Devious
Transcript
Hello. So, today I want to talk to you about the game Devious from Smirk and Dagger. And this was sent to me and I am having a great time with it. It plays two to six players, although you can expand it to seven to eight. And this is a strategybased game that has a lot of Take That. The name is called Devious. It leads up to it. And one of the parts of the game is called The Sabotage. So, if you do not enjoy Take That, this is not a game for you. However, if you like games that have strategy, pressure, luck, a little bit of chaos, and a lot of take that, this is one you're going to want to check out. So, in this game, you're going to play it over five rounds, and you have these different cards, and each game you will play with six different decks. There are 13 total decks of fairy types in the box, and you will play with six. There's a recommended six if it's your first game.
There's some other recommendations for the type of game that you want to have. You can pick six of your favorites or you can shuffle up this the 13 that's each of the kinds. Deal out six and that's what you play with. So the way that you set up the game each time really can vary. You have your first player card. They get the scepter. They get to be the leader of the round. And I love that it says the person who owns the game or is hosting the game gets this first cuz that's just not a common thing. And then we have a player aid for every player that's going to tell you the order of play and then the scoring. And this is basically an anti-set collection game because if you only have one of a given type, that's going to score you a lot of points. That's going to score you equal to the rank value, which could be as many as five points.
If you have two at the end of the game in front of you from the same suit, set fairy type, you get nothing. So that's not great. If you have three or four, you get negative points equal to the highest rank in those three or four. But again, a little pressure luck. If you can get all five cards from a rank, there's 12 cards total. And if you can get five of those to be one type of rank, you have shot the moon. You may be familiar with that from other games. And instead of counting any of your other cards, you are simply going to add up all the points on those five cards and that's going to be your score. So, it's a huge risk because if you only end up with three or four, you lose points. But if you can get that magical five, then you gain them. So, that's pretty cool.
You also have the direction cards and so it will determine what the direction of play is going to be which will be very important for all aspects of the game but especially the sabotage round. So to start the game you get three cards to look at and you are going to decide which two you want to keep to start building out in front of you. And at this point none of their abilities are going to activate like they will in future rounds. So, you generally want to keep things with a higher rank because that's going to help you. So, I'm going to keep these two cards. And then we just discard our third card. No one gets to know what it is. And that is how we start the game. So, everyone then has cards in front of them. Some of the types of fairies will say something about endgame scoring. So, if it says that, just know it's not going to do that until the end of the game. So, then we are going to reveal our direction of play. So in this game, we would be going this direction. And then everyone gets three cards, but these are not going to be your cards. These are going to be the cards that you give going in the direction of play. And here's where it gets tricky. You're going to give them an order of your choosing. So I look at my cards. I look at their abilities and I decide that I'm going to put them in this order. And then I pass them in the direction of play. And I'm also going to receive cards from my neighbor in the direction of play. Now, you're
going to be tempted to pick these up and look at them. Don't do that. You're not allowed to do that. And if you do that, you will get penalized. So then, whoever has the scepter, they're going to say, "Okay, go ahead and look at your first card." And you're going to look at it and you're going to see if you like this card. If you do, you're going to keep it face down because this is where you get to start to use their power. So this one is a begiler and it's a three and it says take a fairy from an opponent. So that is very helpful potentially if I want to try and shoot the moon. I can take something from another player or if there's maybe a rank I a suit I don't have yet. That could also be very important. But let's say I pass. So then everyone who passes, you put that card in the discard pile and you take card number two.
And this is now an ancient. And it says dismiss any fairy. And this is a power four. And I like that. So I'm going to keep that. And then whoever kept that. And then if you didn't keep your first or your second card, you must keep your third card. So now everything everyone has one face down card in front of them. And this is where the sabotage round comes in. So starting with the player that has the scepter, we are going to Well, actually, pause. No, that's wrong. We are going to look at our cards and we're going to look at their rank, which is the number on them, and everyone's going to say what their rank is. Then, whoever has the highest rank will play first. This is where if there's a tie, like say two of us had a four, starting with the person with the scepter and going around. That's how we would do it.
So, let's say someone had a five, they're going to play theirs and resolve the action. I'm now I have a four. So, let's say I'm next. And I would resolve my action. And this says ancients. Dismiss any fairy. So I could dismiss one of my own because maybe I have like three and that's really bad. So I could dismiss one or I could dismiss any fa fairy on the table. So if someone's getting too close to that shooting the moon, maybe I want to dismiss there. So you can see where the sabotage comes in and why it's called devious. So then everyone plays out their card. Whoever was the last one to play their card that round then gets the scepter. We reveal a new direction of play. We get three new cards. We put them in the order and again we pass them. We do this for five rounds. At the end of five rounds, we go into final scoring. So, let's say I had we'll just randomly say it was these five cards.
So, ancients. Whoops. That goes there. So for changelings I would get um three because I only have one. For benefactors I would get four points because I only have one. And for no nobles it says ignore normal scoring. Score your highest rank nor no no noble regardless of how many you have. So this is really helpful if you have like three or four because you just get to score your highest. So I would score four there. So that gives me 11. And then here these do not have any endgame scoring and I have two. So I would get nothing. So, my score would be 11. Everyone else would do that. Whoever has the most points is the winner. It also comes with a travel box in case you just want to be able to take six with you and make it easier and more portable. But I think this game is so fun because it's the mind games of thinking, what order am I going to put these three cards in so that they pick what I deem to be the worst card and not what I think is the best card. Do they think I'm trying to trick them by putting a good card on top and there's really better stuff underneath or do they think the better stuff really is underneath and really that third card is going to be a crap card? Who knows?
There's so many options with this. So, there's a little bit of like you're trying to play the player. You're also trying to play the cards in the best way possible for you because you have so many different decks to choose from. You can really make some amazing combinations. So, that is Devious from Smirk and Dagger Games. I would love to know. Have you played it? What do you think of it? Give me a like and a follow and I'll keep bringing you more board game content. Thanks. Bye.