It is the French Revolution, and it is time to put the foolish, oppressive nobility to the chopping block. As competing executioners, you must collect the heads of the most famous aristocrats lined up before the titular execution device: the Guillotine.
Guillotine is a simple card-collection game at its core. Each card in the Noble Deck features a member of France's upper class, with its own point value. Many are only one or two points but the more famous of nobles (such as Louis the XVI or Marie Antoinette) are worth up to five. Innocent victims are worth negative points; a small handful of similar cards exists in the deck, including a clown. Apparently the angry mob would prefer to see palace guards and tax collectors lose their heads over a clown? But I guess it's the people's revolution so they decide whom they want dead the most. Thus the executioner who collects the heads with the highest total point value at the end of the game wins.
Both setup and turns are very direct. At the start of the game, twelve Noble cards are drawn and laid out in a line (or row, if your landlord has allotted you limited gaming space). Each player then starts with a hand of Action cards, which are used to switch around the order of the line or affect other cards and decks depending on the listed action. Players take turns playing an Action card from their hand, collecting the next Noble at the guillotine (represented by the included paper fold-out guillotine placed at the end of the line), and then drawing another Action card. When the line runs out of Nobles, it is treated as the end of the first 'day'. Another twelve Nobles are drawn and placed in line to the guillotine and the second day begins. Each player's score is tallied and compared after the third day ends.
It is the action cards that provides Guillotine with its ample amount of direct competition and strategy. Rather than leaving the line static and accepting the random order of Nobles as they are drawn, the Action cards give players a lot of power to rearrange the line to their advantage, or force others to spend actions doing the same. The majority of actions involve moving a noble so many places in line, ideally to put a valuable noble at the front for you to collect and leave lesser ones for other executioners to deal with. Some cards are kept in play to increase the value of collected nobles based on their color type (royalty is purple, military is red, etc), including one to make negative-point cards positive. Still other cards can deny players from taking actions, take their cards away, and so on.
In the end it’s mostly a lot of card-swapping. This is by no means deep strategy, but I find it dynamic and straightforward enough to keep me engaged on everyone else’s turns, especially when so much is changing each time.
Obviously it can be just as important to deny others of nobles as obtain them yourself. My favorite instance in the last game I played involved the last couple of nobles including both King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, five points each. Next in line was a Rival Executioner, worth only one point. At that point late in the 3rd day I was stuck without any cards that would have allowed me to take either of these famous nobles (including the card that only moves Marie Antoinette to the front: ‘Let Them Eat Cake’). Having no better options I played the ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’, ending the day and therefore the game after collecting my meager trophy. When collecting the Rival Executioner Noble card, you draw and collect the noble on top of the Noble deck; it was a Hero of The People: -3 points. I still got last place, but not by as much as I could have. We all found it funny.
The only shoe I could see being thrown into this fast-paced machine would be from the dreaded 'action paralysis' players. You know the type; the one who says they want to play a quick game because 'your games take too long', yet here they are puzzling over a hand of Action cards because the last player's turn altered what they had prepared (or not prepared)? Well most turns are going to switch around the line and send them back to strategizing while everyone else waits. Always a concern for any game, but more noticeable when the choices are as basic as in Guillotine. Just move a noble up in line and cut his damn head off (pardon my French).
The equally-big draw to Guillotine is its light-hearted and funny style; for a casual little game it’s a good match. The Noble cards feature caricatures that are bright and expressive, the Action cards depict nobles (and everybody else) as unsympathetically buffoonish, with aristocrats tripping over each other, guards bickering, men disguised in drag, and so on. There would be far less appeal towards Guillotine if it indulged in the morbidity of head-collecting.
There are still constant references to executions and some depictions of blood or wagons full of severed heads, so bear in mind it's not exactly appropriate for little kids. Then again it’s recommended for ages 12 and up; I think by age ten you can handle both the rules and the subject matter. Some people may have French nobility in their ancestry and find the subject distasteful; it is our duty to laugh at them.
The back of the box suggests 30 minutes for one game; I’d say that fits my experiences with playing it multiple times. With thirty-six Nobles to behead that’s a minute to collect each on average. I’ve played the game with 2, 4 and 5 players and felt it scaled well to all of those numbers, but I’d suggest the more the merrier. Guillotine makes for a nice quick opener for an evening of board games (or other activities, if you're into such things), it should get everyone in the competitive spirit and hungry for more complex gameplay. Set up involves just two decks to shuffle and deal out and by then you've already learned the rules. It is the hors d'oeuvres of the gaming night, if you will. I’ll stop with the French jokes now.
I would recommend Guillotine for the sake of variety to one’s game collection, or for those who really like a lot of short, simple soirees (last one, sorry). It’s not going to become your weekly game and you may not bring it to the table too often, but I can see it as a staple.
Guillotine ©1998 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
