A reviewer's guide to avoiding holiday arguments with these harmony-inducing Black Friday board game deals

This cozy board game only involves a couple of real take-that actions: placing a point-reducing card in your opponent's clearing (if you have it), and beating others to valuable resources. The designers have tried to even the field with the latter, with a rotating first-player token. Importantly, scoring happens right at the end, so while you can have a vague idea of how well you're doing, you're not all clawing at the leading player to bring them down a peg.

Key specs: 1–4 players | 40–80 minutes

Price check: GameNerdz $79.99

Most everyone in my household has this at the top of their favorites list. Forest Shuffle is a delightfully simple engine builder in which the only take-that actions are refreshing the clearing (usually accidentally) or nabbing a card someone else has their eye on. Most of these can be chalked up to bad luck. Unless you go round and count everyone's acorns, it's impossible to know whose in the lead, so you can keep the vibe chill as you build your little forest up.

Key specs: 2–5 players | 60 mins

Price check: Miniature Market $23.99

Everyone loves dragons, I don't care how grumpy you are. This one is a little easier to guess your opponents' scores, but generally you're playing your own separate little engine builder while sometimes the shared per-round goals will see you thwarting each other's strategies with a swiftly nabbed dragon card. It's a little more difficult than the others when it comes to rules, but there are plenty of videos online to usher you into the experience.

Key specs: 1–5 players | 120 minutes

Price check: Miniature Market $55 | Walmart $65

Similar to Clue and Dixit, this is a great game even for large groups, as you work together to solve a murder. The major conflict point here is for players taking on the role of the ghost, who must issue surreal clues without speaking to the rest of the team. They'll sometimes get ganged up on for bad clues, so make sure the ghost is a little more of a resilient player.

Key specs: 2–7 players | 42 minutes (exactly)

Price check: Miniature Market $43.99

This is yet another mystery-solving game that features ten exciting cases to work together on. Sure, you might not agree entirely about which choices to make, but making them together and getting them right is sure to nurture some bonding moments.

Key specs: 1–8 players | 90 mins

Price check: Miniature Market $47.99

This is one for the fantasy nerds, like myself, who would rather take on an army of orcs together than go head-to-head. It's a campaign-driven board game that will take several sittings to get through, but the satisfaction from surviving the events of your favorite cult-classic fantasy IP as a team (a fellowship, if you will) is more than enough to bring family members together in the most epic way possible.

Key specs: 1–5 players | 60–120 minutes

Price check: Miniature Market $95 | Walmart $119.99