The best board games to buy in the Black Friday sales

Cooperative games can be just as good as competitive ones – and just as frustrating. This one’ll let you pretend you’re in the depths of the Bank of England (well, technically any bank you want), working as a team to crack a vault and release the gold hidden inside. Four players take the roles of Hacker, Money Man, Look Out and Explosives Expert, working their way to win the hidden treasure. 

While a lot of board games can be slow, methodical and longwinded, Bank Attack certainly isn’t any of those things. An entire game only takes five minutes: it’s intense and fast-paced, all about players’ timing and efficiency. And once you’ve perfected the first vault, there are five progressively more difficult levels to wrap your heads around. (Amazon, until November 21)

While Monopoly will always take the title of most iconic London-themed board game, Mind the Gap is just as essential for any Londoner or London-obsessed game connoisseur. Based on classic card games ‘switch’ and Uno, each card is an Underground station with different Tube lines on it. Players have to match at least one colour line on each turn, and the winner is the first to get rid of all their cards. Mind the Gap is fast, simple and engaging. We’re Time Out London, after all – how could we not include it? (Zatu Games, while stocks last)

If you’re looking for a board game you can get totally lost in this Christmas, one that will immerse you in a world of heroes, battles, monsters and dragons, Epic Encounters’s Shrine of the Kobold Queen is the one for you. This is a proper role-playing fantasy game, as good for experienced players as it is for people that have never touched a game-master’s book in their lives. It also works either as a standalone game or alongside other Epic Encounters editions, and, if all that wasn’t enough, players are encouraged to repaint the detailed little figures – making Shrine of the Kobold Queen an even more immersive and personalised experience. (Amazon, until November 21)

From the people that brought you Exploding Kittens, the Russian roulette-style card game smash-hit from a few years ago, Bears vs Babies is a strategic party game laced with just as much wry wit. The idea is to build ‘incredible bears (and other monsters) to eat awful babies’, where the player that eats the most babies wins. So arm up your monster with chainsaws, lobster claws and saucy sombreros, to give them the best shot at defeating such types of baby as the ‘great white baby’, ‘bumble baby’ and ‘big ol’ diaper baby’. If you’ve got no idea what we’re going on about here, that’s the point. Bears vs Babies is a brilliantly strange game. (Exploding Kittens, while stocks last)

Can you play board games on your own? Too right you can. Everyone’s got their limit: that point in the holidays when the Chrimbo festivities get too much and you need a bit of peace and quiet. Which is exactly the situation for the magnificently-titled Spin Master Games Perplexus Rebel.

Kind of like a Rubik’s cube but without any special formula, this is a handheld 3D maze. The aim of the game is to tilt it to move a ball around and beat over 70 tricky obstacles. A tantalisingly simple concept, anyone can play the Perplexus Rebel – but it’s devilishly difficult to complete. (Amazon, until November 17)