Good 2 Person Board Games

[Toolboxnj 1]

My girlfriend and I have been on a board game kick... it's better than watching TV or movies! Hell, and we've been having a great time playing together.

Lately we've been playing this one game Tripoly which is a three-level Monopoly knock off but we have alot of fun playing.

What are some other 2-player board games that we could take a stab at? We both enjoy war and history, but do not enjoy the fantasy genre. They don't necessarily have to be limited to 2-players, but something that 2-players would enjoy and be able to complete.

[IAmMetaphysical 1]

Battle-sh*ts!

[Toolboxnj 1]

Other than Battleship

[Kevin 0]

Other than Battleship

Go is by far the best 2 player game ever invented.

[Maarten 4]

Chess is always nice

[aequalsa 70]

Might be a little on the long side, but I always liked "axis and allies", obviously a world war 2 simulation. I haven't played since I was 8, but I remember stratego being pretty [email protected] as well. I feel inspired by you two. I wonder if I could get my girlfriend to play???

[Maarten 4]

A&A is a very, very good game I totally forgot about that one. It's more fun with more than 2 people, though, but even just playing together can be very interesting. There are so many options in that game it's amazing

I second aequalsa's recommendation.

Heh, but it takes a long time to play, I have to add that. If you think turns through they can take almost an hour per piece

Edited May 29, 2006 by Maarten

[thejohngaltline 0]

Scrabble is fun, if you like word games. Also doing puzzles or crosswords together, although they aren't very board game-y.

[D'kian 4]

How does Risk play with 2? I've never finished a game, and there were always 4 players.

There's Trivial Pursuit, Backgamon (my favorite), checkers, Scrabble. You can also look up card games for two, there are bound to be some.

[LaszloWalrus 0]

I love Chess and Axis and Allies. Stratego is also fun.

[realitycheck44 0]

One of my friends gave me a Mad Libs booklet for Christmas, and we had alot of fun playing that. Though I don't know how long you can play that with only two people.

I think word games are alot of fun. Scrabble ranks high on my list also.

Zak

[Scott_Connery 0]

Scrabble, and boggle are the two I play most often. I love A&A, but it is a lucky man indeed who has a girlfriend that wants to play it.

Edited May 30, 2006 by Scott_Connery

[Prometheus1 0]

My girlfriend and I have been on a board game kick... it's better than watching TV or movies! Hell, and we've been having a great time playing together.

Lately we've been playing this one game Tripoly which is a three-level Monopoly knock off but we have alot of fun playing.

What are some other 2-player board games that we could take a stab at? We both enjoy war and history, but do not enjoy the fantasy genre. They don't necessarily have to be limited to 2-players, but something that 2-players would enjoy and be able to complete.

You should try some of the so called "Freestyle / German Style Games", you can find detailed reviews on each game at http://www.funagain.com/control/main Gobs of games that you don't see in stores.

[Proverb 0]

If you guys are strategically minded I would look into the japanese game called "Go." If you're not already familiar with it, it's a stunningly simple looking game but it breeds new and unique strategies to this day.

This is a great site concerning this game: http://www.kiseido.com/

[Rex Little 1]

I'll second the recommendations for Scrabble and backgammon. To answer D'kian's question, Risk plays very poorly with only two; as soon as one gets a slight advantage, it translates into extra power and the advantage just keeps growing until Game Over.

There are a lot of good games on the site that Prometheus1 linked, but be careful--many of them aren't intended for fewer than 3 players. Check that detail out before you buy anything.

If you guys are into really intense strategy/war games (very few women are, but your g/f could be the rare exception), there's a game called Titan that's been my favorite for over 20 years. It's intended for up to 6 players, but unlike most games of that sort, it plays just as well with two as with any larger number. It does use fantasy creatures to fight battles, but don't be put off by that; the ogres and behemoths and griffons could just as well be called infantry and tanks and fighter planes. There's no role-playing or quests or anything like that.

The only problem with Titan is that you'll have a hard time getting hold of a copy, as it's out of print.

[Toolboxnj 1]

Thanks guys for all the replies. I'll check some of these out. Just started b-school today so my game playing will be restricted to weekends

We won't play Scrabble because our public schools did not teach us how to spell

[FeatherFall 81]

I hope it isn't too late to chime in.

I like Axis and Allies but I don't enjoy it with 2 players. If you have 3-5 people who are interested and have lots of free time, it's very fun. Try World at War or Twilight Imperium if you like Axis and Allies.

My best suggestion for a 2-person board game that hasn't been presented yet is Hasbro's Battle Cry. It involves both luck and tactics. You lay out a hex map to re-create historic Civil-War battles, then draw command cards to direct either northern or southern units against each other. It is easy to learn and a lot of fun. The games don't last too long, so you can squeeze two battles into an hour (changing the units and board/terrain in between).

[jrs 0]

Go is by far the best 2 player game ever invented.

God's truth.

(Just kidding about the "God" part.)

Edited May 31, 2006 by jrs

[Nxixcxk 0]

Reversi/Othello--extremely simplistic yet involves a lot of strategy. Games.yahoo.com/rv is where you can find play it online; you'd probably have to order off a special site if you wanted the boards/pieces.

ps. . .if anyone plays reversi, either 5mins or 1min with 0 increment, I'd love to play you sometime

[Boydstun 166]

I just learned of a 2-person game from the Bronze Age (4000 years ago). Today's archaeologists evidently call it 58 Holes. If I understand correctly, the game Chutes and Ladders is that game. (I'm not a game person, as an adult, except for a period of playing Scrabble, which I liked---but no time for it in many years.) The game had been found in the Near East, but in November, Walter Crist of the American Museum of Natural History in New York discovered that it was also played in Azerbaijan, which is about a thousand miles north. SCIENCE NEWS (12/22/18) quotes Crist as saying "Bronze Age herders in that region must have had contacts with the Near Eastern world [eg. Iran]. Games often passed across cultures and acted as a social lubricant."

Edited January 13 by Boydstun

[Doug Morris 18]

There's something called the infinite board game which is a set of equipment with which you can play many different games.  It comes with a booklet describing a number of them, and there are sources of info about more, or you could make up your own.

If you are willing to consider card games, you might see if you can find a copy of Abbott's New Card Games, which contains very original games invented by the author.  There are eight card games, some of which work for two people or are even designed that way, and one game called Ultima which is played with a chess set.

[StrictlyLogical 359]

My vote has to be for a game called

Quarto

The rules are simple but the gameplay is challenging. 

Board is a 4x4 grid and there are 16 pieces to play, each one of which is either tall or short, square or round, light or dark, flat or hollowed out on top.  The player who places a piece to form a row of any of these "attributes" (all tall, or all dark, or all square or all flat topped) wins.  The first player picks a piece for the second player to place, after the second player places his piece he picks from the remaining pieces, the piece for his opponent to place, and so on.  Keeping track of all four aspects and how thy are forming opportunities on the board is a challenge but more tricky is the fact that at each turn, you pick a piece your opponent must place on the board... and hence you must guess where he could place it, and guess what piece he would give you for your next turn... etc

So, Imagine something like 4 dimensional tic tac toe but all pieces are open to both players... and in the end someone wins when the loser literally hands the game away...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarto_(board_game