Everything boardgames
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I love co-op games. A few of my favorites (in no particular order) are:
Fallout (w/ Atomic Bonds expansion of course)
The Crew (either version)
Black Orchestra
Stars of Akarios
Forbidden Desert
Gloomhaven
Mysterium
Arkham Horror LCG
Spirit Island
Honorable mention for some semi-co-ops:
Fury of Dracula
Specter Ops
Dead of Winter
Do you have house rules for Fury of Dracula? It was a long time ago that we played it, but I remember that Dracula was too hard to catch and if you cornered him he disappeared into the ocean.
This is a great list, thanks! I can't believe I didn't know about the Fallout game since that is one of my favorite video game series. I"m going to have to find that one and get it on the table.
Yeah definitely get the Atomic Bonds expansion. The competitive basegame is ridiculously broken. For example there are quests that send your all over the map. But the silly thing is if a quests needs to be "picked up" in one location and "turned in" in another then once it is picked up ANY player can just snipe the rewards if they're close to the destination. Also many exploration options are hillariously random. This makes the competitive version little more than a crapshoot. It's frankly mindboggling how anyone actually greenlit that design.
In coop all that is still the case but instead of being frustrated when another player gets an extremely lucky pull in the exploration, you cheer each other on. Sniping different quest stages between multiple players becomes a cool strategy instead of a braindead design choice. Most of these anoyances fall away and you can revel in the setting of the game.
Absolutely love to play Dorfromantik with my kid, it even has campaign mechanics.
Some that I havent heard but love are Pandemic and Spirit island.
And as a hidden gem: Heroes of Tenefyre and sprawlopolis. Heroes is a deckbuilder dungeon crawler where the new cards in your deck are the monsters you slay. Sprawlopolis is a city builder the size of a small wallet, which you can easily take with you. There are 3 challenges out if 18 which decide how the game will play, which asks for different tactics every time.
Spirit island is amazing! So much replayability
Tenefyr is one of my favorites too, especially with the variety added by the expansion. I hope it gets a new printing soon so that more people can try it.
Frosthaven/Gloomhaven. They're co-op, but all of the hidden information stuff stop other players from influencing your turns too much.
Absolutely wonderful games!
I've heard good things about Glomhaven and I think one of our group has that on the shelf. We'll have to give that a try!
It's pretty rough in terms of rules and setup takes a while, but it's so worth it.
I play frosthaven on a weekly basis and sacrifice most of my boardgame time to playing it.
I completely agree. Both of the problems you mention are solved in Jaws of the Lion, so I would recommend any newbie to start with that.
EDIT: my submission is now the deep rock galactic board game. Heaps of fun and faithfully adapts the video game!
There's a portal 2 board game?
Spirit Island is probably our biggest mainstay at the moment. One of our group has most of the content and I'm still only about halfway through playing every spirit we have. The replayability is just amazing and the pacing is beautiful, hitting you hard in the early game and then slowly you turn the tide. Not to mention some of the spirits are just so doggamn satisfying to play.
We're also pretty big into Aeon's End. I completely hated this game in the beginning because I couldn't see how you could possibly win. Once it clicked and we began to get better, it became a lot more satisfying to play.
We also played through and enjoyed all Legends of Andor, all Pandemic Legacy, Mechs vs Minions and Gloomhaven.
Easily Spirit Island. Huge replayability, a wide range of difficulties, and impossible to quarterback for mortals
Spirit Island is one of the best games ever.
How is it even possible that no-one has mentioned the best coop/semi-coop in existence yet? NEMESIS.
Dungeon Fighter is a very silly coop game that might appeal to people that don't like board games normally. You're a group of adventurers and have to move through a dungeon. You roll the dice on a big bullseye board. The twist is that all abilities or traps etc. are in the form of modifying how you roll your dice. So you might have to roll the dice from below the table, or while jumping etc.