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Best Coop Boardgames? (feddit.de)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I would be curious about your favorite coop games. I often find them a big lacking, often being a bit unbalanced. An example is Battle for Hogwarts, where one game can be a walk in the park and another absolutely impossible and rarely is there a balanced match.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Maybe. There is 120 different engame scenarios depending on the board state.

Most of them have the haunt-triggering player turn into an obvious monster - Frankensteins Monster, a Hydra, a Mummy. Then it's a fight.

Other scenarios mean that whomever has all the artifact pieces (scattered across the board) wins. So now it's a free for all and it turns into a very messy brawl.

Even other scenarios mean that one secretly chosen player wins, if they have a specific set of items. This one is especially gnarly, because this is the one that causes the words "Alright. I fire the shotgun at Jane as my first action." and everyone is like "Oh my god! wat!"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

that sounds like a lot of fun! Is the game with a lot of reading about things that happen?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

IMO, no.

Assuming one bloke knows the rules, the game flows fairly smoothly. In the pre-haunt phase, you:

Generally move through an unknown door to a new room
Draw a room card on the right floor, repeat as necessary
Draw an event card based on your room card and execute the event card.
Roll if haunt happens.

Once the group knows these base rules, the pre-haunt game goes very quickly, because you mostly move 2-3 squares (depending on your move points), draw a room, place a room, draw a card, resolve the card and pass on. If the group knows the game, this goes very quickly.

Once the haunt triggers, you have a builtin bio-break. Both the survivors and the evil guy have a bunch of new rules to read and understand. For my main crew, this usually takes 5 - 10 minutes to read and discuss strategies, and we usually combine this with bio-breaks, drink refills, snacks and such.

Comparing this with games like Arkam Horror, Eldritch Horror, or even worse, actual P&P games like DND, It is very smoooth and low-rule-lawyers to play.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Thank you for the description, I will check it out for sure :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I've played a lot of Betrayal. I play tested it at AvalonCon back while I was in high school.

It's very random, and has the potential for some really great games and some real duds. I know in the later editions there have been efforts made to tighten up the scenario balance, do maybe things are better. But From my experience, maybe 1 in 3 games has been 'good', 1 just meh, and the last a steamroller for one side. So many of the scenarios depend on thr size of the house, with too large or too small of a house making it unbalanced. Or specific items being useless or over powered. And many of the scenarios have pretty loose rules.

As long as you understand that, it's a fairly light game that can have a decently large group working together.

I've enjoyed my copy, but there was a stretch where it was OOP and going for big money. It wasn't worth that, but for a regular in-print price, it's fine.