Tonight, we played Coup, the game of secret identities, deduction, and deception. It had been a while since we played the game, but were looking for something quick to play in between dinner and my son getting back to his homework. Coup is a quick little game, which we played twice in about 15 minutes.
Coup is a little bit like Love Letter, in that each player gets cards that determine actions that they can take. Unlike Love Letter, the players can choose to use the abilities of ANY character in the game, as long as they can convince everyone else at the table that they might actually have that card. There are 5 characters in the game, with 3 cards of each character in the deck. Since multiple players could have the same character, part of the strategy and fun is in figuring out how likely it is that one person has a particular character at the given moment. The game could have up to 6 players, so in that case, it's not possible for everyone to have the same character, so if 3 people have already collected 3 coins for Tax around the table and a 4th player announces that they are going to collect Tax in that same round, it's just impossible, but is the person who is currently playing the one that is bluffing, or was it someone else who already got away with it? On top of that, most characters have some kind of counter-ability, which blocks another player from doing certain actions, so sometimes even blocking a character from using an ability can trigger a challenge.
As I mentioned before, we played 2 games of Coup in about 15 minutes, and my wife, Beth, won both times. My son, Isaac, managed to stay alive the longest between the two of us in both games. In the first game, Beth was just trying to understand the flow of the game, but still managed to collect up 10 coins and was able to cause a coup against me and then another to finish off Isaac. In the second game, the first round was funny because we all collected Tax. Beth had started first, then I collected Tax with my Duke and Isaac challenged because he also had a Duke. I revealed my Duke and Isaac was down one card already. Beth lost her Captain to my Assassin soon after, and then Isaac hit me with his Assassin. Once Beth managed to collect enough money for a coup, she hit me with it and then Isaac was up next. He tried to block her from collecting Tax, which was going to give her enough to cause a coup on her next turn and finish off Isaac, but she revealed her Duke and solidified her victory.
Overall, Coup is a fun little game that is easy to play in a short time, and was selected tonight by my son, who has played it before, so obviously he finds it fun also, and I think he actually likes Coup better than Love Letter, which is the game that I'd consider closest in style to this. There are more characters in Love Letter, but the duplication of cards and abilities keep people guessing, but won't stretch the game out. For example, it took longer for me to write this post than it did playing the game tonight.
