Hello everyone,
Over the last few years I’ve experimented with a fair number of card and board games. Most of these games, IMO at least, play best with 4 players (settlers, ticket to ride, powergrid). With my girlfriend moving in next month, I’ve been trying to think of games that are good for two or at most three people. Some that i have and she has liked are Dominion and Carcassonne. Any suggestions of others?
I strongly recommend dominion btw, especially to former magic fans 
Thanks guys!
Rummikub is fun.
The Legend of Robin Hood is a neat, easy to learn game. Combat is straightforward, reasonable balance, fun to play, and not terribly long.
If you’re up for more daunting rules and play times:
Squad Leader (Avalon Hill) is a WWII combat game, which I think has been expanded/updated as Advanced Squad Leader, but I haven’t played the Advanced version.
Star Fleet Battles is space combat between capital ships in the Star Trek universe. Rules are similar in complexity to Squad Leader, combat can get a bit tedious if you play it out all the way to exploding hulls.
Gettysburg is awesome. Sorta similar to Squad Leader, but obviously it’s the Civil War battle.
Magic: The Gathering is a card game that can be cheap or expensive, depending on how you go about it. You could each buy a pre-made deck of cards, might have to download some rules, and play…or you could spend lots of money buying cards and building your own decks. A bonus feature is the game is very flexible in terms of number of players. Any number from 2+ can be accommodated as long as everyone has a playable deck and table space is available.
See this thread: Recommend some new strategy board games! - The Game Room - Straight Dope Message Board
Obvious not all games mentioned play two (or play two well) but a fair mumber do.
Brian
Boy, hasn’t it, though - a little matter of 25 years since, give or take. A good game, but hard work.
Merchant of Venus is a fun game, but good luck finding a copy now - apparently used copies are trading for a couple hundred bucks.
Ticket to Ride Swiss and Nordic are built for 2/3 players if you want a tighter game of Ticket to Ride. Of the two Nordic is better (and the prettiest game in the series), but harder to find.
Great suggestions all around (especially that link, thanks N9IWP).
Good thought! I’m surprised that I can’t find that in stock anywhere even with google. Wonder why.
Have you considered traditional card games? My wife and I go through phases where we’ll play Cribbage every night; and Casino is a wonderful two-player game.
I’m also a big fan of Boggle and Scrabble.
I don’t know any good two person card games (well, except blackjack, and what’s the point if it’s not for chips?). I’l look into cribbage and casino.
Thanks
oh, I so royally suck at scrabble that it’s not even funny 
Somewhat more strategy-based, but Twilight Struggle and 1960: The Making of a President are both 2-player games that are a lot of fun, once you successfully climb the learning curve. My personal favorite of the two is definitely Twilight Struggle. It’s a simulation game where one person is the Soviets and one person is the US, and you jockey for control of different countries and try to deal with the effects of different cards that get played.
Fury of Dracula is a great game that plays perfectly well with two players, also. The idea in this one is that one player is Dracula and the other players (anywhere from 1 to 4) play the vampire hunters, chasing Dracula across a map of Europe. There are four “Vampire Hunter” player sheets, and all get used in every game. If there is only one vampire hunter player, then that person simply controls all four by himself (or herself). I’ve played the game as a 2-player game dozens of times and had a lot of fun with it.
Stone Age is pretty strong with 2 or 3 people.
I think I might actually prefer Race for the Galaxy with 2 players. I’d usually rather play 2 or 4 players than 3, anyway.
Starship Catan. It’s a resource management game where you fly your spaceship to different locations to trade materials and money, in an attempt to upgrade your ship enough to fly “home” before the other player can.
ETA: it is only for two players. It also has the benefit of being probably the least expensive game of all the stuff mentioned here.
Nah, Cribbage is less expensive than Starship Catan :). (Although I do recommend getting at least a basic board for play; it’ll cost less than ten bucks, and the scorekeeping suddenly becomes a lot of fun, as you wend your way around the cribbage track).
+1 for Starship Catan, which is a truly excellent two player game. I was also glad to see Merchant of Venus get some love, it’s one of my favorites.