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You Got A Friend[ly Co-op Board Gaming Experience] In Me…
Why do we still do this? Valentine’s day has been traumatising kids and adults alike since some saint got strapped to a cart wheel and rolled down a hill (that was St Catherine, patron saint of fireworks, you klutz). Whatever. Anyway, not everyone has a significant other or wants a significant other, so this for all you peeps who want to batten down the hatches every time this Hallmark heart-fest rolls around. This one’s for the friends.
Hanabi
Speaking of fireworks (I was, just a couple of lines ago – see?), Hanabi is a good place to start when it comes to friendly co-ops. The idea of the game is to play cards of the same colour in the correct sequence to create a spectacular firework display. The only problem is that you cannot look at your deck – but everyone else can! Now, your fellow team mates can’t just tell you straight out which card to play, but they can give you hints about the colours and numbers of your cards – they can point to which cards are a particular colour or say whether a card is a particular number, but not both at the same time. This game is a bit more elegant and less luck based than The Mind and a bit less frenetic than Kites, which could have also been included, and though there is mild peril – if you make three mistakes, the game is over – this is a game that is all about teamwork and knowing the people you are playing with. Plays up to five.
Forbidden Island
There are now four Forbidden games to choose from, but I think the ‘nicest’ by far is Island – mainly due to the fact that this is the only Forbidden game where you can’t die. I mean, the island can sink beneath you but you can’t die. There’s also a lot more opportunity for meeting and trading cards in this game as opposed to the other games, and sharing is indeed caring. This is also the only Forbidden game where you’re trying to find something as opposed to just survive – get enough cards then go to one of the appropriate shrines and trade them for one of the remaining treasures. Once all four treasures are collected, get everyone back to the helicopter and head off with your booty. Then, once you get home, you will be the toast of the Royal Archaeological Society, because nothing could possibly go wrong on the way home… Nothing at all. Matt Leacock has done many co-op games, but this one feels the least perilous – just a trip to the beach, yeah? Also plays up to five.
Marvel D.A.G.G.E.R
The big franchise remake of Eldritch Horror may have got some grief for being heavy in the cost but light in the component quality, but despite the ‘end of the world’ vibes, this game is all about the teamwork (what’s going to work? TEAMWORK! I loved Wonder Pets…). Up to five (again) intrepid heroes team up to take on the likes of Loki or Thanos in a globe-spanning battle for the fate of humanity. This involves a lot of activating powers and chucking dice, and who doesn’t love chucking dice? The reason why this is here over Eldritch Horror, another co-op, is that there is more than a nod to Marvel Champions here in the way that heroes are set up (you have a hero board and a trait board), and these traits and hero abilities actively get better when you combo them with other player’s actions – just like those ensemble scenes from Avengers Assemble! I mean, you’ll have to provide your own sound effects and soundtrack, but that’s all part of the fun. You also get a lot of heroes to play with (15 double sided hero boards, with each board having the two archetypes of that character) and plenty of second chances – watch out for that threat tracker though…
Heroes of Tenefyr
Now because I love deck builders and Marvel, I could have gone for Marvel Legendary, but there is a hint of competition in that and things can escalate as more villains fill the city. Also, there isn’t much in the way of teamwork. Unlike Heroes of Tenefyr, which is a co-operative dungeon crawl deck builder - all the things. This one only plays up to four, with each player taking a different character (Bard, Thief, Cleric, Barbarian – you know the types). As with all deck builders, you start with a whole load of nowt, but the difference between this and other deck builders is that, when you defeat a monster, the person who gets in the final blow gets to add the defeated card to their discard pile. Different cards work better with different characters, so it is very much a case of making sure the right person gets the last hit in. There are ways to exchange cards in the game, so it’s not a complete disaster if someone goes overkill on a Goblin. It is also an unusual deck builder in that there is plenty of interaction that doesn’t involve getting up in another player’s grill, and everyone stays in the game until the very end. Taste the camaraderie.
Dorfromantik
And finally, a game that is friendly above all friendly co-op board gaming experiences, because there is no way to really lose, only degrees of winning. Based on the computer game that gained a lot of fans during lock down because of its bucolic setting and gentle pace, up to six (yes, six!) players work together to build a village (it takes a village to raise a child; it takes up to six to build a village) by placing hexominoes next to each other to create a landscape of fields, pastures, woods and buildings. Unlike Kingdomino or Carcassonne, most tiles can be played next to any other tile, apart from rivers and railways, which have to continue rivers and railways. The group gains points by completing numbers of types of things together, like the number of river tiles or the number of wood tiles together. When one goal is complete, another is placed until all the tiles have been played. The score is then taken and… everybody wins! But to make things interesting, certain points and goals completed will unlock certain effects and allow the players to open boxes that contain more tiles and more ways to score. Gentle, friendly and with just a hint of achievement. Dorfromantik: probably the nicest game in the world (and it won the Spiel Der Jahr as well).