1519: Hidden Traitor

I’ve played quite a few “hidden role” board games recently, and I’m coming to enjoy them quite a bit.

Most recently, I’ve had the chance to have a go at Saboteur, Avalon and Quicksand, each of which have a very different feel to them but all make good use of the “hidden roles” mechanic. They’re added to my list of “enjoyably backstabby games” that also contains the excellent Shadows Over Camelot and Battlestar Galactica.

Quicksand was a new one on me this evening, and it’s an enjoyable, lightweight, “filler” title. It’s a simple race game at heart, but the hidden role aspect makes it very interesting

There’s six different characters, you see, and only you know which one is yours. On your turn, you can play cards from your hand to move one of the characters — one space per card played. Landing a character on a space of the same colour as themselves allows you to discard any number of cards from your hand and then draw back up to a full hand; otherwise, you simply replenish your hand at the end of the turn without discarding anything. Consequently, the game becomes about shifting the other pieces around to get an optimal hand of cars, then storming ahead with your own character — though naturally, there’s the opportunity to fuck with each other thanks to Quicksand cards, which immobilise a character until you play an extra card of the correct colour.

Saboteur, meanwhile, was an interesting little game that not only had hidden roles, but also asymmetrical play. Taking on the role of dwarves, two teams are racing to be the first to dig their way to the gold, but playing alongside them is at least one Saboteur, who is aiming to deplete the deck of cards as quickly as possible; a Geologist, who is aiming to get as many “crystal” cards on the table as possible; a Captain, who is aiming to help one of the teams to win; and… and… possibly something else I’ve forgotten but can’t be bothered to look up because I feel like crap and just want to get this post over and done with. (Hey. At least I’m honest.)

Avalon, on the other hand, is a completely different beast again. In this game, several of the players are around the table are loyal knights of King Arthur, while the others are evil people of various descriptions. Through an enjoyably silly “open your eyes, close your eyes” sequence at the outset, certain characters know who each other are but others don’t, and from there it’s a matter of assigning people to “quests” and then hoping they don’t vote that it fails. It’s actually a pretty simple, relatively quick game to play, but the amount of interaction around the table makes it a lot of fun and, I would have thought, a fun party game for those willing to invest a little time to learn the rules.

I really do feel awful now so I’m going to go to bed and hope I feel better in the morning. Apologies for the bluntness but, you know. Whatever. Later!