Cooperative Board Wargames: An Oxymoron?

It dawned on me recently that I could not name a cooperative wargame off the top of my head. In a way, this makes sense: wargames are generally well-suited to the head-to-head format that dominates the genre. One player taking each side of a conflict is a reasonable default. But given the popularity of cooperative games in the broader hobby market, it’s curious why they haven’t broken through.

After some preliminary reading, there’s definitely a few titles that pique my interest. The most notable one to me is The Red Burnoose: Algeria 1857, which takes a more civilian perspective to Algerian resistance a century before Insurgent is set. In some of my earliest design notes, I seriously considered making Insurgent a solo- and/or cooperative-only game where player(s) took on various roles within the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria. The main reason I thought a co-op would be best was that some players might hesitate to play as a country that committed atrocities in order to uphold colonialism. I ultimately decided to make the French a playable faction to better elucidate the conflict overall — to show that the political reforms they promised were inextricably linked to the torture and massacres they enacted. I was also relatively new to the hobby at that point, hadn’t played many co-ops.

The cooperative genre has specific strengths for wargame designers to consider. First, many co-ops rely on information asymmetry, which can be effectively translated to a fog-of-war effect, or even the breakdown of communication between units, or between politicians and commanders (my experience with A Distant Plain at Origins this year was a great example of this).

What these games sacrifice by relinquishing human control of half of a conflict, they gain in creating complexities within the other half. As a designer it is difficult to simulate a diverse coalition through a single player’s perspective because they will attempt to enact a coherent strategy that does not necessarily reflect the variety of historical perspectives that existed. Having multiple players to represent these interests, but who have the same overarching goal, is potentially a more effective way to portray complex alliances. The COIN series creates these overlapping incentives, but they are temporary arrangements of strategic convenience, not long-term partnerships like I am envisioning.

Lastly, cooperative games often have scalable difficulties; this helps designers avoid the conundrum of historical accuracy versus optimal gameplay. Players could take on the role of a massive underdog who lost a conflict in real life without artificially buffing them to create a balanced gameplay experience; they could also explore what-if scenarios where factions had fewer resources or alliances to make the game more challenging.

I see several ways cooperative mechanisms could enhance wargaming and hope more get published going forward. Who knows, I might even make one of my own…

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Thanks as always for reading. I’d be interested to hear why you think co-ops are relatively uncommon in the wargaming hobby, and any recommendations you have.

Happy gaming,

Matt