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Box art via BoardGameGeek
Targi
A small box that plays like a heavyweight, built for exactly two brains.
Designed by Andreas Steiger · 2012
One of the best two-player euros you can buy, full stop. It teaches in minutes, plays tight, and the tug-of-war over a 5x5 grid never stops being interesting.
Best for: Couples and duos who want a deep, quiet, no-luck brain-burner from a small box.
What it is
Here's the setup. You lay out a 5x5 grid of cards, place your three Targi figures on the border, and where their rows and columns cross is where you actually get to act. You're scraping a living out of the Sahara: collecting dates, salt, and pepper, trading them for tribe cards, and racking up gold and victory points. It teaches in about five minutes. That's the whole hook. A featherweight rulebook hiding a real euro.
The catch
The clever bit is the bisecting. You don't just claim the best border spot, you claim the center card your two figures intersect, so every placement is two decisions at once. And you can't sit where your opponent's figure already sits or directly across from it. Denying the card they need is often as strong as grabbing what you want. A robber crawls the edge triggering raids, so positioning stays tense. There's basically no luck to hide behind here.
Who it's for
The honest catches: it's two players only, so it benches itself the second a third friend wanders in. The tribe cards hand out ongoing bonuses that are genuinely easy to forget, and the art is plain while the card tableau eats real table space. None of that dents the core. Players and award juries (a Kennerspiel nod, a Golden Geek for best two-player) keep landing in the same place. If you've got a regular game partner, get it.
What other players say
This write-up is grounded in real reviews and player discussion, not just one opinion. A few worth reading:
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