If you like Pandemic, then try...

This is a new column we hope to run fairly often, which compares similar games to each other.  If you like one of the games, hopefully you'll like others on the list!  Ideally we hope to add these similar games to the reviews as well, but for now I thought it would be fun to start a separate column.

To kick things off we'll start with Pandemic, a fun cooperative game.  If you're a fan of Pandemic, here are five other games we think you might like:

1.  Flash Point: very similar to Pandemic, but with a bit more added.  The theme of this game is trying to put out fires in a house and save everyone within it.  It's completely cooperative, and in my opinion a bit better than Pandemic because there is more involved.  I only played once, but it seemed pretty challenging as well.

2.  Forbidden Island: The same makers of Pandemic, the game play here feels very similar.  One nice thing is that it plays well with 2 players, making it a fun game if you're a couple or just have one close friend or sibling to play with.  Like Pandemic, there are different difficulty levels, the hardest of which can be quite intense.

3.  Lord of the Rings:  A bit more complex than Pandemic, Lord of the Rings is probably one of the most challenging purely cooperative games we've tried.  It's a ton of fun though.  Like Pandemic, everyone takes a turn but they are all working toward the same goal.  This game also has the rule that you can't share what cards are in your hand, fixing a problem we had with Pandemic.

4.  Red November: Though it's not Jason's favorite, Red November is also a decent cooperative game you might enjoy if you like Pandemic.  Everyone is working together to save a sinking submarine.  It has a similar feel to Pandemic in that it will never feel like you're very close to winning until you actually do - every game seems to come down to the wire.  Plus, Red November can hold up to 8 players - though keep in mind that if you use that many, the game can last for quite a long time (over 2 hours sometimes).

5.  Shadows over Camelot:  It's not completely 100% cooperative, but it's a fantastic game so I have to mention Shadows over Camelot.  For the most part you are working together against the forces of evil, though there is a possibility of a traitor.  You can choose not to play with the traitor to make it purely cooperative, though it tends to be a lot less challenging that way for advanced players.

Betrayal at House on the Hill

The thing that makes Betrayal an interesting game is that it is different every time you play.  It's also semi-cooperative, with a traitor later on.  There are really two main parts to the game: exploring the house, and then the haunt.  Players take on the role of someone exploring a haunted house.  Your character has stats (a number between 2 and 8) for speed, might, sanity, and knowledge.  Throughout the game you are asked to roll dice based on your stats.  These dice are special, though: each one has two blank sides, two sides with a one, and two sides with a two.  For example, if you have a might of 4 and you are asked to make a might roll, you roll 4 dice.  This means you could get anything between a zero and an 8.  In most cases you are trying to roll higher than a certain number that is specified on a card or elsewhere.

The first phase of the game you explore the house by drawing room tiles and "building" the house based on where you go and what tiles are drawn.  These rooms have symbols on them, and could be an event, an omen, or an item.  An event will cause something to happen and may result in you gaining or losing stats, an item is something that you can use in the future, and an omen is an object you hold on to that may do something good, something bad, or nothing at all when you draw it.  Every time an omen is drawn a haunt roll is made.  If the roll on the dice is less than the number of omens that have been drawn so far, the haunt begins.

There are 50 different haunts in the game, and the one you play is based on the last omen drawn and what room it was acquired in.  Once the haunt begins, everything changes.  One player is assigned to be a traitor based on a chart in the rules (it could be the person that reveals the haunt, the person with the highest knowledge, etc.).  They then do in another room to read their traitor rules, while the rest of the heroes read their own rules for the haunt.  Every haunt is different and has a different way the heroes win and a way that the traitor wins.  However, you only know your own objectives and rules - you don't know everything else about what the other side might be trying to do.

3-6 players.  45-90 minutes.  No expansions available.  Easy-medium learning curve.

Becky says:

I really enjoy Betrayal because it has a lot of what I like in a game.  It's got a cooperative element but the excitement of having a traitor, it's got some fun role-playing, and it's pretty unique in that the game is really different every time you play.  With 50 different scenarios, it certainly keeps the interest level up.  That's a lot of different ways the game can be played, and to me I think it's both the best and worst part about the game.

The good news is that the haunt part of the game rarely gets tedious.  Until you've played over 30 times you won't often get a repeat haunt that you've done before, and if you do sometimes you might be the traitor while last time you were on the other team.  Or if you're like me, the last time you played the haunt was a year ago and you don't remember any of it anyway (unlike Jason, who seems to remember every little detail of every haunt ever played).  And there are some really great haunts out there that are a lot of fun.  The best ones are when the game is close between the heroes and the traitor, and it goes on for a good amount of time without knowing which side is going to win until the very end.

Unfortunately, that's not always the way it happens.  When you have 50 different sets of rules and basically 50 different games, it's not surprising that not every single one of them is great.  There are some that are just not good.  But the bigger problem is that some haunts are great in some situations and terrible in others.  One haunt might be tons of fun in a 6 player game but a total dud with only 3 players.  And some haunts are better with a smaller house, while some are better with a bigger house.  If you get a haunt really early on the game or really late in the game, that can definitely affect how well the rest of the game goes.

We've probably played this game 40 or so times by this point.  There are still some haunts we haven't gotten.  But you know what can get a little tedious?  Building the house in the beginning of the game.  That part doesn't really change so much.  Sure, you may take the coal chute to the basement without meaning to, but for the most part it's pretty much the same all the time.  And with no real goal for that part of the game it can get a bit old.

But let's talk about another good thing: it's pretty easy to explain to people.  The first half of the game is pretty basic, and people catch on pretty quickly, especially since the first part is cooperative and you can sort of explain as you go along.  Once the haunt begins everyone reads and learns the rules together, and they usually aren't too hard since you're learning them mid-game.  Sometimes it takes a few plays to figure out the best strategies though.  In some haunts there is really only one strategy, in others there's a few ways to go about it.  Usually haunts like the latter are better because it makes it more interesting, and even if you lose you wonder what would've happened if you'd done it differently.

Overall I do recommend Betrayal.  The theme, atmosphere, and role playing aspect are great fun, and even if your haunt doesn't go so well sometimes that can still save the game.   I'll just say that it was a lot more fun when we first got it.  Now it seems to be more hit or miss.  But we've gotten a lot of use out of it, and still like introducing it to new players.  7.5 out of 10.

Jason says:

The following reading will be an exercise in the appropriate use of the word “but.”  You will see many examples of its proper usage in the correct context.  Pay attention for this in the recurring format, “Betrayal at House on the Hill is a good game, but…”

So… Betrayal is a good game, but it is also strangely unbalanced and… stuff.  The game is, at its core, a role-playing game.  It’s Dungeons & Dragons lite in many ways.  The game is built as you explore, and random encounters happen in each room, testing your character statistics in various ways.  There’s also a ton of information about the characters that you can use to “play your character” if the spirit moves you (and you are with those kinds of people).  Becky was frustrated by the story provided, suggesting there are large gaps in the explanation for why these characters are exploring a house.  I suspect that this instead gives players the freedom to make up their own stories, and that half of the fun of the game comes just from geeking out about the character development you and your friends can make up.

That stuff is nice and all… but… most people probably aren’t into that kind of stuff.  The game still stands on its own as a good game… BUT… many people might notice a certain role-playing aspect to the game that is extraneous, tedious, or downright boring (I’m in the role-playing camp, if I could just find people who aren’t too self-conscious to do it with me).

So… the gameplay is totally fun with its unpredictable nature… BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT, it is elementary and unbalanced.  The first half of the game is just setup, then the real part begins with one of 50 semi-randomly-chosen scenarios of varying difficulty, quality, and engagement.  So, 50 scenarios is cool… BUBUBUBUBUBUBUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTTTTTTTTTTT!... the game setup is so random that these haunts can’t possibly predict the layout of the house, and thus the difficulty of the scenario.  Most of the time, it comes out either in favor of the traitor or in favor of the heroes, without question.  Sometimes, it comes down to a roll of the dice, or some other random factor.  Less often than I want, it comes down to an exciting duel between the forces of good and evil.  BUHUHUHUHUHUHUHT! when it does come down to that epic battle, this is a tremendous game.  When you play the game for the first time, regardless of the scenario, it usually feels like it works out this way, so somehow, the game manages to give a really good first impression.

For me, this game was really fun for a while, but I slowly realized that it boils down to the same die rolls with different role-playing disguises on them.  When that realization is made, no amount of scenarios is going to restore vitality to the game.

In the beginning, this was a really intriguing game to me.  8.1000000081/10.00000001  (8.1/10) but that is from the point of view of someone who hasn’t played as much as I have.  Keep in mind that I have played this game so many times that my wife and I together can’t count on all our fingers and toes combined (yes, 40+ times, I would reckon!) and after that much play experience, I would rate it a 6.5/10. It’s a good game whose beginning luster fades away the more you play it, BUTT!, after so many plays, maybe every game becomes exactly that: Butt.

Shadows over Camelot

In this cooperative board game, you take on the role of one of the knights of Camelot and are working together with the other players to earn white swords by winning quests.  Every turn, you must “progress evil” and then do a “heroic action.”  The progression of evil is the game taking its turn against you: you usually draw cards during this phase, and things will happen to hurt you or hinder you on your quests.  Then you do something good, such a making progress on a quest.  There are rewards for winning quests, such as white swords, but also penalties for losing them (black swords and/or siege engines).  You win when there are at least 12 swords on the round table and the majority of them are white.  You lose when there are 7 or more black swords on the table, when 12 siege engines have been placed, or when all of the knights are dead.

Most quests are completed by playing cards.  Explained simply, there are fight cards, with a value of 1-5, and grail cards.  There are wars, which are won by playing a straight (1-5, but only one card can be played at a time), and there are some quests where you fight by playing pairs or three of a kind.  And then Excalibur requires you to simply throw cards away, while the grail requires you to place a certain number of grail cards down.

The twist in the game is that there is the possibility of a traitor.  At the beginning of the game every player is given a loyalty card, which may tell them that they are “loyal” or the “traitor.”  It’s also possible for there to be no traitor.  The traitor plays hidden for at least the first half of the game, so it’s tricky for them to appear good buy actually hinder the group.  About halfway through the game knights can make accusations, which are rewarded for correct guesses and penalized for wrong ones as to who the traitor is.  If the traitor has been accused or reveals himself with the use of the “Fate” card, he can then play out in the open.  However, if the traitor goes undetected the entire game, then there is an end of game penalty that could very well mean the difference between victory and defeat.

There are some other minor but important rules, but this is the basics for Shadows over Camelot. We’re also doing the expansion, Merlin’s Company, in this review, as we really haven’t played the game without it.  The expansion adds a travel card deck, that requires you to draw a card and do what it says every time you want to move to a different quest.

3-7 players (8 with expansion).  Approximately 90 minutes.  Merlin’s Company expansion available.  Medium learning curve.

Becky says:

If you know me, you probably know that this is my favorite board game.  I love it for a million reasons.  I’m not sure I’ve ever had a bad time playing Shadows.  It’s always ridiculously fun, even if we lose by a landslide.

I’ll start with the themeing.  The artwork is great.  Even the little knight figurines are well detailed, instead of just wooden tokens or something like that. All of the little details to the legends of King Arthur are wonderful.  Everyone gets to be a specific knight from legend, and many of the cards in the black and white deck reference things from Arthurian legend.  I have to say that playing this game made me much more intrigued about Arthurian legend, to the point where I’ve now done tons of research and am a bit of a “knights of the round table” dork.  I’m even currently working on a children’s novel with a King Arthur theme, and it’s all thanks to this game that I got into it.

But on to the game itself!  It’s cooperative, which I definitely enjoy, because I like working together.  But with the possibility of a traitor, it also creates tons of suspense.  Let me talk about that – the suspense factor in this game, especially if you’re not sure if there’s a traitor and it’s getting towards the end, is huge!  There have been moments where I literally can’t sit in my seat because I’m so on edge about what is going to happen.  Sometimes I have to pace the room.

And the strategy.  I’ve heard a complaint on other reviews that you end up using the same strategy every time after you’ve played it awhile.  I’m not sure why, but for me this couldn’t be further from the truth.  We tend to play with many different people and different amounts of players, so that may be why, but it’s always tough to decide based on your cards where you should go first.  Is it better to win the big quests in the beginning, like the grail or Excalibur?  That gets them out of the way, but then all those black cards turn into siege engines – not good.  Should you stick together as team and all finish a quest, or spread out to hold off the evil in every area?  We do it different ways every time, and no one way seems to be better than the other.  The only thing that seems to be pretty consistent is if you want Lancelot’s armor, you’d better go right in the beginning.  And don’t be surprised if you get some suspicious looks, as the armor is a traitor’s best friend.

Speaking of the traitor, here’s my thoughts on playing that role.  I don’t generally like being the traitor because I hate to be so secretive about everything.  It’s just not in my personality.  I will usually choose to play the traitor in either one of two ways.  1. Be as secretive as possible and do nothing suspicious so that I go undetected the whole game, and then hope that the penalty for not detecting the traitor is enough to turn things my way, or 2.  Once the 6th sword or siege engine gets placed, immediately accuse any random person so they suffer that penalty.  This then leads them to know I’m definitely the traitor and I get accused, but that way I can play out in the open and do more damage.  Of course, even though I don’t usually like being the traitor, I have to admit it felt pretty good that one time when I was able to make a false accusation and then also use the “Fate” card to reveal myself!

Merlin’s company is a good expansion.  Those travel cards can be a pain in the butt, but Merlin’s awfully helpful sometimes.  Some of those travel cards are nasty.  If you’re playing with me you’d better know that you’re sure as heck not traveling anywhere without a pair of fight cards, because if you get charged and have to add that extra black sword I will not be a happy camper.  The expansion also adds the 8^th knight, which can make for some epic 8 player games.

Sorry this was such a long review, but I really love this game.  10 out of 10.  Maybe no game is perfect, but for me Shadows is as close as it comes so it deserves that elite rating.

Jason says:

Shadows is a piece of board game art.  Unlike other games, which convey their entertainment through strategy and competition, Shadows plays perfectly to draw on the power of cooperation and anticipation, then shatters the comfort of cooperation by turning friends and comrades against each other.  In Shadows, you feel the tension in the room as your mind warps every player's moves into acts of treachery and deceit.

I mean it, too, I'm not just trying to be ridiculous.  Art.  This game makes you feel things, and it does it so smartly and skillfully.  To start, I will discuss the mechanics themselves, since this is really the only part of the game to which I can draw comparisons to other, lesser games.

It's a cooperative game, so I'll compare to Pandemic.  In Pandemic, a team doing sufficiently well never has to worry about problems.  In Shadows, completing a big quest adds faster-approaching dangers, so endgame should always be a riveting experience (even moreso with the Merlin's Company expansion).  Furthermore, each player feels like they are contributing to the quest in some way, particularly because they aren't allowed to discuss plans in detail because of the traitor game mechanic.

Yes, the traitor mechanic.  This is how the game turns from a cooperative game into a social experiment on trust and paranoia.  Tension flows through everything because of the traitor.  And most fascinatingly of all, there isn't always a traitor, but because the game incorporates even the chance of a traitor, suspicions often boil over and irreparably rend the team, destroying the forces of good from the inside out.

Last of all, the flow of the game is masterful.  The whole game is sedate in the beginning, but the whole game works slowly, allowing people's suspicions to stew into healthy unfounded accusations.  By the end of the game, everyone is so exasperated that even the most rational person must fight against irrational reflexes.  Finally, when the possible traitor is revealed, the game explodes into a logical race against the machinations of a revealed threat.  Here, people jump out of their seats and furiously count cards, hoping for a ghost of a chance to make up lost ground.  Merlin's Company shines best here, where the travel cards are the element of chance that could mean success and failure.  Wait, did we draw the last Charged! card or might traveling get that last black sword?  Soon, I have to move!  What, Captured!?  We can't deal with this!

Of course, when you can't deal with it, but somehow you come out victorious, those are the best of victories.  Unlike lots of games, Shadows is crafted to supply this last-stand scenario pretty much most of the time, and many times it will end in failure.  This serves to supplement the victories, but it is still fun for me, even if I lose.

The more I thought about this game's review, the more I realized that, either by phenomenal coincidence or by excellent design, this game does everything right for a longer, intense game.  No jokes, no math: 9.9/10 and possibly the highest recommendation I may ever give on this website.

Lord of the Rings

This strategy game is based on the books, and not the movies.  It is a fairly complex cooperative game, in which up to 5 players can participate.  Players take on the roles of Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, and Fatty (a minor character from the book) and each have a special power, which they must use to work together to destroy the ring.  They have to get through 4 different boards in order to do so (Moria, Helm’s Deep, Shelob’s Lair, and Mordor).  Players begin a turn by drawing a random tile, which will usually either move them up through the board they are on or make a negative event occur.  They then can play up to 2 cards to progress further through the tracks on the board, choosing strategically which tracks to move up and which cards to hold on to, taking into account the events that could occur later on.  In the meantime the players characters are on a separate track which has Sauron at the end of it.  Various events and die rolls can cause either the players to move closer to Sauron or Sauron to move closer to the players.  Meet Sauron and you’re dead – and if the ring bearer meets Sauron the game is lost.  Victory is achieved if the ring bearer reaches the end of Mordor and is able to successfully destroy the ring without dying.

2-5 players.  Multiple expansions available (Friends and Foes, Sauron, Battlefields, The Black Gate).  Approximately 60-90 minutes.  Medium learning curve.

Becky says:  

This game has definitely grown on me when we played it more.  To begin with, it’s really hard to beat.  We’ve probably played 4 or 5 times now and won twice – but we’re still playing on “introductory” mode, which gives us a bit of a handicap.  I honestly thought this game screwed you over more than Shadows over Camelot ever could and it would be impossible to win.  The really cool thing was continuing to try it and discovering all of these strategies that occasionally work that I never would have thought of.  For instance, there have been times where we’ve just decided to take all of the negative events to get through a board as quickly as possible just to end it and hold on to our cards for future rounds.  In 5 player games we’ve also taken to making Fatty the “mule,” whose job it is to stock up on cards and give them up when necessary, usually spending his turn just drawing more cards.  I love that the strategy isn’t always obvious, and it definitely changes depending on how many people are playing.

It’s a game where working well together is really important, but everyone really has to be involved (unlike what happens sometimes with Pandemic).  Somehow, though, Lord of the Rings lacks just a little bit of the suspense and excitement that we get with Shadows over Camelot.    I’m not sure why that is (maybe the lack of a traitor?), but I haven’t quite found myself literally jumping out of my chair or pacing the room like I have with Shadows.  Lord of the Rings might be somewhat more enjoyable if you won more often, but that’s all part of the challenge.  I do like the fact that you get a score even if you lose, so you can still keep track and try to beat your previous scores. 

It’s also worth mentioning that the artwork on this game is really gorgeous.  Being geeks, we love the theme and the fact that it’s book based instead of movie based.  And we always enjoy a good cooperative game.  8.5 out of 10.

Jason says:

 I read somewhere that when The Lord of the Rings came out in 2000, it was a unique game because it didn’t pit the players against each other, it made them cooperate to beat the game itself.  It’s now 2012, so I guess I’m a bit late to the party, but that’s okay, because it’s still a really good game.  I’ve seen several cooperative games I think I like better, but variety is the spice of life, so this game has a place in my collection.  Also I am a fan of Tolkien’s books.

This game is extremely difficult, so it is rewarding when you can actually win.  Teamwork and discussion is mandatory, and sometimes even the best strategy is simply destined to fail.  Players have to seize every opportunity they can in order to have a chance at winning.  Everything is pretty straightforward and very linear, so it isn’t hard to learn, as long as you are willing to play through the first time knowing that one personwill have their nose buried in the rules figuring things out.  You could also play with someone who already knows the game.

I don’t have much to say about this game, besides that you should play it for yourself; that is a positive endorsement by the way.  Remember that I do endorse this game, because there are a few issues that I do have to point out.  The first is that this game is pretty static, and once you’ve beaten it, that’s it.  There are multiple difficulty levels, but like I said before, it’s extremely linear, so it is pretty much the same game every time.   The second issue is that there are a bunch of little nuances in the rules, and they’re important.  The worst part is that they are scattered all throughout the giant tome they give as the rules.  The rules aren’t very orderly and I’m still not sure I know every little detail there is to know; for example, we didn't know that the ring-bearer draws two cards at the end of every conflict (remember that, that’s important for winning, and lots of people miss that).  My third problem is the same participation problem that plagues Pandemic; it’s easy for a quiet person to sit back and think that everyone else is handling the game.  But then again, maybe communication is one of the skills you can attribute to “being good” at this game.

It doesn’t seem like I said many good things about this game.  But don’t be fooled, I really like this game and I think it’s worthy of anyone’s collection, especially those Tolkien fans (the game is based on the events in the books, not the movies).  As far as I know, it is the father of contemporary cooperative board games.  Also it was designed by Reiner Knizia, who is one of the most well-known and reputable game designers out there.  I give this game a 9.23/13, or a 7.1/10, and that means that I like this game just a smidge more than Pandemic.  So if you’re a savvy board gamer, try this, then try Pandemic.

Pandemic

Pandemic is a cooperative board game in which you are trying to rid the world of several killer viruses.  Your goal is to cure each virus by collecting 5 cards of the same color.  Each turn players will get the chance to move around and fight the disease, cure it, or trade cards.  However, they must also infect several more countries at the end of each turn.  Players much strategize together in order to be victorious.  They are also each assigned a character with a special ability to aid them in their goal.

2-4 players.  Expansion Available (On the Brink).  Approximately 60 minutes.  Easy-Medium learning curve.

Becky says:
I really enjoy cooperative games, so Pandemic gets points for that.  However, it’s definitely not my favorite out of all of the cooperative games we’ve played for a few reasons.  The first is that the game kind of lends itself to one person “taking over” and directing everyone else, rather than allowing individual players to make their own decisions.  This may also be a result of the type of people we sometimes play with, and if new people are slowing the game down.  The other thing I don’t really care for is the fact that the game can end really quickly if you draw the wrong combination of cards. 

But on to the positives!  I really like the fact that there are three different ways to lose the game – if you run out of cubes of one color, if 8 outbreaks occur, or if you run out of resource cards.  Of course I don’t like losing, but I feel like that really keeps you on your toes and makes you strategize in more ways than one.  I enjoy the different roles that you can be – the medic is definitely my favorite.  And when you really get into the game, it often comes down to just a few moves that are the difference between winning and losing.  That’s really exciting and full of suspense, a feeling I love when playing games.  Another really nice thing about Pandemic is that it is relatively easy to learn, so it’s a good “gateway game” if you want to introduce people to this sort of strategy game.  7.5 out of 10.

Jason says:

I think cooperative games are my favorite kind, so I was already partial to Pandemic going in.  That said, the game still stands on its own merit, being a fiercely difficult but satisfying experience.  The gameplay is logical and the “right” move can often be reasoned out, though “right” is hardly ever obvious.  There is a small but influential bit of chance, which I think is a good proportion (too often, games either have too much chance and you have no control, or too little chance and the game is nothing more than a process).  Pandemic is logic with enough uncertainty that it feels like the meeting of a board or an action committee where they lay out their options, discuss the ramifications, and agree to meet again next turn.  Almost a simulation, but the difference between Pandemic and a meeting is that Pandemic is fun, and action committees, not so much.

My biggest gripe with the game is the participation problem.  It’s easy for first-time players or introverted people to be lost in the waves of discussion.  They might think that other people are getting it, so they don’t need to contribute.  But contributing to the discussions is the bulk of the game, so that person ends up feeling like a placeholder, a potted plant with cards.  Then again, the game suggests two ways of play: you can show your cards to everybody, or you can’t but you’re allowed to say what you have.  At first we thought that not showing cards was silly, but since we’ve played more, I think that hiding your cards encourages you to speak more, thus encouraging you to contribute.

Ultimately, I think I’ll give it a 9.1/13, or for the less mathematically inclined, 7/10.  It encourages highly logical thinking and can get pretty intense, but the participation issue does turn some people off to the game.  There is an expansion, which I think improves the game.  Eventually we may do a review of the expansion, which I have no doubt will have a higher score from me.