Who Needs Solo Games When You’ve Got These 5 Great Cooperative Board Games?
You can’t always depend on the kindness of strangers, so here’s a list of cooperative board games that play best with a tightly knit group.
Last week, we disproved the idea that a good game night needs more than one person with 5 great solo board games. The only person you need for a fun game night is me, myself, and I. Or you, yourself, and you again. You know what I mean.
But the world of gaming moves fast. Solo games are out! Now cooperative games are all the rage. Let’s take a look at 5 cooperative board games where friendship reigns above all else.
Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is often woefully left out for how little it gets brought up in discussions of cooperative board games. Players work together to build decks with cards representing various heroes and allies from Middle Earth. The more players there are, the more each player can specialize a little bit more, making the whole team stronger together.
Campaign play allows for a full narrative journey from start to finish. Each game will have players face off against threats like the Balrog, or Sauron. They must work together in order to complete each scenario before they are succumb to the threat.
Space Alert
You might think you understand stress and anxiety, but until you’ve played Space Alert, you know nothing of true stress and anxiety (It’s fun, I promise). Space Alert is a game about surviving in deep space under constant threat of one emergency after another. But here’s the kicker. Each player has their own responsibilities on the ship, they must plan their actions multiple turns in advance, and, worst of all, there’s a time limit.
Space Alert is hectic, chaotic, wildly entertaining and from the same designer as Codenames and Mage Knight. It’s a game that rewards clear communication and teamwork. But it’s a game that is at its best when none of the players have any of that “cool under pressure” nonsense.
The Crew: The Quest For Planet Nine
You and your fellow astronauts are hunting for a mysterious ninth planet, before we lost the one we already had. But communication systems are failing and the only way to survive is to match cards according to suit in ascending order! Oh no!
Okay, so the mechanics don’t always fit the theme, but this Kennerspiel des Jahres winner is as highly rated as it is for a reason. Players must use their limited ability to communication and clever deductive reasoning to suss out what the rest are planning, and act accordingly. It’s a unique gameplay experience that rewards players who can always tell what the rest are thinking.
Sky Team
Speaking of Spiel des Jahres, Sky Team was just nominated! Sky Team might be the most teamworky game on this list, because it is a cooperative board game that only plays with exactly 2 players. You and your co-pilot must work together to successfully land commercial airliners at airports around the world.
Though a combination of dice rolling, card playing, and real-time elements, players will have to navigate various challenges and hazards before time runs out. Both players choose their actions at the same time, so here’s hoping you’re in sync, or you might be sunk.
Captain Sonar
Okay fine, you blood-thirsty fiends! Here’s a game with the same level of cooperation, but with a little head-to-head as well. Captain Sonar is still a cooperative board game, but with multiple teams of submarines battling each other. Like in Space Alert, each member of the submarine crew has a role to play, and the captain of each sub is dishing out orders. Yes, of course it’s in real time!
Each captain and their crew must work seamlessly in order to find and destroy the enemy submarines. A crew that can communication well will not only perform better, but are also more likely to avoid a vicious mutiny. That’s not a game mechanic, I just mean maybe your buddy Jared won’t be allowed to be captain anymore.
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