Table for two: a trio of two-player games

As a gaming couple, we are always on the lookout for good two-player games. Granted, many multiplayer games work perfectly well with two, but more often than not they are designed with a larger group of players in mind.

We recently picked up a few new two-player games:

Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion is for the most part a re-skin of Cold War: CIA vs. KGB, and an entry into an emerging sub-category of games based on popular licensed properties and marketed more for their status as tie-in merchandise than for their game play. That's not necessarily a criticism, as it's easy to see that Star Wars is a much easier sell than 1960s global intrigue.

The game makes the transition from cold war to star war fairly easily, with a few minor changes and additions. Each round, an event card is played to the center of the table, representing an event from the original trilogy of Star Wars films such as "Duel on Cloud City" or "Locate the Rebel Base." Players secretly choose a strategy card to use for that round, which either gives them a boost towards winning the event, or an advantage in the following round. Players then attempt to score points for these events by playing cards that add up to a pre-determined value without going over.

Each player plays from their own deck of cards, which includes either the heroes or the villains of the Star Wars saga. These character cards have unique abilities that can be used when they are in play, and their value towards the total required to win the event is different depending on whether they have used their ability or not. Whether or not to use a character ability (and change your total) becomes one of the main strategic decisions in the game. Influence tokens, which are awarded upon winning an event and can be spent to re-use a card's ability, are another component that feeds the game's strategy and makes it different from Cold War.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Not quite as simple and elegant as Cold War, but the Star Wars theme will most likely have a much wider appeal.

• Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion official website
• Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion on BoardGameGeek

I'm a huge fan of Jurassic Park, Primeval, and all things dinosaur, so Raptor was a pretty easy sell for me. It's a two-player tactical movement game in which one player controls a team of scientists trying to gather baby velociraptors for study, and the other player controls the raptors and their outraged mother.

The board is made up of 6 square tiles, each with a 9x9 grid of spaces, plus two 1x3 end tiles on each side. Each tile has a different pattern of empty spaces and obstacles, so the board will be different for each game. The game starts with the mother and 5 baby raptor figures on the board, one on each tile, and four scientist figures, two on either end of the board.

Each player has a deck of 9 cards, each with a number from 1 to 9 and an action that player can perform. Players start with a hand of 3 cards, from which they simultaneously choose and reveal one card, comparing the two. The player with the lower number performs the action listed on the card, which are things like hide in the jungle or scare the humans for the raptor player, and reinforcements or move by jeep for the scientist player. The player with the higher number gets a number of action points to spend equal to the difference between the two cards. Action points are spent to move and attack.

Not knowing for sure what you're going to be able to do each round is the key feature of the game, and strategy consists of trying to anticipate what your opponent is going to do based on the figures' placement on the board. It's got a nice balance of randomness and strategic decision making, with simple, intuitive rules.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) A nice mix of tactical movement and card-playing, and I love the dinosaurs vs. humans theme.

• Raptor official website
• Raptor on BoardGameGeek

Longhorn is another game we picked up on impulse based mainly on the genre. In this case, the wild west theme is largely tacked on, and the game itself is pretty abstract.

The board consists of 9 tiles, each with an effect and a random number of cows of different colors on it. There is a single pawn which represents both players. On each player's turn, that player takes all the cows of one color from the tile he is on, and then moves the pawn a number of spaces equal to the number of cows taken. Then it's the other player's turn to take cows an move the pawn. If a player takes the last cow from a tile, that tile's effect is resolved, with different effects including things like taking cows from adjacent spaces or the other player, getting extra points at the end of the game, or having to put cows you've taken back on the board.

It sounds simple, but as usual there is a bit more to it. The pawn can never be moved to an empty tile, and if there are no populated tiles to move to, the game ends. Cows are worth points based on the number of cows of that color still on the board at the end of the game, which means there is quite a bit of strategy involved in deciding which cows to take, and where to move the pawn so that your opponent's choices are limited.

It is interesting to note that Raptor and Longhorn are both by the same designer, Bruno Cathala (Raptor was co-designed by Bruno Faidutti).

Rating: 2 (out of 5) It's almost more of a puzzle than a game, and its one of the few games that we strongly disagree on; I think it's okay, but Katherine finds it really uninteresting.

• Longhorn official website
• Longhorn on BoardGameGeek

Check out some of the other two player games we've reviewed.

Legendary: A Predator Deck Building Game -- it came from another planet for the thrill of deck building

Upper Deck's Legendary series of deck building games is proving to be a pretty versatile game system. My experience with the Marvel superhero version is limited, but it seems to reflect the idea of a big super team battle very well. Legendary Encounters: an Alien Deck Building Game absolutely nails the feel of the Alien franchise, with the different scenarios even allowing for the differences in tone between the four films.

Legendary Encounters: A Predator Deck Building Game is another success for the series. It manages not to be just a simple re-skin of the Alien version, but its own game with a tone that is in line with the first two Predator films. It's really two games in one: players can choose to play a fully cooperative version as the humans in their struggle to survive the Predator's hunting expedition, or they can play a competitive game as Predators, seeing who can hunt the most humans and occasionally getting into duels with each other.

"Instead of complaining, maybe you should help."

The cooperative version is arguably more difficult to win than any of the Alien scenarios. There is a much greater emphasis on teamwork, with many cards that are only effective when played in coordination with the other players. It calls to mind the scene in the first Predator film where Dutch and his crew are setting traps for the Predator, and even naysayer Dillon and prisoner Anna are drafted to help. The idea of military camaraderie is further reinforced by cards that encourage players to draft a variety of different cards rather than focusing only on cards associated with a particular character.

In the competitive version, players get to play as Predators carving a path of destruction through either the jungles of Central America or the streets of Los Angeles. It manages to be recognizably the same game but also completely different. Game play is mainly focused on hunting human characters, beginning with no-name thugs and minions and working your way up to the main characters from the films, with the game ending once someone has defeated either Arnold Schwarzenegger's character from the first film, or Danny Glover's from the second.

Each kill is worth honor points, with bonuses for heavily armed characters or disarming traps. Additionally, several cards allow the players' Predators to duel, swiping away at one another in an attempt to directly knock out the competition. An advanced game variant adds Test cards which award extra points for meeting certain conditions such as healing damage or wiping out multiple humans in a single turn, and Challenge cards that give each player a personal goal to work towards (other than killing everything in sight).

It's clear that the game's developers put a lot of thought into making this game feel uniquely like the Predator films, while at the same time fitting it into the established rules framework of the Legendary series, and I think they succeeded admirably.

The game can be freely mixed with Legendary Encounters: an Alien Deck Building Game, allowing the characters from Predator to jump into the Alien scenarios, and vice versa. It's even easy to mix different scenario elements: imagine a South American jungle crawling with Aliens, or Predators descending on the doomed colony from the second Alien film.

This mix and match is definitely part of the fun of having multiple games with different licensed properties using the same game system. The next two announced games in the series are Firefly and Big Trouble in Little China. Now imagine the Serenity crew stumbling across a derelict ship full of Aliens, or Jack Burton going up against the Predator...

Rating: 5 (out of 5) Another terrific game in the series, it manages to be its own game while fitting seamlessly in with what has gone before.

• Legendary Encounters: a Predator Deck Building Game official website
• Legendary Encounters: a Predator Deck Building Game on BoardGameGeek

Chew: Cases of the FDA -- missing the point

Games based on pre-existing properties such as movies, TV shows, or books can be a mixed bag to say the least. More often than not, the point of a licensed game is to cash in on the popularity it's based on, which tends to result in a lot of mediocre games with "pasted on" themes, such as Doctor Who: the Game of Time and Space or Game of Thrones: Westeros Intrigue. However, occasionally a licensed property will fall into the hands of a game publisher who understands and cares about the material, and you get Firefly: the Game or the Star Trek Customizable Card Game.

Chew: Cases of the FDA, a card game based on the comic book by John Layman and Rob Guillory, falls somewhere in the middle, but it leans more towards the "pasted on theme" end of the spectrum.

The comic book is quite brilliant. It's about a world where chicken has been declared illegal, the FDA operates like the FBI or DEA, and there are numerous characters with food-related supernatural powers, such as the main character, Tony Chu, an FDA agent who can tell the history of any object by eating it.

The designers of the game chose to focus on the criminal investigation aspect of the comic, which is by far the least interesting thing about the story. Players start with a crime card and a suspect card, and throughout the game they are required to play a number of clue cards between the two by matching color patterns on the edges of the cards. Players also have a hand of investigation cards which can be played for fairly standard game effects such as drawing extra cards or stealing them from your opponents.

It's not a bad game, it just doesn't reflect any of the outrageous humor or bizarre plot elements that make the comic book great. Other than images from the comics on the cards, and an ill-conceived optional variant that requires players to take a drink or eat something unpleasant as a payment for playing certain cards, it could just as easily be a generic crime investigation game.

The most amusing thing about the game is the bag of miniature Chogs (frog-chicken hybrids that feature prominently in the comic) that are used as currency.

Rating: 2 (out of 5) An unremarkable, overpackaged game, and a missed opportunity to do something fun with a unique property.

• Chew: Cases of the FDA official website
• Chew: Cases of the FDA on BoardGameGeek

Apex Therapod Deck Building Game: not for vegetarians

Apex: Therapod Deck-Building Game is a game about dinosaurs eating other dinosaurs, designed with a very specific audience in mind: solo gamers. It's not exclusively a solitaire game (it can be played with as many as 8), but there is very little direct player interaction, and the game is essentially a race to see who can take down the most fearsome dinosaurs before the inevitable asteroid strike.

That said, it is an immensely enjoyable and challenging game, with mechanics that, while fairly complex, run pretty smoothly and fit the theme extremely well. And the artwork on the cards is fantastic.

Each player chooses a species of carnivorous dinosaur to play, with choices ranging from classic favorites like Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptor to lesser known beasts such as Sarcosuchus (a giant prehistoric crocodile). Each species plays somewhat differently, with their own strategies, strengths and weaknesses. Like most deck building games, each player starts with a relatively weak deck of cards, in this case eggs, hatchlings, and carcasses. Each player has their own unique Apex deck of stronger versions of their particular dinosaur species, cards which must be purchased over the course of the game.

The game starts with a row of cards called the game trail representing prey, and another representing evolutionary advances. Game play consists of playing out cards to hunt prey from the prey deck, and then spending the points gained to buy better cards for your deck, either general evolutionary advances from the table, or specific apex cards from your apex deck, which are made available by playing egg cards. The goal is to populate your deck with stronger cards, enabling you to hunt larger prey and eventually fight the boss dinosaurs and their minions, that are shuffled into the hunt deck.

At the start of the game, a certain number of boss dinosaurs and their minions are shuffled into the deck of prey, so that they appear randomly throughout the game. When a boss appears, all the other prey scatter (are discarded), and the clash of the titans commences. You have to play a lot of high-value cards over multiple rounds to have a hope of beating a boss, and failure results in trauma cards which are added to your deck and produce negative effects when drawn.

Much like the age of the dinosaurs, Apex has a built-in time limit in the form of a deck of environment cards representing tropical storms, droughts, dinosaur stampedes, and the Asteroid Strike and Extinction cards that signal the end of the game. Players score points based on the amount of prey they have consumed, but no player can win the game unless they've defeated at least one boss monster.

There is a lot going on, but it stops short of being overly complicated. The flow of turns and rounds is pretty smooth once you get accustomed to it. There's a brilliant press-your-luck ambush mechanic that allows you to set aside cards from your hand for later use, but forces you to place an Alert card in your discard pile where it will eventually get reshuffled into your deck. If you draw the Alert before you've played your ambush cards, they are discarded without effect and certain effects on cards in the game trail will trigger. It's a great idea that really translates the idea of an ambush predator coldly observing its prey before striking.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) An extremely well-designed game with a lot of deep, complex, and thematic game play, and gorgeous artwork.

• Apex: Therapod Deck-Building Game official website
• Apex: Therapod Deck-Building Game on BoardGameGeek.com

Relic Expedition: treasure hunting in style

My decision to buy Relic Expedition was based almost entirely on its graphic design. Normally I try to try out a game, or at least read some reviews, before buying, but in this case an ad included in the box for Lanterns: the Harvest Festival and a quick look at a demo copy at my local game store was all it took.

Granted, the game's 1930s adventure theme is one of my favorites (see Fortune and Glory), but beyond that, I found its typography, iconography, and color palette to be very appealing. Imagine my relief when it turned out to be a pretty good game, too.

Players race to explore the jungle and be the first to leave with the right combination of relics. The jungle is made up of random tiles that are placed as the players move; some tiles reveal relics or villages, while others unleash pits of quicksand or wild animals ranging from panthers that send you back to base camp, to mischievous monkeys that steal random items from your inventory.

Inventory management is a major part of the game. Each player can hold eight items, so early on it's easy to load up with helpful equipment such as machetes to cut through the jungle, bullwhips or vines to swing over quicksand, or bananas to distract those pesky monkeys, but eventually all that equipment has to give way to make room for relics. It calls to mind the greedy explorer who leaves all the food behind so he can smuggle out gold and jewels.

Deciding which relics to pick up is a crucial part of the game's strategy, since each player needs to collect a particular combination. In the base game it's either four of the same color, or four of the same type, but an expansion adds cards which give each player a more specific goal. So as you're wandering the jungle picking up relics, you have to decide which pattern you're going to go for, but also have the flexibility to change based on what you're finding. Every relic you carry means discarding a piece of equipment, which can lead to some agonizing decisions since most of the equipment either lets you move through the jungle more quickly, or avoid the wild animals which are the game's main obstacles.

The animals are easily the game's most charming components, consisting of meeples (wooden pieces in silhouette) of panthers, boars, snakes, and monkeys. Animals are placed on the board when certain jungle tiles come into play, and as part of their turn, each player rolls a die which allows the movement of all the animals of one type. Since the players control where the animals move, anyone who gets too far ahead will usually find themselves stalked by panthers or menaced by snakes.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) A delightful, if a bit simple, game with engaging game play and beautifully designed components.

• Relic Expedition official website
• Relic Expedition on BoardGameGeek.com

Lanterns: the Harvest Festival -- an oddly relaxing riot of color

Lanterns: the Harvest Festival is a simple, relaxing game in which players collect lantern cards of different colors by playing tiles, and trade different sets of lantern cards in for points. The playing pieces are lovely to look at, contributing to the serene nature of the game.

Tiles have a color on each side, and are played adjacent to one another in a common grid. You can play a tile anywhere, but if you match a colored side of your tile to one already in play, you get a lantern card of that color. In addition, you get a card for whatever colored tile side is facing you, and your opponents get a card for the colored edge, so a major aspect of the game play is paying attention to what cards you are giving your opponents, and trying not to give them anything too useful.

Some tiles have illustrated platforms in their center, and if you play a tile with a matching color adjacent to a tile with a platform, you get a favor token. These can be spent to trade a lantern card for one of another color, which is an important ability when you're trying to put sets of cards together to earn points.

Lantern cards are traded in for points in one of three possible combinations: four of the same color, 3 different pairs of the same color, or one each of seven different colors. Points are represented by tokens whose value gradually decreases as they are claimed, so the first player to cash in a set of four gets more points for it than the second player to do so, and so on.

Play proceeds until all the tiles have run out, after which players get one final turn to cash in their lanterns before the scores are added up.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) a light, pleasant game that's good for an evening with non-gamers, or when you're not up for something more complicated.

Lanterns: the Harvest Festival official website
Lanterns: the Harvest Festival on BoardGameGeek