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!