Category: Two player

Games for two people

Shut The Box!

Shut the Box is a traditional English pub game. Unlike some pub games, it is family friendly and unrealistically easy. I marked this as a quick game, but that doesn’t at all describe it. With 2 players, this game takes 3 minutes. It is wonderful to play with your family, because you can sit down and it will fit most time constraints. It is especially great to play when you have a purring cat next to you. (Errr… might have tried that. What can I say? She was sleeping next to our chosen game board.)Shut-the-box

This game works with any amount of players, making it great for parties or being by yourself. In Shut the Box, you roll the dice. Then you flip down any one set of numbers that you can add to make the sum found on your dice. You continue your turn until you cannot flip anything to make that exact sum. Then you add up the remaining numbers. This is your score. You proceed to reset and the next person goes. This process repeats until everyone has gone. Then the person with the lowest score wins. If anyone successfully flips down all the numbers, they shut the box and automatically win the game. Yep, that’s it. The entire game. No, seriously, that’s it. Yep.

This is just one variation of the ways it can be played. See here for more.

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Sales in Camden!

Camden is a wonderful game, illustrated by John Kovalic, who might have also illustrated oh, I don’t know… Munchkin? *grins* You’re all business owners with a dream and 10 pounds. No, I don’t mean you’re extremely light. Camden is actually a market area in Britain. Thus I mean the British currency: pounds.Camden

First, chose your colour. I mean color. Or is it colour? Blasted American English against the original English. It’s messing up my spelling! First, there’s player A. Player A is the red token and specializes in clothes sales. Player B is my favourite, and is yellow and selling food. Player C is green, selling a large variety of antiques and random debris. Last is Player D, who is blue and sells comics and books.

Each turn, you will collect income based of the number of entrances to your shop, draw a tile, search for and initiate special effects, place the tile, and then if it meets your fancy, purchase another shop. The first person to reach 50 pounds wins.

Special effects vary, and they’re not always set off. If the letter on the tile matches your player letter, the sign around the letter kicks a special effect into order. The first special effect is basic: Fire. It burns down the largest shop and any shop sharing the tile with it. The second special effect is the Bobby. The police come and empty the largest shop. The final one is the least devastating: Holiday. Every player gets their income’s worth right then and there.

This is a wonderful, reasonably simple game. And has hit my favourites list. Or is it favorite? Or…

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Firefly!… Fluxx?

Do you like the show Firefly? Do you like the card game Fluxx? Then this game is for you: the one and only… Firefly Fluxx!Firefly Fluxx

The Keepers have changed: Instead of Time, and Death, and Chocolate, they have Firefly Keepers: Kaylee Frye and Jayne Cobb. Therefore the Goals are also very different: Instead of Rocket to the Moon, where you need the Rocket and the Moon, they have Goals like The Tam Siblings: you need River Tam and Simon Tam. The New Rules and Actions are similar to the original… they just renamed some of them.

This variation also brings with it a less welcome change: Creepers. Creepers are cards like Reavers. You can’t win with them unless specific conditions say otherwise. There are some Goals that include Creepers as part of the winning criteria… for instance: the Crazy Ivan Maneuver requires Serenity and Reavers. Besides these special Goals, getting rid of a Creeper is particularly difficult.

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Off To Tokaido!

Tokaido is a beautiful game about Japan. In Tokaido, you are a traveler. You are walking across the board, stopping for cash and enjoyment along the way. The happier you are, the more points you get at the end. So let’s start that vacation!Tokaido

On the board, there are 5 inns. You must stop at each inn. Movement is simple… the person in the back moves anywhere up to the next inn. When you reach an inn, you look at that round’s meal cards (number of players + 1) and chose one if you can afford it. The only rule about which one you pick is you can’t have already had one. Each character tile has a special power. My character’s power was I could draw the top card of the meal deck and get it for free. This is because my character was the orphan.

In between inns, there are many places you can visit. There are the hot springs, where you draw a card and receive points. There are also panorama spots, where you take a break to paint a part of one of 3 panoramas.  There’s the farm, where you get some money, or the encounter space, where you draw an encounter card. You can donate money to the temple. Last but not least, you can purchase some souvenirs! Draw the top 3 and pick whichever ones you can afford.

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Fighting with Bullfrogs

Bullfrogs is a fun strategic game. In Bullfrogs, you have little frogs and lily pad cards. You play one lily pad card at the start of your turn. You aren’t competing over the cards, each color frog gets their own deck. You play the card adjacent to at least one other lily pad. Bullfrogs

The amount of moves per turn you get depends on the card you play. The less lily pad spaces on the card, the more turns you get. The lily pad spaces and the turns will add up to 7. When you put the card down, there should be a row of lily pad cards or 2 rows you can manipulate. They have to be in a straight row (like Rooks move in Chess). Any card in this row is a card you can affect.

There are 2 move options for your turn: place a frog or sabotage. When you place a frog you choose any lily pad card in your straight rows except the card you just placed. You may place up to 2 frogs on each lily pad card. There are also 2 types of frogs: Frogs and Bullfrogs.

Sabotaging has the same range as placing a frog. You may choose an opponent’s frog and move it one space to any adjacent lily pad card (adjacent to where it was, not adjacent to you.)

If a lily pad is full, frog wars break out. First, find out how many fighing points each person has. Frogs are 1 point, Bullfrogs are 2 points. The team who wins gets the points from the card.

When the battle is over, the lily pad sinks. The losing team evacuates first. The winning player decides which adjacent space the frogs move to. This is the order they evacuate: loser’s frogs, loser’s bullfrogs, winner’s frogs, and then finally winner’s bullfrogs. If they cannot evacuate, they sink with it. If a frog sinks, it comes back and gets reused. If a bullfrog sinks, it is out of the game. At the end of the game, you count up points. The frogs and cards are worth different amounts of points, depending on the criteria.

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Bank It!

If you really want that bike, save up money and Bank It! Bank It is a game where you are trying to get ten dollars in your bank account. First, however, you have to purchase something from each of the 4 stores (Pizza Palace, Barnes and Books, Toy Store, Sports Corner) and donate to a charity.Bank It

The most common spot on the board is one of the most important. It is the Bank It spot, and it is how you can get money consistently. Each Bank It card will have a different amount of money for you. Will you get $1.50 for chores… Or will you get $0.25 for Flower Power?

One of the worst encounters is with the Do You Have It space. This appears twice on the board.  Depending on which one you land on, you either break a window or buy a gift. Either way, you drop $0.50 on the ground.

There are many things to get. That Novel you’ve always wanted to read, that Stuffed Toy that’s oh so cute, that juice that looks so delicious, and that baseball bat you believe could withstand anything. Or maybe you want that printer, or that ooey gooey slice of extra cheese pizza, or that irresistible board game. Who knows? Find out for yourself in Bank It!

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Total Knock Out!

TKO is a Kickstarter that came with Fly (which I wrote about) and everything else in that Pack O’ Game. TKO is, of course, a boxing game. Be warned: there is humor to be found in a game with characters with names like Barry Punch and Will Bleed.TKO

TKO is a game where both players simultaneously pick one of 4 moves: uppercut, body blow, head block and body block. Each area starts at a different point level depending on the character. Then comes the scoring.

Here’s where things get tricky. If one person hits and the other blocks, but blocks the wrong section, the person who hit gets a point on that specific section. If one person hits and the other blocks it, that block earns a point for the person who blocked. Two punches to the same area cancel each other out, and two punches to different areas then both score.

Each round ends when someone has 5 points on a skill. When a round ends the winner gets the round token. Whoever has the most victories after 2 rounds wins, or if it is a tie, they play a third round. The winner gets the TKO Champion card!

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Which Dojo will Win?

This is about one of the most epic battles of all time; a view into the 15th century; a mystery left unsolved: this week I present to you, Ninja versus Ninja! It was published in 2008 by Out Of The Box Publishing. In Ninja versus Ninja you start with your master at 0, as he scores points, and your spy at 0, as he keeps track of how many points each mission could potentially reward you.

Ninja vs. NinjaThe slightly shaded spots on the board show where the ninjas start at the beginning of the game. Each turn you roll the pair of swords for your movement roll. Then you may move any one ninja that amount of spaces, allowing only one 90 degree turn in your movement unless you are in the opponent’s dojo. If you are, you may have one move that turns him back towards you (a reversal) and a 90 degree turn.

You may only have one ninja in either the opponent’s base or in the neutral zone at once. Once they have left your dojo, they have two more turns to return to the dojo or they will be taken out of the game and their points will not be scored. The same consequences awaits any ninjas that are taken during their mission. You can take a ninja by landing on a ninja from the opposing dojo, but you must end your turn on him, not just pause there and then keep going. When you take a ninja it gets set aside for the rest of the game.

I like this game because it is mainly about logic and fun*.

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*Of course, what games aren’t about fun?

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Can you build Machi Koro?

In Machi Koro you build a town, starting with only a Wheat Field and a Bakery. Buy Establishments and build your landmarks, roll dice to activate Establishment-related events to get more money. Some Establishments include The Forest, The Fruit and Vegetable Stand, and the Furniture Factory.

Machi Koro

I got this game for Christmas from my cousins. It was sort of funny, as we had gotten them the same thing. I enjoyed it because it is a good balance between logic and luck. Of course, Dad won, just like with most logic games. Such a surprise! Oh, wait….

There is also a fine balance, as you have to buy Establishments to get money, but don’t want to spend it all, because then you don’t have enough to buy the Landmarks, which you need to win. There are 4 different types of Establishments, which are color-coded.  The red ones allow you to steal money from other players when they roll the number of that card. The blue ones are activated on anybody’s turn, and the green and purple ones are only on your turn.

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Continue reading Can you build Machi Koro?

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In a Fluxx?

There is a wonderful game called Fluxx. It is a Looney Labs game (click here to see my previous post). In Fluxx, the rules are always changing. I like this game because of that fact, though my grandmother found it a bit confusing. I don’t remember when and where I first tried Fluxx, but it might have been because of the numerous Fluxx decks we have floating around the game closet (a.k.a. the Ultimate Closet of Doom, or UCD).

Fluxx 3.0

There are several variations of Fluxx, including but not limited to: Monster Fluxx, Zombie Fluxx, Pirate Fluxx, Fluxx 3.0, Fluxx 2.1, Cthulhu Fluxx, and Wizard of Oz Fluxx. The version we played this time is Fluxx 3.0. That’s a lot of Fluxx!

There are different types of cards. Keepers like The Robot are played to help achieve Goals like The Appliances, which requires The Toaster and The Television. Actions like Draw 2 and Use ‘Em are played to either mess up the other person or get you closer to winning(or both!). New Rules such as Hand Limit 1 make it tougher to win for both players. There are also other cards like Creepers and Surprises in other decks.

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