I’d love to play more board games but only know one, maybe two people who would be interested. Can anyone give some good two player games?
My wife and I have collected many games at this point, the usual rotation of games we have that works pretty well with 2 players:
- Everdell
- Mandala
- Terraforming Mars
- Jaipur
- Babel (the one by Uwe)
- Century (the first one)
I would anti-recommend 7 Wonders Duel unless you are a person who you know already likes games. It's _a bit_ heavy for an entry level game I think.
Jaipur is a very good quintisential 2 player game. The build quality is _amazing_.
You can try out some of these games on Board Game Arena, tho the tactile nature of games really changes things up so much. The kinds of games available for 2 players also depends on how competitive you are (lots of games recently are kind of "multiplayer solitaire", where there's limited ways for you to mess up other people's games, so it's more just trying to max out your own points).
Really depends on what type of game you're looking for. Generally when I'm trying to figure out what types of games people like, I'll ask if they have played Settlers of Catan and if they want ones longer/more complex than that or if Settlers of Catan was too long/too complex, or if they want more social games.
check out https://www.yucata.de/en and https://boardgamearena.com/ where you can play online. If it's hard to get people to play in person, perhaps see if you could get a group to play online - join a video call and then set up the game on boardgamearena.
Depending on where you are, look to see if there are boardgame meetups. These are a great way to learn games. At most of these, people will split into small groups, play a game, then when some groups are done, people will suggest some next games and people will split up and play those. Even for people who have been playing boardgames for years, I'd say we expect to be teaching a game to some people/learning a new game we've never played because there just so many boardgames out there.
Patchwork is a very good space-filling tiling game. Its theme and premise may sound boring, but it is fun and very competitive.
The small city-based Ticket to Ride variants play two players very well, and are also good with 3 or 4 players.
Tak is a great abstract strategy game for two players.
Concordia is an excellent game, and plays very well with two players on small maps (e.g. Cyprus or Egypt).
My favorites are Terraforming Mars and Through the Ages. Both are very good at 2 players. Puerto Rico is an older one, and it's great, and it has a separate 2 player rule set.
- Radlands
- Brass Birmingham or Brass Lancashire
- Spirit Island
- Food Chain Magnate (beware, highly unforgiving)
- 7 wonders duel
- Great Western Trails
- Wingspan
You might like this list[0], which uses BGG's "best for X players" vote, but BGG is biased towards heavier games.
Lost Cities by Kosmos (first edition, not sure about latest but seems like classic play is still supported: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/50/lost-cities)