I'm always on the lookout for a good game to play with my wife who prefers casual board games. We've played and enjoyed ticket to ride NY, patchwork, little birdie, and scabble
My wife and I are new to board games, but Dominion, Carcassonne, and Jaipur are all pretty good. Monopoly Deal is fun too, but we found it was better with non-default rules
Casual board game playing wife may love the "look" of it (beautiful tiles) and there's a strategy game hiding underneath the hood. It's really simple to learn + explain and it's also fairly portable (just don't start losing the tiles).
Cheers lemmy.ca - new user today, just joined !board_games today
If you like dice game i would try dice throne , easy to learn and short game around 20 min. It got some similarity with yatzhee but rather then make points you need to reduce life of your opponent. There’s plenty of dlc boxes but each one is a complete game and can also work together if you’d like to buy them and add new character to the game.
Fun combat with differing levels of complexity based on the character you pick. AFAIK, There's original characters and then Marvel ones too. Not sure if there's other brands.
Also, if you have multiple boxes, can play with upto 4 players so that's always a plus if someone is visiting. And the production value of the game is just stellar.
Based on your list, would suggest Calico or Azul: Summer Pavilion. I prefer the Summer Pavilion edition over the original edition of Azul.
You may also like Codenames: Duet, but it is not a talkative game.
If you don't mind abstract I would suggest YINSH or any of the other project GIPF games.
Local specialty board game shops should have those. If not, the best place in Canada to find board games is https://www.boardgamebliss.com/. They just run out of stock, a lot.
This might be a touch out there for a recommendation but for two players I've enjoyed Watergate quite a bit. It's pretty affordable and it has this endearing quality where over time you form a meta between the two of your over multiple games.