Board games are usually a social experience. Many players find them to be a refreshing alternative to video games, and the opportunity to combine cardboard, beer, and community gives table games an advantage. However, although many games are designed with large groups in mind, the games that are best for two players (or even one player, but this may be another list entirely) have some special features.

Complexity is a key factor here. The more people who teach the game, the more uncertain the rules; most board games have a knowledge multiplier effect, which reduces the rewards if the player is not prepared. To alleviate this burden, we show the games in this list in descending order of difficulty, starting with one of the lightest two-player games on the market ("Codename: Duo"), a movie-themed war game It takes several hours of study to fully understand it at the end.

Some of these games are in my personal collection, while others are games that I have never managed to get on stage. All of these are widely regarded as their favorites. But every game in this list of 15 best two-player games has one thing in common: the number of players recommended on BoardGameGeek happens to be two. Regardless of the size of the game, if you want to spend time learning and playing two-person games, you'd better be worth the money.

On paper, most party games seem to run counter to the two-person game night. Party games are designed for large groups with different backgrounds and interests; two-player games encourage matching skill combinations and more competitive results. What makes "Code: Duet" so smart in social deduction games is that it can draw a path between these two worlds-and draw it well.

Designer Vlaada Chvátil introduced a two-player derivative of his popular party game: Both players are working on the same word grid. This adds extra complexity to the game. As before, players need to remember different clues and stitch together confusing word combinations, but now they will also guess around two sets of special agent cards and civilians. Can you guess the space that has been uncovered? It is unlikely to affect the results, but it feels so.

But perhaps the genius of "Code: Duet" lies in its little traditional spice. After you win for the first time, you and your partner start tracking your progress on a simple map of Europe. Each new location you unlock has a unique timer mark and allowed civilian casualties combinations. This adds a clever continuous element to "Codename: Duet", encouraging you to replay as many games as possible based on completing the tasks listed (and providing you with enough agents to make you feel like you are running a complete campaign ).

Modern card games have done an excellent job of establishing the game mechanics that we have known since childhood. People of all ages remember the countless hours of playing "Red Hearts" on Windows 95, so the leap from that to games like "Crew: Exploration of Planet Nine" is much smaller than people think. If you have ever learned how to play "Rami", then you are basically playing Sébastien Pauchon's "Jaipur" game.

In "Jaipur", players play the role of a private merchant and compete for the favor of the prince. Each player starts the game with a hand and a row of attractive cards in the shared market. When it's your turn, you can choose to take the card—usually to exchange goods and camels from the market—or sell the card directly from your hand. The more combinations you put together the products, the more valuable your sales will be. This will force you to make difficult decisions, decide when to take the cards you need or block your opponent.

With exquisite artwork and the ubiquitous camel charm, "Jaipur" provides a certain degree of themes that transcend its familiar mechanisms. This provides "Jaipur" with all the benefits of a traditional card game like "Rami"-a test that has withstood hundreds of years-while still inviting your partner into the trash drawer than yours A deck of playing cards is something more immersive.

If you are not familiar with board games, then "Gamemaster" is a good starting point. Charles Mruz's 2020 documentary provides a brief introduction to the evolving industry, highlighting the challenges and successes that define modern board games. One of the best of this documentary is German-born game designer Reiner Knizia. He has more than 700 games-including "Lost City", which has been on the list of best two-player games since it was first published in 1999. Regulars.

You start the "Lost City" as an adventurer drawn to the most remote corners of the world. In each round, you will discard your hand or play cards to construct your adventure route, thus forming a "card" counting system, matching sequential numbers and card patterns. Each route offers a fair share of rewards-if you are willing to make a friendly bet in the game, the rewards will be more-but each route tried will also cost you points, making the final game tense and changeable .

Like many Knizia games, "Lost City" strikes a balance between clear mechanics and colorful themes, inviting people of all ages to sit down and try their next adventure. Just like "Jaipur," it is based on a familiar card mechanism, with fascinating themes and some tense positive decisions. But don't let the bow tie deceive you: Knizia's mechanics can be as ruthless as the best of them, making "The Lost City" sometimes feel more like a "Temple of Doom" than "The Last Crusade."

If you have read our list of 20 best adult board games before, you may already be familiar with "Patchwork Games". The equal amount of hardcore "Tetris" and the comfortable Nintendo Switch game "Patchwork" have been a global hit for many years. Games that are easy to learn but difficult to master are the gold standard in the board game industry. When the right opponent is on the other side of the table, "Patchwork" can sometimes be more controversial than its mild theme implies.

To recap, "Patchwork" is a game built around two resources: buttons and time. In each round, you and your opponent will choose from the ever-shrinking fabric patch circles to weave the most attractive quilt on your personal 9x9 board. Better patches will cost more buttons, but the only way to replenish the supply of buttons is to move the timer forward. This will put you in a race against opponents and game time, ensuring that even the simplest choice between fabric patches will have a huge impact on your final rounds.

If your preferred opponent is too far away to play face-to-face, you can also try "Patchwork The Game", which is a digitally adapted version available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. With the same simple gameplay and cleverly added quilted environment beauty, "Patchwork" feels like the next generation of board game players believe has always been the gold standard game.

Spend some time on BoardGameGeek and you will quickly understand the importance of community player recommendations. Although many games are designed for small groups, crowdsourcing better and the number of the best players can enhance any game experience.​​​​ The more players you add to the game, the more results between rounds, which makes it harder for you to make strategic decisions. So when we say that a game like "Azul" is best for two players, it doesn't mean that it won't play well with three or four players. This just means that when you confront your friends head-on, strategy and gameplay will really shine.

In "Azul", the player's task is to decorate the Palace of Evora. Throughout the game, you and your opponent will select tiles from the shared factory display, and use these tiles to complete patterns and record decorations on your personal player board. The more tiles you successfully place on the wall, the higher your score-or the more you love the king, no matter which final language you prefer.

Each pass lasts 30-45 minutes, "Azul" provides a good balance of strategy and simplicity for those looking for a more refreshing gaming experience. In a list that has so far been somewhat dominated by card game changes, "Azul" undoubtedly provides the platonic ideal of a modern board game experience: a personal player board and a large number of cardboard fragments waiting to be allocated.

In 2017, Justin Jacobson and board game designer Rob Daviau launched Restoration Games, a boutique board game publisher. Their goal is simple: they will dig out some of the forgotten board game classics of the last century, and then republish them for new audiences. In the past few years, Restoration Games has become a fan favorite, bringing back out-of-print classics such as "Fireball Island" and "Dark Tower" back to wild praise. But perhaps their most successful game series is "Unparalleled", which is a gladiator-style duel between the most famous idols in the novel.

In each "unparalleled" game, you and your opponent will pick heroes and partners to start a battle of non-literal death. "Unmatched" is adapted from the 2002 game "Star Wars: Epic Duel" designed by Daviau. This adaptation provides players with a clever example of an asymmetric game through cards and player power. If you have always wanted to try to fight miniatures, but need something more daunting than Warhammer, then this is the game for you.

Although there are several "unmatched" games to choose from-including the "Jurassic Park" series and the must-have "Buffy the Vampire" expansion pack-the real fun of the "unmatched" series comes from the mix and match series. Want to see Spike play the invisible man? Or is Bruce Lee fighting a group of hungry raptors? All of this is possible in the "unmatched" system, making it the closest board game to their own "Super Smash Bros" intellectual property battle royale game.

As someone who was begging for pocket money to support my customizable card game addiction during my childhood, I have a true love-hate relationship with deck building games. Over the years, games like "Dominion" and "Ascension" have appeared on my table-sometimes physical, usually virtual-but both games have a somewhat abstract theme, suitable for decks Novice. This makes Star Fields a great way to introduce this hobby to anyone: you build ships, you blow up ships-what else do you want?

In "Star Field", you and your opponent will start an interstellar war that ends when a civilization disappears from the map. Players take turns to activate power, buy ships and bases from the trade street, and attack the opponent's fleet. Over time, your deck will become more and more powerful, and your newly discovered resources allow you to buy more powerful cards from the resource pool. Combine powerful ships and bases together, and you may become a winner.

As the creativity of two senior "Magic: Gathering" professionals, "Interstellar Realm" strikes a good balance between accessible gameplay and crisp decision-making. With dozens of expansion packs-some of which were recently released last year-"Star Realms" can meet the needs of both casual deck builders and experienced card game collectors. This makes it a casual card game for people who want to perfect their collection...or an evil bait for people who set up "magic" traps for their partners.

The original "Seven Wonders" is an impeccable classic, but do you secretly hate random card draws? Having a card you want to draw from your hand will add more frustration than conspiracy, and a greater number of players will generally force you to become more passive rather than proactive in your strategy. Therefore, although it has not yet appeared on my desktop, I have high hopes that "7 Wonders: Duel" will eventually provide everything I like in the original game without its shortcomings.

In "Seven Wonders: Duel", players play civilized roles that compete with each other. In each round, you draw a card from the table and use its value for resources, coins, or as an important part of building a miracle. Through a combination of military strength, scientific rule, or a large number of victory points, your civilization may emerge triumphantly and stand the test of time.

As a person who often gets lost in his own little tree, any game with multiple paths to victory will always have a special place in my heart. As we dig deeper into more complex games and themes, "7 Wonders: Duel" has also become the last game suitable for family play. Therefore, if you want to play some games that are suitable for education (but in fact they only allow you to hit your opponents), even if you bring pain, "7 Wonders: Duel" may be a good way to keep history alive.

When you think of a World War II board game, you might imagine a long and hard battle. "The Campaign for North Africa", published by Richard Beg in 1979, is known to take thousands of hours and comes with six independent rulebooks. But the truth is that World War II has long been a popular environment for board games, and now you can find games that match any level of complexity. Games like "Memoirs '44" are a great way to convince your father to be interested in your hobby.

In "Memoirs '44", you and your opponent repeated a series of key battles surrounding the landing of Normandy. Players start each game by selecting and creating scenes from the rule book, adding units to each side, and setting terrain around the battlefield. From there, players will flip command cards, activate units, and roll dice to determine the outcome of each battle. Each game ends when an army is annihilated or a public goal is reached, usually with some last-minute bravery on both sides.

In addition to the battle layout, each scene also includes a detailed article about the events that led to this historic battle and how the results shaped the war. Players can choose to run each scene in sequence or jump between their favorite matches; dice bring random elements to the game, but the clever use of cover mechanisms makes "Memoirs 44" more like a consumption game, and Not a crazy swing.

"Watergate" is another title in our list of the top 20 best adult board games, one of the last lightweight games before things get harder. Although this theme may be a bit boring for young audiences, the balance between complex scenes and simple gameplay—cards, actions, tokens—makes "Watergate" the title of a blonde girl: The first few games of the god of game rules to achieve high replay value at the expense of replay value.

It was 1972, and a group of people had just been arrested for breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Congress. Playing the role of newspaper editor or the Nixon administration, you and your opponent will do their best to link (or confuse the audience) any connection between the Watergate scandal and the White House. Every round of "Watergate" will see players competing for evidence. If the truth is revealed or completely prevented, either party will win.

Except for some tricky hypertext issues—forcing one person to act as a corrupt government administration and forcing another to listen to Richard Nixon’s bad impressions for an hour—"Watergate" provides satisfaction for those who like cardboard. The gameplay requires only a little bit of political intrigue. Without real expansion at all, "Watergate" is also a rare game that does not require much maintenance by players. Every game of "Watergate" uses the same resources to make the player's strategy take center stage.

How much do you really need to enjoy the board game? Ask another way: if I hand you a bag of hexagon tiles and tell you they are bugs, do you think you will play one of the most popular board games of the past two decades? "The Hive" seems to be the kind of game that only entomologists would like, but under its gentle appearance hides a complicated ocean and two-person strategy.

In "The Hive", two players fight for control of a shared insect hive. The goal of the game is to surround the opponent's queen-to do this, you need to use the unique abilities of different bugs in your hands. The battlefield changes as you move debris over the hive that you and your opponent are creating; how you react to this ever-changing board will determine whether you are the last to make a mistake.

If games such as "Jaipur" and "Lost City" are just extended versions of family card games, then grid sports games such as "Hive" and "Chess" have a large part of their DNA. Openings, openings and moving the board give unlimited depth to the strategy, and several key extensions add more variety to your gameplay. With the availability of the game's Android port and the allegedly upcoming Apple Store version, you will also have enough time to practice your moves between sessions.

When a board game has an online community dedicated to round optimization, you know it has a special meaning. Before I played Twilight for the first time, my friends and I spent a few days combing online research and figuring out the best way to not break the game in the first 10 minutes. Over time, we began to discover our own game style among the different options available to players. No two games feel the same. This is simply because our stubbornness means that we would rather overthrow a local government than do what is needed to completely win the game.

In "The Battle of Twilight", you and your opponent repeated the 40-year Cold War between Russia and the United States. The initial board of directors was asymmetrical-beneficial to the Soviet Union's presence in post-war Europe and Southeast Asia-but over time, the balance of power has changed. Because the gameplay is built around the key events and political battlefields of the last century, the resulting battles are both similar and unfamiliar to our collective history books. If alternative history is your jam, then "Twilight" is your game.

If you sit down and play the game "Battle of Twilight", you will almost certainly spend three or four hours frowning on your board when you play Nuclear Destruction Chicken with your opponent. This is a game that is never enough-resources are never enough, troops are never enough, time is never enough-the two players will make trade-offs to decide who keeps their weak victory.

Because of the high-quality touch of Fantasy Flight Games, fans of "Star Wars" have a large number of high-quality board games to choose from. But while both "Star Wars: Empire Assault" and "Star Wars: X-Wing" may be excellent two-player games, the sheer scope and scale of "Star Wars: Rebellion" make it a place on this list. How else can franchise fans interpret the events of the original trilogy? What other game can match the fierce, asymmetrical game board of "Star Wars: Rebellion"?

Just like in the "Star Wars" movie itself, the Rebels and Imperial soldiers were involved in the Galactic Civil War. Sheer numbers and firepower are good for the empire, but the rebellion is cautious-all they have to do is to survive and ensure victory. Designed by the creator of "Twilight Imperium", this is a rich game that requires multiple clearances to fully appreciate.

But please note: "Star Wars: Rebellion" is not a random thing, "Star Wars" fans attracted by the promise of rolling the dice and moving the Star Destroyer must understand the promise they will undertake. But even the most casual "Star Wars" fans can't resist the promise of playing their own version of the trilogy-fighting on large and small planets, balancing spaceship battles with political conspiracies. Therefore, just be prepared to spend as much time learning the game as possible.

Although the board game industry is experiencing its golden age, many conversations affecting the film and publishing industries are also appearing in this market. A common problem is colonialism. So many games are built around the conquest of Europeans, and these games, no matter how interesting, will leave a bad taste in the mouth of players. Therefore, the 2017 cooperative strategy game "Spirit Island" (Spirit Island) went to great lengths to flip the script and make the invaders the enemy.

In "Elf Island", you and your partner will play the role of weak island elves, and their peaceful area has become the desire of the invading people. "Spirit Island" is often mentioned when discussing the best two-person board games, part of which is the balance between spirits: although the game can accommodate up to four players, which spirit do you choose-and how their elemental forces complement each other -Can completely change the game. The more fear you cause (the invaders you slaughter), the stronger you will eventually become.

Of all the games in this list that I don't own, "Spirit Island" is the most likely to be in my collection. Bright design and bleak gameplay are a weakness for me, and the concept of flip script-in their review, Ars Technica called it an "anti-colonial board game"-represents the absoluteness of the mechanics and themes The best combination.

Some games you play. Some games you collected. However, there are some games that you just stare at. I have never played a game of "Lord of the Rings: Second Edition", and unless the people in my life change their relationship with the rulebook in the next few months, I may never. But it is still a board game that I often marvel at. Its rules and YouTube videos give me the same impulse as when I actually play a game.

In "The Lord of the Rings", two players-technically up to four people, but honestly, come on, let us recreate the events in the "Lord of the Rings" novel and let the human kingdom fight against Sauron and the army demon many. Partly miniature wargames, partly strategy and hidden moves, this is a pure refinement of everything that makes books and movies great.

Just like Frodo and Sam Wise, don’t take your challenge lightly: "The Lord of the Rings" is run from a 48-page rule book, and players don’t even have to reach page 44 to reach the victory conditions. . But for those brave people who love the "Lord of the Rings" series, "Lord of the Rings" can become their personal doomsday mountain. This is a long and arduous trek, but it will still bring the previously dreamed victory. As long as you know that the odds are high, you may want to change direction and try the whole process again in a few weeks.