Category: 1-2 Player Games

Classified Information

| OTSG Staff

In the pursuit of political supremacy, knowledge is key. Since the revolution, two factions have been fighting for power in the dystopian, cyberpunk city of Intellexia. In order to break the years long deadlock and secure control of the city, each faction must uncover their adversary’s secret plans hidden inside their top secret, code-protected briefcase.

Your job, if you are to accept it, is to protect your secret code by cleverly deploying card abilities, by seeking help from the Guards, Assassins, and Sentinels at the local tech-noir guilds, and by encrypting information when you can. But espionage is a two-way street. While trying to deny your opponent information about your secret code, you must try to crack theirs.

Classified Information is a fast-playing (10-minutes or less), 2-player “iterative” deduction microgame that is fully contained within just 18 cards. Each turn a player plays a card from their hand in one of three ways (for its ability, for its guild affiliation or by discarding it out of the game). Once the draw deck is depleted players reveal their secret code and the single card left in their hand, if their card matches a number in their opponent’s code they may win the game, but things may not be so easy if their opponent also matches and has more guards, or has cleverly guarded their briefcase!

Will you be able to access your opponent’s Classified Information?

Game Mechanics:

  • Deduction
  • Hand Management

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 10 – 15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.25

Claim 2

| OTSG Staff

The King is dead! What happened? Nobody really knows, but he was found face down in a wine barrel this morning. It could have been either foul play or his own thirst that did him in. Regardless, the King is dead without any known heirs, so it’s up to the five factions of the realm to decide who will be the new king: Will it be you or your opponent? Do you have what it takes to win over the realm’s factions?

Claim 2 is played in two distinct phases. In phase one, each player gets a hand of cards that they use to recruit followers. In phase two, they use the followers from phase one to compete and win over the five factions of the realms. Each faction has a special power that effects play, and powers can be different in each phase! At the end of the game, the player who has the majority of followers of a faction wins that faction’s vote, and whoever wins the vote of at least three factions wins the game!

Claim 2 is a standalone sequel to Claim, featuring five new factions that can be played on their own or mixed in any combination with the factions in Claim.

Game Mechanics:

  • Take That
  • Trick Taking

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~25 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.60

Brightcast

| OTSG Staff

Brightcast is a fun, fast-paced, 2-player card game. It all starts with one basic rule: get one of each Spellcaster card or five the same Spellcaster card into play to win the game! Begin the game with 4 cards in your hand. Start each turn by drawing a card, then playing a card from your hand and performing that card’s action. Use your Spellcasters to claim victory and stop your opponent from trying to do the same!

Oh…and…watch out for Dragons!

Game Mechanics:

  •  Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 10 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.33

Caper: Europe

| OTSG Staff

Your role as criminal mastermind is to recruit a crew of thieves, send them to locations across Europe, and provide them with gear. It’s your job to utilize your resources efficiently to steal goods, but being a great mastermind is about more than the things you walk away with. It’s the thrill of a well thought-out plan coming together: the set-up, the sting. Properly deploy your thieves and gear to dominate locations, outmaneuver your opponent’s plans, and win the night. You’ve got six rounds to plan and play your cards. Nothing like a tight timeline to up the stakes!

Caper: Europe is a two-player drafting game. You take turns sending thieves to famous locations across Europe, vying for control through special card powers. These thieves have tricks up their sleeves, which you can enhance by adding gear to them. And controlling the locations isn’t everything because priceless stolen goods await the thief who’s clever enough to snatch them first.

Your goal is to score the most points by winning locations, collecting stolen goods, and equipping thieves with their preferred gear. The mastermind with the most points, tallied at the end of six rounds, wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Closed Drafting
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 25 – 35 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.11

Botanik

| OTSG Staff

In the hushed intimacy of her laboratory, the eminent researcher Beatrix Bury has just discovered a technology allowing to mechanically generate all kinds of edibles. Subtropical plants, stellar potatoes, Orion mandarins, this new technology opens a way to save the people of Forharms, prisoners of a world made of rust and toxic vapors. It’s in the urgency of a threatened world that the scientist puts two of her best teams in charge of developing her plan… that can seem quite demanding at times. Each team is engrossed in its mission and Beatrix’s laboratory becomes the battlefield of fierce competition to produce the best performing machine. You are promoted to the head of one of these two teams, and must prove yourself worthy of the head researchers’ trust. Rise up to the challenge!

Develop the most effective network of mecha-botanics, the combination of plants and science! Botanik offers fluid mechanics (one action per turn), in addition to an ingenious exchange system, associated with tiles of different groups/colours.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection
  • Take That
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.76

boop the Halls!

| OTSG Staff

A deceptively cute, deceivingly challenging abstract strategy game for two players.

The Mensa award winning, Game of the Year, boop, is back with a new Holiday edition and has really leveled up game play (literally!!).

The hoomans are hanging ornaments on the highest boughs of the tree, but those clever cats are leaping up and boopin’ them right off. You can win “Naughty” by knocking off 3 of your opponent’s ornaments or “Nice” by lining up three cats in a row!

The 4-tiered game board ‘tree’ presents a surprisingly mind-bending 3D challenge for players. And the alternate win condition of knocking off 3 of your opponent’s ornaments creates new strategic problems to solve, elevating the play experience to a new high!

Game Mechanics:

  • Grid Movement
  • Pattern Building

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.33

Blitzkrieg!: World War Two in 20 Minutes

| OTSG Staff

Recreate World War Two in 20 minutes! The perfect wargame for non-wargamers, Blitzkrieg! allows two players to battle across the War’s most iconic theatres, winning key campaigns and building military might.

Players draw army tokens from a bag to determine their starting forces and to replenish their losses. Rather than ‘fighting’ battles with dice or cards, players allocate their military resources to each theatre’s campaigns, winning victory points, further resources, special weapons, and strategic advantages as they play. Refight World War Two several times in one evening!

Includes Solo mode by Dávid Turczi.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Race
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Take That
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 2 Players
  • 20 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.92

Beer & Bread

| OTSG Staff

Beer & Bread is a multi-use card game for two players. Its clever structure of alternating rounds puts a fascinating twist on player interaction, card drafting, and resource management.

Founded on the fruitful lands of an erstwhile monastery, two villages have held up the dual tradition of brewing beer and baking bread. While sharing fields and resources, they still find pride in their friendly rivalry of besting each other’s produce.

Each of you represents one of these villages. Over the course of six years – which alternate between fruitful and dry – you must harmonize your duties of harvesting and storing resources, producing beer and bread, selling them for coins and upgrading your facilities.

However, in order to win, you must maintain the balance between your baked and liquid goods. Because, after the sixth year, you only score the coins collected from the type of good – beer or bread – for which you earned less. The village with the higher score wins.

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 30-45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.32

Battletech: Beginner Box

| OTSG Staff

In this introduction to the BattleTech game and universe, players each take control of one giant walking war machine (a BattleMech, aka ‘Mech) and battle until one is destroyed or until the scenario objectives being played are completed.

BattleTech is the world’s greatest armored combat game, filled with a myriad of epic stories and gaming experiences to satiate any player: miniatures to RPG play, hobby painting to fiction, and beyond. The BattleTech Beginner Box is the first step on that fantastic journey and includes everything you need to get started: two high-quality miniatures, quick-start rules, a mapsheet, cards to represent your MechWarrior’s unique skills, dice, and more.

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 2 Players
  • ~120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.43

Azul Duel

| OTSG Staff

Decorate the magnificent ceilings of the palace. Will the vaults look more beautiful by day or by night? Azul Duel invites you to play with light and pit opposites against each other.

This competitive strategic game for two players retains the purity and elegance of the original Azul while adding an extra tactical dimension in which you determine the pattern in which tiles will be placed, in addition to drafting tiles to complete that pattern.

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.42