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Stay alive, gain a fortune...
Dead Last — originally known as Tontine — is a "social collusion" game of shifting alliances, betrayals, and murder for profit in which players must conspire and vote upon whom to kill each round. Any means of overt or covert communication is allowed — a glance, a nod, pointing under the table, flashing a card, anything – but make sure you don't tip off the target or they could ambush you instead! In the end, one or two players will remain, either claiming all the gold or squaring off in a final showdown before starting the next round of play. The first player to score 24 points of gold wins.
Thematically, the inspiration for the game is one of the oldest pulp fiction/detective novel tropes: the Tontine, a financial investment that accrues, but pays out only to the last surviving member of the group. This practice is now largely illegal as it famously had the tendency to lead to murder.
But it is the subtle art of communication that delivers the fun of the game and you conspire with each other. If you are the target of the most votes, you're dead, and if you did not side with the popular vote, you are also dead, so you constantly have to stay informed or deceive your target to band together without letting the target know. Wink, smile, kill — that's the whole game. As soon as someone asks, "Hey, wanna play Dead Last?", the game has already begun — and if you don't know who the target is, it very well could be you...
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- player elimination — A simple card game where players can be eliminated.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- there's a few things more satisfying than telling someone your hobby is tabletop gaming and getting raised eyebrows that look to say that's a hobby then introducing them to modern board gaming and waiting for that moment when they say oh that was fun let's play again
- my gateway introductory go-to game has been camel up
- that was actually such a proud moment as a gamer having a game that I introduced to someone that they in turn then wanted to introduce to someone else and that other person enjoyed it so much that they asked to keep the copy of it
- the mechanism where the camels stack on top of each other or underneath and whoever camels on top is actually in the lead it can lead to some moments of oh interesting when you're playing
- Catan Carcassonne tickets ride and Dominion they teach virtually all the mechanisms you play those and you can play anything
- it really depends on the person that you're trying to get to play board games do they play any kind of games you know video games RPGs card games if yes try to build on that and find the right game for them
- pushing a game on to someone who's not interested in it is not going to do as much to help introduce them to the Hobby in a good way as kind of finding out where they're coming from
References (from this video)
- clear, thematic hook around survivability and inheritance
- high-stakes tension that drives player interaction
- can become cutthroat; may not suit casual players
- betrayal, cutthroat competition, prize inheritance
- Tontine-style investment with deadly stakes
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- player elimination / winner-takes-all — The social dynamics push players toward risk and strategic backstabbing to secure the prize.
- tontine-style investment / bidding — Players pool resources with the last survivor inheriting the pot, incentivizing strategic cooperation and betrayal.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- we're not here to make friends we're here to break people
- one of the biggest personalities in a board game space
- it's a good investment
- the idea and it's it's mostly illegal now I believe
- this version is a ton of fun
- the table presence is terrific