Coup: City State

So last night I trotted out a copy of Coup: City State sent to me by the publisher. It's a very short bluffing game for 3-6 people, a sort of combination of Citadels and Cockroach Poker. I've heard it described as a very short version of the Hoax, the old game by EON, but I've never played that so I don't know.

The deck is five characters, three of each one. You get two cards at the beginning. On your turn you take one action. Some actions are ones that anyone can do, but each character can do an action as well. You can claim you have a character to let you take an action, but you could be lying. If someone calls you out, you lose one of your cards. Last player in wins.

I think it could be something special, but I don't know for sure. We played four games last night, and I saw different stuff happening each time. It really does drive home that you don't want to lie too often, but there's definite times where bluffing is totally what you want to do.

Brian Bankler wrote a huge strategy entry about it, and it's the sort of game I've been thinking about all night and today. I'll do the full write-up eventually, but it's one to watch.

Ordered this one as soon as it became available in the states. Love it. It really shines when you keep playing it with the same group of people and learn their mannerisms and such.

The most difficult part about the game that I've seen is not giving yourself away by the time you've gotten down to the last two players. Usually once our games get down to the last two players the winner is a forgone conclusion, but occasionally somebody manages to pull off some surprises.

It's got a permanent home on my shelf right next to Love Letter and Skull & Roses and Liar's Dice.

San Il Defanso wrote: I've heard it described as a very short version of the Hoax, the old game by EON, but I've never played that so I don't know.

Hoax was really short, too (potentially under a minute), so I wouldn't call it a short version of Hoax. It sounds like a more STRUCTURED version of Hoax. Hoax is insanity.

San Il Defanso wrote: The deck is five characters, three of each one. You get two cards at the beginning. On your turn you take one action. Some actions are ones that anyone can do, but each character can do an action as well. You can claim you have a character to let you take an action, but you could be lying. If someone calls you out, you lose one of your cards. Last player in wins.

Everything above is literally identical to Hoax except for you getting two card, not just one.

The game looks cool, but it also looks so close to Hoax that it makes me sad that people aren't trying out Hoax, especially when you can pretty easily jury-rig a homemade version to try it out. Those EON guys, they were good.

Someone on BGG pointed out how similar they were, and the designer swore up and down that she'd never played Hoax before. Citadels and Liar's Dice were cited as the main influences.

If that's true, that's a fascinating bit of coincidence.