Adpenture

If there’s anything fun in family life, it’s the many many board games you can play with your loved ones. We know the joy that comes from wholesome and educational activities as we have experienced it ourselves. And just as promised, we are giving you a detailed review of our proven family board games with our Board Game Review Series.

For our first board game review, we are going straight with one of our favorite deception games:

Game Overview

The Resistance is a social deduction game for 5-10 players divided into two opposing teams.

The game revolves around the story of the members of the Resistance trying to overthrow the government through missions but was infiltrated by Spies whose aim is to cause those missions to fail.

What’s great about this game is the players are given the liberty to say anything they want throughout the game. Whatever serves their purpose in order to win is accepted. Like what the instructions say: “Discussion, deception, intuition, social interaction, and logical deductions are all equally important to winning.”

What’s in the Box

This game consists of:

---

It’s a perfect board game to bring which we have, on many occasions, brought to a friend’s house to play and it wasn’t even a hassle.

Set-Up

This game is super easy to set up. All you need is a table to put the tableau, tokens, markers, and cards on.

You then shuffle the character cards and randomly give each to the players face down. Only the players can see what’s on their cards and they have to hide it after looking. We usually just let them put it under the tablecloth or inside their pockets.

How To Play

After setting up, the “Narrator” reads the script where everyone closes their eyes and only the spies get to peek when called to see who their fellow spies are. This gives them the leverage to team up and make deception strategies to win the game.

Building The Team

The players now begin with the first round. The “Narrator” gives the “leader” token and 2-3 “team” tokens (depending on the tableau) to his player of choice. That player now acts as the “team leader” and chooses who he wants to let in the first mission with the rest of the players discussing and voting on that proposal.

If a majority of the players approved, they will proceed to conduct the Mission. If not, the leadership passes on to the next player who will repeat the process until the majority approves.

This is where the deception comes in. Spies should try their best to convince all players they are members of the Resistance and be included in the Mission. The true members of the Resistance should determine who is lying and who is telling the truth. As they do so, they are building into what the goal of the game is: deduction.

Conducting the Mision

In this phase, the chosen players will each be given a pair of “mission cards” which would determine if the mission was a success or not. The members of the Resistance will have to give a “success” card but a Spy can choose whichever he deems best to use at the moment. He can put “failed” to make a step forward to winning the game or place “success” to further his strategy of deceiving other players.

The reason the Spy can do that is for a mission to be successful, there must be not one single “failed” card revealed. If there is one, that mission is considered a failure.

Endgame

The game ends when 3 missions are either a success or failure. The Resistance wins if it has three successful missions and the Spies win if it failed.

What’s so great about this game is how even without getting 3 failed missions, the Spies still win if there is no unity among the members of the Resistance. This happens if there are five consecutive rejections in one round or because the Resistance cannot trust their members enough to keep rejecting proposed teams each time.

More Ways of Playing The Game

The rule gamebook definitely added some variants to the game to accommodate a bigger number of players and put twists on the play.

The Inquisitor Module

The Inquisitor basically allows players to gather information and gain advantages throughout the game by having one person use the Inquisitor token to take a peek at another player’s loyalty card. It adds an extra layer of strategy and excitement as this puts a twist to the game’s flow.

Targeting

Team Leaders can choose the mission for the round before picking the team members. With this, a whole new strategy for the spies had to be taken place considering the uncertainty of the flow of the game.

Blind Spies

This is definitely the best thing we’ve done for the game as everyone does not trust everyone since the spies don’t even know who their fellow spies are. We suggest doing this when there are only a few of you but still got a lot of time to play.

What We Think

This is a great board game that really gives out competitiveness and cunning traits you don’t know you have. Our friends absolutely loved it and have played the game a lot of times whenever they come over to our apartment.

The Resistance is a great bonding tool for enjoying intense gameplay and immersive experience.

Whether you’re a fan of deception games or new to the genre, The Resistance is definitely a must-try! We highly recommend and make sure to gather your friends and prepare for an exhilarating adventure of deduction and subterfuge!