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How Many Players?
by Brian A. Roddy
Intimate Conflict:Two Player Games
— Part
two of a series of articles examining the social and strategic
differences in games for varying numbers of players. Find
the rest of the
articles here.
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The term "scalability" describes how a game plays with
different numbers of players. A lot of board and card games claim
to be for 2-4 or 2-6 players, but playing them with two often falls
between experiencing an entirely different game and an exercise
in futility. Elfenland, Kill Dr. Lucky, and Illuminati are all great
games that (in my opinion) are horrible with only two players.
This isn't surprising. The mechanics of many games simply don't
cover a wide range of participants. There may be too many resources
or too much board territory for just two players. Games that demand
trading and alliances obviously don't fit the two player mold. Luck-driven
games may have one player burst into the lead, while their lone
opponent wishes there were other players to help take the leader
down.
Of course, plenty of other multiplayer games work just as well with
two. But most of the best two-player experiences out there are games
designed for two players and two players only.
Limited assets two-player games force the players to share
(and fight for) the same resources. In Gin, Lost Cities, and similar
card-meld games, any card I discard may be one you can pick up and
use. In Scrabble and the pencil-and-paper game Dots & Boxes,
any letter or line on the board can be used by either player. In
Connect Four, Pente, and even Tic-Tac-Toe, a move that blocks your
opponent may also set you up for a win.
Abstract strategy games for two generally give both players
identical pieces and a limited area to fight over. In Chess, your
opponent literally mirrors you. Othello is about converting your
opponent's tokens into yours. In Stratego, no matter how you mix
up your troops, they're still the same as your opponent gets (notwithstanding
the Stratego: Legends and Star Wars spinoffs).
Combinatorial games are subset of abstract games, without
any randomness whatsoever: no rolling dice, no drawing cards, no
hidden units. Checkers and Backgammon are both abstract games, but
Backgammon can be won or lost by a lucky roll. Checkers can only
be won by skill and concentration, or when the other player lacks
these. Game theorists tend to think of combinatorial games as one-player
puzzles, but there are a host of two-player combinatorials: Gobblet,
Rubik's Eclipse, Cathedral, Quarto!, and Hive, are a few.
An exciting recent development in two-player combinatorial games
is the GIPF Project, a banner for a series of high-quality
two-player abstracts. In Zertz, players capture stones on a shrinking
board; your goal in Dvonn is to create the highest tower of stacked
rings with limited movement options; in Tamsk, the pieces are tiny
hourglasses, and when the sand runs out, the piece is removed from
play. Each takes minutes to learn, but all are very strategic, and
among the most competitive games I've seen. All of the GIPF Project
games have been well reviewed, and several have earned praise from
Mensa, Games Magazine, and nominations for the Game of the Year
(Spiel des Jahres) award.
Moving from the abstract to the representative, dozens of historical
military encounters have been adapted into hundreds of wargames--almost
all of them two-player (since real-world battles tend to be between
two sides). In these war simulations, players get a chance to rewrite
history, creating their own versions of Waterloo, Gettysburg, or
Midway. Some scenarios may be lopsided, with one player controlling
the side that had fewer troops or tactical disadvantages. Players
can certainly switch roles the next time they play, but most wargames
take a large investment of time and brainpower, and two plays of
the same wargame in an afternoon will burn out all but the most
diehard gamer.
Not all wargames are based on history, or even reality. If you and
your opponent tire of soldiers and artillery, you can switch to
elves and dragons, or zombie cowboys and Confederate sorcerers.
In the futuristic battle game OGRE, one player controls multiple
squads of infantry, hovercraft, tanks, howitzers, and laser towers.
The other player has one unit: a single tank. It's just that the
tank is a mega-super-powerful robot, an OGRE, the Terminator of
mobile artillery. It's an even fight.
This leads us to an intriguing subset of two-player games, called
alternate setup games. Most abstract games have identical
setups. Most wargames have some differentiation between the sides
(who is attacker and who is defender, what types of units are used).
In alternate setup games, the players use different pieces, follow
different rules, and have entirely different paths to victory. It's
like the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs burrows up into a bullfighting
ring. The bull is fast, strong, and fierce. Toreador Bugs is clever
and quick-thinking. Though Bugs ultimately wins, the bull boots
him out of the arena several times.
Many alternate setup games are battles between asymmetrical forces,
such as OGRE. Sci-fi alien invasion is often the theme, pitting
hordes of frenzied otherworldly beasts against a small number of
resourceful humanoids. The Awful Green Things From Outer Space is
a tongue-in-cheek take on this genre, while the industrial-gothic
Space Hulk is a darker example. On the fantasy front, Lord of the
Rings: The Confrontation is a spin on Stratego based on the Middle-Earth
books. The Free Peoples must get Frodo to Mordor. The Forces of
Sauron win by capturing Frodo, or by moving three warriors into
the Shire. The evil pieces are better at attacking, and seem more
powerful. But the Fellowship is stealthier, with clever tricks up
its sleeve.
Other alternate setup games are cat-and-mouse chases, with
a hunter and an evader. In Mole Hill, a farmer tries to trap a mole
intent on destroying the flower garden. In Tally Ho!, one player
controls foxes and bears while the other gets hunters and lumberjacks.
The board is a maze of trees and ducks. Foxes catch ducks, hunters
catch ducks and foxes, bears catch hunters and lumberjacks, and
lumberjacks cut down trees, opening up parts of the board. Most
of these chases play quickly, allowing players to experience multiple
matches in one sitting, switching roles after every game to see
how each fares playing the other side.
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Netrunner is an alternate setup game that plays slowly
and strategically. In this cyberpunk collectible card game,
both players win the same way, by scoring seven agenda points.
One player is the defensive corporation, cautiously building
data forts and researching agendas to completion. The other
player is the 'runner, who must hack through the corporation's
walls and sentries to pluck agendas like a fox in the hen
house. Given enough time, the corporation will build a near-impregnable
fortress and win. Runners must quickly arm themselves and
begin the attack. Both players use entirely different cards
and different table layouts. In effect, they are playing two
quite different games over the same stakes.
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Netrunner is one of the few collectable card games that utilizes
different rules and card sets for each player. But in a way, all
collectable games are battles between asymmetrical forces.
Before a game, each player must build their own deck (or figures,
dice, disks, or whatever format the game uses) filled with surprises
and strategies unique to that particular grouping, and individually
tailored to fit the whims of the player. Part of the fun is learning
your deck's flavor, and adapting a play style to defeat the deck
your opponent is playing.
(Some non-collectable games, like Flagship and Brawl, also give
each participant their own unique deck. While not as personal an
experience as constructing your own forces, these games still challenge
players to discover how to exploit the strengths and cover the weaknesses
of their deck as they play.)
While more and more customizable games include multiplayer rules,
the majority of them focus on two-player in tournament or "sanctioned"
games, and many were designed exclusively for two players.
In the original and most consistently popular Collectable Card Game,
Magic: the Gathering, players construct their own deck from
the pool of thousands of cards available (or, more realistically,
however many cards they can afford to buy). Depending on the situation,
virtually any card has the possibility of swinging victory in your
favor. Some cards will do it much better than others, but many cards
long considered near-useless have been discovered to be elements
of devastating combinations. With more than four hundred new cards
printed each year, Magic: the Gathering continues to be as wild
and as full of possibilities as magic itself.
(Magic and Netrunner are both properties of the same company, and
both games were designed by the same individual. Netrunner proved
to be less accessible to new gamers, and was canceled after one
expansion and a handful of bonus cards. Magic has had more than
twenty-five expansions, eight editions of the basic set, and championship
tournaments with cash prizes of thousands of dollars).
Regretfully, the widespread popularity of Magic has had some negative
effect on the game: with tens of thousands of fan-run Magic websites,
information is made all-too available for a game supposedly about
wonder and discovery. Although there are hundreds of possible deck
types, at a Magic tournament there may be as few as three or four
decks that everyone plays.
Finally, in the European Strategy genre of games, many of
the new favorites from across the pond (The Settlers of Catan, Princes
of Florence, and Puerto Rico) require a minimum of three players,
for reasons given at the beginning of this article. But there are
a host of excellent two player German Style Games as well. The most
prolific publisher is the German company Kosmos, many of whose games
have had English editions through Rio Grande. I've already mentioned
three of their releases (Tally Ho!, Lost Cities, and Lord of the
Rings: The Confrontation). Other well-reviewed Kosmos titles include
Hellas, Elchfest, Hera and Zeus, Kahuna, and Die Pyramiden des Jaguar.
With so many excellent titles, the Kosmos two-player line has become
synonymous with quality entertaining games.
While multiplayer games offer the possibilities of alliances, diplomacy,
and trading, there are times when you just want a face-to-face on
the battlefield. When you're in the mood for some cutthroat competition,
pull out a two-player game and challenge your foe to a survival
of the strategic. Imagine yourself as James Bond going up against
a diabolical mastermind, Sherlock Holmes facing Moriarty, Ripley
vs. the Alien Queen, and you'll be in the right mindset.
Two players enter, one player leaves.
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