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KickStarter Recommend me a 2 player tabletop game

Morkar Left

Guest
It's a card game but I recommend The settlers of Catan card game. It's for 2 players only and nicely done (especially with the addons). And it's not a trading card game.
 

Aqualung

Dead duck
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Insert Title Here
It's a card game too but I can't recommend Epic enough. Star Realms and Hero Realms are really nice too. The three are real must haves.
 

Skunkpew

Augur
Joined
Jun 17, 2013
Messages
138
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Ontario
Here's a list of games I have that are great for couples and tend towards the lighter side. I tried to include a mix of themes:

Pursuit of Happiness: you’re trying to build up your life story by acquiring items, relationships, jobs and completing projects, while managing stress so that you can live as long as possible and score your life the best.
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Roll Player: you’re creating a traditional D&D type character, by drafting different coloured dice and placing those dice in the best character traits to utilize abilities and complete various bonuses. You’re also trying to collect the best armor and weapons and skills for your character.
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Clank: a deck builder where you’re thieves descending into a dungeon to steal artifacts, trying to make as little noise/clank as possible, in order to not wake the dragon. Steal the treasures and survive long enough to get out.
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Mystic Vale: another deck builder, but instead of buying cards, you acquire ‘pieces’ of cards. You can build up complete cards over several runs through your deck. But assemble the card pieces into your sleeves to produce the best combos.
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Kitchen Rush: a real-time cooperative game where you have four minutes to bring in customers, take their orders, assemble the plates and ingredients and spices you need to produce the final dishes. The main difference to other real time games, is that your playing pieces are hourglasses and you cannot take back your hourglass from the board until the sand has expired.
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Meeple Circus: another real-time game, assemble the best circus over a series of rounds, bringing in animals and special entertainers. But then they all have to be stacked in certain ways to complete objectives and score you the points you need to win.
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The Networks: over the course of five seasons, you’re building up the best lineup of primetime shows, matching celebrities to the shows they do best on, trying to score the most viewers.
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Sanssouci
: you’re playing tiles down, trying to build up your fabulous garden with different components, as visiting nobles walk through your garden scoring you points. The game is a little more abstract, because you’re trying to complete rows and columns in order to get the nobles as far down their preferred rows as possible.
pic3538345.jpg

So many other potential options out there depending on difficulty or what themes you prefer: Fog of Love, Elder Sign, Castles of Burgundy, Orleans, Takenoko, Arkham/Eldritch Horror. On top of this are the dozens of different Escape games, if that’s your thing. Some are destroyed during play and thus can only be played once, others are not. I prefer the Unlock series of Escape games. There’s also Choose Your Own Adventure games that are coming out and are surprisingly good. Or there is also Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective where you play as detectives trying to solve crimes in Victorian England (a lot of reading though).
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I really like(d) to play mind games with my wife (it is in the past, because since Child number 2, 3.5 years ago, we played a grand total of zero times):
Android Netrunner is pretty cool in that respect, despite being a card game (you can skip the LCG elements, though, and just play with the base sets).
CIA vs KGB I already mentionned.
King and Assassins is also pretty good (but I only played the Steam version):
One player controls the assassins and the passerby, while the other controls the knights and the king.
The King player doesn't know who are the assassins, so he risks losing valuable actions arresting commoners. The assassin player needs to approach his killers among the crowd without them getting too obvious.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1385293/purge-688-king-assassins-vein-mr-jack-we-get-anoth
The king needs to get to his castle in a set number of turns, without being stabbed twice by the assassins.
 

Cadmus

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2013
Messages
4,264
Thanks for the games guys, the dreaded date is closing in and I still haven't combed through these.
 

eggdogg

Learned
Joined
Dec 31, 2016
Messages
102
Arkham Horror LCG. Yeah its a card game but its dripping with theme, its great with 2 people, it has depth if you choose to get into it, it has starter decks so you can jump right in without deck building, its very close to an rpg (it feels just like an rpg to me), it has longish campaigns that you can play over the course of a few sessions...and its fun as fuck.
 

Cadmus

Arcane
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Dec 28, 2013
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Uh after a recent experience with Monopoly, I think I set the difficulty/complexity requirement too high....
 

udm

Arcane
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Make the Codex Great Again!
Then I repeat my recommendation (and ignore that nigger above you): Nightvault.

Oh and Patchwork. Patchwork is always good.
 

Berekän

A life wasted
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Sep 2, 2009
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3,097
Well, Monopoly is utter shit and not because of it's 'complexity', I wouldn't dismiss more complex games just because of a bad experience with it.
 

udm

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Make the Codex Great Again!
Ok got another one to recommend:

60010799006_ENGNightvault01.jpg


I've been eyeing this, how well did you enjoy it?

Really fun stuff. I'm not a fan of deck building games in general, but the uncertainty that comes with the objectives and power cards that you draw makes for some very intense cloak and dagger games, and complements the skirmish mechanics very well. Although each game only lasts 3 rounds, there's a lot of stuff going on in those 3 rounds. It took a while to get used to the activation mechanics (I Go You Go, but only 4 activations per round), but after 3-4 games, everything just clicks and flows well.
 

Gay-Lussac

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Ok got another one to recommend:

60010799006_ENGNightvault01.jpg


I've been eyeing this, how well did you enjoy it?

Really fun stuff. I'm not a fan of deck building games in general, but the uncertainty that comes with the objectives and power cards that you draw makes for some very intense cloak and dagger games, and complements the skirmish mechanics very well. Although each game only lasts 3 rounds, there's a lot of stuff going on in those 3 rounds. It took a while to get used to the activation mechanics (I Go You Go, but only 4 activations per round), but after 3-4 games, everything just clicks and flows well.

Damn, that sounds awesome. I'm really interested but I reckon I don't have someone to actually play this with. My girlfriend is not into deckbuilding, and I got the Batman game from Monolith on the way as a skirmish game... but then again this sounds really cool, I'll have to be on the lookout for this later on. Thanks!
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Well, Monopoly is utter shit and not because of it's 'complexity', I wouldn't dismiss more complex games just because of a bad experience with it.
Indeed!
Monopoly is a game anyone sane should be afraid to play. You have zero non trivial decisions to make, and it can last for hours. Even worse is that the winner is obvious much earlier than the end of the game.

Regarding Star Wars Rebellion that was mentioned by Destroid, it is a fun game indeed, but I would only play it with fans of Star Wars, because the randomized set up can create very lopsided games, and the game can drag for a while. It is a very cool Star Wars alternate timelines generator, though (I had a game where the Emperor was able to turn Mon Mohtma to the Dark side early on. It was fun for me, but completely hopeless for my opponent).
The length, nerd factor and complexity make it completely unsuited for playing with your wife/GF.

I played a lot of Robo Rally(the 1994 version, I haven't tried the 2016 one) with my daughter. It is an interesting case, because there is a lot of planning with 2, but with more players, it becomes a lot more chaotic. It can work both way, and it is easy to set a handicap.

Carcassonne also works well with 2. With more players, it is more about outmaneuvering your opponent than making deals (which hapens with 3+ players).

Dominion is good for girlfriends because even if you lose you can feel like you were building something positive.

Terra Mystica plays well for the same reason.
As long as you don't try to build recursive(infinite cycling) decks...
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,287
Two player DnD. You can stop whenever you want and pick up again whenever you want.

Failing that, try Munchkin boardgame.
 

Lagi

Savant
Joined
Jul 19, 2015
Messages
726
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Desert
Tzolkin is the game for which I hear the most "I would like to play it again", from female players.https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/126163/tzolk-mayan-calendar

it have great physical visible mechanic: moving gears. Each turn you place or remove workers from the gears teeth.
you gathering resources, building structures, upgrade tech, gain gods favor, feed workers to score most points for your "sub-tribe" (?) over the game
 

Cadmus

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2013
Messages
4,264
Well, I still haven't got around to getting any game but again I think I set the difficulty bar too high so I have to re-check the suggestions.
 

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