The best card games for 2 players
The best card games for 2 players
No, we’re not talking about war, speed, or the Egyptian rat screw.
Have you ever hoped on a plane or at the airport and wished you had something to do with your friend on the trip (other than endlessly scrolling through Instagram on your phone)? Did you find yourself in a cafe with great observers and just wished you had something to do?
Good news! I'm here to tell you that 2 player card games are the answer. A small card game with a deck of cards is a great solution for boredom and travel-friendly ! Here are some of the best two-player card games we’ve ever found.
Our best selections for the best card games for 2 players
Are you in a hurry? Check out our favorites below.
Most Dungeons & Dragons Scam
The best portable
Best overall
Bryan and I travel a lot and we always have a card game available ... but not always a group of friends who would play a big game.
Here we will cover:
- Our favorite two-player card games
- The best components of any card game
- Advantages and disadvantages of any card game
- Other versions of card games
If you’ve been looking for the best two-player card games that you can carry in your pocket or purse, you’ve come to the right place.
# 1. Munchkin
This is a version of the Dungeons & Dragons card game for all my super nerds. This is a stupid, stupid (and yet strategic) game of magic, murder and monsters. What would you not like? Munchkin is our favorite card game for 2 people. Of course it is also a lot of fun with more people! But unlike many multiplayer games, Munchkin simply doesn’t lose any fun with just two players.
This is a fun game that is pretty easy to figure out and has endless expansions that can help you create new combinations and combine cards for funny scenarios. Where else would you see something like this?
I love it so much that it doesn’t even bother me when I die and come back as a ghost and torture Bryan. How can you also resist a company with this marketing plan? Absolutely brilliant. It brings together all of our favorite things.
Go down to the dungeon. Kill everything you encounter. Lock your friends in the back and steal their stuff. Grab the treasure and run.
- You can play the whole game out of the box
- 3 to 6 players
- 1 2 hours to play
Advantages:
- Always have fun with two players (or more).
- Great for travel or on the go.
- Tone extensions so you will never be bored.
Weaknesses:
- Keeping scores is a kind of pain (unless you have a folding game board), especially since you can inadvertently gain and lose levels in this game, and writing numbers on a piece of paper becomes pretty ugly.
- Lots of extensions = hard to organize. The card organizer really helps!
- That's it. Against no more. This is a great game.
If you’re a devoted Munchkin fan like us, and you take cards wherever you go, we highly recommend card protectors for your Munchkin cards to keep them clean and bent. They were a huge investment for our cards.
# 2. Love letter
A love letter is a game of risk , deduction , and good luck. Your goal is to get your love letter into the hands of Princess Annette while discouraging the letters from competing suitors.
One of the great things about a love letter is that it’s very easy to learn and very fast, and then you want to play another game.
In a love letter, each player will have one card in their hand. The object of the game is to try to remove all other players from the game or have the card with the highest number when you run out of piles of cards. Each card has a specific ability or rule to follow.
Behind the simplified rules is a very competitive and sharp game. Do you play baron and risk being knocked out? Are you hiding behind a maid and hoping the card has less value than you?
There aren’t many cards in this game, so the pile disappears quickly. Your opponents can get to the princess in front of you and you can’t allow that.
- In the package with the Again Products guarantee: authentic, real, ...
- Small packaging for easy carrying Two new character roles ...
- Brand new illustrations give the classic game a fresh, modern ...
Advantages:
- The most portable game. And cheap too. That's literally 16 cards.
- Still fun with just two players.
- Does require a bit of strategy and bluffing .
- Very fast, so if you lose, you can always play another round.
Weaknesses:
- If you play with the same player, you can start guessing actions and tactics (allowing you to really get to know someone).
We have the original, but there are also variations in tons. Also a Munchkin version called Loot Letter! Cleverly titled, Lovecraft Letter is the one I would love to try.
A love letter is also available on Steam.
# 3. Dominion (Second Edition)
Dominion is a great box game unlike some others on this list. The Dominion is the original umbrella builder , and some may argue that it’s best to play with multiple players, but with two players, it’s still a lot of fun.
In the Dominion, each player gets his or her own starting deck of 10 cards. As the game continues, they will buy cards from a common set of piles and build a strategy based on the cards obtained.
Later in the game, players will need to start buying winning cards to actually score points and win the game. However, if you buy winning tickets too early, you will fill up useless cards and hamper your overall efficiency. If you buy too late, then you may not have enough time to make up for it. Winning cards have value only at the end of the game.
- The 2nd edition contains updated cards, artwork and simplified rules
- Tactical game for 2-4 players
- 30 minute playing time
Advantages:
- Very high repeatability due to combinations of random cards.
- Many different extensions to choose from.
Weaknesses:
- It is not transferable at all. (I flew from the UK to the US with a box in the upper section. It was a mess).
For a complete breakdown and overview of the Dominion, check out our in-depth review .
# 4. Fluxx
Fluxx is probably one of the most random games I’ve ever played. The rules are quite easy to start and can continue with the game.
The only rules in the game are:
- Draw 1 card
- Play 1 card
That's it. It’s impossible to win and that’s all you do. I sell a little, but he plays a lot more over time.
The cards you can play are:
Guardian cards
Holders are simply placed in front of you and you “control” these cards.
Goal cards
Goals are the conditions for winning that tell you how you can win the game. Most of the conditions for winning include control of certain Keeper cards. Compounds usually form something stupid or a word word. The Toast goal, for example, requires control of the Bread and Toaster Keeper cards to win.
Goals will be constantly changing, so a set of administrators who do nothing in the early stages of the game could be exactly what you will win with later.
Rules maps
Rule cards do exactly what they say. They change or add rules to the game. This can get out of hand very quickly. The original rules start with "draw a card and play the card". It can quickly turn into "draw 5 cards and then play all the cards in your hand". This is one of the games that, if the card is against the original rules, follows what is written on it. Eventually, it turns into madness very quickly.
Action cards
These give you a one-time bonus or attack on another player and could really be anything. The game is so random that it is usually good, but sometimes you can also accidentally injure yourself.
Creeper cards
Climbing tickets are bad. They prevent you from winning the game ... unless it is (there is an exception to the rule in the game). In our previous case, if you have a Toast goal and have both Bread and Toaster in the game, but you also have a Creeper card in front of you, you won’t win the game until you get rid of Creeper somehow.
This can be very distracting, but you’ll see some goals on each board that require you to have Creeper to win the game, so you never know what’s going to happen again.
- For 2 to 5 players
- 5 to 30 minutes playback
- For those over 8 years old
Advantages:
- It is extremely portable. The entire game is equivalent to the size of 2 standard playing cards.
- it's easy to learn and friends who aren't gamers like it.
- Whatever your opinion, there is probably a version of Fluxx for you.
Weaknesses:
- Part of the fun is that even though it’s a small portable game, it can quickly devour table space when you have a huge amount of rules at your disposal.
- Games can sometimes drag on for quite a while if you’re unlucky.
- If you’re looking for a serious strategically difficult game, then this is not it.
# 5. Competitors for Catan
Bryan and I love the world of Catan Island . Catana contestants scratch us when we don’t have enough people to play the regular version or when we’re on the go.
In Rivals for Catan, each player will start with the standard setting. Your play area will be presented with square tiles that will create your starting points and surrounding resources. Each player is given a hand of one resource card that surrounds their starting places.
As this is a simplified version of the card game, there are no resource cards. Instead, the resource tiles have resource images at the edges. Each square tile has 0, 1, 2 and 3 sources, one on each side. An image-free page is the default homepage that faces you, meaning you don't currently have resources of this type.
For example:
Let's look at the forest tile. You will start the game with the blank side facing you, which means you have no wood. In the middle is a picture of cubes with two dots. So if in the production phase of cylinder 2, the tile would be rotated so that one wood was facing you, which means you have one wood in stock. If you use this wood later, rotate it back to the empty space, which means the wood is no longer available.
The next difference you’ll see is that there are event tickets and extra dice . This is what adds some extra complexity to the game. As your cities expand, you will get a variety of options for what can be built and what resources you will have available. It’s a bit different from the regular Catan, but all the elements are there and it was a lot of fun to play cards for two.
- STRATEGIC CARD GAME: Create your domain to best suit your competitor. Rivals ...
- FUN ACTION CARD: Use gold, resource combinations and ...
- RIVALS FOR KATAN OFFERS MORE QUOTATIONS: Continue exploring ...
Advantages:
- It still feels like a Catan game. Some other Catan spinoffs have some weird mechanics and feel like their own game with Catan elements. Competitors still give me the feeling of Catan when we’re just two and I don’t seem to be dealing with home rules for two players.
- Some really cool extensions to that branch outside of medieval darkness.
Weaknesses:
- It needs a little more table space to play than some of the other games on this list.
# 6. Monster Boss
Instead of playing as a hero, the monster boss puts you in the shoes of the villains. All those hidden rooms, selected locks, broken dishes and treasure behind closed doors ... have you ever stopped and thought you might break into someone?
You will be able to take control of (you guessed it) the boss at the end of the dungeon. You will have to build rooms and make as deadly as possible killing the “heroes” coming to your dungeon. The first player to reach 10 or the last to stand wins.
Boss Monster always strikes me with nostalgia . I grew up playing a number of NES and SNES video games, and the art and design of Boss Monster was shaped after that period of video play .
Boss Monster works pretty well as a dueling card game. In fact, I prefer only a few players. To lure adventurers into your dungeon , you have to build rooms with the desired value, and with too many players, it becomes tedious to keep track of everything. It even works pretty well on the go. I leave all the chips behind and follow with the help of a pen and paper.
Would you like to be a boss? Check out our in-depth review of Boss Monster here .
- For 2-4 players
- The play takes about 20 minutes
- Playing cards to build a dungeon
Advantages:
- Great artwork inspired by retro video games.
- It works really well as a two-color game.
- Tone extensions to keep this fun going.
Weaknesses:
- Does it require you to record something by hand. Boss Monster also has a Steam version available (Personally, I prefer the digital version).
# 7. Jaipur
My kingdom for the camel. Work hard, earn more than your opponent and become the official trader of the Maharaja.
A card game for two seasonal dealers! And who can resist a game that starts with, “My Kingdom for the Camel”? Of course not us.
Jaipur is a city in northern India, an important trading center in the region. Each player becomes a local dealer and tries to acquire the goods and sell them at the best available price. Earn the most rupees from your deals to win. Of course, it's not that simple. You will have to master the art of camel management (to transport products) while striving to outperform the competition as you attract the attention of the Maharaja to choose you as his personal trader.
Components of Jaipur
The deck consists of 44 cards for goods and 11 cards for camels. There are also 38 tokens for merchandise that you will gain by selling merchandise. The pictures match the cards, so it’s easy to figure out what matches. Also included are a range of bonus tokens for selling goods, a Camel bonus token for the largest herd, and Seal of Excellence tokens for gaining Maharaja’s favor.
Winning condition
Jaipur is a fast-paced card game, a mix of tactics, risk and luck. The game is based on the mechanics of collecting and managing hands. You will win Jaipur when you secure their second seal of excellence, so basically the game uses the condition for the best of three wins.
He points to the first person who can explain a dead panda to me.
- SUBTLE TRADING GAME: In Jaipur, players take on the role of two ...
- STRATEGIC GAME: Collect and exchange goods in the market, then sell ...
- TWO PLAYERS COMPETITIVE GAME: Sell your opponent to win ...
Advantages:
- Very accessible: rules for easy acceptance, very few explanations.
- Vibrant and colorful works of art.
- Also available as a computer game on Steam.
Weaknesses:
- It is characterized by a considerable degree of happiness.
- Scoring is a bit difficult.
- Small and compact, but tokens are complicated to travel.
# 8. Morels
Morels is at its heart a collective game with some intricate features. How can you carry mushrooms without baskets? How can you cook mushrooms without a pan, butter or spices? These additions create new opportunities that require some planning and strategic thinking, not just collecting ‘shrows’.
In Morels, players take on the role of mushroom pickers, collecting sets of mushroom card types. Once the players collect them, they can sell them for cash or cook them for points. Some species of mushrooms are common, while others are rare, so the possibilities of picking them are limited. This creates considerable competition with the opponent in collecting the most valuable varieties, while forcing you to plan ahead to maximize the usefulness of your turns.
We love this silly but obviously strategic mushroom match. This is a great game for two players with the addition of becoming a mushroom expert by the end.
Who thought mushrooms could be so exciting?
- 2 players
- 30 minutes
- Age 10+
Advantages:
- Simple and relaxed gameplay with lots of unique options.
- It’s not terribly aggressive for a two-player game.
- Very portable.
- An impressive work of art.
Weaknesses:
- It includes some luck, especially in the night mushroom ingredient.
- Less direct interaction with the opponent.
# 9. Lost Places: A card game
Research teams are equipped and ready for their adventures to find five forgotten places. Who will lead the way to fantastic discoveries?
As far as I can remember, I wanted Indiana Jones . Who am I kidding? I still want to be Indiana Jones.
Lost Cities is a simple card game for two players and one of the older games on the list. Don’t be intimidated by this, but this game is still fun! Lost Places is easy to pick up and play and custom made for two players, full of adventurous and exploratory joy that stems only from an amazing new discovery.
In Lost Cities, players become adventurers trying to succeed on up to five expeditions. Place the appropriate cards in ascending order to progress. With investment cards, you will double, triple, and quadruple your earnings. And watch out! Starting an expedition costs a point and you may not be reimbursed! Doom!
Points are awarded based on how far the players make their way. Each step earns more points than the one before it, and the first three steps earn negative points. Along the way, players can increase points by searching for items, winning points, and shortcuts ahead. The player with the most points wins at the end of the game! (There's a shocker.)
No matter how the rounds go, the inevitable conclusion is that the loser sweeps the cards, shuffles the pile, and asks, "Are you ready to play again?"
- Two researchers embark on research trips to remote corners ...
- Explore the Himalayan mountains, the Central American rainforest, ...
- Expeditionary routes are being formed and researchers are earning points
Advantages:
- The rules are easy to adopt, very little clarification is required.
- Quick installation.
- Few components are great for travel.
- There is also a version on Steam!
Weaknesses:
- Like Jaipur, scoring is a bit tricky.
- It is characterized by a considerable degree of happiness.
# 10. Lord of the Rings: A card game
I am a huge Lord of the Rings nerd. For proof, you only need to look at the fairy tattoo on my back and Tolkien’s initials tattooed on my arm. As a child, I tried to learn the languages of Middle-earth and created Silmarillion glossaries while reading . I ... nerds.
Every game that includes Tolkien’s world is a winner in my book.
What is it about
In Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, players choose three heroes and a deck of cards full of allies to join forces and fight Sauron, represented by the "meeting deck". Players can also choose between completing tasks to advance under a scenario in a more aggressive campaign or to maintain a defensive mode and defeat enemies when they arrive.
He is both a card player and a deck builder. The goal of the game is to complete a series of search phases before your threat reaches fifty. You need to decide how you are going to use each of your characters, as you (mostly) can only use them once per lap.
Each player chooses a hero who will grow in ability with the help of his bullet. Areas are leadership, science, tactics and spirit. The rounds take place in a series of phases. You will get a resource on your site and draw a map. The following steps include:
- Planning phase
- Search phase
- Travel phase
- Meeting phase
- Color phase
Once the fight is resolved, the danger level increases by one and the first player marks the transition to the next player.
The game combines a wonderful mix of mechanics and themed elements. He has stood the test of time and now has an impressive set of cards to play with. Like books, narrative and now it plays here more as a journey than a goal; more about trial and error than about victories and defeats. Without a doubt, this game is a place to rave about your imagination.
- COOPERATIVE ADVENTURE GAME: This epic card game puts players in ...
- START YOUR JOURNEY: The core contains 226 cards that you can ...
- DESIGN YOUR WISH: Build a party from a set of 12 hero cards ...
Advantages:
- Exceptional works of art on maps.
- He lives by the epic theme of The Lord of the Rings .
- Lots of themed fantasy extensions like Hobbits, Dwarves, Gondor and Rohan.
- Also available as a computer game on Steam!
Weaknesses:
- Mechanics more complex than others on this list. Slightly harder for a newcomer to pick up and play right away.
- It is not portable and actually requires a lot of desk space.
Wrap-Up
Sometimes it’s hard to put together an entire gaming group. People move away, they have conflicting schedules, they are swallowed up by the storm. Things happen, so it’s good that there are a lot of options for two players.
We travel a lot and although not every game on this list is travel-friendly, card games are generally easy to take with you. We got far from Uno, Speed and War. Speaking of travel ... while on the road , we saw the Kitten Blast in gaming cafes everywhere.
This list is by no means exhaustive. We’ve picked out some of the best two-player card games we’ve personally played together with Par , and there are a lot of great games we haven’t (yet played).
We hope you enjoyed our list of the best two-card card games! What are your favorite card games for two players? Drop a comment below. We want to hear your thoughts.
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