Snorkack
Arcane
Hey guys!
I love my pnp, because I like games and I often like playing with my friends, not just against them. The older I grow, the less time I have at disposal for evening-long or even weekend-long pnp sessions. So quite a while ago I started getting into board games, and especially those that are played cooperatively against the game itself are a really good substitute for that 'working together' feeling.
I'm always curious to see recommendations for coop boardgames, so let's make a thread about those. I begin with three games that I think are pretty awesome.
Pandemic (2008) https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30549/pandemic
I guess this is the prototype coop board game. It's pretty accessible, rather abstract, widely available and if you clicked this thread, chances are you knew it already.
Humanity is threatened by four deadly diseases that spread quickly over the planet and the players need to contain the spread to tolerable levels while researching the antidote. The board is, similar to Risk, divided into countries and regions. To find a cure for a specific affliction, a player needs four cards of the same color, but the players also need to use the cards in order to be mobile on the map. Each player has a specific role: The doctor can cure the country where his pawn stands more quickly, the scientist needs less cards to find the antidote the logistics officer can move other pawns more effectively,...
The rules are pretty simple and a single session is about 45 minutes. It is imo the perfect game to initiate people to the world of coop board games for who monopoly has been the pinnacle of board game complexity.
Legends of Andor (2012) https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/127398/legends-andor
This game received a lot of buzz and although it looks like it could be similar to Descent and the likes, Andor is more a puzzle game than anything else. In the base game there are 5 scenarios, one of them is the tutorial. Each player plays a typical fantasy hero archetype, while monsters move over the map in a predetermined pattern and try to reach the castle and kill the population. The players need to solve specific tasks, e.g. travel to the search markers on the map, search them and find a specific item. Then they need to get to another tile and defeat a strong boss. There are special events that are triggered after a certain number of rounds, an amount of enemies that are slain, etc. Then the game reveals new objectives or threats to the players who then need to reevaluate the situation.
Apart from too many monsters reaching the castle, there's another losing condition. You need to complete the objectives in a certain amount of time. But not only turns take time: slaying a monster adds to this counter as well, so you need to think twice about slaying an enemy next to you or not.
The appeal from this game comes from the scenarios that only reveal themselves during play. Once you have beaten a scenario, there is only little replayability. Several expansions are available.
XCOM: The boardgame (2015) https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/163602/xcom-board-game
As the name suggests, this game is based on the xcom franchise and deserves that name more than many of the xcom pc releases of the last years.
I have one problem with most coop games: Although it looks like four people are playing, it sometimes is just the one who understood the mechanics the best telling his mates what to do in their turns. Xcom doesn't let you do that.
In order to play, you need a mobile device or a pc besides the actual board game to play. At first glance it looks similar to Pandemic. There's a world map, each player has a specific role. One controls finance and airforce, one controls ground troops, one is in charge for science and research and one handles the (browser-, ios- or android)app, transmits informations to the others and manages sattelite network.
General goal is to prevent humanity to exceed a certain panic threshold as well as defending the xcom base while solving missions that require ground troops until the final mission is unlocked and beaten. There are two phases: realtime phase, and resolve phase.
During real time, the app gives the players consecutive tasks like placing ufos and aliens on the map or allocating research, deploying sattelites, air and ground forces. The latter all cost money and need to be agreed on while a strict timer is urging.
In the resolve phase, the allocated funds are spent, battles are resolved and research that enables new weapons or actions gets checked for success. When all is done, app checks if winning or losing conditions are met and proceeds with the next rt phase (or not).
This game is just awesome. I comes with a variety of difficulties and missions (replayability) and I'd recommend it to anyone who's into boardgames. Oh, and the tutorial is brutal :D
I love my pnp, because I like games and I often like playing with my friends, not just against them. The older I grow, the less time I have at disposal for evening-long or even weekend-long pnp sessions. So quite a while ago I started getting into board games, and especially those that are played cooperatively against the game itself are a really good substitute for that 'working together' feeling.
I'm always curious to see recommendations for coop boardgames, so let's make a thread about those. I begin with three games that I think are pretty awesome.
Pandemic (2008) https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30549/pandemic
I guess this is the prototype coop board game. It's pretty accessible, rather abstract, widely available and if you clicked this thread, chances are you knew it already.
Humanity is threatened by four deadly diseases that spread quickly over the planet and the players need to contain the spread to tolerable levels while researching the antidote. The board is, similar to Risk, divided into countries and regions. To find a cure for a specific affliction, a player needs four cards of the same color, but the players also need to use the cards in order to be mobile on the map. Each player has a specific role: The doctor can cure the country where his pawn stands more quickly, the scientist needs less cards to find the antidote the logistics officer can move other pawns more effectively,...
The rules are pretty simple and a single session is about 45 minutes. It is imo the perfect game to initiate people to the world of coop board games for who monopoly has been the pinnacle of board game complexity.
Legends of Andor (2012) https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/127398/legends-andor
This game received a lot of buzz and although it looks like it could be similar to Descent and the likes, Andor is more a puzzle game than anything else. In the base game there are 5 scenarios, one of them is the tutorial. Each player plays a typical fantasy hero archetype, while monsters move over the map in a predetermined pattern and try to reach the castle and kill the population. The players need to solve specific tasks, e.g. travel to the search markers on the map, search them and find a specific item. Then they need to get to another tile and defeat a strong boss. There are special events that are triggered after a certain number of rounds, an amount of enemies that are slain, etc. Then the game reveals new objectives or threats to the players who then need to reevaluate the situation.
Apart from too many monsters reaching the castle, there's another losing condition. You need to complete the objectives in a certain amount of time. But not only turns take time: slaying a monster adds to this counter as well, so you need to think twice about slaying an enemy next to you or not.
The appeal from this game comes from the scenarios that only reveal themselves during play. Once you have beaten a scenario, there is only little replayability. Several expansions are available.
XCOM: The boardgame (2015) https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/163602/xcom-board-game
As the name suggests, this game is based on the xcom franchise and deserves that name more than many of the xcom pc releases of the last years.
I have one problem with most coop games: Although it looks like four people are playing, it sometimes is just the one who understood the mechanics the best telling his mates what to do in their turns. Xcom doesn't let you do that.
In order to play, you need a mobile device or a pc besides the actual board game to play. At first glance it looks similar to Pandemic. There's a world map, each player has a specific role. One controls finance and airforce, one controls ground troops, one is in charge for science and research and one handles the (browser-, ios- or android)app, transmits informations to the others and manages sattelite network.
General goal is to prevent humanity to exceed a certain panic threshold as well as defending the xcom base while solving missions that require ground troops until the final mission is unlocked and beaten. There are two phases: realtime phase, and resolve phase.
During real time, the app gives the players consecutive tasks like placing ufos and aliens on the map or allocating research, deploying sattelites, air and ground forces. The latter all cost money and need to be agreed on while a strict timer is urging.
In the resolve phase, the allocated funds are spent, battles are resolved and research that enables new weapons or actions gets checked for success. When all is done, app checks if winning or losing conditions are met and proceeds with the next rt phase (or not).
This game is just awesome. I comes with a variety of difficulties and missions (replayability) and I'd recommend it to anyone who's into boardgames. Oh, and the tutorial is brutal :D