The Thread Where We Are Board Game Geeks

Carcassonne is great, and Ticket to Ride is another popular game very playable for two and readily available at most games shops. Also, I'm yet to play it, but I've recently heard high praise about Jaipur.

Five Tribes

Carcassonne is great and has a lot of replay value, although I don't know what they're playing at by having recently re-desigined the game, rendering my older version a bit useless if I want to buy add-ons or anything.

Splendor is good for two people. Not a lot of interaction though.

catan is really easy to pick up and extremely addictive xp

my roommates and i play every other night or so. it's the kind of game where people's true character really comes out, for better or worse. (usually worse)

Catan is great but needs three players.

Carcassonne is a lot of fun as an entry-level game, although I do feel the need to say that it is wayyyy less fun with 2 than with 3/4 which is really its ideal size. Catan is kinda the same deal imho. But neither is necessarily un-fun with just two. Will return here when I have a positive useful two-player suggestion!

love letter can be played 2 player and games are super quick. morels is a v cute game about collecting mushrooms.

play android: netrunner. Not super easy at first, but damn, it's great.

Netrunner is truly fantastic but I'd consider it hardcore.

Thanks for the recommendations, everyone!

I am very into the idea of a card game about collecting mushrooms and it's p. cheap too* so that's currently top of my list, but I'll definitely try to some of the others too.

(* or will be if I'm brave enough to go to the slightly daunting board game café/shop in town instead of Amazon. I am a little sad that according to BGG the Euro edition "Fungi" gives Latin names and not the more pronounceable names on the original Morels cards but it does still look v. cute)

try to some of the others too

I never some of the others

play the ticket to ride app two player with my bro and it passes time so well, super fun, india expansion v fun too

Well, here's a theme I haven't seen before: rabbit divorce.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/155495/kune-v-lakia-chronicle-royal-lapine-divorce-foreto

new Dominion expansion should be on shelves within days. Most exciting part of this one to me is the Landmarks, which provide alternate ways of earning (or losing) VP either during or at the end of the game. For example, one gives you 15 points if you have at least 10 coppers in your final deck. (And since like the Events from Adventures they're just one card you have out, you could proxy them pretty easily if you were so inclined.)

Dominion is probably my favorite game and I'm delighted Donald X. is still coming up with new ideas.

i wish i could get more into dominion. i've liked it when i've played (i have the core set and the Prosperity expansion) but something about it feels so sterile that it's kinda --yawn-- but i can see that clearly it's a super well designed game. idk what it is that i feel like it's missing.

It's sterile like a surgical instrument and I wouldn't have it otherwise tbh.

I don't find it serile, I think it's generally a real hoot - unless you have one of those really draggy kingdom card combos with hardly any plus actions or whatever.

I've been working my way through the Dominion expansions for about a year and a half now, most recently on Dark Ages, which I think is my favourite along with Prosperity and possibly Seaside. I like how each one has a different atmosphere to it as well as different mechanics.

I really need to get some kind of organiser for all my cards - it's a real pain getting them out and putting them back into the various expansion boxes.

I use the same solution Donald X does which is long cardboard trading card boxes. I got some dividers printed out too, everything is in alphabetical order and easily grabbed, it's pretty great.

Yeah I need to get something like that together.

Had a look at the new card list, some really fun ones! Though the art looks worse than usual.

my group won't play dominion anymore after someone discovered 'big money' & insists that's the only way to play and is unbeatable

p.sure that only applies for the base game but we never get the chance to try out the other expansions : /

Big Money isn't unbeatable. It's just a baseline strategy all others can be measured against. You can even beat it in the base game. Try Chapel, or Market and Gardens, or Witch.

Big money is often a winning tactic, but no one in my group ever plays it cos it's really boring.

played King of Tokyo yesterday - v fun. the card combo w/ roll 1,1,1 take an extra turn and turn any one die to 1 is game-breaking.

Race for the Galaxy has been on our shelf for about a year and I kept falling asleep reading the instructions.

Anyway, we finally started playing and it's pretty fantastic. We also just bought HIVE, which I just thought I'd mention as no one else has. It's a little rinkydink two player game, basically chess with bugs. The pieces are really well made and the game mechanics are really original and fun.

Anyway - I seek recommendations. What's else is good in a Carcassonne/Ticket to Ride kind of way? I.e. A board game rather than card game, easy to pick up, good for two players, some relatively sui generis mechanics rather than a trading/resource-developing thing.

As an aside, I just get crushed at internet backgammon by a guy in Iran. The internet is great, sometimes!

Good for two players is probably the toughie there - - - I've played so much stuff that clicks into gear with three, but seems like it'd just sit there awkwardly with two people alternating. But I feel that way about Carcassonne, so if you're enjoying that, hmmm... I dunno! Just flipped through my spotty BGG reviews and the only thing jumping out at me as a 'maybe' would be Seeland, which I remember finding quite enjoyable and sort of "medium-light."

I found Troyes fun with two, but my tastes may be different than yours. (I do love "trading/resource-developing games" like Agricola.) Merchants and Marauders can be a tad complicated but is also a very fun two-player "theme" game, if you play it in the race mode.

Some favourite card-based ones for two:
+ Dominion
simpler:
+ Lost Cities
+ Coloretto
+ Bohnanza

Thanks for the recs! I heard Agricola was good in two-player mode too? I do like the trading-developing stuff as well.

I like Labyrinth for 2 players but it's nothing like Carcassonne

Also there is an expansion coming momentarily! It will include contractors, ISIS, Syria, etc.

I mean Hive is probably the best new two player game of the last 15 years so you're setting your bar pretty high there.

It's really great, eh? We bought it by chance. And I've been playing online at BGA when I can't sleep. I've lost every single game.

Hive is great. v. chess-like. but u know what's even more chess-like? chess. i've been playing a lot of it recently.

I can't seem to get good enough at chess to relax and enjoy it. My partner's lousy too. I guess it could be worth brushing up? Also I demand a good set. It's something about feeling the ridges on the knight, the baize under the pieces, the weight of the King tipping over when I inevitably resign.

I can't seem to get good enough at chess to relax and enjoy it. My partner's lousy too. I guess it could be worth brushing up? Also I demand a good set. It's something about feeling the ridges on the knight, the baize under the pieces, the weight of the King tipping over when I inevitably resign.

i got a cheap board for in person but i've mostly been playing online. idk why bc i've always been kinda bad at it but lately it has taken over most of my gaming. i want to get better. atm my very humble aspiration is to reach ~1200 rating.

For 2p Agricola look up online suggestions for how to hack it for optimal fun. But it's basically the best game ever, so recommended!

Just had an amazing time playing Bohnanza with the in-laws, so a reminder that it's good entry-level, surprisingly sophisticated, fun. Works well with as few as two players, up to seven.

Played Castles of Mad King Ludwig and Galaxy Truckers recently, both a lot of fun with a similar tile construction element.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/25/board-games-back-tabletop-gaming-boom-pandemic-flash-point

For those seeking reviews with a dose of British humour (leaning towards party games with a peppering of Splotter Spellen-type heavies), I'd recommend Shut Up and Sit Down.

has anyone on here played the Legacy versions of any games like Pandemic or Risk? Wondering if this is actually fun or just a goofy trend.

Goofy trend, but Pandemic Legacy has a lot of fans who think its the best boardgame ever for those with regular groups. Rob Daviau's third legacy game, Seafall, has had rather mixed reviews. Having a solid base game makes the difference.

I'm personally kind of over cooperative boardgames in general, what ever happened to good old competition?

risk legacy was a fun thing to try once, its hard to separate the novelty of playing an old game in a new way from how enjoyable the game itself is. no real desire to try pandemic legacy but then ive always disliked pandemic

got Betrayal at House on the Hill today! Wooo!

Ermm, I'm not terribly experienced at games. Only really played Carcassonne + expansion sets but I'm looking forward to this.

the fuck is this

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/who-soiled-the-toilet-is-your-next-party-game-about-pooping-on-the-floor/

is anyone interested in playing some board games on VASSAL? in particular i'd really like to play the COIN games but they require 4 ppl and it's hard to get enough ppl together irl. i was thinking of trying to get a group together and go through them in order starting with Andean Abyss: Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Columbia. for ppl who aren't familiar with this series they are 4-player asymmetrical games. in this one players take the roles of the "Government (Govt) or 1 of 3 Insurgent Factions—the Marxist FARC, the right-wing AUC 'paramilitaries', or the narco-trafficking Cartels."

the rules for the game are here:
http://www.gmtgames.com/andeanabyss/AARules-1c.pdf

there's a youtube learn to play from the publisher here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgS8pF0GmSw