5561

My favorite very short 2-player game is LotR:Confrontation. It probably helps if you’re a LotR geek. Takes half an hour or less, and not much setup/tear down time.

5562

I’m excited to see suggestions for this as well. For the past six months (after moving in with my girlfriend), I’ve been moving from mostly playing 4-5 player games to mostly playing 2 player games.

So far, the two best experiences I’ve had have been with Yomi and Puzzle Strike.

Yomi takes 20-30 minutes and almost no table room. It’s basically Street Fighter the card game, but extremely easy to get into. IMO it plays best in “best of three games” style to offset some inherent luck.

Puzzle Strike takes 30-40 minutes, takes up a huge amount of table space and has probably a 10 minute setup time. We only crack it out when we have 1-2 hours. I also think it’s best to play “best of three” because you get to figure out how to combat your opponent’s character and how your character works with the current available actions. It’s my favorite Dominion-style deck-building game, but IMO is not worth playing with more than 2 players.

We also occasionally play Ticket To Ride on the Nordic map, and Carcassone (as well).

Lost Cities is always a big recommendation for 2 players, but I really disliked it (one of my least favorite Knizia designs). I will back up the LOTR: Confrontation board game. I don’t own it, but I’ve played it a bunch. It’s great! We also got into LOTR: LCG for a while. It’s quite fun, but I found it a little dry. Pretty painless setup, takes up not too much table space, and plays quick.

I’ve been looking at Seasons lately which is a new game with a drafting mechanic that’s apparently best with 2 players. I haven’t played it, but it seems to be getting good reception on BGG. Anyone given it a shot?

As a side note, my father put Castles of Burgundy on his Christmas list this year. Anyone played this? He’s pretty new to board games but found it on BGG and thought it sounded neat. I’ll probably grab it for him anyways, but I’d love to hear opinions on it.

EDIT: I should probably mention that my girlfriend is annoyed with how sexualized the characters in Yomi are. It’s sorta standard Japanese fighting style art. It hasn’t soured her on the game, but she disdainfully points it out periodically.

5563

Castles of Burgundy is a fairly heavy and longish euro. I like it, although it can bog down with slow players. It’s not really a good introductory euro game though. I want to say that something like Stone Age might be a good middle ground, although the two games are nothing alike, so I don’t know what makes me think of it.

5564

Morels is a good two player game, if you can handle a game about collecting mushrooms (some of my friends cannot).

If you like Dr Who there is a very good two player card game available on BGG for free (search ‘12 doctors’). You have to print out the cards since it is print’n’play. Asymmetrical with the Master attacking and the Doctor defending.

5565

Exactly. I usually play with takeovers (the main new mechanic of the second expansion) off. And arguably it’s the best from a balance perspective with the first two expansions added.

5566

I concur. You’ll know best what you think he can handle or would be interested in, but games like Stone Age and Carcassonne are often recommended/attempted first before trying out something like Castles of Burgundy. CoB is worth the effort, however. And yes, it’s the kind of game that definitely leads to analysis-paralysis…so much so that three players is the max I’ll sit down with, so I suspect it makes for a very good two player game. Doesn’t lend to short sessions, though (obviously).

If trick-taking card games have any appeal, check out Haggis.

If there’s an appreciation for chess-like abstracts, check out Hive or Mr. Jack.

I think a good game would be this year’s SDJ: Kingdom Builder

5567

That’s definitely helpful for setting up expectations. He’s played quite a bit of Dominion and Carcassone. He also played London with me a few times. My biggest concerns are his ability to dig into the instructions to teach himself the game, and that the people he usually plays with are MUCH less capable of handling complicated / long games. I think he’s pretty excited about finding a game he’s interested in on BGG (without my suggestions), so he’ll probably like it regardless. But I think I’ll pair it with something he can play with his friends more easily, like Ticket to Ride or Stone Age (or maybe London. He seemed to like it a lot last time we played. But Martin Wallace rulebooks are… inscrutable).

5568

My first Kickstarter to deliver just showed up.

Defenders of the Realm: Battlefields

Finally Kickstarter isn’t just a black hole that takes my money and only provides endless email spam updates (Hello Star Citizen!). Now about those 20+ software projects I backed…

I have no idea how good the game is yet, but it looks good so far.

5569

I just got my copy of Battlefields yesterday. I love the quality behind Eagle Games’ stuff. They always put together a top notch package (see Defenders of the Realm and Dragon Rampage for further evidence).

That being said, I wish I’d known that this was going to be a bit of a trick taking game when I kickstarted it. My initial impression (and maybe if I’d read the description more clearly, I would’ve know this to be false) was that it was going to be more like richard launius’ previous games…which usually don’t include that mechanic.

But I could be proven horribly wrong and this may be a game that makes me love trick taking games. Who knows. I’ll give it a whirl this weekend.

5570

That was my impression as well. I saw the battlefields and imagined something along the lines of Elder Sign or Blood Bowl Team Manager. I was intentionally keeping myself in the dark about the game specifics.

I don’t have a trick taking game, but have enjoyed the fast pace of the couple games I tried that use it. No matter how it turns out I am happy to support a local game designer. Richard lives about 30 minutes from my house.

5571

Lanuis has created some of my absolute favorite games. So if anyone can make me learn to love trick taking games, he’s the man.

p.s. Now that I think of it, I have actually come across such a game in the recent past that I really enjoyed and then bought. Dominant Species the Card Game. So maybe I’m more open minded than I thought.

5572

I just learned that there is a Pathfinder based card game coming, using deck building mechanics to have a full adventure. I’m intrigued.

5573

Hmm… isn’t this standard CCG/LCG mechanics? Based on the brief decscription, this doesn’t sound particularly different from something like Blood Bowl Team Manager.

5574

Some of the battlefields that you fight over dictate that you have to have certain sets of cards, or place cards in a descending order of value to win them.

5575

How tough is Lords of Waterdeep to get up and running? Just bought it to try out on Saturday with a group of 5 and none of us have played it before. I’m planning on taking a look tomorrow night and trying to learn the rules ahead of time.

5576

I think it is quite easy to teach and learn.

5577

Super simple. Takes about ten minutes to explain and the rules are really simple to read through and learn as well. Great game to boot, have fun!

5578

Lords of Waterdeep is a favorite. It’s VERY easy to teach and folks usually know all they need to after the first turn.

5579

As an aside, I think Lords of Waterdeep is the culmination of all worker placement Eurogames up to this point, and now that someone has made it, we can stop producing worker placement games. There’s no point any more. It’s OVER.

5580

Shut it, Dave! I have a worker placement design that has not had its chance to set the boardgaming world on fire!