![Grifters](https://cdn.zatu.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/18152612/Grifters.jpg)
Grifters
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Description
Grifters is a hand-building game that has all the fun of deck-building games, without the deck. Set in the Dystopian Universe, players take on the role of powerful crime bosses, building their criminal organizations by carefully recruiting new operatives with specialized skills and directing their team’s nefarious deeds. All of your specialists are either in play or in your hand, ready to be used as you command. This unique hand-building mechanism gives you total control of your strategy. Grifters is all about stealing as much money as you can from the corrupt government, malicious corporations, and your rival players. Each player starts the game with a hand of six Specialist cards, each with unique abilities. Your objective is to use this team of six Specialists to recruit more criminals, complete jobs, steal from the government coffers and swindle your opponents. Each specialist has a special ability and skill. On your turn you can play a single specialist to perform their ability, or you can play a team of specialists to use their combined skills to complete a job. This means every specialist is a valuable asset to your criminal enterprise, earning immediate benefit through abilities and valuable end-game bonuses by completing jobs against the same target. And because all the cards in your deck are always available, you decide how to maximize your play. Grifters uses a unique card cooldown" system to control the use of your cards. On your turn, you play one or more specialist cards into the first "Night" of your hideout. If you already have a specialist card, or a team of specialist cards, in night one those cards advance to night two and push other cards through your hideout. When a card is pushed out of the third night of your hideout it enters the refresh area. Any cards in your refresh area will return to your hand at the end of your turn. The game ends when the coffers run out of money, there are no more jobs left to complete, or if there are no more specialists cards left for recruiting. End game bonuses are calculated for completing multiple jobs against the same target. The player with the most money wins.
![Grifters](https://cdn.zatu.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/18183652/Griftersr-1.jpg)
‘Grab your piece and meet-up at the hideout – we’ve got a ‘job’ tonight and it’s going to be a payday!’ It’s time to shave your head, don your best Jason Statham accent and not necessarily in that order.
Grifters, by Indie Boards & Cards, is a gangster-based mini deck-building game about forming teams, completing jobs and gaining as much ‘money’ as you can because the gang with the most at the end of the game, wins.
Grifters – The Game
At the beginning of the game, each player starts with three ISK (the game’s currency), three ‘ringleaders’, all of whom cannot be lost or removed from your deck, and three random cards from the shuffled deck. Each card is a gang member and each has a specific skill: brains, brawn or speed.
Each round consists of forming ‘gangs’ from the members in your deck, to either use their specific skill (recruit another card, steal money from the bank/another player or copy another specialists skill) or pull off a job.
The jobs are each a stack of four cards, each in it’s own colour and each requiring more (specific) gang members and all must be played in order of the top (easiest) card first. Each job has a gang requirement (two brains and a brawn, four brawns, a speed and a brain, etc.) a ‘first time’ reward and an end game value. Completing and collecting jobs of the same colour gives better end game values. The more players, the more jobs stacks and ISK are included at the start of the game.
![Playing Grifters Card Game](https://cdn.zatu.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/18183755/Playing-Grifters-Card-Game.jpg)
Each player has a ‘hideout’ board which consists of four different areas: Night one, two, three and ‘refresh’. At the beginning of your turn, each night advances one space and a new card or gang (hand) is played into ‘night one’. Outside of specialists (cards) with skills that interfere with the rotation – that essentially renders the specialist out of action for four turns, however, as long as the specialist remains ‘within’ the hideout (that is, as long as it’s not in the ‘refresh’ area) it can often still be utilized by proxy.
Play continues by performing actions, building up your deck, pulling off jobs and accruing loot until all the jobs have been done, someone has taken the last ISK or there are no more cards to recruit at which point, players count up their ISK, adding the various values for the jobs they’ve completed and whoever has the most – wins. If it’s a tie, whoever has the most completed jobs (still a tie?) and then the least total amount of specialists, wins. Simple my son.
If this sounds a little complicated, trust me it’s not. Once you’ve performed two or three turns, it all clicks into place and the game continues smoothly from then on.
Final Thoughts on Grifters
The components on Grifters are simple but effective, whilst the art style is nice and well executed. The only criticism I can see being leveled at it is that there could be a wider variation of specialists within the overall game. There are 16 outside the ringleaders, which is fine for a two-player game but a little more noticeable with four players. Maybe they had thought of the possibility of add-ons, which I would personally appreciate but as yet there is no such thing.
Out of all the games I have played with my girlfriend, this was the first one she really took to (and I still haven’t beaten her at – maybe that’s the clue)! This game is fun, easy going and well worth the effort.
Zatu Score
You might like
- The tactics.
- The deck/gang building.
- The art style.
- The very quick set-up.
- The gangster theme.
Might not like
- The simple components.
- The gangster theme.
- The lack of depth.