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Resistance is Not Futile: A Review of The Resistance

Oct 23, 2011

Designer: Don Eskridge

Artists: Luis Francisco, Luis Franco, Piotr Haraszczak, Jihoon Jang, Maryam Khatoon, Jordy Knoop, Vinh Mac, Alex Murur, Jarek Nocoń, George Patsouras, Michael Rasmussen, Jordan Saia, and Luis Thomas

Year: 2009

Players: Five to ten players

Ages: 13+

Playing Time: 30 Minutes

Category: Hidden traitor, social deduction card game

MSRP: $19.95

Set in the near future, The Resistance pits a small group of resistance fighters against a powerful and corrupt government. The resistance has launched a series of bold and daring missions to bring the government to its knees. Unfortunately spies have infiltrated the resistance ranks, ready to sabotage the carefully crafted plans. Even a single spy can take down a resistance mission team, choose your teams carefully or forever lose your chance for freedom.

I had my first chance to try The Resistance at Origins this year. Travis from Indie Boards and Cards himself was running demos. I had the spies figured out by round three, but a ten year old girl convinced everyone I was a spy, and we lost. I’ve been wanting to get another shot at it ever since. Flash forward to the 2011 Miller Gaming weekend. I brought out The Resistance for everyone to try. We proceeded to play multiple games, and had a great time.

The Resistance is a social game that bears resemblance to Werewolf or Mafia, but it has the distinct difference of allowing play without the need for a moderator. The Resistance however is intended for 5-10 players rather than up to 40 as with Werewolf.

The premise of The Resistance is that the players are members of a resistance out to bring down some malignant government, but secretly hidden among the resistance are spies out to sabotage them.

Each game lasts five rounds, or missions, and the first team (resistance or spies) to win three of the missions wins the game. The spies are hidden of course; you have to figure them out as you play the game.

Initially, each player is dealt a card face down that indicates whether they are in the Resistance or a Spy. The number of Spies depends upon the number of players, which is indicated on the nice small board which also keeps track of who wins each mission. The board is thick and has thematic artwork and the score markers are round wooden tokens.

After the cards have been dealt, all of the players close their eyes and the spies open their eyes so that they know who all of the spies are. Everyone opens their eyes and then one player is selected as the leader. The leader then selects a number of players to go on a mission. The number of players to go on the mission is dependant on the round number, and the number of players playing the game (which is also shown on the board).

Then all of the players receive voting cards in which they vote if they agree with which players were selected for the mission. If there are more Yea’s than Nay’s, the mission is a go. If not, then the leader card passes to the next player, new mission members are selected, and the vote happens again. After five failed votes, the mission automatically fails and the spies get to place a score on the board for mission one.

In most cases though, this doesn’t happen. You will usually at least agree on a mission team. After the team is selected, they are each given a set of mission success cards where they will each vote on whether or not the mission succeeds or fails. Once they select their cards, they are shuffled face down (in order to conceal who chose what card), and flipped up one at a time. If all of the cards indicate success, the mission succeeds and the Resistance wins the round. If a single card indicates failure, then the mission fails and the spies win the round.

Then its back to selecting a team and this continues for five rounds or until one team wins three rounds and is declared the winner.

The entire game is an exercise in bluffing and acting. It may take a play or two but you’d be surprised at how well a person’s acting ability increases as they play this game. One slip up though, and you’ll be set upon like a pack of hyenas. I know this all to well as I accidentally made a reference to “You guys” during a game where I was the spy, and that was it.

I really loved the fact that I could play too, unlike in other similar games that require a moderator. Game play is quick and we had a great time playing.

The one problem that I had was when we attempted to integrate the expansion that comes with the game. The rules were too short and made no sense to us, and so led to much confusion and a generally crappy game. There is a video on BGG that explains how to play the expansion, but of course I had no access to this at the time and thus it didn’t help.

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