Kickstart Your Week! Secret Hitler
Secret Hitler
“I think you’re Hitler!”
(Not you, dear readers, not you)
“Well I know you’re Hitler! Fascist!”
While these may be phrases you read on forums the Internet over, it’s not often the sort of thing you’ll hear in your living room. Or coming from a neighbour’s living room. In fact, you might want to close your windows before you crack this game out…
Secret Hitler is a hidden role game that takes players back to 1930s Germany for a history lesson like no other. You will be leading members of the German parliament, attempting to bring laws into power during turbulent times. Amongst your number will be fascists, supporters of Hitler, looking to seize power for themselves, but you may find it all too difficult to identify them from your fellow liberals. An important lesson for modern times too.
Each round a president and chancellor are elected, and between them shall chose a new law to bring into effect. This might be a liberal law (good) or a fascist law (bad), but a bad draw of cards can sometimes offer no alternatives, or much like during 1930s, a liberal leader may still want to enact a fascist law. When these come into force, the president gains a one shot ability that might help them discover who is who, and later in the game to order the execution of the suspected fascist leader!
Yes this game features player elimination, but only at the games climax, taking the brilliant tension of hidden role classic Werewolf, and removing it’s worst part (being eliminated in the opening rounds). But it is more than a Werewolf clone, there is enough information to feasibly work out who your opponents are, maybe, but sufficiently challenging win conditions that identifying the fascists might not be enough, it’s Hitler you have to find and if he becomes Chancellor after 3 fascist policies have passed he’ll win. Add to this terrifying social experiment some amazing graphic design, and you have yourself a real winner.
The elections for Secret Hitler are coming December 23rd.
Other Great Games
Rockwell: The Fluctuating Market – An expansion to Rockwell, a worker placement game of mining for and trading resources. This expansion adds a market price that fluctuates as you play, forcing players to perfect the timing of their sales. This is also one of the last opportunities you may have to get a hold of the base game as stock is in short supply! Ends Dec 21st.
Fantasy Fantasy Baseball – A fantasy baseball league of fantasy creatures, each led by a wizard who can cast malicious spells on opposing teams, forms the core of this somewhat confusingly titled game. Mechanics such as drafting, action programming, stat tracking and variable player powers will hopefully capture the theme of a fantasy baseball league, although having never been part of one I can’t say with certainty! I recommend you check it out! Ends Dec 23rd.
Jewels – Journey through the land of Marylia, visiting cities and their most important inhabitants, to obtain gems, craft jewels and hopefully sell them for profit. At least, more of a profit than your opponents can make! There are events to deal with and even monsters to fight, all within two small(ish) and nicely illustrated decks of cards. Ends Dec 23rd.
Wordwright – A new word game system, featuring a host of word roots, suffixes and prefixes to be combined by the quickest thinking players. A number of different game modes are available, for example Word Scramble, in which players race to form the best words from a limited central selection. Ends Dec 28th.
Images from Board Game Geek users ddlhz, W Eric Martin, garden7, DefinedMind and the relevant Kickstarter pages.
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