OUR REVIEW

Fighting Crime in WIldWest

Desperados

Sherriff Versus Outlaws

We are in the wild Wild West. Many are looking for prosperity and do not hesitate to acquire this by methods outside the law. Bank robberies, cheating at cards and hold-ups of mail coaches are daily events. What would happen without the Marshal and his Sheriffs?

One player takes up the role of Marshal and tries to hinder the other players, who all embody Desperados, to commit any crimes, assisted by his Sheriff characters, to intercept them on time and thus to put a spoke into their wheels, figuratively.

The game is played in five rounds, and those rounds are each comprising five turns. In each turn the Marshal begins and advances the Mail Coach by one step/position, along the pre-determined route of the coach. Then the Marshal moves his Sheriffs - he has as many Sheriff Markers as there are players embodying Desperados - one step each or leaves them in their current position. Then he moves the Marshal piece. This is when the pondering and considering starts, because he does not move the marker on the board, but lays down a card face down, corresponding to the intended target. Each Desperado and also the Marshal holds a deck of cards which holds one card for each location plus a Saloon card that is played when you wish to refrain from moving. For all those moves you can only move one step to an adjacent location. When the Marshal has finished his turn it is time for the Desperados to do theirs. As they embody a gang, all play simultaneously and may, that is, even should communicate their intentions and moves. They show their cards to each other, discuss their target locations and coordinate their actions. Of course, the Marshal should be kept in the dark as much as possible about their plans, because he might otherwise try to send his Sheriffs to those locations and thus intercept the Desperados. The Marshal is allowed to change his target card while not all Desperados have decided their target location.

When all Desperados, too, have decided their next target location and have laid out the corresponding card face-down, they can resolve actions. This is implemented with the help of their wooden discs which are placed to the respective locations. There are three possible actions: Hold up the Mail Coach, cheat at cards and reconnoiter a bank. For an action you place the wooden disc at the intended location, that is, next to a poker tile or next to the Mail Coach. You can reconnoiter a bank without having to place a disc. The important thing is that you must, of course, be present at the location where you want to act and that you are only allowed to place the disc / implement the action when at this moment more Desperados have decided on this then there are sheriffs present at the location. You also must remember that in each round the disc of a Desperado can only be used once, as the resolving is done at the end of the round and the discs must remain in place till then. And by placing the disc you tell the Marshal where you are and must reveal your location card for checking.

Then the Marshal begins the next turn. This is continued until the fifth turn has been played, that is, the Mail Coach has been advanced five times - please note that the coach does not move in case of a hold-up happening, and every player has five cards down on the table, face-down. Now the cards are resolved in turn. Each player turns up the card that he played first, all do this simultaneously, and relocate their playing pieces, both Desperados and Marshal, and the previously planned moves are implemented. Whenever the the Marshal Piece reaches the same location in the same turn as one or several Desperados, he takes them prisoner, their future moves they planned for are forfeit and the Desperado pieces remain in place, as they are deemed to have been caught and imprisoned. Furthermore, the respective Desperado must hand the location card to the Marshal, which means that he cannot enter this location again for the rest of the game. A clear advantage for the Marshal, who now knows that this Desperado can no longer commit any crime at that location.

But when one or more Desperados reach a location marked with one of the wooden discs, the hold-up is successful and they take the corresponding tile. Finally, the Bank robberies are checked. A Bank can only be robbed when at the end of the round there are more Desperados than sheriffs at the respective bank. In this case the Desperados take the corresponding tile.

When all cards have been resolved the Mail Coach is placed at the new location, and, after the first round, a second Mail Coach comes into play, starting its journey at the location where the first one did, too. Then all take up their cards again, banks that were robbed are replenished with new tiles, which then are checked by the .Marshal, and a new round begins.

The game ends after the fifth round. The goal for the Desperados was, to accumulate a minimum of 4000 Dollars for each Desperado; if the Desperados fall short of that goal, the Marshal wins the game.

Which leaves with one simple questions? Can the Desperados win that easily? The answer is Yes … and No. Yes, when they cooperate well and set up some traps for the Marshal, that is, move in unexpected ways. And they must be well agreed on the question, which tiles, banks etc. they want to collect.

The total sum of the poker tiles is 5800 dollars. That amount of money is always in play, which means that the fewer players there are in the game the easier you can achieve the Desperado goal using the poker tiles which are the easiest to acquire. Contrary to the poker tiles, the Mail Coach offers 1000 dollars on average and a bank 1875 dollars. On average, because not all of them come into play necessarily and therefore there is a certain amount of luck involved for the drawing of the tiles.

The Marshal must move about randomly and hope that he can catch a Desperado on his move unless he manages to spot their plans.

In a game of six, for instance, the situations gets rather confusing and there is also a big negative aspect that evolves with this number of players - the long, really very long down time, which the Desperados have to cope with. The Marshal naturally has to do quite a lot of considering in order to visualize all possibilities of all the players, which can be up to five! The Desperados can discuss, conspire and collaborate, can give advice to each other and can agree on their moves when the sheriffs have been moved. So they have the advantage to know where they can get active, while the Marshal must do all this in his head alone. This also reduces the thrill of the game considerably. But also in a game of three there is no development of challenge of thrill - it is rather frustrating to plan your move in painstaking detail und then, in the second round, being caught be the Marshal due to an "unexpected move" of the Marshal and thus rendering any additional planning useless, and sometimes also the considerations of one's fellow Desperados, as you agree on meeting points in order to rob the mail coach or the banks.

Furthermore, when reading the box bottom text, the game reminded me of a game still in vivid memory from my childhood days, which was called Zorro. In Zorro the bandits had to hide in three-dimensional houses and Zorro hat to go and look for them. When he discovered some of them, a fight sprung up, which was usually won by Zorro, as he was far the strongest one. How not? But the bandits had the advantage of being able to rob all other buildings when they were not discovered, that is, when they distributed themselves as evenly as possible among the buildings.

Fighting and Hiding added an essential challenge and thrill which I badly miss in Desperados. Even when one is caught by the Marshal one is not spending at least a penalty turn in jail or something like this, but is back in the game instantly, which kind of reduces the authenticity somewhat. But basically, the games are nearly identical, Even Scotland Yard is not too far away from the concept of Desperados, albeit with the difference that in Scotland Yard all chase one and not the other way round.

My resume: A nice, even if well-known, idea, which unfortunately does not create a challenge, a thrill or some zeal. One would have to play this game a few times with the same people to develop some real strategies. But most players find it too drawn-out to play it again, and it seems that the Marshal does not really have a chance to win, when the Desperados cooperate really well.

Astrid Willim

Players: 3-6

Age: 12+

Time: 90 Min.

Designer: Florian Racky

Artist: Dennis Lohausen

Price: ca. 28 Euro

Publisher: Argentum Verlag 2012

Web: www.argentum-verlag.de

Genre: Cooperative, collecting, Wild West

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Attractive design, beautiful components

Long down-times in the planning phases

Simple mechanics

Compares to:

Scotland Yard, Zorro

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 3

Statements:

A very attractively designed game which creates the flair corresponding to the topic due to high-quality components, and also a strategic planning-game with rather a lot of chance, so that little tension is created in the game

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 2

Communication (red): 3

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0