The Resistance - First Time

I recently had a chance to play The Resistance, and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

So, first off, I noticed that despite good intentions, I do not seem to be very good at blogging.  It has been a while since my last post; partly just because of the busyness of life, and partly due to that busyness cutting down on the amount of gaming, so less to talk about!

 A couple of weeks ago I had a bunch of guys over, with the intention of playing boardgames, but no particular games in mind.  One of them brought The Resistance, which a couple of them actually own, but only he (who brought the game) had ever played it.  Through the night we varied from 6 to 9 players.

This is a very different kind of game than I normally enjoy; I am usually about longer games with deep strategies.  Each game of The Resistance took 10 - 20 minutes, depending on the level of debate, and we managed to play a lot of rounds in one night.  It is also focused largely on your interaction with the other players, being able to convince them (whether truthful or not) of your position and strategy.  I think what really sold me is that there is a lot of strategy in the deduction of what happened in the previous mission, who was involved, and as a result who you can trust.  It probably also helped that everyone else was really into the game too, so (as far as I know) no one carried over any grudges from round to round when they were lied to.

We played first without the plot cards, and later with the plot cards.  We found that they added a little more strategy to the game, but also added some randomness that made it feel a little less strategic.  We also found that they greatly shifted the advantage towards the rebels.  Separately we found that balance was really good in the game, but depending on the rebel to spy ratio the balance seemed to shift somewhat.  With the plot cards, it seemed to shift too far towards the rebels.

I would definitely recommend this game when you have the right group together.  I can see it being a lot less fun if people can't leave the "sneakiness" behind after each round.  My wife and I are getting together with three other couples this weekend, and we are intending to play The Resistance.  All of the men were at that first night, and in general our wives are a little less into the games (and more into the social aspect), so I am interested to see how that changes the game.