Designed by: Reiner Knizia
Desperados – previously published as Digging – is a card game of mining copper, silver and gold, whilst the desperados of the title can either steal from other players, or protect your own haul. Although the game officially plays 2 or 3, it’s best with four players playing two teams of two.
The deck of cards is made up of cards that open mines, cards that ‘find’ the aforementioned metals, cards that close mines (and thus stop the stuff being stolen) and a dozen desperados valued from 1-12.
Players are dealt a hand each and on their turn they have three options – draw (add a card to your hand) pass (a card to your team-mate) or play (play a card face-up on the table). Once you’ve played an Open Mine card you can start playing the matching metal cards on top of it, which will get you points. Closing the mine means those points can’t be stolen. While it’s open, desperados may come in and steal your haul – any opponent can play a desperado on an open mine, and their team-mate can add another. Fortunately you and your own team-mate can also play desperados to defend it. If you succeed, your mine is safe (for now) but if you fail, the desperados will make off with some of it.
One other kink in the game is the double cards, showing not one but two pots of copper/silver/gold. Play these first into a mine and every metal card there will be worth double.
The game continues until either team reaches an agreed points target.
A fair bit of arbitrary theft.
Low - one good thing about Desperados is it moves fast.
Low - decisions are fairly simple, and often moot if you have a duff hand of cards.
Cards are shuffled and the team-play aspect is unusual. But it's not a game with any depth, and the fun factor can depend on the fickle hand of fate.
2-4
Players
8+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
The first published game of a now highly-respected designer with many excellent - or at least intriguing - games to his name, Desperados is unfortunately neither excellent nor intriguing. Or at least, despite the potential for a swingy game of desperado-led theft where teams steal from each other, it's also possible to simply have a hand of cards that do you no good at all - you have a silver mine open, say, with no silver to add to it and no desperados to defend it, and you keep picking up gold. If your team-mate is in a similar position - also with no gold mine, so no reason to pass them your gold! - you're kind of watching the game happen rather than playing it. That's not much fun for either the losing team, or the winners. So whilst Desperados can be fun, it can also play out as a bit of a decision-free luck-fest. The partnership aspect is interesting but other games such as Team Play do it better.