One of the games I played the most in the last year was The Resistance, a simple little 15 minute card game intended for a large group. Up to 10 players can play, and it's really a "the more, the merrier" kind of thing.Each player secretly draws a card identifying himself as either a saboteur, or a member of The Resistance. Players close their eyes for a moment so the saboteurs can learn each others' identities. The players then have 5 rounds to work as a group to identify the saboteurs.
Players take turns being "team leader," identifying a sub-group of players (of changing numbers each round) to go out on a mission. All players then vote openly whether they approve of the selected team -- whether they believe the mission will be successful. If the mission is approved by the majority, each player on that team secretly selects whether to support the mission or sabotage it. True Resistance players will, of course, always choose to support the mission, while saboteurs may elect to sabotage it. The secretly selected cards are shuffled and revealed, and any number of sabotage cards ruins the mission. The Resistance wins if they succeed in 3 out of 5 missions. The saboteurs win if 3 out of 5 missions fail.
The game is quite clever, and has some welcome extra wrinkles that similar "group trust" games (such as Werewolf) don't have. But unfortunately, the game doesn't really seem quite fair, either. In short, it seems virtually impossible for the Resistance players to actually win, and far too easy for the saboteurs to triumph. I have yet to see a game that wasn't won by the saboteurs.
The game does come with an expansion, which my group initially chose to ignore for the sake of simplicity. But reading through some of the special cards in the expansion, we speculated that they might go a long way toward balancing the equation -- we simply haven't had a chance to try the expansion out yet.
So, bottom line for now: for a cheap little card game, this may be a good buy if you can reliably field a group of at least six players. But you might end up needing to come up with some sort of house rule to make it more fair (and therefore, in the long term, more fun). Perhaps 4 missions out of 7 for victory, to give the Resistance more time to gather intel?
If I get to try out that expansion, I'll be sure to report back.
2 comments:
Very good little game. And so much better than Werewolves, for two simple reasons:
1. You don't need an umpire.
2. Nobody gets eliminated (i.e. everyone plays through to the end of the game).
Now as to your balance issues: while it's true that I've seen more wins by the saboteurs, I have seen an almost equal number of wins by the resistance. Maybe we just had dumb saboteurs?
FKL
I agree with Francis, and have one extra reason why it is better than Werewolves:
3. You actually have data to start your deduction with the mission results. In Werewolf, the first few turns are often "I nominate Bob to hang because he looks hairy/I think I heard him move/he can't be trusted".
Jean-Luc
Post a Comment