Fun Two Player Board Games for 2020

I welcome to actual law I'm John parkus today I'm gonna share with you four two-player board games that are worth your attention if you're new to the channel you won't know if you like this video yet but when you do if you do please subscribe as a reviewer it's my duty to play the games that don't stand out I have to find the hidden gems and coax them out of oblivion like a kindly English teacher nurturing the creativity of a quiet child a premise I've had to conjure with the power of my unfulfilled imagination because my English teachers were all uncaring bastards I'm only human and sometimes a game looks so dull and derivative that even I ignore it I had seen air land and sea when it was released I looked right at it then with a blank expression I pretended I was looking at something else behind it ignoring its existence just like when I catch the eye of an old English teacher in the street thankfully the board game community leaves no good game behind and when the buzz reached me many months after its release I decided to give it a second look air land and sea is a battle for control of the three theatres of war which war is sadly left your imagination as the generic artwork suggests they couldn't get the licence to World War two a bet asthma day has it you take it in turns to play a card into one of the theatres on your side the cards are color-coded so for example you can only play a battleship in the sea you win the battle by having more power than your opponent in two of the theaters you get all your cards up front so you can create a battle plan with them you have to decide which two theatres you'll be able to put up a fight in your approach is everything if you go in all guns blazing with a massive six point tank on land you've shown your hand and your opponent can pivot their strategy to the other two theatres or you've given them time to neutralize your prize asset taking them out the game and killing your advantage it's all about the card powers and how you use them this support card will give you +3 strength in the theatres adjacent to it airdrop an aerodrome let you break the rule of having to play cards in their matching theatres so you can throw a surprise tank in the ocean or if you don't have the cards for the theater you won you can play a card facedown and it's still worth 2 points even better is you can later play a card with a flip action revealing your battleship on land flipping works both ways and you can use the same power to flip an opponent's card facedown weakening their attack or cancelling out an ability so it's risky to play an amazing card early because it's more likely to get flipped it's also risky to save its all later because they could stop you from ever playing it with a blockade there are a lot of two-player card games that I'm not fond of because you have to know all the special abilities to stand any chance of winning making it a nightmare for a newbie coming up against an experienced player the beauty of air land and sea is that there's only 18 cards in the whole game so you can remember them all and be prepared for them but let's say you're under the cosh you've got three cards left to play but you can't see how to turn it around and win this battle this is air land and seas ps2 resistance its eunice a qua except I can say qua the game lets you surrender if things aren't going well you can give up hand the win to your opponent and the sooner you do it the better if you stay until the bitter end unwilling to accept a fee you'll take more casualties and your opponent will get a full 6 points but if you're mature enough to spot your weaknesses early on and bow out then they will get a lot less points it's perfect they're ready to rain down on you like a smug partner who's just found out you were wrong about something and before they can you calmly apologize and admit your error leaving them with a brain full of I told you so's and nowhere to spend them I love it because it goes against your gaming nature to give up and it's so thematic knowing you might have lost a battle but you can still win the war you play until one player gets 12 points which would only need two wins against a cocky alpha gamer who won't surrender or could take six against a player who can admit defeat air land and sea is exactly how I liked my two-player games it's short and simple enough that you feel the heart of the game from that first play but with such clever design choices to make you want to keep coming back at first glance it looks like many other two-player card games fighting over a central ground but the card effects and the ability to withdraw from battle make it a completely different experience it's a brilliant game that I would highly recommend and so I'm awarding it with a seal of actual of in Paree la cañada la lumière you're competing to light up the streets of Paris you'll be placing street lights erecting buildings and trying to place them so they're well illuminated the game plays out in two distinct phases in the first you're adding cobblestone tiles to the map of Paris neatly held inside the box we're trying to create regions of your color where you'll be able to build each tile has orange and blue sections the two player colors so every time you expand your orange region you might be expanding your rivals too and then you have the neutral purple spaces which either player can build on as you place these tiles down you do it with a vision in your head of what buildings you'll put there in the second half of the game you're also trying to carve out a spot that's adjacent to streetlights because you score points for the size of the building multiplied by the number of light shining on it instead of laying a tile this turn you can reserve a building put it in front of you to place later but then you miss an opportunity to shape the city in the way that suits you and if you only focus on the cobblestones the other player might take the buildings that you're working towards both actions are vital and doing one will feel like you're betraying the other it's like having to decide between oxygen and water already in the first phase the game is tense because you're casting the future if you don't make space for your buildings there's only so much you can do about it later and wasted buildings score you minus points once all the cobblestone tiles are in the phase ends in Phase two you again have to decide between two actions the first is to get one of your buildings down putting it into a legal spot this is where those fickle purple spaces are forced to pick sides giving themselves to the player who first shows them affection and when you realize that your dream location that you were trying to keep quiet about is also your opponent's dream location and your heart breaks for not seeing Purple's wandering eyes instead of playing a building you can activate a postcard using its special ability to rescue you some points levitation lets you swap out a building tower you have with one that wasn't taken with char ta you can make more room for yourself by adding an extra purple space to the board it's a race to grab the postcards you need there's an instinct to get your buildings down early but if you're confident you're building spaces won't be blocked by your opponent you can be brave and leave it in to later and spend that time securing even more points by adding a new street lighting the postcard actions are great because they keep the second phase exciting providing some twist to what might seem inevitable some of the more advanced ones play with the remaining free space such as this Moulin Rouge dancer who gets a point for each empty space in the block that she's in Paris the city of light feels fresh it's nothing like my other two-player games splitting the game into two phases forces you to plan as you try to keep your vision together in your head and there's a real Jeopardy in your opponent jumping in to steal your spot or your postcard it's a clever game that deserves to be thought of alongside the two-player games in its weight category and so it too gets a seal of actual love circle the wagons is a two-player card game made up of only 18 cards you compete to build the best boom town in the Wild West you create a circle of cards choose a starting spot and then take it in turns to take a card from the circle adding it to your town the card acts as a tile with four regions to connect up expanding areas of deserts and forests you can add the card to any side of your town even covering existing ones ideally you'll end the game having created a big area of each territory because you get points for your largest group of each type that's your based run that you keep kicking in the background you mustn't miss a beat but it's simple you've got it covered your main focus is on these three gold cards this one will give you two points per fault that is adjacent to a gun every quadrant of a card has a terrain and a thing a cow a gun or wagon so while you're trying to keep that largest terrain bass-drum going you've got to remember to hit these three drums as often as possible each turn the circle designates you a card to take but you don't have to take that one you're looking for cows and wagons and this card has neither the next card has both so you choose to skip and take that instead the price you pay is that the card you skip goes to our opponent for free and now it's their turn so they now have one more card than you so you better be sure that the card you jump to is worth it you can skip ahead to any card you want in the circle giving every card along the way to them it feels reckless it goes against your gaming instincts give your opponent more cards than you but if it proves decisive you'll feel like a genius unfortunately it does slow down the pace of the game when they suddenly have to place two or three cards into their grid especially if they overthink it because the real challenge is in how you place your cards the goals just won't align with each other so you're desperately trying to keep that terrain bass-drum going whilst hitting three different symbols in three different time signatures for example if you play this wagon here to continue the straight line you'll have to cover up the cowl that will score you two points you have to neglect one to perfect another only one pizza can be at the top of the oven at a time the space-saving genius of circle the wagons is that there is a unique goal on the back of all 18 cards so every game will pull you in its own three directions it's a masterclass in simplicity I can think of a hundred games that achieve less with stacks of components than this game does with 18 cards where I find it lacking is that I never feel clever in the moves that I make and with the pressure of the three goals multiplied by the myriad of potential places to put a card I find it impossible to look ahead in the game so it comes down to assessing my options fresh every turn it doesn't quite deliver the satisfaction that my favorite two-player games master but 18 cards it's hardly a fair playing field what it is is a great travel game that will be going on many a holiday with me Robin of Loxley is an unusual little game that has you racing to complete missions faster than your opponent you play as the English folk hero best played by a talking Fox robbing the rich to feed the poor with jewelry every turn you move your pawn in an l-shape the move first popularized by the ostentatious Knight character from chess which you might call the horse if your basic wherever you land you take that tile and add it to your stash your L movement only gives you a few options each turn which keeps the game moving quickly as you collect the colors you need while the decision of where to go right now will be obvious you need a blue it's really easy to look ahead and see that if you move there what your options will be next turn and the turn after that planning your l-shaped dance around the grid and you will need to plan to win the around the outside of the board is your barred porn singing to the village of your achievements it's just a snitch with a lute to move your bard around the track and win the game you have to complete the mission on each tile most are really easy such as owner blue tile or have exactly two sets of tiles but the clever play is in how efficiently you can complete them because you can set up a situation where you can play a few of them in a row on the same turn if blue is also a part of one of your two sets and the other set is green or black some missions won't jell with what you've collected or it feels like it will take too many turns to get there for those you can choose to skip them by paying a gold coin you get gold coins by selling off a set of three or more of a color so instead of always chasing exactly what the mission wants you might read the board and see an opportunity to get loads of one color for every tile over three you sell in a set you get an extra gold coin it's an interesting decision working out what to skip and what to work towards you can plan your run for the next five missions or more occasionally pivoting if your l-shaped lunges don't get you the colors you need the type board and the moving your player piece around like a knight might fool you into thinking that this game is tete-a-tete when really it's much more of a tete a vector throughout the game I'm almost never concerned with the position of my opponent to me they don't even feel like an opponent they never get in my way they don't steal the tiles i won occasionally the goals try to trick me into caring about them by asking me to get my piece adjacent to theirs but the game never asked me to understand my opponent to read their plans or out-think them we share the same goals but how we get there is down to our own ability to read the game for some of you that would be a selling point and if you're looking for a relaxed two-player game that feels different to any other then I can really recommend Robin of Loxley for me I'd rather play something which is a little more social there you go for very different two-player games if you think one of them is up your street there are links to buy them in the description below if you want to see more videos like this please subscribe to the channel and I just want to say a big thank you to all my patrons I literally couldn't do this without you I'm John Perkis thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Actualol

Views: 32,802

Keywords: Jon Purkis, Board games, Board game, comedy, Gaming UK, family board games, board games for couples, gaming conventions, popular board games, top board games, best board games, 2019 board games, 2018 board games, london board games, london gaming, new board games, new games, new games 2019, tabletop gaming, Essen, Spiel, party games, shut up and sit down, Dice Tower, Family Games, board games for 2 people, no pun included, board games for 3 people

Id: 1KwIiviUFkA

Length: 13min 27sec (807 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020