Every line you'll ever hear during a game of Coup: 1. "Duke for three." 2. "Sorry, I'm Captaining you." 3. "No you're not." 4. "Yes I am." 5. "Prove it." 6. "Aaaargh!" 7. "Ambassador..." (Said shakily in hopes nobody bothers with you.) 8. "I'm assassinating you." 9. "I block it with my contessa." 10. (Saying absolutely nothing and meekly taking 1 coin.)
At the start of the game, everyone is a duke, so we always say "my fellow duke" until it becomes obvious who actually has the dukes. Also, don't know if it's official rules, but we played a variant where you have to call you the role you are assassinating/coup, and someone without thinking said "I assassinate your contessa"
One interesting fact about Coup is that it is technically a sequel. The first game is called The Resistance, which in a nutshell is a game that plays very similarly to Secret Hitler. In that game you're the rebel group mentioned at the start of the video who has been infiltrated by government spies. Coup takes place after a canonical Rebel win. This basically means that all the rebellion has done is just put in a new, just as corrupt government in power.
I remember when I played Coup regularly, we reached the consensus that, while the Contessa's printed FUNCTION is probably the worst , the Contessa CARD might just be the best card to have in front of you. In typical gameplay what's printed on the cards is moot - early on, there's a certain tension to calling anyone out on their bullshit; but further down the line, you might have sold your Contessa's story as being a Duke or a Captain perhaps, and the blow-out you cause when your Duke-coins make you an assassination target and your Contessa call is challenged is just unmatched.
100% the truth of the game is you are every roll you just have 2 rolls that you can claim safely but trying to call out someone on a lie is not important. if the way they plan to win is not faster than yours you don't need to risk calling them. assassin is the fastest win con in the game. but the Contessa is immune. However, if you get called on Contessa and you don't have it you lose both lives. knowing that you are safely immune to the fastest strategy in the game is powerful also you know of one less contessa you enemies don't have.
I once got my hand and i had a Contessa and a Contessa. I then told everyone i was the duke till the assassins came and I said i am the contessa and they didn't believe me. they died then another assassin came and didn't belive that i was still in fact the Contessa. oh what a glorious Rusev day
One thing I learned about playing Coup with my board game club... Everyone is the Duke till the money in the bank runs out... That's where the killing (coup and assasination) starts lol
@@alexanderhargleroad3110 if you’re playing with more than 6 players, that can actually be a legitimate issue, since the Reformation expansion does not add more money despite adding more player slots.
What really amazes me about Coup is how much is done with very few components. Hearing the strengths and strategies of each character, and being able to lie/challenge lies as a game mechanic, it's impressive.
You missed a key feature of the ambassador: no one I've met calls you a liar for swapping cards. It's never worth calling someone a liar when they're just swapping their hand. Also, the Assassin is great when someone tries calling you a liar. They lose a card for being wrong, then lose a card from your attack.
The second I realized that people weren't challenging ambassador, they started challenging ambassador. The other main quirk? On one life left, it became standard to challenge assassin rather than even attempt the contessa bluff.
The sheer comedy of dropping a textbook with "COUP" written on to represent a coup is too good And the gesturing with the cards is very funny, like 10:20 and 11:31
Coup has always been one of the big attraction games for my get-togethers, because you naturally get so much table talk and drama out of what is a very simple game. It's also very easy to learn for even people brand new to board games, as the depth comes from social interaction rather than rules complexity.
While I bought the expansion none of my friends liked any of it except for the new character. So we just added her and some additional rules to an otherwise normal game of coup. I'll go in detail but bear in mind we are still working the kinks out. The expansion adds a new character called The Inquisitor and her powers are normally: she replaces the Ambassador and can be used to exchange with the court deck and blocks stealing. Additionally she can examine another player's card and force them to exchange. We felt that was overpowered so here's roughly what we decided. She does not have any of the powers of if the ambassador and he is still part of the game. She can still examine and force exchange but it costs 1 coin. We also tried to buff the Contessa and make it so she can block an examination.
If you want to teach a group of new people how to play this game, play the first round with all cards face up and tell everyone it's going to be unfair but it'll help them understand how things work. Then play the next round with the cards hidden and introduce the challenge rule
I want you to cover more coup as much as Katy Perry doesnt want another potentially deadly encounter with Nickelodeon goo. That teen choice award box with a high pressure water nozzle aiming viscuous substances right at her face was actually a safety risk.
Kam keeps finding the most fun yet chaotic games to bring up. Also I love how so many cyberpunk/dystopian settings seem to not realize they're basically just describing our world.
I would flip that and say our world doesn't seem to realize it's mirroring dystopia. A lot of tech bros in the industry seem to be *wanting* to emulate cyberpunk and don't realize it's saying they're bad people who are ruining everything. That's, like, a huge thrust of its message.
@@Phoenix0F8Yeah its weird how in a few years the idea of personal privacy is dead, all so tech bros can sell info about spying on us online to companies.
@@Phoenix0F8i recently had a chat with someone who wanted warhammer 40k to be real. If you've never had anything to do anything with it, it's f***** up.
I sincerely implore you to visit a country in the global south: if you think you're living in a dystopia in comparison, you are unfathomably priviliged.
I have a genuine tournament trophy for Coup from winning a tournament at my local comiccon. It was a total fluke, and every year that I have attempted to reclaim that glory has ended with me out in the first or second round.
The turn one 1 income play worked fairly consistently in my group when we played Coup. That might have been because of bad threat assessment though, because everyone would try to off the dukes first, then whoever tried to attack them next. So by keeping a low profile I was able to take my time to gather enough income to take out the survivors or at worst play kingmaker.
For my group, that worked at first, but then low-profile players were viewed as a threat. We started persuading each other to coup the low-profile player because “they’re gonna stab you in the back!”
I would honestly like you to do the sequel/expansion, especially how you would rank all the new characters, such as the Illusionist and the Mortician, which are my favorites of the newest characters. Also, it's kind of surprising seeing the game in that style, since the french version (which I don't know if it's the original version) features a much more cartoonish artstyle, and is based on medieval europe instad of a futuristic, dystopian setting.
Coup is insanely fun! Between me and my roommates, its the game that gets the most mileage. It's so easy, and so fast. I love that the results of previous games played informs your decisions when playing with the same group later on. For a fun variant, sometimes we would play "blackjack", where one of your influences started the game face-up. The two influences were separate, so if your face-up one got taken out, you didn't have to flip the face-down one, but if the face-down one was killed, you were playing honest Abe from then on out. It's a fun way to mix it up once you've played the base way dozens of times.
Playing coup I almost always had the same strategy as how I play Sheriff of Nottingham: play everything by the book and above board, but act as sus as possible. Then when everyone learned I was always being honest they stop challenging me and I can lie with impunity. I was never the best general strategist at my college's Board Game Club, but I was usually the only one at the table with a psych degree and that won me quite a few games I really had no business winning
god i love this game, i cant remember how many times ive claimed each role in a single turn and got to watch my friends sit there trying to figure out which one om lying about (it was all of them, i actually only have a stack of uno cards)
My friends love making homebrew versions of coup. There's blind coup (you don't know your cards), heads up coup (everyone ELSE knows your cards), Half 'n Half coup (everyone knows ONE of your cards), Mao Coup (a perfect example of how to torture your friends), ect
Love coup, the board game club at my uni plays it fairly frequently- its got little in jokes with ir, primarily "but a simple income!", said whenever we take income (ofc)
I have played a fair amount of coup with my family but never actually engaged with any discussion about it until now and I find it really funny how we had just figured out so much of what you said here on our own. It only takes a few rounds before you get 4 people at the table claiming to have a duke on turn 1 and nobody wants to claim foreign aid after seeing it get blocked twice.
I still like the Polish version better-"Światowy Konflikt" (World conflict), because it uses real world countries and leaders. So Duke is Russia with Putin's face on the card. The captain is Police, ambassador is called media, assasin became a protest, and the most useless card - contessa is the european union with Angela Merkel's face on the card. There is a new one however - UN you can play using it instead of media (ambassador) and it lets you either draw one card and exchange it or peek at another player card and choose whether he has to exchange it or keep it, so the UN card is useless.
My friend and I have attempted to balance the game a little and I would love to hear your opinion on these changes. Contessa: now has the ability to look at the top 3 cards of the court deck. This will give them a way to gain intel, which only an ambassador could do before. Duke: does not have the power to block foreign aid (everybody claims duke, which makes foreign aid useless). Instead, his ability is so that if a captain steals from them, they have to pay 1 of the gold received to the bank. This will weaken duke a bit, and will give actual purpose of using foreign aid. Assassin: gets the ability to block foreign aid. The reason I like this is that, at least in the early game, not many people claim to have assassin, and thus foreign aid will still be blocked by a character, just not a reliably claimed one.
Coup is really fun - simple and ruthless. My eight years old kid loves it, though I am slightly worried that the game will teach him to lie, deceive, betray and cut traoths. He is already pulling off pretend-duke moves like a pro.
I really liked the video. I would recommend avoiding the "best to worst" sort of talk though. It's not really helpful for evaluating the game and when encourages viewers to play in a very specific way. As an example, if I had to pick a "best" character I'd argue that the ambassador is the best character in coup. This is primarily for the ability to make it extremely difficult to nail down what you actually have. Ambassador drawing two ambassadors can often be turned into a game win. In addition not showing a ton of money early may let you keep two cards for longer and let you set up for a strong late game. Being able to negate the captain not just for steals targeting yourself, but also between other players can allow you to control who you want to face in the inevitable 1v1. I loved the spoon smacks XD
We use a house rule: Duke doesn't block foreign aid. Contessa does. Makes foreign aid a better option, because now you can fish out who has the Contessa. Or, it makes Contessa better, because now you can block foreign aid in the late game. Or, it makes Duke worse, because it really doesn't need two abilities.
I ended up finding the base game at a local comic shop and played with my friend and roommate and it goes by quick if you're bad at lying like we are lmao. I appreciate this vid for introducing me to a new game to play!
I played Coup once but as someone who just can't lie AT ALL, of course I had no chance. These bluffing games are really interesting but unfortunately I can't play them
I like Coup, but you gotta play it with people who are into games. I've played it with friends who are much more casual, and they basically never lie, so the game just becomes predetermined based on who drew the best cards.
I would probably switch the assassin and the ambassador because the info from the ambassador is just too easily destroyed by other ambassadors like he says. And the assassin is a great offensive card.
Ambassador is my top pick. Just waste your time fiddling while the other players kill each other, then swap into whatever card combination counters the other players once you pretty much understand what they have.
Rules clarification: while anyone at the table can challenge a player power, you can only protect yourself with the Captain, Ambassador, or Countessa powers. You cannot claim those powers to protect another player.
Hey id like to see a total over view of the coup stuff. Also would like you to review the minecraft board game builders and biomes, it's a game that from my experience goes from 0 to 60 real quick in competitive groups.
Contessa is very very damn good as a lying card, since if you lie about having something else, you'll likely get targeted by assassins and you can pull a reversal which people will not only lie to have to get rid of people cheaply (e.g. duke+assassin is the most common fake setup) but as a lying card, is goated since challening the contessa is one of the most risky moves for an assassin player
@@franslair2199 yea I realise that now. I'd say for one of these games to have a better ability to catch someone out would include a full deck of characters with there only being 1 of each. I wrote the comment before he mentioned that.
If the Contessa wouldn't exist, Assassin would be S-rank, far above everyone else. She needs to exist solely because the other unit would be incredibly broken. So thank you Contessa. You being kinda useless is for the benefit of the game!
Here's something funny I noticed while browsing for a copy of this game. The sheer amount of different editions and themed versions of the game is enough to rival Yahtzee. There are expansions, different versions themed around medieval city-states or Industrial-era Europe. There is a DUNE version, a FRIENDS version, one based on Futurama characters... Future video maybe?
I wonder how how people use the Ambassador to make people call each other out. "I Duke for three." "That's a lie." "Are you challenging me?" "I'm not. I'm just saying there's two Dukes in the middle so there's a high chance you are." And that'll just encourage other players to call them out if they have a Duke. Or you're just lying and no Dukes are in the middle.
I love this game but it really depends on the friend group. With some of my friends it’s perfect, but with others it’s annoying cause they all play it straight every time. This game isn’t much fun when nobody else is lying
I played this once and won i had two dukes and had no idea how to play the last other player was hoping i would false call his assassin but i didn't know enough to bluff or call one and no one anticipated this
Kam love your channel and all your vids! Im not sure if you knew but wish it was mentioned how this game and it's sequels are all part of The Resistance Meta-Universe from the comics with tons of lore and backstory to all the characters.
You haven't played coup until you've played a game where after everyone finishes they reveal that no one had a duke in the first round, or that there are 4+ dukes in the first round
When you compare how simple this game is to the game it's in the same world of - Resistance- it's interesting how night and day the mechanics are. Since this game is basically an anti-Love Letter and Resistance is your typical Secret Hitler saboteur game.
I mean, is it rlly anti-Love Letter? Also, I’d argue that the rules of the Resistance are slightly simpler than coup; having roles will always make a game more rulesy. And even then, the resistance is more easily understood imo. The whole bluffing part (the entire point), I could see that being a bit hard to grasp. The resistance is just pick players, see (and potentially affect) outcome, choose again til a team wins.
Actually, in my experience double contessa is the second best hand Blocking an assassin in my groups often leads to a second assassination after Blocking both? That's an easy way to get accused a second time and get a huge advantage Once I even got a third contessa card after two successful blocks, and that won me the game
No, they make eachother able to exist. The contessa obviously requires the assassin in order to function. But also if the assassin existed but the contessa didn’t the game would be literally unplayable.
“I assassinate” player does not have assassin
“I block” does not have contessa
Nothing happens because player 1 was not willing to bluff their way out
Every line you'll ever hear during a game of Coup:
1. "Duke for three."
2. "Sorry, I'm Captaining you."
3. "No you're not."
4. "Yes I am."
5. "Prove it."
6. "Aaaargh!"
7. "Ambassador..." (Said shakily in hopes nobody bothers with you.)
8. "I'm assassinating you."
9. "I block it with my contessa."
10. (Saying absolutely nothing and meekly taking 1 coin.)
Me: "Income"
Friend: Too suspicious. I'm using my money to make you lose influence...
Me: Oh
In our playthroughs, almost no one mentions 2 or 3, declaration of intent is final
That ambassador one is spot on
At the start of the game, everyone is a duke, so we always say "my fellow duke" until it becomes obvious who actually has the dukes. Also, don't know if it's official rules, but we played a variant where you have to call you the role you are assassinating/coup, and someone without thinking said "I assassinate your contessa"
@@johnnooyen461that rule is only in 2 players
One interesting fact about Coup is that it is technically a sequel. The first game is called The Resistance, which in a nutshell is a game that plays very similarly to Secret Hitler. In that game you're the rebel group mentioned at the start of the video who has been infiltrated by government spies. Coup takes place after a canonical Rebel win. This basically means that all the rebellion has done is just put in a new, just as corrupt government in power.
realistic
Maybe i mistaken, but secret hitler was made after resistance, no ?
I remember when I played Coup regularly, we reached the consensus that, while the Contessa's printed FUNCTION is probably the worst , the Contessa CARD might just be the best card to have in front of you. In typical gameplay what's printed on the cards is moot - early on, there's a certain tension to calling anyone out on their bullshit; but further down the line, you might have sold your Contessa's story as being a Duke or a Captain perhaps, and the blow-out you cause when your Duke-coins make you an assassination target and your Contessa call is challenged is just unmatched.
You just gave me a beautiful strategy
100% the truth of the game is you are every roll you just have 2 rolls that you can claim safely but trying to call out someone on a lie is not important. if the way they plan to win is not faster than yours you don't need to risk calling them. assassin is the fastest win con in the game. but the Contessa is immune. However, if you get called on Contessa and you don't have it you lose both lives. knowing that you are safely immune to the fastest strategy in the game is powerful also you know of one less contessa you enemies don't have.
My favorite strategy is to not even look at the cards until challenged. I'm now 100% bluffing the whole time without any tells 😂
GENIUS!
Nobody can know your moves if even you do not know
Or get overly anxious about each single move you make being a potential lie
I once got my hand and i had a Contessa and a Contessa. I then told everyone i was the duke till the assassins came and I said i am the contessa and they didn't believe me. they died then another assassin came and didn't belive that i was still in fact the Contessa. oh what a glorious Rusev day
One thing I learned about playing Coup with my board game club... Everyone is the Duke till the money in the bank runs out... That's where the killing (coup and assasination) starts lol
I feel like you shouldn’t be running out of money. Given you have to coup if you have 10+ coins
If you ever want to stop Tax bluff spam, just call Foreign Aid. But is that worth it? I don't actually think so.
@@alexanderhargleroad3110 if you’re playing with more than 6 players, that can actually be a legitimate issue, since the Reformation expansion does not add more money despite adding more player slots.
My local friends play Coup all the time and it's WILD how intense it is. Like it seems so simple but good LORD it's not at all
What really amazes me about Coup is how much is done with very few components. Hearing the strengths and strategies of each character, and being able to lie/challenge lies as a game mechanic, it's impressive.
You missed a key feature of the ambassador: no one I've met calls you a liar for swapping cards. It's never worth calling someone a liar when they're just swapping their hand.
Also, the Assassin is great when someone tries calling you a liar. They lose a card for being wrong, then lose a card from your attack.
The second I realized that people weren't challenging ambassador, they started challenging ambassador.
The other main quirk? On one life left, it became standard to challenge assassin rather than even attempt the contessa bluff.
The sheer comedy of dropping a textbook with "COUP" written on to represent a coup is too good
And the gesturing with the cards is very funny, like 10:20 and 11:31
Love the pauses at the start when reading off the synopsis
....this world is absolutely f**ked-
I assumed that was because it’s boiler plate cyberpunk setting
@@Tickerchicken nah, it's just what America's come to :(
@@rawhead1486 Visit a country in the global south, mister upper middle class.
@@rawhead1486not just america, thats just what capitalism does
@@mandarinenschaeler3192No?
Coup has always been one of the big attraction games for my get-togethers, because you naturally get so much table talk and drama out of what is a very simple game. It's also very easy to learn for even people brand new to board games, as the depth comes from social interaction rather than rules complexity.
While I bought the expansion none of my friends liked any of it except for the new character. So we just added her and some additional rules to an otherwise normal game of coup. I'll go in detail but bear in mind we are still working the kinks out. The expansion adds a new character called The Inquisitor and her powers are normally: she replaces the Ambassador and can be used to exchange with the court deck and blocks stealing. Additionally she can examine another player's card and force them to exchange. We felt that was overpowered so here's roughly what we decided. She does not have any of the powers of if the ambassador and he is still part of the game. She can still examine and force exchange but it costs 1 coin. We also tried to buff the Contessa and make it so she can block an examination.
thank god someone buffed contessa
Why not just make the contessa the only card that can embezzle?
Exact opposite for me. I guess it's a matter of taste.
@@ATMOSK1234 Opposite how so? I'm curious!
If you want to teach a group of new people how to play this game, play the first round with all cards face up and tell everyone it's going to be unfair but it'll help them understand how things work. Then play the next round with the cards hidden and introduce the challenge rule
I want you to cover more coup as much as Katy Perry doesnt want another potentially deadly encounter with Nickelodeon goo.
That teen choice award box with a high pressure water nozzle aiming viscuous substances right at her face was actually a safety risk.
THIS IS THE THIRD COUP VIDEO I"VE SEEN TODAY. THE OTHER TWO WERE ALSO THIS VIDEO
Kam keeps finding the most fun yet chaotic games to bring up. Also I love how so many cyberpunk/dystopian settings seem to not realize they're basically just describing our world.
Doing that is the entire point of dystopian settings, and ESPECIALLY of cyberpunk as a whole genre
I would flip that and say our world doesn't seem to realize it's mirroring dystopia. A lot of tech bros in the industry seem to be *wanting* to emulate cyberpunk and don't realize it's saying they're bad people who are ruining everything. That's, like, a huge thrust of its message.
@@Phoenix0F8Yeah its weird how in a few years the idea of personal privacy is dead, all so tech bros can sell info about spying on us online to companies.
@@Phoenix0F8i recently had a chat with someone who wanted warhammer 40k to be real.
If you've never had anything to do anything with it, it's f***** up.
I sincerely implore you to visit a country in the global south: if you think you're living in a dystopia in comparison, you are unfathomably priviliged.
I have a genuine tournament trophy for Coup from winning a tournament at my local comiccon. It was a total fluke, and every year that I have attempted to reclaim that glory has ended with me out in the first or second round.
The Contessa's greatest ability is the fact she exists at all.
Much like the spy in tf2: while they can be devastating, just the knowledge that they might be out there can cause more harm.
when i heard about the Capten i went "Turn one Capten would be so busted compared to Duke"
I haven't played coup in forever, this makes me wanna play again! Thanks for the awesome video as always Kam!
This is surprisingly, the best tutorial ever for Coup. I'll start using this logic and video when i teach the game at the board game club i use to go.
I would love to see the expansions and variants covered as much as coup players love using the duke turn 1
Captain does not block stealing for other players, only the target of the action.
18:55 That setup throws the game off balance.
1:03 1:13 the silent pauses say a thousand words
The turn one 1 income play worked fairly consistently in my group when we played Coup. That might have been because of bad threat assessment though, because everyone would try to off the dukes first, then whoever tried to attack them next. So by keeping a low profile I was able to take my time to gather enough income to take out the survivors or at worst play kingmaker.
For my group, that worked at first, but then low-profile players were viewed as a threat. We started persuading each other to coup the low-profile player because “they’re gonna stab you in the back!”
I'd love to see it as much as I love claiming Duke
I would honestly like you to do the sequel/expansion, especially how you would rank all the new characters, such as the Illusionist and the Mortician, which are my favorites of the newest characters.
Also, it's kind of surprising seeing the game in that style, since the french version (which I don't know if it's the original version) features a much more cartoonish artstyle, and is based on medieval europe instad of a futuristic, dystopian setting.
Coup is insanely fun! Between me and my roommates, its the game that gets the most mileage. It's so easy, and so fast. I love that the results of previous games played informs your decisions when playing with the same group later on.
For a fun variant, sometimes we would play "blackjack", where one of your influences started the game face-up. The two influences were separate, so if your face-up one got taken out, you didn't have to flip the face-down one, but if the face-down one was killed, you were playing honest Abe from then on out. It's a fun way to mix it up once you've played the base way dozens of times.
Playing coup I almost always had the same strategy as how I play Sheriff of Nottingham: play everything by the book and above board, but act as sus as possible. Then when everyone learned I was always being honest they stop challenging me and I can lie with impunity. I was never the best general strategist at my college's Board Game Club, but I was usually the only one at the table with a psych degree and that won me quite a few games I really had no business winning
Captain Contessa one of the nastiest hands if you have a group that plays really safe.
I absolutely love coup. It’s so broken and unfair but I love it
god i love this game, i cant remember how many times ive claimed each role in a single turn and got to watch my friends sit there trying to figure out which one om lying about
(it was all of them, i actually only have a stack of uno cards)
Coup is probably my most played board game of all time. Played it a ton in high school.
I want you to cover the rest of coup as much as i want to think of a good analogy.
Turn 1:
If Duke: Duke
If Ambassador: Ambassador
If neither:
If
Just bought the game at a local board game store because of this video. Hopefully the video helps me teach others how to play too.
My friends love making homebrew versions of coup. There's blind coup (you don't know your cards), heads up coup (everyone ELSE knows your cards), Half 'n Half coup (everyone knows ONE of your cards), Mao Coup (a perfect example of how to torture your friends), ect
What mao coup?
@thegeneralissimo6172 Mao is like uno, but you make a whole bunch of rules and don't tell anyone what they are. Winner gets to add a rule.
@@HazelSilvian devilish, i like it
also i am shocked i got a response since its new year
@thegeneralissimo6172 lol, I literally just got back from the club and started geeking out about card games
1:10 We are there already.
Great overview of Coup! The moments where you threw the card you were holding while explaining something were funny too ;u;
Coup: that one game at my summer camp in the games bin nobody has played
Love coup, the board game club at my uni plays it fairly frequently- its got little in jokes with ir, primarily "but a simple income!", said whenever we take income (ofc)
I have played a fair amount of coup with my family but never actually engaged with any discussion about it until now and I find it really funny how we had just figured out so much of what you said here on our own. It only takes a few rounds before you get 4 people at the table claiming to have a duke on turn 1 and nobody wants to claim foreign aid after seeing it get blocked twice.
I still like the Polish version better-"Światowy Konflikt" (World conflict), because it uses real world countries and leaders. So Duke is Russia with Putin's face on the card. The captain is Police, ambassador is called media, assasin became a protest, and the most useless card - contessa is the european union with Angela Merkel's face on the card. There is a new one however - UN you can play using it instead of media (ambassador) and it lets you either draw one card and exchange it or peek at another player card and choose whether he has to exchange it or keep it, so the UN card is useless.
Of note the UN card is the same as the inquisitor card, which appeared in the kickstarter version and later the reformation expansion
Thanks for covering this, after seeing it in your Game Themes video I really wanted to check it out
Ah yes, my favorite game about gaslighting people
My friend and I have attempted to balance the game a little and I would love to hear your opinion on these changes.
Contessa: now has the ability to look at the top 3 cards of the court deck. This will give them a way to gain intel, which only an ambassador could do before.
Duke: does not have the power to block foreign aid (everybody claims duke, which makes foreign aid useless). Instead, his ability is so that if a captain steals from them, they have to pay 1 of the gold received to the bank.
This will weaken duke a bit, and will give actual purpose of using foreign aid.
Assassin: gets the ability to block foreign aid. The reason I like this is that, at least in the early game, not many people claim to have assassin, and thus foreign aid will still be blocked by a character, just not a reliably claimed one.
Coup is really fun - simple and ruthless. My eight years old kid loves it, though I am slightly worried that the game will teach him to lie, deceive, betray and cut traoths. He is already pulling off pretend-duke moves like a pro.
Got a little prodigy on your hands there
I really liked the video. I would recommend avoiding the "best to worst" sort of talk though. It's not really helpful for evaluating the game and when encourages viewers to play in a very specific way. As an example, if I had to pick a "best" character I'd argue that the ambassador is the best character in coup. This is primarily for the ability to make it extremely difficult to nail down what you actually have. Ambassador drawing two ambassadors can often be turned into a game win. In addition not showing a ton of money early may let you keep two cards for longer and let you set up for a strong late game. Being able to negate the captain not just for steals targeting yourself, but also between other players can allow you to control who you want to face in the inevitable 1v1.
I loved the spoon smacks XD
We use a house rule: Duke doesn't block foreign aid. Contessa does.
Makes foreign aid a better option, because now you can fish out who has the Contessa. Or, it makes Contessa better, because now you can block foreign aid in the late game. Or, it makes Duke worse, because it really doesn't need two abilities.
Good stuff - this is the kinda shiz people crave
I ended up finding the base game at a local comic shop and played with my friend and roommate and it goes by quick if you're bad at lying like we are lmao. I appreciate this vid for introducing me to a new game to play!
I played Coup once but as someone who just can't lie AT ALL, of course I had no chance. These bluffing games are really interesting but unfortunately I can't play them
i love the thunk of the COUP book
I like Coup, but you gotta play it with people who are into games. I've played it with friends who are much more casual, and they basically never lie, so the game just becomes predetermined based on who drew the best cards.
Lying about who you are reminds me of the age old classic of Chardee MacDennis
I would probably switch the assassin and the ambassador because the info from the ambassador is just too easily destroyed by other ambassadors like he says. And the assassin is a great offensive card.
I don't think I've ever heard 7 double S's in a sentence
Ambassador is my top pick. Just waste your time fiddling while the other players kill each other, then swap into whatever card combination counters the other players once you pretty much understand what they have.
@@Tzizenorec never tried that strategy
I've played this game myself but this video made me appreciate it more than even playing it did
said yippee out loud when i saw this was uploaded. ty for the food
Rules clarification: while anyone at the table can challenge a player power, you can only protect yourself with the Captain, Ambassador, or Countessa powers. You cannot claim those powers to protect another player.
Hey id like to see a total over view of the coup stuff. Also would like you to review the minecraft board game builders and biomes, it's a game that from my experience goes from 0 to 60 real quick in competitive groups.
1:02 well it did say "in a not so distant future"
I want to see you cover the rest of Coup as much as a completionist wants to see a platinum trophy.
Contessa is very very damn good as a lying card, since if you lie about having something else, you'll likely get targeted by assassins and you can pull a reversal which people will not only lie to have to get rid of people cheaply (e.g. duke+assassin is the most common fake setup) but as a lying card, is goated since challening the contessa is one of the most risky moves for an assassin player
I love how designers don’t know what to do to make something futuristic so they just throw lines on things
The easiest lie catch outs to win are the ones where you know they can't be that person because you have them.
There are multiple copies of the character in the deck tho.
@@franslair2199 yea I realise that now. I'd say for one of these games to have a better ability to catch someone out would include a full deck of characters with there only being 1 of each. I wrote the comment before he mentioned that.
Coup is one of my favorite games! Great to always keep it with you for great pickup games when traveling or just need to kill some time.
If the Contessa wouldn't exist, Assassin would be S-rank, far above everyone else. She needs to exist solely because the other unit would be incredibly broken. So thank you Contessa. You being kinda useless is for the benefit of the game!
Coup is absolutely one of my favorite card games.
Here's something funny I noticed while browsing for a copy of this game.
The sheer amount of different editions and themed versions of the game is enough to rival Yahtzee.
There are expansions, different versions themed around medieval city-states or Industrial-era Europe. There is a DUNE version, a FRIENDS version, one based on Futurama characters...
Future video maybe?
I cannot find futurama themed coup
Kam was randomly pocessed by a owl
Between you and Ordinary Things I’m totally ready to overthrow my democratically elected Guvment.
It’s like Monopoly cheater edition, but fun
Videos are getting better and better! Keep it up!
I wonder how how people use the Ambassador to make people call each other out.
"I Duke for three."
"That's a lie."
"Are you challenging me?"
"I'm not. I'm just saying there's two Dukes in the middle so there's a high chance you are."
And that'll just encourage other players to call them out if they have a Duke. Or you're just lying and no Dukes are in the middle.
this sounds awesome
and could probably be replicated with normal playing cards, even if you have to maybe write out all abilities on a piece of paper
I swear, after watching this video, copies of Coup started appearing all over the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.
I wanna see more coup videos like I wanna see Duke in my opening hand amirite fellas?
I LOVE COUP
fun fact theres actually a ttrpg set in the world of coup.
One of my favorite recently discovered channels, love your sense of humor man.
I love this game but it really depends on the friend group. With some of my friends it’s perfect, but with others it’s annoying cause they all play it straight every time. This game isn’t much fun when nobody else is lying
I played this once and won i had two dukes and had no idea how to play the last other player was hoping i would false call his assassin but i didn't know enough to bluff or call one and no one anticipated this
I want to see a video on the expansions as much as the Pope wants people to stop calling his vehicle the Popemobile
Kam love your channel and all your vids!
Im not sure if you knew but wish it was mentioned how this game and it's sequels are all part of The Resistance Meta-Universe from the comics with tons of lore and backstory to all the characters.
You haven't played coup until you've played a game where after everyone finishes they reveal that no one had a duke in the first round, or that there are 4+ dukes in the first round
When you compare how simple this game is to the game it's in the same world of - Resistance- it's interesting how night and day the mechanics are. Since this game is basically an anti-Love Letter and Resistance is your typical Secret Hitler saboteur game.
I mean, is it rlly anti-Love Letter? Also, I’d argue that the rules of the Resistance are slightly simpler than coup; having roles will always make a game more rulesy. And even then, the resistance is more easily understood imo. The whole bluffing part (the entire point), I could see that being a bit hard to grasp. The resistance is just pick players, see (and potentially affect) outcome, choose again til a team wins.
I already know about this game as i think polygon played it
THIS GAME SLAPS
I love coup so much, my college friend group played it near daily
Actually, in my experience double contessa is the second best hand
Blocking an assassin in my groups often leads to a second assassination after
Blocking both? That's an easy way to get accused a second time and get a huge advantage
Once I even got a third contessa card after two successful blocks, and that won me the game
My playing strategy always goes like this:
Turn 1: Claim Duke
Turn 2: Claim Ambassador
Turn 3: Claim Captain
Turn 4: Claim Ambassador
Turn 5: Claim Duke
So this is like the Illuminati Card Game except that it actually exists but at the same time doesn't work because of the insane lying mechanic?
Damn sounds like a very interesting game ngl
4:32 jackbox reference????????
i'd like to see you talk about the coup expansions & spinoffs more then i'd like to see the duke in my hand in the first turn.
i'd like more vids on the expanded universe
If you like this game, I highly recommend Captain's Gambit. It's a variation of Coup with social deduction elements.
A hidden role game? Sounds a little... sus.
The contessa and assassin make each other worse...
No, they make eachother able to exist.
The contessa obviously requires the assassin in order to function. But also if the assassin existed but the contessa didn’t the game would be literally unplayable.