Targi

This one I almost didn’t bring. The box looked heavier than it needed to be for a two-player game, all those wooden tribe tokens and cardboard tiles and a border frame that snaps into a square around a four-by-four grid. Once I got it up here and actually played it I understood the weight. There’s a lot of game packed into that frame.

Targi is built for exactly two players, no more, no fewer, and I’ve come to think that’s not a limitation so much as the whole point. The grid sits in the middle, sixteen tiles arranged in a square, border tiles running around the outside where you place your tribesmen to claim goods, cards, and actions. Here’s the sharp part. Whoever places a tribesman on a corner tile takes both of the adjacent inner tiles too, so every placement is also a denial, and with only two players and a fixed number of spots, you’re constantly reading what the other person needs and deciding whether to take it just to keep it from them or leave it because you need your tribesman somewhere else more. That’s a tighter kind of tension than most worker placement games manage, since usually with three or four players there’s enough slack that somebody else absorbs the friction. Here there’s nowhere for it to go but between the two of you.

Underneath the placement there’s a fairly meaty engine of goods, gold, and tribe cards that build toward end-game scoring, camel herds and building sets and a chieftain track, more moving parts than I expected from something built around a single grid. It rewards a longer session, forty-five minutes to an hour once both players know their cards, which up here means it’s a weekend game, not a between-checks game. I’ve only gotten it to the table a handful of times a season, when a hiker with the patience for a real rules explanation happens through, but every time it’s been worth the wait and worth the weight in the pack.

The components have taken the trail fine. Cardboard tiles are thick enough not to warp in the damp, the frame’s sturdy plastic that snaps together tight and doesn’t rattle loose on the hike. Only real complaint is setup, which takes a few minutes of sorting decks and tiles I could do without, though once it’s laid out the game moves fast enough to make up for it.

Best two-player game I’ve got up here, and I’ve got a fair number to compare it against.