Red November

Red November is a cooperative game of drunken gnomes trying to survive for 60 minutes on the Red November, a nuclear submarine stricken with assorted disasters including fire, flooding, reactor meltdown and attack by a Kraken. The gnomes move around collecting useful items and trying to hold the ship together and their progress is measured on a time track (it is always the turn of the player who is furthest back in time). In order to fix something, players simply decide how much time they are willing to spend and then roll a ten-sided die; rolling lower or equal to the time spent on the problem results in a successful repair. Collected items can help a repair by adding a bonus to the roll. Players win by keeping the submarine habitable for 60 minutes. However, any player with an aqualung can abandon his comrades during the last 10 minutes and claim a sole victory if the submarine is subsequently destroyed.

+ Co-operative
+ Cheap
+ Great quality components and cool artwork
+ Small box (no wasted space here - it's a struggle to get everything back in!)
+ Tense gameplay

- Rules difficult to follow in places

Red November is sufficiently random and there's so much happening that there is rarely an obvious path victory, which prevents a dominant player from dictating the game. Although the box says 3-8 players, it is possible to play with 1 or 2, but each player should control multiple gnomes - with too few gnomes in play the game becomes too easy to win which detracts from the fun. Definitely highly recommended.