Playing games with two players: How do you like it?

Carefully worded lede there, because I said playing games two-player, and not playing two-player games. Yes there is a difference! Two-player games play differently to multiplayer games, often with a ‘zero-sum’ nature. You push, they pull.

Not all two-player games are like that, and the finest game ever made also happens to be a two-player only game, expansion notwithstanding, and that’s a knife fight in a phone box, and isn’t ‘zero-sum’ at all. Oh, that game is Fields of Arle, by the way.

Back on topic, I’m asking how you play your games with two players. Sometimes you hear people and internet board gaming superstars use the lines “Oh, we don’t like conflict!” and every single time I hear that I wonder how they play their games with two players. For me there has to be conflict.

Quick side notes before we continue; Conflict is not equal to combat or attacking. I mean get out a game of Memoir ‘44 on the table and me and the wife we gleefully attack each other. When I say conflict, I mean friction.

Using an example, I often hear people say the base game of Concordia is “too open with two players” and sure if you played with the 4-5 player map it would be, but the 2-3 side isn’t. Oh but it is designed for 3, I hear the audience sigh. Well yes, and so in a two-player game you could putter about on your side of the board, you could even let the other player have all the cloth cities, after all, you could get the wine ones, and wouldn’t that be nice? NO! I mean if that’s how you want to play then you do you, chief. How we play is we see there’s a cloth bonus, and that the other player has their eye on it and we go out to make sure they don’t get that extra city, oh and then they spot we are going for that other city to complete control of one area and they send a ship there to deny that. BOOM! CONFLICT. What could be a nice relaxing game becomes 60 minutes of moves, counter moves, and tension. It’s that tension and conflict that makes games for us.

We don’t like many “figures on a map” style games, even though they tend to be full of conflict. It’s mostly the wrong type. Seriously, it gets complex quickly, doesn’t it? I think it’s dice ruining plans rather than the other player that I don’t like. Nothing worse than a carefully organised plan that’s ruined by your dice rolls (and not even theirs!)

It comes down to the fact that we enjoy games where there’s minimal luck involved, but isn’t zero luck, and we enjoy games where we can work out our plan, but can also see what the other player is aiming for and attempt to scuttle their plans.

66% of all the plays I have ever logged have been played, two-player. Without any tension and conflict, I’m not sure we’d bother. It certainly why we don’t play any cooperative games - no conflict or tension for us - and I’ll leave my wife’s views on those as the closing line - “What’s the point in this?”

So how do you play your games with two players

That feels like a simple question; *“I put them on a shelf, Marcus, what else do you think I do?” *

Ahh you sweet summer child, you must be new to this hobby. At some point you need a special room for storing your games, this is referred to in hushed tones as “the games room” The reality is less glamourous as for 99% of us it’s a spare room, or the dining room, bedroom, or anywhere else there’s space for the second revered thing - A Kallax! Or two.

Ok, ok, I’m not talking about where, but how? That’s a question that can turn brother against brother.

“Do you store your games vertically or horizontally?”

(Half the audience has just fainted, the other is now tracking me down with angry pitchforks, as they’ve seen the picture of my collection attached to this post) So what do you do? I prefer vertical - put the pitchfork down, they’re my games - but horizontal is needed for some games.

So what do you do? Answers to @MacBoyceGaming, please? No pitchforks though.

I read today that the average board game gets played less than one half a time. Now, how’s that possible? Well, it’s maths, but that’s not the point of this post (the 0.5 comes from the sheer amount of unplayed games people have. Reasons behind that are for another time, but trust me, I’ll get to that)

So how many times do you need to play a game? Well, that’s up to you, as I am neither your mother or your keeper. However, I’d suggest that it is more than 0.5 and really should be more than 0. A board game is mostly a consumable item, designed to be consumed…erm, played. Very few board games are collector’s items. However, if you want to collect games and it is doing no harm to you or those you love, then well you do you.

Both me and my wife like to get at least three plays of any game under our belt before deciding if we like it. There has been the odd rare exception to this (Akrotki, for example, we hated that after one play) but in general, this has worked well for us. We have fallen into a process that is well defined and tailored to our situation of being a board gaming couple.

Here’s how it goes:

Game 1. All information open, with me teaching, and asking questions.

Game 2. Open information removed, but otherwise the same as the first play.

Game 3. Playing as normal, but still with opportunities for rules and strategy questions.

So by game four, we take our gloves off. Now, this isn’t required for simple games and can get extended for the heavy games. Pipeline took five plays before the gloves came off.

So we have a system that works for the two of us. Would this work for game group? Nope, got to do the whole preloading of the instructions and all the headaches that brings to the process.

Even games that have left our collection have a handful of plays under the belt. Omissions and exceptions excluded. Not a single game that remains in our board game collection has less than five plays. So we’re way beyond the 0.5 average times.

I asked at the top of this post “How many times do you need to play a game?” and honestly this is no correct answer. So many times the Wiccan rede rings true:

“An it harm none do what ye will!”

Last week I was in Snowdonia - there’s a game reference there, but that’s not the subject of this post. The holiday was marvellous, and we walked our legs off and climbed quite some distance. We also took some games on holiday with us, not only in case the weather - it is Wales - turned poor, but also to play whilst having a pint and relaxing after a hike.

What did we take as our ‘pub games’? Two of our most played games, Harbour and Isle of Trains. The later is the most played game we own by a fair margin, and it only cost £8. They’re both small footprint, easily portable games. Under more normal circumstance we’d pick an inside table, but it is 2020 and being indoors with strangers is not a good idea - wear a mask! So we played outdoors and whilst the wind was a risk, you can always work around most issues.

I won some games.

I lost some games.

None of that mattered, as we both had fun and relaxed over a pint (or two) of beer and a great game. Both Harbour and Isle of Trains are great for two players. Recommended.

What’s your favourite ‘pub game’?

Ever want to play a game, but only to set it up and then not feel like it? Well, I’d set up Lignum on the table this morning, but after an exhausting run, and then a cycle ride with a few pub stops, I didn’t have the energy to play the game.

We’ve not played Lignum in some time, and that’s a shame as it is a great game (#IfYouAintChoppingWoodYouAintGaming?) though for whatever reason it has languished on the shelf. The upshot is we’d have to spend some part of the evening relearning, and in Lignum where advanced planning is vital a lot of this learning is front-loaded. A tired body and a few beers left me not in the mood.

So what do you do when you want to play a game but are tired? You get the “comfort game” out. We have a few, but the one I chose tonight was Concordia. Played so much it goes down like a nice pint of best bitter - sorry, beer on the mind - and so after a little involved setup, that’s the fiddly part. It was ready to play.

I lost, but I had fun, and that’s what matters.

So what’s your comfort game?

Ever since I got into the hobby of “modern board games” quite some time ago, I find myself drawn to games themed around farming. I got into this hobby sometime around 2012, but I can’t remember exactly when because delicious beer is no good for my memory.

Anyway, I digress, this isn’t a post about beer, even if I do wish there were more great games with a theme about beer.

So what is it about farming? Do I come from a farming background? Nope. Do I enjoy running a micro-farm as a hobby? Nope. I’m pretty alergic to horses, and I get hayfever, so whilst I love the outdoors, farming isn’t something on my list of things that excite me.

So why do you see me posting with the hashtag #IfYouAintFarmingYouAintGaming (so much so I’m known for it)? Well, it happens to be I love board games about farming. Agricola was for quite some time my favourite game of all time. Whilst that game has dropped out my top ten now, Fields of Arle has been in it since the release of the game in 2014, and nothing has come close to toppling Arle from that top spot. Arkwright, sitting proudly in the number two spot, is the closets any other game has got, and I’ll cover that game in another post.

So, why farming? Here’s what I think draws me to farming games. I enjoy fantasy and science fiction books but don’t like orcs and spaceships in my board games that much, but more than my wife does. I think little spaceship miniatures would kill her interest in a heartbeat. Did I say I play games mostly two-player with my wife? Well I do, and I’m not going to make her play a game she doesn’t like - the hobby for us is about fun!

So rule out science fiction, so that leaves fantasy. We both adore Lords of Waterdeep, but that game doesn’t have a million orc miniatures and handfuls of dice. So that rules out a lot of fantasy games (not all of them before you get your pitchforks out)

So we circle back to farming. As a theme, it is relaxing and nice? Little horse meeples, watching your fields grow, enjoying watching your opponent crumble under the oppressive weight of 30+ action spots (oh hello Arle!)

Honestly, I think my reason for loving farming as a theme is it far removed from my day job that it helps me relax when board gaming. That’s what board gaming is about, even if that ‘relaxation’ is playing a game that is a knife fight in a phone box disguised as a worker placement game about farming. Fields of Arle can often go down to half a point between winning or losing for us.

Told you #IfYouAintFarmingYouAintGaming

Game Shelf: Somewhere to store the games you’ll never play.

In London, you attempt to build the best city and hope to get the least poverty. #mbaug

Her face is somewhat frosty. The expansion box art for Rococo: The Jewellery Box is…interesting. #mbaug

Resources: Small wooden things you line up in neat rows whilst the other players take too long on their turns

Belgium? Belgium!

When I made the video below, I had every single one of Uwe Rosenberg’s big box games, and I went on to own most of the smaller box ones (excluding Bohnaza)

How many do I own now? Around seven, and only five of the big box games. Why is this? Uwe Rosenberg is still my favourite designer, and I’m frothing at the mouth (jumping out of my pants in Secret Cabal terminology?) for Hallertau, his latest big-box farming game.

The reason is, I don’t collect games. I mean I did, hence why I had all of Uwe’s games I could get my hands on, but one of two things happened.

1. They didn’t get played. This is what happened to Merkator. The game isn’t bad, it just didn’t hit the table for the two of us. Over the years of ownership, it got played a handful of times.
2. They get ‘played out’ - This is why I no longer own Patchwork. Loved that game but played so much there’s no point in keeping it around. It’s done.
3. My wife doesn’t like the game. No point keeping a game that works well with two but your main gaming partner doesn’t want to play it.

So, now my 5x5 and 4x2 Ikea Kallax shelves are much more empty (well there’s more space for Lego, every cloud has a silver lining) and I’m more cautious about what I buy. I’ll still jettison any game that has no place in my collection (see points 1…3 above)

So there you go, that’s how a game I imported from Belgium and made a video about all those years ago, is no longer in my collection. Someone else is enjoying it now.

So sit back and enjoy my video about Merkator.

Worker Placement: The art of choosing the exact spot the next player needs, despite this spot not being your best choice.