Spain, 1936: General Franco and his troops advance through the territories of Spain, giving way to a long period of civil war and repression. After the Spanish Civil War, a group of loyalists to the Republic continued the armed struggle, forming resistance groups better known as "Maquis". Hidden in the mountains, these men and women risked their lives to defend the ideals of democracy and freedom.
Fighting against them were the Army of Franco, the Civil Guard, and the Armed Police, but the Maquis perfected their guerilla warfare in France during the second World War and were determined to take back their homeland. In the head of each Maquis resonated the echo of the desire of many compatriots: Resist!
Resist! is a fast-playing, card-driven solitaire game in which you take on the role of the Spanish Maquis, fighting against the Francoist regime. Over a series of rounds, you undertake increasingly difficult missions, and completing missions earns you the points needed to win. Failing to defeat missions and enemies may cause you to lose. At the end of each round, you must choose whether to end the resistance or risk it and take on another mission.
At the beginning of the game, you assemble a team of twelve Maquis, which are represented by a deck of cards. At the heart of the game is the tension between keeping your Maquis concealed from Franco or revealing them to unlock their full potential. Unfortunately, revealed Maquis are removed from your deck, and you likely won't be able to use them for the rest of the game. While Resist! does have some minor deck-building elements, it is primarily a "deck-destruction" game in which you have to manage your deck, balancing the decision of defeating the immediate threat with trying to move on to the next mission.
- Compact solo experience with a roughly 30-minute playtime
- Hidden identity mechanic adds tension and strategic depth
- Card-driven actions and clear phase structure aid replayability
- Complex setup and multiple interlocking rules can be daunting for newcomers
- Difficult to track all interactions between phases, cards, and keywords
- Limited published information may make sourcing a rules reference challenging
- Hidden identity, espionage, and covert operations under pressure
- A fictional resistance faction led by McKee fights against Franco's army in a wartime setting
- Operational/strategic with a focus on phase-based actions and card-driven powers
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Civilian track and casualties — Civilian losses are tracked; if five or more civilians are killed, the player loses. Enemies and events move between piles and affect civilian status.
- deck-building/hand management — Players manage Maki decks and a recruit/hidden stack. They draft by drawing sets of two cards, choosing which to use, and discarding the rest for future rounds.
- Discard, recruit, and supply flows — Cards used or unused are placed into recruit/hidden discard piles; discarded cards can be reshuffled to renew decks as needed throughout the game.
- End-of-round aftermath and scoring decisions — Each round ends with an aftermath phase that tallies progress, checks for mission losses, and decides whether to continue resisting or end the session.
- Hidden and revealed sides on key cards — Key cards have hidden and revealed faces; the revealed side provides powers and contributes to attack strength, while the hidden side is used later and preserves unique capabilities.
- Mission and enemy management — Missions have defense and victory point values; enemies sit above missions. Defend and defeat keywords determine what must be resolved to progress.
- Phase-based play (plant phase and attack phase) — During the plant phase, players may play powers from key cards (often on their revealed side). The attack phase resolves the round by applying strength to missions and enemies with defined keywords.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- the game the player is leading a resistance team of McKee against the army of Franco
- powers are significantly stronger but the player will lose the Maki card at the end of the round
- using their Maki cards you can reveal enemies attached to missions or even destroy them on
- one of the missions is chosen by the player to be attacked using strength from the played McKee cards
- the goal of the player is to use McKee cards wisely in order to resist for as much as possible before becoming defeated
- Shuffle its stack and create a supply at one side of the table leaving space for discards
- then the player draws sets of two cards from this deck reveals them and then needs to choose which my key will be used and which not
- there is a plant phase and an attack phase
- if I play this my key card in the plant phase I would have to use the revealed side
- the ultimate goal on each round is to defeat the mission
- I just won one Victory point and I have four more points to spend on destroying enemies
- after the attack is resolved the round continues to the aftermath phase
- then you reshuffle the hidden deck discards to form a new stack and then continue drawing