Cooperative games, where all players work together as a team, and solo games have become increasingly popular in the board game community. Many of these require the players to defeat rules-based opponents. Implementing Artificial Intelligence for these opponents is a particular challenge in tabletop games, as players need to execute the steps to determine what moves will be made. The limitations of complexity, component count, and player engagement create serious restrictions on the design of these automatons. This presentation will survey the history of these opponents since the 1960’s, and how clever design has enabled increasingly robust AI's that are capable of challenging and surprising human players.

Geoff Engelstein is an award-winning tabletop game designer, whose titles include Space Cadets, The Fog of War, The Expanse, and Super Skill Pinball. He is also a noted podcaster as a contributor to the Dice Tower, the leading table-top game podcast, with a series on the math, science, and psychology of games, and the originator of the long-running Ludology podcast. He has published several books on game design, including Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design. He teaches Board Game Design at the NYU Game Center.