Coup is a good game for people that don’t play games. It has bluffing, hidden roles, variable player powers, a dash of deduction, a pinch of probability, and many more modern game design goodies in a very compact package. When it exploded back in 2012 with a chorus of claims that it is “a lot of game” for its size, that’s because in a way it was. It’s an impressively deft design that mixes myriad mechanics with ease. The problem is these eclectic elements don’t add up to much, and Coup greatly misses the mark in several key areas such as narrative, balance of risk/reward, and social impact. This is a last-man-standing player elimination game where the winner is often the player that played the most passively. This is a bluffing game without bids or bribes, a hidden information game without much information in the first place, and a filler that is — in direct contrast with the genre’s name — unfulfilling.
What Coup wants to be is a game about political espionage and subterfuge. To start off, you shuffle the deck of 15 role cards (3 each of 5 different types) and deal 2 face-down to each player alongside an initial supply of 2 coins. Players then take turns performing 1 of 7 actions. 3 of these are general actions, while the other 4 are tied to specific role cards. The general actions are: 1) take 1 coin from the bank, 2) take 2 coins from the bank, and 3) pay 7 coins to launch a “Coup” and force another player to turn up one of their role cards. When both of a player’s cards are face up they are immediately eliminated from the game, so you can see why the game is named after this. The actions tied to specific roles are: 1) take 3 coins from the bank, 2) pay 3 coins to perform an “Assassination” and force another player to turn up one of their role cards, 3) steal 2 coins from another player, and 4) exchange your role cards with cards from the deck. Some role cards also have counteractions which can stop other players’ actions from being performed. For example, one role can block players from taking 2 coins from the bank, making it safer for everyone to just take 1. Other roles can block assassinations and being stolen from.
Here’s the twist: you don’t actually have to have the role card to perform the action/counteraction of that role. That’s where the bluffing aspect of the game comes in, and it’s also why your role cards are kept face-down. Here’s the other twist: every time you take an action/counteraction any other player can challenge you on it, claiming you are lying and don’t actually have the necessary role card in front of you to do the thing you want to do. The challenged player then responds in one of two ways: either by revealing the appropriate role card and forcing the challenging player to turn up one of theirs, potentially eliminating them, or by declining to reveal the appropriate role card (either because they don’t have it or don’t want to show it) and turning up one of their own, potentially getting eliminated themselves. Afterward, if the challenged player did reveal the appropriate card, they give it up and are dealt a new face-down one to replace it. Play continues around the table in this manner until only one player has face-down cards left.
It sounds simple enough, and it is, but Coup still manages a fair amount of clunkiness. Determining the acceptable length of time to wait for players to challenge actions is a constant meta-concern and one that every table’s going to have to address eventually. The bigger issue though is how obnoxious and stultifying the challenges are in the first place. The only two actions you can do without the threat of some “Take That!” response are coups and taking a single coin from the bank. I have no doubt this is intentional, but pushing players to constantly take unsafe actions leads to some pretty severe monotony. The challenges, which are clearly supposed to be exciting, quickly grow tiresome when they happen every other turn. Even so, some players won’t have much of a reason to bother with them at all. If you have decent cards, you’re probably better off letting other players go after each other while trying to get to 7 coins so you can safely eliminate someone that’s already taken a hit.
None of the above may sound particularly problematic, but it is. Because of the game’s flat structure and never-ending “No, you!” moments, I’m not totally convinced that your actions even matter. There is simply no reason to target any particular player with any particular action. Really, there is not much of a reason to do anything. I’ve seen players take 1 coin from the bank nearly every round and win. The goal of Coup is to be the last man standing and not a single action in the game actually helps you do that. This lack of player agency is further exacerbated by the game’s decentralized nature. There is no shared space that your actions manipulate, not even a social one. Think about The Resistance without the team-forming and missions or Skull without the bid opening and ensuing war. Those games thrive on decision spaces created by their player groups. Coup has nothing of the sort. Its sole social interplay, the challenges, are binary and lack the dynamics and nuance of a multi-faceted system that all players contribute to.
Lastly, Coup is way too short to get any memorable tension out of its narrative (though if it lasted any longer its weaknesses would become shockingly apparent). The experience it provides is uninteresting and unnecessary, even relative to other fillers, and its brevity is not an argument in its favor like many would have you believe. A game that only takes 15 minutes to play should have a breezy, relaxed cadence and be easily expandable into longer sessions via cumulative scoring or something of that nature. Trying to cram a tense bluffing/deduction game into a quarter of an hour is an exercise in futility unless you happen to find a full group of players whose emotions behave like light switches.
As I stated at the beginning of this review, I think Coup could be a solid experience for people that don’t play many games. It features many modern design elements that will keep a casually-interested mind pleasantly engaged for at least a few sessions. But I can think of plenty of other, better games that fit the same criteria just fine, ones that don’t immediately fall apart under the slightest burden of scrutiny no less. Coup is approachable to the point of meaninglessness, and it’s just no fun catching someone in a lie when the stakes are this darn low.
Coup gets a rating of TWO out of FIVE, indicating it is NOT RECOMMENDED.