Category: Blog

Secret Hitler & Newcastle Gamers

On 2nd January 2016

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Today has been a rather fun day, firstly we drove to Newcastle to see my adorable little nephew who was born on Christmas Eve, and as per usual I was a puddle of mush with him. We left him with a Serenity plush toy, just to make sure we have a future browncoat in the making.

Then I went along to Newcastle Gamers whilst the girls went up to see Lindsay’s granddad, and my awesome mates, Drew, Kyle and Steven (Geek Apocalypse) were there. Upon arrival we quickly began with a couple of games of Drew’s print and play version of Secret Hitler.

Secret Hitler is a secret identity deduction game, much like The Resistance or Warewolf, but is set in the days of the Weimar Republic, its written by Max Temkin of Cards Against Humanity fame. The basics of the game are that you are secretly divided into two teams, liberals and fascists, with the fascists having Hitler on their team as well, in each round a player takes on the role of president and he nominates a chancellor, who the players then vote to accept or not. Once that is done, the president picks up three policy cards, and discards one, he hands the remaining two over to the chancellor who puts one into law. These policies could be liberal or fascist policies, the aim of each side being to introduce more policies of their group, but there are more fascist policies out there than liberal, and fascist laws can be beneficial to the liberals as they allow them to for example identify which party a player belongs to, or allow the outgoing president to select his successor.

The aim for the fascist side is to introduce 5 fascist laws, or get Hitler into power once 3 fascist laws have been enacted, for the liberals, they need to pass 6 liberal policies into law, both are more difficult than they sound. I understand the subject matter may be uncomfortable for some people, but the theme fits, it shows us the dangers of slipping into fascism and how people like Hitler were able to take advantage of the Weimar Republic and its imperfect form of democracy.

Secret Hitler successfully Kickstarted at the end of 2015, and I am pleased to say I am a backer, in at a level which gets me the game in a lovely wooden box, but once its published in the second half of this year, I seriously recommend you take a look at it because there are serious lessons to be learned from Hitler’s rise to power even today, and to top it all off, it just so happens to be a brilliant game, that takes the idea of The Resistance and completely improves that games issues.

Whilst I was there I also got in a game of Superfight and Ladies and Gentlemen, games I played for the first time and very much enjoyed, particularly Ladies and Gentlemen which has been on my radar for some time now.

12 Days

By michael

On 1st January 2016

In Blog

Today myself and the girls I live with had a game of 12 Days, a game I have been trying to get hold of for a couple of years now, and got a reprint in December 2015 thanks to Calliope Games.

Its a charming little game written by James Ernest of Cheapass Games and Mike Selinker of Lone Shark Games, ands despite the PnP version having been available for ages, the art of Echo Chernik has a certain appeal.

The game is described on Board Game Geek as

The holiday-themed 12 Days takes the familiar “Twelve Days of Christmas” song and twists it into a quick-playing card game. Over twelve rounds, players try to re-gift unpopular cards while keeping cards that are strong enough to win the day, while also keeping a careful eye for bonus scoring at the end of the game.

The gift deck consists of eighty cards: one partridge in a pear tree, two turtle doves, and so on up to twelve drummers drumming, as well as one card each for Mr. and Mrs. Claus. Shuffle this deck, then deal each player twelve cards. Each round a new holiday card is up for grabs, with the cards ranked from 1 to 12 and being worth 1-12 points. In a round, a player:

Gifts a present to the player to his left,

Opens presents and tries to win the day with the best present, and

Buys a new gift to refill his hand.

More specifically, all players simultaneously pass one face-down gift card to their left-hand neighbor. Then everyone chooses one gift card in hand and reveals them simultaneously. Whoever plays the lowest gift card wins that round’s holiday card; in the event of a tie for lowest, with the Clauses counting as zero, then the next lowest card wins. Each player then draws one card to bring their hand back to twelve cards.

After twelve rounds, players score points for each holiday card they’ve collected. In addition, whoever holds the most gift cards for each rank scores as many points as that rank, with all tied players scoring in the event of a tie. Whoever has the most points wins. Happy holidays!

So we set the game up and had a little game, I focused on collecting the 11 and 12 sets which Lindsay was handing over to me without issue, but I wasn’t winning many day cards, so I ended up passing some 11 cards to Megan, and playing some low cards too early on.

Later in the game I noticed Megan was on low day card points and Lindsay was racing ahead, so I played a Mrs Clause to give Megan points in order to deny them to Lindsay.

In the end, I was on 42 points, Megan 43 and Lindsay 52.

I really enjoyed playing the game and although its going to get packed away in the Christmas box and put away in the attic until December, I expect a good number of games when it comes out.