Board games, to me, are the perfect cure for winter date days or date nights! When it’s cold outside, we find that cozying up at home to play games together is just the ticket, and I’m excited to share our roundup of favorite games for two players with you.

Rob and I have always loved playing games and board games, both long before we ever met each other and, of course, love playing them together now! Some may call me competitive, but I don’t think I’m really that competitive, right?! Ha! We very regularly host game nights or go to our friends’ homes for game nights, and playing board games with our friends and family has always been a part of who we are as a couple. We even made sure to register for a slew of board games when we got married, and our board game closet is absolutely overflowing. On trips (like our annual winter beach week or our annual fall mountain trip), we always bring a favorite game or two with us so that we can unplug while we’re together. And yes, we do have an entire closet dedicated to board games!

Come every January, we find ourselves playing games even more than usual. We find games to be such a good alternative to TV, a good stretching of our minds, and a really fun way to connect with each other. In the past, we’ve instituted a standing Friday date night consisting of a fun dinner and a board game, and we regularly keep a stack of our favorite games out on our dining room table to encourage ourselves to play games often. It really is one of our favorite ways to spend an hour or two together. When you’re cooped up a bit more than usual with the cold weather outside, playing games (whether with a roommate or significant other) is a very fun outlet. Here is a list of our very favorite board games for two!

our favorite games for two:

• chess
• backgammon
• dominoes
• Azul
• Hive
• Seven Wonders
• Seven Wonders Duel
• Yahtzee
• Sequence
• Blokus
• Carcassone
• Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation
• Monopoly Deal
• Ticket to Ride (Rob hates it for two players since it’s flawed, FYI)
• Dominion
• Scrabble
• Boggle
• Star Wars Risk
• Star Wars Epic Duels (Rob’s favorite game of all time)
• The Fox and the Forest
• Sagrada
• Jaws
• Don’t forget about puzzles! (This one and this one are so beautiful!) We find ourselves doing more puzzles in January or February than the rest of the year, and we really enjoy them. It’s a little bit mindless while also being a bit challenging! And there are so many gorgeous puzzles out there to choose from, which keeps them very fresh and exciting. My friends and I even do a puzzle swap (we have one this week!) to rotate puzzles around amongst us, which is a great way to expand the puzzles you do without having to spend a penny.

I would highly, highly recommend any and all of the above games, and we thoroughly enjoy each of them for various reasons. You can probably tell that Rob is quite the board game aficionado, and he’s opened my eyes up to dozens of games that I’d never heard of before! He and his friends are very serious about their games.

Here’s a fun little at-home date I surprised Rob with recently:

I wrote 5 favorite board games, 5 favorite cocktails, and 5 favorite bands/records on slips of paper, put each category’s slips into a bowl, and had Rob draw one of each. Then it was a complete surprise which combination we’d enjoy for our date! We ended up making gimlets, playing Dominoes, and listening to records on our record player, and it was such a simple yet sweet date together. You can easily recreate it or tweak it… I’m always game for infusing a little more novelty into everyday life!

Are there any that stand out to you as a favorite in your household? Are there are that are missing from our list? We’re always up for trying out new games that have been recommended to us, so I’m all ears!

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