By Don, Dylan, Noah, Rachel
Our group chose to review Coup, a social deduction card game where players must eliminate others to be the last one standing. We found that Coup was especially interesting for its minimalist design, featuring only 15 cards and coin tokens. Each card represents a character with a unique ability, like the Duke who steals coins or the Ambassador who exchanges cards with the deck. Players start with two face-down influence cards and two coins.
At a turn, players can make one of the following plays: take an action or challenge another player’s action. Actions involve using the ability of a specific character, like taking three coins with the Captain or assassinating another player with the Assassin. Bluffing is key, as successfully pulling off a lie can grant you a significant advantage. The objective of Coup is to be the last player with remaining cards. Losing an influence card forces you to expose your true identity, while losing both eliminates you from the game. You can develop a strategy by reading other players’ actions, remembering bluff patterns, and balancing bluffs and abilities in your own play.
We found that a strength of Coup was its use of social deduction. Every action and challenge was debated amongst players. Accusing another player of lying can backfire if they hold the claimed card, forcing you to lose an influence card. At the same time, calling out a genuine bluff gives you the upper hand. This constant back-and-forth made Coup a very lively game that had us wanting to play for multiple rounds. Another strength of Coup was that rules were relatively easy to grasp which allowed us to get started without much delay. Furthermore, the short playtime allowed us to play multiple rounds within the time we met, with each round featuring a different strategic landscape due to new hidden information and ever-changing power dynamics.
A weakness of Coup might be that with only 15 cards, after multiple rounds, the game may become stale, since once someone comes up with a strategy, they’ll likely employ it on every round after the fact.
