“If you all make it through to the end of Turn 8, then all Players survive and win the game for a collective victory! Time to celebrate!
                In addition, if one Leader has more Status Awards than any other, they are elected as chief among all of the communities and are granted an additional victory. Congratulations! […] while it’s great bragging rights to say you had the most Status and were elected chief, it can only happen if you all get a collective win first.”
                -Kenna Alexander, Wolves (2024) rulebook

                It may come as no surprise to folks who know me that I usually prefer cooperative board games to competitive ones. Concept (2013). Pandemic Legacy (2015). The Crew (2019). Tranquility (2020). Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast (2022). I guess I like working with my friends more than trying to outsmart them. But it was absolutely a surprise, at least for me, to come across Kenna Alexander’s wonderful Wolves. 
                Wolves is “a semi-cooperative game about community survival.” I read the rules today, working out how its mechanics work. Tomorrow we’re having friends over to play. Sitting now, the box at my elbow, I’m struck by how easily I accepted cooperative and competitive as mutually exclusive categories. I remember teaching a friend a game (I can’t remember which), and whenever we came across a moment where one player would make a decision without talking to the others, my friend asked, “So wait, is it actually cooperative?” The question made sense to me. It was cooperative, or competitive. It couldn’t be both. 
                Except of course it can. Tonight my partner and I met some friends to ramble around our neighborhood, enjoying night’s cool. We stopped at a neighborhood park with a zipline. During the day it’s alive with nine and ten year olds, but I guess we stay up later. We took turns. We talked about how we jumped and swung and approached the zipline to go the fastest, bouncing off the far end and returning as close as we could to where we started. We saw how far one another went. We laughed, and then we kept walking. It’s a little thing. And the more I sit with it and Kenna Alexander, the more I’m wondering how many of the competitions I’m part of can only happen inside a larger collective win.