Cooperative Games Have Got Me Down

These days Shadows Over Camelot routinely leaves the kingdom in shambles, the world is festering with disease and pestilence whenever the CDC leaves us in charge with Pandemic, even the lost treasures of antiquity rarely make it off of the Forbidden Island. Forbidden Island is a kid’s game! It’s for children! I used to think that cooperative games were great for bonding with my fellow gamers, but now they just leave me feeling hollow inside.

I don’t mind losing a game to friends. In fact, it happens all the time. I usually play games with a smart and savvy group and wins are distributed fairly evenly amongst us all. It’s losing to a game mechanic that I hate. And I don’t mean losing a game because of some sort of rule technicality, I mean when the game is actually the winner. Cooperative games have really got me down these days. We just seem to rarely win, and the silent gloating of the victorious game pieces looking up at me is almost more than I can bear. Whether it’s the stack of black cubes surrounding Mumbai and Tehran, or the hordes of siege engines massed in front of the castle makes no difference to me.

Recently four of us were playing Shadows Over Camelot and we were doing really well. We had won the Grail Quest and several others and basically just needed to keep the siege engines at bay until the game ended. Two of our braves knights had returned to Camelot to do battle with the belfries and catapults of our foes, and they got mangled. Not just defeated, but really embarrassed. On three consecutive rolls the enemy rolled an eight (on a d8) and both knights were killed in successive turns. Undermanned, the remaining two were quickly overwhelmed and the kingdom was plunged into darkness. It was heartbreaking. The next time we played we were dead men walking. We didn’t stand a chance. Our fragile mindset, so recently elevated as we were on the cusp of victory, doomed us from the beginning. We overreacted to threats, jumped around the board like novice squires and bickered with one another. We had lost the psychological game to a non-entity, literally something that had no brain or psyche had gotten inside our head.

What I need to do is play more Castle Panic. That game is absurdly easy, maybe that’s why people seem to like it so much. Because they always win. But therein is the problem. If a game doesn’t present much of a challenge for the group than it’s not a very good game, it makes me feel a little bit like a bully. But if it’s too challenging and we just lose all of the time we feel like doormats. True, it does make victory all that much sweeter, but I’m beginning to forget what it tastes like at all.

Ranking the Pandemic Roles

Pandemic is a tough game. In addition to the horrendous surge of disease that is plaguing the world, there are also the questionable hiring practices of the CDC. Sure, some of the staff I understand, but others I really wonder about. How did they get a job with an organization that seems responsible for saving the world? And wouldn’t the CDC just send out the people best suited for the task? Maybe they were on vacation and no one could get a hold of them. However, the variable roles in the game are also one of the best aspects of the game so I’ve decided to rank all of the roles, including the ones that are introduced in the On The Brink expansion. Unlike the characters in Last Night on Earth none of the roles are wretched, they all have some use. Though the gap between the best and worst is still pretty large.

Dispatcher- In my eyes the unquestioned number one in the game. One of the most important tactics in Pandemic is to be able to trade cards between players and no one makes this easier to do than the Dispatcher. The ability to dispatch any player to another player makes so many things possible when it comes to trading cards. And on top of that they can also move other players around with their own actions, usually setting people up to be in a good position when they start their turn. Any group with a Dispatcher gets a big leg up when it comes to winning. Ideally the Dispatcher never even leaves the greater Atlanta region. The only downside is that the Dispatcher can be hard to use, often requiring the player to think a couple of turns ahead. Which I actually consider to be pretty fun.

Medic- The medic will not help you win the game in the curing sense, but no role is as productive when it comes to keeping the world safe. Being able to clear off all the infection markers with a single action is really strong, assuming that you can get them to the trouble spot. Once a cure is found they can also wipe out all the cubes without spending an action, making them the perfect partner for the Dispatcher to run them through an infected region and clean the whole mess up.

Researcher- Who doesn’t like the Researcher, the most giving of all CDC employees? Seriously, the Santa Claus of Pandemic is a welcome addition to any crew. For one action per card this lady (I think it’s a lady) can give city cards to other players as long as they are in the same place. One of the best tactics is to give away their initial cards on the first turn when everyone is in Atlanta, it’s a good way to get some direction early and maybe snuff out a color in the first two rounds if the cards cooperate a little bit.

Scientist- The object of the game is curing diseases and the Scientist does it better than anyone else. Needing only four cards (instead of five) makes them the ideal candidate to get the job down. However, they still need to get those cards and possess no ability to help with that. The Researcher, Dispatcher and Scientist make an awesome combo should you be so lucky to get them all together.

Field Operative- My favorite of the expansion Roles, the Field Operative has a cool mechanic that makes them very useful in finding cures. Once a turn when they remove cubes from a city they can put one of the cubes on their card. When they have collected three cubes of the same color they can then cure that color for only three cards. Awesome. I like this for a couple of reasons. Obviously it’s pretty powerful, it just takes a bit to develop. But I also like that it makes sense. This guy is out there collecting samples and then can use that evidence to find a cure. Though I am a bit concerned about their haircut, it looks like blonde noodles springing forth from their head.

Troubleshooter- The best preventative role in the game, whatever that means. The Troubleshooter works best in a game with four or five players when they can play the role of freelance operative, flying around and preventing outbreaks. The ability to peek at the upcoming infections is really handy, but if that is all they are doing they are nothing more than middle of the pack. The secondary ability of not discarding city cards to fly there is also useful, especially when it comes to trading since they can fly to a city that they have a card of. Makes it easier to trade.

Containment Specialist- Ultra specialized character that can be very helpful, though at times it’s power will go unused for long stretches. Perhaps the best character at preventing those horrid chain outbreaks, you just need to make sure that he is in the right location to take advantage of his unique skill set. Another character that works well with the Dispatcher, though really everyone does.

Generalist- That’s not a real job. How did they get hired? I wonder if the position was posted as Generalist on a government job site. “We are looking for someone who doesn’t do anything all that well but it useful to have around.” Each turn they get an extra action. It is what it is. Some turns it is very useful, other times it won’t make that much of a difference. About as average a character that you can be. And what it she holding in her hand? Is it for injections?

Epidemiologist- The ability to trade cards easier is very good, but the Epidemiologist gets the short end of the stick as far as this ability is concerned. The issue is that it is capped at being usable once per turn, which is okay but definitely inferior to the Researcher. Also, being able to give cards seems to help more than being able to take cards from players (which is what the Epidemiologist does). This is one of the roles that I’ve just never seen be all that useful during the actual course of the game. Additionally the fact that the woman’s face appears to be melting makes me nervous.

Operations Expert- It’s not so much that the Operations Expert is bad, being able to easily build stations is actually really nice, but the problem is that he becomes quickly obsolete. Once they build a couple of stations they can’t really do all that much. If you happen to have the New Assignment special event it works great here; build some stations and then bring in someone who can still do their thing. The added ability to discard any card at a station to fly somewhere is nothing all that great, but at least it let’s you put a station anywhere that you want. Oh yeah, it’s the On the Brink version that we are discussing here. The original killed himself in shame.

Archivist- Weak. A hand limit of eight cards instead of seven is okay, but it really doesn’t stack up to just about any other power in the game. The more useful ability is the one that allows the Archivist to bring a city card back from the dead, but it’s really an ability that takes a lot to make it work. Chances are it is something that you will want to use during the end of the game when you need a certain color. In order to yield some results the Archivist has to get to the correct city, get the card and then get it to the appropriate player (assuming it is not the Archivist) and give it to them (or more likely have the player come to them and take it). That’s a lot of work in a very time sensitive game.

Who Goes First?

Going first in a game usually affords an advantage to that player, though it is not substantial and most likely normalizes over the course of the game. But still, an advantage is an advantage and most games recommend that for the sake of fairness the players roll a die and the highest roller will kick things off. This is fine, and usually the preferred method in the games I play in. However, some games do recommend alternate methods of deciding the first player. Here are some of my favorites, with suggestions to improve them as well.

It makes sense that the starting player of Pandemic is connected to illness, that is after all what the game is about. In this cooperative game the rules state that the player who has been sick most recently goes first. I like this one a lot and in our games we always stick to it. The reason why? It’s always different every time that you play, essentially making it random. I don’t think that this one needs fixing.

One of the stranger methods of choosing a starting player is employed by Smallworld. The player with the pointiest ears gets to go first. Certainly an odd way of picking things, I do like that it rewards such a bizarre personal trait that really may have never come up before in the person’s life. However, like a lot of these methods it winds up being redundant in a group of players that frequently game together. Unless someone is so committed to victory in Smallworld that they alter their ears the same person will continue to go first. Here is my suggestion for an alternate method. Once the initial races are all out on the table the player who most resembles the race in the first spot goes first. Sure, it could cause some hard feelings when trying to figure out who among you most resembles an orc or a ghoul, but really it’s just setting the tone for a game that is all about slaughtering your friends. And if an elf pops up you can still fall back on the pointy ears.

Ticket to Ride rewards the most well traveled of a group of gamers. The initial player is determined by the player who has visited the most places. Like Smallworld this gets old fast, though it does at least have the possibility of changing if you have a long term gaming group. People travel, usually for the reason of improving their chances of going first in Ticket to Ride. Not really, but this game is not really about traveling. It’s about trains. How about the first player is the one who has most recently been on a train? Done.

It’s fun to pick on old people, and clearly the designers of Bohnanza agree with me. In everyone’s favorite game about bean farming, the first player is the player to the left of the dealer. Which is pretty standard fare, however the rules state that the dealer is the oldest player. Ouch. Not only does the elder gamer have to do all of the setup, but then they ultimately wind up going last as well. Not sure what any of that has to do with beans or farming and it also suffers from the redundancy problem, though in a different way (the first player is always changing, but the last player stays the same). My fix is rather simple. Prior to shuffling all the players flip over a single card, the player with the most common bean then has to do all of the shuffling and be the last player. Come on, growing old sucks as it is. Does Bohnanza really need to be against you too?

For a game that is all about being an evil overlord it seems like an odd choice that Dungeon Lords chose to reward the nicest player by having them go first. But I think it is a brilliant way of deciding. There is nothing quite like watching several people argue over who is the nicest among them. It is also the type of thing that is subject to rapid changes based on recent actions. I think that this method is pretty solid, and since in Dungeon Lords players are not really getting a chance to actually kill one another it’s nice to be able to get some animosity out with a healthy argument to start the game.

There is nothing wrong with the random roll of the dice to determine who has the minor advantage of going first, but sometimes a game deserves a little better. Plus, these games all have one thing in common. They don’t use any dice so something else needed to be implemented. (The exception is Smallworld which has the reinforcement die, but it is not a traditional die and could result in a bunch of ties. So we will forget about that one.) I applaud the game designers for coming up with a solution that has some personality to it, even if they are a bit redundant at times.

Pandemic Custom Card- Special Delivery!

It was very nice of the creators of Pandemic to include some blank cards with the game, encouraging players to create their own Special Events and Roles. Considering how bad we seem to be at saving the world from disease and pestilence we could really use all the help we can get. So we decided to make our own Special Event.

I thought that it was very important for the card to be balanced, none of us wanted anything that would just turn everything in our favor. As nice as it would be the have a card that automatically cures one of the viruses, it’s not really keeping with the spirit of the game. That spirit being to crush the players and leave them feeling useless. I mean, who doesn’t want that to continue? Katie, Mike, and I put our heads together and came up with a new card, Special Delivery! One of the problems that we have, especially when playing with a smaller number of players, is trading cards to one another to cure a disease. Special Delivery allows the current player to give any City card in their possession to any other player. Basically I imagine the player packing up a vital piece of information, or a disease sample, and boxing it up into a parcel and shipping it off at high speed. It certainly isn’t overpowered. Trading cards is a part of the game and a regular activity among players, this just makes it a bit easier at a key moment in the game.

Katie was tasked with creating the card and I have to say, she did a rather awesome job. For one, it looks just like the other Special Event cards which is cool. And the picture is great; a package being sent off in a hurry. I especially like how it looks like a stamp. All around win. Rather than printing onto the blank card she made a sticker of the right size and just adhered it onto the template. Brilliant.

Considering that we lost again last night, even with the Special Delivery contributing to the curing of the black virus, we may need to come up with some more Special Events or a new Role or two.

Pandemic: On The Brink- Virulent Strain

Just when we were starting to get the hang of Pandemic and reel off some consecutive wins we decided to start to use the On The Brink expansion, thus once again endangering the world and setting back our success considerably. On The Brink comes with a bunch of goodies including new Roles, Special Events, and extra scenarios. Of the three additional games in the expansion the Virulent Strain challenge is currently my favorite.

In the Virulent Strain challenge one of the four viruses takes on deadly new properties. It¹s virtually the same game as the original Pandemic, except that the Epidemic cards are replaced with new Virulent Strain Epidemic cards. Otherwise it plays the same way. All of the new Epidemic cards function just like the Epidemic cards from the original set (i.e. Increase, Infect, Intensify), except they all have one added nasty effect that impacts the virulent strain for that game. When the first Epidemic card comes up during the game the color that currently has out the most cubes becomes the virulent strain for the rest of the game; making it tougher, harder to cure, and usually more abundant as it seeks to infect the known world. Or at least one localized quarter of it. The added effects vary from card to card and depending on when you get them in the game can be completely lethal. Some of them are one time effects, others are continual and will torment you until the game comes to it¹s (bitter) conclusion.

One that I’ve found to be particularly difficult is the Complex Molecular Structure, which increases the number of cards needed to cure the virulent strain by one. This can be an absolute devestator of an effect if there is no role suited to curing with fewer cards. Needing six cards of a color to cure a virus (out of a total of twelve) is crippling in several regards. First off, when playing with three or more players each player is most likely not going to see six cards of the same color over the course of the game (they are probably not going to see five either) which means that the difficult practice of trading cards will have to come into play. Second, it also means that only six cards of a particular color can be discarded over the course of the game, either from chartering flights, building stations, or discarding for being over the hand limit. Getting the right cards into the right hands is really the key to the game. A lot of it also has to do with the number of players. Have too few players and you will wind up discarding cards that will come back to haunt you. Have too many players and the Player Cards will run out after each player has only had a couple of turns, thus really limiting the chance of getting the needed number to cure.

Slippery Slope is another one that will push the world to the brink of extermination. A continuing effect, it causes each outbreak of the virulent strain to move the Outbreak Marker two spaces instead of one. That can end the world in a hurry. Of course, not all are deadly as these two, but none of them are pleasant.

One of the aspects of the On The Brink expansion that I find interesting is that, unlike most game expansions, it just makes the game harder. A lot of expansions do nothing other than introduce new characters or make the map bigger, ultimately making the game easier in some cases by giving the players a larger arsenal of options to work with. Not so with this one. Additionally, the Virulent Strain contains eight Epidemic cards, allowing the players to really test their skill by having one more potential epidemic than in the original game. I have to say that I think that Pandemic is absolutely one of the best games around, probably the best game that we’ve added to our group since the classic Starfarers of Catan. Having an expansion that really enhances the game only makes it that much better.

Pandemic: On the Brink

After months of waiting for my preordered copy of the Pandemic: On the Brink expansion to arrive, I was finally rewarded with a package in the mail the other day. That night I got together with Mike, Katie, and Jesse to play the new game, but I did have some questions going into it. The truth is morale has been real low lately with team games. Between Pandemic and Shadows Over Camelot we are really struggling, victories are few and far between these days. While I was going through the rules for On the Brink everything in there told me that this just a way to make the game harder. The game comes with three variants on the traditional game; Virulent Disease, Mutation, and Bio Terrorist (in which the game is turned upside down by having one player go against the others) all of which just seem to increase the difficulty level. Did we really need this, seeing as how we routinely get our butts kicked? So we decided to not play one of these new games right away. Fortunately for us the expansion comes with a bunch of other things which increase the fun of an already very enjoyable game.



One of the best aspects of the expansion is these really cool plastic Petri dishes that are used for containers for all the cubes and pieces for the game. Previously players had no choice but to put all the components in the small bags that the game came with, which really isn’t all that bad. But the little dishes are real cool and fit into the theme of the game, they have little stickers to go on them that make them look like hazmat containers. An excellent touch. Plus, it does make the game a bit more organized. What they really should have included was something to put the cards into, instead of that bizarre, ninth rate cardboard monstrosity that the original comes with. Really, what is that? Maybe next time. The game also comes with some smaller pawns which is good because the pawns were way too big, it was sort of awkward when you were on a space with another player or a couple infection cubes.

Aside from the new scenarios the game also comes with eight new Special Event cards and seven new Role cards. Additionally there is also a revised role card for the Operations Expert, which I find to be hilarious. Ever since we started playing Pandemic the Operations Expert has been the most maligned of all the roles, drawing that in the game was essentially the kiss of death. There was something charmingly morbid about being him actually, so it was very funny to see the game designers essentially acknowledge this by issuing a “patch” for the Op Ex. In addition to his awesome normal power of building research stations, he can now also discard any card if he is at a station to move anywhere on the board. It’s not a bad power, but it’s still not great. What it does is allow him to fly all over the board and quickly build stations anywhere that the group wants. Certainly makes getting around much easier.

Much like the original five roles, the new seven are a mixed bunch of usefulness. The Generalist looks like she may be the winner of the bunch since she gets five actions each turns, instead of four. That’s real good. The Troubleshooter is also excellent. He can peek at the infection deck at the start of his turn, allowing him to sniff out trouble before it happens and he also can use cards to fly around without discarding them. The Epidemiologist can take cards from other players, much like the Bizarro version of the Researcher. The Archivist can have eight cards in his hand! He can also take city cards from the discard if he is in the matching city. Eh, nothing special there. There are also some others that I have not seen in action yet, so I will reserve judgement on them but all of these news cards really just decrease the chance that you will get the Dispatcher or the Medic, which still seem to be the best cards. Have these new roles actually made the game harder?

Like the new roles, I have not had a chance to see all the Special Events in action. We just took all the new cards and mixed them in with the old, so I am sure they will come up at some point. I think that my favorite is New Assignment, which allows one player to draw a new role during the game. The other night when we first played with the new cards I, ironically, drew the improved Operations Expert. I was able to build several stations in a hurry and then Mike used it on me to call in some useful backup. The card is sort of unclear if the draw should be random or chosen, but we went with random and I would up with the Researcher. Some of the other new Events include one that allows a player two extra actions on a turn, the ability to remove five cubes of a color immediately when a cure is found, remove any three infections cubes on the board, and a couple others of varying power. The rules also recommend putting two Special Events per player into the deck, which is a boon to the players if you have three or more going at it. The original game had five cards, so it equals a gain for the CDC.

I don’t mind that we keep losing at Pandemic, but I don’t understand why it keeps happening. I feel like we have pretty solid strategy, understand the game well, work as a team. Yet we always seem to come up a turn or two short. What usually gets us is that we run out of cards in the Player Deck, despite making curing our top priorities. The other night everything seemed aligned for us. We had the Dispatcher and the Medic, used the Event cards well, and we still came up short.

Pandemic!

With all the talk of swine flu in the news recently I thought that it would be a good time to talk about Pandemic, the board game of infectious disease from Z-Man games. As members of the Atlanta based Center for Disease Control the players work together to prevent the spread of four different strains of a deadly virus that is threatening to annhilate the world’s population. I have to say that I think Pandemic is one of the best games out there. The mechanics of the game are creative and work great to create a tense, fun environment. It is also a quick game at about 45 minutes, though it can also be much faster in a losing effort.

I sort of have a thing for maps, so I love the board because it is just a map of the world. The world is divided into four regions, each of which is inflicted with a strain of the virus that is threatening humanity. The map looks nice, even though it does not have a ton of detail on it. And I’m sort of bummed that Philadelphia is not one of the cities featured, but with New York and Washington already there it would be East Coast overload. Infections are marked with generic wood cubes and the player pawns look like they could be from any of a hundred games. The infection cubes in particular get a ton of use so I see why they are nothing ornate. Plus it keeps the cost of the game down, which is well worth it is my eyes. There are also two stacks of cards, the Player deck and the Infection deck, which are fine. The strength of this game is not the components, but rather the clever game play and mechanics.



One of the nice aspects of a cooperative game is that everyone can go home a winner. Or a loser as the case may be. This game gives no bragging rights. But it is a good change of pace for all involved to throw their lots in together and try to save the world. There are five roles in the game available to the players, each one assigned randomly at the start. Since the game is for 2-4 players there is always at least one role missing from the team, which can make things sort of tricky. Each role is useful, though some are certainly better than others. The Medic is almost a necessity to control the large outbreaks, and I feel that the Dispatcher brings a lot to the table by being able to move other players on their turn. Some of them are more or less useful depending on the number of players in the game but none are a total waste. But more than anything working together with the other players controls the fate of the game. If the team is not organized they don’t stand a chance.

At the start of the game nine cities have been infected with the virus that the CDC has been tasked with stopping. Cities are drawn from the Infection deck and then the card is discarded. Each turn a player draws two or more cards from that deck and more cities continue to get infected. With each new infection a single marker is placed on the disease ridden city. At that rate there would just be low level infections breaking out in cities all over the world and it would be relatively easy to contain. However, dispersed throughout the Player deck are Epidemic cards which really kick things up a notch. When an Epidemic card is drawn the bottom card from the Infection deck is given a high level infection (3 markers), but even worse is that the discard pile is reshuffled and placed on top of the draw pile, meaning that all the places that are already infected will get infected again in the coming rounds. When a fourth infection marker is placed on a city an outbreak occurs and things start to rapidly spin out of control as the neighboring cities all begin to accumulate markers and perhaps spawn outbreaks of their own. If enough outbreaks occur the players lose and the world is doomed. Losing also occurs if there are no more infection markers of a strain left to place, or if the players run out of cards to drawer from the Player deck. This game is not easy. The difficulty level can also be adjusted by increasing or decreasing the number of Epidemic cards in the deck.

On each player’s turn they have four action points to spend. They can be used to move around the board, charter flights to cities around the globe, reduce the infection level of the city they are in, and trade cards with other players. Cures for diseases are found when a player has five cards of a certain strain and gets to a research center. The game is won when all four diseases have a cure. The team does not have to administer the cure to each city, so it is possible to win when the board is still filled with diseases.

This game is a lot of fun. One aspect of the game that I really like a lot is how quickly it can turn sour for the players, it really keeps everyone on their toes. An Epidemic card at the wrong time, or a certain city drawn from the Infection deck can create havoc in a short period of time. To date we have not had a single game where the outcome was assured. By the last couple turns everyone is keeping their fingers crossed every time a card is drawn. It’s also interesting to play a game that takes place in the real world. Don’t get me wrong, I love games in outer space and ones that take place in far off lands and idyllic medieval universes, but the familiarity of the real world brings an element to the game that imparts some actual concern for the places that are being torn apart by an epidemic.