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What kind of game are you interested in?
I'll plug Spirit Island as far and away the best board game I've played this decade. It's a complex cooperative game where you play as natural spirits of a lush island with the game automating a joint enemy, the Invaders who try to explore the island, build their towns and cities on it, and than ravage it for its natural resources, causing blight and slowly killing the island, the native people, and the spirits. Your goal as a team is to scare them away, or get rid of them, or just flat-out kill them as the case may be.
I will write a multi paragraph review of this game given the slightest provocation, so I will merely say that it is unique among cooperative games by scaling incredibly gracefully with player count (you can play this game solo and it is in fact consistently the #1 solo board game on BGG) and being near immune to quarterbacking (which constantly plagues games like Pandemic). The theme is incredible, the gameplay is incredible, the spirits are fun and evocative ... this game is an 11 / 10 for me. My brothers and I have played literally over a thousand games between the three of us.
Why do you say it’s immune to quarterbacking? I love the game, but I’ve only been able to consistently win by micromanaging each play, which gets tough with 3 or 4 players without riding herd to whole game.
Interesting; I'd be curious to hear more about what spirits you're playing as well as what difficulty you're playing at. My guess is either you are wildly more experienced than the rest of your group, or your entire group is inexperienced -- or you're just a lot smarter than I am!
My reason for saying Spirit Island is largely immune to quarterbacking is twofold. First, the Spirits play very, very differently. If you're playing Pandemic, everyone has the same basic actions available to them -- move, cure disease, discover a cure, etc. Each "role" really is tantamount to a very minor buff (usually to one action) and rules change. It is therefore fast and easy for someone with good game knowledge to scan the basic problem on the board and tell the next player the ideal solution.
But in Spirit Island, while the underlying mechanics are the same (everyone does Growth, gains Energy, and plays their cards), each Spirit has a very different play pattern and flow. You have to think about which growth option to take, which tracks to open up in which order, which cards to play in order to hit which innates ... in order to quarterback a new player piloting, say, Spread of Rampant Green, I'd have to have a very deep understanding of how to play the Spirit efficiently, such that I could play it with my eyes closed. I'd have to have all its starting cards plus their elements plus their tracks and growth options memorized or discernable at a glance, more or less, and that isn't even taking into account whatever powers they have drafted since the game started.
I'm not saying it's impossible to get to this point -- now that I've played hundreds and hundreds of games, some of the spirits with easy play patterns (River Surges in Sunlight, for example) I could probably quarterback if I wanted to, but if I'm playing with a new player it's actually both easier (for me) and more fun (for everyone) for me to grab one of their lands, drop a reminder token on it, and tell them "I'll handle this ravage for you, nbd". I could tell them "OK, this turn you need to pick your second growth option, both from cardplays, and, uh, what minor did you draft last turn again? Let me just see your hand real quick." Like I said, though, it's actually easier for me to just handle one of their lands and let them worry about the rest of it. I don't think quarterbacking is actually optimal even if you're trying to help out a less experienced player.
The other reason I'm skeptical that quarterbacking really works in practice is my own experience with two-handed play. I play a lot of solo games -- true solo, where I'm piloting one Spirit. I'm not exaggerating when I say I'm extremely good at Spirit Island. I can win against any Level 6 adversary with a near-100% win rate and when I'm interested in a challenge, I'm playing double adversaries around Difficulty 13-14. I have beaten 6/6 Adversaries before (albeit with very specific matchups). However, when I try to double-hand Spirits (even two Spirits I know well!), it is dramatically more difficult to actually play the game! It's really hard for me to keep track of everything that's going on if I'm playing two Spirits at once; I get confused about my game flow for each Spirit, make a lot more minor tactical mistakes, and the game gets bogged down as I try (and largely fail) to stay organized. It's difficult for me to imagine someone piloting a Spirit and then wanting to control the second one for a new player. I just haven't seen it happen. Maybe you're smart and fast enough that you can play your Spirit quickly and then jump over to another player and be able to tell them what to do, but if so you're a lot faster at board games than I am.
So to conclude a long-winded response, I think Spirit Island largely dodges the problem of quarterbacking because:
Each Spirit plays sufficiently differently that it's quite difficult to tell at a glance the correct set of moves for someone else.
Even if you are sufficiently experienced to do so, it's still easier and more fun for you to just handle a few more lands than literally try to play a second spirit.
The only place I've even been tempted to quarterback is when playing a Difficulty 0 game with new players and they're piloting an easy spirit that I know quite well -- but again, it's still both easier and more fun for me to help out with their lands and drop Gift cards on them every turn I can.
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