The Resistance

My wife, Kate, and I went to spend the last day of this holiday with our friends Luke & Louisa. As Luke had asked, I brought along a bag of games to play. Knowing that he had also invited a few other people I brought games that would be quick to learn and fun. The first game we played and, by extension, the first of my 100 games I played in 2012 was...


1. The Resistance
Players: 5 - 10
Ages: 13+
Time: Approx 30 mins
Type of game: Co-operative, Team play, traitor element
Recommended?: Highly

Nervously, you look around. You know there are traitors amongst you. Who can you trust? Who is out to betray you and your mission?
Finally, you decide who is going to accompany you on your final mission to overthrow the corruption that is all around you. Next, comes the voting. Everyone gets their chance to cast their vote even if, secretly, they're a sneaky conniving spy.
The votes stand at 4 in favour, 2 against so the mission will go ahead! Euphorically you hand out the tools your little team will need to complete the task safe in the knowledge that the 2 treacherous spies must have been the ones voting against you.
One last step left. Your mission strike team now select the equipment they will use on the mission. If they select a blue card they are doing their bit to make the mission succeed. A red card means they're a spy, they've sabotaged the mission enough to ensure it fails and you have doomed everyone by making a poor decision.
Slowly you gather up the cards your team have selected and, one by one, you flip them over for all to see.
Blue, blue - you start to breathe a sigh of relief - another blue - relaxed now, you mentally give yourself a pat on the back - Red!
How could this have happened? You were so careful! You look up at your team with eyes filled with distrust and regret. One of them betrayed you. Your best friend? Your wife? Or the new girl?
There's no way back now. The mission failed and you've run out of chances so the spies have nothing to lose by revealing themselves. Everyone reveals their true allegiances and suddenly you're reeling. You've been living a lie for the last 10 years. Your wife, your sweet innocent wife, shows her true colours and you can never, EVER, trust her again.

The Resistance, at its heart, is a game played not with counters or a board or cards (although they all feature to some degree) but with your head.
The premise is simple. It's the future and you are part of a resistance cell. You're dealt a card that shows which team you belong to. Your group will consist of mostly Resistance, but there will be some Spies.
The Resistance have to pass 3 missions to succeed, the spies have to make 3 missions fail. Simple enough?
The twist is that the spies know the identity of the other spies. They can work together to spread dissent and bring the missions down.
The resistance are left to guess, use logic to eliminate options and mistrust. But mostly mistrust.

Once learnt the game can fly past or go slowly and tensely depending on who you are playing with. While the selection of mission teams and the playing of cards drives the game forward, the discussions in between rounds are where it really gets interesting. As accusations fly around you can find yourself talking other people out of trusting you by protesting too much.

It's Werewolf or Mafia with more going on or Battlestar Galactica Lite. Neither of which are bad things.

Its rare that this will be played just once. This is the kind of game which will have someone asking "Can we play again?" as you collect up the cards. With such a short running time and so much involvement for all players it's hard to say no to just one more game. You never know, as you deal out those cards, you might just find yourself able to trust your wife again.


 Where to buy:

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