“You are the weakest link. Goodbye!”
If you are not familiar with the quote, it was made famous by the British TV show “The weakest link” that first aired in the year 2000. While the show had nothing to do with board games, I always felt that when a player is eliminated from the show, it is done in a semi comical yet cold-hearted way. That cold heartiness generates the same feelings as player elimination in board games, at least for me.
Player elimination is one of the oldest game mechanics in board games and is defined as permanently removing a player from the game. I assume the most if not all the readers know about this mechanism because it's a natural one that is very easy to grasp. As children, we come to know many 2 player games that while not considered featuring player elimination per se, they do teach us about a winner and a loser in games. In games like Chess, Checkers, Backgammon and Go, there is a clear winner and a clear loser that are determined at the same moment. Once one player is eliminated, the other one is declared the winner.
So if this mechanic is so obvious, why write about it?
Well, as I came to enjoy board games more and more, I noticed that player elimination can be devastating for a game but, when done right, is wonderful.
I’m not sure if I need to mention the obvious, that when a player is eliminated from a game, he has nothing to do. He stops enjoying the game, other players enjoy the game less, and in cases of long games someone will almost always offer to kill the game altogether so that player will not be left on his own. The best and most common example is Monopoly, of course. A player can be eliminated early, which usually leads to someone asking to end the game as it is not fun anymore. It’s also not surprising that Monopoly is a great example of the zombie player effect, where a player is so far behind that he is practically eliminated from the game but keeps on playing without really doing anything meaningful. This loss of interest in the game, is the main caveat of player elimination, and why game designers should try to avoid it as much as possible.
But, player elimination is not all bad, and if taken into consideration, there is a lot of good that can come out of it.
The game BANG! The Dice Game shows how the game designers evolved and found a way around the problem. In the game, you belong to 1 of 3 groups. Sheriff and vice, outlaws and renegades. Each group is trying to eliminate the other, and so player elimination is an important part of the game. But since the game plays up to 8 players, the first player to be eliminated might need to spend some time doing nothing. In some cases if your group wins even after you were eliminated, you also win, so you might have some interest in the game, but mostly when you're out, you're out.
In the first expansion, BANG! The Dice Game — Old Saloon, the designers added a small twist. The first player to be eliminated becomes a ghost player will a role to help one of the teams and win or lose with them. By adding this mechanism, they solved some of the problem of the first eliminated player. While this player who has to wait the longest is now still part of the game, the role is very thin, and the problem was only delayed until a second player is eliminated.
Only in the second expansion, BANG! The Dice Game: Undead or Alive, the designers tackled the issue. Now, when a player is eliminated, they create a zombie group that fights against the other players. This keeps everyone in the game for enough time to make the rest of the player elimination insignificant.
Player elimination can also be used as a mechanic to heighten then the game suspense or create a more intense and competitive gameplay experience. When players know that they can be eliminated from the game at any moment, they are forced to play more strategically and think carefully about their moves. This can create a more engaging and exciting game for everyone involved, as players must constantly be on their toes and work hard to stay in the game.
In Sub Terra, a player can be easily eliminated by one of the many dangers that lurk underground. Player are afraid to be eliminated but must explore the cave hastily, or they will all die. This adds a lot of tension to the game, but to prevent a player from losing interest a player does not die but rather becomes unconscious. This allows other player to come to his aid and revive him, adding more tension to the game and keeps all player involved.
As mentioned before, a zombie player might have even a worse time than being eliminated. At least if he was eliminated, he would get to player another game or go home. This problem is usually mitigated by obscuring your game position so much that you have no idea who is leading and who isn’t. In Concordia, there are so many ways to score points that it's just impossible to understand if you are in the lead or not. Even in the simple game of Ticket to Ride, the secret routes are the ones that determine the winner and keep everyone engaged.
Another interesting approach is presented in Food Chain Magnet. Here you need to build the most profitable restaurant chain, but since the game is aimed to be played by “professional” players, the un professional ones might find themselves quite quickly out of the game with 2 hours left to play. The game deals with that by actually letting players who have no chance of winning to basically shut their shop and leave. So the player can actually decide which is the lesser evil 😈.
Another honorable mention is King of Tokyo where 3–6 monsters try to eliminate each other from Tokyo. When the main mechanic of a game is the last man standing, player elimination is inevitable. The game doesn’t bother to deal with the problem because it is short (30–45 minutes) and players get eliminated only towards the end of the game. This means that an eliminated player will only have to wait around 10 minutes for the next round and will probably stick around to see who won anyway.
Very short games like LCR or Love Letter also feature player elimination, but they are so short that player elimination is totally negligible.
Nemesis receives the final mention. It’s the best board game adaptation of the movie Alien, in case you’ve never heard of it. To keep the game as thematic as possible, the designer allows for player elimination even early in a game that may take up to 4 hours. To deal with this issue, 2 mechanics were added to the game. The first is a “revive” mechanic, where other players can take the nearly eliminated body to the Emergency Room and revive him. As in Sub Terra, doing this might lose the game for everyone (if the ER is far away, for example) but is always an option. The other is that the first eliminated player, much like in Bang, can switch sides and take the role of the invaders. By doing so, that player makes the game harder to win for the rest of the players and in fact shortens the whole game play.
Player elimination is a two-edged sword that will add a lot of emotion to a game. Whether these will be feelings of excitement or frustration is all up to the game designer.