Board and card game enthusiasts.

[The Highway To Hell]

Pfft, noobz... it's all about Boggle

[afterstasis]

It's a major, major time and money sink, but my favorite two player game is still Warhammer.

i'll probably never play it again in my life, but warhammer: fantasy made for some great times.

[Sayburr]

Best two player games, IHMO are:

Lost Cities - An abstract game with a pasted on theme. You are trying to make a run of cards by suite (run = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) with the higher the number the more it is worth, but you can't play a card with a number lower than one already played in that suite, either by your or your opponent. Also, the first card you lay down is worth negative points. It is a very strategic two player game.

Battle Lore or Memoir ’44 – These are both two player war games, one with a fantasy theme and the other based on WWII. Orders are drive by cards. If you don’t have a certain card, you can’t take that action. That being said, the cards are less about luck and more about being forced to think about what can be done. Very fun game, with either theme. I actually prefer the WWII theme, but some of my friends prefer the Fantasy theme.

If you prefer Science Fiction, there is Space Hulk. You are on a broken down spaceship, battling for it. Space Marines vs Genestealers. Cramped battle space means you can get support caught around the corner where it can’t help… Again, another war game of sorts.

If you like politics, there is Making of the President: 1960 where you and an opponent are battling it out for the presidential election of 1960. That is right, you are either John F. Kennedy or Richard M. Nixon. The game is card driven and the cards come right from history as you are trying to get the most electoral votes. I found the game a hell of a lot of fun the one time I played it. Been meaning to buy it, but right now MS Points are more important…

Mr Jack is another great two player game. One person is Jack the Ripper and the other is the coppers. There are eight characters on the board, only the Jack player knows which is his. The players take turns moving characters in and out of the shadows and at the end of the turn the Jack player tells the other player if the Jack Character on the board can be seen in the Light. The Jack Player wins if the Jack Character can be moved off the board while the investigator player wins if, by using one guess for the game, guesses correctly which is Jack, thus arresting him. Really a fun game.



Der_Lex... I am still trying to decide about trying Dominion... I know Amazon has it on sale right now, maybe I will just bite the bullet and order it. Edit: I just ordered it... $27 is a pretty good price... I also ordered the first volume of Batman Chronicles. Never really got the read the "golden age" comic and since these are the "entire series reprints" I thought I would take a look at the first volume to see if I want the next nine in the series and have the desire to try and keep up with upcoming releases.

[Rockox]

if you guys could recommend one board game, ideally for two players (my brother being the second player), what would it be?

Fun 2-player games I own:

Sword and Skull - a cross between Monopoly and Talisman, but with pirates. You can play with as many as five players, but with as little as two. Each player controls a pirate and an officer in order gain might and/or wealth to either kill the Pirate King or buy back the stolen Sea Hammer ship with gold and win the game.

Risk: Balance of Power - a 2-player version of the new revised rules, where players must complete objectives to win the game (no world domination). My wife and I tore through a game in 70 minutes. Quickest game of Risk I've ever played.

Khet - like chess, but your pieces have mirrored glass and the board shoots a red laser to destroy your opponent's pieces. Plus it's got a cool Egyptian theme, which I dig.

Ricochet Robots - a puzzle type game where you must come up with the fewest number of moves it would take a robot to get to a randomly selected target on the board. Fun if you're in the mood for a slow "thinky" type game, absolute boredom if you're not.

Monsters Menace America - a fun game for 2-4 players, each player plays as a different B-movie monster (Kong, Big Walking Eyeball, etc) and a faction of the military. The purpose of the game is to amp up your monster (by destroying American cities) in order to prepare for the final monster brawl, while you use your military to weaken the other player's monster.

And honestly, you can never go wrong with Upwords, basically a dummy version of Scrabble. I've been playing that game for years and I still love it.

[overdriveguitarman]

Woah what the heck, haha I have never heard of ANY of these board games...

Well except for Monopoly and Trouble, I don't really like those though

Sorry! Is my favorite!

Edit: Oh yeah I know Battleship too, that one is fun

[instantdeath999]

Thanks for the recommendations... I'll give a few of these a shot.

[Mystlyfe77]

No, don't get me wrong, I'm fine with an element of chance. Every strategy you devise in any game or even in life should take random chance into account, and it can often spice up a game that might otherwise be dull.

My problem with basic, original rules Risk is that chance plays too big a role in the game because of the way combat is handled with unmodified die rolls: it's far too easy for a single defender to hold off hordes of attackers by blind luck. This can often cause unpredictable and massive losses for the attacking side that no amount of careful planning can make up for. Another negative effect of this is that 'digging in' is way too powerful in Risk (there's a reason why everyone wants to start out by controlling Australia), making it very much a defender's game in which, ironically, taking a risk by attacking rarely pays off unless you win with overwhelming numbers. Too often it turns into a game with very little interaction in which players simply stockpile units, which is ultimately decided by one side having better die rolls than the other. To me, that makes it a very poor strategy game, and that's why I when I want to play a strategy game, I strongly prefer Axis and Allies (which added the necessary tweaks to Risk's basic ideas to make it a good game), A Game of Thrones or occasionally War of the Ring. All have a luck factor, but it's not nearly as dominant as in Risk and/or it affects all players equally in any given game.

I've always considered it a bit of a shame that Monopoly and Risk are the two most well-known games that introduce people to board games, because neither is all that good mechanics-wise or all that fun. When people want to get into board games, I usually suggest Catan instead: easy to learn, high degree of player interaction and for a casual game it has a good blend of strategy and luck.

I know that chance plays a large role in Risk, but I find it acceptable. While particular battles may derail your plans and, if early in the game, screw over a particular player, in the long run the odds balance out. Especially if you play more than one game of Risk, the chances that everything evens out are far greater. The game is relatively simple (which means more time can be spent on developing strategy and mastering the game rather than learning the rules) and, while it takes a long time, it doesn't take as long as Axis & Allies.

My favorites at the moment are:
Railways of the World There is just something special about building your own railroad and delivering goods to cities. I am looking forward to the release of the western half of the US in 2011 so I can have a mega game.

Have you played Ticket to Ride? Another railway based game that's lots of fun. The goal is to build railways along desired routes using a deck-based system.

Hm, all this talk about board games that aren't Monopoly interests me... if you guys could recommend one board game, ideally for two players (my brother being the second player), what would it be? I believe Lex mentioned a game called Catan (is that right?) earlier.

Settlers of Catan, as mentioned, is a 3+ player game. It's absolutely incredible, though. One of my favorites games.

For two player games, honestly, I like the classics. They may not be as fancy as some of the new games out there, but a lot of them are refined to the point of near-perfection.
Chess, Checkers, Othello, and (to a lesser degree) Stratego.

For a two-player game for people who haven't played too many board games, I'd probably recommend Dominion or possibly Carcassonne.

I've only played Carcassonne once (and it was with 4 players iirc). Didn't really like it.

It's a major, major time and money sink, but my favorite two player game is still Warhammer.

i'll probably never play it again in my life, but warhammer: fantasy made for some great times.

Oh man, if I had much more money and free time I'd still play Warhammer (specifically 40K, which I always enjoyed more than WFB). I still have a lot of my old stuff boxed up at my parents' house. I wish I had the time to strip off all the old paint and fix everything up to have an army that I would be proud to show off.

[Sayburr]

Have you played Ticket to Ride? Another railway based game that's lots of fun. The goal is to build railways along desired routes using a deck-based system.

Yeah, I have it too. Completely different game from Railways of the World. I didn't really care for it all that much. Played a demo of it at GenCon when it was first released and thought my wife might like it. We played it one time with four players and it has never hit the table again.

[Rockox]

I actually really dislike Risk. It's far too random for a strategy game and too slow-paced for a more casual board game. It's basically the worst of both worlds to me.

I know that chance plays a large role in Risk, but I find it acceptable. While particular battles may derail your plans and, if early in the game, screw over a particular player, in the long run the odds balance out.

I've only played the original Risk a handful of times. My core Risk game is the futuristic 2210 A.D. variant, which adds cards and commanders (adding a bit more strategy), a separate moon board, water colonies and a 3-5 "year" turn limit, which greatly shortens the length of a game (basically, whoever owns the most real estate at the end of the year cycle, wins). It's still a dice game at heart, but the use of command cards and all the little additions to the game really mix it up in exciting ways. I never was a fan of Risk until I played this version.

[Der_Lex]

I'm with Mystlyfe on Ticket to Ride, I think it's a fun, fast game that's really easy to learn, but allows for a lot of planning and strategy.

A couple of card-based games (I hesitate to use the word card game, because that makes people think of Magic/Pokémon these days) that are also very much worth mentioning are Bang! , Infernal Contraption and Citadels. The latter is playable with two players, although it's a lot more fun with 4 or more.