Tabletop Gaming

Spirit Island! It's a co-op where it's you as natural forces defending your island and natives against foreign invaders. It's very replayable, with ways to ramp up (or down) the difficulty level, and it's fun to play new pairs of spirits and discover synergies (or in a few cases, the utter lack thereof) in their powers.

Hive! Or Hive pocket. It's kind of a boardless chess like game with bugs. The only thing I don't like is that sometimes if you're not really careful the hexagonal pieces get a little crooked and it throws off more than it should. That's the pocket version anyway, maybe the full size is better

One Deck Dungeon - you work together to fight the monster on each card using your dice. You have to plan the move together so that you will win. It's a lot of fun.

Blue Moon. We have the Legends version with a million or so cards. It's definitely a competitive one. You build a deck, increasing your firepower (hopefully) as you go, and battle your opponent's deck each turn.

It took us a while to figure it out but man is it fun to play once you get the mechanics of it. Even teenage boys who had been rolling their eyes at the game for weeks tried it one day out of boredom and became obsessed as soon as they figured out how to start backstabbing each other.

I see you already play Aeon's End, which would be first on my list of recommendations, I can highly recommend the other content too. It's one of my favourite games, and it plays so well at 2 players (and it's good at 4 players too, just a different experience IMO).

Another would be Spirit Island, an asymmetrical game in which each player is a nature spirit who tries to defend their island from the invading settlers. It's incredibly strong thematically. While the rules are pretty straightforward, it has an incredibly complex decision space and can be a bit of brain burner. The great thing about that is that it really limit alpha gaming, as it's generally too complex to think for other people too. Especially with expansions adding more spirits, adversaries, and power cards, every game is very different.

If you play with your spouse and you like legacy/campaign games, I can also recommend Gloomhaven. Particularly Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion is a great entry point into the world and system, and it's a lot more approachable than the main game while still offering a similar experience. There's a second edition of Gloomhaven coming out next year, which is in all respects an improved version of an already great game, so if after Jaws of the Lion you want more , I'd recommend waiting for that.

My girlfriend and I really like Trails and we take it with us to bars pretty frequently!

Its like a baby Parks game, and has a few mechanisms I thought would really do well in Parks (which apparently the designers felt the same because they released a new expansion which adds a few Trails like features)

Our favourite: Arkham Horror LCG, Hero realms, Lord of the rings Journey in the Middle Earth, seven Wonders duel. We are currently playing Earthborne rangers. I also often propose war of the rings/twilight struggle/ other war games but they are tougher to sell :-)

I'm pretty bad at it and don't have a lot of games in it but I really really like android netrunner, it is very well designed and full of immersive charm IMO. It can be a bit 'heavy' for casual game nights, lots of thinking and bluffing going on.

My wife and I play almost exclusively two player games, but we try to find stuff that can expand beyond two players if at all possible. That said, our top most played games as a couple are...

• Aeon's End
• Unfair
• Codenames Duet
• Fugitive
• Everdell
• Tiny Epic Galaxies

and after that it starts getting into a lot of games that have 15-20 plays each (Wingspan, the Pandemic Legacy games, Welcome To, Clank!). Out of those, I'd recommend looking in to Fugitive for something more "off the beaten path". It's a two player cat and mouse game where one person is a criminal trying to outrun a sheriff. The sheriff wins by catching the criminal, the criminal wins by getting to the escape vehicle by the end of their cards. We played it probably 30 times before calling it quits because we reached a point where the sheriff would almost always be able to read the other player and figure out where they were, but that was a LOT of plays to get there!

EDIT: Apparently Space-Biff did a write up on the 2nd Edition yesterday!

My wife and I love playing Jaipur! It's nice that you get 2-3 games out of it since it's best out of 3. We also got a new-ish game called Watergate, which is really fun. We've only played it a few times so far.

Our top 3 are:

• Fungi, because my s.o really loves mushrooms
• Shards of Infinity (w/ one expansion), because it's a fun game to relax, not to easy and not too complex
• Jaipur, because it's quick and it's fun trying to screw each other over

7 Wonders Duel is specifically a 2-player version of 7 Wonders, and it's very well done. Familiar enough to anyone who has played the original while being entirely unique mechanically. I really enjoy it.

Also, you mentioned it, but the Asia expansion for Wingspan is great as a standalone 2-player game.

A few more that often hit the table with just the two of us:

• Azul (any of them)
• Sagrada
• Parks
• Cottage Garden
• Patchwork (specifically for 2 players)

Azul is a nice short game that's honestly better with two players. If you have more people, you can't really think about what the others are doing and just have to focus on your own plan. But with only two, there's also an element of trying to screw each other over. It's great fun :)

My wife enjoys a fun theme, so the first three are all animal themed. 🙂

• Wingspan
• Ark Nova
• Zoo-ography
• Heart of Crown
• Rolling Realms

I also think Master of Wills is a great 2 player game, but it's also mostly just a two player game.

Scythe is more fun with 4-5 but it’s not bad with 2. Can say the same with Firefly the Game. Star Realms is great (pretty much any deck builder will be).

My wife and I play Castles of Burgandy together sometimes. It's nice because there is some luck involved with die rolls but still a good amount of strategy. It isn't cooperative though.

We've played the solo version of Agricola together cooperatively and it was pretty fun.

I really enjoy Patchwork as a two person game. Its quick game, but it feels just challenging enough.

Theres also a shorter two person version of Agricola called "All Creatures Big and Small" thats pretty darned fun as well.

Lots of great suggestions in this thread! I will add a few of my favorites.

• Mansions of Madness Fun spooky co op that has a lot of stories to play through. Your typically an investing team trying to solve spooky mysteries. I saw someone suggest Arkham horror if you like that suggestion then you will also like Mansions of madness.

• Sleeping Gods Story telling co op adventure. The game takes you though this new world and you have to figure out how to get home. Very thematic with a bunch of different crossroads. Combat is very punishing but still fun. I also believe they are coming out with a second one. I love Red Raven games so I would also suggest Above and Below as well as Near and Far but both of those are competitive.

- Nemesis It is basically Alien the movie the board game. It is semi co op. You have a general objective to get the ship safely to earth but as aliens start popping out your goal changes to what you find most important. Every time I play this game I feel like I could have watched the movie I just played. Your goals could be aligned or they could not be. But why I like to play it with my wife is because even if our goals are not aligned we cannot fight each other you can old do some what harmful things haha.

The Gloomhaven suggestion

• I am sure people have put Gloomhaven. It’s top tier when we are talking co op but I would suggest jaws of the lion over Gloomhaven. Jaws is cheaper and a lot easier to set up than. This suggestion is only if your considering Gloomhaven.

Best of luck and happy gaming.

We like to play Elder Sign. Cooperative game with a Lovecraftian theme. We also got one of the expansions to up the difficulty, but I can’t remember which one it was at the moment.

We really like:

• Fantastic Factories
• Project L
• Heat: Pedal to the Metal

Don't do it a lot, but there are games I would suggest.

BattleCON: My favorite board game, period. You know how everyone says fighting games are just strategy games with quick inputs? BattleCON is the way to play the mind/tactics of a fighting game without the muscle training.

Spirit Island: Just a solid coop game, defend the island from the invaders by developing a hand of powers to either scare them away or destroy them. Big setup time though, so not exactly a pick up and play game.

Jaipur: My friend has this and I've loved it every time. It's an awesome set making game with camels.

Other games include Magic: The Gathering, Pixel Tactics, and Bullet. Everyone knows MtG and I didn't want to just talk about 3 L99 games in one post lol.

Lost Cities is our most played two player game.

After that, Patchwork, Ingenious, and Hive all get a good amount of play.

We have also found that mystery or detective games (like Detective) work really well with two.