Guillotine (game)

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Guillotine is a card game created by Wizards of the Coast and designed by Paul Peterson. The game is set during the French Revolution, and was released on Bastille Day in 1998. The goal is to collect the heads of nobles, and thus get points.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Gameplay 3 Noble types 4 Action cards 5 Strategy 6 Packaging and Availability 7 External links

Overview

The game plays in a half-hour and can accommodate 2-5 players. It has two decks of cards: "Noble" cards, which are the ones you collect and get points from, and the "Action" cards, which allow you to do numerous things to affect the game.

Gameplay

The gameplay is divided into three rounds, called days. Each day, twelve noble cards are lined up in a row to be executed. A turn consists of three things:

1. Play an Action card.
2. Get the Noble card at the front of the line.
3. Draw an Action card from the deck.

Noble types

The nobles are divided into 5 categories, each with its own color background. These are Church (blue), Military (red), Royal (purple), Negative (grey), and Civic (green). Grey nobles are worth negative points, so you don't want to get them. Each noble is worth the amount of points shown on the bottom-right corner of the card, with the exception of the Palace Guard and the Tragic Figure. The Palace Guard is worth the number of Palace Guards you currently have in your score pile, and the Tragic Figure is worth -1 point for each grey noble you have in your score pile. Some nobles have special abilities. For example, when you collect the Fast Noble from the front of the line, you also get the second noble in line, and when you collect the Clown, worth -2 points, you get to put him in another player's score pile, which depletes their points.

Action cards

Action cards move the game along. There are three subcategories of Action cards:

• Rearrange the line - e.g. move a noble forward or backward a certain number of spaces, remove a noble entirely, or discard the entire line and deal out new nobles.
• Affect other players - e.g. switch hands, discard one of their Action cards, or discard one of the nobles in their score pile.
• Affect gameplay on an ongoing basis - e.g. alter your score by a fixed amount, alter your score depending on which nobles are in your score pile, or draw an extra Action card at the end of your turn when you collect a certain color noble.

Strategy

The key to winning the game is to manage which nobles you collect (and possibly deny to others) by judicious use of action cards to either collect high value nobles, or force others to collect poor ones or ones that are not advantageous. A secondary consideration is when to force the end or prolong it.

Packaging and Availability

The game is packaged in a small box containing the deck and a cardboard guillotine model. The model plays no part in the game but can be useful, when set up, to help remember which end of the line of nobles is the "collection" end.

The card illlustrations are done in a whimsical and somewhat satirical style.

After several years of Guillotine being out of print, Wizards re-released the game in 2005 alongside The Great Dalmuti, another previously out-of-print Wizards card game.

External links

• Guillotine information at BoardGameGeek
• Review at www.thedicetower.com