Hello Beehaw!
As someone that enjoy playing with my spouse a lot I wonder which games are your favorites for playing with or against someone else. Our current favorites are:
- Dominion
- Res Arcana
- Wingspan (still need to try Asia expansion)
- Terraforming Mars
Unfortunately these listed games are competitive ones so I’m also looking to increase the list of cooperative games! We did play Aeon’s End Legacy but need play the expansions.
edit: typo
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
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.
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.
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 :-)
Thank you!! We really like seven wonders so we’re definitely looking into getting the duel version
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.
