Top Bruno Faidutti Games

It was our wedding day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky… Stop, let’s talk about Bruno! Bruno Faidutti is a French designer with over a hundred board games to his credit. Many of these have been co-designed with other game designers, and while those might just outnumber his solo efforts, his influence in these games usually stands out. I don’t want to oversimplify his game design style, but Bruno’s games are usually characterized by simple rules, multiple mechanisms and a soupçon of chaos.

Best Party Game – Mascarade

This game is Bruno Faidutti at his best – simple rules and chaos. I’ve played it with four players, and it’s okay, but this game really shines with more players (6-8 is best) as there are more characters in play (and more chaos).

At the start of the game, every player is dealt one card face down with a character mask on the face, but they don’t know what card that is. Each of these cards has a unique action (eg, the Empress can take three coins from the bank). On their turn, a player can look at his card, take his character’s action, or swap his cards with another player. That’s it – remember what I said about Bruno and simple rules?

If you decide to look at your card, your turn is over. Instead you could claim to be the Empress and take three coins from the bank. You might be bluffing (and hoping that no one challenges you), or you might actually have the Empress card (or at least believe that you do).

When a challenge occurs, the active players (the one who claimed to be the Empress and all those who challenged the claim) reveal their cards. Anyone who is not the Empress, must pay a fine of 1 coin to a penalty box (called the Justice board). All those players now know what their card is but so does everyone else at the table. If any of the active players does indeed hold the Empress card, they now take 3 coins from the bank, even if it’s not their turn.

But swapping cards isn’t as straightforward as it sounds, because when you take an opponent’s card, you shuffle the two cards under the table (without looking at either of them) and then give one of the cards back to the player you took it from. It might be that you gave them the same card you previously took or it may be that you did indeed swap cards. Only you know what you have done. However, quite often, people shuffle the two cards under the table and forget which card is which, so even they don’t know whether they are giving the same card back to the player.

The goal is to get 13 coins (you start with six), but there is that money that’s piling up on the Justice board to keep in mind. The holder of the Judge card can take all the coins from the Justice board. So you really want to be the one who is holding the Judge card. Now you might think that the secret is to hold on to the Judge card and bide your time until the board is ripe for the plucking. But if any player ever runs out of coins, the game ends instantly with whoever has the most coins being declared the winner. A typical game lasts about 30 minutes.

I have some great memories of playing this game. In one 4 player game, the player was convinced that she had the judge card and declared it (to win the game), but another player thought he had the card so decide to challenge her. But neither of them had it! That meant that one of the other two players had to have the Judge card. The game ended on the very next turn when that player decided to claim to be the Judge, and the remaining player challenged her. Even people who don’t like bluffing games like Mascarade, because how can you lie when you not sure what your card is?

Best Of The Brunos – Mission: Red Planet

This game was designed by two Brunos – one being Bruno Faidutti of course, the other one being Bruno Cathala (another great French game designer who is responsible for such great games as Five Tribes, Kingdomino and Abyss (which he co-designed with Charles Chevalier)). Bruno Cathala has recently made a name for himself by taking two good classic board games - Splendor and 7 Wonders – and turning them into fantastic two player games – Splendor Duel and 7 Wonders Duel. I know quite a few people who didn’t like the original board games, but absolutely love the duel versions.

These two Brunos have designed several games together but Raptor and Mission: Red Planet are the only games still available in stores. Raptor is a two player game capturing the spirit of the Jurassic Park movies/books. One person plays the role of a team of scientists and the other a family of Velociraptors. It’s an incredibly thematic game that takes about 30 minutes to play.

But let’s get back to Mission: Red Planet. This game combines two of my favourite game mechanics - area control and simultaneous action selection. Each player starts with the same 9 cards, and everyone chooses one card to play at the same time. The cards are numbered from 1 to 9, and the cards are played in reverse numerical order – first the 9, then the 8, then the 7, etc. That countdown really adds to the theme of the game. The game plays 3 to 6 (best with 4), and last about an hour (to an hour and a half).

Essentially, you are sending rockets (with astronauts) to Mars, but one card allows you to launch a ship, one card allows you to blow up a ship, one card allows you to change the destination of the ship, etc. But once your astronauts have reached Mars, they then have to find the minerals and ice that you want to harvest. Only your 8 card allows you to move your astronauts on the planet. Only your 2 card allows you to move 3 astronauts from Phobos (the moon of Mars) to any zone on Mars (killing an opposing astronaut in the process). But you can use your 9 card to pickup all the cards you previously played and play some of those cards again. All these cards have character names (explorer, scientist, saboteur, etc), but it's that number that you remember. When do you play that number 9 card? Too early or too late, and you have effectively wasted a move (that rocket left before you could get your astronauts on board). Throughout the game, you are always waiting to see if anyone plays the 5 card (the Saboteur). You will never forget the screams of “Noooo!” as you just used your 7 card to place 2 astronauts in a ship only to have someone play the 5 card and blow it up. Brilliant game!

Best Selling Bruno - Citadels

This game comes in two flavours - Citadels Classic Edition and Citadels (sometimes called Citadels Deluxe). As you might suspect, Citadels Classic Edition is the original game (released in 2000), and Citadels is an expanded edition (released in 2016). In the classic edition, there are 8 character cards in the character deck, and 68 cards in the district deck. In the expanded version, there are 27 character cards and 84 district cards. When you first start to play Citadels, you follow the classic edition rules, but as you become more familiar with the game and the character interactions, you can change the character deck and expand the district deck. So, if you’re deciding between the two, I would say if you’re buying this as an occasional filler, then get the classic edition. But if you’re prepared to play this game with the same group on a regular basis, definitely go for the deluxe version.

At the start of the game, each player is given two gold coins and four district cards. You are each building a city, and when one player has seven districts in his city, the game ends and the player with the most points is declared the winner. In each round of the game, you get a character card and that character card gives you special powers.

At the beginning of a round, the crowned player (starting player) takes the character deck, shuffles it, discards some cards (depending on the number of players), and secretly chooses a card for himself. He then passes the deck to the player on his left, and they choose a card and pass the deck to the player on their left. This is repeated until everyone has a character card. This is called the selection phase. So, by the end of this round, you know the cards that you saw in your hand when you had the character deck are somewhere on your left, and the cards you didn’t see are somewhere on your right.

Next comes the Turn phase. The crowned player calls out the number 1, and if anyone is holding the number 1 card, they turn it over and take their turn. During your turn, the player must gather resources which means you either take two gold from the bank or you draw a district card (technically, you draw two, choose one, and place the other one on the bottom of the district deck). After you have gathered resources, you may build a district in your city.

To build your district, you merely turn the card over and pay the bank the costs shown on the card. You can only build one district on your turn and you can’t build another district of the same type already in your city. This building stage is very straightforward, but the presence of the character abilities throws a spanner in the works. For example, the 1 card allows you to pick any player, and they lose their turn. Another character card allows you to take all their gold.

Citadels plays between 2 and 8 players, and lasts between 30 and 90 minutes. It’s a very easy game to get into, and after your first game, you’ll immediately want to play another one. However, I should warn you that this is a very confrontational game. You can be building a great hand of cards or accumulating lots of coins, but there is always a chance that someone will take either or both away from you. It is a mean game, but it’s also great fun.

Mischievous Grin Bruno – Kamasutra

This is a party game for adults, and while it’s not available at Zatu, I don’t think you’ll be hunting around for it. In this game (which plays any number of couples), you draw a card from the deck and reveal a sexual position. Every couple then takes that position, and places an inflated balloon between the two sex organs. The goal is to move so as to pop the balloon. The first couple to pop their balloon takes the card and you start all over again. I assume you continue until you run out of cards, energy or balloons, whichever comes first. Bruno Faidutti used to have this as a PNP on his website, but it’s now available in the US (published by Vice Games), so the PNP files are no longer available. Having said all that, I really have to commend the great artwork on the cards by David Cochard.

Golden Bruno - Incan Gold

I was torn between two games for this category – Dragon’s Gold and Incan Gold (co-designed with Alan R Moon, who is probably best known as the designer of Ticket to Ride). Dragon’s Gold is a game of timed negotiations and set collection, and not surprisingly, themed around dragons. However, Incan Gold gets the nod, mainly because Dragon’s Gold is out of print. Having said that, you will come across Incan Gold in two forms - Incan Gold (3rd edition) published by Eagle-Gryphon Games and Diamant published by Iello. It’s exactly the same game (and theme), but the artwork is different. Personally, I have always been a fan of Iello games, and I prefer their artwork. Moreover, Iello has announced an expansion for Diamant and that’s due in stores any day now.

The core mechanism of Incan Gold is press your luck. You are all adventurers going through a mine shaft collecting gems and sharing them equally as you go along. Any excess gems are left at the location. You progress further and further into the mine. With each step, you vote whether to continue, or to go back and bank what you have accumulated. If you continue, you will get more gems (and there will be fewer adventurers to share them with). But with every step, you risk coming across a hazard (there are five different types). That first hazard (eg, the giant scorpion) only scares you. But when you come across that second hazard of the same type, you all have to drop any gems that you’ve collected and return to the camp with nothing.

You play this five times, and the winner is the player with the most gems in their case. One of the nice features of the game is the artifact cards. This initially distinguished Incan Gold from Diamant (one had the cards and the other didn’t), but now both games have these cards. When an artifact card is revealed, it does nothing. But thereafter, any player who manages to return on his own (ie, no one else decides to vote to return) collects the artifact card and any other gems along the path that were previously left behind. There is a surprising amount of game chat that needs to be done with these cards in play. As the leftover gems continue to accumulate you really want to head back to your tent and scoop them all up, but you can only do this if everyone else decides to keep going. Can you convince everyone to keep going so that you can secretly return with the gems.

Secret Bruno – Dreadful Circus

Sitting on my shelf waiting to be played are two more Bruno Faidutti games – Vabanque and Dreadful Circus. Vabanque is a straight forward bluffing game with a few interesting twists. It should have been on my best bluffing games list, but that list was getting too long, and Vabanque didn’t fall neatly into a nice neat category. On the other hand, Dreadful Circus is a card game that combines set collection and secret auctions. The way the latter works is that every player places their bid (for a card) inside a box. The seller can look at any one box, and then has to decide whether to accept that bid, or move on to the next box. Once the seller has rejected a box/bid, he cannot come back to it later.

Bruno Faidutti has a nice blog and he occasionally talks about the background and inspirations for his games. For example, on his page for Dreadful Circus, he says that he was working on a more meaty game with Eric Lang, and that Dreadful Circus evolved from a portion of their game and his discovery of small papier mâché boxes. But what is interesting is that he concludes that blog with a criticism of how the publishers have changed his original game. I quote it here because if you decide to buy Dreadful Circus (and you should), Bruno has suggestions for how the game should be played.

'After a few games, I’m disappointed by some of the changes made to the game. It’s not bad, but it’s not as good as it should have been. It’s partly my fault; I should have been more involved in the last developments and not let them do it in such a hurry. This puts me in a very uncomfortable situation with people I have known for twenty years and I still like a lot. The best solution is probably to explain what can be done to repair the game.

Two cards, Seer Anaïs and Astonishing Camilla, simply don’t work. More important, the scoring system has become strongly unbalanced towards contracts. The idea of the game was to have different winning strategies, with contracts, money or cards, now the only path to victory is contracts.

I hope this will be corrected in future editions of the game, but in the meantime, it’s relatively easy to tweak your game and make it fairly balanced. Here’s how :

• Start the game with 5 contracts instead of 6.
• Change the scoring for contracts : 5 points for a 5 cards set, 8 points for majority.
• Change the scoring for collections : 0,6,14 instead of 2, 5 9.
• Remove Astonishing Camilla from the game.
• Remove the 5+ copy of Wirewalker Jia Li.

Change the following cards :

• Seer Anaïs: Look in the bag and take one contract of your choice.
• Looped Wagons: You need only 4 different contracts for a set.
• Bizarre Kaleidoscope: Score 3 extra points for every set of contracts.
• Crystal Balls: … Score 12 points (and not only 5) if you get it right.
• Formaldehyde Jars: As a seller, you can always return to the very first Wagon you checked.

I would have liked to make other changes, among which is reducing the number of Copper coins, but this would mean changing the text of even more cards. As it is, these small changes already make for a fun, better balanced and more challenging game experience.'

Bruno’s analysis is correct. In the handful of games of Dreaded Circus that I have played, you are all trying to get the most contracts. It seems like that is the only winning strategy. The publishers seem happy with the game as it is, so I am not expect a revised edition (or should it be better called a designer’s edition). I have the greatest of respect for Bruno, and if he says make these changes, I’m making these changes.

In any case, if the idea of chaos appeals to you as much as it appeals to me, I highly recommend that you look up some of Bruno’s other games.

Until next time, roll those dice, baby!