pick a game for my wife

My wife Michelle was my first boardgame kaki (gaming buddy) when I first got into the hobby (defined as the start of regular boardgame playing). At the time we had no kids yet. I was on a long work assignment in Taiwan and she went with me. It was around that time that I discovered German games. Prior to that I played some Axis & Allies games and Samurai Swords once or twice in a year, and Michelle had little interest in those. But German games, that was something that she could accept.

We played with my Taiwanese colleagues. After returning to Malaysia we played with whoever I could convince to play with us. Two children came along. Gradually Michelle drifted apart from my gaming friends. When friends come to play, she prefers not to play so that she can take care of the children. She would otherwise be annoyed if she keeps getting interrupted by them when in the middle of a game.

So now I have two quite mutually exclusive game circles - my wife, and the rest of the world (I do play boardgames with my children, but let's exclude that from this discussion). The rest of the world part has overlaps. Most frequently I game with Allen and Han. Then there's also Afif, another gamer whom I got to know via the internet (maybe I'm old-fashioned, it still seems spooky and a big deal to make new friends via the internet). And there's also Jeff, Heng, Jimmy, and the many other gamers who play at Old Town Kopitiam Cheras on Fridays. The biggest difference between these two circles is the wife circle purely plays 2-player games (including games that can support more than 2 players) and the rest-of-the-world circle usually plays 3+ players games (mostly 3). I have access to lots of new games with my rest-of-the-world circle. All being gamers, there is no shortage of new and interesting games to try. Where I now have a bit of a dilemma is the choice of games when playing with my wife.

Nowadays Michelle is less patient to learn new games, and we tend to stick to old favourites: Through the Ages and Race for the Galaxy, the former for when we have 2 hours to spare on weekends to sit down for some quality spouse gaming time, the latter for those half hour quick games when she feels up to it. I have been struggling to move on to some new games, since these regulars have been regulars for the past 3 years or so. Any suggestions?

Here's the gamer psychoanalysis profile of my wife:

• Favourites that have seen heavy play (roughly ordered by timeline): Carcassonne (168 plays), Ticket to Ride series (230), Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper (199), Blokus and Blokus Duo (71), Race for the Galaxy (383), Through the Ages (54), Agricola (54).
• Other games she likes: Le Havre, At the Gates of Loyang, Galaxy Trucker, Goa, Princes of Florence 2-player variant, Puerto Rico 2-player variant, Jambo, Hacienda.
• Games she dislikes:
  • Games about fighting and war, confrontational games, games where you need to attack and bring destruction to your opponent, games where you need to be nasty to your opponent. Our games of Through the Ages is by unspoken rule the peaceful variant. Noone plays Aggression or War cards. Thankfully military is still important for the colonies and for the events, so the game is still very playable. The same cannot be said for Sid Meier's Civilization where military is much more "undetachable".
  • Innovation - I had high hopes for this, and I like the game a lot too. But she finds it too confrontational - the part where your points cards can be robbed or discarded by your opponent.
  • Blue Moon - Too directly confrontational. I tried to convince her that it was just about pleasing the dragons, but she's smarter than that.
  • Lord of the Rings - the Confrontation - she actively hates this game. It even has the word "confrontation" on the cover!
  • Babel - This has a lot of destroying your opponent's towers and robbing your opponent's tribes.

I recently managed to persuade Michelle to play Twilight Struggle again, by saying my beautiful deluxe version had not been played yet and it was such a waste. She had played it once before. She didn't seem to dislike it, but she did not particularly fancy it either. She had lost the first game playing USSR. I let her play USSR again, which should be easier for beginners. As the game progressed, I worried whether I was going to lose her. She seemed frustrated by the game, or rather, by the learning experience. She struggled to digest everything and to optimise her card play. USSR got close to 20VP, but as the game progressed, the VPs shifted towards USA. Things started to look bad for USSR, as the USA score moved towards the teens. I became nervous that I might win the battle (win this game) and lose the war (getting her to like Twilight Struggle).

USA (me) was at 11pts.

USSR (Michelle) remained strong in Europe throughout the game.

This is the deluxe version, with a mounted board, and improved graphics.

Mexico had been hotly contested. It was right next to USA so I wanted to make sure it didn't fall to USSR, because that would be 1 extra point for Michelle.

Then on one turn she played both Red Scare/Purge and Quagmire.

Red Scare/Purge reduced the operations value of all my cards for the whole turn. Quagmire was a card that in the best case wasted one action and one medium-to-high valued card, and in the worst case paralysed your whole turn (6 or 7 actions!). I did manage to remove Quagmire, but only on the second attempt (i.e. 2 actions and 2 high-valued cards wasted). And since my operations values were greatly reduced, Michelle took control of Europe, and then played the Europe scoring card to win the game. Europe was already close to being controlled by her, so I couldn't stop her. Aarrgghh!!... She literally got up and did a victory dance. I guess 383 games of Race for the Galaxy have taught her about card combos.

Michelle controlled all the battleground countries in Europe. Soviet victory!

The game took about 2.5 hours, since it was a re-learning game for Michelle. I hope she will be willing to play again, when we have time for a longish game.

As for shorter games, we are still enjoying Race for the Galaxy (with all 3 expansions) very much. It is our bedroom game (no naughty thoughts please) - I put it in the bedroom so that I can quickly set it up to play at any time, without even needing to walk to my game shelf. However it would be nice if we can have another short game to turn to, just to break the monotony. Dominion is OK (she finds the constant shuffling tiring) but it's a hassle to setup and put away. Lost Cities has been played a lot and is not meaty enough. Here are some that I am going to try or am thinking about:

• 7 Wonders - I've finally managed to try this and I like it, just like 95% of the gamers out there. Some say the 2-player variant is quite a strategic way to play, although most say it is best with 3 or 4. I've pre-ordered this from boardgamecafe.net.
• Maori - A recent and less well-known game from Rio Grande Games, with individual player boards, and a little Carcassonne-like. Also pre-ordered.
• Jaipur - I just worry this will be too abstract, like Lost Cities is. We enjoy the theme in Race for the Galaxy and Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper.
• Haggis - Again, the themelessness worries me a little. Also we've never really got into climbing games or more traditional card games. The 2-player version can actually be played using a normal deck of cards, so I'm probably going to try that first.

On medium-length games, I guess we do have a decent selection. We don't play Agricola as heavily as we used to. There is a better rotation of medium-length games. But any suggestions are most welcome. I just discovered that there are some 2-player variants for Endeavor, which I recently bought, and they are supposed to be quite decent. So I'm going to try this on Michelle.

Suggestions?