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Cost: $10
From: Wizards of the Coast
Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 15 minutes
Type of game: Card
Skill level: 2
Complexity: 3
Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 19, Summer/Fall/Winter 1998
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Most of the new non-collectible card games released under the Wizards of the Coast imprint in recent months have been disappointments. Some are merely uninspired reincarnations of classic card games, others try out some novel ideas but don’t quite hold together. Guillotine, on the other hand, is an unmitigated delight, but then again it might not really have been designed by Wizards of the Coast.
The story goes that Guillotine was designed by someone at TSR about twenty years ago. TSR made an abortive foray into traditional games (anyone remember Chase, Kage, and their ilk?), but really didn’t know what to do with anything outside the RPG format. So even though the game was popular with their staff, TSR sat on it. One staff member smuggled out a playtest copy to another company. That company liked it, tweaked it a bit and published it, keeping the designer’s name off the product (perhaps to avoid TSR’s infamously hungry legal team). The company was Mayfair, and the game was Family Business. Warp forward two decades. TSR is bought by WotC who are desperately trying to make as big an impact in the traditional game world as they have in the hobby market. Suddenly the original Guillotine design, massaged for the nineties, had found a home. A WotC representative denied this story, however,claiming the game originated in WotC’s halls.
Regardless, the similarities in gameplay between Guillotine and Family Business are obvious. More notable are the differences. Family Business is a vicious “Take that!” game in which players can- and must- arbitrarily pick on each other as they pick off opposing mobsters and send them up against the wall to be shot. Guillotine is less confrontational, recasting the players from 1920s mob bosses to executioners of the French revolution. The line of people getting herded to the guillotine is longer than at Space Mountain, but to an executioner it’s the quality of the head that matters, not the quantity. Lopping off Marie Antoinette’s delicately coiffed cranium is sure to get you invited to all the swank triggerman parties, but execute the Hero of the People and you’ll wind up on the blacklist for sure. So the prudent executioner learns how to manipulate the line to bring the upper crust to the front when it’s his turn to drop the blade.
The game uses two decks, one of nobles and one of actions. At the start of each round (there are three of them) a dozen nobles are dealt into a line. Each player’s turn has three steps. In the first, a player can play an action card from his hand. He’s dealt five of these at the start of the game, and always draws one as step number three. Step number two is the mandatory beheading of the noble at the front of the line, which the player collects into his scoring pile.
As you might imagine, many of the cards allow players to mess around with the line. Most let you move a noble a number of spaces forward or backward in line, some let you shuffle part or all of the line around, add new nobles to the end of the line, or remove one from the line completely. Other cards can be played on opponents to steal from their scoring piles, trade hands, and other shenanigans. A third class of card sits in front of you for the rest of the game, earning you a flat bonus or a variable one depending on the nobles you collect.
The nobles come in five colors and carry values ranging from -3 to 5. Some have special abilities which activate when they’re at the head of the line or are beheaded. One type of card, the Palace Guards, score like Magic Plague Rats- the more you get, the more each one is worth.
The round ends when the line empties out, at which point a new line of twelve gets dealt and the game continues. Players total their scoring piles after three rounds to find the winner.
Guillotine is a superb specimen of its genre, the quick & fluffy beer & pretzels game. It moves at a good clip, has wonderful artwork (although a couple of cards are unnecessarily bloody given the otherwise cartoony style), a finite, predictable duration (unlike, say, Fluxx), and works as advertised. I’ve heard people gripe that you can only really affect the person to your left, which is mostly true but beside the point. This is fluff. Mind candy. Well produced and developed, Guillotine is one of the finest examples of its genre I’ve seen in years.