Hive / 2 players / Requires basically zero setup. Game is easy to pickup and a bit strategic

Star Realms / 2 players / Requires shuffling, separating some cards out and dealing out a few cards. Rules look daunting at first, but it’s pretty straight forward after a few games. There’s a mobile app if you want to try the digital version.

Fox in the Forest / 2 players / minimal setup

Play these with my wife and they’re all good for a relatively quick game. We’re not a big fan of largely random games and prefer something a bit more strategic.

Seven Wonders has a two person game called Seven Wonders Duel that’s really easy. It comes with expansions and it’s my husband’s and my favorite game to play ^^

Patchwork! Nicely balanced and very replayable. Out quilt your opponent!

A few from my closet: Castle Panic (with expansion set), Labyrinth (Ravensburger), Classic card games: Crazy 8s, Go Fish, Hearts and Old Maid. Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots, Mille Bornes, Pirate's Cove, Stratego, Battleship, Chess, Checkers, Chinese Checkers, and Laser Khet 2.0.

And story dice are fun with any number of people.

Space base is pretty fun! It's for 2-5 players. What I like about it is it's a base building game where you don't really hinder your opponents, and there's stuff for you to do when it's not your turn.

Radlands - my personal favourite 2 player game. Tower defence with cards. Design a mix of borderlands meets Mad Max

Aeons end - not two players but works really well at 2. coop card game against a nemesis. Multiple expansions available. Many characters and card combinations. This game is a close second in my two player list.

Shadows of Kyoto - a game from emporers4, and I have to admit I like their games. Two player slightly asymmetrical trying to get your spy to your opponent site or try to catch their spy.

Hanamikoji - trying to get the favours on the right site with only four possible turns. Kosmos has it too, and it is language independent, no need to get it from Taiwan if you have better access through them. Geisha‘s road is pretty similar.

Shottentotten - name could be more sensible but a quick to learn Poker with multiple games one plays at the same time

Definitely give Parks a try, it's a personal favorite of ours. I also recommend Cascadia and Tiny Epic Galaxies.

I love 2 player games and the vast majority of my plays are with 2 players. My top recommendations are:

Azul—plays 2-4 players, and I love it with 2. Tile placement in patterns. Quick to learn and plays fairly quickly as well

Beer and Bread—you are playing as 2 rival towns using the same ingredients to make a variety of beers and breads. At the end of the game, your final score is whichever of the 2 is lower between beer or bread. A slightly longer time to learn than Azul, but still plays in under an hour

Splendor Duel—a tableau builder —you’re collecting gems to buy cards that count like permanent gems in your hand. Time to learn and play falls between the other 2, in my experience

Catan Duell/ the cardgame. Great Strategy game.

• Targi - Cards are displayed in a 5x5 grid. The “outer” square of the grid are action spots while the “inner” 3x3 grid are resources/objectives. During your turn you will place one of your 3 workers in one of the available action spots. Then your opponent places their worker but they cannot place their worker in the same column or row than your wokers. After both players have placed their 3 workers, you place tribe markers (the cilinders) on the cards where your workers intersect. At the end of the round you get all the resources/objectives where you have cilinders and perform all the actions where you have workers!

• Hanamikoji - This is a “I split, you choose” 2 player game with some area majority in the mix. I honestly think this game is fantastic but I have had very low success in introducing it to other people. The game is very quirky, very different than everything I’ve tried. You force players to make hard and unintuitive decisions and I think that turns off some people. “Why would I split these cards, I want them all. How can I have them all?”. Split wisely! I guess the art work and box doesn’t help people get excited about it either.

• MicroMacro: Crime City - There is some debate about wether this is even game or just an activity but I don’t really care about that. This game is absolutely brilliant. It’s basically a “Where’s Waldo” but with all timelines printed into a single map. Each mission points you to a crime and you have to trace back the map to understand what actually took place there. Where did the victim come from, what were they doing, who looked at them funny? I would put this game as the best 2 player game but it have felt weird for the best 2 player game to be a game where you can play with an infinite number of players. Wouldn’t recommend more than 2 players tho! Get it!

Something that is pretty quick in terms of set up, learning, and play.

You had many recommendations, but I think very few beats Sea Salt & Paper in term of setup, learning and play.

This is really strange because I've been googling this exact question for the past two days. So, I guess it's my turn to return the favor.

My wife and I play games constantly, and the kids are getting older and leaving us playing one on one more often. The ones that we play the most are Silver, Boss Monster, Machi Koro, Heckmeck, and Dungeon Mayhem.

They are all pretty simple games, quick set up and tear down. That seems to be what we lean into.

Oh, as for my search, the consensus seems to be that the best two player game is Jaipur. I can't vouch for it yet, as I haven't played it, but it should arrive tomorrow. 😁

I've had a lot of fun playing Radlands and 7 Wonders Duel with my girlfriend

My favorites for two are Carcasonne, Seven Wonders Duel, and classic Cribbage. Those first two aren't exactly simple to learn though.

Another suggestion is to play a cooperative game with two. This can be really fun to talk about thr strategy together since you are on a team. For simpler, I like Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert.

War of the Ring: The Card Game
All the flavor of the gigantic classic, but in a nice quick-setup card game form.

I would recommend micro macro

I always liked Kahuna. Quick to set up. Easy to explain even to casual gamers. Has a lot more depth than it appears at first glance.

If you want to go with the classics, the only form of Chess I enjoy is Xiangqi. It's a faster-moving and more dynamic game than International Chess, but if you're good at the latter the skills, after you get past a few little "gotchas", transfer well to this. Related (very distantly: it's more closely related to Stratego in that it inherits from the same parent) is Junqi, though you'll want to play the refereed version (either a human referee or the various mechanical/electronic referee systems out there) for the most enjoyment.

For card games, well in traditional cards there's (literally) hundreds of choices, perhaps thousands. For commercial card games I really liked the Star Realms series of games when I got them.

Best two player quick setup/teardown: -Star Realms for take that battles -Patchwork for thinky polyomino puzzles -Calico for brain melting but simple gameplay and gorgeous everything -Radlands for vicious battling -Boop. Cute cats and simple pushing mechanics but very deep tactics possible.

I like A little Wordy. It's like combative wordle, made by Matt Inman, the oatmeal/exploding kittens guy. It's like 12$ at target if you don't want to wait for shipping

Raptor I tried with a buddy on a whim, it was fun, quite strategic, not too hard to understand after going through the rules once. The idea is that one player is a mama dino trying to get the babies out of the lab, with the other player as the scientists trying to catch the babies or tranquilize the mama.

The lower value cards allow you to do a special move that helps you, but higher cards will give you movement actions based on the value difference of your opponents' card choice. So you need to think of which cards you and your opponent might have in your decks and each others' hands.

One my favouit 2 player boardgames is Hallali (Not sure if it has a diferent wnglish titel). It is a fantastic game with a big strategy part, but also some luck.

Check out Quarto. There's smaller and larger boards, mine is I think 5x5. It's like a more complex Connect Four where you pick your opponent's next piece at the end of your turn.

The "Connect Four" part is getting four in a row, the complexity is that the four can be in any combination (piece height, color, dimpled or not, etc.). Quick to learn, hard to master.

Have you ever played any Grandpa Beck's Games? My wife and I love Skull King

https://www.grandpabecksgames.com/

These have been excellent at two players for us:

Targi

Innovation

Morels (AKA: Fungi)

Jaipur

Port Royal

Kanagawa

Star Realms

Thanks everyone for all the responses so far, I look forward to digging into these this weekend

Mindbug - an amazing card battler for two without building a deck. The twist is that you can take the opponents card twice a game. Makes for a super interesting gameplay.

Splendor duel - seen it mentioned before, a really great implementation of the splendor game for two

One is missing:

Wing span!

Claim, a trick taking card game. Easy to learn, but difficult to master the tactics. Has many extensions.

Jekyll vs Hide, another trick taking card game. Twist is the players have different goals. Jekyll wants balance meaning both sides win equally, while Hide wants to win either none or all of them.

Otherwise I second Azul, Hanamikoji and 7 Wonders Duel that were mentioned already