Welcome to Meeple to Meeple uniting players around the world, a 30 minute exploration of PJ and Gareth 4 game Experience Syndrome across both sides of the Atlantic. Each episode they share their thoughts and opinions on the World War games, including their favorite themes, games, hot topics, and much, much more. Hey guys, welcome again. It is episode 68. In honor of tomorrow being Valentine's Day, the title is Be My Valentine. We're going to talk about two player games that you should
play with your partner. As always, I'm PJ. And I'm Gareth. How are you Sir? I'm OK Valentine's Day tomorrow. So before we begin, I want to say, because you know I'm just too excited right now. Today's a great day. Today is a great day. What I love about this podcast is that we always broadcast on Tuesdays, which means today is Mardi Gras, Laissez Le Banton Roule to all my friends in the South, Happy Mardi Gras, everybody. Happy Mardi Gras.
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and we're going to get together with our loved ones. It's interesting because it's also Ash Wednesday. So it's a fasting day, but it's Valentine's Day, so it's like the day of love and the day of repentance. It's it's just it's interesting how the calendar works. Maybe we should do solo games for those who haven't got a partner. Oh. Oh dear, just realized this. For those of you who don't have a partner.
I'm going to pick my favorite solo game in a second and I'm going to sit here and think to add that at the end. OK, all right. So good point. The plan is 2 player games for you to play with, your loved one, your spouse, your partner on Valentine's Day. And Gareth. You're up first, Sir. I'm up first, so this is a new this is a new game to our collection. I say new. I think it might have been before Christmas, but this is Sky Team. Yeah. Which I'd still think it's quite hard to find.
I think the print run hasn't second print run hasn't hit hit the ground, but hit the ground taken off or landed maybe if we're talking about Sky Team. Hit the sky. So A2 player cooperative game where one of you is the pilot, the other is the copilot, and you're supposed to work together to land planes. Sounds easy, but here that you and Katie argued you. Can tell me you? Can tell me that story in a minute? Yeah. So it's purely 2 player. You've got components wise, it's really nice.
It's got a nice little dashboard. One player is seeing one side of the board. I guess it's got that landing the the wheels. The other person's got the flaps. You both roll your dice and you need to put those on the board. Trying to often like if both of you got to put one for like kind of the balance of the plane. So if somebody over you can't discuss, you can't discuss what you're going to do so or you can before you start playing. Once you roll the dice.
There's no discussion, so I put a four down, Carrie puts A5 slightly missed balance and we just turn the plane, not turn. We balance off to the left, of course, if you like that, the tilt. If the tilt, that's it, the tilt. If the tilt is not balanced by the time the runway arrives which is over maybe 6-7 rounds, then of course you're going to crash and you've got the speed.
So you've got yeah, that kind of how fast you go into again if you haven't slowed down enough by the time the plane gets to the runway, you overshoot or you ditch it into the land before the runway. So we played this game quite a few times even uneasy until until we actually succeeded and then yeah, you've got other planes to navigate out of the way and move them. It is really fun. Really good solid two player game.
Perfect Valentine's and you need you do need to work together but there obviously is a bit of luck with the dice. Yeah. Ours. You know you have coffee so you can mitigate. You can use coffee to mitigate. Are just dice rolls so it's definitely worth checking out plenty of what's the word So you play the first game and it's landing and then you open a rule book and you've you've got taken. I think it's taken off or it's what's the what'd you earn.
I believe it's called blank. You earn stuff, you. Get you get more stuff to do and. You land at different airports at different difficulties. Yeah, and the red and green. Sometimes they're really short, so worth worth checking out Sky Team 2023. Right. 2.05 out of 5 S Yeah, so PJ happens and it's 15 minutes. It's a quick game. You can play a couple of games. It could be even quicker. Wow, OK, Sky Team's a great game. I, however, do not believe it's
a good Valentine's Day game. Wait, I don't think it's a good Valentine's game because it has the potential of risking your relationship with your spouse. Katie and I played this several times. Like you, we played it four or five times and we will. She will not play it with me ever again. I see. I think it's it's the pilots. I wouldn't say it's not Valentine's Day. Clearly one of you is who is who is trying to run the game. She's mad at me. She's mad at me. I never, I could never do
anything right. The problem is you can't speak. So yeah, I did not go well. But then I played it with my friend David on a regular, regular night. He and I played it. And, you know, the first game didn't go very well because I was trying to teach it to him. He's like, let's play that again. And yeah, so I guess with my friend David, he and I can communicate well and work together. But with my wife. I'm not going to say a word. I'm not saying a word. I mean I just say go check it
out. It's a great two player game it. Is it is a great game? It'll be a good lesson in communication. Yeah, you've got to be able to communicate. I wouldn't play it on Valentine's and. I'm moving on. So we're going to move on to something a little bit more romantic, at least in theme anyway. And that's Paris. City of Lights. Beautiful tile placement game, two phases to the game. The first one is you're actually the beauty of the game, Where
this game really shines. Everyone hears me say this is that the box, the bottom of the box is the board in which you play. Love that. So you know it's kind of like like Boop, right? You flip the box over and it's. But in this case you just, you open the box lid, you take the components out and you play inside the box. You lay your tiles down in the first phase in order to try to you know match up shapes,
polyomnik shapes of your color. So in phase two, when you go lay tiles of buildings across Paris, you can only put them on your colored squares. And the purple was a share because it's like you're blue, I'm orange, and then purple we share and so we place our polyomino shaped buildings onto the tiles to build the city of Paris. And you score points when your buildings are erected or are illuminated by lamp light. Hence the City of Lights. Beautiful. It is beautiful.
There's a few little 3D the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe. There's a couple. It is really pretty. It really is. It's a lot of fun. We played it at Gen. Con 2021, then we got the expansion for it, which came with all the three-dimensional buildings. It's beautiful, just it's very pleasant. And you know, apparently Paris is the most romantic city in the world. So why not go lay tiles and build Paris City of Lights? It's about two out of five wait
30 minute play time. Yeah, very quick. Very popular #30 of of abstract games and Ball Game Geek. I see. I didn't know that. But it is. It is. It's worthy. Well rated, well rated. I like an abstract game. Well. You will love Paris City of Lights then. Excellent. Will carry like it? I don't. Know Sure. OK, I think Kiera would like it. She likes to abstract more kind of that whole placement thing. OK, I am going for the extreme.
So we've talked about games which are generally quite light as a two player game that me and Carrie would want to play on Valentine's Day. We've gone for the Evie Rosenberg Fields of. Oh, that's great. Which which in its basic game is one to two players that you can add a third player if you add in the expansion. But I'd say the the core game is good enough, but it is a 3.85 out of five. So if you don't understand complexity, 5 is the most insane amount of thinking and
understanding and strategy. Whereas the 3.85 is kind of a medium heavyweights game. So it's a bit more complex in
terms of thinking. You are a farmer in East Frisia and it's got flax and you've got to clear the land, you've got to build dikes it. Some people describe Fields of Isles as a sandbox worker placement because there are so many spaces to go, which everything from yeah, drying out the bogs, harvesting peats, creating more fields for your livestock, building buildings, developing your tools so you can do more things, better, better. Obviously there's livestock to
grow as well. If that wasn't enough, you've got to travel and prosper to neighbouring villages and finding buyers. There's multiple paths to victory with this one, but it is. It is one of Carrie's favorite games, so it is a delight to play. It doesn't hit the game table as often because the set up is a bit of a beast, but if you're after something a bit more meaty on Valentine's Day, I want to get into something a bit of a heavy.
I guess Euro then the fields of all would be my recommendation. 10 years old this year, 10 years old. Between now and two, I'll get play time. Have you got fields of all? We do. So this is a really interesting game. It's one of Katie and I's favorites, two player, but I I really enjoyed the story behind it. So E Frisia is in Germany run on the border with the Netherlands right? And it's it's on the coast of the the North Sea and it's where UE it's from I believe or.
Because the rule book is full of history and every component has got like a a story behind about how it comes it feeds in thematically. Yeah, I mean the history goes back to the Paleolithic times when man was just, you know, hunter gatherer hunting reindeers in the what is it, the Neolithic and the Mesolithic Age. And so it's got a, it's it's below sea level, which I identify with coming from South Louisiana, which you know, we we have levees to hold back the rivers and the lakes all the
time, same thing. And you're building levees to expand your farmland. So it is, it's definitely a great worker placement, 2 player game. Beautiful, beautiful. I I, I really enjoy it. But it's got a rich heritage and a rich story that I really enjoy. And yeah, good choice, good choice. So where you going next? So I'm going to go with another favorite of my wife and I's and that's patchwork. Now there is in fact a Valentine's Day reskin of patchwork.
So you you could play that on Valentine's Day, which would be very appropriate thematically, You know, Patrick's really cozy. That's a that seems to be. That is an adjective that we've been seeing used a lot to describe a lot of games recently across all the social media platforms. Cozy, right? It's been used to describe Mythwind and other games recently, so maybe I want to stay away from that. It's delightful. Two player only. As you know it's been around for
a while. You're laying polyomino tiles. Who doesn't like tile placement? Any listener? This show knows that it's my favorite mechanic, right? Because this is 10 years as well. This is 2014. Was this one? Was this one of the first? It probably wasn't polyomino games, but I seem to have made it. It may very. Well be certainly was around when that mechanic started to take off. So you you, you place all the tiles because you're you're
fashioning A quilt. Yeah. And you place all the tiles in a circle around the main board, which is like a track for your player count. And you have a board in front of you, so you're going to have use buttons as your currency to purchase tiles around the board. But you can only purchase amongst the first three of like the token. Here's a name for it.
I don't I'm not a quilter or sewing, so there's I think there's a term for it. But anyway and you can purchase those and place them on your board, which then forces you to move around the center board. But the tiles that you place on your quilt, the ones that have buttons printed on it. Yeah. When you cross the button on the middle board, you get more buttons, which is your currency to purchase more tiles. And so you want to try to fill up your quilt as much as possible.
You get negative points at the end of the game for vacant squares on your quilt. So you want to, you want to do that, You want to make sure you get buttons and you want to make sure that you, you know, I play that just today with Katie. It's pretty. First time, now it's really accessible. There's a there's a Halloween themed patchwork. There's an Americana themed patchwork. There's the basic patchwork. There's Valentine's Day. I'm sure there are others.
Valentine's was last year. Yeah, and then? We've upgraded our our buttons to to proper blue buttons. It's a lovely game, just to to add a little bit of enhancement to. Absolutely. You know it. You got to have real buttons because a lot more fun than little cardboard tokens. I get it. But yeah, yeah, so Patchwork is Patchwork's my number 22 player game for Valentine's Day. It's definitely going to hit our table. Actually, it hit our table today.
So most likely Paris is going to hit our table tomorrow on Valentine's Day proper, right? So yeah. Good choice, very good choice. And I've got some other other games I think I'd chat out that we would add to the list. Obviously we had patchwork, so you've covered that. I think what episode do we do? Two player games? Episode seven was it. Episode 7.
So we're going back. So if you want to hear some other two player games, certainly I again another game that both me and Carrie love is Targie, which we covered Episode 7, which is a nice worker placement, kind of putting two workers out. You draw a line and it's so
clever. The game that Carrie we enjoys playing but gets frustrated is Mister Jack, which is, which is the kind of hidden movement you're kind of trying to position yourself in. The lights is it's based on Jack the Ripper. So the Jack is trying to manipulate the other characters on the board so that he escapes. All the other characters got to find Jack and the lights are on or off. It's a really clever game.
So here's a question. What kind of message are you sending to your spouse if you want to play a game about Jack the Ripper on Valentine's Day? Just just be nice. It's a nice game. I think you're ever thinking it. Overthinking it? OK. Yeah, it's. A Jack. It's just a game. I wasn't having sort of a murder or anything, have we? Wow. But I mean, you know. That's what I got my list to ask you about 5. That's about insects, you know, is that is insects. OK. Insects. I think they're OK.
This is a game that you gave me. You gifted me a copy of this. Game copy over. Yeah, when when Diz came to stay with us back in September and we played it last, David and I played it Thursday night. We play like 3, maybe three or four games. It's so quick, so portable and so many and so many ways to play. So if you haven't played Hive, it's a two player. Insects. Yeah, you got grasshoppers, your spiders, ants, each player's got a bee, a queen bee.
And you just need to make sure that the other player doesn't surround your queen bee with with their with their insects. So it's a mixture of, I guess chessy kind of moves each each insect moves differently and you've got to say connected to the hive. So they all have to. You can't have breakaways. They all have to be attached all the time. That's a great description, yeah. Chess with Hexagon. Hexes. And they all move differently based on the insect. That's pretty.
On the hive moves, It's brilliant, it's genius and. Unlike unlike chess where you're trying to remove the king, you're trying to surround the queen. Around the queen. And sometimes you can trap yourself because you can look, you can put your because you've got to be connected to the queen. Right before you know it you trapped yourself for the queen.
So it's it's absolutely genius game and the other one I've got here would be Santorini which is an older game now but similar two players who are playing trying to build the the towers of Santorini up and down and not be landed on by the other player. So it's just trying to always keep out of the way, which is a very popular game as well. It looks. Great. Great for Instagram photographs. It is, but we sold it. Did she? Yeah, it is. It is. I'm going to be nice.
It's boring. It is so boring. Yeah, it's so boring. Even with all of the variation on the character cards, yeah. Yeah, it's just like there's so many better two player games that we would prefer to play and we're like, why even keep this? So we pitched. I'm going. To have to play that with you, so it's what we played. Maybe you'll see how boring it is too, and we'll sell that game. Never sell it. And the collection what? What else did you have on your list?
So I was going to talk about Far Away by Cherry Pick Games, but we did talk about it in episode 7. So that's another one. That's challenging because you know when you're on the same tile you can talk to one another, but when you leave, you can't, like in Sky News. So. You could get into a lot of trouble with that and and this is a, this is a type, this is a. It's not really a theme. It's not really a mechanic, you know. I love two player games just in
general. So there's there's tons of them out there. What do we play? We played so back by Pandasaurus games again. We talked about that in Episode 7. What else? What else did we What else we? I mean, there's so many two players. Star Wars Rebellion's Great. Yeah, it's on my list, but it's a. But it's a long game.
Yeah, I mean, fields have always short compared to what could be Star Wars Rebellion. Star Wars Rebellion is a great two player game, but it is not a good example of a Valentine's Day game for myself and my wife, especially with Valentine's being on Wednesday. So it's like, you know, you come home after work, do I want to sit down and play a three hour game from set up to finish? It's always War of the Ring. War of the Ring that's. I've not played it, but. 33 or fours hours. Yeah, yeah.
Yep, only one person can win. Hopefully. It's not. Absolutely. It's not the bad guys, which is what happened to me. Trying to look at my shelf on my. Yeah, I'm trying the other two other two player games. There's a nice abstract game called Show Shobu which is these wooden balls. Shobu, yeah. And black and white tokens. It's kind of, yeah, move around position, but each board you have to move independently.
That's why we picked that up in New York and it's been around the world with us. So what I've noticed about two player games just in general, right? And I'm going to, I'll just quickly rattle off some titles. The two player versions are better than their Big Brothers, right? So 7 Wonders Dual is a two player version of Seven Wonders. 7 Wonders is not the best game out there, but Seven Wonders Dual is very popular and we love it in our home. Yeah, Agricola all. Creatures. All creatures.
Big and small. Yeah. Something like that. Anyway, it's a two player version of Agricola. Now I can tell you that I despise Agricola and will not play it. We played Agricola Friday night. Yeah, well, you've. Lasted 4 years. Yeah, well, there's a reason. Why brilliant? No, it wasn't, because it took you 4. It's a good like an hour and a half. Like that, Yeah. But it took you four years to hit the table. There's a reason why it doesn't hit the table. It's. Just got too many games.
There's better games out there. It was really bad at it. I'd forgotten how hard it was. So it'll be in the table again next week because we were like, it's it's good, no? It's not what? Would you keep Have you got Caverna? No. I see. It's the problem. It's not even your genre games. No, we had the two player version of Caverna, which we love cave to cave. But the the two player, Agricola is so delightful.
You know, Agricola's got beautiful animals and animals are cool and I don't want to plant pumpkins and corn and oh, and by the way, if you feed your family, I can't feed mine because you took the spot, I mean. No, you haven't got right about that a Grricola. Man, yeah. We need more conflict in our lives. We have loads of conflict games, You Convocation Kong. We need more conflicts and upsetting people. Clearly OK, you need. Apparently. You know, it's funny you mention
that. Apparently so, yeah, Agricula is just so it's one of Yui's early games and he's gotten so much better in designing games. There's a reason. You know you get a wave to me as. Well, it's like the I wouldn't say it's wherever the 2012 or whatever, but there's a there's a second edition which has been OK streamlines. So A just celebrated. A. Just celebrated.
The box isn't it. Yeah, it's like a grickle of 15 because 15th anniversary or something took a look at that and said yeah, I'm not buying it. Yeah, I mean, someone sends me on on my post that they've got every spare card, every deck. We've just got the core game. You can't give me a copy of a grickle for free. Just. Yeah, and have it set up ready. What else do you have the two player games before we do a solo? A couple of solo games.
I've got a couple of solo games. Oh, right, Emo Tap Dual is another two player version that's better than it's bigger, rather it's it's great. I mean, you're basically offloading ships and scoring points for it. I had the I had the original game, yeah. So I mean emo tip is a. Emo tip is OK. Yeah, we sold it too because we got the two player version which is so much better. Yeah, that makes sense, you
know. Moving on solo, so for those are our friends and loved ones who do not have a partner or loved one at the time. Currently of their way. Or their way like. I've been for the last couple of years. But Yep. This year I'm not, so I've just gone through my solo games and I'm going to pick out three without really getting touch detail, so I think a really good one will be Final Girl. Maybe. Not sure it. Sticks to the theme of Valentine's Day and serial
killers. What other ones have I got on my list? We've got a friend, we've got a friend here in the US in our community who absolutely loves Final Girl. That Final girl is his favorite game. That it is supplanted Everdell as his favorite game. Wow. That is our our dear friend Jacob. Game with me under the Evertree. Under the Evertree. With my ex under the evertree. He confided in us that he was considering changing his handle on Instagram. He's a. Favorite final girl over
Everdale and I was like, I mean. Doing 2 accounts you. Could do that, too. I know he loves Final Girl, our good friend Mae Beasley. Ameri trash talk. She's a big fan of Final Girl. I'm Horrors, not my genre. Solo gaming is not really my thing, but it's. I've I've only got 1 box. I've got the core game and it is genius. There is so much expansion boxes and other stories. But the way you open both sides of the box, set it up and it does feel like a tense you know
horror film live. It's it's really clever. That's interesting very interesting. A game that we got, I got recently that it does play more, but I do agree probably plays best with one is Turing Machine. Oh yeah. Which is a logic, I guess a logic puzzle if you like. So I've having, I've been having
fun with that. So yeah, trying to crack the code using a real life analogue computer, Yeah, and what the one would I recommend under Falling Skies was my last one, which is kind of the space space Space Invaders kind of games, so. I have never played it, but here's the question. There was a there was a television show back in the 90s, maybe the maybe the aughts in the beginning of the 2000s called Falling Skies. Which was? Which is about alien invaders. I'm wondering if there's a
connection or that's. Just. Just coincidental. I've always wondered that about the game. I've never played it, but I I don't know. So if anyone knows, send us in the comments there at Instagram and be able to meeble. Or catch us on Spotify and let us know if there's a connection to the USA series Falling Skies. With the game under Falling Skies, maybe there is. Maybe you've got. Any sort of games before we wrap up the episode? I I I don't. I don't have any solo games.
There are games that I I've played solo that I enjoy and we've talked about them before. But yeah, I've got I've got nothing. You've. Got nothing, You've got nothing. I'm not a solo gamer, so. I think the game that we'll play on Valentine's but won't be a two player game will we will be two players is that we have picked up Newton which if anyone was listening to maybe two episodes two episodes ago. We're talking about our our favorite games by. That was a Darwin.
'S Journey episode, wasn't it? And then we talked about other games by the designers, and then you said. 66 We talked about Darwin's journey and we discovered that Newton is similar and by the same designers. And now let's all of those designers and when they are games that I enjoy. So there's a whole host of other games I'm going to try. But yeah, Newton is probably what we will end up playing on Wednesday. Good for you. Good for you. We're going to play Paris City of Lights.
Good. We should talk about that next week, then. Let's see how we. Yeah, How we get on. Yeah. So with that, I wish. I guess we both wish everyone a happy Valentine's Day, whether you're celebrating with your partner or you're going to hang out and do some solo gaming or whatever it is you're going to do. And we'll be back for our next episode in a week. Yeah, and I think Gareth needs more Valentine's in his life. So everybody send him a message and be his Valentine.
Thanks. Yeah, Share the love. That's right. Right. Thanks for listening. Thanks everyone for listening. Please subscribe and it's always love to hear your thoughts and ideas, so make sure to leave those in the comments. And don't forget, you can also chat with us both on Instagram at meeblesomeebles.