5 Great Board Games under £20

On a recent look at my basket on Zatu, I sit thinking blimey I love board games. But I will tell you who doesn’t, my bank account.

This wonderful, ridiculous hobby of ours can be incredible, bringing people together and providing joy round a dinner table, a board game café or at the pub after work, but a love of board games can be very expensive.

But following on from my 5 great board games under £10, I am here to tell you that not all great games cost the earth, and many great experiences can be found in even the most inexpensive of games.

So, if you’ve got some spare cash in your wallet, or are even looking at getting a little birthday present extra for a friend, I have 5 great board games under £20 that you won’t need to wait for pay day for!

1. Courtisans

Let’s start this list with the newest board game I have added to my collection, the pompously noble card game Courtisans.

Released only last year, Courtisans is a card game themed around a royal banquet, where you look to rack up as many points as possible by backing families who have the queens favour.

You do this with a brilliant mechanic in which you can play all three cards in your hand. 1 card you play in front of yourself, 1 in front of an opponent, and 1 one the Queens table itself, impacting the influence each house has on a family.

Certain cards have powers that can impact the game, like the spy card which gets played face down, and the tactical, backstabbing game you play as you decide where to place each of your cards is excellent. Courtisans has a wonderful dose of tactical gameplay mixed with spite, beautifully encapsulating the theme of the game which is enhanced by the stunning artwork on the cards, and the delightful fabric mat which represents the Queens table.

Its never easy to tell who’s winning, so every game is intriguing and tense. While it can be played with just two players which is important for these sorts of games, it shines best at 3-5 players, where the courtly betrayals can really go into full swing.

So go gather four of your noblest friends, invite them to a banquet and have a wonderful time backstabbing them at every opportunity, all for a price that even a pauper could afford!

2. Jaipur

The next great board game under £20 on my list is the well-known, but somehow still criminally underrated Jaipur.

Released all the way back in 2009, Jaipur was a game that even before I got into the hobby, I had heard of somewhere in the back of my mind, but never actually played until one fateful board game café trip in 2021.

This wonderfully simple two player card game has you play as two competing merchants, looking to trade and sell goods to become the wealthiest merchant at the market.

It is quite possibly the perfect two player gateway game. It doesn’t have any fancy pieces or complicated mechanics. It just does the basics extremely well.

Making tactical decisions on whether to buy or sell your goods, whether to take the camels you need for better trades down the line, its classic tactical quandary’s that many great card games have built upon since this 2009 release, but arguably no game has done it smoother than Jaipur.

While it is such a well-known classic, I always argue it deserves more flowers, as I hardly ever see it discuss in list features or online videos as one of the best two player games, because for my money, it simply is!

I think Jaipur is a perfect introduction to board gaming, and you won’t even have to sell any rubies or gold to add it to your collection!

3. Skull King

A real treat for you now with a game that’s currently actually under £15, Skull King is another surprisingly cheap board game which is crying out to be added to your collection.

A fantastic trick taking game which works incredibly well at 6-8 players but can still be greatly enjoyed at smaller player counts, Skull King wonderfully blends trick taking mechanics with a bidding function whereby players state how many tricks they think they will win, based on the cards they have in hand.

Crucially you only score points if you win the EXACT number of tricks you betted you would, so even if you have a great round winning lots of tricks, if you didn’t back yourself, you won’t score points.

With a variety of cards working in different ways, no one game of Skull King is ever the same. Working at different player counts you will find people play this game wildly differently, and when your bet pays off you will feel like you have sussed the game out, only to bet completely wrong next time and feel like a Skull Fool rather than a King.

Using formats taken from traditional card games, I think Skull King is worth its fantastic price. People argue you could essentially play the same game with a standard deck of cards; however the card art is fantastic, the theme brings people who might not otherwise be interested into the mix, and at this price, I think it’s certainly worth treating yourself to this trick.

4. Codenames: Duet

Codenames: Duet is a game I haven’t talked nearly enough about when it comes to games that got me into the hobby.

This was one of the first games me and my partner purchased back in 2021 when we were dipping our toes into the world of board games, and it will always hold a very special place in my heart.

A 2017 release, Codenames: Duet follows on from Codenames, but works instead as a cooperative experience, as you work together to give your fellow spy clues to find their agents, using a word and number to link the words required together on the table.

Using the little key card in front of you with a 5x5 grid, you can see which words you need your partner to guess, and they see the ones you need to. So, if you need them to guess chalk, milk and wizard, you might say White 3, so they know they need to guess three words that all link to the word white. (I am sure my fellow LOTR fans have worked out the connection there).

Part game, part activity, part bonding exercise, Codenames: Duet is a joyful, hilarious experience. With some people you might find that you’re so in sync you start to believe in telepathy, and with others who you thought you knew so well, you will start to view them differently when they can’t work out your clearly brilliantly designed clue.

Because the crux and beauty of the game is sometimes its bloody difficult to link words together! The mental gymnastics you sometimes go through to make even tenuous links to words is mind boggling, but the moment somehow, the person opposite you works out your clue, its euphoric.

Its why I put this above the standard Codenames game, because I think the format works better as a wholly cooperative experience, working together to try and deduce what in the hell your partner meant when they gave you some obscure clue.

I have so much love for this game, and at under £20 Codenames: Duet is an absolute bargain which is utterly perfect for a date night with your other half.

5. Traitors Aboard

You know how I just said I love the cooperative experience of Codenames: Duet? Well let’s do a complete 180 on that and thrive in some mutineering with Traitors Aboard.

I have played a grand total of 1 game of Traitors Aboard, and it already has gone into my recommended pile, I loved it that much.

Released in 2023, Traitors Aboard allows you to experience all the lying and trickery of the Traitors, in under 30 minutes with a small deck of cards. You and your friends (enemies), play as pirates looking to discover the mutineers among you, as you try and ensure you chuck them over board, and not your fellow scallywag pirates.

You can work out who they are through the usual brilliance of social deduction, probably my favourite board game mechanic, as well as deducing it through their actions and the cards they play, giving the pirates more agency than just basing it on who they might prefer to do a bit of pirating with.

Traitors Aboard is a lot simpler than similar games of this ilk like Avalon or Secret Hitler and you could argue it lacks that edge those games bring. But as a teach for newer board gamers, its simple approach to social deduction can be really appealing. I brought it to a game night at work with people who don’t play many board games outside of Christmas, and two out of the five people I played it with went out and bought it the next day to play with their families.

It’s also a lot cheaper than other social deduction games and takes far less time. So, for a quick bit of backstabbing with your family or friends, Traitors Aboard is a must play.

That was my list of 5 Great Board Games under £20. I know how expensive this hobby can be, so finding cracking games at a price that won’t have you worryingly checking your online banking is always a blessing, and there really are many fantastic ones out there to be discovered. So let us know on social media if you have any games you love for under £20!

About the Author:

Paul Websell is a freelance contributor for Zatu who spends his time either playing board and video games or talking about them. While he’s not on social media, you can view his other blogs right here on Zatu!