What are the best 2 player board games

Jaipur is a great game of tug-of-war that provides a surprising amount of tense decisions within a small decision space. Any self-respecting list of two-player tabletop games must include a card dueling game, and our pick this year is Richard Garfield's super-hot release Keyforge: Call of the Archons. The game's schtick is an odd one: Keyforge is a CCG-style card game that forbids deckbuilding. Instead of asking you to buy booster packs or chase down coveted cards on the secondhand market to build a killer deck, KeyForge wants you to let it do heavy lifting for you.

Specifically, an algorithm assembles every deck and assigns it a unique name and card back—you buy it and play it, no alterations allowed. But beyond the intriguing distribution premise, the game is a ton of fun to play.

There's no mana economy to manage; instead, each deck has cards from three of the game's "houses," and you can only play and activate cards from the house that you declare as active at the beginning of your turn. Creatures you play can attack each other, of course, but the goal of the game is not to reduce your opponent's health to zero.

Instead, three "keys" must be constructed by using the game's "ember" resource, and collecting ember is one of the actions available to creatures, forcing you to choose between attacking and resource gathering.

There are a lot of fun and interesting decisions to make. KeyForge has a nascent tournament scene, but although the game has some baked-in mechanics for balancing powerful cards and decks, I'm not sure the game has competitive legs.

As a kitchen-table brawl between friends, though, it's a blast. A light, two-player game about quilting from the designer best known for the heavy serf farming epic Agricola , the heavy Frisian farming epic Fields of Arle , and the heavy dwarf farming epic Caverna?

Yup—and it couldn't be better. Patchwork is a two-player game about picking up fabric pieces and assembling them, Tetris -like, onto your personal square game board while simultaneously trying to maximize the number of "buttons" essentially, money that these pieces deposit in your personal treasury.

The game uses a wonderful circular movement mechanic to ensure that, on each turn, players have a choice of just three fabric pieces—but that these three change constantly.

The rules can be explained in a couple of minutes, the gameplay is quick 20 minutes and non-confrontational, and play is smooth and engaging. Cards feature various characters, and players use them to change the trump suit and take the lead, according to Daniel Kilbert, owner of The Compleat Strategist.

Like the original Railroad Ink — which was featured in both our best one-player board games and best board games for Zoom stories — players roll dice to build out a network of railroads. The main objective is to earn points by choosing from six different-colored dice for chain-scoring opportunities on your scoreboard. If the raptors eat all of the scientists or help three baby raptors escape, they win. Heads up: Only a few are left in stock! Some ingredients will help you gain points and coins which you then spend on more resources.

Tiny Towns is designed for two to six players, so couples or roommates can play by themselves or whip it out when hosting a larger game night. Caper combines elements of a drafting card game players start with a handful of cards and then take more to build a stronger hand with a whodunit-style murder mystery along the lines of Clue.

But unlike Clue , which is best played with a group, this is perfect for a pair, says Bilanko. The game combines elements of deck-building as you seek to build up your military, as well as the interactive component of trading-card-style combat as you face off to attack your opponent.

Players take on the role of two hikers as they navigate different trails, collecting memories of the different places they visit. The game is played in four rounds, each one representing a different season, with the trail tiles being shuffled and rearranged before players begin the next round.

But the tension of the game lies in the small size of the board. The Strategist is designed to surface the most useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. Some of our latest conquests include the best acne treatments , rolling luggage , pillows for side sleepers , natural anxiety remedies , and bath towels. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change.

Account Profile. Moving your queen out of harm's way before it's pinned inside a ring can force an opponent to rethink an attack strategy. Grasshoppers can come leaping huge distances across the board. The "one hive" rule—which forbids any break, even a temporary one, in the unity of the growing hive—can be used to pin down enemy pieces.

Games are quick enough that defeat doesn't sting; instead, you'll find yourself pleading for just one more match. Highly recommended to anyone who likes abstract gaming. The best gaming partner you have access to might just be your real-life partner. And unless your significant other is as much of an uber-gamer as you are, you'll need to pull out something less intimidating than Terra Mystica when you want to get a game in. Atop the pantheon of two-player games sits the storied "couples game," and Jaipur , a game about trading goods in India, is perhaps the perfect realization of the form.

At the beginning of the game, both players are dealt a hand of cards representing various goods—spice, silk, leather, etc. A central market of five more goods cards is dealt to the middle of the table. On your turn, you're presented with a deceptively simple choice: get new goods or sell the goods you already have.

To get goods, you can either trade cards with the market or take a card from the market without giving anything up. If you decide to sell, you'll discard all the goods of a certain type and be rewarded with tokens representing money. The value on the money tokens goes down as more and more goods are sold, so you want to sell quickly to get the best price.

The more goods you sell at once, the better bonus you'll get. Do you sell your two silk now to get the best price, or do you hold out and hope to collect more so you can get that nice, juicy five-card bonus token? Jaipur is a great game of tug-of-war that provides a surprising amount of tense decisions within a small decision space. It's the only game my wife has ever set up by herself and asked me to play.

I don't think I've ever beaten her.