For some reason the last month has been filled with 2-player gaming.  Our Friday night group hasn't met in several weeks, and I haven't made it to the Tuesday night Borders session, either.  I usually prefer gaming in groups of 3 or 4, but the 2-player games have been a lot of fun.  Over time, I've slowly added a lot of solid 2-player games to my collection, which means there is a lot of variety with just two people.

Here's a quick rundown of the 2-player games I've enjoyed lately.

Wyatt Earp
Christina bought me Wyatt Earp a couple of months ago, and we've played it together a couple of times.  It's a game that plays from 2-7 players.  Sometimes games are listed as being playable with two, but really aren't that much fun.  While I think I enjoy it with more players (I've since played with three), it's still fun for you and a partner.

A quick description of the mechanics...  At it's heart, Wyatt Earp is a rummy game, with little twists that make it very similar to Mystery Rummy.  The melds you play are going towards the capture of communal outlaw tiles in the center of the table.  At the end of a hand, any outlaws that have over 8 points worth of melds are captured, with a monetary reward going to players who contributed to the capture.  The player who reaches $25,000 wins.  Throughout the hand, the reward on each outlaw (represented by little $1,000 counters) gets bigger as cards are played in their melds, meaning some outlaws are worth more than others.  At the end of a hand, the reward money stays on outlaws that were not captured, meaning they will be worth more next hand.  This was a nice mechanic, since some outlaws were more valuable than others at times.

Having to split the reward based on contribution also made for some interesting tactics.  Sometimes you might want to toss a couple of cards on an outlaw an opponent is winning, just to get in on the reward.  There were also some interesting special cards that let you draw cards, put more reward money out, or make one of your opponent's melds worthless.

It was a nice 2-player rummy variant, and it definitely gave Mystery Rummy some competition.  When playing with three players, there were more tactical decisions to be made, but the 2-player game was still very satisfying.  

Lord of the Rings
I may be the last gamer in the world to have played Knizia's Lord of the Rings.  I got it in a math trade several months ago, but it took a while to get to the table.  I've played it twice now, once with two players and once with four.  Since this is an older game that a lot of people have played, I'll skip the description of mechanics.

My initial impression for two players is favorable.  The decisions were never very difficult, but there were enough of them to keep things interesting.  Things got tense late due to some poor rolling on my part.  As Frodo, I had 9 corruption before even reaching Shelob's lair, which meant Brandon had to help a lot.  We managed to get him the ring, and he further sacrificed himself - taking most of the die rolling actions to try to save me.  We both made it to Mordor, but the event tiles came at us too fast.  Even after calling on Gandalf twice, we were thwarted by Sauron before reaching Mount Doom.  We ended the game with a score of 56 / 60.  Not bad for a first try.  

In hindsight, I think we would have spent more time drawing cards on the early boards.  When we made it to Mordor, we each had less than 4 cards.  I think starting the last two boards with a healthy hand will give a nice head start.

Like Wyatt Earp, this game was a little more fun with more players, but was a nice game for just two of us.  There aren't a lot of cooperative 2-player options.

Pizza Box Football
I broke down and ordered a copy of Starfleet Command last month.  It was inevitable.  I cut my gaming teeth on Star Fleet Battles as a kid.  Despite the large arcane rulebook, SFB was an incredibly great tactical game.  It rewarded creative tactics, and was one of the best tests of gaming skill I've ever played.  But I digress.  I mention that only because on the same order from Time Well Spent, I got Pizza Box Football, the other end of the spectrum.

I don't mind dice.  In fact, I love dice.  I love rolling dice in roleplaying games, rolling phaser hits in SFB, rolling troop hits in Memoir '44.  Dice are great.  But dice need to be the result of calculated risk.  I need the dice to determine the end-result of my strategic or tactical decision, to add a little bit of randomness.

In Pizza Box Football, the dice don't represent much.  Sure, my opponent picks "run" and I pick "long pass", so the dice are supposed to determine the end-result of my tactical decision.  But the decisions in PBF are nothing more than rock-scissors-paper.  In fact, take rock-scissors-paper, make the outcome a modifier to a die roll rather than the final result, then roll a die with the modifier, that's what Pizza Box Football is.  Throw in first downs and touchdowns, and you've got Pizza Box Football.

I hope the expansion might add to the complexity and make the tactical decisions interesting - at least, more interesting than a guessing game.  But the base game was so uninteresting that I probably won't spend money on an expansion.  

Dungeon Twister
After nearly a year of sitting on my shelf, I finally managed to play Dungeon Twister.  After the Pizza Box Football flop, we ended the day with this game.  I had read the rules previously, but wasn't familiar enough for an explanation, so I had to read through them, which took a while.

The basic premise is you're trying to score 5 victory points.  You can score a VP for either killing an enemy character token (1vp) or by having one of your characters race across the map and cross your opponent's start line (1vp).  The map is made up of eight tiles with a 5x5 grid on them.  The tiles are very similar to the Wiz-War tiles, with a maze of walls and doors (portcullises), as well as pit traps and rotation gears.  The pit traps and portcullises are impassible unless your character has some sort of special ability or equipment.  And the rotation gears add a very nice twist to the game - standing on a gear will let you rotate the current room tile or another remote tile (each tile has a matching pair) 90 degrees.

Movement in the game is done via action points.  You and your opponent start the game with cards numbered 1 to 4.  Each turn, you play a card and you get that number of "activations".  Each activation lets you activate 1 character, who in turn gets a number of action points, based on his movement score.  These action points let you move, rotate gears, use equipment, fight, etc.  Once you play a card, you lose it until you have played all four of your movement cards, in which case you pick them all up and may play any of them again.  Combat is done in much the same way - using a given starting set of cards that add to your character's base attack.  The main difference is that the combat cards are lost forever when played - except a +0 attack card, which may be kept indefinitely.

The game is definitely interesting, but I can't say I enjoyed it.  While I generally enjoy brain-burning games (Die Macher, anyone?), this game felt too much like a puzzle.  Each turn, I had to decide not only what I was going to do with my characters, but what my opponent might do with his.  This led to a lot of counting, mental math, etc.  Even though I usually enjoy this sort of activity, it felt like it was too much work in DT.  I also felt very overwhelmed - having so many options early in the game led to analysis paralysis very quickly.  I suppose repeated playings might make these decisions easier, but there was an underlying gut feeling about this game that I just didn't enjoy.

It's disappointing, as I was really looking forward to playing DT after all the good things I've heard.  Maybe in another few weeks I'll give it a second chance.  I really want to like it.


That's my 2-player game report for the last month.  In between, I also got in several plays of Battle Line (still my favorite), as well as a couple of the Kosmos games, which continue to be a lot of fun.  And last week, Jay stomped me in my second game of Hammer of the Scots.  I'll save that for its own write-up.