Bruce Murphy
Australia
Pyrmont
NSW
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(a version of this review first appeared on boardgamenews.com)
After last year’s contrast of the complex Dungeon Lords and party-game Bunny Bunny Moose Moose from Vlaada, Sneaks & Snitches sits at the lighter end without being a party game. The game is one of bluffing and blind action selection among a group of thieves as they compete to have the most valuable collections of stolen items.
The game’s components are simple: mini-cards representing various treasures to be stolen (these are 2-5 pieces of one type of item, or various special cards), location cards marked A-H with various world cities on them, secret bonus treasure cards and a set of full-size location cards for each player used to secretly select locations. The four types of items available to be stolen are represented by shiny plastic cubes in four colours representing technology, historical artifacts, jewelry and gold.
The basic game play is simple. Each turn, a single treasure card is assigned to each of the cities and each player secretly selects location cards from their hand to indicate the single location they will attempt to steal from, and the single location their snitch will inform the police about a robbery. All player cards are revealed simultaneously and lined up with the matching locations.
Each location is checked in turn, the presence of snitches stops everything, a single unopposed thief will successfully steal a treasure, while multiple thieves will trip over each other and go away with only a consolation prize of a single secret stash card, leaving the treasure untouched. In an interesting twist, any location without sneaks or snitches has its treasure discarded, forcing players to think carefully about which treasures they want to save for themselves, as well as protect from others.
In this example, groupthink has struck. Players have rushed to protect the 2-point item, while all but one have attempted to steal the lower-valued item thinking it would be less popular, while blue romps off with the more valuable red card and uses his snitch to prevent the other players even picking up a consolation secret snitch card. The multi-colour card is simply discarded due to disinterest.
As well as collecting 2-5 item tokens, players can also steal special treasures which give a selection of treasures, direct victory points at the end of the game, or force all other players to discard half of their items in one colour. The direct victory point special items in particular are frequently desperately fought over.
There’s also a two-player version which works very well. In alternating turns, the players choose two thieves and one snitch, or two snitches and one thief, this played on the same 6 locations as a normal 3-player game. It’s a little more direct since you can tell exactly what cards your opponent is likely to be chasing or exactly what you need, so you can block or foil those attempts. The feel of the two player game, as you make the most of your double snitch, or perhaps even one of your thieves, to thwart the other player is actually quite similar to the game with 3 or more players. A pleasant surprise.
After each round, any stolen or discarded treasures are replaced for the next round. More valuable treasures appear in the second half of he game, enabling quite sudden shifts in majority scoring in different items. The game ends when there aren’t enough treasure cards to fill all the empty locations.
The end-game scoring is also interesting. For the higher player numbers, the items are distinguished not by points awarded, but by how many places receive them. In a 5-player game, technology gives 3 points to only the player with the most items, while gold gives 3 points to players with each of the biggest four collections. This leads to more furious competition for the blue treasures, while most players are happy to just place in gold, giving a nice gradient of value over the different treasure cards as they appear.
In playing the game, there’s a certain amount of chaos that you’d expect whenever blind role selection is employed. With more than 3 players, extra locations are added to the game, but even with all 8 locations in play, a 5 player game swiftly descends into utter craziness, as three or even four thieves pile up on a single second-rate item while all the better ones are silently discarded. With any number of players, the game moves along quickly and doesn’t wear our its welcome. It has the feel of most of the fun parts of Adel Verpflichtet/Hoity Toity distilled into a much shorter game.
Sneaks and Snitches is designed as a light game to be played without much time spent on careful planning and strategy. The hidden secret stash cards that make it impossible to tell exactly how many items each player actually has, ensuring people can’t count on exact leads in items. It can be hilarious with larger groups to watch the chaos as groups of thieves fall over each another, but it’s also a quick and fun filler with fewer. It’s come out quite a lot since I got a copy, and I expect to see more of it in the future.
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Burster of Bubbles, Destroyer of Dreams.
United States
Sunnyvale
California
Just imagine the red offboard up here. I'll create it Real Soon Now...
Yes, I know a proper 18XX tile should have a tile number.
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This sounds a lot like "Hoity Toity the card game" -- right?
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Bruce Murphy
Australia
Pyrmont
NSW
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Yes, but with a lot higher fun density in time and fewer rules. I guess you might like the multiple types of play each turn and the set collection, but the ht scoring borders on tedious.
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