Need some board games to play with the missus

Cafe Society
1

So, we’ve tried everything: Chess (I’m pretty terrible at), Go (no go as it were). Lunch Money (not enough people), Risk (ditto), Pit (again, although she has a terrible aversion to it for some reason), hell, even Battletech (too much like high school). I even considered signing up for City of Heroes and letting us be some sort of bickering superhero couple (no good, her computer won’t handle the load and I’d never get her to agree to it anyway). We need some cool games to while away the long summer dusk hours now that making fun of the crying people at the end of the reality show season is over. Preferably something with some decent replay value and suitable for two people.

Mankala was fun in junior high, but I don’t even know where to find a board anymore.

Cathedral sounds cool, but from what I hear the first person to go wins.

Settlers of Cattan (?) also sounds pretty cool but is too close in her mind to role-playing games to get anywhere near.

I recall seeing “Viking Chess” (played by those of the horned helmets (or not depending on what a recent thread concludes) and possibly a predecessor of the great game itself) in a catalogue, but couldn’t find it again for the life of me

It’s getting to the point where I might take out a mortgage and get a Warhammer 40,000 set and try to guilt her into playing it based on the fact that it’s going to bankrupt us.

Any suggestions? I suppose we should probably just get out of the house once in awhile.

2

Some thoughts, Stratego, Othello, and Tri Tactics were good semi-tactical two player games. Get a copy of the Hoyles book for card games ideas. Something like Magic the Gathering card game can be good if you invest time and money into it though may be too role-player-ish. Scrable works well two player if you have similar language skills.

3

Sequence? My gf and I play that a lot.

4

Stratego is awesome. Double fun if you name all the dudes yourself.

Cribbage is a fun game.

Depending on your wife’s computer, there are all sorts of older multiplayer games. Starcraft, Unreal Tournament (if she’s so inclined). Yahoo! has all sorts of 2 and 4 player games.

And of course, if you know another two people, there are tons of four-player games out there that are a blast.

5

I like the board game Upwords. Or Boggle, for that matter. For cheap thrills, get two hand-held Yahtzee games and engage in parallel play.

6

I never get tired of Yahtzee, and I never get tired of Othello.

7

Scrabble, and another vote for Boggle. It’s not cards, but Pass the Pigs is a fun game for anywhere from two players on up. Backgammon is fun for two. Mastermind is fun for two as well.

8

Strip Monopoly?

“Uh, I don’t have enough money for the rent.”

(cue music - wakka, ca-chow)

“I don’t have to take money, you know…”

9

OK, First, I’m gonna second Blue Sky’s suggestion that on a sultry summer eve, you don’t need anyone to suggest a game to play, IYKWIM…

But, barring that… I have to second Cribbage, which has simple rules but is endlessly replayable. To its credit, Cribbage is especially amenable to alcohol consumption with play. Tactically, it helps beginners to play against a more experienced opponent, but the tricks and traps are easy enough to learn in a few nights.

OK, then there are the classic games that haven’t died, and continue to garner followings, like Scrabble.

If you find chess boring, you might want to look into Chinese Chess.

Or, if you’re more into the geeky side of things, I might suggest looking for old Avalon Hill games on ebay, like Stalingrad, World at War, or Advanced Squad Leader.

Finally, there’s always the Playstation 2.

10

I picked up a copy of a game called Mission Command: Air Game a few months back at Targets and I’ve enjoyed it. It’s about jet plane combat (if military games are a problem). It’s marketed as a kid’s game, but I found it worth playing with both skill and luck being needed to win. (There are two other games in the series: a Land Game and a Sea Game - skip them.)

11

One I always liked is Tripples . (The link goes to eBay.)

I’ll also second many of the suggestions above.

12

I second Scrabble and the endlessly addicting Magic: The Gathering.

I also think the excellent German game Carcassonne works well for two people, as well as its various expansions. There’s a version called Carcassonne: The Castle made specifically for two players, but I haven’t tried it.

13

Help them, so that they might know the way:

Luding Two Player Games List

Board Game Geek Lists of Two Player Games

14

Max stole my idea of Carcassonne.
Settlers of Catan is 3 players minimum (oficially at least)
Backgammon?
Checkers?
Brian

15

If the lists are not enough, here is some stuff I see on the shelf to my left that we enjoy (I’m keeping this light, games finishable in 3 or 4 hours, most significantly less):

Battle Line (GMT Games - Not a wargame)

Caesar & Cleopatra (Kosmos)

Hera and Zeus (Kosmos)

Lost Cities (Kosmos)

Settlers of Catan Card Game (Kosmos) and Expansion Set (Kosmos), sold by Mayfair in the U.S.

Starship Catan Card Game (Kosmos), sold by Mayfair in the U.S.

Battle Cry (Avalon Hill, after the Hasbro acquisition)

Blue v. Grey (GMT Games - I love this, but it may be too wargamy)

Age of Napoleon (Phalanx)

Eurorails (Mayfair - use the included honeymoon rules for 2 players)

Iron Dragon (Mayfair - use the honeymoon rules found in Eurorail or on the net)

Duel of Ages (multiple expansion sets, I recommend 1-3, but this gets expensive)

Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage (Avalon Hill - hard to find, as it is out of print)

Up Front (Avalon Hill - a little more hard core wargamy, but with cards and not counters - hard to find, as it is out of print)

Bloodbowl (Games Workshop), or the far cheaper Battleball (Milton Bradley)

We the People (Avalon Hill - hard to find, as it is out of print)

16

Well, what kind of games does she like? That’d be helpful in recommending some.

Sight unseen, I’d have to say… **Magic: the Gathering **. It has near-infinite replay value and is a great two-player game.

And you can sign up for City of Heroes by yourself and join C.E.C.I.L. – we won’t tell her if you don’t.

17

Well, one of the things I need to do is get off the compter, so unfortunately, CoH is out (I didn’t click on the link for fear of discovering what C.E.C.I.L. might stand for).

Thanks for the suggestions. Settlers is out and I heard that Carcassonne wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, but I’ll keep it in mind.

I gotta claim ignorance on Yhatzee, but since that’s probably the greatest legend of board games (along with Risk and Monopoly although I suppose Yahtzee isn’t strictly a board game).

Magic is a good suggestion, but it falls too close to the role-playing thing. That and I had a bad experience in high school wherein I bought eight dollars of booster packs for something or other and traded my way to about two hundred cards before realizing that I had 1) no good cards and 2) no interet in throwing more money into it. My hopes for CCGs were similarly crushed when I discovered that the new version of ILLUMINATI wasn’t the old version and I spent hours making my perfect deck out of the starter pack and lost to the “Chaos deck” that my friend made by playing the cards right out of the box (without even shuffling!).

Chinese chess sounds good, but I think we’ll run into the same problem as everything else: 1) if she’s better than me, she gets bored. 2) if I’m better than her, she gets bored. I gotta find something with just enough chance to even the odds and just enough skill to make it fun.

I dunno. Even when Blue Sky’s version of Monopoly fails, I’m always in the mood for either submission wrestling or pounding on the heavy bags which isn’t exactly something that appeals to der better half.

18

Another vote for Yahtzee – it’s mostly chance, I think, but you can get some decent Yahtzee strategies going. Okay, I confess I have no idea if any of our strategies are decent, because you have to stick to a strategic theory FOREVER to see if it plays out over time, and then you have to start tweaking it and then it’s hard to remember what your original theory was. But it keeps us occupied. Mr. Del and I have kept a running total of our yahtzee scores since we started dating. (OMG, did I just admit that in public?)

I’m also voting for backgammon. We like this game because you can buckle down and apply some serious strategy to it, OR, you can also rip through it pretty quickly while not paying too much attention and talking about your day and your plans for the weekend, etc. Plus, I don’t know if Mrs. Pow is into this sort of thing, but there are really attractive sets you can get that you can use in your home decor.

For some reason, Mankala is often sold in art museum gift shops. I’m not clear on what the relationship is with that, but that’s where we got ours. It’s fun for a while, but it doesn’t quite hold our interest as adults. Sometimes a kid will come over, and thoroughly trounce us at Mankala, so it’s good to have around.

19

Not technically board games, but I like Fluxx and IceTowers. Fluxx is a very simple card game which works pretty well, and IceTowers can be played with 2-4. But if you only have 2, your imaginary friend Gus can play as well, which makes it almost an entirely different game. Also, the pieces used for IceTowers are what’s called a “game system.” Like with a standard deck of cards, there are tons of different games you can play with them.

20

I heartily recommend Backgammon and Cribbage. Those games are classic, easy to learn, and have excellent replayability. I’ve spent at least a year of my life getting slowly inebriated and playing one or the other.

If you want to branch out to other two player card games (I realize you asked for board games), you might want to consider: pinochle (or its cousin, bezique), piquet, and gin (NOT rummy.) I consider these, along with cribbage, the best card games for two.

And, of course, there’s Scrabble. But if you and the missus want to stay on good terms, perhaps I suggest playing something else…