Review: Coup: Rebellion G54 – Anarchy

As I have reviewed Coup: Rebellion G54, I’ll not be going over the rules. Instead I will look at what the expansion adds to the game and examine the cards in detail.

Contents:

18 influence cards (3 of each role)

7 role action cards (1 of each role, and 1 Social Media)

1 general action card (bank)

1 role token (bomb)

6 role dividers (1 of each role)

Two new general actions are available:

Social Media (General action): Take 1 card from the deck. Return 1 card to the deck. This cannot be challenged or blocked.

Bank, enables Loan (General action): Take 1 coin from the treasury. Add 1 coin to the bank. This cannot be blocked or challenged.

The roles and general actions in this set

The roles: 

Plantation owner (finance): Active player takes 1 from the treasury. Then any other player may claim Plantation owner. Once all claims have been made, challenges have been resolved, everyone gets the number of coins equal to the surviving claimants.

Financier (finance): The Income General Action card is swapped with the Bank card, enabling people to take the Loan general action. Active player may claim the financier to take all the coins from the bank card.

Anarchist (force): Active player does not have to claim anarchist to take this action. Active player pays 3 coins to the treasury and declares a target. The target gets the bomb token and can either Defuse or Pass the bomb to a new target. If they do not Pass or Defuse, the target loses a life. Counteraction: Target may claim anarchist to either Defuse (discard) or Pass the bomb to another player. The bomb may never return to any player that had the bomb, including the player that first took the bomb action.  

Paramilitary (force): The player declares a target and pays 3 coins if the target has 2 lifes remaining or 5 coins if the target has 1 life remaining. Target loses a life. Counteraction: Target may claim paramilitary to prevent the loss of a life.

Arms dealer (Special interest): Active player names a character role and then turns over two random cards from the deck. If any of those two cards is the named role, the player gets 4 coins from the treasury. Return the cards to the deck and shuffle.

Socialist (Special interest): All other players must give either 1 coin or 1 card. Active player keeps all the coins. The player then looks at the cards acquired, adds 1 card from his or her hand and chooses 1 card to keep. Then they add 1 card from the deck, shuffle and give 1 card to each player that gave a card. The leftover card is returned to the deck.

Thoughts and review:

 All cards are advanced, and add two new roles to force, finance and special interest. For finance and force it's nice to have more options, as they had less options in G54. Communication is missing, but replaced with Social Media. Now every turn, someone can swap a card with the deck and hopefully assume a new role. This has influence on the communications card that people might wish to use, as some of them lose their purpose. I can’t say much about them in play, as the mechanic of G54 is different with each set of cards.

Plantation owner: Another special mechanic. People are encouraged to claim plantation owner, as everyone benefits from it. However, the danger is that you might just help your opponents too much, because now they have more coins than you’d wish them to have.

Financier: To take all the coins in the bank is interesting, but the downside is that everyone is also eyeing it. There’s also no counteraction for this, except challenging the player directly. The biggest change is that it influences the general actions, so people might think twice about gaining income and instead steal coins from their opponents.

Anarchist: Anarchist is interesting, as you don’t need to have the anarchist yourself in order to claim the bomb. Also you can’t get the bomb back yourself, so there’s an incentive to light the fuse. However, because another player can defuse or pass on the bomb, you’re not guaranteed that someone will lose a life.

Paramilitary: Basically, it’s a guerilla, which always costs 4 coins, but with some cost variations. The first time people pay less, as they have more lives remaining. To finish them off costs more, so the incentive could be to equalize gameplay.

Arms dealer: The arms dealer can acquire a lot of money in a single turn, but only if you’re feeling lucky. You might just get what you want or be left empty handed. I like this card.

Socialist: My personal favorite in this expansion! You either mess with other people’s plans. If you’re targeted by this you can buy yourself out or might just end up with a new card. Again there’s a luck component, but due to the general reshuffling, you might just end up with the card you needed (or not).

Does this expansion take Coup G54 to a whole new level? Not really, as basically G54 remains G54. However, what it does add is another 6 roles, which are of various interest. Most of them are fine and fun additions. The Plantation Owner, Financier, Anarchist, and Paramilitary are all equal to me. Nice to have, but it’s no harm if you don’t have them. The two remaining roles are exciting, Socialist and Arms Dealer. The Socialist, which allows you to mess with other people’s cards and plans. They can have a plan with their roles, but you can mess these up. The Arms Dealer is also nice, but mostly because it’s amusing when you guess correctly. The remaining cards are nice, but more on the same level for me. Overall, I would certainly recommend this expansion. However, keep in mind that as it’s no radical overhaul of the game, but an addition to the existing game. G54 can also be played without it and plays perfectly fine. If you want more options, however, then certainly get this expansion!

Critical Component Comparison: Coup & Coup: Rebellion G54

A while ago we reviewed Coup on this blog and recently Coup: Rebellion G54. Of course a comparison is logical to make. The purpose of this post is to review the components of both games and share some thoughts on the mechanics. This review shall start with a overview of what’s in both boxes, before examining them in detail.

Coup (Coup)

Players: 2 – 6

Publisher: Indie Boards & Cards

Year: 2012

Coup: Rebellion G54 (G54)

Players: 3 – 6

Publisher: Indie Boards & Cards

Year: 2014

Both games are about deception and bluffing. Both games are published by Indie Boards & Cards. They’re set in the same universe and the goal is to eliminate other players. Coup was published first, while Coup: Rebellion G54 came out later. The following aspects will be compared: total components, player aids, cards, coins, box, extra's.

Total components

Total components

Coup comes with 15 characters cards, 6 summary cards, 50 coins, a rulebook.

G54 comes with 75 influence cards, 2 general actions cards, 25 role actions cards, 8 role tokens, 50 coins, rulebook, 25 role dividers, 2 dividers.

Judging by the components alone, G54 gives a lot more than Coup. Not only in terms of cards, but also other additions as well, such as the tokens and everything else. The nice aspect is that it’s not just the game, but also storage of the game that they thought about.

  

Player aids

The player aids

Coup comes with simpler version, which is double sided. One side features the available actions, while the other side shows the roles and their related actions, explained in two sentences. Illegal actions, or actions that can’t be taken are marked with a cross. Also symbols related to the roles are shown.

G54 comes with cards that explain the role, as well as general action cards. These cards are divided into several sections (force, communications, special interest, finance) and that makes swapping them easier.

Equal. Both serve their purpose. The benefit of Coup is that they are personal and are in front of you. It would be impossible to fit all the cards from G54 on a player help and it are separate cards. Because of the space, more text can be put on it, so more complex roles can be added to the game.

  

Cards

The cards

Coup comes with bigger and sturdier cards. On it the person and their action is shown. These stand up better to repeated playing, shuffling and transporting. Sleeves for these cards are less easily available.

G54 comes with smaller cards, features the artwork and a box with the text. The cards are numbered in the bottom, relating to their set and the game. They are also better sleevable, making them more durable and standing up to repeated play.  

G54: Cards are a smaller size and sleevable. While they would be equal and both have benefits, the size is the dealbreaker.

  

Coins

The coins

Coup comes with 50 coins. These are all valued 1. They look like a cross between poker chips and sim cards for your phone. They are good to wield, except that they are all the same value.

G54 comes with 50 coins. These are valued either 1 or 3. The look like small sim cards for your phone. The value 1 is silver, while the value 3 is gold. It ensures there’s enough money to go around for every player, while you don’t need to gather big piles in front of you.

G54: Because the coins have different values.

Extra’s: Dividers and tokens

Extra's

Coup doesn’t have this feature.

G54 comes with 2 big divider cards and 25 role divider cards. These can be inserted in the box to split the cards and to make it easier to take out the cards that you want. You can use them, but it’s optional. While they are okay to have, I haven’t used them so far and to me it doesn’t seem to add a lot to the game. G54 also has tokens, which can be used to make more complex roles.

No points awarded.

Box

The boxes

Coup comes with a smaller box, which contains everything. The game is much more manageable and transportable this way. This is a huge benefit compared to the other box.

G54 comes with a big box, which can hold everything. You can even fit the box of Coup in there. The size is also the detrimental here, because it’s not easy to carry around. While Coup can easily be added to your backpack or taken along, G54 fills the whole bag. However, it’s nothing that can’t be fixed by putting the game in a different container.

Coup: has a better box.

Even the Coup box can even fit in the G54 box!

Score: Coup – 2 (Box, player aids) G54 – 4 (Coins, cards, player aids, total components)

Final thoughts.

G54 comes out better in comparison. Coup is leaner and might have trimmed out some of the unnecessary fat, such as the divider cards, but it also lacks the extra possibilities of G54. Of course, this can be explained as Coup was published two years before G54 came out. Therefore it’s logical that G54 is like an improved version compared to the previous game. There’s several benefits to G54 that make it more suitable than the basic game, such as the different coin values. However, the main feature that really improves this game is that there’s so many cards that can be used and added. Where as Coup can only be played in a certain pattern with the same cards, in the same environment, G54 offers the possibility of changing everything. This way you can introduce new mechanics, new strategies and a whole lot of more replay value to the game than just basic Coup. It stays interesting, even after several playthroughs in a single session and elevates it from a light filler game to something that can be used to spend the evening. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this comparison and it might help you make a better decision if you’re still on the fence about which game you should buy.