Game Of The Month October 2023

Harold Cataquet - Inside Job

Trick taking games are enjoying a revival. First you had The Crew and then its sequel The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. Up until that point, trick taking games had been viewed as strictly competitive games. When The Crew came along and introduced the concept of a cooperative trick taking game, it broke completely new ground. The two latest games to come along in this genre are Cat in the Box and Inside Job. Cat in the Box is a trick taking game where the cards have no suits – only numbers. Inside Job, on the other hand, combines two mechanisms – the hidden traitor and trick taking. It wasn’t the first card game to try this – Shamans is another game that combines these two. But in Shamans the emphasis is on the trick taking; Inside Job uses trick taking as a way of playing a hidden traitor game.

The deck in Inside Job consists of the numbers 1 to 13 in four suits. At the start of the game, you shuffle the deck and deal the appropriate number of cards to each player (13 for 3 players, 12 for 4 players and 10 for 5 players). In addition, there is a stack of mission cards. These mission cards tell the group how they are to play the trick. For example, one of the cards might “Each card played must have a higher number than the previous card”. This mission card only applies to current trick. If the group succeeds, then the team counts the mission as a success and puts the card aside. For the next trick, a new mission card is drawn. I should point out that the starting player draws two mission cards and discards one. The decision lays solely in the hands of the starting player (there is no discussion about the choices), and the contents of the discarded card are never seen. The mission card also states which suit is going to be the trump suit for the hand.

Players are also given a role card. All but one of these cards will say Agent; the odd one will say Insider. Regardless of the number of players, there are three winning conditions:

• The Agents will win if they succeed in a specific number of missions (e.g., 7 in a 4 player game)
• The Insider will win if they get a specific number of intel tokens (e.g., 5 in a 4 player game)
• If neither of these outright wins occur, then the group votes on who they think is the Insider. If they are correct, the Agents win. If not, the Insider wins.

In the event of a tie (e.g., the Agents succeed on 7 missions and the Insider wins 5 intel tokens in the same hand), then the Insider wins. The Insider can win intel tokens by winning tricks (whoever wins the trick gets an intel token). But any player can use an intel token to change the trump suit to that of the card they just played (by placing an intel token on the card). So, if more than one player uses the intel token in this way in a hand, the winner of the trick could receive three or more intel tokens in just one round.

This game is so much fun, and it’s really quick (20-30 minutes). In the 25 or so times that I have played, I have seen all the possible outcomes. Sometimes, the cards dealt to the Insider means that there is no way he can be stopped (so the Insider wins outright). Or, the mission cards are just impossible to fulfil (given the hands that people have) and when it goes to a vote, the group is split over who the Insider is, and the Insider wins. But the Insider is one against many, so if the others

can figure out who he/she is, they might be able to stop them. You can happily discuss who the Insider might be, and analyse the cards that they have played so far to make your case, but you are not allowed to discuss what cards you currently have in your hand. I should point out that that all the Agents must follow suit (if blue was led and you have a blue card, you have to play it even if it means the mission fails), but the Insider can play any card. So if someone plays a green card when blue was led, you instantly suspect them of being the Insider. Of course, they’ll claim they didn’t have any more blue cards. You’ll just have to keep an eye on them to see if they play a blue card in a later trick. That’s why this game is more of a hidden traitor game than a trick taking game. Right from the beginning of the game, you feel your every move being scrutinized by the other players. If an easy mission card is chosen, you will watch how many tricks the starting player wins, because he’s the first suspect. If a hard mission is chosen, you’re wondering if the starting player chose it to make sure that the group wouldn’t succeed. This is a great game if you like trash talking.

The game also includes a deck of Special Role cards. When you get comfortable with the game, you can replace the Agent cards with one (or more) of these roles. You can even replace the Insider with a character called Professor No. If this card is used, whenever a player accumulates 4 intel tokens (in a 4 player game), he must reveal his identity. Professor No’s goal is to get to the end of the game having kept their role a secret (ie, having accumulated less that 4 intel tokens). If it comes down to a vote, players who have revealed their identity cannot vote. In our games, we preferred playing with the Professor No card instead of the Insider card.

John Hunt - Hansa Teutonica

Don’t let the theme and art put you off as Hansa is absolutely fantastic!! I have enjoyed this game more and more each play and I have yet to find a player that hasn’t really enjoyed it. At heart it’s a train game really... or rather it’s a route-building game as you build a network of trading posts across mediaeval Germany. But then it’s also so much more. You spend the first part of the game upgrading your actions: the number you take a turn, the number of cubes you can move, the number of cubes you being back to your supply when you take a refresh action... that sort of thing. Then at some stage you start to pivot to actively trying to build a trading network which will likely net the majority of end game points.

A key decision is when and how you do this and how your strategy develops across both elements of the game. That is all great but it’s not the best bit, which is the player interaction. As you work to upgrade your abilities or build trading posts you lay cubes on each of the spaces between two towns. But as well as playing them on empty spaces you can also choose to bump an opponent’s cube(s).

Evidently, that’s a bit take that; however when you do it you must spend an extra cube for the privilege, and also the bumped player gets to relocate that cube and a free one from the general stock to spaces on an adjacent route. So every slight slap also give the recipient a bit of a benefit. Cue huge pervasive tactical decision space: filling in the blank space left on a route dominated by a different player hoping to be bumped; avoiding having to bump players by developing your move options; bumping multiple cubes on a vital route to slow down an opponent at a vital moment in the game. It is absolutely brilliant – rush out and get the Big Box now.