In The Shadow of Atlas

Great two player 'lane battler' adjacent title with a few interesting twists on the genre from one of its masters. Thoroughly recommended for anybody looking for a compelling two player experience.

John Clowdus has been iterating on the post-Magic "every card does something different" realm until it is a relative of German games from 20+ years ago -- here there are six suits, each with a slightly different bonus, and you want pairs more than singletons. That's almost the whole game. But it's not elegant; when I tried to think of it as a simple game with exceptions, the exceptions were overwhelming. When I just played, though, and let the game carry me, it was very smooth, and more than deep enough for its runtime. It's a little confusing, but I liked it.

[1 play]

PNP

Increasing my rating to an 8. The more we play, the more strategy we uncover and the more ideas we get to explore. What started off as a perfectly fine head-to-head, area majority game has turned into something we want to play each time there’s only two of us.