Sabre-toothed Seven

8. Mammut

By Kristian Amundsen Ostby

Players: 2 - 5
Ages: 8+
Time: 30+ minutes
Type of game: Social / Auctionish
Reccomended?: Yes

Seems like life in prehistoric times was a little more straightforward than it is now. You'd go out with your tribe hunting and gathering then split the spoils under the watchful eye of the tribe leader. Everyone shared the work and got their equal share of the spoils. Fair. Y'know, exactly like banking works now.

What if the tribe leader wasn't around and we were left to ourselves to decide how to split it? What's to stop me taking all of it? We need some rules to stop that happening. Let's see... If I have nothing in front of me I can take as much as I want from the central pile or take everything from somebody (who either has been too greedy or has what I want).

Seems fair? That's Mammut.

Here's the 2 boards. The far one acts as storage for the 7 sabre-toothed animals and a reminder of the various scoring options, the other is for keeping track of your score and furs.
You get thin and fat mammoths to mark your journey and another one to keep in front of you to:
A) remind yourself what colour you are
B) remind the other players what colour you are
C) play with
During the game you will find yourself doing mostly C.

Each round you'll upend a bag of tiles and leave them as they fall apart from separating them slightly so you can see what side is up. The first player takes what they want but tries to take little enough so that it's not stolen by another player. In our game 7 was decided as being the amount you could take without being acutes of being too greedy. Which meant we'd take 8-9 to try and push our luck.
With a number of ways to gain points and a couple of ways to lose points, you've got to get a good mix and keep an eye on what your opponents are picking up. But, as the tiles are double-sided you can never be certain of what you're going to get each round. So, although you can decide on a basic strategy you've got to be open to changing it.

Like The Resistance, the bulk of this game happens socially. Yes, you have the tokens in front of you to represent the choices you're taking but it's how you argue the fairness of those choices that really makes the game. That's where the fun of this really comes into play.

Also, there are sabre-toothed hamsters in this game.

One of life's little highlights

Gambling Lambs is the name of a monthly games night in Nottingham held in a lovely little tea shop called Lee Rosy's on (at least for now) the first Thursday of the month.

It's something I look forward to every month and will talk more about it in the future, particularly when I play one of my games there.

At Thursday's GL though we played The Resistance followed by The Resistance then The Resistance and a final serving of The Resistance. Which is fine because even though I want to play all of my games, I've got a year to do it and playing games for fun is equally (or more) important.

One little extra note on The Resistance. If you're running the game and you get to the spy reveal stage, where all the spies open their eyes, remember to open your eyes too. You'd be surprised how easy it is to forget. Especially if you're me.

Find out more about Gambling Lambs here

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:

Wherever possible, please buy games from your local games shop. Not only will you support your local economy but will also be able to benefit from local experts.

If you can't find it locally, you can support this blog and my gaming addiction by purchasing games through the links below or at the side of the page.