Coup! Such a nice little word, so pleasant to say. Coup. Coup. Cooooooo. Although hard to think of it as anything but pigeon noise once that’s been crowbarred into your brain by a well-meaning board game review website. Sorry!
We covered Coup’s transition from fast-paced, bluff heavy hidden roles card game to sloooooooow-paced, bluff heavy hidden roles mobile game last month, and basically suggested new players give it a fleeting go before shunning it in favour of its tabletop ancestor. It’s great! Here’s a sneak peek at a video we’re making a video about it and a couple of other light, card-based hidden roles games at the moment:
That doesn’t capture the game (or Alex) in full majesty, but probably gives you a rough sense of how it works. What’s maybe not clear is that each player starts with a couple of randomised role cards (there are five of each in the game), a couple of coins, and take turns using the power of their cards to steal from and assassinate each other or build cash for an unstoppable Coup to knock other players out of the game. Except! Everyone has their cards face down, and you can bluff and lie through your teeth about what you’ve got in order to get ahead. Get caught lying, you lose one of your two cards. Lose a second, through being assassinated, couped, getting called out again or wrongly suggesting someone else is lying and you’re done for. It’s a whip-smart system which rewards risk and bluffing – but not too much, as you’ll always get called out sooner or later.
Coup came out in 2012, and was re-themed a year later to the world of fellow card-based lying-fest The Resistance through a Kickstarter a year later. But in 2014 Rikki Tahta brought a whole new load of friends to the party through Coup: Guatemala 1954, which translated the action top the namesake place and time and introduced another 20 characters with subtle takes on the five original roles. So while Bankers let you take $3 like the Dukes of the original, they can be switched out for Speculators, which let you double your money, but lose it all if you get called out. Or the CIA, which lets you take just $1 but then allows you to take another action. Variety, as they say, killed the cat, and I think we can all agree that’s as true here as anywhere else.
Anyhow, as is the form these days, Coup: Guatemala 1954 is also being given a Resistance retheme through a Kickstarter RIGHT NOW – it’s raised more than 16-times its original $10,000 target, and there are still a few hours to go as I type this for you to get on board. It’s a bigger box, and the price hike reflects that – you’re looking at dropping $30 on this in the US, and about £25 in the UK thanks to some hefty transatlantic postage. Not willing to spend that much? Totally fair – why not bag the original, which is currently sitting online at about $12 or £12 depending on which flag you salute. We don’t really do that in the UK though, and the people who do are SCA-REEY. Here’s a thing – if you’ve already got and love the original Coup, why not pick up Rebellion G54, and simply give the old game away to a non-gaming friend? Not a massive loss to your wallet, and you might just draw someone else into the wonderful world of board games. If you do, make sure you send them here, because frankly we need the hits.
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