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From:Parker Germany
Cost: $40
Players: 3-6
Playing Time: 60 minutes
Type of game: Family Strategy
Skill level: 5
Complexity: 3
Reviewed by: Dan Blum, Issue 6.2 (22), January 2000
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Don Pepe is one of Hasbro Europe's two new adult board games. While it definitely takes second place to the other title (Rheinlander), Don Pepe is an amusing lightweight game that's certainly worth considering. The theme here is gangsters in (of course) Chicago. All the mobs are meeting at a restaurant to divvy up the ill-gotten gains, and you're trying to get as much of those gains as possible in between various acts of mayhem.
The simple board shows a long table with 30 chairs around it. Some of these chairs have guns, knives, drinks, or ledgers in front of them, and one has a cash register. Everyone gets enough gangster pieces so that the entire table will be filled, and sets them up (there are suggested setups in the rules for new players). You always get one Boss and a variable number of gunmen, knifemen, and generic thugs (depending on the number of players). You also get a hand of cards. A certain amount of money (again, depending on the number of players) is placed in the middle of the table. Then the fun begins.
On your turn, your cake explodes (we'll get back to that), you collect your money, and you get to play cards. You get money if your Boss is alive and if any of your gangsters are sitting in front of ledgers (with bonuses for sitting in front of matching pairs). If you have a gangster at the cash register, you double your payout (this seat is never occupied for very long, for some reason). After taking your money, you get to play a card, which is how you do everything in this game. A gun card allows a gunman or anyone sitting in front of a gun to shoot the gangster sitting across the table. Similarly, a knife card allows a knifeman or someone in front of a knife to off a neighboring thug. A Mickey Finn card allows you to drug three gangsters sitting in front of drinks (they wake up at the end of their owners' turns, but if drugged a second time before that they die). A police raid card (there are only two, and they get removed once played) forces all gangsters to be picked up and placed back one by one. There are movement cards, which allow you to move one of your men to any empty seat (these can be played after playing any other card, or two can be played on a turn). Finally, there are three cards related to cakes.
Unsurprisingly, the principle ingredient in these cakes is dynamite. When you play a cake ordering card, you get to take your cake counter and place it anywhere at the table you like. At the beginning of your next turn, it will explode, taking out the gangster in front of it and the two men flanking him. However, in the interim other players can play cards to move the cake (to the next gangster in either direction) or have it explode immediately. This can make for a fair bit of tension, but it also makes for a great deal of chaos - in a game with 5-6 players, people are likely to play "Hot Cake" to the extent that it could explode anywhere on the table.
The two rules that really make the game are these: the last player with gangsters at the table gets all the remaining cash on the table, and the player with the most cash wins, even if all of his or her gangsters are dead. There are three basic viable strategies - try to get a small steady income and keep your guys alive a long time, try to get high payouts at the start and not worry if all your men die fairly early, and try to kill everyone else as quickly as possible to get a big bonus for being the last standing.
This might seem like a pretty obvious set of strategies, but considering the number of light games that really only have one winning strategy, or that don't admit of any long-term planning at all, I think Don Pepe does pretty well in this department. The actual gameplay gets fairly chaotic, but it is possible to follow the different strategies on the macro level. On a turn-by-turn basis, things are more chaotic - you're limited in your actions by your cards, where your pieces are at the table, and where everyone else is at the table, so you often find yourself knifing someone just to accomplish something. There ARE tactical decisions to make, just not too many of them. You can't put your brain in neutral to play, but it won't get a major workout, either.
I give Don Pepe a somewhat qualified recommendation. It's fast, it's easy, it's fun, it does require a little thought, and it accommodates 3-6 players. So why "qualified?" Price. Ordered from Funagain or other importers, the game runs as much as Krieg und Frieden or Giganten, which have much nicer components. For your money, Don Pepe gives you a small board, a very cheap-feeling deck of cards, paper money, and a smallish number of cardboard tokens (a cute custom box insert adds nothing to the game and doesn't even store the pieces very well). Ordered from Germany, the price is even sillier- it retails for DM57.50, as opposed to Giganten at DM49.50, Durch die Wueste at DM49.95, etc. From a small publisher, this might be acceptable, but Hasbro can't use the small print-run or other similar excuses. However, it's still a decent game, so if you're willing to pay a little extra, I can certainly recommend it (and if you're wondering, Hasbro USA informs me they will not be printing a US edition).