How to Win at Codenames (Part 2: Field Operative side)

Welcome to the second half of this ruthless, no holds barred, ultimate guide to beating people at Codenames. We’ll cover the Field Operative side this time. (Read Part 1 here!)

I have listened to your feedback. I accept again that Codenames is designed as, and is most often received as, a light-hearted game for casual gamers.

You want to hear another game which was originally designed for casual gamers? Super Smash Bros. Melee. It’s all a matter of how much you want to take something seriously, design intent be damned.

That being said, let’s get into some hot Codenames advice action!

-- Field Operatives --

Field Operative Overview

-- Listen, Listen, Listen --

As with the Spymaster side, keeping engaged with what players are saying is key. I won’t beat this argument to death, but it is worth saying a few things specific to the Field Operative side.

The most obvious difference moving from the Spymaster side to the Field Operative side is that you don’t know which tiles belong to which of the two sides. Your main source of information about this comes from the Spymasters. Your own Spymaster tries to herd you toward correct answers, but the rival Spymaster (and the rival Field Operatives) are actively trying to expose their own team’s tiles.

I want you all to channel the listening skills of this CREEPY-ASS emoji

If you can solve the rival Spymaster’s clues better than your rival Field Operatives can, you will gain some advantage in a crunch. It could mean the difference between a miss or a hit at a critical point in the game. Getting a hard read on your opponent's clues will also help you avoid falling foul of Fucker Tiles (tiles with related meanings that happen to belong to opposing teams) so keep listening!

But one party that we haven’t covered yet are your fellow Field Operatives. If you have them, they can be a help or a hindrance depending on how you all work together. That’s worth considering in it’s own section, so we will.

--  Get your Teammates Talking! --

If you’re playing with some fellow Field Operatives, you’ll probably have a difference of opinion at some point during the game over one of your Spymaster’s clues at some point during the game. You’ll be at an impasse until you come to a consensus.

At this point it can be tempting to turn this discussion into an adversarial debate where your theories about the Spymaster clues are placed in opposition to the theories of the other Field Operatives. This is often not the most productive way to conduct the discussion.

I’m taking huge cues from Edward de Bono’s book, Six Thinking Hats when I say that trying to get everyone on the team speak their piece without fear of failure or chastisement is the way to go.  

I overthink casual games, so you don't have to!

Keep a mental note of what proportion of the theories has come from which members of the group and try and get theories on the table. This achieves two big things for your team. First, you are allowing possibly excellent theories to enter the discussion from people for whom the high stakes adversarial debate style just does not work for.

Secondly, it improves the overall quality of the discussion by encouraging people to talk through their theories, which is a lot easier to do in a welcoming environment. Talking through these theories allows other members of the team to benefit from any insights that previously only existed in that player’s head beforehand. You’ll also build up a better toolbox of reasoning for your future sessions with Codenames.

Tl;dr be a co-operative and likeable human being to succeed.

-- Feedback should be Limited, but Constructive --

Playing as the Spymaster is often incredibly frustrating as you cannot meaningfully comment on the guesswork that your Field Operatives are doing. Not so much as a ‘Nice One!’ or a ‘Dammit!’ should be appear on the Spymaster’s face.  Field Operatives, on the other hand can have a field day.

As a field operative, you should have an idea about how well you personally know the Spymaster. How well do you think you can read their clues? Do you know how they think? If you and your team all have a deep psychic link that reliably produces wins for you, then ignore this section of the guide, then ignore this entire guide, and congratulations on your dominance of your local Codenames meta.

For the rest of us, read on. 

You ever have that moment where your Spymaster appears to just give the most outlandish, impossible clue? The kind of clue that makes you say ‘What!?’ out loud? That reaction, on its own, is of no use to your Spymaster. Vocalise your thought process as you struggle to find a valid answer. Don’t just ‘Pass’ the turn huffily. Do your best to enable your Spymaster to do better next time.

tl;dr for this section

When you give this feedback out loud, you are practically giving info away to the other team, but I wouldn’t let this concern you. If your Spymaster isn’t delivering top tier clues yet, the trade-off ends up being in your favour. You’ll not solve your communications problem by letting it fester.

-- Wrap-Up --

The Field Operative job involves a healthy balance between going with your own gut, communicating with your team-mates, and considering all the angles. Overconfidence can lead to missing out on better possibilities, but overthinking clues often leads to talking yourself out of sound intuition. Achieving this balance is something that comes with practice, but this involves some introspection. Do you need to believe in yourself more? Can you listen to others better? Or do you need to hold your horses and practice some more caution? All these skills are worthwhile both in Codenames, as they are in life.

Simply put, playing Codenames, will make you a better person. I hope you’ve enjoyed this guide to winning at life.

How to Win at Codenames (Part 1: Spymaster Side)

Vlaada Chvatil's Codenames is a very bankable board game. If you are going to a board game meet up with a bunch of randos, you could do a lot worse than having the orange Codenames box in your bag. It's a very easy game to teach, and very soon your whole group will have got the hang of it. You'll be playing it all evening.

Then of course, you'll want to fucking win. I acknowledge that a more casual, rules-light, happy-go-lucky game like Codenames probably doesn't warrant a ruthless, expert level guide. But I've made one, and here you are reading it. I'm just glad that there is someone else who also wants to win this fun, friendly game with devastating aplomb as often as possible. DM me.

The guide will be broken into two posts. The first post will cover winning tactics that one should employ as one of the spymaster, and the second post will set out some best approaches when playing as a field operative.

Let's get into it!

-- Spymaster --

The spymaster is often thought of as the ‘harder’ role to play. It’s certainly the more daunting role. The spymaster assumes the most responsibility for the team’s overall success. They cannot confer with an ally like the field operatives can, and the field operatives’ potential for success is limited by the performance of the spymaster. The pressure can get into your head and mess up your game. Here are some tips to prevent this:

-- Eavesdrop like there’s no tomorrow --

James Bond’s spymaster M would relish the chance to be fully aware of their highly irresponsible agent’s movements in real time. They don’t have that luxury, but you do. You’re instructed to maintain a poker face while your field operatives deliberate, but you can ‘react’ through your moves.

An example. Your team misses one of your clues on Turn 1, but also talk about the correct answer at any time before Turn 2, you should know that your team are prepared to hit that missed answer on Turn 2, so it may be wasteful to give them a second clue that points toward that missed clue again. 

Meditate on this image and you will succeed at Codenames

It’s not just your allies either, if you overhear that the opposing operatives are considering selecting on of your team’s tiles on their next turn. Don’t do them the favour of setting a clue that leads directly to it if you can possibly delay it. Why waste a perfectly good opportunity to have the opposing team waste one of their turns and give you the additional tile?

If you’re not listening intently, you’ll miss this stuff. Spymasters don’t get to talk much, but they damn well get to hear an awful lot. Don’t waste this opportunity and channel your inner M.


-- Take Risks If You Are Behind --

Almost every Codenames team that I’ve played with or against falls into a familiar pattern of going for conservative pairs of two words at a time and simply communicating an association between two words. This tactic works if you’re either ahead on points already, or if you can rely on the opposing team fouling up on their turns. In my view, this is less of a tactic to win more games, and more of a tactic to pass fewer turns to the other team.

Tl;dr: Hitting safe pairs is wuss tactic, so try and find opportunities to pull ahead.

All of this being said, it is your job as Spymaster to gauge the bravery of your field operatives by Eavesdropping like there’s no tomorrow. There’s no point giving a bold clue that connects 5 tiles if your team buckle under the pressure and pass the turn. Wuss clues for wuss field operatives, I guess!

If you are going to ‘go wide’ on a clue incorporating 4 or more words, be very mindful of the potential for your Field Operatives to get it wrong. Try and rule out any possibility that a player will accidentally hit the Assassin or a tile for the opposing team of spies. It’s perfectly okay if there’s a slight chance that the player hits a Miss Tile though, as they can recover from that in future rounds. Don’t be afraid of passing one turn if you can potentially communicate over half of your tiles to your team, even if you are behind.

You can do this!

Also, with larger amounts of tiles being connected, you can afford to be a little broader. Cat and Dogs are ‘Animals’, but Beard and Kiwi are not ‘Animals’. However, all could be considered ‘Furry’ with a slight tilt of the head.

Another good way to find connections is to look at all of the other tiles that are not yours and see if there is something that they all have in common, which your words do not. It might be that you give an exceptionally vague clue to your Field Operatives, but they should be able to get the clues by process of elimination. The words 'Well' , 'Fridge' and 'Binoculars' may not have an obvious meaningful connection, but they could be easily be connected by the word 'Manmade' if all of the other tiles relate to things found in nature.

Just try and be on the lookout for larger connections. 3 is a world of difference away from 2 in a game which is first to 8 or 9 tiles.

-- Leave “Fucker Tiles” on the Board As Long As Possible --

This is the last big tip I have for the Spymaster. Before I get to it I have to emphasise that the first two tips are already a lot of work.

Paying attention what everyone is saying and then using that information to formulate a picture of what you think everyone remembers, and how brave everyone might be feeling is a lot to be engaged with at once. This is of course in addition to trying to figure out how to draw connections between tiles of your colour for your Field Operatives!

If you have any room in your head though, I would cast your eye to what your rival Spymaster is going through, because my god they are going through some shit!

If you have time to look at your opposing team’s tiles. You might find what we call a Fucker Tile.

A Fucker Tile is one of your own tiles, which could very easily make it way more difficult for your opponent to make a solid connection between tiles because there is a very good chance that it overlaps with one of yours.

Aim to be the purple guy: victorious and unliked

For instance, you see that the opposing team has ‘France’ and ‘Germany’ as two of their words, but you have ‘Italy’ and ‘Plumber’ as two of yours. You have an easy-ish 2-connection with ‘Mario’ but in doing so you make it a lot easier for the opposing team to get an easy-ish 2-connection with ‘Countries’ if you take ‘Italy’ off the board.

The ‘Italy’ tile in this instance is a Fucker Tile and you should leave it on the board for as long as possible. There’s a chance that the 'Italy' tile will be accidentally selected by the opposite side, and at the very least, you’re making your rival Spymaster’s job just that bit more difficult.

Try to look for Fucker Tiles the next time you’re playing Codenames!

-- Wrap-Up --

I hope that these three tips vastly improve your success as the Spymaster in Codenames. Next time we'll cover the game from the Field Operatives side. Until then, may all your games be good!