Kosmos 2-Player Series

Alright, I'm looking for 2-3 games to pick up for the wife and I at Christmas (yes, this is one of those spouse threads). She likes Lost Cities, guillotine, 10 days in africa and other small/short games. I'm looking to get something with a bit more theme.

For sure I will get Dracula, but of the following which two are best, or any suggestions?

Rosenkonig*
Hera and Zeus*
Hellas*
Balloon Cup (looks like a bore, but has good reviews)
Odin's Ravens
Kahuna

* = look interesting to me

(Edit: As an aside what are the thoughts on BattleLine and Ivanoe by GMT?)

Ballon Cup is a bore. It's kind of fun barely 1 or two times. After that it's just a waste of cards and tiny cubes. I'm holding on to my copy just because I don't see getting much in trade and I'll use it with my son to help with learning his numbers once he's a little older.

BattleLine from GMT is awesome. It's a quick, down and dirty 2 player game with enough tough decisions, gotcha moments, and "OH CRAP! I should have waited one more turn!" kicking yourself moments to make it a lot of fun. One of the most played games I have.

If you're looking for a card game, I'd heartily endorse Colossal Arena, with the caveat that it really isn't very good as a 2 player game. If you can get at least 3 people then it's awesome, but if you're going to be playing this with just your wife then go with something else.

Of course if you don't already have it, you should get the ultimate spouse game- Twilight Struggle! My wife is a little bit burned out on it now, but really enjoys it a lot.

Here's the short list of games my wife has liked a lot that we play 2 player:

Twilight Struggle
BattleLine
Battle Cry
Memoir '44
Risk: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Risk 2210
Domaine
Bohnanza (it suprised me how well the 2 player rules work)
Naval Battles (another card game you might want to look into)
Citadels

I like Balloon Cup. And Battleline.

Edit: Oh yeah, LOTR: Confrontation is pretty awesome too. You could also give HeroCard: Orc Wars a try.

Rosenkonig and Kahuna are both intense, screw-your-opponent-with-good-strategy games, and I highly recommend both of them.

As for other games I have had fun with in the series - Times Square and LotR: The Confrontation are good to great. And Battleline is terrific. My wife's three favorites are Kahuna, Rosenkonig and Battleline. My 7-year-old daughter prefers LotR.

Along with Bohnanza & Battleline, my daughter and I also enjoy Citadels and Mr.Jack. Both are great bluffing and deduction games but Citadels has a great screwage element (Warlord, Thief & Assasin).

Thanks for the tips, fellas.

I recently picked up Maneouvre (thanks KingPut!) as a light 2-player war game. I hope to give it a go this weekend. I also want to test the waters with War of 1812, but I think too many wargames will be overkill.

Besides being good games do the ones mentioned above match the theme. I'm not much on abstracts. Lost Cities is pretty damn abstract. It's got interesting card manipulation, but exploring a lost city? I don't think so. Dracula looks like it's got some theme, as does Hellas, but what about the others?

(Ironically, I think Rosenkonig an abstract but looks pretty cool!)

Jack Hooligan wrote:

Alright, I'm looking for 2-3 games to pick up for the wife and I at Christmas (yes, this is one of those spouse threads). She likes Lost Cities, guillotine, 10 days in africa and other small/short games. I'm looking to get something with a bit more theme.

For sure I will get Dracula, but of the following which two are best, or any suggestions?

Rosenkonig*

I found it dry and boring; too think-y.

Hera and Zeus*

Fun, as long as you can deal with the fact that you can just randomly lose before you get to take a turn.

Hellas*
Balloon Cup (looks like a bore, but has good reviews)
Odin's Ravens

HATE Odin's Ravens. Completely boring, pretty much no interesting choices.

Kahuna

Found this dry and abstract, too.

(Edit: As an aside what are the thoughts on BattleLine and Ivanoe by GMT?)

Battle Line is, in my opinion, the best of the Kosmos two-player games (yes, I know it's not technically part of the line). I think most people, non-gamers included, that I know who have played a few of them agree.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation would be an easy second place, I think. We also enjoyed Blue Moon (which is kind of similar to Ivanhoe, if you're playing two-player) and Caesar & Cleopatra...but really, my girlfriend and I haven't played any of those in ages. She's a wargamer/CCGer now (though lately she's been obsessed with Agricola)

Just to provide a little more information, here's the problem (at least in my view) with Balloon Cup:

You've got cards. You've got to play them into different "slots" on the table. Nothing too unusual here. You do the same thing in Battle Line, Lost Cities, Bohnanza, and 10 million other card games out there. Here's the rub. In Balloon Cup you can play cards into either your slots or your opponent's slots. So the amount of thinking involved boils down to:

Is this a good card or a bad card?

Good Card-play it on your side
Bad Card-play it on your opponent's side

To use a poor, but hopefully illustrative analogy, it would be like playing chess and deciding you don't have any good moves to make, so you'll just make a crappy move with one of your opponent's pieces.

For me most of the fun with games that involve cards (Twilight Struggle and Battle Line chief among them) is figuring out what to do with your crappy cards. In Balloon Cup there is no such dilemma. You simply play them for your opponent.

Ok. Ballon Cup rant off.

The decision in Balloon Cup is "do I play a good card on my side before my opponent screws me with a bad card or do I play a bad card on the other side to get revenge/make a preemptive strike."

I like Hera and Zeus, but it's true, you can loose by being unlucky. But it's clearly an abstract even though the different abilities of the cards are closely tied to the mythological origin.

LotR: Confrontation, on the other hand, is one of the best games - two player or not - ever published. I've played it tons of times and it still feels fresh. And even though it looks abstract it's extremely rich in theme.

Most of these games suck and the line is hugely overrated. Out of all of them, only LOTR: THE CONFRONTATION (which isn't even really part of the line at this point) is really worth a damn after 10 plays- and since they're short, 10 plays comes pretty quickly.

LOTR: THE CONFRONTATION is one of my favorite games, actually...and yeah, the FFG version is pretty awesome and adds a lot of replayability.

HERA AND ZEUS is probably the worst of the lot...ugly cards, ugly gameplay, completely boring, uninspired, and useless on every level. Shame on you Richard Borg.

I did think BABEL was pretty decent, it was a little more aggressive than most of these games were. Sort of an "I tear down your ziggurat, you tear down mine" thing. Not bad.

DRACULA...I dunno. I like it because it's DRACULA, but the game is really kind of stupid. It's a memory/deduction thing (don't you dare say FURY OF DRACULA LITE) with some goofy rules. The roadblock thing is really, really dumb.

LOST CITIES- give me a break, if you're still playing this game after 10 plays then you've somehow missed the game's expiration date. BATTLE LINE is a little better, but I don't think it really has staying power either. It has that Knizia thing no one ever seems to notice or comment negatively on where it becomes impossible for one player to win after a certain point in the deck due to the card distribution.

HELLAS is one you see folks praise a lot but it's dry, boring, and abstract. It tries to pack a lot of game into a small package and succeeds in leaving all the good parts behind. I liked it once upon a time, but the thought of playing it now turns my stomach.

ROSENKONIG is like some kind of card-driven checkers game...I used to have it, played it a while, sold it. Totally unremarkable.

KAHUNA is a total snooze, BLUE MOON makes me nauseous.

You know what's a great 2 player game? UP FRONT.

I don't mind odins ravens.

LOTR the conrontation is 7 kinds of awesome, and 10 kinds of awseome if you are playing the FFG version.

Blue Moon kicks the shit out of the rest of the line (apart from confrontation), as long as your wife isn't offended by cartoon titties.

Jambo is also really good too.

I think Balloon Cup is actually a much more interesting game than Lost Cities (which would probably get my vote for most overrated game), though it is a very similar premise. It's not nearly as simple as "play a good card on my side/bad card on opponent's side", but has a lot to do with the timing involved and which of the different races to put the card down on, and what you think your opponent is likely to do at a given time.

I also like Kahuna okay, but have never had much interest in the others of that series.

So what does the FFG version of LOTR: Confrontation add?