On Board, I'm the Captain (Coup)

Royalty.  The good life, the pampered position.  But you never know when some rich duke is gonna want to sign you up for marriage, or if some wanna-be assassin is going to try to take your life.  So, what do you do?  Even in the future, things aren't all that great, and it can be just as easy to Coup as be Coup-ed...

BACKGROUND:  Coup is a hidden role card game created by Rikki Tahta in 2012 and published by Indie Boards & Cards.  Players attempt to gather up coins and take the others influence down.

GAMEPLAY:  Each player starts with a pair of Role cards, kept hidden from the other players.  Each turn, players can take 1 of 7 actions.  Some of these actions are dependent on Coins, such as performing a Coup requires 7, and is required if a player starts with 10+ Coins.  Some actions are determined by the Influence cards, and most of these can also be blocked by other Influence Cards, but no player is technically required to have that Influence card in their hand.

CHALLENGE:  If, at any point, a player takes an action from a Influence card, another player can challenge that they have that card in their hand, or the player that would be affected if it is a single effect, like assassination or stealing Coins.  The challenged player reveals a Influence from their hand.  If they do not have that card, the effect is nulled, and the challenged player discards an Influence card..If they do have that card, the effect applies and the challenging player discards an Influence card, while the challenged player shuffles the revealed card back into the deck and draws a new Influence card.

WINNING:  The player who has the last Influence wins the game.

CONCLUSION:  I can honestly say that Coup is a fine game.  I will give it credit for being one of the few Hidden Role Werewolf-esque games to be drastically different than Werewolf, and causing players to directly fight each other rather than relying on subterfuge and misdirection as strongly as most other games in the genre.  In addition, it also has a thematic component, being in the Resistance universe, but that only goes so far, and it doesn't have much of a connection personally.  If you like the Resistance universe and that helps sell this game for you, great, it's a fine universe, but not one I'm invested in.  That being said, it is nice to have a game like Coup for those that want to play Werewolf of Secret Hitler, but have fewer players.  Coup is meant for that, and it's worth checking out, but it still won't replace some of the other games I've reviewed better (again, see Secret Hitler, The Resistance, or One Night).