Although I enjoyed playing Saboteur, I think there are many parts of this game that should be improved on in order for the game to be more balanced. The way the game is now, it is almost impossible for the Saboteur to win. Not only are players able to look at the goal cards when they receive a map card, but saboteurs must also use all cards in the deck, make no gold miners able to play, or completely block off paths in order to win, which makes it impossible for their true role to go unnoticed. That makes only the beginning of the game interesting when the identity of the saboteur is concealed, and players are working to build a path to the goal and discover the saboteur’s true identity.
I have several different ideas to help keep the saboteur’s identity hidden and make the game fairer for both sides. The goals should be on several different sides, there should only be fewer map cards, and the other is to make the game end when one goal is reached. During one round I played, the saboteurs managed to trick the gold miners into thinking that the gold was in a different spot than it actually was when they were the only ones who were able to get the map cards. Since the goal card was revealed to be a rock, the saboteurs’ identities were revealed and instantly blocked from building paths. Then, since the real gold was five tiles away, the gold miners quickly won. That’s why to decrease suspicion and allow saboteurs to place more tiles away from the goal subtly, they should be equally spaced away from the starting tile from different directions, and the game should just end when a goal is reached.
As for the map cards, the fact that basically everybody in most of the games got a chance to look at the goal cards gave away the saboteur’s identity or made it impossible for them to act to win the game. Although the broken tool cards aided them a lot, it was not enough to balance out the game because there were only one to two saboteurs against three to four players. The only way the saboteurs could fool other players successfully was to play everything they did as a joke at all times, even in rounds where they were gold miners.
Besides the imbalance of this game, I enjoyed the path-building and blocking aspects of it. I find aligning the paths perfectly satisfying and fun to maneuver around tough tiles that make other ones impossible to fit. The tiles designed to screw other players over are also a great touch. In my game, players loved to create loops. Every chance they got, they would take the opportunity to make one. As for the blocking through breaking other players’ tools, we sometimes stacked all of them onto one player who acted a little suspiciously, and they would only be free when they fixed their tools or when somebody would feel guilty or make an exchange. I would also play the tool cards whenever they were the only thing in my hand, adding to the chaos of the game.
