The Best Board Game Charity Shop Treasures

Written by Chris Marling

While I don’t do it as regularly as some, I love a rummage through the charity shops on an afternoon in town. I’m inevitably drawn toward the board games and have found several ridiculous bargains over the years. 

But rather than talk about the one-offs, I’ve put together some of the games I’ve regularly seen for as little as 50p or £1 that are well worth their place in any board game collection. What makes these games more common is having a UK publisher that shifted these games in bulk to toy and department stores, rather than just hobby stores, so make sure you take advantage if you see one peeking forlornly from behind the jigsaw puzzles. 

Children’s card games

Monopoly Deal

Hey! Wait! While I’m not going to claim that Monopoly Deal is anything other than completely luck in a box it does have one super useful job for any gamer parent. When one of your kids says, hey, can we play Monopoly, you can save yourself several hours by pulling out this 10-minute card version instead.

Monopoly Deal takes all the concepts of the big box horror show and condenses them into a fast-playing card game. It genuinely isn’t terrible either but I think that, for adults, very few real choices are involved. 

 

Zeus on the Loose

If you have a child struggling with basic maths concepts this little card game does a great job of gamifying them. To back this up I know several teachers who will pick up Zeus on the Loose whenever they see it to use in the classroom. It was available mass-market in the UK from 2006 through Gamewright, so there are a lot of copies around.

Players take turns to play numbered cards (1-10) and god cards with specific powers. It helps with addition, subtraction, rounding, doubling, patterns, and multiples of 10, as well as a bit of Greek mythology for good measure.

Abstract games

Ingenious

This excellent Knizia abstract board game remains one of my favourites. Players of Ingenious take turns to play domino-style double hex pieces (with a colour at each end) on a shared board. You get points for lines you make and each player has a score for each colour. 

The ingenious part is the winner will be the player with the highest score in their worst scoring colour. In gameplay terms, players must pivot their thinking around halfway to blocking rather than scoring, as they try to deny scoring opportunities in colours they don’t need.  

 

Blokus

Don’t let the colourful plastic pieces or the Mattel logo fool you because Blokus is an excellent, aggressive area control-style battle of wits. Each player has an identical set of shaped pieces. The idea is to lay as many as possible, with the player having the least left when no one can go winning. 

The trick is your pieces can only connect by their corners, so you can’t have your pieces lying next to each other. This makes it harder to block your opponent from getting past you into spaces you’ve left. Also look out for Travel Blokus or Blokus Duo, two-player versions of the game and are equally good. 

 

Take It Easy

This 1980s Peter Burley design in Take it Easy got wider UK distribution thanks to Spear Games. Each player has an identical set of hexagon pieces, with one player calling (bingo style) the piece everyone needs to play that turn. You’re trying to match numbers across the tableau you’re creating.

Players soon diverge in strategy despite using the same pieces and while luck certainly plays a part, playing the odds well will give you an advantage. Take it Easy plays fast and can take as many players as you have sets (six per box).  

 

Co-op and semi-co-op games

The Lord of the Rings

I remember seeing Lord of the Rings on a charity shop shelf and was immediately drawn in by the beautiful box art. I picked it up but noticed the dreaded Hasbro tag. However, just before I put it back, I spotted board game legend Reiner Knizia had designed it. I bought it and was very glad I did.

It’s a beautifully produced cooperative game, with the lovely art making up a little for the typically Knizia abstract nature of the gameplay. Each player plays one of the hobbits either being or accompanying the ring bearer. Story tiles reveal obstacles that you need to cooperate to overcome, and the sense of desperation and loss becomes very real despite the simple rules. 

 

Scotland Yard

This classic 1983 Ravensburger all-against-one deduction game of Scotland Yard was way ahead of its time, predating more complex follow-ups such as Letters to Whitechapel and Fury of Dracula. You may also see it as Mister X, which added modernised rules and made the map continental. Mister X is the better game but both are good family games.

One player takes the role of a criminal trying to evade the police. They have a limited number of journey cards representing different modes of transport, allowing them to move around the board. They record their movement secretly while the remaining players move on the board and investigate spaces, trying to deduce where the criminal is.

 

Party games

The Really Nasty Horse Racing Game

UK publisher Upstarts made a roaring trade through the 1990s with a series of TV tie-ins and TV-DVD games, including the best-selling Who Wants To Be a Millionaire game. But in amongst it all was the rather wonderful if far from perfect Really Nasty Horse Racing Game. You may see better horse-racing games in charity shops, such as Winner’s Circle and TurfMaster, but this is still worth an each-way punt.

As the name suggests this racing game is all about cheating. You have your horse you race, roll-and-move style. However, you can bet on other players’ horses, move yours poorly, and play cards that make horses fall, get up again, or make the race restart entirely. Despite the betting and cards, it is still a luck-fest but I’ve had a good time playing it with the right crowd.

 

Perudo (Liar’s Dice)

While many gamers will be familiar with the name Liar’s Dice, Perudo is the same game and an edition with this title has been much more widely available in the UK. Parker and Hasbro published the game from the mid-1980s into the 1990s in a blue tin that would just as happily hold a wine bottle. Paul Lamond Games kept this going into the 2000s.

This South American dice game dates back to the 16th Century. Each player takes a cup and a set of dice. They shake the dice and look at the result while keeping results hidden from others. Players then take turns to claim how many of a chosen number they have, each time having to claim a better result than their predecessor. Anyone can call you out as lying, at which point the result is revealed and one player is illuminated. 

Family games

Labyrinth

This Ravensburger classic has been in print since 1986 and its German roots have always shown through compared with the games it was on our shelves next to back in the day. The cover doesn’t do the game justice, making it look like a cheap children’s game when you get a cleverly designed maze-based puzzle game. 

Each played has a coloured pawn placed in a 7x7 map grid. There’s one extra tile you slide into the map from any side on your turn, pushing another piece out and altering the maze for everyone. Now you can move as far as you like along the corridor you’re on, hopefully landing on a space that holds a treasure you need to collect. It’s a great spatial awareness teaching aid for children but can become a mean tactical game when adults get involved. 

 

Survive! Escape From Atlantis

Escape From Atlantis has had various iterations since its 1982 debut and while each tweaks the rules a little, including the 2010 Stronghold Games edition, none properly solved its little niggles. However, despite its quirks, there’s a lot of fun to have with any of the editions. You’ll often find the mass-market Parker Brothers edition in the UK, which has delightfully chunky plastic pieces. 

It’s a mean family game that gets the mean bit just right, making everyone mean rather than giving you the option. You each place your Atlanteans on a central island and try to get them to safety via boats and helpful dolphins. But after moving your pieces and destroying a part of the island, you must move hungry creatures such as sharks and octopuses away from your survivors which, inevitably, means towards your enemies. Sorry, I mean friends…  

 

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