We asked over 1,000 U.S. adults what tabletop games they had played last year, “in real life, not on an electronic device.”
The most played board games were Monopoly (37% had played), Checkers (25%), and Chess (24%). The most played “modern” tabletop games would be Catan (5% had played) and Ticket to Ride (2%), so the hobby industry of board games is still very much a niche market. Most Americans play the same board games they could have played in the 1960s.
The most played card games were Solitaire (32% had played), Uno (29%) and Blackjack (25%). On whole, the most played card games are even older than the boardgames. The few widely played dedicated-deck card games besides Uno are Cards Against Humanity (14%), Apples to Apples (11%), Phase 10 (10%), and Skip Bo (5%). Altogether, 21% said they had played no card game at all (compared to 26% who had not played board games).
These results are from a newsmaker survey of 1,059 U.S. adults that was conducted online by Researchscape International from January 3 to 5, 2025. The data was weighted to the U.S. population by 10 demographic questions. The credibility interval for questions answered by all respondents is ±4 percentage points. The lists of games were derived from the top responses to an open-ended question, asked in the last two years.
Five and Dimes
Now for a look at what I’ve personally played…
BoardGameGeek has a Five and Dimes report on the games you’ve played 10+ times and 5-9 times. (Why it is five-and-dime and not nickel-and-dime I’ll never understand.)
| Dimes – 10 or more plays | |
| Games | Qty |
| Civscape | 41 |
| Ticket to Ride: San Francisco | 17 |
| Race for the Galaxy | 12 |
| Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition | 10 |
I had a chance to playtest Civscape at Anyone’s Game for 10 hours, and I then I did a lot of testing afterwards, so I got in 41 plays over the year.
I bought a friend Race for the Galaxy for his birthday and got back into playing it for the first time in four years. And I reveled in the new edition of Clash of Cultures (my review).
| Fives – 5 or more plays | |
| Game | Qty |
| Qwirkle | 9 |
| Brew Crafters: Travel Card Game | 7 |
| Port Royal | 7 |
| Time Breaker | 7 |
| 7 Wonders: Architects | 6 |
| Machi Koro | 5 |
| New Frontiers: The Starry Rift | 5 |
My folks and wife enjoy Qwirkle, so that hits the table when they want to play. I’ve reviewed Microbrewers and 7 Wonders: Architects before, and they remain favorites. I finally got the Starry Rift expansion to New Frontiers and played it a bit, though not as much as I’d like.
Railroad Games
While I played Ticket to Ride (the original) once, I played TtR: San Francisco 17 times. For me, 2024 was a year of rail games. I prototyped a rail game and played almost ten other rail games:
| Game | Qty |
| Ticket to Ride: San Francisco | 17 |
| Wabash Cannonball | 3 |
| Age of Steam | 2 |
| Spike | 2 |
| 1846: The Race for the Midwest | 1 |
| Prairie Railroads | 1 |
| Railways of Portugal | 1 |
| Ticket to Ride | 1 |
| Ticket to Ride: London | 1 |
Unlike most Americans, I don’t play mobile games too often, but this year I played Dune: Imperium and Steam: Rails to Riches (review in progress).
On the TTRPG side, I MCed an Apocalypse World campaign (hybrid of 2e and the beta test of Burned Over). You can read my review of that campaign in Reflections on PbtA Design.
No resolutions for 2025, though I’m excited to replay the original Milton Bradley Dark Tower, which a friend of mine recently refurbished!
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash.
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