THE COUNCIL
A downloadable game
A remote play game
2-4 Players
20 minutes
The world is under siege. As members of a global security council, you must work together to save the planet from invasion.
The Council is a cooperative strategy game played remotely via video chat (in person is ok too). Using a deck of cards, players take on the roles of security council members with different skills to secure sectors of the world and cancel the apocalypse in 20 minutes or less.
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Just finished a round of this with my friends! We were able to use the drawing and highlighting features on my pdf viewer to screenshare and make it visually legible for everyone and it was a lot of fun, we managed to win with just 51 seconds left. Definitely a really great rush. A few rules we were a little unclear on when we read, but we just came to agreements on what we thought was fair and then went on. Very good game to kill time while you wait for group members for a bigger game, def recommend.
Council is a 1-page x-comlike video-conferencing game. There's also elements of Pandemic in the mix, and everything is run off of a deck of playing cards (which is controlled by the GM, to avoid everyone having to duplicate deck changes on their side of the screen.)
The initiative rules are a little odd and unclear (suit drawn decides who gets to take a turn, which implies that you should have exactly four players, no more or less,) but it's fairly easy to just house-rule that the turn order rotates and that the kind of turn you can take is determined by the drawn card's suit.
Overall, this game does a fantastic job of miniaturizing/streamlining x-com and pandemic into something that can be played through in half an hour.
It's also solo-play compatible, and makes for a short but crunchy timekill.
This might be my favorite one-page game? At minimum, it's impressive, and if you like anything I described, I strongly recommend checking it out.
Ran a game this evening for a few friends and it was good fun. We did an untimed dry run just to get a feel for the rules and then a proper game with timer etc. It's definitely fun and mechanically works really well, but could use a bit of tightening up in terms of the actual rules.
It wasn't hugely clear to us, for example, how control of a sector worked - when it says that two or more units "repel" a threat, for example, we took that to mean that having two or more units (or threats) in a sector effectively marked it as no longer contestable (with the exemption of the mech or the special action of Response).
That also makes it unclear what the purpose of improving / splitting units with the standard Research action is - does improving serve to control the sector, or does it have to be a process that takes place over multiple turns i.e. improve on turn 1 and split (giving control) on turn 2?
With shielding counting as control of a sector for the purposes of winning this also ended up making research a little OP - at least in our two play sessions, both had shielding as a major focus of the win.
I hope this is helpful and I really don't want this to be seen as saying this is a bad game. We had a lot of fun playing it and will definitely play it again, it's just that we ended up having to "house rule" a couple of things to make it work.
This was good fun and, bar some very minor issues, has an extremely fun core. I would really like to see you continue developing this and other games and will definitely keep an eye out for what comes next.
(P.S. the map that Crosbie produced was massively helpful in playing the game - if you can come to some arrangement to license their work for future iterations I would highly recommend it).
(P.P.S. we won in around 12 minutes, maybe a 15 minute default timer would have given some extra tension to the experience?)
this is incredibly helpful and I appreciate you taking the time to write it. I’m hoping to implement some changes from feedback soon so keep an eye out and thanks for playing.
Deck of cards come with the game?
it does not unfortunately. If a deck is needed feel free to use this website: http://random-cards.com/
thanks. :P
This seems to work pretty well, like a micro-Pandemic! However, sometimes Research and Ops in particular get a turn where they don’t have a useful choice to make. Add an alternative action for each role? Move a Threat instead of a Unit? Split an Improved Unit into two normal units?
thanks for this. I’ll take a look and tinker around. Cheers.
I saw the changes. Did you try it out with these rules? Playtesting now, and maybe Ops is now too powerful... Moving any threat seems strong (you can 'unoccupy' a zone). Maybe ALL threat from one sector to an adjacent sector?
Also, to clarify: Can Response deploy AND attack, or just one or the other? (Probably the latter is more balanced.)
And: What does 'repel the threat' mean? The threat is destroyed? Or draw another card? OR place in an adjacent viable sector?
Finally (sorry): I assume two Units in a sector 'controls' it for the purposes of winning, and being 'shielded' doesn't count as 'controlled'. I couldn't see this in the rules, am I right?
Thanks again, I'm looking forward to giving this a spin with my group!
Hey these are great and I should definitely clear some of this up it’s been a busy couple of days.
Ops might need some balancing. I’ll look closer when I can.
Response can deploy and then attack with units that have been maneuvered by ops into contested zones. It’s a bit of a one-two so coordination is key.
repel means the same as defeat so the sector is not occupied and the enemies fizzle.
Shielded does count as controlled for the purposes of winning. I’ll make a note on the power. You only need one unit to control a zone however, they are more vulnerable to attacks.
I’m sure there’s some more stuff I’m missing. Again, these are great notes and I appreciate you digging in here. You’ve got a great eye for mechanics.
Thank you! You may be interested in a version of the map I'm trying in Google Drawings, with elements that can be copied and moved around by the Director (with edit permissions) and viewed by all others... https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1PCyPSMDV7p7NtVsLRrpbIIihUtrqKQ7BEd9NVgLxmMk/...
ok this is amazing