Resistance The Card Game: Avalon

20th October 2019

Sunday lunchtime is here and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. There's no 50 Fathoms this week, so that means board games.

We began with 'Avalon' an 'Arthurian' themed game.
It seems that a reoccurring element in Arthurian themed games is 'betrayal' (Or is it confirmation bias on my part?). Is Avalon any different? Does it buck the trend? In a word; no! Because Avalon is a hidden role game that's all about betrayal.

What's in a game?
Avalon has very few components, but they are of a good quality.

• Character card: There are some personality cards and some nameless minion cards too. Avalon need at least 5 players and supports up to 10! When playing in lower numbers, the personality cards are used. But with larger numbers, the minion cards are also used.
• Voting cards: There are 'yes' and 'no' tokens. one of each is given to all players.
• Quest cards: There are 'success' and 'failure' cards. One of each is also given to all players.
• Game boards: Avalon has a set of small boards, the board that is used in a game depends on the number of participants. Each board contains a row of circles (For the 5 quests undertaken during the game.) and beneath each circle is a a number (This the number of players who must participate in each quest.).
• Result tokens: Marked with 'success' on one side and 'failure'' on the other. Used to indicate the result of each quest.

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How's it play?
Because Avalon is a 'hidden role' game it requires quite a bit of setup first. For the games of Avalon we played was 5-player and we used the following 'good' characters: Merlin, Percival, and a loyal servant of Arthur. And the following 'evil characters  Morgana, and the assassin.

• Deal a character to each player face-down.
• Give a pair of voting and quest cards to each player.
• Now we do the hidden role thing, where everybody closes their eyes. Then the following occurs.
• The Merlin player learns who is playing the 2 'evil' characters.
• The Percival player learns who are the 2 magicians (Merlin and Morgana - but Percival does not learn who-is-who!).
• The 'evil' players learn who each other are (Morgana and the assassin).
• The remaining 2 players learn nothing! Poor saps!
• Finally, someone is assigned to be first player (Leader.).

Now we can play.
The objective in Avalon is to go on 5 quests, the 'good' characters want at least 3 of these quests to succeed. Meanwhile the 'evil' characters want at least 3 quests to fail and are looking to sabotage the quests.

Each round is divided into 3 phases, team selection, voting, questing.

Team selection

• Each of the 5 quests requires a certain number of participants to complete.
• The leader will nominate the required number of players to go on the quest, this can include the leader.

Voting
Once the leader has finished nominating players for the quest, everyone will then vote on their team selection.

• During voting, every player decides if they are happy with the team selection or not and votes on it.
• This is done by playing either the 'yes' or 'no' card face-down.
• When everybody has played a card, all the cards are turned up and revealed for all to see.
• If the majority of cards are 'yes', then the quest will go ahead. If the majority of cards are 'no', then that team has been rejected (A tie in voting counts as a rejection.)
• In the case of a rejection, the player to the left of the leader now becomes the leader and the team selection and voting begins again.
• If 5 team selections are rejected in a row, then 'evil' wins the game

Questing
Now that the team selection has been approved, the game moves on to questing.

• Every player that is participating in the quest must play a quest card.
• The player must choose 'success' or 'fail' and plays the card face-down.
• When all the quest cards have been played, they are collected and shuffled.
• All the quest cards not used are also collected face-down and shuffled. This is to prevent players deducting who chose what from the cards not used.
• Finally, the quest cards used for the actual quest are revealed. If all of the cards are 'success' cards, then the quest is successful. If any of the cards are 'failure' cards, then the quest is failed!
• Both quest cards given to the active players.
• The player to the left of the leader becomes the new leader and the game moves on to the next quest.

Endgame
Play continues until:

• 'Good' has successfully completed 3 quests, in which case 'good' wins.
• 'Evil' has sabotaged 3 quests, in which case 'evil' wins.

However, this is not the end of the story, or blog in fact.
If the 'good' players have successfully completed 3 quests; the assassin player can 'kill' a character. If the assassin kills the Merlin character, then evil wins!

Additionally, as mentioned above, 'evil' can also win during the team selection voting.

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Overall
I'm going to start by mentioning that I'm not a particular fan of hidden role games. I think it's because I'm not entirely comfortable with my friends flat out lying to my face!

But I have to say that Avalon is a good hidden role game.
I think that the reason it works so well is because there are 2 'tiers' of play going on at once.
Most hidden role games I've seen have players making deductions based on the results of how things play out. Which for Avalon is the quest outcome

But Avalon has something different, something extra. It also has the 'team selection voting phase', which has open voting for everyone to see. This gives players plenty of opportunity to try and glean each other's motives.
'Good' players will want to try and vote down teams that they suspect contains 'evil' characters. It's hard for a quest to be sabotaged if it contains no evil characters. Conversely 'evil' characters may want to vote down a team that does not contain evil characters.

Finally, the assassin introduces a sting in the tail. The Merlin player will know exactly who the villains are. But they must be careful when selecting or voting for teams. If they're too obvious, then the assassin player may manage to deduce who the Merlin player is, then 'evil' will win.
It's an intriguing idea and a real balancing act for the Merlin player.

So, if you like social deduction, bluffing and hidden role games, Avalon is definitely worth a try.