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stolksdorf/coup_rules.md

Created January 19, 2021 15:39
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Condensed Rules for Coup
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coup_rules.md

Coup

Coup is a quick game of bluffing, deception, and reading your opponents. 3-6 players, 5-10min play time. Needs a deck of cards and a bunch of tokens. Great to play over beers.

Components

  • Setup the 15 card deck: 3 copies of each King, Queen, Jack, Two, Ace
  • Gather tokens, at least 6 per player (eg. at least 24 for a 6 player game). Coins or poker chips work great.

Setup

  1. Shuffle the deck, place it in the center of the players along with the tokens, this is the Bank
  2. Deal 2 cards and 2 coins to each player. PLayers may look at their cards, but keep them hidden
  3. Randomly choose a starting player and begin

How to win

  • To win you must be the last player in the game
  • You are out of the game if you no longer have any cards

Play

  • On your turn select 1 action to perform, then play passes to the next player
  • There are 3 basic actions, as well 5 card-based actions (see below)
  • If you lose a card, choose a card from your hand and place it face up in the center of the table
  • If someone claims to have a certain card to use it's action, any player may Challenge them. The player that is challenged must prove they have that card.
    • If they have it, they reveal it and then draw a new card from the deck, and return the revealed card to the deck and shuffle it. The accusing player loses a card.
    • If they don't have it, they lose a card
  • If your action gets blocked or you fail a challenge, you do nothing for your turn.
    • If your action required paying coins to the Bank, you still do so even if the action was blocked or successfully challenged. Eg. if you assassinate someone and they block with Contessa (and it is not challenged), you still pay 3 to the Bank

Basic Actions

You may always do these actions and they can not be challenged

  • Income: Take 1 coin from the Bank
  • Aid: Take 2 coins from the Bank
  • Coup: Pay 7 coins to the Bank, target player loses a card

Card Actions

You have to claim to have the card in order to use it's action. However you only need to prove that you have it if you are challenged, so you may lie/bluff about what cards you actually have.

  • Captain (King)

    • Action: Steal 2 coins from target Player
    • Blocks Captain

  • Assassin (Ace)

    • Action: Pay 3 coins to the Bank, target Player loses a card

  • Ambassador (Two)

    • Action: Draw 2 cards from the deck, then return any 2 cards from your hand to the deck. Shuffle the deck.
    • Blocks Captain

  • Contessa (Queen)

    • Blocks Assassin

  • Duke (Jack)

    • Action: Take 3 coins from the Bank
    • Blocks Aid (basic action)

Tips

  • In order to block an action, you also have to claim to have that card, so your block can be challenged.
  • Remember that there are only 3 copies of each role. If two Dukes are face up on the table and you are holding the last one, you know when someone is lying
  • It tends to take a game or two for it to "click" with new players
  • Printing out a small player aid of the roles for new players is really useful
  • Encourage players to play quickly and not to get too invested in each game
  • You can use Ambassador to learn what cards are still in the center deck. Using this information with cards that have been lost can give you a pretty good read on what cards are in play.
  • If you get assassinated you have 3 options:
    • Just lose a card
    • Challenge; If you are wrong you will lose two cards (one from the challenge, one from the successful assassination)
    • Block with Contessa; If your Contessa gets challenged and you don't have one, you will lose two cards (one from the challenge, one from the successful assassination)

Variants

Once you got the game figured out, you add these to spice things up

  • Selective Coup: Increases the level of deception and requires players to pay more attention to other's choices. Replace the Coup Action with this:

    • Coup: Pay 7 and name a card: Target player loses that card, or reveals their hand to you if they don't have that card.

  • Blocking Contessa: If you find players don't challenge Duke enough, add this in

    • Contessa can now block Duke

  • Factions

    • Each player starts the game with a card that's either face-up or face-down (their choice), this represents their faction
    • You may only target players of a different faction. Eg. if your faction card is face-up, you can not steal from another player with a face-up faction card.
    • New Basic Action; Defect: Pay 1, flip your faction card.
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