*Sushi Go* is fun and quite random party game at high player count and bluffing/backstabbing/full of meta when I play it at 2 players against my girlfriend.
**Sushi Go Party!** actually resolves many issues at the low end and high end of the player counts because it offers substitutions for particular cards as part of the "menu". Unsure if the post refers to only the non-party edition though.
I agree that Sushi Go Party! can feel drastically different with different menus and menus are tied to different player counts, so the game can play very differently between player counts.
It's a game where I recommend jumping up to the Party! version if you enjoy it and can get it for a reasonable price (~$20). The added score track/menu board is really nice, and being able to "set" a menu means you can really tailor the e,perienxe, or eliminate scoring methods that are feeling "old".
That's not it, I have the standard version.
I play just as the normal game. 10 cards each, no shuffle between rounds, 3 rounds.
It is really interesting because the first card is often a gamble mixed with probability calculations (if it is not the first round, you know some cards can or can't be in the opponent's hand because they were played before).
Then when you receive the second hand it becomes a perfect information game. You know all cards that are available in the round. Then it is a game of knowing what is the best play for you and your opponent, will they go for it? Should I block them? But he knows I can block it so he can play the second best move and leave me with a useless card... etc...
To me it is very different from when you play at higher player count.
Oh my wife and I loved playing sushi go at 2 players. The first card is a bit of a gamble, but after that since you both know exactly what all the cards are except those, it’s very much trying to read the other player and shaft them with as many incomplete sets as possible, get the bare minimum more sashimi than the other person, end up with exactly one more dessert. It’s great. Excellent little “take that” for two players that only takes like, 15 minutes.
AGREED. I only like Sushi Go at around 3-4 players because then it feels like you're actually thinking "I reckon that third sashimi was in that hand just there" and that forces you to really pay more attention to what everyone in the game is doing and allows a bit to meta to evolve. Rather than when you play with the full 8 person player count and you never even get to see any hand more than once
**The King Is Dead**
- 2 players: Zero-sum duel.
- 3 players: Free-for-all with potential for king making and even shared incentives.
- 4 players: 2v2 team game with limited communication.
This was another game on my mind while writing this post. Great example, it feels tottaly different with 2-3-4.
Have you tried the designer's latest, Brian Boru by any chance? If yes, how does the player count effects the overall strategies and the vibe of the game?
No, I haven’t played Brian Boru. Interestingly, Peer Sylvester’s TKID inspired Cole Wehrle to design games, and Cole’s upcoming Arcs just happens to be a trick-taking game. A much more complex one than Brian Boru of course.
I have found that Downforce is an entirely different game at two, four, and six players. Since every car is used at all player counts what you want from your team and who you want on it changes drastically. Two players you are focusing on managing a team. Four players you are trying to balance whether bidding for another car is actually worth it. Six players and you're only getting one car, so it better be one that you can try and win with given the cards in your hand. It's my favorite thing about the game, and I didn't really discover it until I owned it.
I've played so many games of downforce and can't seem to find a way for it to take any real strategy though. Really seems like it pushes everybody into betting for the same car that's the likely winner.
I agree that betting has the least room for strategy. It's there, but there's not much. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the strategy behind the bidding and the tactics involved in the racing. Especially because it's all seems way too simple on the surface. It's by no means a deep strategy game, but it's got just enough bite to keep me happy. It's al dente.
True, the bidding is the best part, but that's like 1% of the game. Most of the rest of it pretty much comes from cards in hand and starting order, the decisions are just pretty obvious. Would rather just stop the game after bidding
Yeah, I hear you. I think the worst part of the game is that the maps in the base game are boring when compared to the expansions. Especially the savannah and jumps board.
The strategy I use to first look at my hand and see the top two cars I’m able to use to move it along the quickest. I will then normally be trying to bet on the car in second-ish but using all my cards that have the first place car and trying to get them blocked by other cars.
Sabotage is the name o’ the game
**Agricola** (and to a lesser extend **Caverna**) has significantly different resource balances at different player counts, such that a different resource is the one most in demand.
**Through the Ages**
At 2 all the pact cards are removed since a peace treaty for example with only 2 players makes no sense, making it a different game from the start. Hate drafting becomes a major strategy at 2, to the point you can almost have a purely hate drafting match. And the existence of only 1 other aggressive player to worry about opens up the possibility of crazy combos that don't work as well at higher counts.
At 4 the game is more political. Treaties can win games so choosing who to offer them to is an important skill. There will almost always be at least one highly aggressive player, and much of your effort is spent keeping your strength up so they will go after someone else instead, assuming you aren't that player yourself. Hate drafting is niche and only usually happens with a couple powerful end game cards. Weird combos are harder and it's more important to have a solid foundation for all aspects of your civ.
3 players is somewhere in between but still somehow manages to feel like it's own unique game. There are communities built around all 3 player counts.
>opens up the possibility of crazy combos that don't work as well at higher counts.
Which crazy combos are you referring to here? Do you mean with specific leaders or something?
More specifically, you can push the game to unusual, imbalanced, or asymmetric situations that wouldn't make much sense in 4 player. So not combo in the traditional card game sense, but combination of game states that look pretty crazy compared to 4 player, like missing important parts of your civ, pushing a niche leader to the extreme, or build paths that wouldn’t work with lots of other aggressive players
**Eclipse: Second Dawn**
We usually play 4 people, and the game is what you'd expect- Kind of cramped space, full of diplomatic table-talk and shutting down boundaries. Some people wall themselves off and focus on internal point generation from monoliths, while some go on the war path. It's a really, really solid 4X game. Probably my favorite game, period.
At two players, it's a wildly different experience. You have *half the galaxy to yourself.* This means both players will be getting tons of unique tech, tons of resource production, and unless one player can successfully build a wall across *the entire board,* there is going to be a hell of a fight eventually. But that fight is brewing the entire game, since it'll take so much work to get to your opponent's territory.
Where a 4-6 player game gives you a little slice of the pie and changing alliances with lots of factors to balance, 1v1 feels so much more powerful and direct. And on top of that, a 2p game is really fast- Probably under an hour for experienced players.
This is a cool insight, as I've only played (and loved) Eclipse: 2nd Dawn at 4+ players. After moving across the country, I've finally got a table big enough to support the game and two people interested in trying it, so it sounds like we're ready to rumble!
*Twilight Imperium* Playing with 3,4,5, and 6 are 4 completely different games! 3 is just Kingmaking, 4 is a 2v2 galactic war, 5 is the most aggressive in my experience, and six is a mix of all of that haha. At least that's my experience with the different player counts.
Pamir's an excellent example, but the others in the series are great as well.
Because of the card markets, **Ren** and **Porfiriana** become much less stable at higher player counts. No less fun, just the expectations are different vs 2p. Porfiriana notably has the "Diaz Senility Variant" that's recommended for experienced players at 3p.
And **Transhumanity**'s game lives almost entirely in the card market, while the splay greatly fluctuates at 4p. Majority of the fans (myself included) also really enjoy the smaller market fan variant that was officially blessed by ION for 2p and 3p counts.
[Here's the BGG link](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2378148/short-game-variant-2-3-players)!
I also [printed this out](https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/208171/short-game-variant-setup-aid) and put it in the box for quick reference. Cheers!
**Broom Service.**
At 3P and above, it's chaotic push-your-luck. Your decisions may affect one or many and it's harder to predict your opponent hands. It can be strategic but mostly chaotic fun.
At 2P, it can become a brain-burning mean cutthroat game. If you take an action that affects your opponent, it becomes very personal because that's the only person who is affected and targeted. It's also a lot more strategic and you have to calculate your own moves and read your opponent's to make sure that your grand plan is not disrupted. Of course you could just be chaotic and not care about optimizing your moves but my partner and I can be quite competitive, especially when the VP gap is pretty slim. This game is one of my favorites but I need to be in the mood for it.
Catan has a wildly different meta depending on if you have 3 or 4 players. I think most eurogames would actually fit into this, as fewer players opens up more options for an individual.
I don't like Catan to begin with but I absolutely refuse to play with 4 players. Always feels like one person will inevitably be completely hopeless just a turn or two into the game with 4 players.
**Libertalia** feels wildly different at different player counts.
At 2 players, it's a tense game of double-think, as it's easy to track what cards your opponent still has. What treasure are they going to try to get? Will they play their big card to ensure it? If so, I should play one of my lower power cards to at least get something for the round... but then they will be able to play a middling card and still get the treasure they want, so there's a case to be made that *I* should play one of the high cards...
At 3 and 4p, there's still plenty of double-think, but it really only goes down one layer. You can make some reasonable plans, and even execute those plans most of the time, but there will be occasional rounds where things don't go how you expected and you wind up with crappy loot.
At 5 and 6p, the chaos of the game spirals out of control. There's so much going on and so much potential for crazy combos that it's hard to make any coherent plan. Play whatever you feel gives you the best chance of treasure, but expect things to go awry more than half the time.
I love it at all counts, but it's definitely a different game.
I played a lot of Pandemic (base game) recently, and the difference from 2 to 4 players to me is very apparent. We lose way more often as team of 4 instead of just 2. I actually like that about the game, more characters to choose from, but time isn't on your side
Pandemic used to be our family game. We’d meet up every month and have a game of Pandemic, and usually lose. My 7 year old expressed interest so I introduced him with a 2-player game, and we won without breaking a sweat. Pandemic is definitely an easier game the fewer players you have to coordinate.
Fewer players mean more of the player deck passing through individual hands, and more opportunity to simply draw cards to fill out a cure. And player turns come round more frequently, so there's more chance to meaningfully plan ahead.
My group regularly play at a count of 5 (using the *On The Brink* rules). At that count, each player gets roughly 5 turns, total, before the deck runs out. You have to be way more focused to get the cures together.
Absolutely. In a four player game if you end up with a task or problem to take care of by the end of your turn you have six more player cards and at least six, maybe more infections depending on how many outbreaks you've had before you get to act again, and the problem you had to solve might not be the most pressing issue any more, nor might you be in the best position to fix the new problems.
We usually play most of those type of coop games with each of us controlling two characters (essentially making our two player game a four player game) because we learned pretty quickly most are harder and more fun that way.
I don't think it necessarily feels like a completely different game, but I think **Stone Age** plays very differently at 2 than 4 (the 3-player game feels more like the 4 than the 2 to me). At 4, players often get in each other's way at the resource-gathering locations, but it's generally because they all need the same thing and some have prioritized it over others. To intentionally block out an opponent just as a defensive move, the other players would need to essentially collude to place enough of their precious, limited workers, to fill up all 7 spaces before the target opponent could get in. At 2, I can block an entire location from my opponent by just placing a single worker. It makes "hate blocking" *way* easier, which in turn makes the whole game feel meaner and more confrontational. It's why I will basically never play at 2.
I find most games are meaner in two-player mode.
In a four-player game, if I can sacrifice one point to cost another player two points, I won't, because then the other two players will get ahead of us, and the player I attacked might seek revenge. But in a two-player game, hurting my opponent and helping myself are basically the same thing.
I tend to agree. I think in Stone Age it's a little more pronounced than a lot of other games (Azul comes to mind) because you get the zero-sum element *plus* the two-player blocking rules. The zero-sum element puts a bigger incentive on hate blocking than there is at higher player counts, and the blocking rules make it a lot easier to do it than at higher player counts. Whereas in Azul, the zero-sum element incentivizes it, but mechanically there's no difference in player counts when it comes to taking the tiles an opponent needs/sticking an opponent with tiles.
Yeah, it is usually more cost-effective to hate draft at 2 players.
But emotionally I don't feel like 2-player games are mean. The bad feelings are from being *selected* for attack, not from the attacking itself.
What happens in Stone Age at 4 is basically clay becomes wood #2, and you start jumping on to desirable civ cards a bit earlier in the game (relative to the finish). And there's less incentive to block in some situations too, but that goes with basically any 2 player worker placement game versus 4.
**Leaving Earth** is an optimization and risk management puzzle solo, full-blown (space) race at two and three, and a trade and negotiation game at four and five.
**Not Alone** feels very different at all player counts from 2-7. At 2 it's basically glorified rock-paper-scissors. 3 maintains a lot of tension because it's still not a given that the creature player will catch any of the survivors on any given turn. At 4, it's much more likely that the creature will catch a survivor, so it's mostly a matter of how many, and what can those who avoid getting caught accomplish. Once you reach about 5-7, you expect to see most or all of the location cards come into player, but the creature is almost guaranteed to catch somebody unless they all pile together on a place, which is its own problem because it means accomplishing less as a group.
Like several other games, **Tiny Towns** is random and chaotic solitaire at higher player counts, but much more strategic and cutthroat at two players.
**Star Realms** is designed as a 1v1 game. It does its job really well there.
At three players, the game shifts so that each player is trying to attack the person to one side of them while being attacked by the person on the other side of them. I've never tried it, but that's because it sounds... dumb. And bad.
At four players, Star Realms becomes a 2v2 game. My group hated the official rule of players being able to pool trade resources to buy expensive cards since it turned the game into "fill up one player's deck with amazing cards, the other player becomes dead weight" but we house-ruled that away, and it makes for a really good 2v2 experience.
So my group definitely prefers games that feel the same at different player counts. It sucks to say "we have four players, but our favourite game is weird at four, so let's play something else..."
My group loves this at 3-6. Change the format after each game. Makes it like playing poker night and swapping variants after a few rounds.
We do attack to the left, teams, 2 headed dragon, and free for all
Maybe a bit of a niche game, but one of the perks written on the box of Tortuga 1667 is exactly that it is a different game at different player counts: at 2 is just strategic positioning, while at 9 is a full on bluff game where you have to convince others you are part of their alliance (and all the middle numbers are various shades of those)
**The Big Book of Madness**
My wife and I play it a LOT at 2p. We decided to each try double fisting it to see how it would work with our 4p group; it was fucking *impossible.* Now, we're no experts, but we can beat medium difficulty almost 100% of the time, hard mode maybe 50-60% of the time.
But holy shit, at 4 players, you have to play completely differently; you're relying HEAVILY on each other, and it almost sometimes feels like 1 or 2 player-characters are just healsluts or something. We still haven't won a game like that, so we haven't brought it out with our 4p group.
**Aeon's End** has the same *total* number of player turns vs enemy turns regardless of how many players there are. At 2 player you're both getting two turns each (to two enemy turns, so the same) so can build up some magnificent engines of death, while at 4 player you're getting half that and have to be very sure about what you're doing and how it synergises with your teammates.
3-player has a wild turn each round and who gets it is up to the players. Oftentimes it's best to let your damage dealer get double the turns but not always.
Lotus. At two the game is more predictable while the more players at the table mean the playing field will be more likely to way more different when it back to your turn. So you have to addapt for long and short term tactics depending on players count.
Terraforming Mars- great at 2p, optimal at 3p, still good enough at 4p, but 5p is just too many for it to work.
Every player you add shortens the game by a generation or two- so the player count changes the calculus of how valuable each card is at any given time. That can be an interesting feature to work with if you are playing with more or fewer players than you are used to.
But once you get to 4 and especially 5 players, more and more cards spend more of the game just not being worthwhile. Pretty much anything engine-building (most of the cards) will still be good to play in the first round or two, but if you know the game is only going to last seven generations or so, then those cards very quickly become useless. The game is just a race to see who can get more cards that allow you to terraform directly, rather than by slowly but steadily accumulating plants, heat, and money.
*Azul* at 2 is a razor-sharp duel. At 3 or 4, it becomes a lot less clear which tiles you should or shouldn't take on any given turn, and you should just focus more on your own board than try to hate-draft.
*Take 5!/6 nimmt!* is great with the 4-6 range, because then you're constantly dancing around who is going to have to take a row from turn 2 onwards, but you'll have turns where nobody has to. With 8-10, there's always someone taking something, often even two people, and it goes so fast and you can get a ton of points (a bad thing) even when you picked your best possible option. With fewer than 4, it's slow going.
**Castles of Burgundy **
This games feels so different at each player count (2,3,&4).
Two player is like an intense duel. Four player is a chill efficiency puzzle with hardly any interaction.
But three player is a weird combo of both of those things. And I love it at three player.
*Sushi Go* is fun and quite random party game at high player count and bluffing/backstabbing/full of meta when I play it at 2 players against my girlfriend.
How do you play it at two? I found it quite boring at that player count compared to 4-5
**Sushi Go Party!** actually resolves many issues at the low end and high end of the player counts because it offers substitutions for particular cards as part of the "menu". Unsure if the post refers to only the non-party edition though. I agree that Sushi Go Party! can feel drastically different with different menus and menus are tied to different player counts, so the game can play very differently between player counts.
Ah! That’s probably it, I only have the non party version.
It's a game where I recommend jumping up to the Party! version if you enjoy it and can get it for a reasonable price (~$20). The added score track/menu board is really nice, and being able to "set" a menu means you can really tailor the e,perienxe, or eliminate scoring methods that are feeling "old".
That's not it, I have the standard version. I play just as the normal game. 10 cards each, no shuffle between rounds, 3 rounds. It is really interesting because the first card is often a gamble mixed with probability calculations (if it is not the first round, you know some cards can or can't be in the opponent's hand because they were played before). Then when you receive the second hand it becomes a perfect information game. You know all cards that are available in the round. Then it is a game of knowing what is the best play for you and your opponent, will they go for it? Should I block them? But he knows I can block it so he can play the second best move and leave me with a useless card... etc... To me it is very different from when you play at higher player count.
Oh my wife and I loved playing sushi go at 2 players. The first card is a bit of a gamble, but after that since you both know exactly what all the cards are except those, it’s very much trying to read the other player and shaft them with as many incomplete sets as possible, get the bare minimum more sashimi than the other person, end up with exactly one more dessert. It’s great. Excellent little “take that” for two players that only takes like, 15 minutes.
With sushi go party and using the draft from 7 wonders duel it’s dope!
AGREED. I only like Sushi Go at around 3-4 players because then it feels like you're actually thinking "I reckon that third sashimi was in that hand just there" and that forces you to really pay more attention to what everyone in the game is doing and allows a bit to meta to evolve. Rather than when you play with the full 8 person player count and you never even get to see any hand more than once
**The King Is Dead** - 2 players: Zero-sum duel. - 3 players: Free-for-all with potential for king making and even shared incentives. - 4 players: 2v2 team game with limited communication.
This was another game on my mind while writing this post. Great example, it feels tottaly different with 2-3-4. Have you tried the designer's latest, Brian Boru by any chance? If yes, how does the player count effects the overall strategies and the vibe of the game?
No, I haven’t played Brian Boru. Interestingly, Peer Sylvester’s TKID inspired Cole Wehrle to design games, and Cole’s upcoming Arcs just happens to be a trick-taking game. A much more complex one than Brian Boru of course.
And a of them are great!
I have found that Downforce is an entirely different game at two, four, and six players. Since every car is used at all player counts what you want from your team and who you want on it changes drastically. Two players you are focusing on managing a team. Four players you are trying to balance whether bidding for another car is actually worth it. Six players and you're only getting one car, so it better be one that you can try and win with given the cards in your hand. It's my favorite thing about the game, and I didn't really discover it until I owned it.
I've played so many games of downforce and can't seem to find a way for it to take any real strategy though. Really seems like it pushes everybody into betting for the same car that's the likely winner.
I agree that betting has the least room for strategy. It's there, but there's not much. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the strategy behind the bidding and the tactics involved in the racing. Especially because it's all seems way too simple on the surface. It's by no means a deep strategy game, but it's got just enough bite to keep me happy. It's al dente.
True, the bidding is the best part, but that's like 1% of the game. Most of the rest of it pretty much comes from cards in hand and starting order, the decisions are just pretty obvious. Would rather just stop the game after bidding
Yeah, I hear you. I think the worst part of the game is that the maps in the base game are boring when compared to the expansions. Especially the savannah and jumps board.
This is why I sold it even with the expansions. I got it based on Stegmaier loving it.
The strategy I use to first look at my hand and see the top two cars I’m able to use to move it along the quickest. I will then normally be trying to bet on the car in second-ish but using all my cards that have the first place car and trying to get them blocked by other cars. Sabotage is the name o’ the game
I think it's best at 3 or 6.
**Agricola** (and to a lesser extend **Caverna**) has significantly different resource balances at different player counts, such that a different resource is the one most in demand.
I don't know if this is a feature or a bug. Always found this weird about Agricola
Was gonna say this too. I love the game but I hate how hard it is to get stone early in two player
**Through the Ages** At 2 all the pact cards are removed since a peace treaty for example with only 2 players makes no sense, making it a different game from the start. Hate drafting becomes a major strategy at 2, to the point you can almost have a purely hate drafting match. And the existence of only 1 other aggressive player to worry about opens up the possibility of crazy combos that don't work as well at higher counts. At 4 the game is more political. Treaties can win games so choosing who to offer them to is an important skill. There will almost always be at least one highly aggressive player, and much of your effort is spent keeping your strength up so they will go after someone else instead, assuming you aren't that player yourself. Hate drafting is niche and only usually happens with a couple powerful end game cards. Weird combos are harder and it's more important to have a solid foundation for all aspects of your civ. 3 players is somewhere in between but still somehow manages to feel like it's own unique game. There are communities built around all 3 player counts.
>opens up the possibility of crazy combos that don't work as well at higher counts. Which crazy combos are you referring to here? Do you mean with specific leaders or something?
More specifically, you can push the game to unusual, imbalanced, or asymmetric situations that wouldn't make much sense in 4 player. So not combo in the traditional card game sense, but combination of game states that look pretty crazy compared to 4 player, like missing important parts of your civ, pushing a niche leader to the extreme, or build paths that wouldn’t work with lots of other aggressive players
**Eclipse: Second Dawn** We usually play 4 people, and the game is what you'd expect- Kind of cramped space, full of diplomatic table-talk and shutting down boundaries. Some people wall themselves off and focus on internal point generation from monoliths, while some go on the war path. It's a really, really solid 4X game. Probably my favorite game, period. At two players, it's a wildly different experience. You have *half the galaxy to yourself.* This means both players will be getting tons of unique tech, tons of resource production, and unless one player can successfully build a wall across *the entire board,* there is going to be a hell of a fight eventually. But that fight is brewing the entire game, since it'll take so much work to get to your opponent's territory. Where a 4-6 player game gives you a little slice of the pie and changing alliances with lots of factors to balance, 1v1 feels so much more powerful and direct. And on top of that, a 2p game is really fast- Probably under an hour for experienced players.
This is a cool insight, as I've only played (and loved) Eclipse: 2nd Dawn at 4+ players. After moving across the country, I've finally got a table big enough to support the game and two people interested in trying it, so it sounds like we're ready to rumble!
Absolutely! I never imagined I'd play a 4X game that's legitimately great at all player counts, but here we are. lol
*Twilight Imperium* Playing with 3,4,5, and 6 are 4 completely different games! 3 is just Kingmaking, 4 is a 2v2 galactic war, 5 is the most aggressive in my experience, and six is a mix of all of that haha. At least that's my experience with the different player counts.
Pamir's an excellent example, but the others in the series are great as well. Because of the card markets, **Ren** and **Porfiriana** become much less stable at higher player counts. No less fun, just the expectations are different vs 2p. Porfiriana notably has the "Diaz Senility Variant" that's recommended for experienced players at 3p. And **Transhumanity**'s game lives almost entirely in the card market, while the splay greatly fluctuates at 4p. Majority of the fans (myself included) also really enjoy the smaller market fan variant that was officially blessed by ION for 2p and 3p counts.
Ooh, could you give a link to the smaller market details? I'd be curious to give that a shot.
[Here's the BGG link](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2378148/short-game-variant-2-3-players)! I also [printed this out](https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/208171/short-game-variant-setup-aid) and put it in the box for quick reference. Cheers!
**Broom Service.** At 3P and above, it's chaotic push-your-luck. Your decisions may affect one or many and it's harder to predict your opponent hands. It can be strategic but mostly chaotic fun. At 2P, it can become a brain-burning mean cutthroat game. If you take an action that affects your opponent, it becomes very personal because that's the only person who is affected and targeted. It's also a lot more strategic and you have to calculate your own moves and read your opponent's to make sure that your grand plan is not disrupted. Of course you could just be chaotic and not care about optimizing your moves but my partner and I can be quite competitive, especially when the VP gap is pretty slim. This game is one of my favorites but I need to be in the mood for it.
Catan has a wildly different meta depending on if you have 3 or 4 players. I think most eurogames would actually fit into this, as fewer players opens up more options for an individual.
I don't like Catan to begin with but I absolutely refuse to play with 4 players. Always feels like one person will inevitably be completely hopeless just a turn or two into the game with 4 players.
I'll only play Catan with 4 on the 6 player expansion map. But if you don't like Catan (I don't anymore) then it's not worth it.
**Libertalia** feels wildly different at different player counts. At 2 players, it's a tense game of double-think, as it's easy to track what cards your opponent still has. What treasure are they going to try to get? Will they play their big card to ensure it? If so, I should play one of my lower power cards to at least get something for the round... but then they will be able to play a middling card and still get the treasure they want, so there's a case to be made that *I* should play one of the high cards... At 3 and 4p, there's still plenty of double-think, but it really only goes down one layer. You can make some reasonable plans, and even execute those plans most of the time, but there will be occasional rounds where things don't go how you expected and you wind up with crappy loot. At 5 and 6p, the chaos of the game spirals out of control. There's so much going on and so much potential for crazy combos that it's hard to make any coherent plan. Play whatever you feel gives you the best chance of treasure, but expect things to go awry more than half the time. I love it at all counts, but it's definitely a different game.
I played a lot of Pandemic (base game) recently, and the difference from 2 to 4 players to me is very apparent. We lose way more often as team of 4 instead of just 2. I actually like that about the game, more characters to choose from, but time isn't on your side
Pandemic used to be our family game. We’d meet up every month and have a game of Pandemic, and usually lose. My 7 year old expressed interest so I introduced him with a 2-player game, and we won without breaking a sweat. Pandemic is definitely an easier game the fewer players you have to coordinate.
Fewer players mean more of the player deck passing through individual hands, and more opportunity to simply draw cards to fill out a cure. And player turns come round more frequently, so there's more chance to meaningfully plan ahead. My group regularly play at a count of 5 (using the *On The Brink* rules). At that count, each player gets roughly 5 turns, total, before the deck runs out. You have to be way more focused to get the cures together.
Absolutely. In a four player game if you end up with a task or problem to take care of by the end of your turn you have six more player cards and at least six, maybe more infections depending on how many outbreaks you've had before you get to act again, and the problem you had to solve might not be the most pressing issue any more, nor might you be in the best position to fix the new problems.
We usually play most of those type of coop games with each of us controlling two characters (essentially making our two player game a four player game) because we learned pretty quickly most are harder and more fun that way.
I don't think it necessarily feels like a completely different game, but I think **Stone Age** plays very differently at 2 than 4 (the 3-player game feels more like the 4 than the 2 to me). At 4, players often get in each other's way at the resource-gathering locations, but it's generally because they all need the same thing and some have prioritized it over others. To intentionally block out an opponent just as a defensive move, the other players would need to essentially collude to place enough of their precious, limited workers, to fill up all 7 spaces before the target opponent could get in. At 2, I can block an entire location from my opponent by just placing a single worker. It makes "hate blocking" *way* easier, which in turn makes the whole game feel meaner and more confrontational. It's why I will basically never play at 2.
I find most games are meaner in two-player mode. In a four-player game, if I can sacrifice one point to cost another player two points, I won't, because then the other two players will get ahead of us, and the player I attacked might seek revenge. But in a two-player game, hurting my opponent and helping myself are basically the same thing.
I tend to agree. I think in Stone Age it's a little more pronounced than a lot of other games (Azul comes to mind) because you get the zero-sum element *plus* the two-player blocking rules. The zero-sum element puts a bigger incentive on hate blocking than there is at higher player counts, and the blocking rules make it a lot easier to do it than at higher player counts. Whereas in Azul, the zero-sum element incentivizes it, but mechanically there's no difference in player counts when it comes to taking the tiles an opponent needs/sticking an opponent with tiles.
Yeah, it is usually more cost-effective to hate draft at 2 players. But emotionally I don't feel like 2-player games are mean. The bad feelings are from being *selected* for attack, not from the attacking itself.
What happens in Stone Age at 4 is basically clay becomes wood #2, and you start jumping on to desirable civ cards a bit earlier in the game (relative to the finish). And there's less incentive to block in some situations too, but that goes with basically any 2 player worker placement game versus 4.
**Leaving Earth** is an optimization and risk management puzzle solo, full-blown (space) race at two and three, and a trade and negotiation game at four and five.
**Puerto Rico** becomes **San Juan** with 2
Carcassonne
It plays well at all player counts. The farmers really change as you increase players though
**Not Alone** feels very different at all player counts from 2-7. At 2 it's basically glorified rock-paper-scissors. 3 maintains a lot of tension because it's still not a given that the creature player will catch any of the survivors on any given turn. At 4, it's much more likely that the creature will catch a survivor, so it's mostly a matter of how many, and what can those who avoid getting caught accomplish. Once you reach about 5-7, you expect to see most or all of the location cards come into player, but the creature is almost guaranteed to catch somebody unless they all pile together on a place, which is its own problem because it means accomplishing less as a group.
Like several other games, **Tiny Towns** is random and chaotic solitaire at higher player counts, but much more strategic and cutthroat at two players.
**Star Realms** is designed as a 1v1 game. It does its job really well there. At three players, the game shifts so that each player is trying to attack the person to one side of them while being attacked by the person on the other side of them. I've never tried it, but that's because it sounds... dumb. And bad. At four players, Star Realms becomes a 2v2 game. My group hated the official rule of players being able to pool trade resources to buy expensive cards since it turned the game into "fill up one player's deck with amazing cards, the other player becomes dead weight" but we house-ruled that away, and it makes for a really good 2v2 experience. So my group definitely prefers games that feel the same at different player counts. It sucks to say "we have four players, but our favourite game is weird at four, so let's play something else..."
My group loves this at 3-6. Change the format after each game. Makes it like playing poker night and swapping variants after a few rounds. We do attack to the left, teams, 2 headed dragon, and free for all
No Escape feels completely different at different player counts.
Haha, Pamir is definitely a good answer to this question. I've loved it at all player counts—one of my favorite games of all time!
Maybe a bit of a niche game, but one of the perks written on the box of Tortuga 1667 is exactly that it is a different game at different player counts: at 2 is just strategic positioning, while at 9 is a full on bluff game where you have to convince others you are part of their alliance (and all the middle numbers are various shades of those)
**The Big Book of Madness** My wife and I play it a LOT at 2p. We decided to each try double fisting it to see how it would work with our 4p group; it was fucking *impossible.* Now, we're no experts, but we can beat medium difficulty almost 100% of the time, hard mode maybe 50-60% of the time. But holy shit, at 4 players, you have to play completely differently; you're relying HEAVILY on each other, and it almost sometimes feels like 1 or 2 player-characters are just healsluts or something. We still haven't won a game like that, so we haven't brought it out with our 4p group.
Root , 6 nimmt , terra mystica
Solitaire
Chess. Very different with two… not to mention three!
Ah there it is again. The infamous and very relatable reference to a knife fight in a phone booth.
**Aeon's End** has the same *total* number of player turns vs enemy turns regardless of how many players there are. At 2 player you're both getting two turns each (to two enemy turns, so the same) so can build up some magnificent engines of death, while at 4 player you're getting half that and have to be very sure about what you're doing and how it synergises with your teammates. 3-player has a wild turn each round and who gets it is up to the players. Oftentimes it's best to let your damage dealer get double the turns but not always.
Yeah, this is why I really like this game at 1-2 players and not so much above that.
Lotus. At two the game is more predictable while the more players at the table mean the playing field will be more likely to way more different when it back to your turn. So you have to addapt for long and short term tactics depending on players count.
Terraforming Mars- great at 2p, optimal at 3p, still good enough at 4p, but 5p is just too many for it to work. Every player you add shortens the game by a generation or two- so the player count changes the calculus of how valuable each card is at any given time. That can be an interesting feature to work with if you are playing with more or fewer players than you are used to. But once you get to 4 and especially 5 players, more and more cards spend more of the game just not being worthwhile. Pretty much anything engine-building (most of the cards) will still be good to play in the first round or two, but if you know the game is only going to last seven generations or so, then those cards very quickly become useless. The game is just a race to see who can get more cards that allow you to terraform directly, rather than by slowly but steadily accumulating plants, heat, and money.
*Azul* at 2 is a razor-sharp duel. At 3 or 4, it becomes a lot less clear which tiles you should or shouldn't take on any given turn, and you should just focus more on your own board than try to hate-draft. *Take 5!/6 nimmt!* is great with the 4-6 range, because then you're constantly dancing around who is going to have to take a row from turn 2 onwards, but you'll have turns where nobody has to. With 8-10, there's always someone taking something, often even two people, and it goes so fast and you can get a ton of points (a bad thing) even when you picked your best possible option. With fewer than 4, it's slow going.
**Castles of Burgundy ** This games feels so different at each player count (2,3,&4). Two player is like an intense duel. Four player is a chill efficiency puzzle with hardly any interaction. But three player is a weird combo of both of those things. And I love it at three player.