Outwit Your Fellow Thieves in Buskers

Designer Rikki Tahta launched La Mame Games in 2012 with Coup, a small design of his in which you can take any game character's action you wish — but other players can challenge that action, and if that character isn't one you have among your face-down cards, you're punished by losing one of your cards. Lose both of your cards, and you're out of the game.

Tahta's La Mame Games has released a new title at the SPIEL convention in Essen, Germany most years since 2012, and while some of those games have been licensed by other publishers, others have been one-shot releases you're unlikely to ever see on the market again.

For SPIEL Essen 26, La Mame Games is releasing a game in the latter category, at least for this particular production as Tahta notes that "the pieces are too expensive for a real publisher to produce".

As in Coup, this new design from Tahta — Buskers — will challenge you to bluff your fellow players and call out their bluffs. In the game, you are living out the "no honor among thieves" saying. You and 2-3 others have robbed a bank and are trying to reach the getaway car first in order to escape, without concern for the fate of those you leave behind.

Each turn, you either busk where you are in your disguise as a street musician or you place 1-3 coins in your hand, then challenge others to guess how many coins you're holding. They'll make a singular guess, and if they're wrong, you move as many spaces as the number of coins you hold; if they're right, you don't move. In either case, those coins are gone.

The game board includes a few wrinkles to keep players guessing: Land at a bank, and you receive three coins immediately sans busking; stop at a taxi stand, and next turn you can hide 1-5 coins; reach a café, and you take another turn immediately; land on other players, and they must each give you one coin. Barriers cost you an additional coin after you finish moving, so count carefully as you make the final sprint for the pink van.