Co-op Based Board Gaming

[Cuzzdog]

I was thinking of picking up a 5+ person co-op based board game for my local gaming group to play. The two choices I could think of for this off the top of my head were the WoW board game and Arkham Horror. So I’m opening up a poll to see what you guys think is the better game, or possibly chime in with another option if I'm painfully out of the loop on the latest greatest in board gaming technology.

[Dr. Mage]

Hmm so for Co-op let me list a few choices:

Arkham Horror you have already mentioned: For a big complex game, I would say this is a really great choice. It's a game that, IMO, you may need to tamper with to get your difficulty settings just to where you want it, but it won't be much tampering and Fantasy Flight supports it well. It has tons of expansions which is both a pro and a con depending on your perspective. There is absolutely no competitveness to it, which again, pro for me, maybe a con for someone else. I think if you love it and play the crap out of it, you should expect getting some of the expansions as a foregone conclusion. The variety of Great Old Ones you face, and the different characters you can play keep games feeling fresh and new. I find that it has a good mix with some games being pretty well handled by the explorers, some being tight, and a few going down hill and getting worse from there. Which, I think, you actually want, cause you need some chance of failure to hold interest. This would be my recommendation for your group, if you like mythos stuff at all you will be unlikely to go wrong.

The next two are, well let's call them co-op with traitors
Battlestar Galactica: Here's my disclaimer, I think I might be the only person on this board who doesn't love the shit out of this game. I started out loving the shit out of it, but cooled on it, personally. Much like arkham horror, it's a big complex Fantasy Flight game, it's got a lot going on, and I find that the traitor dynamic drives a sort of paranoia that is just perfectly matched to the show. There's a lot of this game that is really good, and even me not liking it I still think it's a B and is definitely a quality product. My only gripe is that I think the humans have too much futility, that their turns can get pissed away and it kind of a lousy situation where it's hard enough to deal with the traitor much less everything else. That being said, you should probably treat my review of this game as an outlier. Most of the people on this board will love the shit out of it, and even I assume when it comes to the BSG game it's me, not it.

Shadows over Camelot: A great co-op game from Days of Wonder, which I often think of as sort of opposite of fantasy flight. I dunno if you are familiar with DoW but I love their games a lot since usually, a turn can be described in 3-4 sentences, and there's less fiddly bits. Shadows is actually a fiddlier game than many of their others. Much like all these games, you do some good, and then you have to do some bad. Also like BSG, someone might be a traitor (although in BSG, someone WILL be a traitor and in Shadows someone merely might). Shadows also has a well received expansion that helps add increased difficulty if you like. The theme of the game is as good as Arkham or BSG, it plays much faster than either (75-90 per play vs 120-150 IME). It was actually Shadows that helped me realize what I didn't love about BSG. Because the game is simpler, doing meaningful good on your turn is something you can easily do, and I still find ample room for a traitor to simply drag his heels. If you want a co-op with traitor game, I really recommend this over BSG, but I am sure others will disagree.

Co-op and PVP: The thing about the wow boardgame is that they really tried to get it all in there. It's got, a... frankly insane number of bits and cards and everything, my impression of it was that unlike the video game, management of all the bits became a hassle. The thing is here is that you have two teams of people working against each other. It therefore has less of a let's all sit down and get it done versus mixing that up with a beat the other team. Again that's not really a pro or a con overall, depends on the people. What I will say is a con, though, is that it is one of the most mechanically laden games I have played, and that's saying something up against other FF games. I remember attacks involved rolling three colors of dice, often totaling 10+ dice, and the different colors meant different things, and they were all compared against different TNs based on the monster and... there was a lot of exposed math. Arkham has fistfuls of dice, but it's just counting 5s and 6s. Something about WoW just didn't seem to come together.

Tl;dr summation: Two thumbs up for Arkham and Shadows. While I don't like BSG, the math says you will, and it's certainly by no means a bad game. I can't recommend WoW unless you are really passionate about it.

I know you said 5+ but if you have room for a 2-4 player co-op game, go directly to pandemic, do not pass go, do not collect 200$, go directly to Pandemic.

[mahvelousmeat]

I know you said 5+ but if you have room for a 2-4 player co-op game, go directly to pandemic, do not pass go, do not collect 200$, go directly to Pandemic.

Second'd. My GOD is that a good game. I bought it about a month ago and we've probably gotten at least 20 games out of it so far. It's just that good. (Also cheaper than the WoW board game...I paid $35 at Millenium, I believe.)

[Ruby Vixen]

I'm going to chime in for Shadows over Camelot - it's easy to explain, and it is a lot of fun to play.

[Cuzzdog]

Thanks for the suggestions so far! Unfortunately, the 5+ people thing is a key point. I have a group of people come over for gaming on a weekly basis, and the group fluxes too much to get some solid role playing in, but is also consistently greater than 4 people. As such, I have plenty of great 4 player games already that don't see much group play.