Like the title! For someone getting into board games, what would you recommend? Bonus points if it is or can be played cooperatively, with 2 players, and double bonus points if it has a sci-fi theme (like, grand sci-fi), though the previous points are more important.
What do you like to play? Arcs and Earthborne Rangers both look cool to me, but wanted to ask here too! Anyone have experience with those two?
Wingspan - easy to learn, playing with more of your friends makes it even more fun, lots of people play it, not cooperative but you don't fuck each other over, game revolves around collecting bird cards
Spirit Island - Fairly complicated, but if someone knows what they're doing it's easy for them to carry newbies, very fun & strategic, also quite popular so easy to run into people who play it, theme is kill whitey
Hegemony - A new lesser-known game that simulates the dynamics of a democratic-capitalist society, one person plays as the capitalist class, one the working class, one the middle class, and one the state; it's cool and very didactic to play these roles but requires a lot of buy-in to convince people to play it. I bought this on the recommendation of some person here. I had to study the manual & mock-play it for probably eight hours before I felt comfortable inviting others over. It definitely is not the sort of thing where you can invite people over to communally "figure it out as you go".