Your friend asks you, as they have time and time before, “You’ll bring the board games, right?”

You grimace, imagining the weight and bulk you’ll have to lug onto the train and into their house. But you say, as any board game lover would: “Of course.”

Board games are bulky. There’s no doubt about it. Many times, I have driven to a friend’s house, board games stacked in a Krispy Kreme bag in the boot, with another one buckled into the passenger seat because it was too big for the bag.

But not all board games have to be big. Today, I’m going to walk you through 5 board games that are small, light and easy to travel with.

1) Hive Pocket

This tiny but surprisingly strategic board game was the inspiration for this blog post. Comprised of only 26 hexagons pieces, roughly an inch in diameter, Hive Pocket is a strategy game that can literally fit into your pocket. This tiny 2 player game is almost like a tile placement chess game. To win, you need to totally surround your opponent’s queen, without letting yours get surrounded. Where the full size version of the game weighs 600g, this pocket version weighs only 200g, and can be played anywhere you can find a flat surface.

2) IOTA

This tin is just as small as a TicTac box. Honestly, you’d be more likely to lose this game than to struggle travelling with it. In IOTA, you will need to create lines of cards where each line shares the same colour, shape or number. Eventually, the lines will form a grid and it will get more and more difficult to create consistent lines. With its bright colours and simple gameplay, IOTA is a great game to keep in your handbag for whenever your brunch starts to get boring.

3) Orchard

If you’re a lover of solo games, you’ll love Orchard. This solitaire tile-laying game consists only of nine cards and a handful of dice, meaning it can fit into a box roughly the size of a deck of cards. In Orchard, your goal is to play your cards overlapping each other in order to gain the most bountiful harvest. If you manage to overlap trees of the same type, you’ll be able to pick more fruit. A wonderful little solitaire game for whenever the mood strikes.

4) Mint Series Games

Marketed as “big games in tiny tins”, the Mint Series games are games designed to literally fit inside a mint tin. Each one has a different board game mechanic as its core—worker placement, pick up and deliver, or cooperative—and manages to cram the same experience as a big box game into a tiny package. All these games are light and easy to pick up (both literally and figuratively) and would make either the perfect travel game for a big gamer, or a non-threatening way to introduce new players to the hobby.

5) A Fake Artist Goes to New York

Oink Games is a company renowned for their unique games in small and compact boxes. A Fake Artist Goes to New York is one of their more popular games, best described as Pictionary meets Spyfall. In this game, players are attempting to, collectively, one line at a time, draw the secret word on their cards. However, one player receives not the secret word but simply an X, making them a fake artist! Where this player’s job is to blend in, the other players must make their additions to the drawing clear enough so they aren’t falsely accused as the fake, but also not so obvious that the real fake learns the secret word!

And there we have it! Our top 5 board games to travel with! What do you think? Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments below!