Gaming With Two - Part 1

 

One Is the Loneliest Number...

*Insert obligatory 3 Dog Night song here*

As someone who regularly plays games solo, the recent explosion of solo modes that has become available in the market is something that I truly appreciate. It allows me to play my favorite games in an official (and sometimes unofficial) capacity at any time that I want to, especially in the times that I'm not able to play games with my beautiful, clever and often perplexing wife. It's nice being able to play games, but there's also something that gets lost in that solo play that I miss when I play alone.

I thoroughly enjoy solo games, and ones that are able to be played without the addition of another player are absolutely ones that I want to keep in my board game collection. Being able to pull out a solo game that I can finish in 30 minutes or less is nice because it allows me a quick diversion that doesn't require me to use the television for video games or get heavily involved in a television show. It's also usually a good mental puzzle for me to challenge myself during the evening and allows me to play it late into the night, far after my family has gone to bed.

However, I find that I'm an extremely social person and I have a great need to connect with and hang out with other people. This has only been exacerbated by the pandemic over the last few years and although I enjoy a good solo gaming session, I still find myself needing to spend time with other people. As a massive extrovert, the pandemic was extremely difficult for me as my social energy battery just plummeted during that time. I did enjoy time virtually with others, but found that it wasn't the same as meeting someone in person. I'm glad that things are (slowly) getting back to normal and despite ongoing concerns with the virus, we're able to have more regular meetups with people.

Two Is A Magic Number

In space, everyone can hear you clank!

For some time now, I have been playing games with my wife Sarah. She and I just celebrated our anniversary on Wednesday of last week and we decided that we were going to commemorate the day by picking up a game (or a few expansions) at a local board game shop. They sell all of their inventory for about 20-30% off MSRP and I had been wanting to take Sarah to the shop to show her what was available.

Over the years, we've celebrated our anniversary in different ways, but this last year we really started getting into regular board game plays together. As someone who has been actively building my collection in 2023, I managed to drag her into more plays of board games through sheer curiosity about what I was playing. We just had our second daughter in September of 2023 and with that, we had found that our time that we were able to go out was becoming less and less available. Instead of lamenting our lack of ability to venture forth into the world for some time (due to the chaos of attempting to get two kids ready and out of the house), we decided to double down on board games and playing them together.

This year for our anniversary, we wanted to do something special and after a really nice lunch, we decided to play a game of Clank! In! Space!: A Deck-Building Adventure. It was a nice diversion and after we had finished our game, we packed up our youngest and went to the local board game shop that I had found a few months prior to peruse their selection. Since Sarah and I had been playing a bunch of Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure in the last month or so (I snagged both games for about $50 total used), we were wanting to add a few expansions to the games since it had quickly become one of Sarah's favorite games to play.

As we walked into the store, I kept a close eye on Sarah, whose eyes bugged out at the large amount of inventory that the store had for board games. Previous visits to other local stores had not prepared her for the staggering amount of games that were available as most other stores had a large selection of tabletop RPG items (such as miniatures and the like), and a decent selection of board games, but nothing like the inventory of the shop we went to on Wednesday. I could tell that she was slightly overwhelmed at first, but as she started looking through the games, Sarah started pointing out games that she had either played, knew about, or wasn't really interested in. I was very proud since she was pointing out things that I hadn't told her about and yet she seemed to know about them already.

We perused the various games that were available and found that while there were some games that we would eventually like to pick up, there wasn't anything that really caught Sarah's eye about what she wanted to get to commemorate our anniversary. I wasn't really surprised since I had been extremely picky about my collection and I had curated a set of games that I new tailored to her preferences. And that was when we found the Clank! section.

A Study In Sarah

This is an older setup, but everything is still in our collection.

If you'll permit me to interrupt my story briefly for some further background on the next part of the story, this should help explain what got me so excited when it happened. There's some additional context for what I want to write, but it does require a bit of a dive into what makes Sarah tick, so I'm going to take a bit of a rabbit trail to explain some things.

Sarah is an extremely intelligent woman. She might downplay that, but she's really quick on the uptake when it comes to new games. Although it might take her a game to understand the mechanics of everything that is going on, she's really fast at developing strategies and presents a really significant challenge for me to play against since she and I think so differently about things. She will often see strategies and take moves that I haven't even thought of resulting in a win that comes (in my mind) completely out of nowhere.

Over the years that we have been playing games together, we have grown our collection from an initial set of intro games (Azul, Ticket to Ride, CATAN, and Splendor) to a collection that I would say is fairly respectable, sitting around 65 or so games (not including expansions). It's a bit smaller than I would like, but Sarah is extremely practical and wants to have space for our games versus just getting games willy-nilly and then attempting to find a place for them. I respect this and I attempt to keep my game purchasing to a minimum without involving her in the process. It's worked well for us and we've curated an excellent collection that is tailored towards each of our preferences with games.

Sarah's initial favorite game was Splendor and she loved the depth that it provided in just a simple box with the base game. I have wanted to expand it with the additional expansion, but we've never pulled the trigger on the expansion and while I'm not upset about this, I still would eventually like to add the expansion at a later date. Sarah has gotten to the point with the game that she and I are at about a 50/50 win ratio against one another. We have found several strategies that work for us and it becomes a bit of a chess match with each of us attempting to outthink one another while playing the game. I like Splendor, but it can be a bit light for my tastes at times when I want something deeper and more strategic.

Everdell is still one of her favorite games to play; expansions and all.

Insert Everdell. I had heard about it quite often here on BGG and wanted to get my hands on a copy of the game, but I was hesitant that the game would be a bit too heavy for Sarah to really enjoy. I had almost picked it up several times over the last few years, but I had stayed my hand, especially because the game itself was expensive and I wanted to get the deluxe version of the game because of the upgraded components. I will fully admit to being a dragon hoarding all the nice things for games and wanting only the best. I've said it in the past, but I'm a sucker for shiny upgraded things and I can't help myself. I'm a greedy slob. It's my hobby.

However, I hadn't really had a chance to play the game with Sarah, so when a friend offered to let me borrow his base copy of the game, I immediately jumped on the option and quickly brought it home with a gleam in my eye. I got it onto the table and while Sarah wasn't up for playing a game that night, I was able to get a solo play in and she was immediately interested, requesting that we play the next night. It's a strategy that I've pulled a few times in the past when I am trying to get her interested in a game: play the solo version on the table while she's busy watching television or getting ready for bed to pique her curiosity and offer to play the next day. Usually, Sarah is so intrigued that she'll carve out time the next night to play the game.

This worked with Everdell and upon playing the game, Sarah immediately wanted to play another game. Four games into the game over the course of three weeks convinced Sarah to get the game because she loved the resource management aspect of the game and the depth that it allowed for. Less than a month later and I had saved my shmekles to get the Everdell: The Complete Collection along with all the bits and bobs to add to our collection. When it arrived, Sarah gleefully watched me get everything punched and we have proceeded to play seven times in the last several months, quickly catapulting the game to the top of Sarah's "Favorites" list.

I was surprised that she was even open to playing each of the expansions and although we have two mini-expansions left to play, Everdell: Rugwort Pack and the Corrin Evertail cards, we've managed to play each expansion at least once (some several times). Sarah, to my surprise, liked the Everdell: Spirecrest expansion the most, especially since it allowed her to have even more resource management, utilizing the challenges of the weather implemented in the expansion to further challenge herself. I personally like Everdell: Newleaf the most (with Everdell: Mistwood being an extremely close second due to the solo mode added) due to the gameplay additions, so it surprised me that Sarah liked the added challenge of Spirecrest.

Clank!: A Secret-Hunter's Dream

"A secret is powerful when it is empty." – Umberto Eco

Feeling fairly proud of myself for finding a game that was both heavier and more involved than Splendor that Sarah like, I began my search to attempt to find something else that we could play when she didn't have enough brainpower to play Everdell. I attempted to introduce her to Apiary, but due to some poor timing, it just didn't click with her, despite having more of what she liked when playing Everdell. (We're going to give it another attempt because we think she might have been too tired to enjoy the game when I attempted to introduce it.)

Stumped, I didn't really have anything in mind that I could bring to the table that I thought that she would enjoy. I had several thoughts on the matter, but I wasn't really finding anything that really seemed to interest her. I've detailed my journey to purchase Clank! in a past blog post, so I will not go in depth here about it. It was extremely surprising to me however, when I brought the game home and after the initial play of the game, Sarah noted that she absolutely loved the game.

I knew that she had enjoyed our plays of The Quacks of Quedlinburg, but the love of Clank! immediately off the cuff of playing it for the first time surprised me. I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised in playing the game with Sarah as she had won the game on our initial play, which always helps improve her feelings of the game. I thought it might have been a bit much mechanically for her to enjoy on her first play, but she picked it up almost instantly (although there are a few questions about hand management that are still being resolved), and has only gotten better since we've played more.

I picked up the sci-fi version of the game shortly after and we looped it into our regular play sessions, interspersing plays of Clank! with it's sequel, Clank! In! Space!. We quickly logged 10 plays of both games in just over a month and it has become one of Sarah's favorite set of games to play at night because it's easy to set up and play. As we've delved further into the games, I found out that part of the reason that Sarah loves the games so much is the hidden secrets that are tucked away in various locations on the game board.

It's actually been a downfall of hers that we've found in the last few games, resulting in her being trapped in the depths (both in original and space) when the final attack is pulled. Her curiosity is to the point where she will actively go out of her way to see what a secret is, even if it means that she has to take an extra turn to do so. It's actually gotten to a point where Sarah and I joke about it as there have been at least three separate times where she's been burned by her curiosity.

Interestingly enough, that's also what has drawn her into the game so much. The unknown secrets that lay out on the board for anyone to find and discover offer a tantalizing reward for Sarah, one that often is a bit much for her to avoid the temptation of. While she loves the push-your-luck element of the game, she moreso enjoys the discovery and resolution of determining what a secret is. Even to the point where she will flip over each secret token left at the end of the game once we've finished to see what they were. It's extremely endearing and shows me that even after nine years of marriage, there's still hidden components to Sarah that I've yet to learn about.

Anniversary Haul

We snagged all of this for just over $50 on Wednesday.

Returning to the story of last Wednesday, I knew immediately that when we came across the section for Clank! that we were going to pick up at least one expansion for our games. After multiple plays of the games through the last month or so, we were feeling like it was time to expand the current boards we were playing on as we wanted a little bit of variety to play on and I had done my research on what various expansions to pick up.

We found that there were multiple expansions available for us to purchase at the shop, including the Expeditions (Clank! Expeditions: Gold and Silk and Clank! Expeditions: Temple of the Ape Lords) for the base game, as well as a copy of Clank! In! Space!: Cyber Station 11 and Clank! In! Space! Adventures: Pulsarcade. I unfortunately didn't see a copy of the Clank!: Adventuring Party expansion as that was my number one pick to add to our game, but it was not available at the store. I knew that I wanted to pick up both Expedition expansions, not only because of the cool boards, but also the little minis that you could play with the base game as well (they don't add any changes aside from looking cool!).

After some discussion, we decided on getting one of the expansions for Clank! (Temple of the Ape Lords) and one expansion for Clank! In! Space! (Cyber Station 11). It did bother me that we were passing on another board with Gold and Silk, but I was happy that we were getting not one, but two separate expansions to build our Clank! collection. Once we brought the games to the checkout, that quickly changed when we found out the price for each was significantly under MSRP. I grabbed Gold and Silk immediately to add to our purchases and Sarah and I happily drove home to enjoy our purchases after we grabbed our daughter from her grandparents.

When we finally were able to get both of our daughters down for bed, we eagerly punched out the new expansions and sleeved the cards for Cyber Station 11 (I had some extras so it worked out very nicely). We agreed that we wouldn't have time to play all five of our new potential options and just decided to play the Temple of the Ape Lords board, using the mini-campaign included in the rules to play both sides of the board. It resulted in a very late night for both Sarah and I, but after we sat back from completing both sides of the board, we agreed that our purchases had been good ones.

This prompted a discussion between the two of us where we determined that for our anniversary going forward, we would make it a tradition to pick up a new expansion or board game specifically to celebrate another year together. It's has been a long journey together, but we both agreed that board games had become an essential part of our relationship, especially in bringing us closer together. We have enjoyed our time together significantly and especially over the last year as we've played at least once or twice a week together, we have found that we enjoy ourselves more often and appreciate how games bring us together.

While the addition of several new expansions resulted in me vacating the original inserts from both Clank and it's spacey counterpart, I do appreciate how it will serve as a reminder of our love for one another and how much fun we have together. I'm planning on getting an insert (Folded Space for the win) for the games which will help with storage in the future, but for now, I'm just sitting back and appreciating the enjoyment of playing with my best friend.

Sarah suggested that I make this a series of posts about games and how they work with two players, especially since there are many games out there that don't have a good balance with lower or higher player counts. This is my first one of the posts and I can say without a doubt that Clank! works well with anywhere from 1-4 players (I know that there's a 5-6 player expansion, but I've only played 1, 3 and 4 players). It's a really fun game to play with my wife and we definitely will be enjoying the game for years to come.

Give me your thoughts: Do you play games with your partner/spouse/good friend regularly? What kind of games do you find that they enjoy and have you built a collection around that idea of sharing games with them? Do you have any thoughts about the Clank! games and their expansions? Which ones do you enjoy the most? I personally am a big fan of the Expeditions expansions and I look forward to playing Cyber Station 11, but I'm curious what you think are the best ones. I'm probably going to pick up everything (including Catacombs and Legacy) eventually, but I would be curious to hear your thoughts on them.

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*Originally posted on BoardGameGeek on 17/4/2024*