Table for two: Our favorite two-player board games

By Aaron Zimmerman and Nate Anderson 

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage right here—and let us know what you think.

Several weeks ago, Ars Cardboard asked a seemingly odd question: “Can you play board games if you don’t have a group?” The answer, surprisingly, is yes.

But what if you have a gaming partner and not a gaming group? Or maybe a non-gaming friend has been sniffing around your board game shelf and wants to dip their toes in the water without committing to a full-fledged game night. Again, you've come to the right place—today we're going to look at a few of our favorite two-player games. The majority of board and card games support two players, many of them quite well, but certain games work best when your table is set for two.

This is not, of course, an exhaustive list of the best two-player tabletop games on the market. We stayed away from miniatures games and wargames, for instance, as those are a tale for another day. Although they're certainly worth your attention, you won't find games like the perennially chart-topping Twilight Struggle or the new hotness Star Wars: Rebellion on this list (though you can read our review of the latter here.) If you're interested in two-player miniatures games and you don't want to go all-in on a full tabletop wargame, we'd recommend checking out Fantasy Flight's Star Wars games.

Instead, we decided to stick mostly to new-player-friendly card and board games that can be played in an hour or less. Most of our list consists of two-player-only games, although a few two-player-plus games snuck in for good measure. If your favorite game didn't make the cut (and with the endless supply of good two-player games, it may not have), share your picks with us in the comments.

Hive (2001)

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Chris Hutchcroft

Here's the elevator pitch for Hive: "Like chess but with bugs—and no board." Depending on your entomological proclivities, that may sound amazing or like an idea worthy of being squashed. But if you're in the former camp, give Hive a chance; it's a winning two-player-only game that's compact enough to be played at a cafe and short enough to break out when you have just a few minutes of downtime.

In Hive, each side, white and black, must protect its queen bee while simultaneously moving to encircle the opposing queen. The "board" is simply any flat surface; pieces are placed in alternating turns, with each hex-shaped slab of chunky bakelite growing the "hive" in organic fashion. Different pieces show different insects, and each kind of bug moves differently—worker ants can move at will around the edges of the hive, while beetles can clamber up and over other pieces—so the hive morphs constantly. Play itself has only a few simple rules about unit placement and movement, which are easily mastered even by many children (my nine-year-old can play well).

But Hive isn't simple. Moving your queen out of harm's way before it's pinned inside a ring can force an opponent to rethink an attack strategy. Grasshoppers can come leaping huge distances across the board. The "one hive" rule—which forbids any break, even a temporary one, in the unity of the growing hive—can be used to pin down enemy pieces. Games are quick enough that defeat doesn't sting; instead, you'll find yourself pleading for just one more match. Highly recommended to anyone who likes abstract gaming.

—Nate Anderson

Jaipur (2009)

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The best gaming partner you have access to might just be your real-life partner. And unless your significant other is as much of an uber-gamer as you are, you'll need to pull out something less intimidating than Terra Mystica when you want to get a game in. Atop the pantheon of two-player games sits the storied "couples game," and Jaipur, a game about trading goods in India, is perhaps the perfect realization of the form. It’s a snap to teach, it plays in about 30 minutes, and it's interactive in the best of ways.
At the beginning of the game, both players are dealt a hand of cards representing various goods—spice, silk, leather, etc.—and camels, which aren't goods but can be used in trades. A central market of five more goods cards is dealt to the middle of the table. On your turn, you're presented with a deceptively simple choice: get new goods or sell the goods you already have. To get goods, you can either trade cards with the market or take a card from the market without giving anything up. If you decide to sell, you'll discard all the goods of a certain type and be rewarded with tokens representing money. The value on the money tokens goes down as more and more goods are sold, so you want to sell quickly to get the best price. But conflicting with this "SELL NOW" mentality are the stacks of bonus tokens. The more goods you sell at once, the better bonus you'll get. Do you sell your two silk now to get the best price, or do you hold out and hope to collect more so you can get that nice, juicy five-card bonus token?
Jaipur is a great game of tug-of-war that provides a surprising amount of tense decisions within a small decision space. It's the only game my wife has ever set up by herself and asked me to play. I don't think I've ever beaten her.
—Aaron Zimmerman

Patchwork (2014)

A light, two-player game about quilting from the designer best known for the heavy serf farming epic Agricola, the heavy Frisian farming epic Fields of Arle, and the heavy dwarf farming epic Caverna? Yup—and it couldn't be better.
Patchwork is a two-player game about picking up fabric pieces and assembling them, Tetris-like, onto your personal square game board while simultaneously trying to maximize the number of "buttons" (essentially, money) that these pieces deposit in your personal treasury. The game uses a wonderful circular movement mechanic to ensure that on each turn, players have a choice of just three fabric pieces—but that these three change constantly.
The rules can be explained in a couple of minutes, the gameplay is quick (20 minutes) and non-confrontational, and play is smooth and engaging. Quilt away!
—Nate Anderson

Lost Cities (1999)

The best two-player games are titles that could only exist as two-player experiences. Lost Cities is one of those games.
The game is nominally about explorers setting off on expeditions to discover mythological cities lost to time. What it's really about, though, is two players trying to score points through careful hand management, a judicious amount of luck-pressing, and knowing when to cut your losses.

Players set off on expeditions by playing cards—which come in five different colors and are numbered 2-10—in ascending order on their side of a central board. When you play a card to start an expedition, you're putting yourself on the clock—committing to a color puts you at a 20-point deficit until you can claw your way back to the positives. Cards score their face value, so you'll need to play three or four cards before you break even. "Handshake" cards can be played before you commit to a suit and act as multipliers for your score in that color, both positive and negative. Instead of playing a card, you can discard a card you don't want, but be careful—your opponent can grab your discards on their turn.

There's a bit of luck involved, but that's part of the game's draw. The only real downside is that its scoring can be a bit opaque and mathy, which is at odds with the game's simple, elegant ruleset. Still, there's a ton going on in this little game, and I highly recommend it. You can also check out the excellent iPhone version for $3.99.

—Aaron Zimmerman