When Your Friends Are Simply the Worst

"Traitor" games have always been popular among my group of friends -- each for their own bit of time, anyway. We started out way-back-when with the granddaddy, Werewolf, moved onto The Resistance and Don't Mess With Cthulhu, and sampled others along the way. We seem to enjoy getting a big group together to lie to each other. But we recently found our favorite game yet in the genre: Secret Hitler.

DISCLAIMER: "Recently" in this case is a rhetorical flourish. Here's a little secret about my blog that's now being unmasked. I actually have a considerable backlog of posts right now. In "normal business," I let current things like new movies jump in line, and dole out the things that are sort of "timeless" on days I don't feel like writing something. This is one of those older posts; I could not have imagined when I first wrote it months ago that getting together a big group of friends to play a board game would in fact come to feel very dated. In any case -- a lot of my backlogged posts are about board games, some going all the way back to my ski trip in early February! (Remember skiing?) You'll probably be seeing more game posts in the weeks to come.

Anyway... back to Secret Hitler.

It's 1930s Germany. Players are randomly assigned a role as a Liberal or a Fascist. One of the fascists is Hitler. Secretly. Fascists know who each other are, as well as their would-be leader. Hitler is in the dark, unaware who is on his side. In each round, a President (which is passed clockwise around the table each round) nominates a Chancellor to form a government. All players vote on whether to elect the pair. If elected, the president draws three tiles from a stack of Liberal and Fascist policies. The president rejects one in secret and passes the remaining two to the Chancellor. The Chancellor rejects one of those, and the remaining policy passes. Over several rounds, if five Liberal policies are passed, the Liberals win! But if six Fascist policies are passed, the Fascists win.

Lots of bickering ensues whenever a Fascist policy is enacted. But the truth isn't always so easy to ascertain. The stack of policies is weighted almost 2-to-1 in favor of the Fascists; maybe when things go bad, it's because the leaders had no choice? Maybe the President was a Fascist? Or maybe it was the Chancellor? Who should be excluded from any future governments?

Things get dicey as more Fascist policies are enacted, because each one passed activates an immediate power for the President -- the ability to conduct espionage on another player's role, or eventually even to assassinate a player and remove them from the game. If Hitler is assassinated, the Liberals win! But if the country is going Fascist and Hitler is elected Chancellor, the Fascists win! Oh, what a tangled web of deceit and intrigue.

The rules of Secret Hitler are only marginally more complicated than those of the most basic "hidden role" games. And yet those few additions carry many times their weight in strategy. There are a lot of compelling ways to sow mistrust in the game. You can work for good early as a Fascist, only to turn cloak later, and the game gives you enough runway to do that. Plus, the special "third role" of Hitler -- who wants Fascism but doesn't know who his allies are -- adds a fun wrinkle to the mix.

The components of the game are a real treat that adds to the experience. Policies are hefty tiles. Roles and faction cards are hidden in envelopes. The President and Chancellor roles are marked by wooden desk plates that thunk satisfyingly when you pass them around the table. You could conceivably play Secret Hitler with your own cobbled together components, but the real thing truly does take it to another level with its thoughtful art style and tactile thrills.

If you're the sort of player stressed out by these kinds of bluffing games, who simply doesn't like gathering with friends to lie to each other, I can't imagine Secret Hitler will win you over. But if you're a fan of any game in the genre and haven't tried this one, you're really missing out. I could imagine its subject matter being off-putting to some, but I can think of no flaws with its incredibly clever system. (And we've already played it a ton in my group.) There's even a smartphone app to guide you through the game setup, with hilarious dialogue delivered by a joyously hammy Wil Wheaton.

Other hidden role games have faded with time among our group, but it seems like Secret Hitler may be built to last. I give it an enthusiastic A.