Why Five-Year Mission Stays on the Shelf

In my time at the college board game club, I came across a tendency for players to gravitate towards cooperative games. Maybe we're all stressed from schoolwork. Maybe we're playing with a new person and haven't judged their reactions to setbacks and loss yet. Maybe we all just feel nice. No matter the reason, co-op games had an advantage in being chosen.

And I didn't like it.

And Five-Year Mission was the first brick in the structure of my distaste for co-op games.

It's a fairly lightweight game. You refill your dice pool, roll your dice, reveal an Alert Card, and then see where you can place those dice. In order of difficulty you have Blue Alerts, Yellow Alerts, and Red Alerts. But not every card counts towards the score you need to win, only the ones with the Starfleet emblem do, and those are more concentrated in Yellow and Red Alerts. Attempts to take things slow will fall apart when you flip over an Alert card that forces you to also reveal a card from the next tier.

You can choose to play with the TOS or TNG crews. Blue Alert cards are all shared between series, Yellow Alerts are 50/50 shared and series-specific, Red Alerts are all series-specific. All in all it's not terribly involved, could go fast, could be a fun time together.

Could.

One of the issues with co-op board games is keeping the flow of the game intact. In a competitive or adversarial game like Magic: the Gathering or Settlers of Catan, each player is monitoring their opponent to make sure there are no gross rule violations. Yes, it is completely possible to cheat. But you are more incentivized to monitor your opponent and make sure they do things properly and preserve the integrity of the game.

But in a co-op board game, it is the players vs the game itself. The game is your adversary and it is one that won't speak up for itself and you don't have to justify yourself to when you see it later. Plus, one thing I do believe is that players love to feel like they're getting away with something, and if they can get away with something against the game itself? No one's going to blink.

Which is all a bunch of setup to let you know why I had to spend so much time every game reminding people they had to reroll their dice pool and flip an Alert over before placing dice.

Another co-op game problem is the Self-Appointed Leader.

Controversial statement but I think most people aren't playing board games to lose. You may enjoy the process of playing a game so much that it gives you a net positive experience even when you lose, but the loss is not a desired outcome. But that is also a personal thing, not everyone shares that same ability to find enjoyment in the moment and deal with setback and loss. And even those who can may be having a bad night and really need a win.

So with multiple people who all want to have success, when you're all already supposed to be working together, if you see the right course of action you aren't going to keep it to yourself.

Co-op games in my experience have a tendency to where the player who picks up the game fastest or has the most confidence in their decision making starts sharing their suggestions. Which is good when it is asked for but they're not going to wait to be asked. Telling people that they should do X, Y, and Z takes their own agency and decision making out of the experience. If they're not standing up for themselves (and we're all friends, right? You wouldn't tell your friend off for trying to help, right?) they get bowled over by someone who's acting like they're taking every turn.

This is exacerbated in Five-Year Mission because some of the Alert cards force you to take out the little hourglass and complete the mission before the few minutes run out or you fail. And Communication Failure cards tell you not to talk (but I make an exception for verbally saying you end your turn) which is annoying and you'd rather clear that fast.

Which is all a bunch of setup to explain why it's easier to not take Five-Year Mission along than it is to have to repeatedly tell someone to chill out, that it is not their turn, and to let someone play the game for themselves.

Pre-planning is also a problem in co-op games and this combines both issues. The Self-Appointed Leader sees the line of what A, B, and C should do on their turns. As a group the players get so invested in this plan for multiple turns, they forget there were steps to take in between. This is another reason I've noticed why the flow of the game starts getting ignored.

Which is all a bunch of setup to let you know why I had to keep gently reminding people that things can change between turns and not to get so caught up in things that might not happen.

I don't understand why this one game in particular is so frustrating. It's not even a Star Trek thing! I have Star Trek Panic and that game isn't free from these sins but it's still way more fun of a time! Sure, we can probably say that Communication Failure was an interesting idea but not something that really adds to the fun. But this game still annoys me when those cards aren't out.

Five-Year Mission isn't the only game that built my dislike of co-op games. Shoutouts and dishonorable mention to the Marvel Legendary deckbuilding game. But it is a major one, and because of it Five-Year Mission stays on the shelf.