Pub game recs

July 31, 2024 7:35 PM

Looking for some fun board or card games to play at the pub with the following requirements: must be good for 2 players, must be pretty portable - preferably something you could tuck into a laptop bag, mustn’t be too sprawling or delicate (because pub table) and must be engaging enough for adults. Bonus points for cute themes!
posted by Artw to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (14 answers total)

dutch blitz, chess
posted by HearHere at 7:58 PM on July 31 [1 favorite]

Cribbage's my go-to
posted by CrystalDave at 8:07 PM on July 31 [4 favorites]

Hive is perfect for this. Very portable in a small cloth bag. It has an insect theme. Plays a bit like chess, with different types of pieces having different movements, and complex strategies arising from a simple set of rules as you try to trap your opponent's queen bee.
posted by hovey at 8:14 PM on July 31 [7 favorites]

PASS THE PIGS

best pub game ever

nothing better than hearing someone yell "LEANING JOWLER!" from across a crowded room
posted by niicholas at 9:31 PM on July 31 [4 favorites]

Love Letter is a fun and fast card game of elimination and deduction for two or more, but two can be satisfying.

Bohnanza is a card game better with 3+ players but has rules for 2 (Dummy hand?) where players plant, harvest, and trade beans of varying scarcity and value.

Sushi Go Party is a pick, pass, and play drafting card game with a score keeping board in a fun little tin. Hands of various sushi cards are drawn and passed between players who choose dishes to complete to get delicious points. Another game with a 2-player variant, possibly dummy hand like Bohnanza.

A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King is a fast 2+ player card game where players vie to enlist members of Westeros' great houses - like Bohnanza's beans, houses have varying amounts of members/value - in a quest to win the Game. Fun for players who aren't familiar with ASOIAF and for ones that are, the bonus character cards that tweak the game are thematically perfect, playing Ilyn Payne removes Ed Stark from the game, playing Hodor lets you rescue Bran from your opponent, etc. Great with 2 players, wee little box, highly recommended to everyone.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:20 PM on July 31 [3 favorites]

nth-ing Sushi Go! and Love Letter

Hanabi (build sets of same colour/runs of numbers for a fireworks display, but you don't see your own hand and must not tell each other what to play), Coup (mild deceit needed to bluff that your two cards contain a member of the court with privilege to do the action you claim, setting you up to win the court's upcoming coup) and Bandido/Bandida (catch/free the tunneling escaped prisoner).
posted by k3ninho at 12:20 AM on August 1 [1 favorite]

Cribbage, spit, bananagrams (may be too sprawling), othello/reversi
posted by entropone at 3:38 AM on August 1 [1 favorite]

The game Fluxx is quirky and fun. My husband and I often get onlookers asking questions about what we are playing when we have this out at the pub.
posted by JennyJupiter at 4:43 AM on August 1 [2 favorites]

Hanamikoji or Ganz Schan Clever (That's Pretty Clever!) is what my husband and I bring
posted by ellerhodes at 4:50 AM on August 1

A travel set of backgammon.
posted by hovey at 6:26 AM on August 1

We get a lot of mileage out of German Whist while traveling. Doesn't require too much table space and is great to do lots of rounds of when not much else is going on.
posted by chiefthe at 6:40 AM on August 1

6 dice and some paper makes for many a game of 10,000 played by myself and various people, mostly in bars. The dice can make some noise, so better in a noisier pub, of course.

2nding Fluxx and Hive, ooh, and yes, That's Pretty Clever (an amazing game that's like yahtzee on steroids).

I also like to bring a box of cards from a Trivial Pursuit game. Each player takes a stack. Ask your partner questions, going down the card. If they get it right, they get another question. They get it wrong, then it's your turn to be asked. Just accumulate cards; whoever gets through the most cards, wins.
posted by hydra77 at 6:55 AM on August 1 [1 favorite]

Cards is it? Not for the first, nor last, time I'll put in a plug for piquet - a cross between whist, rummy and medieval french played with a short 32-card deck and two people, not necessarily lovers.
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:58 AM on August 1 [2 favorites]

nthing Hive, yes yes, and came here to add Lingo. It's a Scrabble-type tile-based word-creating-game with no board needed, and no pen-n-paper score keeping. The tiles snap together so they don't just go everywhere. It can be played with 2- to-6 people and steadily becomes really quite quick-fire in a way that Scrabble does not, highly portable.
posted by Joeruckus at 3:15 PM on August 1 [1 favorite]