Modern board games are not just about the Monopoly's, the Clue's and the Snake and Ladder's.
There are a good variety of board games are easy-to-learn, light-weighted, and most importantly, FUN, FUN, FUN.
This post introduces a few games for 5-to-10 players. These games are all about bluffing and spying. Players have different and contrasting objectives that they may have to "deceive" one another to win the games.
(1) Saboteur
Saboteur is a game that players acts as miners. The goal is to build a tunnel connected to a gold mine.
As seen below, a tunnel begins from the center left. Every turn, players play cards to build the tunnel, in an attempt to reach one of the three sites on the right. However, only one site is a gold mine. Players have to work together to connect the tunnel to the gold mine to win the game.
This sounds easy, but NOT. Not all players play as "good" miners. Some players act as a "saboteur" to make sure the gold mine is never reached.
As the game progresses, conflicts are between good miners and bad guys. The good miners have to identify each other sooner to be successful.
It is a good game that it is easy to teach and learn. And, many people can play the game. Lastly, a little bit of strategy may be used to win the game. That is FUN!
(2) Resistance
The Resistance is a 5-to-10 players game. Like Saboteur, players are divided into two teams with two contrast objectives. The "Good" intends to succeed the missions; the "Spies" aims to destroy the missions. There are five missions in total. The "Good" and the "Spies" play the best-of-five. The team, succeeds or sabotages three missions, win the games.
To begin a game, players are assigned to be the "Good" or the "Spies" team members. Different from the game Saboteur, the "Spies" do know each other.
Once the roles are assigned, the fun begins. A player would be chosen as a leader. The leader would pick a definite number of players for a mission. Once picked, the players would vote to agree or disagree the selection. If more than half of all players agree the selection, the mission proceeds. Otherwise, the player to-the-left of the leader would be a new leader. The new leader would make the new picks, and the new votes are cast again. This continues until an agreement is reached.
The selected players would then proceed with a mission: each player has one of the two cards to play: "Mission Successful" or "Mission Failure". The players belonged to the "Good" team have to play the "Mission Successful" , while the "Spies" team players may play either card. The cards are played face-down, shuffled and revealed. If all revealed cards are "Mission Successful", the mission is claimed as successful. As long as one of the revealed cards is "Mission Failure", the mission is claimed as a failure.
This repeats with five rounds. Three "Mission Successful" gives the "Good" team a win, and three "Mission Failure" would proclaim the "Spies" team as a winner.
This is a very exciting game. A five player game would have three "Good" and two "Spies" players. The number of players to be selected for a mission in each round would be 2, 3, 2, 3 and 3.
In case a "Spies" team player is chosen in three of five rounds, that would most likely give the "Spies" team a victory. In the first few rounds, the "Good" players may use the votes to guess out a "Spies" Player. It is very challenging, as the "Spies" players may confuse the guessing game in discussions and play. As the rounds progress, the game would be more intense. A clear mind would be in need to make a correct guess.
(3) Shadow Hunter
The game of a Shadow Hunter makes a bluffing and spying game one step further.
The players are divided into several groups. The players have multiple objectives, not just two distinct objectives. During the game, they would "attack" each other. The group that meets the objective at the end of the game wins the game.
In the beginning of a game, the players would be assigned blindly one of these groups:
(i) Hunters - has an objective to kill all shadows at the end of the game.
(ii) Shadows - has an objective to kill all hunters at the end of the game.
(iii) Neutral - has different objectives among themselves. For example, a neutral's objective is to stay alive at the end of the game. The other neutral's objective is to be the first player that get killed.
An example of a eight-player game would have three hunters, three shadows and two neutrals.
In a turn, a player rolls the dices to land on one of three sites that gives the player special power: one site allows a player to find out the identity of another player, but only in his/her own knowledge. The other two sites gives a player protections or powerful weapons, to heal oneself or to increase its attacking strength.
Next, the player may choose to attack another players whom are located in the same site. A player starts with zero wounds. An attack would increase the number of wounds by 2,3,4 or 5. Once certain number of wounds are reached, the player "die" and is eliminated.
Then, the next player starts its turn. The game goes, until the objectives of Hunters, Shadows or Neutrals are reached.
The interesting thing about the game is that a player may not truly know the each other player's identity. A Shadow player may know about the identity of another Shadow player, but the other Shadow player may not know his/hers, and the other Shadow player may mistakenly attack or kill the the first Shadow player.
In additions, a player cannot blindly attack others, because a Neutral player has the objective of dying first. If that Neutral player indeed dies first, the Neutral player wins the game, and everybody else loses .
That is the fun part of the game. And, you should give the game a try =)
