Does the idea of playing Trivial Pursuit one more time fill you with dread? Never fear – here is our guide to the best new board games

﻿Luxor

2-4 players, 30-45 minutes, £29.99

This family-friendly game of rival archaeologists sees players racing to explore an ancient Egyptian tomb, uncovering priceless artefacts as they make their way along a twisting underground passage. At first glance it resembles roll-and-move games such as Monopoly or Ludo. But where those traditional family favourites rely heavily on luck, Luxor is more tactical. It uses clever card play to determine how you progress along its subterranean track, emphasising smart decisions rather than chance.

As you delve deeper into the tomb you will discover an assortment of treasures that boost your score and gain new, more powerful cards that let you carve out advantages over your opponents. It is an addictive blend of fast and thoughtful gameplay and, while its grave-robbing theme may not be culturally sensitive, it is quick, elegant and accessible – an ideal option for anyone dipping their toes into modern board games for the first time.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Word Slam is a charades-like game that challenges players to communicate with their teammates using a limited vocabulary of just 105 words. Photograph: Owen Duffy

Word Slam

3+ players, 30-45 minutes, £28

For many families, a post-turkey game of charades is a Christmas staple, and the festive season would not feel quite complete without watching uncle Fred turning purple with rage while trying to mime “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe”. This team-based game of clever communication aims to create the same kind of feel, but rather than making you wildly gesticulate, it challenges you to convey messages to your teammates using a vocabulary of just 105 words printed on cards.

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This turns out to be trickier than you might think. You could end up expressing “Super Mario” as: “Play with red blue jump man,” or “hedgehog” as: “Small brown not fast animal.” With such a small pool of words at your disposal, you will have to be creative to get your meaning across, and if it is difficult for the player coming up with the message, it is just as tough for the other members of their team trying to decipher it.

With both sides simultaneously attempting to guess the same word, there is real competitive tension. And if you are playing with kids, the game comes with a selection of difficulty levels, letting you tailor its setup to players of all ages.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Blue Lagoon sees Polynesian tribes explore and settle a tropical archipelago. Photograph: Owen Duffy/The Guardian

Blue Lagoon

2-4 players, 20-30 minutes, £29.99

This deceptively simple game casts players as the leaders of Polynesian tribes vying to explore and settle a cluster of tropical islands. On each turn you will place one of your tribespeople on the board, claiming areas of land and water. The aim is to spread your people as widely as you can across the map, but also to control the islands by having more members of your tribe on them than your opponents. Along the way, you will also boost your score by picking up resources such as bamboo and coconuts.

With multiple ways to earn points, you will face some tricky decisions as you try to work out the best ways to place your people. And even once you have come up with a plan, you will need to seize vital sections of the board before your rivals. The result is that, in spite of its sunny artwork and idyllic island theme, Blue Lagoon reveals a brutal competitive streak as you cut your opponents off from the territories they most need.

It is enough to spark some intense grudges, and it is impressive just how much antagonism and strategy the game squeezes out of some very straightforward rules.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Troll & Dragon puts players in the shoes of adventurers trying to steal treasure from terrifying monsters. Photograph: LOKI Games

Troll & Dragon

2-5 players, 10-20 minutes, £17.99

Troll & Dragon, a child-friendly game of courageous treasure hunters, sees players sneaking through caverns guarded by ferocious monsters, helping themselves to as much loot as they can carry in the process. Each turn starts by rolling and re-rolling dice in an effort to accumulate diamonds. But each time you do it, you risk attracting the attention of an angry troll, dropping your treasure as you flee.

From there you will move on to a dragon’s cave, where things become more heated. Once again you will roll dice, this time aiming to grab precious golden nuggets. But as you do, your opponents will also roll a set of red dragon dice, attempting to wake the slumbering beast and chase you off empty-handed.

The result is a fast-paced and frantic scramble. To escape with your ill-gotten goodies you will have to judge when to push your luck and when to turn and run. It takes some quick-thinking analysis of risks and rewards, and watching young players trying to find that balance can be hilarious, making for riotous fun for grown ups as well as kids.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gizmos is a game of eccentric inventors competing to win first prize in a prestigious science fair. Photograph: Owen Duffy/The Guardian

Gizmos

2-4 players, 40-50 minutes, £32.99

The first thing that strikes you about this game of strange contraptions and eccentric engineers is the giant cardboard structure it deposits in the middle of your table. It is a container full of coloured marbles with a chute-like mechanism that lets them slide out as you play, and it looks a bit like something Wile E Coyote might order from the Acme Corporation.

Look beyond this physical gimmick, though, and you will find a slick and streamlined game about inventors trying to claim the top prize in a prestigious science fair. You will battle to build machines that impress the judges, harvesting different types of energy – represented by those shiny marbles – and spending it to add new components to your growing creation. You will unlock new abilities, generate extra power and make ever-more dramatic plays as you fight to establish your scientific supremacy.

There is a powerful sense of progression as you incrementally augment your machine, and it is deeply satisfying seeing its parts starting to work together. But with players taking just a single action on each of their turns, it never gets bogged down in complexity, and as soon as one game is over, you will be itching to start another.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The strategy card game Keyforge: Call of the Archons hands players command of armies of knights, monsters, aliens and demons. Photograph: Fantasy Flight Games

Keyforge: Call of the Archons

2 players, 30-45 minutes, from £8.99

In 1993, the designer Richard Garfield released Magic: The Gathering, a trading card game that cast players as powerful mages doing battle in a fantasy universe. It became a smash hit, with players building collections of cards and using them to create custom decks, all fine-tuned for different strategies. But it also led to the growth of a secondary market, with powerful cards sometimes changing hands for hundreds of pounds online.

Garfield’s latest game aims to side-step this collector mania. Like Magic, Keyforge sees players command armies of beasts and warriors in card-based conflict. But rather than building your own deck, you will buy a pre-constructed one assembled by a computer algorithm.

It is a novel approach, and it makes Keyforge much cheaper to get into than other card battlers. But it is also a fascinating game in its own right, with plenty of interesting tactical decisions and clever card combinations to discover. The game goes out of its way to ensure you have something interesting to do on almost every turn, and contests swing back and forth as players deploy their troops, clash in combat and exploit an array of special powers and abilities. It makes for some dramatic and unpredictable moments as the fight for supremacy plays out on your kitchen table.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fantasy skirmish game Wildlands sees players control squads of miniature warriors in fast-paced tactical battles. Photograph: Owen Duffy/The Guardian

Wildlands

2-4 players, 30-60 minutes, £59.99

Miniature battle games have a reputation for complexity. But Wildlands, a fantasy skirmish game that sees players command squads of warriors in fast and furious combat, aims to make things quicker, simpler and infinitely more approachable.

It hands players command of an assortment of sword fighters, archers and magically-powered automatons, throwing them into a frantic struggle for survival. The aim is to outsmart and overpower your opponents, gaining points for killing off enemy troops and collecting magic crystals scattered around the board.

In the process, you will come up with clever plans and react to your rivals’ plays, picking off your foes with well-placed crossbow bolts or charging headlong into hand-to-hand combat. The result is a game full of twists, turns and dramatic moments, where lone soldiers put up heroic last stands against multiple assailants, fleet-footed rogues dive out of the path of volleys of arrows, and grizzled sorcerers lob fireballs at one another across darkened corridors.

What is most impressive is that Wildlands conjures so much action and drama with so little mechanical clunkiness. Everything in the game revolves around simple sets of symbols on cards, and it combines real tactical depth with pick-up-and-play simplicity. It also comes with four different factions to command, and a double-sided board giving you either a ruined city or a subterranean dungeon to battle over, ensuring your clashes have plenty of variety.

Have you played any great games this year? And are you looking forward to trying any over Christmas? Let us know in the comments below.