Jambo Is a Real Euro 2 Player Card Game
It’s not often that I find a 2-player-only game that my wife and I both enjoy. Chess, Go, and even Hive are too abstract. Lost Cities is okay but doesn’t have that many interesting or diverse decisions to make. Mastermind used to be fun, but now it makes my brain hurt.
Jambo, however, has lots of what we like. It’s got an interesting, appropriate (non-space) theme. You are a buyer and seller of goods taking on all the hazards that accompany the occupation.
Jambo is essentially a card game with a few extra bits of cardboard thrown in. Thus it doesn’t take up a lot of space or require a lot of time for setup and takedown. The cardboard is for the gold (victory points), 6 types of goods, and the 5 action tokens.
There is no downtime in Jambo. When it’s not your turn, it’s your responsibility to track the active player’s actions. You also may be able to play cards that protect you from attacks waged by your opponent. Keeping track of cards used by the other player isn’t a bad idea either.
Jambo has plenty of options just like good 3P and 4P games do. Buying, selling, increasing storage space, optimizing your position in goods, drawing new cards, exchanging good for cards and vice versa, attacking your opponent, auctioning off goods and cards – all this and more is packed into the basic game of Jambo.
There are 2 expansions to Jambo (neither of which we’ve tried) that reportedly make it an even better game. That’s fairly rare for a game that’s this good to start with.
“Jambo” is Swahili for “hello”. If you’ve been looking for that elusive 2P game that you and your gaming partner will both enjoy, you should say “Jambo” to this fun card game today.
Oh, the other 2P-only games we like? Other than cribbage and WordSpot, there really aren’t any.
Check the price of Jambo on Amazon.