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Meeple & Mat

Board game gifts for people who don’t play board games

Buy the right board game without knowing anything about board games

Sorted by how many people are playing, what the occasion is, who it is for and what you can spend. Every pick carries the publisher’s own player count, playing time and age band - and a price we can stand behind rather than one we remembered.

Choose a gift in four questionsStart with the number of players
A group of friends around a wooden table mid-game, cards and wooden pieces spread between them in warm lamplight
Games covered
40
Specs from the publisher
100%
Sponsored placements
0
Games we claim to have tested
0

Every gift guide in this category implies a shelf of played games behind it. We do not have one, and we would rather say so. Here is what we do instead.

Start with a constraint

What do you actually know about the gift?

A board game gift is decided by constraints, not by taste. Pick whichever one you are sure about.

Our top picks

If you only look at one thing per category

The number one pick from six of our guides, with a live price and a buy link on each. No digging.

Why trust a page of recommendations

What we do instead of pretending

We have not played these games. Here is the work that replaces that, stated plainly enough for you to check it.

  • Publisher figures only

    Every player count, playing time and age band comes from the publisher's own page and names that publisher. Where a publisher does not state a figure, we leave the row empty rather than estimating it.

  • Live prices, or none

    Prices refresh daily from the retailer. If we do not hold a current one, the button says so. We never print a number from memory, and no price on this site is older than 48 hours.

  • A stated exclusion on every pick

    Every game we recommend carries a plain answer to who should be given something else instead. A list where everything is great is advertising, not advice.

  • Constraint-fit, checked

    A page about six players contains only games whose publisher-stated range includes six. Every pick says where it sits in that range.

Read the full method

Read these first

The four pages that do the most work

If you have never bought a board game for somebody else, these answer the questions in the order they actually come up.

  • How to choose a board game gift

    Four questions in order. Two minutes, and it eliminates almost every wrong answer before you look at a product.

  • How much do board games cost?

    The four price bands, with publisher list prices read from publishers' own stores rather than remembered.

  • Board game age guide

    Every game we cover, listed by the publisher's own stated minimum age. From 4 to 17.

  • How we pick

    What we do instead of pretending to have played forty games, written out so you can check it.

Latest

The most recently updated pages on this site.

Every page on this site

How this site is funded

Meeple & Mat is a participant in the Amazon Associates program. When you buy through a link here we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It does not change which games we recommend or the order they appear in, and where a cheaper game is the better gift, the cheaper game wins. We do not currently hold live prices for these games, so no price is shown until we do.

Affiliate disclosureEditorial policy