Corruption

From: Atlas Games List Price: $19 Players: 3-7 Playing Time: 30-45 minutes  Type of game: Family Card Skill level: 9 Complexity: 3  Reviewed by: Matthew Baldwin, Issue 23, April 2000

I am no fan of poker. I've just never understood the appeal. And I'm always a bit mystified by people who say they are gamers and poker enthusiasts'— that's always struck me as similar to someone who both boasts of being a wine connoisseur and professes a love of Night Train Express. But Bruno Faidutti claims to be both, so it's no wonder he's responsible for Corruption, which bills itself as "a cross between Banana Republic and stud poker". I have several friends who love poker, so I picked up a copy of this card game from Atlas. And to my surprise I found that I enjoy it quite a bit, because it takes the elements of poker that I enjoy (the bluffing and the tension) and jettisons much of the rest, substituting a number of clever mechanisms for the "luck of the draw" aspect that I dislike so.

The time is the 1920's, and the participants are... less than upstanding. But when everyone's on the take, your only option is to pony up as well. So, as the owner of a large construction firm, you will be bribing the government in the hopes of receiving building contracts. Each player starts with six bribe cards ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. Players also receive two Reporters, a Hit Man and a District Attorney. All this might sound like a pretty good set up, but it's small potatoes compared to the contract cards, which can net you more than a million bucks. Each player’s cards has a distinctive color, so you can tell whose cards are whose even when they are face-down and in play.

Three Government cards are labeled "City Hall", "The County Seat" and "The Capitol". These cards are placed on the table first, and then six contracts (from a total of 24) are randomly drawn and dealt out, with two contracts assigned to each government body. So City Hall might have the Subway ($800,000) and the Theater ($400,000), The County Seat might have the Police Station ($200,000) and the Interstate Expressway ($1,000,000), and "The Capitol" might have the Post Office ($200,000) and the Hydro-electric Damn [sic] ($1,200,000). The game itself couldn't be simpler. On your turn you take a card from your hand and play it to one of the six contract cards, or to one of the three government bodies. Plays to the contracts are put below the relevant cards and usually face-down; plays to the government are placed above the chosen government card, both face-down and horizontal (to indicate that the money is in the government's Swiss bank account (SBA)). Bribe cards may be played to either contracts or governments, but Person cards can only be played to contracts. When everyone has placed six cards the contracts are awarded. All the cards are turned face-up, and bribes in a government's Swiss bank account are then assigned to specific contracts. For each SBA "deposit", the person may take the bribe and assign it to one of the contracts that the government body owns. So if I played a bribe to City Hall’s SBA in the above example, I could then assign it to either Subway or the Theater. SBA bribes seem pretty great— you always get to put them face-down and you get to decide where they go after you've seen all the cards - but there's a catch: bribe cards played to SBAs are only worth half of their full value. Ergo, my $8,000 bribe played to the City Hall is now only worth $4,000.

Once all the SBA cards are assigned, Person cards take effect. Hit men “kill" any other person on the same contract, causing both cards to be discarded. After the assassinations the DAs step in. Any contract that still has a DA on it is voided and will not be awarded this round. Finally, for every Reporter card remaining, the person who played it may negate a bribe card played on the same contract. Remaining bribes on the contracts are tallied. Each contract is awarded to the player with the most money on it.

The game is played over four rounds. Each player receives his bribe cards back at the end of each round, so Corruption could have easily become an exercise in repetition: deal out six contracts, everyone bribes, award the contracts and repeat. But there are a couple of twists that give the game a sense of progression. First, the Person cards are non-renewable resources— you play 'em and you lose 'em. Although this is resource management at its absolute minimum, it still forces you to consider and reconsider before slapping down your sole DA. Secondly, more cards are played face up with each successive round (except for cards played to SBAs, which are always face-down). This, by itself, wouldn't add much to the game, except that the contracts that a person has won are open knowledge, so you can single out the leader for abuse. The player with the most money in awarded contracts also has the disadvantage of starting each round, which aids in balance.

Corruption strikes me as a kind of Get the Goods in reverse. In that game there is a large quantity of cards in a number of different types and you score points by amassing the most cards in each category. In Corruption, there is only a single card in a number of different types (contracts) and you score points by assigning the most of your own cards to each. One big difference between these two, though, is that while you can usually score some points in the Alan Moon games by coming in second place, you'll receive no such mercy in Corruption. If you play $18,000 worth of bribes to a card and someone else plays $19,000, you just wasted that money. Sure, you'll get your cards back at the end of the round, but you'll be wishing you could have gotten a more immediate return on your investment. Some find this all or nothing aspect makes the game deliciously tense, but I thought it was kind of rough. Rewarding second place would allow for additional strategy: should you shoot for a few high-profit firsts, a lot of low-paying seconds, or some combination thereof? In Corruption, your options are to get first place or get hosed.

But perhaps saying that Corruption lacks some strategic depth is unfair: it is obviously designed to be a light game of bluff and second-guess, and at that it succeeds quite well. One thing we did notice, though, is that the Swiss bank accounts almost never got used. In fact, not once in any of our games did a SBA card affect the ultimate outcome of a round— usually the halving of their value rendered them pretty toothless. I had already mentally written my negative review of this aspect of the game when we discovered we were playing it incorrectly. When a contract is carried over from one round to the next (because of a DA or because of a tie between bribers), you still deal out six new contacts on the next round. We had been dealing out only enough contracts to bring the total up to six, two per government body. With six added every turn in addition to preexisting contacts, a single government body may wind up with three or four assigned to it, and SBA bribes are therefore more useful. Now having played Corruption the correct way a few times, I see that SBAs do serve a function. I still think they are largely irrelevant, but I can't tell if that's because I had already prejudiced myself against them, or because, in truth, it rarely pays to voluntarily halve a bribe regardless of the benefits.

I learned the correct interpretation of the "six contracts a round" rule from the Corruption FAQ on the Atlas Games website. Also posted there is the Errata, which points out that the value of the Elementary School Contract is $100,000, instead of the $1,000,000 printed on the card. Maybe I'm too easily rankled, but I find such gaffes quite annoying. I will gladly pay 20 bucks for a card game from Atlas that a behemoth like Hasbro would put on the shelves for 10— that's a price for supporting independent American game companies that I'm happy to pay— but in return I expect a product that's at least as well proofread.

But nit-picks aside, I find Corruption an enjoyable pastime. The comparison to stud poker is pretty superficial, in my opinion. Granted there are some face up cards and some face down cards, and bluffing plays a substantial role, but in poker everyone has different cards; in Corruption everyone starts with the exact same set of 10. Indeed, the only random element in Corruption is who plays first. And although it rarely does my ego any good, I like games where everyone starts with the same resources and has the same options, so at the conclusion no one has an excuse for not winning. I wouldn't call myself the biggest Corruption fan in my circle of friends— several people say they love it, which is a bit more enthusiasm than I can muster— but it's much better than I'd expected.

With simple rules and great artwork it's easy to convince newcomers to join in, and they'll be bluffing and backstabbing with the best of them in no time. Plus, the organized crime motif gives it just enough theme to roleplay a bit. And let's face it— while we're all honest citizens here, it's always fun to get embroiled in dirty dealings, or simulations thereof. It's like Ashleigh Brilliant says: "I want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it". Given the choice, I say opt for the latter.