New and flashy board games these days typically come with a level of complication to them. When we reviewed The Lord of the Rings board game a few months back, it was complicated to learn, tough to master, but one helluva ride as good board games go. That is still the peak of complicated board games for me.
This week, Asmodee and Unexpected Games are set to release a complicated masterpiece called 3000 Scoundrels, a board game set in the old west. The complication comes from the initial one-time setup, while the masterpiece part comes with its execution.
Let’s get right into this, partner.
The juice is worth the squeeze
As the old saying goes from the movie The Girl Next Door (hilarious film, kinda inappropriate nowadays – but whatever), getting juice out of an orange to fill a glass can be a lot of work, but it can be satisfying. That same mantra goes with the setup process for 3000 Scoundrels. My wife (Kelly) has more patience than I do with the setup process, and she was pushed to the limit with how intricate of a setup this game was…but just a one-time setup.
When you break out the board game, the one thing you must do is sit down and put small sliding see-through action cards into each card sleeve. There are a hefty amount of sleeves. The sleeves come in green, purple, and black. Each color stands for gradual complication for the scoundrel cards inserted in them and the ones you pick. The green is the easiest, the purple is mid, and the black is the most valuable and most complicated card sleeve in the bunch. Each card sleeve slide (say that five times) comes with a set of actions that the player can perform, should they choose to purchase the scoundrel that the action is attached to in the sleeve. For example, there is a green card (below) that says you get four dollars if you don’t currently have four dollars in your hand. That is in a green sleeve because it is cheap, and the action is quite simple. While it might be valuable at the beginning of the game, there are better cards out there in other color sleeves. Those said cards might cost more and have more complicated actions attached to their scoundrel. It’s a gradual set of complicated actions that do get better as you traverse the color scheme, but the setup of each is tough. It’s a lot of work.
The actual scoundrel character features general card instructions on it that allow the scoundrel to be placed in different sleeves. For example, you may get a scoundrel that requires you to pull specific poker cards (getting to that, don’t worry) to activate the character’s actions. The scoundrel card is switchable between color sleeves and slide instructions, which matches up with the 3000 scoundrels’ title, as you can have 3000 different combinations. That certainly keeps the game fresh, which is a huge plus.
As you can probably tell from the above text, just putting the slides into the color sleeves takes time. I think Kelly spent about an hour getting that done. Once they were in place, you can mix up the scoundrels and place them in those sleeves behind the slides. Each slide has a sleeve to fit in and stay in because you don’t want an expensive scoundrel in the green cards. That wouldn’t make sense, right? Beyond this setup process, the game quickly becomes faster. It just takes a long time to get these tiny slides in their sleeves. As Kelly told me, it’s a lot of work for a board game.
Pushing through to fun
If you can survive the setup process, which I’m sure you can because you’re a dedicated board game player, then the game is a fast and fancy-free experience. The game starts by choosing a character sheet for a boss of sorts. Each character sheet comes with a set of poker card placement tabs at the bottom with each boss having a different result on each tab that is unique to the character you have chosen.
Once you choose your boss, you then get random poker cards to shuffle from, you choose four of them, and then promptly hide them from the rest of the players. The game of poker is played in true cowboy style (from the movies, not in real life) where you hide your hands, place a card in its particular spot on the bottom of your boss board, and reap the rewards of whatever is in that space. Now, you never show your cards to other players. The cards must be placed face down, so you only know what number you are placing on what corresponding card number placement. You don’t have to match the numbers (card to placement) at all. You want to fool your opponents into thinking it’s the right card/placement, so you can gain the rewards. In doing so, this allows other players to either allow you to continue as if you put the right card in the right spot or they can choose to send a henchman to call your bluff by placing a henchman token on the poker card they think you’re bluffing about. You still collect your reward, but by the end of the round, if you’re bluffing, you must give up your own henchman and put them in jail, as well as lose a reputation point because no one likes a cheat. It’s a wonderful cost and a risk that is sometimes worth taking, especially if you have a reverse poker face (go ahead, sing it) in bluffing your bluff so that they lose a henchman. For the record, my son played the game with us, and he has the worst poker face (he always laughed when he was lying – bless his heart). Anyway, the first go around with this game I bluffed and was caught, I lost a reputation point (everyone starts at zero), dropped to negative-one in rep, and lost the game because of that single point. Only bluff when you can get away with it. That is determined by the company you keep.
Once you place your poker cards down, you then go to an action round. This round allows you to perform actions if you have a scoundrel card that contains actions. If you don’t have a scoundrel, then you wait until the next round and use a certain amount of dollars to purchase a scoundrel (laid out in threes on the main gameboard). If you purchase a scoundrel, then you add them to your own board and can use their action on their card for your own needs during the action round (starting the following round). If you don’t end up purchasing a scoundrel, then the scoundrel to the right (in the trio on the game board) moves off the board, while the other two are shifted to the right, and a new scoundrel is brought onto the board. This alone is a fantastic strategy piece to keep good scoundrels out of the hands of other players. Or at least I found that to be a solid bit of thinking when playing against other folks. You can have multiple scoundrels in the game and each one gives you an action that you can use during the action round of play unless it’s a one-off scoundrel.
While scoundrels are entertaining and abundant in this game, the main goal of this is to scout and steal safes. Safes in the game carry point values and the person with the most points at the end, mainly driven by safes and reputation points, is the winner of the overall experience. Scouting safes allow you to spy on safe contents. You can scout safes by using scoundrel cards or using poker cards with scouting safe actions attached to them. In addition to scouting safes and seeing their values, you also must place value chips on safes that you scout. The value chips, much like the poker cards, are either placed to be truthful about a safe’s value or to bluff and keep other players away from acquiring said safe. You can take someone’s scouted safe if you have a steal safe action, so just because you place a value on a scouted safe doesn’t mean it is yours. There is a lot of trust and distrust in this game, which makes it more fun and brilliant.
Stealing a safe is done in the action round of the game, where you can pull a card that says you steal a safe or you can pay your way, as the sheriff allows it in the final round of the day if you can pay $12. You can carry up to three safes, which are best scouted before stolen. There are three tiers of safes, much like the sleeves of the cards, where the darker the tier color, the more rewarding the safe can be (up to seven maximum points for one safe). This is the main goal of the game because it drives the main numerical points of the competition.
One part of this process I mentioned above is the use of henchmen. These tiny tokens allow you to call out bluffs. You start the game with a single henchman in jail, which you can keep in there if you want, though you won’t be able to call out bluffs without them. You can get them out of jail for a whopping two dollars. You can do this during the action part of the round and it’s best to have as many henchmen as you possibly can to call out BS from other players. The jail allows you to release a henchman and do other things like become an informant and gain two dollars for being a snitch. Sometimes that is valuable and sometimes it can be wasteful. It all depends on what strategic approach you’re taking with the game.
All the above considered, the game goes through four complete rotations between players before the day ends. If you’re playing the game with three people, like I was with my family, then it takes two full days to complete the game (eight total rotations). You will go through a majority of the scoundrels with this timeline playing with three people. If you played with the maximum amount of folks, the game would take 12 rotations to complete or three days (not real days, by the by, just game days). The game took about one hour for us to fully play it through two days. That’s enough time to get used to the process and execute it smoothly by day two. The next time we play it, I would imagine it will take less time, which is fine by me because I don’t mind one bit playing this game multiple times in one sitting. It’s that much fun.
Honestly, the only grueling part of the game is the setup, and it’s not too bad. Once you sit down and put the slides in their sleeves, the rest is butter. You’re prepared to pull out the game, have some fun in the old west deceiving friends and family, and then decide whether to immediately repeat the experience. It’s fast once it’s ready, which is great by any board game standard, especially as one fun as 3000 Scoundrels.
On that note, let’s wrap this up.
Conclusion
3000 Scoundrels from Unexpected Games and Asmodee is probably one of the more unique board game experiences that I have had this year. It’s fast, furious, and fun, and playing each time brings a new experience thanks to a bunch of scoundrels included. The setup might be a little grueling and time-consuming, but it’s a one-time fee for a lengthy amount of entertainment.
