What Makes a Good Two Player Game? What are Some of Them?

0:00 what makes a good to play a game competitive or cooperative well there's not a better time to discuss this when felon Thursday around the corner coming up

0:23 hi everyone hope you well it's Stella and Tarrant from maple University welcome back to our tabletop diary in time for Valentine's Day if you ever wonder what other things that makes good two-player games we want to discuss this and share with you what we think of it so it is a bit more like discussion between me and Terrence so if you have anything to say please write in the comment sections below so we'll check it out later so we do often play to play games naturally and we do have some thoughts about what we feel other games that work quite well playing with two players and that's regardless of whether it's a design to play a game or not I think there's a lot to be learned from design to play games and how they compare with bigger games that scale down or how well let's go down what do you think and we also all going to mention a few of our favorite to play games and the one that keeps coming back to the table it's yeah so if that's coming so would you like to share what you think of what actually that is a good to play a game I think the biggest thing for me is we play a lot of four player games four and five player that's sort of our the that's the best count for a lot of the games we play a lot of the heavier euro types of things mostly actually to four players I noticed yeah and where general we're kind of Care

1:53 Bears when we play really we don't like the big area control sort of things all that much compared with resource building and we're not that take batty or vindictive about things and one of the well there are some exceptions but carry on and I think one of the bigger things in a three or four player game is that I don't like singling out someone to attack or singling out someone to block just for the sake of it and that's a key part of tactical gaming is blocking people out from things when you're playing with higher player counts it for me it's time to do it kind of like I know what you mean though it's like it's about a bit like King making as well especially if somebody is ahead and do you attack that person or do you attack the person that is I don't know that you think that always wins in the game or but is it based on the strategy or is it based on that particular game or you don't want to attack your partner because you're scared that you gonna get kicked out and sleep in the spare part anyway sorry carry on yes okay King making or the need to for the collective team to block each other equally is something that it's something I don't enjoy and I like when I like in a

3:28 two-player game you strip all of the complexity of that away and a lot of the games that I find scale best to two players or that I like best as two players bring you down to a point where it's just as valuable to block somebody else as it is to forward your own game and that forms a critical part of the strategy so for me that's what I like in a two-player game particularly one that scales down is one where I've got a very clear way of responding to what my opponent is doing I agree in that part because there's like we tried many different games many two-player games like specifically to players and games they are you know it can play multiple players but we play two players some work some don't and that's one thing about it for example I think I don't know a plate bunny Kingdom just right there next to you that's why I thought about and terraforming Mars and it's interesting to have a scale down mechanics for two players and some games do that through by the way so they have special rules for card drafting for two both actually catch something and it sometimes make the game feel different and placed differently yep yep I think so and I think on the converse side the

5:00 thing that works badly for me when a two-player game scales down is if it takes something that even if it wasn't directly at much attacking even if it wasn't directly impacting other players if it doesn't scale now like the action space is available and makes things too plentiful you can turn a game that is at least a competitive action draft into something that is very much more solitary and I remember most distinctly Lords of Waterdeep yep when we played that at two players we were pretty much doing our own thing it didn't have anywhere near the feeling it's true everything is wildly available yeah and you know I don't remember is they're scaling Mechanics for two players there there is some scaling I think it changed the number of workers you have but I don't think it I don't think it changes the action spaces very much and so yeah things felt relatively plentiful I see what you mean so that's one sample of you know obviously things don't scale down very well for two players so like some of the examples I'm thinking of a few examples before this there's a very distinct difference in the two-player game for the basic assault and as all summer pavilion and I you know we're playing the basic is all two-player the other day and I really

6:32 enjoy that as a two-player game because it has a lot more interplay with only five factory tiles things are really tight you can see what your opponent's doing you can see right there's only six red tiles on the board and I need five of them am I going to get that yes or no and then you can go to a different strategies so let's go I think you meant in a way it controls yeah it's all chaos yeah it's a little bit more it says a little more it it's a little more restrict because with nine tiles in a for play game you can usually get the tiles with the two-player game it is a lot tighter and you can play off your opponent but when we were playing some of pavillion that had i've we found you saw it as well that there's sort of across six rounds there's only really enough tiles to complete three and a bit stars and so i was doing three of the stars you were doing the other three stars and we weren't competing that much for color so i felt that that one because of that ability for us to run our own path didn't really scale them anywhere near as well as bases or although i think this is this is a bit of a spoiler i do like some of the fillion because of a few things we I am I do have a video for it so I'll check it out why but I see what you mean it's just certain things that it's very restrictive but then

8:03 again it's restrictive for you and restrictive for me so we both getting restricted it's in a way it's kind of balanced in a way I mean I know what you mean but in other way it's a balanced more balanced to play games as well is definitely it's definitely balanced I just found it more solitary yeah I understand I remember this particular game that we don't actually agree parade it's actually one of our early how to play videos if you notice it's it's very the reason I think the reason Greg knead flour on reason you like it is because player yeah as a two-player is because it's more controlled you know what's going to happen more it's not like what I say before it's not too chaotic is that correct yeah I find with parade at higher play accounts so much has changed before your next turn that really every turn is just these are my four cards what's my minimum damage where was a five cards but in two-player because you can there's only going to be one other card play before your turn so you can at least plan ahead a little bit and you can be a little more tactical less I found yeah that was one that scaled down quite well even though it's a nice filler for six players which there aren't that many of which that's probably the reason why I would say that

9:34 it's better for more play accounts for me personally it's because I actually you okay tan is really good at planning ahead with gaming and I find that he's already planning like five six steps ahead well only climbed two steps ahead so this works for me I can just like blend a little bit things at a time which one got me the least amount of damage and then plan ahead like only just twice two steps so that's probably why like hah that runs your plan hahahaha basically why um one of the games that we've only played terraforming Mars at two players once we've played it at four or five players heaps of times I always remember how different that was at two players we played it with drafting every round so of course there was a lot of drafting to keep cards away from each other in that yeah I like that bit about it and it comes to one mechanism that it's sometimes works well or sometimes doesn't and that's a majority mechanism when you've got like the majority mechanism where whoever's got the most in something at the end of the game gets 10 points and whoever's next gets six that sort of thing it's mostly I think built for the higher play accounts and when you get that in a two-player game it can it changes its importance and it changes the way you play it dramatically because the milestones in terraforming Mars I assume it's visible in the frame I'm

11:05 pointing at it yep I think the milestones in terraforming Mars it's not just a five point bonus in a two-player game it's a ten point swing for whether you get it in your opponent's character and when we play it I I was beaten quite heavily but there came a generation during the game where I looked at all of the milestones and realized that there was already two of them that I could not possibly win in and I think there was one that I was probably going to lose but I might have been able to swing it and so I spent that entire generation master master award award award just fun to try to get them away from you and I think he's still got two out of three of them you beat me pretty heavily in that game but that was I found I say it's not always gonna work well but I found that really interesting and a very important part of two-player terraforming Mars which was quite quite fun to discover and play yeah that's that's quite surprised when we found that out well we don't know usually know until we actually played I remember I I think I probably quite lucky when I get the cards and we we play fully drafting of course into players I quite lucky and I've already started to specialize at this time I keep getting the cards and you actually don't was it a Venus one I think and I keep getting that and you are not collecting that so I keep getting the things that you don't click and you concentrate on something else a few other things I

12:35 think that's why I got yeah I think and I think I I distinctly remember making horrible error and just giving you the card you needed to fulfill a milestone it was really silly yeah that's the thing that you can just directly think ahead when playing to play game in their formulas and I think you know if we bring this back to a designed to play a game and you think of some of the good design to play games out there and whether they'd work at higher counts like you have seven wonders dual because you got all the dual games right so seven wonders dual it breaks it right down to that card draft card selection with the grid mechanism and kind of like parade I think you need to be able to count ahead and see ahead to what only one person's doing for that sort of mechanism to work no one's alright you can see quite clearly and kind of well there's some elements of luck when you flip the cards you don't know what it is but I like the yeah and Channel Tunnel I wasn't 1987 Channel Tunnel oh yeah we played recently actually mate for two players yep and I mean thematically that makes sense because it's a two country tunnel I was thinking could you expand that game to three players by making I guess receiving it because it's not based on true stories anymore yeah so could you could you use that mechanic which is

14:06 using the little stacks of disks and taking them back and even that is a draft mechanic that I think works a lot better with two players than three because there's a lot of like predicting on what that one opponent is going to be doing or not giving them the easy out to get the tiles they want because you've got different options on different cards and this is I think you destroy me in this one when we play I think I got combo one yes yes and this is where you play my head so many steps ahead and I can't I know I don't know choose not to I kind of member and you want so that's this is what makes the to play games better I like that part as well to a certain degree if you know as long as it's not like ten steps ahead I guess it's okay I know that there's another favorite of mine oh actually before that we talked about the game that scaled down good Michelle yeah Michelle 1897 the card game version the two-player version is really good yeah that was I remember being distinctly surprised when I played that because I thought when I was reading the rules there were a couple of obvious pathways you could go to get points and I thought it was going to be one of those games where you scaled it down one person went this way one person went that way you had specialize and whoever specialized best

15:38 in their thing win but as we yeah as we played through it because this know the specializations changes because each round the bonus stars got drawn randomly and in place in different columns yeah and then what you won the column not necessarily making the one that you want in the bonus yeah yeah I think that because that's got a double a double impact drafting system essentially I think that's what makes that work really well as to players because you're choosing the action but you're also choosing what column you're in and that placement dictates a majority later and so you can take a lesser action to block your opponent from getting the majority that's worth a lot of points and that was why it didn't end up just being I'll do buildings you'll do post office so it wasn't post office yeah I'll do buildings you do art it ended up being very tight and I can't really let you get away with the buildings as well and that's not a big and that's also in Channel Tunnel I can't get away let you get away with drilling the tunnels because the more rubble I have the more points you have so that's also a good mechanics speaking about those games so far we've been talking about the competitive games we do play cooperative

17:10 games by the way and we've got many favorites one that keeps coming back to the table is called names do i code names do it yeah I it's probably it might be my favorite design to play again if not to play game i think it's just it takes what worked well about code names and makes it so tight and i don't think it's just because that side that we don't often win we're terrible at it and i don't think that's I don't know if it's because it's been designed in a specific to play out well I just think it's just a really nice design there's nothing uniquely two-player about what makes it good it's just it's just a really good game yeah and another one that we play a lot is the escape room games so in a lot of cooperative games they are some I won't say issues some dilemma where there are too many too many heads would you say too many yeah too many too many brains at the table basically and I think whether it's a puzzle style game like pandemic or so a puzzle style pieces game like pandemic or puzzles in a book like an escape room you've got to play that with a right size team I think and generally when it comes to any of those sorts of things we just enjoy

18:41 doing it as a two-player rather than with other people it's quite easy yeah it was like that night what I'm gonna play it just get one thing what what's that favorite we played exits unlock Jack's cape one that we started enjoy playing use adventure games the dungeon and monochrome I think the other one so we like those sort of games where it's really easy just two players and it's not too many heads so we often go to escape room like exact the actual escape room just the two of us well the brain is mainly Terran mine yeah we both contribute and I think the I think the worst times I've had an escape from sort of when there were too many people yeah really yeah the actual escape room game no game well I don't I would never do one with more than four really how many plays we've done like four and five is probably okay it just ends up being there's not enough different puzzles and when there's too many people it's hard to it's hard for everyone to get anything out of it but again when I say too many eight so many brains it's probably it's one of those things yeah I think one thing that I like it I like it when a game recognizes that even though it could technically mechanically scale

20:11 down to two players when they realize that they don't do it very well and they just leave that off the play account all right I think raise an example is flotilla it's a three to five player game I don't I don't believe there's any mechanic reason why you couldn't play that with two players but because it's got the sink side sky sky nezam and you need to what one side is doing affects the other yes that asymmetry is critical to the game and so they just drop two players off you're right I always wonder I haven't thought about that further why doesn't has to be minimum of three players in flotilla is because of that balance that needs to be you know you know strike for the sink site in the side side thank you so those are the things that what other games that we haven't mentioned that we like playing I think event comm-pass and which is a new game work pretty well yeah pretty well for two players anything else on this Ilan's invasion it's a cooperative game yeah I don't know if it's a you know you can play through to three players that B we've often played that three I think we've played that two as well it was very tight with two actually if I remember correctly that one it was so it became a lot harder with fewer players sometimes

21:43 Australia as well it was a lot harder with two players and you can find that sometimes in a coop when it scales down suddenly you don't have enough actions to do everything in fact we even found that it's a very different game pandemic with two pawns versus four and when we did legacy we were two people playing four pawns cuz it felt a little more comfortable being able to spread across the world more quickly and the cards are swell like how many cards you can have in your hands with four players you have a lot more options with a cartel you collect in your hands yeah you hold more cards I think you start with fewer there's a couple of offsets for but it becomes quite a different game yeah that's true anything else you can think of the games that we play I'm sure there are other ones oh um rush MD there's a cooperative play it's it's already it's already chaotic in two players I was like looking at the games it's already quite chaotic in two players I think I don't know if it's I mean we uh we play it for two players and we really enjoy that what do you think of that I'm just thinking arms going everywhere on the tables because a real-time cooperative game yeah that's one of those like kitchen rush it's from the same series I think that is a defender although it's similar I think I think it's a guy I reckon that's a game that

23:15 assuming the objectives scale correctly it probably the game played probably is pretty similar a different player counts there again less bumping into each other with two players though that's right another I think another game that I really prefer the to play account versus higher is Dominion it's a simple thing but I find treating it as a dual and responding more directly to mice I think it's two things firstly it's responding directly to my single opponents cards if I know they're getting a lot of attacks I'll go and get a lot of moats or whatever the defensive one is if they look like they going a fast game I've got to adjust my pace to that I find that a lot cleaner at two players and four players and the fact that the game almost always ends from the provinces being empty rather than the the decks being out I think that also to play it turns it into a race and I just find that works well for plays yes out of all the minions that you have well this this attacking one I hate I play this you get a curse god and although there's a other type as well that affects others I think I can I haven't played all of the minions played most of them I play more than your thing in Dominion there's a van

24:46 cart and things like that that probably might change it a little bit but you're talking about the basic good just just any of the well the ones I've played certainly I've enjoyed it a to players and that's how we usually play it so those other games I'm sure I have other games that I have not mentioned and I forgot to mention I still really want to try food chain magnet at two trailers I think that will be a very I think again the the ability to make it just sort of direct chess directs like not just picking off the weaker guy and going there it's like okay I can see my soul enemy's restaurant I have to work out exactly how to ruin that restaurant I think it would be a more comfortable cutthroat game at two players I would like to try that sir if you want to get bitten again switching back natural by me now something about it that you're I'm just thinking what did I do many because of the fact that it's more than two players they get other people to steal your thing maybe and I just like get advantage out of it when we will play it with the extensions as well that's true so I think that's it yeah well if you have anything that you are look to add please write in the comment sections below I'll have a look and all-present reply as soon as I could and if you can please subscribe to us click

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