This game was really fun because it helped us use an important teaching concept: creating memorable mistakes.

This also syncs really well with advice for couples – create memories. This one was memorable!

Before the game started, husband and I had been discussing casinos and I mentioned that HS BGs fills that same “itch” – I’ll do a later blog post about thoughts on human nature and gambling.

Universe aligned a bit, because he was then dealt Barov. This guy is really fun to play and I love him in duos. Being able to pass gold at will is so useful and in duos the shared economy is such a key for power spikes.

I consider Barov an all around strong hero. At early game, he rewards skill but as you last into late game, he becomes rather easy economy as it’s obvious who will win against a ghost. My pick rate with him is around 60-75% each game. I’m not a savant, but I’m not bad.

I also consider him quite advanced, but as our earlier conversation had been about gambling, we thought it appropriate to pick.

So the first turn started with the hero power, buying the +4 attack spell and a refresh. I explained the value of taking some small damage now for a big boost later – husband got the concept pretty quickly, but he’s great at meta.

We froze because either we’d be leveling up or buying next round, and the glim dragon was the best of the options. We ended up winning the gold and bought that, but I had husband hold the +4 spell.

“Why?” he asked.

“Trust me,” I answered.

There’s a thing in game theory called the prisoner’s dilemma. It basically boils down to “look out for yourself.” This game is a great way to play through this concept: https://ncase.me/trust/

It’s a 30 minutes of your life you’ll be glad you spent.

I think in duos, it’s often an exercise of trust in a similar way as well as an incredibly interesting experiment in symbolic communication.

For example, I had a game the other day where a key minion for my board was in my teammates tavern, but I had just passed them [tier 3 eating minion]. They pinged question mark, they pinged [eating] and I emoted back [fingers crossed emote].

Let’s gamble. Let’s give it a try.

And we pivoted from there because we got lucky (it was only a 25% chance to eat it).

And so back to playing with my husband.

Worrying that your partner will do something wild or not understand a key tech play is a pretty valid concern in duos and I think a lot of us play it safe because we’re scared to trust. I had a great moment last game where I passed my partner a card for a triple – it was best for my board but at the time it made sense for them to play both solo versions (naga which grows per spellcast). I was playing Faelin and already had naga going so I picked the dragon which buffs allies as a good filler. I was basically buffing my own future triple.

And my teammate passed this naga back to me after it was tripled. I was able to play the strong minion we needed on a different board and also get a discover. But how scary is it to give your partner a triple? You just have to hope it works out and that they understand and help you out.

And so back, again, to teaching my husband this game.

Remember how I mentioned the axe spell? We got a whelp smuggler, so I had him play that spell on a dragon – he then instantly understood the value of holding a spell, because we got extra health from waiting to use the attack buff.

Sometimes casting a spell can have extra effects, and me telling him to hold and then play showed him how using spells at the right time is important.

I let him go “casino” for most Barov choices. I thought this so be a good way to train in tempo, and it worked well – when he was uncertain, he looked to me, but for the most part I let him gamble Barov.

Since he was playing dragons we stayed at tier 3 for most of the game. I loved watching him figure out how to deal with poets and placement – I think this was a great revisit to dragons which made him think more about positioning.

We seemed to high roll dragons and when he got amber he did a cute little dance. It was GORGEOUS watching him place poet and tarec and amber. This was a really good test, imo – he had to sit and consider who would be best where, and he figured out positioning really well. We worked through a papercut dragon and then amber as he cycled establishing buffs.

Results:

– he really liked voting for mechanobot sheerly because of the portrait and voted for that one to win every round. The dude ended up in our final 2!

– one of our enemies had a hilariously vulgar name so he voted for it several rounds in a row for the the lulz. Ironically <censored> then won the round we gave up on him!

– I had the most I love you moment when we were in the final 2. Husband had just watched me play Barov in duos before we played him and he saw me (mumble) “should have bet against myself” – an hour later, husband is in final two and says “best to bet against myself.”

If you are top two and you are Barov, always bet that you’ll lose! If you lose, you get some extra gold. If you win, you WIN, so why bother with buffing yourself next round?

So to go back to the start of this post, we made some hilarious “failure” memories through wrong predictions, especially with the vulgar name we started meme picking. I gave him room to explore and make mistakes, and we focused on creating a scaling build.