My Top 10 Favorite Games with Player Elimination

Jamey discusses his favorite games that raise the stakes with various versions of player elimination.

Games mentioned in this video include: Skull, Dead of Winter, King of Tokyo, Eclipse, Shadows Over Camelot, Love Letter, Coup, Leaders of Euphoria, Good Cop Bad Cop, Bang, Cash N Guns, Exploding Kittens, Summit, Risk Legacy, Patriots and Redcoats, Civilization, Tournament at Camelot, Blokus, Clank, Red Dragon Inn, Legendary Encounters Alien, Sentinels of the Multiverse

[Drummerboymatt]

Awesome video Jamie! Some games jump to mind. 1. In gloomhaven you are eliminated if you run out of action cards, which deplete faster with bigger actions you take. So players decide how close to the 'elimination' edge they want to play. 2. Eldritch horror, characters get elimanated when they die or go mad, but leave a token on the board that other players interact with, and makes it harder for everyone.

[DustyCraine]

Better late than never. I love the co-op discussion there at the end. And I like the idea that an eliminated player is still active in the game but they become both boon and bane. It almost makes me think of an action movie where like someone gets shot or injured and the other person is slowed way down because they're trying to carry them along with their arm slung over a shoulder. And the inured person is still looking over their shoulder and returning fire. Movement is seriously reduced, but damage is still being dealt. I like the idea that the eliminated player is still vested, active, and participating.

[haze]

I played a game of Shadows Over Camelot where it looked like we were going to lose, until King Arthur sacrificed his life to help out another player. It was a huge risk, but it helped us win soon after. It added a thrilling story to the game's climax, but it was also an interesting use of agency. Camelot has player elimination, but it's never forced; there's always an option to run away and heal, but that consumes valuable time. I've noticed players will ALWAYS try to keep themselves alive, but soon find themselves stuck in a cycle where they're not helping their team get to victory. So that risky sacrifice made the player invested in whether it would pay off, or just make us lose even faster. Camelot's not my favorite co-op game, but I haven't had an experience quite like that in other games.


The card game Vampire: The Eternal Struggle had a neat twist on competitive player elimination, with players assigned as "predator" and "prey" based on seating arrangement. Basically, if a player got eliminated, only their predator got rewarded, no matter who actually did the killing blow. This (usually) prevented everyone from ganging up on one player, and lead to interesting short-term alliances and negotiations.

[ambrosehuang]

1. Catan sometimes has the “effective player elimination” effect, if you have terrible numbers/resources and nowhere else to go. Power grid can have that temporarily, for example btw the steps when you are locked in until the step changes.

2. I didn’t think of clank (in space) as player elimination but it came to my mind when you brought up the alien game. And it’s your number 1!

3. What is the game you are working on?

4. In forbidden desert it could have been that when you run out of water you become too exhausted to go on. But maybe someone could carry you. (In clank in space that’s why you are able to score if you make it to the escape module even if you die...because you are close enough that one of the players carries you onto an escape pod) I’m fine with the way it is though, either way.

5. I love king of Tokyo. It’s fast and fun and silly so if you get killed it was still fun while it lasted. And the game will be over soon anyway.

[florianstock]

There are also games that have (I would call it) Pseudo-Player-Elemination: The player gets eliminated but is not out of the game. I just recently played "Nemesis" a really nice semi-coop, where you could very easily get eliminated while fighting the aliens. But when a players dies, he is just out as player character -> the rules change and the player now plays the opposing aliens. He cannot win anymore, but (in form of the aliens) his new goal is now to stop the others from winning.

[benhoff]

My family added player elimination to Welcome To... we use 6 city plan cards and your game ends when you strike out or fill all our house spaces. This means that players using the Bis power or just get unlucky with card flips at the end will finish before others.

[modemacabre]

Ticket to Ride: Old West board doesn't have player-elimination, but it is possible to reach a point where you are no longer able to place any more trains on the board. Because all tracks you build must be connected to other tracks you have built you can be fenced in by other players. Of course you can still draw cards to prevent players from getting them, or draw destination tickets in the hope of getting a track that you have already built.

[BrandonGraham]

There are some video games that have a mechanism where when someone is "eliminated, " the other players can come "revive" them to a low amount of health. I would like to see a similar mechanism in a board game. It could take precious time and resources to make that happen, but that means you can still require all players to finish/escape/etc.

[danielkeim]

I really like how elimination works in Sentinels because it's high-stakes, the player still isn't out of the game, and many times the "weaker" turns they then have can turn the tide! Sentinels is great because it's so thematic and this just lends itself to that end even more as heroes use their dying breath to handle one last thing that opens up a door for the remaining heroes to win

[kenjin]

I like how it works in Aeon's End so I'm glad you are considering something similar.
Player elimination works for me as long as the game is short (Bang the dice game) or the first player gets eliminated near the end of the game (such as in Clank!).
A game like Cerberus works too since the first player eliminated will just get a new objective making the game asymmetrical.

[deanmuramoto]

Player Elimination Games I played Shadow Hunters, Bang the Dice Game, and The Adventurers.

[TubeYoular]

Tiny Towns player elimination is a lot like Blokus. You reach a point where you can no longer play, but you might still turn out to be the winner. But like Blokus, it's less likely.

[SenseiJae]

Ghost Stories has an excellent take on being eliminated. You still are part of bringing the evil, but you don't contribute to the battle. UNLESS, one of the other players sacrifices a turn (and a resource) to bring you back. I really like that way of handling it.

[steveody]

Jamey, try Tiny Towns. It will give you that same feeling as blokus does and has a really interesting mechanism where you pick your blocks you use and everyone has to use the same one. Also, we just played the new Run, Fight, or Die Reloaded and it has player elimination that ends the game. It was really fun!

[viridian]

I think I echo your sentiments on the co-op elimination aspect. I think in general everyone losing when one player is eliminated is typically better. It makes the stakes a little higher, you have to work with your weakest link, and keeps everyone engaged. There is definitely some pluses to allowing a player to sacrificially die and I like the idea of it possibly more, but it can fall apart too easily in those other aspects (someone is eliminated too early or there is a feel bad moment when people allow the person who is holding the group back a little bit to die)

[dsquaredgames]

Your experiment for your game sounds like what happens in Aeon's End when a player hits zero health. That player can no longer gain health, and any time they would take damage Gravehold takes twice that much damage instead. Speeds up the end game and makes the players really knuckle down to try to win, but it also takes the pressure off that player a bit because they're ok with taking one or two damage for the other players because 2 or 4 damage to Gravehold isn't too bad, depending on how much health it has left.

Another great game that we played with you, Sub Terra, ranks the win based on how many people were able to escape the cave. So, the group can win even with some players not escaping, and often this leads to great sacrificial moments. But you have an incentive to try your best to get everyone out.

[ianblackburn]

Played skull for the first time a few weeks ago. It’s a really cool game and yeah, hard to explain without it in front of you. Liked it so much I challenged myself, with my daughters, to make a version of it with art/design inspired by their ideas. We actually made this with blank cards. I’ll probs stick some pics on Instagram, maybe soon, when we don’t feel self conscious about the designs...plus some of the ideas cross over a few copyrights and not sure what the ‘skull’ makers would think 🤔🤷‍♂️

[naadirjoseph]

I was wondering what you think about longer games with player elimination that goes over an hour. I generally think that these days games that go over that limit are creating ways for you to continue playing even though you have been "eliminated" like Leaders of Euphoria and Dead of Winter. Coup is one of my favorites, but I end up being called out in it a lot because I love manipulating the players when they know the game really well.

[lagibait]

My group regularly plays the Lord of the Rings LCG, and I like the elimination mechanic there. The team wins or loses as a group, but the elimination of a player is not an auto-loss condition. The difficulty scales up, as the AI boardstate was established based on X number of players, and now X-1 number of players have to deal with it. However, this also encourages teamwork, as everyone understands that the chances of success are higher by keeping everyone alive.

[anthonywestbrook]

I like when cooperative or solo games have a definitive win/lose condition, but I'm totally okay with degrees of victory and loss, especially when there's a strong story element. So I'd be totally excited to play a game that has the goal of getting everyone home safe, but it being a "tragic victory" if one or more didn't make it back. (How great would it be to have three candles included, with instructions to light one for every party member lost once the others make it home?)