Secrets & Lies 1: The Mystery of the Polar Conspiracy

This week: We gave Conspiracy its' first go-round, after one round each of Mystery of the Abbey(MotA) and Captain Park's Imaginary Polar Expedition(CPIPE).

After a brief rules refresher/introduction to the game for H, we dove right into the game. We haven’t come back to this one since our original session with it, which was quite some time ago. Easy was on the record as not being a big fan, but I thought that with a little experience we would start asking better questions, and the gameplay would be improved as a result. Things started off a little slow, and Easy displayed a knack for tricky questions – along the lines of “How many brothers in the same order as the bearded monk that you just passed to me have you eliminated?” – in an attempt to keep information from becoming public knowledge.

Things were just getting going, when it all crashed to a halt. The third round started with Kozure (playing green) and me (playing yellow) beginning from their cells, rather than from the chapel. This placed both of us close enough to the Chapter Hall to get there before other players. Kozure made it first, and revealed that the killer was a Templar. I was only planning on revealing that the killer was thin, but Kozure’s revelation made me realize that the only possible killer was Brother Harold. Kozure’s revelation backfired; I made the accusation and the game was over. The interesting thing is that I still had seven different monks as suspects prior to Kozure’s revelation, so everything was up in the air until that point.

I think that we made a better go of asking questions this time around, although I still think that we answer too many, and give up our secret information too easily. Personally, I had decided early on to refuse to answer any questions about Benedictines, just as an experiment. Unfortunately, I was not asked any questions about Benedictines, so I didn’t get to try it out. After seeing the way that this game unfolded, I think that a valid strategy in the future might be to intentionally make false revelations, or at least revelations that you are unsure about. This seems to be the only fair way to get disinformation into the minds of the other players, and the 2 point scoring penalty that it would incur may be worthwhile.

Next, we moved on to a game of CPIPE (which Easy is also not a big fan of), without the participation of H (aka the lovely Mrs. Shemp). This was fairly entertaining, but less so then last time we played, in my opinion anyway. I think as a group we were less interested in reading the stories that were created, just buzzing through the card titles in order to gain the points. Since the humour of the game is it’s real selling point, I have to say that this session suffered in comparison. As with most Cheapass games that I’ve had the opportunity to play, there’s not really much point in discussing strategy or tactics – the game is what it is, and Ogami/Hapi/Luch/????? managed to pull out the win, thanks in part to Captain Park, who ran into Kozure and Easy more than once on the streets of London.

Lastly, we busted out Conspiracy, which Easy has hung on to since, oh, about 1983, from the look of the art on the box. In this game, each player portrays a spymaster for a world power, and is given a $10,000 bribe budget. The object of the game is to move a briefcase from the centre of the board to your headquarters, using spies as couriers. On your turn, you can bribe a spy, attempt to move a spy, or attempt to eliminate another spy. One doesn’t need to bribe a spy to move them, but anyone with more money in that spy’s pocket can block your move.
With these simple, yet interesting rules in mind, Kozure Washington, Peking Luch, Shemp London, and Moscow Easy set to work. The game was tense and unpredictable, with the briefcase almost landing in Peking and Moscow (and the game nearly being derailed by a stupid error of mine), and with 5 of the 8 spies being eliminated before a slight cash advantage over Washington allowed London to bring the briefcase home. This was really fun, and I think that we were just starting to scratch the surface of possible strategies. I would heartily recommend this game to anyone, and hope that we get to play it again. And then again after that. I think I'll rate it as a Seven - it might really be a seven and a half, but those early 80's aesthetics - Ouch!

All in all, it was a great, snappily paced night. Although my jambalaya was (disappointingly) a little bland and not meaty enough. Oh well, next time.

Looking forward to your comments.