7 wonders duel is a lot of fun. Feels similar to regular seven wonders but tweaked enough to be it’s own game.

Here are my top 5 2 player specific games:

1. Radlands. Mean as nails card based lane-battler with amazing components and art, easy rules, and tons of cool abilities on each card.
2. Beer and Bread: easy to learn resource management and hand-passing to bake and brew even amounts of bread and beer. Simple components and tons of fun!
3. 7 Wonders: Duel. Perhaps the best 7 wonders iteration ever
4. Boop: simple rules but very thinky game with cute components, cats pushing each other off a bed. Much deeper than you’d think!
5. Patchwork. It’s basically a meme to recommend this one but it’s a fantastic polyomino game that’s tougher than it looks.

Battleship

Everdell or Ticket to ride.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_(board_game)

It almost feels like cheating to say so, but Chess.

My wife and I have been playing a lot of the 2 player varient of The Crew this month. Works really well with the “Jarvis” third player and makes for a good quick game to reel through a few missions of.

MageKnight plays well with 2 players