Family Business Review (Mayfair Games)
Today is dank and wet in my neck of the woods…Perfect gaming weather, of course this damn 8-5 job really puts a damper on days like today where I just want to sit inside and push to plastic guys around a table. Oh well…So I guess I’ll do the next best thing, talk about games. Today I’m just going to talk about a card game Family Business (FB) published by Mayfair Games.
Rarely these days do you find a game that comes in an actual box for less than $20 so when I saw this game with a MSRP of $14.99 I decided to break one of my rules of game purchases and make an impulse purchase. After a few years of making many impulse purchases I’ve found that 9 times out of 10 the game sucks (Deacon might remember Abuse! The Final Insult). They either never make it to the table, since I had no drive to play it until I saw it checking out so once I get it home that lack of drive is still present, or if it does hit the table it is usually a bust and then sits on my shelf instead of the retailer’s shelf where it belongs.
My interest in the mafia, especially the Chicago Mafia, has been a part of me as long as I remember (but for whatever reason I still haven’t seen any of the Godfather movies) so as I mentioned I threw my impulse purchase ban to the wind and walked up to the counter with the game I wanted in hand (Fields of Fire) and this small box stacked on top of it and for once an impulse purchase actually turned out to be quite a blast.
FB was originally released circa 1982 so it is a game that has been around for a while but one that sadly gets lost in all the noise surrounding this hobby these days. The concept is simple, you play as the leader of a crime family and the goal is to conduct your business in a way that will leave you as the last family standing and all others dead. There are two types of cards in this game, the action cards and the gangster cards. The gangster cards act as your “life” while the action cards you play during your turn and provide things like police protection for your gangsters or contracts to put a hit out on another player’s gangers. Each player starts off with nine gangsters which are placed in front of them (here I should note that though each gangster has a unique drawing and name based off of real people, there is no difference in terms of gameplay, they just act as a mechanic to keep track of your “life”). Players are also dealt a starting hand and setup is complete.
The process during your turn is simple; you draw a card to your hand and play a card from your hand. There are three types of cards: Red Cards are your “attack” cards; Blue Cards “counter” red cards; Green Cards act as “rescue” cards. The majority of the red cards are what they call “Contract” cards and are the means to winning. When you play a contract you nominate a player and then anyone has a chance to cancel out the contract via a blue card. If the contract goes thru then the person named takes one of their gangsters and places in the “Hit List”. What the Hit List is, is a line of gangsters in the order which they were placed on the Hit List and once the Hit List reaches six gangers then a Mob War breaks out…More on the Mob War in a bit.
So as play proceeds more and more gangsters will show up on the Hit List. Here I will talk about the green cards for a bit. Often what those cards do is allow you to swap the gangsters positions on the Hit List, pull members off the hit list…etc. Basically it is stuff that allows you to manage who and where people show up on the Hit List. Once a Hit List reaches six gangsters a Mob War begins. When a Mob War starts game play continues as normal, but at the beginning of every player’s turn (before they do anything) the gangster in the first position on the Hit List is whacked, that gangster is said to be up against The Wall and removed from the game placing them in the R.I.P. pile. This happens at the beginning of every player’s turn until all the gangsters are killed or a card is played that cancels out the Mob War.
Well that is the game in a nutshell. What I really like about the game is the interaction. With a larger group (the more players the better in this game) possibilities open up where alliances can be formed with other family leaders or unsteady truces can be established. Players not only have to rely on good card play (and a lucky draw here or there is nice as well) but they also have to negotiate with people to strengthen their positions in the game. FB is a game where you have to be aggressive and a passive player, if not forgotten by everyone else, is bound to have a family which isn’t one of the last remaining.
The card design and graphics are nice but create a little too cartoon-y of an atmosphere but perhaps that is to gloss over the fact that in a five player game at least 36 gangsters are found dead in the streets. One thing I wish Mayfair did was include a little paragraph that explains the cards a little bit better. Once players get a feel for the game the one line makes sense, but if you’re playing for the first time the short description at times adds more confusion to a person trying to figure the game out. A little paragraph would have helped a lot in this case.
The other “problem” with the game (I use quotes because I don’t see it as such, but the current environment frowns upon this) is player elimination. The point of the game is to be the last person with gangsters left in front of them. Meaning, players will be eliminated from the game. If this is a problem and your group requires all people to be participating then not only would the player elimination be a problem, but chances are the aggressive nature of the game would not work for your group either. For me though, the game is short enough that there isn’t much time that a person is sitting around while the game finishes up, also combine the fact that if you’re out of the game, chances are just about everyone else is teetering on that brink.
For me, this game was a perfect fit into my collection. The card based nature (with no other components needed) makes it assessable to new people because you won’t be scaring them off with all sorts of bits and piles of cards. The theme is one that many Americans have a romance with due to particular movies like the aforementioned Godfather as well as Casino and Goodfellas to name a few others. As I mentioned though you have to go after people in this game, it can be downright mean at times if alliances form and someone is ganged up on, so if you have a person or persons in your group that takes things like that personally then I wouldn’t bother with the game. If you do have a group of people that have an arsehole streak in them or just like to have a good time, then chances are this game will be a success.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
‘Til Next Time - Happy Gaming
LvT
