Cooperative 2 Player Games

RiemannLives

The newspost today got me thinking about how much I would really like to find some good cooperative 2 player tabletop games. Obviously most RPGs can be run this way with a single player or with a DMPC (which I really, really do not like doing) but I was thinking of more structured games where the 2 players are peers.

For those who have played the WoW CCG, how does this "raid deck" thing play out? Do you need 3+ players with 1 being the environment / mobs and the rest being the "players"? Or can it be done with 2 players and no mediator?

If not the WoW ccg, what other tabletop games out there are suited to 2 players (I have a whole closet full of good 3+ games) and are coop rather than directly competetive?

TomWhitbrook

I'm looking at getting into the WoW tcg myself, so anyone with experience of that I'd love to hear from.

As for co-operative games, if you're a fan of the lore you can't go wrong with Arkham Horror. Be warned, it can become very complex with all the expansions and requires a huge table, but there's no need for a "DM" and it scales well from two players co-op'ing it out to five or six.

trentsteel

Yeah, I always thought there should be more cooperative card and board games. Can't really think of any myself.

MoSiAc

RiemannLives wrote: »

The newspost today got me thinking about how much I would really like to find some good cooperative 2 player tabletop games. Obviously most RPGs can be run this way with a single player or with a DMPC (which I really, really do not like doing) but I was thinking of more structured games where the 2 players are peers.

For those who have played the WoW CCG, how does this "raid deck" thing play out? Do you need 3+ players with 1 being the environment / mobs and the rest being the "players"? Or can it be done with 2 players and no mediator?

If not the WoW ccg, what other tabletop games out there are suited to 2 players (I have a whole closet full of good 3+ games) and are coop rather than directly competetive?

After you posted this I went to their website to read, and according to what I read you don't really need 3 people for the Raid deck thing but one person does have to be the raid. So if you want to team up someone has to play as the encounter, and the rest play as the team entering the instance so to speak.

PMAvers

MoSiAc wrote: »

After you posted this I went to their website to read, and according to what I read you don't really need 3 people for the Raid deck thing but one person does have to be the raid. So if you want to team up someone has to play as the encounter, and the rest play as the team entering the instance so to speak.

Yeah, you're going to want to have at least three players as the "raid", and one as the boss. Any less number of players and it'll be much harder (and a lot higher chance of wiping).

Back to board games, I've been hearing good things about Z-Man Games' Pandemic, which has everyone playing co-op as CDC agents trying to stop a outbreak of a ton of killer diseases around the world.

Rainfall

2-player Co-op? Sounds to me like you need a good dose of Arkham Horror.

It's good for 1-8 players, and with 2 players it's challenging but not impossible. I do mean challenging, though. This is Lovecraftian boardgaming. Your characters run the gauntlet of madness and death every single turn.

So much fun. I highly recommend it to everyone, and for someone actively looking for co-op? No other choice.

jabrams007

While not the best solution, it's pretty easy to convert the WoW boardgame into a two player co-operative game with both players picking the same faction and trying to kill the Overlord.

TomWhitbrook

Actually, someone really ought to do an arkham horror thread.

piL

I'm a huge fan of Arkham horror. If you need to ease it up (and you probably will; the most glaring flaw is that by turn 3 you'll pretty much know the outcome: either you've defeated the elder god like the little bitch he is, or you're on the slow descent to madness) you can play an extra character or two.

Rainfall

piL wrote: »

I'm a huge fan of Arkham horror. If you need to ease it up (and you probably will; the most glaring flaw is that by turn 3 you'll pretty much know the outcome: either you've defeated the elder god like the little bitch he is, or you're on the slow descent to madness) you can play an extra character or two.

That's not entirely true. In some games that's the case, but sometimes you're rolling along fine, it's turn 9 and you need to seal one final gate, all of a sudden The Stars Are Right and mummys are clogging the streets so you can't move and you can't find an ally, and then you go into R'lyeh to seal the final gate but instead go insane as you see a great black corpulence exiting the temple.

And right as you're lost in time and space Cthulhu decides to wake up, eats you, mauls your partner since he's almost impossible to kill, and you lose.

If you pick up the base game and find it easy right off the bat, the King in Yellow expansion pack adds a LOT of difficulty to the game without making it that much more complex.

But finding it easy right off the bat is unlikely. The game itself is possessed of the dark malevolence that sometimes haunts dice. FFG holds dark sorcery. I swear!

Rend

I just bought this game yesterday, Arkham Horror, GOD. HOLY JESUS, what a great game.

I definitely recommend it for cooperative gameplay, it is quite amazing, and you could play it over and over.

Muriden

The raid decks in WoW TCG are very fun.
You need an absolute minimum of 2 people to play the Raiders and 1 person to play the Raid Encounter.
I often play the Raidboss and love talking shit as I ruin my friend's prize decks.
The raider decks need to be built for the raid specifically so bringing any tourney deck into it wont mean that it will be successful in the raid.