Playing games with two players: How do you like it?

Carefully worded lede there, because I said playing games two-player, and not playing two-player games. Yes there is a difference! Two-player games play differently to multiplayer games, often with a ‘zero-sum’ nature. You push, they pull.

Not all two-player games are like that, and the finest game ever made also happens to be a two-player only game, expansion notwithstanding, and that’s a knife fight in a phone box, and isn’t ‘zero-sum’ at all. Oh, that game is Fields of Arle, by the way.

Back on topic, I’m asking how you play your games with two players. Sometimes you hear people and internet board gaming superstars use the lines “Oh, we don’t like conflict!” and every single time I hear that I wonder how they play their games with two players. For me there has to be conflict.

Quick side notes before we continue; Conflict is not equal to combat or attacking. I mean get out a game of Memoir ‘44 on the table and me and the wife we gleefully attack each other. When I say conflict, I mean friction.

Using an example, I often hear people say the base game of Concordia is “too open with two players” and sure if you played with the 4-5 player map it would be, but the 2-3 side isn’t. Oh but it is designed for 3, I hear the audience sigh. Well yes, and so in a two-player game you could putter about on your side of the board, you could even let the other player have all the cloth cities, after all, you could get the wine ones, and wouldn’t that be nice? NO! I mean if that’s how you want to play then you do you, chief. How we play is we see there’s a cloth bonus, and that the other player has their eye on it and we go out to make sure they don’t get that extra city, oh and then they spot we are going for that other city to complete control of one area and they send a ship there to deny that. BOOM! CONFLICT. What could be a nice relaxing game becomes 60 minutes of moves, counter moves, and tension. It’s that tension and conflict that makes games for us.

We don’t like many “figures on a map” style games, even though they tend to be full of conflict. It’s mostly the wrong type. Seriously, it gets complex quickly, doesn’t it? I think it’s dice ruining plans rather than the other player that I don’t like. Nothing worse than a carefully organised plan that’s ruined by your dice rolls (and not even theirs!)

It comes down to the fact that we enjoy games where there’s minimal luck involved, but isn’t zero luck, and we enjoy games where we can work out our plan, but can also see what the other player is aiming for and attempt to scuttle their plans.

66% of all the plays I have ever logged have been played, two-player. Without any tension and conflict, I’m not sure we’d bother. It certainly why we don’t play any cooperative games - no conflict or tension for us - and I’ll leave my wife’s views on those as the closing line - “What’s the point in this?”

So how do you play your games with two players