Paula's Top 10 Games for 2 Players!

hello my name is Paula Deming and when I sit down to play a board game 61 of the time it's going to be a two-player game and I think a lot of people are like me and only have one friend or loved one willing to put up with them at a time I mean find themselves in a situation with only one other person to play games with for whatever reason don't read too deep into it and so I've put together a list of my top 10 two-player games for this list I tried to limit myself to games designed with just two players in mind even though this is four just two players in mind no other player counts allowed get out of here three no one wants to see you around here four okay so there might be like two games on the list that technically don't quite fit that criteria because they can be played in teams but let's start with some quick fire honorable mentions if any of these pique your interest you should go check them out maybe they'll end up on your personal top 10 list try tea for two be a Tea Merchant gorgeous production dice worker placement and manipulation Longhorn Yeehaw it's abstract strategy be an outlaw force your opponent to make plays that are bad for them and good for you Marrakesh with the CH not an sh roll to move but like it's actually good make an island of rugs force your opponent to make plays that are bad for them and good for you also the rugs are actual bits of fabric Watergate historical simulation feels like a tense tug of war lots of take that asymmetrical powers and hand management now that we've quick-fired those honorable mentions let's get on to the main list but first I enjoy while I talk about games in mini worlds Tavern makes tea for the tabletop so they're a perfect choice and a sponsor of this video I'm brewing some Sage's gate which is a lavender mint Sage Tea and it is genuinely one of the most delicious teas I have ever had if that doesn't sound like a jam they have eight other tea varieties and I really want to try the golden Roots which is a turmeric ginger and spiced Sands which is their Masala chai let's be real sometimes gaming can be stressful and a nice cup of tea is the perfect way to make your mind all cozy well you're crushing your opponent Mini World Tavern also makes coffee for game night of course you've heard me talk about it before and how much I enjoy their coffee they also have cat stickers so you know they're good people further proof of that they donate one dollar per bag they sell to gaming related non-profits so go check them out and a big thank you to them for helping to sponsor this video now let's talk to player games the first game I want to talk about is Caper Europe now full disclosure I've done lots of work with keymaster games the publisher at Caper Europe and I did make the official how to play video for the game but that is not why it's on this list it's on this list because it's a really good two-player game this re-implements the game Caper from 2018 which I've never played so I don't know how different it is or isn't from the 2022 version but I do know that I think this is a really fun game for two people to play you're both playing as a criminal masterminds trying to pull off the best heist by gathering the right crew with the right equipment to steal the right stuff your drafting cards and activating their special powers when you play them scoring for area control of the three different Caper locations for set collection of cards and set collection of stolen goods it's a really tight game that feels tense especially with the drafting because you're potentially giving your direct opponent cards you want or cards you don't want them to have and you don't know if when in the next turn they pass them back to you is what you were hoping would still be there is it still there can you take it also the production value of this game is so good it's just it's visually pleasing like everything that keymaster does honestly and all the different European cities in the game have different rule sets and Powers so there's a lot of replayability my tea is so hot undaunted Normandy is the ninth game on the list I've chosen this one from the series specifically because I like it better than undaunted North Africa which might just be because I've played Normandy Moore and I haven't had a chance yet to try undaunted Stalingrad but I'd really like to anyway this game combines War gaming mechanisms with deck building and it is a great way to dip your toes into the style of War games and see if that's a pond you'd like to Wade deeper into the game has a campaign of scenarios that are historical simulations of World War II battles and you're building a deck of troops and placing chits on a board to achieve objectives and you're making tactical plans and rolling the dice and watching all those plans go to pot it's really fun it's got a lot of luck it's not too heavy especially compared to more traditional War Games the line of sight rules are really easy to understand and I just really like it and all the troops on your cards in your deck are named so it's really kind of sad when they die Mythic Mischief is number eight in IB Studios who makes it might be becoming one of my favorite Publishers so like Key Master they put so much care into the visuals and production quality of their games and that's something that just it really appeals to me and enhances my gaming experience in Mythic Mischief you are a student at a magical School moving around the library avoiding the tone keeper while trying to get other students caught by the tone keeper it's an abstract strategy game but it's so thematic there's a ton of different factions or clicks you can play as the trolls which are the theater kids the Frankensteins who are the jocks the ghosts who are The Artsy kids Etc every faction has slightly different powers and special moves and your abilities upgrade during the game it is a brain burner and can be prone to overthinking a turn because you're trying to figure out the most efficient way to manipulate the board your pieces your opponent's pieces and the tone key paper to score as many points in one go as possible it's such a puzzle and when you know you've had a super efficient turn it feels really good the seventh game on this list is space Hulk the fourth edition from 2014 or is in one place it was listed as a re-edition of the Third Edition I don't know why that's not a fourth edition I don't I don't understand that so I'll be honest I don't know if this is something you can actively purchase from Games Workshop I'm actually pretty sure you can't but I'm not gonna let that stop me from putting it on this list because I like it this game is set in the world of Warhammer 40K but you don't need to know anything about Warhammer really to play it's got really cool Miniatures of course because it's made by Games Workshop that's pretty much their jam and a modular board that can be built differently according to the scenario you're playing so two players go head to head with one being the Space Marines and one playing the gene Steelers and they play with totally different rules the Space Marines are exploring a derelict space vessel and the gene Steelers are there too moving around the vents waiting for just the right moment to show themselves and destroy the Space Marines it's got a bit of a Vibe of the movie Aliens one thing I really like about this game is the asymmetric gameplay means you can play with people of different skill levels so the Space Marines in my opinion are more complicated to play with more moving parts to keep track of and the gene Steelers who I like to play have a much simpler rule set that's less about puzzling out your tactics and more about surrounding and overwhelming you can play the side that fits your skill level or strategy preference and the other person can play the side that fits them and everyone can be happy while playing the same game until one of you loses then there might be less happiness game number six is Lost Cities so this is a game I heard people talk about for a long time and I was kind of a snob I guess I thought it sounded and looked boring and at the time I didn't really understand the appeal of set collection which is a what this game is I have since learned the error of my ways because when Matthew Jude finally got me to play this game a few years ago I was immediately so taken with it it's so simple play a card draw a card that's your turn the theme is fairly abstract but you are explorers trying to send Expeditions out to Lost Cities and those different locations are represented by different card colors and you have to play those cards down to their matching locations in sequential order from lowest to highest so first I play the green two then I can play the green three then I can play the green four but once I've played the Green eight I can't go back to play the green six right you get points based on the values of the cards you play at each location except as soon as you play Down car to a location you incur debt it's the cost of the Expedition which means immediate negative points you have to now make up with your card values and you're just holding out because you've got a two and a three already played and the five is in your hand and you really want to be able to play the four but it keeps not showing up every time you draw a card you have to play and then draw so you're like forced into making a decision finally you give in to the inevitable you play the five draw a card and it's the four every single time and that feeling along with holding back a card you know your opponent wants but it's in your hand you're not going to give it to them I think that's what makes this game so good game number five Warhammer underworlds this is like a whole series of box sets but it's called overall it's called Warhammer underworlds I like Miniatures games and I think this series is one that is really approachable especially for people who've never played a tactical Skirmish game before it's got lots of things in it that will feel familiar to board gamers and in a way that's similar to undaunted this could be a good way to test out to see if these kinds of games are something you might like underworld games are pretty quick they play in three rounds and each War band has like six minis they vary a bit they don't all have the exact same number and you have a board with hexes so you don't need to worry about like measuring movement or making terrain so that's really approachable and you play cards to do actions and activate special powers for each of your Minis and roll dice to attack or defend and you have a deck of objectives you can draw from and try and score so your goals might be different from your opponent and at the end of three rounds whoever scored the most objective points wins it's fast paced so if you end up with a bunch of bad Dice look you aren't stuck in a losing game for like hours it's way simpler than something like kill team or 40K or age of Sigmar and I really like assembling and painting The Minis and the mental load of the game really isn't too taxing which is just right for me and my brain though borgi does rate it it's like a 3.7 something I mean that's not that light it's fine I'm like slurping at my tea because it's still so hot jiper is the fourth game on the list and oh I just I think it's really good you're a merchant collecting goods and trying to sell them to become the wealthiest Merchant the trick here is on your turn you can either take one card from the market trade two or more cards from your hand with cards in the market or sell a set of cards that's in your hand different Goods have different values and the person who sells the goods first gets more for them because the points tokens that you get for selling go down in value as more of them get taken but you also get bonuses for selling larger sets in one go so the game is this really tight and stressful tightrope of holding out as long as possible before you sell those spices because you want to try and sell four or five at a time to get the bonus but if you wait too long your opponent will sell spices first and get the best points tokens oh and you have a seven card hand limit so you can only hold so much while you're pushing your luck waiting for the right card to come out I'm getting worked up just thinking about it quick and light and fun and great game number three is Memoir 44.

this game has been in my collection for basically the whole time I've been playing board games I will never get rid of it it's another game of historical World War II simulations each scenario is a different battle from the war that you're playing out with specific Victory objectives you're trying to achieve to win you have a hand of cards that tells you how and where you can activate your troops on the board movement again is hex based so it's really simple and you're rolling lots of dice to attack your opponent which means if bad luck frustrates you you might not have a great time with this game because sometimes the dice just aren't on your side not that that ever happens to me but I also think that's what makes the game exciting it's unpredictable and maybe your game of this battle turns out differently than it did in history because of that you can get some great cinematic story moments out of like the one single troop left in a hex who just won't die he's a hero also if World War II or war or historical stuff like isn't your jam this same game system with a few tweaks is used in the game battle lore which is fantasy creature battles so that might be something to look into if that's a more exciting thing for you the penultimate game number two it's a tardy boy this game is good I really love it now this game can be quite mean because you're going to be blocking each other a lot and often not even on purpose you're gonna have a turn and you're gonna do something the other person's gonna be like oh that's where I wanted to go and you're like I did not even I just needed to go there but I never get upset about it in this game because I know going in that that's just part of it in the game you're Gathering resources that you use to spend on tribe cards that you collect and put down in a tableau you score points printed on those cards but you also get bonus points if your row has all the same type of tribe card or all different types of tribe cards but how do you get those cards they're laid out in a grid with a border of action cards around them so you take turns placing one worker on one of these border cards once both players have placed all three workers going back and forth you see where you're workers intersect so I have one here and I have one here and I'm like oh they intersect on this card you place a little marker on it and that's an action you're going to get to do on that turn if it was a Goods card you replace it with the tribe card for the next round and if it was a tribe card you replace it with a good start for the next round the competition for the best spots for your workers to get the best cards is tight and it can get pretty Fierce it's the kind of game that stresses me out like in a good way it has me like shaking my fist and my opponent a lot if you don't mind direct player conflict which honestly has been everything on this list you should really try this game if you haven't yet the worker placement mechanism is really unique and y'all it's so fun honestly talking about it right now is making me want to stop filming and go play it my number one two player game is an abstract strategy game about time travel with a liked campaign narrative and boxes of goodies to unlock and it's that time you killed me you and your opponent are rival Time Travelers trying to erase each other from history because one of you in minute time travel and it's gonna be you darn it so you have three boards one that is the past one that is the present and one that is the future and you start with a copy of you in all three which is just a little Pawn on your turn you choose one of those copies to do two actions with move one space time travel forward or time travel back which leaves a copy of yourself behind the goal is to use your movement and other bits that are in the game no spoilers to cause the death of your opponent's copies and like wipe them out of the board so they don't have any left they can play and there are little things in the design of this game that make it such an engaging puzzle like the most you can move in one turn is two spaces if you use both your actions doing it and because of the size of each error board that often leaves you vulnerable to the other player and you can't act in the same era two turns in a row and you have to choose what era you're acting in next turn at the end of your current turn so I'm like well I acted in the present right now I'm done now I have to commit next turn am I going to act in the past or the future and then I choose you're trying to set yourself up and enact all these Ripple effects through time to get the better of your opponent it's really good and and it's really tricky and more rules and variations get introduced as you play through the game making it more and more interesting each time the components are nice and it looks good narrative abstract strategy what I really really like it and that's it my top 10 two player games I hope you found this list enjoyable and maybe you learned about some games you didn't know or hadn't been motivated to check out yet I am always looking for more two-player games so if there are others that you enjoy I would love to know what they are down in the comments especially collaborative two-player games I didn't have any of those on this list mostly I think because most co-op games aren't specifically two player only so they didn't fit the criteria thank you again so much for watching if you'd like to support what I'm doing here on the channel you can check out the merch that's available in partnership with themeps.co links below and you can make sure you're subscribed here to the channel and you can support my patreon patreon.com things get dicey thanks again to mini worlds Tavern for being a sponsor of this video see y'all back here soon thank you