My struggle between a cooperative game and a competitive one

Last game night I had to pick between Pandemic and Catan, went with Pandemic because my group was split on arguing. Turned out three of us had totally different ideas about how to stop the outbreaks, nearly cost us the win. Anybody else find co-op games actually bring out more conflict than competition?

3 comments

3 Comments

bens8123d ago

co-op games actually bring out more conflict than competition" - yeah that hits home. My group went through the same thing with Pandemic. We learned to assign roles before the game even starts. One person handles the research decisions, another focuses on moving pieces around the board. That way nobody is stepping on each other's toes when things get tense. It also helps to have one person who's fine just being support, not trying to call the shots. We still argue sometimes but way less than when everyone was trying to be the leader.

danielhenderson23d ago

That's smart with the role assignments. Reminds me of when my buddy tried to quarterback a co-op game of Mysterium and we just let him run with it while everybody else threw out random guesses. Turned into more of a clown show than a strategy session but it was way more fun.

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king.stella23d ago

Wait, isn't that kind of missing the point of playing together? If everyone's just doing their own assigned job without talking, that's basically solo play at a shared table. Last time we tried that with Pandemic, the "leader" made a call that didn't make sense to me. Had to sit there silent while we lost because I wasn't allowed to speak up. Competitive games at least let everyone fight for their own win fair and square. No fake harmony, no one bossing anyone around.