes.)

A few honorable mentions go to the following games: Dominion (a deck building card game), Upwords (a word game, slightly slower paced than Bananagrams but faster than Scrabble), and Phase 10 (a card game in the Rummy family that takes a long time so you can break it up by playing a phase or two a night). Happy gaming!