Codenames

Codenames is a game that pits two spymasters and their teams against each other, with the goal of being the first team to contact all of their spies in the field.  How is this done?  By the spymasters looking at a 5×5 grid of cards with a single word on them, and giving clues to their team that point them toward these spies.  Confused?  Let’s delve deeper…

At its heart, Codenames is a team game with a spymaster on each team giving clues to their teammates that correspond to cards on the table.  A clue can be a single word or (in some cases) a proper noun, along with a number.  The number indicates the amount of cards that the spymaster thinks are associated with the clue they gave. 

Example of a set of keywords

One of the spymaster cards

 

At its heart, Codenames is a team game with a spymaster on each team giving clues to their teammates that correspond to cards on the table.  A clue can be a single word or (in some cases) a proper noun, along with a number.  The number indicates the amount of cards that the spymaster thinks are associated with the clue they gave.  So if the words BRANCH, LEAF, COCONUT are on the table, the spymaster may say “Tree 3”. 

However, if the spymaster missed the word TRUNK, and their team guesses it, there are 3 potential things that can happen

1. If it was a word assigned to the other team, that team gets a point and the turn is over.
2. It could be a civilian, which is neutral (no point given to either side).
3. It could be the assassin (black square in the image above).  If this happens, the game is over and the other team wins.

Once a clue is given, the spymaster must say nothing and do nothing (a good test of poker faces).  The only thing they can do is set out the team/civilian/assassin markers.

A team can decide to pass at any time, and it’s important that the spymaster still say nothing, because they may be able to give hints as to whether the team chose well or poorly.  Ideally, the spymaster would only ever give hints in the course of the game.

The spymasters share a card between them that shows the grid, which indicates the color of each card, along with which team goes first.  The penalty for going first is that they have to guess 9 correct answers instead of 8.

While this is a team game, it also works really well against an AI opponent.  The game still plays the same, except that each turn the spymaster has to pick a card to mark for the other team (so the other team always gets 1 point each turn).  I have played several games like this, and it’s always fun.

Is this a buy?  It most definitely is.  The price point is very low (I’ve not seen it above $20), and it comes with 200 double-sided clue cards and 40 spymaster cards (that can be turned 4 ways, giving 160 different games just from those cards, even if you use all of the same clue cards).  It also works just as well with 2 people as it does with 10 (and even more, in theory).  There are lots of laughs to be had as the teams try to decipher the spymasters clues, and on the spymaster side, lots of frustration when you give what you think is a clear answer and they go a completely different direction.  Even worse, sometimes they may vocally debate guessing the right word, then dismiss it and choose something different.  It’s also a very quick game, each one lasting no more than half an hour, so it’s perfect as a filler game, or to round out an evening.

I strongly recommend this game.  This has some of the highest value/$ amongst my collection, and I’ve not seen anyone yet who dislikes it.  It’s also one of those rare games in that I can’t really think of any flaws.  All in all, a very solid buy, and a great addition to any game collection.

If this review was helpful and you are thinking about buying this game, please consider purchasing via the link below.

Codenames on Amazon

 

Tammany Hall

In New York City, from the 1790s to the 1960s, a group known as The Sons of St Tammany (shortened to Tammany Hall) made it their mission to help immigrants find homes and rise in politics.  It also became synonymous with corruption (does the name Boss Tweed ring a bell?).

In the board game Tammany Hall, you play as one of the leaders within the political group, helping immigrants settle into different districts, and currying their favor in the process.  The game is split into 16 rounds, and further divided into 4 sets of 4 rounds.  At the end of each set of rounds there is an election; the person who has won the most districts becomes the mayor and earns themselves victory points.  The mayor will then appoint one person to each political office, giving them special powers that can help them win the next election.

Close in shot of the board at the end of the third election phase

 

The board is split into 15 sections (or wards), with some wards closed off early in the game if less people are playing.  In the first 4 rounds (also think of them as years) you can take one action each turn: settle an immigrant and place a ward boss, or place two ward bosses.  So what’s the benefit of doing these things?  Well, immigrants give favors, which can be used during the election phase as additional votes in your favor, and ward bosses are a guaranteed vote.  However, ward bosses are stuck in the ward they are assigned to, while favors can be used in any district where you have a ward boss and at least one immigrant that matches the favor token.  During an election, each player with a ward boss in a ward takes part in a vote (in theory, up to 5 people could be participating in the same vote).  They count up the number of ward bosses in that ward of their color, then announce how many favor tokens they have that could be used in that vote.  Next, each player secretly chooses a number of favor tokens, and once all players participating in the vote have done so, they simultaneously reveal the number of tokens they have staked.  Finally, all favor tokens that were used in that vote are discarded, and all ward bosses are removed from the ward except one from the winning player (this ward boss stays around through the next election, thus acting as an additional benefit for the winner).  If, however, there is a tie, then no one gets the district, and all ward bosses are removed.  Looking at the board above there are also 5 wards that grant additional bonuses.  Two of the wards grant a favor token from any immigrant population.  Two wards grant the ability to place an immigrant of your choice into a ward.  Finally, Tammany Hall itself (center of the board) is worth 2 victory points instead of the usual 1 (more on this below).

The order in which these elections take place is dictated by arrows on the board, so you always know which wards are coming up and in which order, so you can plan ahead and pick your battles.  Once all elections are done and points granted for winning wards (each ward is worth one victory point, with the ward containing the building Tammany Hall worth 2), the mayor for the next 4 rounds is the person who won the most wards (with total number of favor tokens as the tie breaker).  They automatically get 3 more victory points, and get to choose which player holds which office until the next election.  Each office grants certain powers, such as the ability to move immigrant cubes around, and to lock down wards so nothing can be added or removed.  After the election, favor tokens will be handed out for the player with the most immigrants of each nationality in their wards.  So if one person has more Irish cubes in a ward they “control”, they get 3 favor tokens of the corresponding nationality.  If two or more people tie, each person gets 3 tokens.

Once the election phase is over, the new rounds begin.  However, instead of just the one type of action they had before (adding ward bosses and immigrants), two more types of actions are introduced: Office powers and Slandering other players.  On a given turn, a player performs the ward boss/immigrant action, but additionally they can use the powers assigned to their office (examples of these powers are given above) and they can take a slander action. 

At the start of the game, each person is given 3 slander tokens.  For each token a player has left at the end of the game, they get one victory point.  However, if you decide to use one, you choose a ward where you have a ward boss and there is an opponent’s ward boss.  You discard a slander token and one favor token that corresponds to a cube of the same nationality in that ward, then you remove one of the opponent’s ward bosses.  Additionally, you can spend two more of the same type of favor token to remove a ward boss in an adjacent district that belongs to the same opponent (so for 1 slander token and 3 favor tokens, 2 ward bosses of the same color can be removed).  The idea is that the ward boss starts a rumor, and it spread throughout the immigrant population.

And that’s it, you do this over 16 rounds with elections every 4 rounds, slowly filling the board with immigrants, staking your claim to certain wards and trying to prevent your opponents from doing the same.

Would I recommend it?  Yes, but with a caveat.  This is probably not the type of game that everyone will love, some may even groan when seeing it come out.  I’ve only played this game with 5 or 6 different people, and while everyone seemed to like it, they are also the type of people who like bluffing games and don’t mind/like butting heads.  This game has only a sliver of luck involved (in the form of which immigrants can be placed, a group of these are pulled randomly from a bag and made available for placement into wards), so you have to have really good strategy to do well.  That also introduces another potential issue.  If you have a group of people who have played it before, they are almost certainly going to do well and the new players are going to be treading water, not sure what to do.  This can be an intimidating game for new players, since they don’t know how the game flows or what they need to do to be successful.  At the same time, in the last game I played, a new player was complaining about this several times over the course of the game and in the last round he made a power play that shot him from fourth place to second.

I have a fairly large game collection, and this game is unlike any others I have.  It also tends to go fairly quick (for 5 players it’s about 2 or 2.5 hours), and since it’s split into 16 rounds, each person doesn’t have much downtime between turns.  Since each player can play into any ward (with a minor exception due to the lockdown power granted by one of the offices), it tends to keep people engaged as they want to know who is placing into which areas.

In summary, if you have a group of friends that like bluffing and zero-luck games, and you want something different in your collection, I’d recommend this game.  This shouldn’t be the first game you buy, but it’s worth having around.

If this review was helpful and you are thinking about buying this game, please consider purchasing via the link below.

Tammany Hall on Amazon