Category: 1-2 Player Games

boop the Halls!

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

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

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 Mechanics:

  •  Closed Drafting

Game Specifications:

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

Battletech: Beginner Box

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 Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Miniatures
  • Paper-and-Pencil
  • Player Elimination
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

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

Battle Line: Medieval

This new re-themed version of Battle Line is a two-player strategy card game built around the theme of Medieval warfare. This re-themed version of Battle Line features 60 beautiful new cards by illustrator Roland MacDonald, as well as 10 full-color tactics “wildcards” that give players extra flexibility and choices and help make each new battle wildly different from the last.

Battle Line takes about 30 minutes to play. To win, you must create powerful formations along your side of the line of battle that are superior to those of your enemy. Victory goes to the player who wins 5 of the 9 battle flags (an envelopment) or three adjacent flags (a breakthrough). Based on Reiner Knizia’s original design published in Germany as Shotten-Totten, Battle Line enhances and expands that game system to give players even more tactical options and gut-wrenching decisions.

Battle Line places you in command of your army’s strategies. How will you muster your formations? Will you use your powerful KingsGuard to vanquish your enemy, or perhaps send the King of England or France to the front to win a critical flag? Or perhaps you”ll rely on your spies to determine the enemy”s strengths and weaknesses before committing your best forces. You’ll always have plenty of choices. With every card play, you’ll determine the strength and direction of your attack while plotting to fend off your enemy’s advances.

In Battle Line, you and your opponent lead the combined arms of the greatest units of the era. Will you, like the great Kings of yore, reign supreme? Play Battle Line, and find out.

Game Mechanics:

  • Card Play Conflict Resolution
  • Hand Management
  • Melding and Splaying

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.85

Azul Duel

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 Mechanics:

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

Game Specifications:

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

Aleph Null 🟢

As a successful Magician, you have been able to fund a lifetime of research by delivering to the petty demands of liars, philanderers, gluttons and the least of Humanity.

How refreshing, then, when a client should emerge with a commission of horrifying simplicity that has the potential for acquiring a vast amount of knowledge – perhaps the ultimate knowledge – albeit at the expense of many millions.

“Release the denizens of Hell into the Earth, with Baphomet – The Sabbath Goat – at their Head, for one night only and let them run amok. Let us see the consequences – for aesthetic reasons only, of course.”

However, do not expect this matter to proceed without interference from the Church and/or from Hell itself: the best-laid plans do not always go the way expected.

Inspired by the Black Easter novellas by James Blish, the aim of Aleph Null is to successfully summon the demonic Prince Baphomet who, when he appears, expects there to be no cards in your hand, the main deck and the discard pile; if there are any cards remaining in these ‘zones’, you lose. However, ‘not losing’ in this way doesn’t mean that you have won: any cards still in play also count against you – too many and you shall lose also. The sooner you ‘win’, the better your chance of surviving any due punishment.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Once-Per-Game Abilities
  • Physical Removal
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Sudden Death Ending
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 1 Player
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.70

300: Earth & Water 🟢

Step back into history during the Greco-Persian war as you and a friend choose a side in this historic conflict. Will you be the great Persian Empire, seeking to maintain its hold over the eastern Mediterranean, or the Greeks rallied around Athens, defending your home? In this card driven game, you will raise armies, play events, and maneuver your troops to defeat the other player and claim victory for youself!

Game Mechanics:

  • Card Driven
  • Dice Rolling
  • Point to Point Movement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.36

Air, Land, and Sea: Critters at War 🔵

In Air, Land & Sea: Critters at War, two players vie for control over each theater of war by playing cards and strategically utilizing their special abilities to win battles. Whoever gains the most victory points over several battles wins the war!

Gameplay is the same in this standalone game as in Air, Land & Sea, but with 100% critters and more vibrant colors.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Hand Management
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.70

A Little Wordy 🔵

From the award-winning, best-selling creators of Exploding Kittens and Throw Throw Burrito, A Little Wordy is a fresh and ridiculously clever take on the genre of tile-based word-unscrambling games.

Here’s how it works: You’re each given a pile of letters. Rearrange your letters until you come up with a word. Be sneaky and choose a word that your opponent won’t easily guess.

Write it down, keep it a secret. Rescramble your tiles, pass them to your opponent. The goal is to examine your opponent’s tiles and try to figure out their word. You do this with Clue Cards. These tell you things such as: what’s the first letter, how long’s the word, or what does it rhyme with? You win by using as FEW of these clue cards as possible to figure out what word your opponent wrote down.

It’s thoughtful, strategic, highly-replayable, and built specifically for two players. It’s not a game about having the mightiest vocabulary – it’s a game about making clever choices.

The longest, most complicated word isn’t always the best choice. Sometimes, picking a smaller, common word is better because your brainiac opponent will overthink things and blaze right past it. Trying to figure out your opponent’s secret word can be both hilarious and (delightfully) maddening. A Little Wordy levels the playing field against veteran word wizards.

Game Mechanics:

  • Tile Placement
  • Word Game

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 5 – 15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.09