The Best Board Games for Two That Also Scale Up - Paperwave #7

(Welcome to Paperwave: a free newsletter focused on board and card games, Lego, art books, and other cozy objects likely to spark joy with nerds).

The first modern board game I bought was a very clever, fast-playing two-player card game called Lost Cities, back in 2009. My partner and I played it dozens of times and it actually still gets pulled off the shelf on occasion.

But as I got deeper into the hobby I had a conundrum I think is probably pretty common: about 75% of our play time is 2-player, just my partner and I. But we also needed to have a collection of games good for 4+ players too, for the occasional opportunity to play with another couple or group.

The game that started it all for us. Image Credit

With limited shelf space (and funds!) I couldn’t separately collect games good for groups and games good for 2-player dueling; I had to build a collection of games that could pull double duty and do both. Games that played great with two, but still “scaled up” to larger playgroups smoothly and successfully - all in one box.

This is harder than you might think. Even many of the all-time greats make some sacrifices or trade offs when scaling player counts. I spent a lot of time weighing games that mostly work with two that are perfectly balanced for four players, or vice versa. 

If you’re in a similar boat, with one main Player Two but an occasional need to scale up, let me save you some time, research, and trial & error and share with you my personal picks for the best two-player games that also successfully scale up to larger player counts. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list! These are selections from my personal experience and game library - if there’s others you think fit the bill I’d love to see them in the comments!

Dominion

Scales up to: 4

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Dominion rapidly earned its place as a modern classic for a reason. Its central deck building mechanic - you all start with the same 10 starter cards and use those cards to buy, prune, and evolve your deck as you play each round - had a profound impact on board gaming that is still being felt today. It’s brilliant and just never gets old. 

Dominion does not have a huge amount of player interaction. You can insert “curse” cards into your opponent’s deck to slow them down, and you can buy out the cards your opponent wanted too (essentially competing for the same resources), but that’s more or less it. The game is in many ways a solitaire race. You’re sitting alongside each other, competing to build out the best deck first.

You’re going to quickly notice that recurring theme with many of the games on this list - often (but not always!) for a game to truly scale from 2 to 4+ players smoothly and evenly, there probably isn’t a ton of player interaction in that game to begin with. 

Carcassonne 

Scales up to: 4-5

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Caracassonne is probably our most-played board game of all time, with dozens upon dozens of games under our belts. First released in 2000(!), it’s one of the original tile laying/matching games and in my opinion has never been surpassed. 

Every turn is fast-playing. Every turn presents an interesting short-term choice with long-term implications that reverberate through the rest of the game. The constant risk-reward calculation is perfect.

One thing worth shouting out about Carcassonne in the context of games with scaling player counts: Caracassonne is a very rare case where the game takes the same amount of time to play with two as it takes with 4-5. The game ends when the last tile is laid, so the play clock is set by the number of tiles you’re using, not by the player count.

Tip: To drastically speed up play time, let players pre-draw their next tile at the end of their turn, so they can think about it when other players are going. Best house rule of all time.

Cartographers and Silver & Gold

Cartographers scales up to 10+ or more (seriously)

Silver & Gold scales up to 4

Silver & Gold on the left, Cartographers on the right.

Dominion and Carc saw loads of play in my household a decade ago. Cartographers and Silver & Gold are our most-played games over the last year.

Although very different in their specifics, both are similar in their broad strokes: you’re tasked with squeezing Tetris-like shapes onto your map as efficiently as possible to score points. Both have a very fun physical “play factor” - you’re drawing a map on real paper with pencil in Cartographers, and writing onto cards with marker in Silver & Gold. 

Silver and Gold is simpler and faster-playing - just 20 minutes or so. Cartographers is somewhat more complex and a bit lengthier, at about 40 minutes. But don’t be scared off by this comparison - I played Cartographers with a group of 10-year-olds and they all got it pretty easily. 

Cartographers earns a special mention for playing just as well with 2 as with 20. You’re mostly building up your own map as you play (the ‘simultaneous multiplayer solitaire’ I mentioned earlier) with one exception: you occasionally have to hand your map to the player next to you, who draws an enemy area onto it. So this works perfectly well at any player count. 

Alhambra

Scales up to: 3 (or 4)

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Alhambra is another tile-laying/matching game like Carcassonne, but you’re building up your own palace, instead of building out a shared map like you are on Carc. It has a clever drafting system for balancing who gets their first pick for the next tile they want to claim. 

It gets a special mention for being one of the only board games I’ve experienced that feels perfectly balanced for three players. It works well with two (adding a simple game-controlled phantom third player) and scales up to four smoothly, but three feels completely perfect. 

As a result of this somewhat-less-common balance, we end up playing Alhambra quite a bit when we have one parent or friend coming over. 

Cooperative Card Games

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My favorite flavor of tabletop game, as discussed in my solo games newsletter, are expandable card games with cooperative campaign gameplay. I collect five of them (good lord) to varying degrees of completion: Legendary Marvel, Arkham Horror: The Card Game, Aeon’s End, The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, and Marvel Champions.

We’ve mostly been focused on 2P games that scale up, but these deserve a shout-out as pitch-perfect two player experiences that successfully scale down to 1P play, as well, so they meet our requirement here for perfect 2P games that also give you more flexibility in your game library.

Legendary is excellent for up to four. Aeon’s End and Marvel Champions are perfect up to three, with four still working very well but starting to feel a little long.  LotR and Arkham have somewhat longer play times. They still work well mechanically with larger groups but the downtime can become a but much. 

Borderline Selections

I have a lot of games in my collection specifically because they support variable player counts that I really love, but that I don’t think quite earn a place in the main list above, including:

• Ticket to Ride

• Gloomhaven

• Aeon’s End

• Forbidden Island

• The Crew

• Sushi Go

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These games fall into two categories: games that support two, but require more players to truly get the full or best experience (Forbidden Island, The Crew, Sushi Go), or games that simply have too much downtime or the run time gets too long when playing with more with two players (Aeon’s End, Gloomhaven). 

If you’re reading this as a true buying guide, please note that these may not be commonly-held opinions. Gloomhaven has a legion of fans that played it 3P or 4P. But in my opinion it’s more fun and feels perfect at two - the game session gets long and you sit for too long with nothing to do at higher counts. 

Still - if your goal is to grow a flexible game collection, all of the above are high-quality games that support variable player counts respectably well.

Justin’s Pile of Shame

In what looks like it may become a tradition in these newsletters, I want to call out a few options here for games very popular with two players, but capable of scaling up, that I haven’t yet had a chance to try and can’t yet personally vouch for:

• Casual, avian-themed engine builder Wingspan is very popular at 2-4.

• I’ve played Pandemic several times but have not yet gone through any of the Pandemic Legacy campaigns at any player counts.

• Public opinion of Terraforming Mars, which has always been high, just keeps climbing. 

• Traditional Eurogame Great Western Trail is by all accounts a much better game than its generic theme would indicate.

• Spirit Island, a challenging and complex co-op game, is well known for supporting 1-4 players well.

• Viking village builder A Feast for Odin.

• Critter village builder Everdell.

• Villager village builder Villagers.

Any board games in your collection you’ve found flexible enough to work perfectly with two and up? When buying a game do you care about how many player counts it supports well? I’d love to read your comments with more suggestions.