My Other Hobby: Tabletop Gaming #2: Cooperative Games

Cooperative is a very neat genre of tabletop games. In a cooperative game, the players are all working together against the game itself. This is nice because competitive games can get ugly, especially if there is player elimination. You know what I'm talking about. You get smoked early in Monopoly, then sit there like a schmuck as a couple players sit there for 3 hours trying to wear each other down. It sucks, and can easily end in a flipped over table or a punched player. Cooperative games still carry that risk, because you are can lose to the game or to your fellow players' stupidity! FUN!

To be honest, cooperative games are a lot of fun and there is a great sense of accomplishment at beating one. What you do need to avoid in some of co-op games is the phenomenon of the "Alpha Player." This is a player (usually the most familiar with the game) who tries to direct every other player on what they should do for their turn. In the event this happens, you need only tell them "shut the fuck up and let me take my turn."

Here are three of our favorite co-op games:

Hanabi

Number of players: 2-5
Time to play: 25 minutes
How do you win?: Arrange stacks of cards by color and number
Difficulty to learn/teach: Easy

Hanabi is a very accessible card game and is great fun. Every player starts with a hand of cards (cards come in five colors and are numbered 1-5). The object is to create five stacks of cards, one color for each stack, each stack in order from #1-5.
Simple!
Except everybody holds their hands with their cards facing AWAY from themselves. You can see every other players' cards EXCEPT your own. Each turn you can do one of three things:

1. Lay down a card. If the card will go on one of the stacks, excellent. If not, that's a strike. Three strikes and everybody loses.
2. Give another player a hint. This costs a token. The group has a finite amount of tokens to use. You can then tell another player how many of a color OR number they have, but not both. You are allowed to point to the cards.
3. Discard a card to regain a token.

That's it. The game is deceptively difficult but a lot of fun. You're not allowed to give any sort of clue that a player is about to play/discard something they shouldn't. You have to sit there stonefaced as they either succeed to fail. Great game and fairly inexpensive.

Pandemic

Number of players: 2-4

Time to play: 45 minutes
How do you win?: Find cures for four different diseases
Difficulty to learn/teach: Medium

Pandemic is one of the most well known cooperative games and generally the game against which other cooperative games are measured. It is also extremely topical right now. Four different diseases have broken out at once, and the players are a group of scientists/professionals who are charged with controlling the outbreak and finding cures before the diseases overtake the board or time runs out. Each turn a player can take several actions such as moving, building facilities, controlling outbreaks, or curing the diseases. The game is extremely tense and it is very possible to lose the game quickly. Each player takes a specific role with special abilities no other player will have. There are several expansions to this game which you certainly do not need right away. There is also a Legacy version of this game. Probably avoid this version first. The Legacy game has a finite amount of plays and the game gets permanently altered as you play. This is arguably a must own game for any collection.

Space Alert

Number of players: 1-5
Time to play: 30 minutes
How do you win?: Survive for 10 minutes as everything goes to shit
Difficulty to learn/teach: medium/difficult (the game includes a great system that slowly eases you into the game, adding new mechanics each play)

This game has a fairly steep learning curve, but is totally worth the effort. The players are the crew of a survey ship. The ship simply has to sit for 10 minutes. However, during that 10 minutes, literally everything that ever went wrong in Star Trek occurs during that 10 minutes. IN REAL TIME. There is a CD (also an App) that will play announcements from the ship. The crew must then respond to those threats by playing cards to move their crew members around, charging shields/weapons, firing weapons, etc. All as the ship relentlessly gives more and more alerts of things going wrong. These things can be meteor swarms, attacking ships, boarding parties, aliens, etc.

At the end of 10 minutes. You basically rewind time and then go turn by turn and see if your planning actually worked. Generally it does not. You end up with people fighting for the elevator, trying to fire weapons that haven't been charged, or standing there helplessly as large portions of the ship are exposed to the screaming void of space.

The game has been best described as "imagine putting five people into a giant hamster ball. Give them all meth, then have them try to navigate a Super G downhill ski course." There will be an amusing amount of screaming, then everyone dies. Repeatedly.  That being said, the game is extremely good and a great game if you can get four other willing people.

Next time we'll take a look at games for two players!