Indoor games for two players
During the long winter evenings to pass time, we often play indoor board or card games while watching the television or listening to music.
Just being the two of us, we have had to do quite a bit of research to find games that are fun and intelligent and can be played with a minimum of two players and trust me we had a hard time finding such games!
Some of the games we do enjoy are Quiddler, Linx, Tilz and your regular playing cards.
Quiddler involves cards with a letter and points on each card. You start with three dealt cards and one open card besides the stockpile. The youngest player starts by building a three letter word and can make a word with his existing cards or the open card or pick one from the stock pile. The moment you complete your word and lay down your cards, the next player(s) have to do the same with the opportunity to do so either with the open card laid down by the winner or pick one from the stock pile. If you cannot make a word you score zero, or if you make a word and discard more than one card which is then deducted from your total score, you make a zero if the total runs into a negative. Else your score would be the word total less the discard card score. This is continued for eight rounds with an extra card dealt in each successive round. Hence the sixth round has eight cards dealt and the last has ten cards dealt. Words less than three letters are not permitted. The person who has the highest score at the end wins. A good game for letter / word lovers and great for children to build their vocabulary.
Linx is another card game which has numbers and symbols on the cards. There are two sets of cards- scoring cards and playing cards. The purpose of the game is to make links with the anchor cards on the board and score accordingly. Each player is dealt ten cards to begin with; there will be three scoring cards displayed which tell us the minimum number of cards required to make a chain or link. So there can be scoring cards of five or eight or twelve (being the highest chain) chains and one gets higher points for the longer chain. A chain is started with either of the four anchor cards displayed, so your next card can be a matching number or a matching symbol and so on and your last card has to match with another anchor card on the board. Once you lay down your chain, you clear the two anchor cards and your chain and pick the corresponding scoring card to add to your score. Two new anchor cards are placed and a new score card is replaced as well. There is an open card and a stock pile to choose from and each player can pick two cards once he has less than ten cards in hand. If you cannot make a chain in your turn, you need to discard one card. If you do make a chain, you do not need to discard any card. The highest scorer wins and the fun or frustration arises when you are working on building one chain and your opposition ends up making a chain with your anchor cards and you got to start all over again! This game tends to stretch for as long as two to three hours when playing with two players!
Tilz is another fun board game where you need to analyze and play smart with your tiles on hand. The board is a magnetic one and there are a bunch of L shaped tiles with 3 coloured boxes on each. The idea is to place a tile on the board that matches on at least one side with another colour on the board. The more sides with the matching colour, the more you score. There are stars on the board at various places which gives you double the points. One can plan and save a tile for the most opportune turn or place for the tile and score high. You start with three tiles and keep replenishing them as you place one tile in each turn. Again the highest scorer wins and this gets tricky as the board starts to fill up!
Hope some of you already do and some will enjoy these games as much as we do.
Here’s to lots more of fun times!
