Game Daze Park Place Mall Manager Recommendation, August 2011

Drew -

You look around the table at your fellow freedom fighters, knowing you’ll have to make a decision soon. But it all stands on this one choice; the mission is important, but one of you is a spy for the tyrannical government. Pick the wrong team and it’s all over!

In The Resistance, you ostensibly all play Resistance Agents, but some of you are secretly Loyalist Agents for the government. The object of the game depends on which side you're on, but the mechanics of it are astoundingly simple, yet novel. Resistance agents want to complete a series of missions where the loyalist agents want to sabotage them from doing so. This is handled by the player in the dealer position, or Leader, which rotates per round, choosing a group of people to go on the mission, which will require 3 to 5 agents, depending on the amount of players. Then all players vote to agree on that squad.

If an affirmative vote is reached, the selected agents then vote, secretly, on whether the mission should succeed or fail via vote cards. If, though, consensus cannot be reached and no affirmative vote can be made on a team five consecutive times, the spies have immediately won and the resistance is crushed. But here's the even nastier part: If a team is successfully chosen, if a single failure vote comes up, the mission's been compromised and therefore fails. If three missions are successful, the tyranny is overthrown and the resistance wins, but if three failures occur, the spies win and the resistance is subjected to merciless torture and subsequent death by hanging. Something like that, at least.

It’s a great party game for 5 to 10 players. Easy enough for some of the younger folk, but with enough back-stabbing and bold-faced bluffing for the older folks.