TEAMS FOR TABLETOP

Team play modes should become more common in board gaming

Teams are weirdly absent in tabletop gaming. While cooperative games have everyone as one massive team and many games offer an ‘all-versus-one’ challenge like Scotland Yard or Star Wars: Imperial Assault, too few games offer a combined cooperative competitive challenge, with two or more players on each side working together to defeat their opponents.

There’s a good reason for this; tabletop games are mostly about thinking and reacting alone. To win, you need to look at the current board state and consider what moves will put you ahead of your opponents. If you’re then sharing that information out loud to a teammate, your opponents can listen out and scupper your plans, leading to a disappointing loss. It’s why the most common genre of tabletop team titles are trivia or charades-like party games, where groups can take it in turns to perform, draw pictures or answer what the capital of Assyria was (Assur) without interruptions.

But I feel that tabletop games are selling themselves short. Team games let designers create a challenge that’s too complex for one person to comprehend, sharing the puzzle whilst also testing a wide variety of skills. Captain Sonar has two teams compete to sink their opponent’s submarine, with tasks that require players to have skills at positioning, risk management, pattern recognition and even attentive listening. No single player needs to be great at all of those things and when a player does perform their task outstandingly, the sense of achievement will always feel more satisfying when against a real person instead of outwitting a set of AI cards (the latter of which is even more demoralising to lose against.)

Great team games can also create a shared sense of connection. Codenames has players interpreting one-word clues to recover secret agents, with a team’s nominated spymaster attempting to discover what wavelength their team is on. You get to know each other and build up a communal understanding of references and catchphrases, which is why I can say the word “Hitchhiker” and know my teammates will select agents Space, Robot and Lemon.

Sometimes the simple act of communication itself can be just as entertaining. Hidden role games like Werewolf and The Resistance have secret teams where everyone has part of the puzzle leading to one team’s success or failure. You’re still working together to defeat an opposing team, but working out exactly who is who is a mixture of guesswork and gut instincts. Of the many board games in my collection, none of them are as lovingly beat up and battered as my copy of One Night Ultimate Werewolf, because few other games bring people together quite so quickly and effectively, an aspect greatly helped by the teamplay element, which ensures that everyone is free to commit as little or as much as they want to the experience, but still sharing the same highs and lows together.

Creating unity through diversity is what gives any team game its greatest power. Video games learnt a long time ago that you can create engaging experiences by providing varied player roles all working towards a common goal, an aspect often overlooked when board game designers simply cut a single player’s resources in half, so that two players have to share a less substantial version of the same game (looking at you, Star Wars Rebellion.)

I’m not saying that designing team games are easy. Creating a challenge that requires multiple people to solve whilst also having a way for two or more teams to compete is a tricky endeavour. In my experience, the best games to succeed in this are ones that can present a universal challenge that can be solved in multiple ways. Upcoming strategy game The Defence of Procyon III has two teams battle for control of a planet, but each teammate either controls the space or ground troops for their faction, with all four players having unique ways to gain power over the board.

Despite what the history books say, most human achievements are not the work of individuals, but of teams working together. How about a game where you’re city planners with players planning comboscoring communities funded by teammates manipulating investors before the opponents can? Or maybe a space race where players are scientists, engineers and politicians, each plying their profession as expertly as they can before a rival country launches their rocket first?

As board games continue to improve in quality and diversify in experiences, I hope we see more designers offer ways for us to play in teams, as I feel that a victory earned together always tastes a little sweeter than one earned alone.