Which classic board games have stood the test of time in their genre?

One of the most fun things about being a fan of board games is going to the store and browsing the shelves to find your next hit for game night. But as fun as new games are, the ones most likely to please may already be on your shelf at home.

With new board games coming out all the time, you'll never be short of exciting new adventures, but if you're trying to keep things classic at your next board game night, here are some older board games that still dominate their genre after all this time.

Go

Perhaps the oldest of the classic board games on our list, Go is more than 2,500 years old and is still incredibly popular today. A strategy game intended for two players, you will be pitted against a friend to try and claim the most territory on the grid-shaped board.

You will keep track of all this with colored stones, placing your own color down to take place. You will fence in areas to claim yourself, but watch out for your opponent trying to completely surround your territory, giving them the entire interior. The player with the most territory at the end wins.

Trivial hunting

There have been plenty of trivia games throughout our history—people love to show off how much they can—but no trivia game has done it better, sooner or later, than Trivial Pursuit, which debuted in the 1980s and completely shook up the trivia game genre.

We've seen plenty of newer versions of the game since then, with electronic versions always getting pretty good reviews on PC and game consoles. You choose a category from six possible options – geography, history, entertainment, sports and leisure, art and literature or science and nature – and prove to your friends how much more you know than them.

Carcassonne

If you're a fan of placing tiles to claim your medieval lands and establish your own territories in the scenic South of France, then we'd feel safe guessing that Carcasonne is probably the board game you've been bringing to game nights since its debut.

Place your tiles strategically around the game's playing area to establish a vibrant city, choose meeple tokens to take on specific roles in the city to help establish your network of roads and religious buildings. Do your best to build your city both first and best if you hope to win in this classic board game.

Scrabble

Are you more into careful wordplay than placing tiles or moving pieces like you do in many other board games? If you're looking to get wordy with your next game night with friends, consider breaking out Scrabble, a classic word-based board game that's been popular with players for nearly eight decades now.

You'll draw a handful of letter tiles at the start of the game and work both with and against your friends playing together to put words together on the board. Less common letters have much higher point values ​​– the letter A is more common than the letter Z in the English dictionary – so do your best to create impressive words to win.

Risk

If you're interested in claiming games that task you with fending off invasions from your competitive friends on board game night as you work to take over the world yourself, consider bringing the classic Risk to your next night out with friends.

You'll be assigned territories around a world map, and each turn sees you place soldiers and move into nearby territories with the hope of conquering them yourself. Owning entire continents increases your supply of soldiers each turn, so work smart to crawl across the globe in the name of domination.

Diplomacy

If you've got a decent-sized group for your next board game night and you want to do some social deduction and searching instead of just moving plastic pieces around a board, then consider Diplomacy, a game that tasks you with talking your way into and out of global peace during the First World War.

Without having to roll dice, you'll spend the evening talking to your friends and trying to forge alliances for your nations, betraying others when it's best for your quest for power, and capturing supply centers around Europe to ensure your country is the most successful in the Great War.

Crokinole

A board game that rose to prominence in Canada in the 1870s, Crokinole is an age-old favorite that has yet to be dethroned. Players take turns dragging colored discs around the board. It's almost like darts, where the smaller and more precise areas in the center of the board are worth more than the wider, easier to hit sections on the perimeter.

However, there is a competitive element to trying to beat the discs your opponents have placed in lower-scoring sections, and claim the higher score values ​​for yourself. Aim carefully and get the highest score to win.

Catan

Originally debuted as Settlers of Catan in the mid-1990s and then simply Catan, this iconic board game is all about gathering resources and supporting your settlements on the titular island of Catan, with the goal of establishing yourself as the most prominent new settlement on the island.

You will roll dice and try to collect the resources your settlement needs to sustain itself and grow in time. Trade with other players to establish healthy, mutually beneficial relationships with your nearby settlements. Expand your settlements, build roads, claim new territories and fend off the robber if you hope to win this classic board game!

Monopoly

A game so infamous that some people roll their eyes at the concept of the box hitting the table on board game night, Monopoly is the age-old board game that pits you against all your friends in a race to brutally bankrupt each other. There's never been a faster way to lose your friends!

Known for being a slower game that really lets you stick the knife in slowly, you and your friends will each try to acquire property and public works around the board, and by owning all the properties in a color set you can build on them. Players pay rent to whoever owns the spaces they land on, and the rents increase dramatically with the houses and hotels that come from owning sets of suits.

Chess

One of the oldest board games still played today, there is a whole community in the chess world, with professional rankings, clubs and plenty of opportunities to play in person and online these days. The history of the game is a bit muddy, with early references to similar games in Asia before it became prominent in Europe in the 15th century.

There are more layers of strategy to chess than the average player could ever hope to know, with world champions consistently vying for the crown in an ongoing World Cup circuit that has run since the 1880s.