There are some tiny tin-box style games, often not very deep but maybe there is something out there worth traveling around with?
Star Realms is a solid little 2 player deck builder game! The base game is just a deck of cards and you dont need much room to play, so it’s a great portable game.
Took me too long to find this. In addition, the base game is plenty good, and it’s not expensive. I feel like getting a second set as a stand alone “sacrificial set”, just to bring around, unsleeved.
Yeah nice choice, I like to take this with me as well.
Love Letter
Hive Pocket goes on every vacation with me; its portable, indestructible, and can be played anywhere. Will also usually bring: Love Letter, Tides, SpaceShipped, and a deck of cards for Regicide/Scoundrel/Loot-The-Loop/etc. Will sometimes try to bring Bang! The Dice Game, Anomia, or Happy Salmon if there’s a potential for party games being played.
One of my favorite pictures I’ve taken, playing Hive Pocket on a stream bed:
Our family usually packs Sushi Go and No Thanks when traveling
I recently travelled with the following small games and can recommend them.
Sprawlopolis - Lovely co-op city builder with 18 cards, much more replayable than you’d think.
Fugitive - A great cat and mouse/hidden movement game with numbered cards. Either flee as the fugitive or hunt as the marshal.
Air land and Sea - A tactical game with the added wrinkle of choosing when/if to withdraw.
Monopoly Deal - A classic, fast, fun, ruthless. Monopoly as it should be.
Hive Pocket - Chess like, strategic, tactile and can be played pretty much anywhere.
Stew - A simple bluffing card game of creating a stew together and working out when the best time is to eat the stew, if at all.
Hope this helps!
Machi Koro is super simple to travel with. Just rubber band the cards and throw the dice and money tokens in a bag and there you go.
Jaipur is similar that way.
Anything by Oink Games.
Splendor. I 3d-printed a small case for it so that it will easily fit in a bag or backpack. It’s one of our favorites.
Oh cool! Is this for the full game or the duel? Do you have any pics of the case?
This is for the full game. I’ve considered printing something similar for the Cities expansion.
I found the STL here
I don’t have a pic handy with the contents shown, but these old pics show the scale
Nice. I’ve spent a bunch of time trying to fit both Splendor and Splendor Duel into the Splendor Duel box. Almost, but not quite. I settled for the other way around with both games in that huge Splendor box.
I haven’t seen “Wizard” mentioned yet. It’s a staple among german outdoor tourists.
Also “Witches” which is somewhat similar. Both are great games!
Hive is a great travel game! It’s small (so therefore easy to transport) and just requires any flat surface to play on. It’s a turn based game where your objective is to place tiles (which have different bugs on them) to surround your opponents Queen whilst also defending your own Queen from being surrounded. It has a surprisingly deep level of strategy involved for such a simple game.
Sprawlopolis is very light weight and offers a lot of replayability.
We have laminated (I believe that is the english word) clever, qwixx, knaster and knister so that we can bring 1 set of dice and play those all.
We really like regicide, which is just 1 pack of cards.
Lastly you have some (card)games with a small footprint, such as The Crew, or Cahoots, or Pickomino.
Elfer raus! / Domino (the card game) is pretty fun and easy to learn. It’s usually sold in a small-form box; i.e. about the size of a Schmidt tin-game.
This is somewhat hypothetical because I don’t travel that often so I haven’t actually traveled with all of these. But this is what I’d pack:
- Next Station: London: great roll & write with a nice compact flap box. Works for solo.
- Sea Salt & Paper: one of our current favorites, small box, easy to teach
- Scout: ditto
- Orchard: My small comfort solo
- Some Buttonshy games. Maybe some Pack O Game ones too.
Easy to teach can be an important consideration in case you find some new people to play with.
7 wonders duel.
Handsome (button shy) and Arboretum tend to be family travel faves.
(edit: Scout is a new addition to the travel games)
Star Fluxx