It's often difficult to find a good board game that can be played with just 2 people. Rio Grande Games has done a great job with Jambo, a board game that uses cards and "tokens" (for wares and gold) to depict a market competition between two merchants. Basically you and your opponent are two merchants competing to buy and sell wares, and the first person to reach 60 gold effectively triggers the ending of the game (but his or her opponent then has one last turn to try to catch up to win). The game play is not difficult to pick up but is still complex enough to be slightly strategic, particularly given the wide array of utility cards, people cards, and animal cards that you can play to help yourself and/or hinder your opponent. I wouldn't recommend this for extremely young children, but anyone 12+ should enjoy it.

Compared to other games we've tried, Jambo stands out because it has more replay value than games like Gloom or Guillotine (both games which are fairly dependent on luck, and have low replay value because the fun lies largely with the novelty of the cards and the game concept).

If you're interested in Jambo but want to consider a few other 2-player games, I'd also recommend "Lost Cities" (another card game by Rio Grande that offers a good mix of fun and strategy) or "Set" (this card game is a pure thinking game, sort of like Memory, no luck involved, so I'd recommend it if you're looking for an educational game that can be played with a flexible number of people).

This game is solid. If you are used to the basic games of Sorry or Monopoly, Jambo will be fun as well. But compared to about forty or fifty other games also in the genre of German-style, Game of the year contenders, this game is not as interesting.

We purchased this game 2 years ago after reading a review on it. Our family has two adults and two teenagers, and we all enjoy this game.

The scenario is that you compete against another trader (opponent) to see who can buy/sell enough wares; the first person to have sixty gold pieces wins the game.

But the game doesn't just consist of buying and selling; there are animals that can help/hinder you and utility cards that can help you achieve your goal. It all depends on what cards you get, and how expertly you play your hand.

When we first played this game it took us an hour and a half, because each card has a description of what it does, so it took a while to read all of the cards. Now we can play this game in about 20 minutes.

I just found out there is an expansion pack, so I just ordered that. I am excited to add to the fun!

I purchased this game as a gift for my boyfriend at Christmas. Although the instructions were initially a bit overwhelming, this game is extremely easy to learn and fun to play. The game is only for two players and takes maybe an hour to play.

It's basically a buying and selling game, wherein you have gold pieces and you purchase and sell goods with the goal of making the most money. Each turn you get five actions, and so the game moves pretty quickly and is never dull, because you can keep track of how many actions your opponent is using or be planning out your next turn in the downtime. What I like best about the game is the end, because it's "not over til it's over" in that the game ends when a player reaches a certain number of points, but the opponent gets one last turn to try to equal or beat that number for the win.

I would highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys Settlers of Catan or Puerto Rico or San Juan, and if you haven't played those games, I'd recommend them as well.