Cooperation Board Games
Most of the time, games are about which player gets the highest score or accomplishes a task first. However, there are a family of games where either everyone wins, or everyone loses. Today, I would like to give a brief description of games that fall into this category, beginning with the easiest. I (Nick) am only listing games that I am familiar with, and that have an event scheduled.
This is a game for two to four players, all trying to collect four mystic idols. The problem is that the island is starting to sink. Each turn, players can move to different tiles, shore up (temporarily stop a tile from sinking), trade cards, and trade in five matching cards to collect the idol. After their turn is over, they draw two new cards, and then flip over island cards. The island cards cause the matching tile on the board to either flood, or sink if it is already flooded. The players win when all four idols are collected and the players reach the helipad. If the helipad sinks, all the players drown, or an idol is not collected before the temple holding it sinks, the game is lost.
This is by far the easiest and the fastest. Even on the lowest difficulty, winning can sometimes come down to the wire. The six different characters and random board set-up will mean that no game is the same twice.
In this game, you play as two to four members of the CDC working to slow the spread of disease across the globe. Each turn, players can move to different cities, treat diseases, research cures, and trade cards with other players. When the turn ends, they draw two cards, and then flip cards to show what new cities get infected. If a city is drawn that already has three disease cubes on it, an outbreak occurs and spreads the disease to every adjacent city. If all four cures are found, the players win. Players lose if they run out of cards, disease cubes, or if too many outbreaks occur.
Pandemic is very similar to Forbidden Island. However, having four different diseases to worry about instead of one sinking island adds more complexity to the game. Also, card management is vital as each card can be used to find a cure or to travel across the board. The expansion for Pandemic adds seven new Roles and three variants, one of which adds a fifth player acting as a bioterrorist! A great game, except that you can lose on the first turn. (Just check BoardGameGeek if you don’t believe me.)
Three to eight players are Knights of the Round Table, including King Arthur. You must defend the realm from Saxons, Picts, catapults, the Black Knight, and a dragon. While Camelot is under siege, you also can quest to claim Excalibur, the Holy Grail, and Lancelot’s armor. There’s one other problem: one of you is possibly a traitor! As you successfully complete quests, you collect white swords. Failing a quest earns you black swords. When twelve or more swords are collected, the players win if more than half are white. If half or more swords are black, or all the players die, the traitor wins.
Here’s the first of two co-op games with the hidden traitor element, adding paranoia and suspicion to the game. Since there are only seven Good loyalty cards and one Traitor card, it is possible unknowingly play a game without a traitor. During one of the best seven-player games I played, everyone had been accused of being a traitor except one. We all assumed he was the traitor and refused to trust him, only to discover the traitor card was still in the box! The expansion adds new Knights to choose from and a different loyalty deck for seven to eight players with two Traitor cards in it.
Here, three to six players are humans searching for Earth. They are faced with Cylon attacks, dwindling resources, and struggles for political and military power. Not to mention that some of the players may secretly be Cylons, even without them realizing it. If the humans manage to reach Earth, they win. If the ship takes too much damage, or if any resource reaches zero, the Cylons win.
This is by far the longest and most difficult of the group. The most important feature of the game is the halfway point, or “sleeper phase”. To start the game, only half of the loyalty cards are dealt. The remaining cards are given out during the sleeper phase. That means that you could be human on one turn and a Cylon the next. The expansions add new characters, cards, and variants.