Saboteur Card Game
- About Saboteur Card Game. Saboteur is a mining-themed card game, designed by Frederic Moyersoen and published in 2004 by Z-Man Games. I can't say much about the rules. If you're new to Saboteur Card Game, you can read all about the rules here. For your information, this game needs at least 3 human players. I have no AI installed here.
- Saboteur Card Game. Available to ship: 2 Regular price $9.99 Sale price $9.99 Regular price. Sale Not Available Online. Unit price / per.
The Basics:
- Ages 8 and up
- For 3 to 10 (yes, 10!) players
- 40 minutes to complete
Saboteur Card Game. Available to ship: 2 Regular price $9.99 Sale price $9.99 Regular price. Sale Not Available Online. Unit price / per.
Geek Skills:
- Active Listening & Communication
- Visuospatial Skills
- Cooperative & Team Play
Learning Curve:
- Child – Moderate
- Adult – Easy
Theme & Narrative:
- Dig a underground path to the treasure … unless you’re a saboteur!
Endorsements:
- Father Geek approved!
- Child Geek approved!
Overview
Saboteur, designed by Frederic Moyersoen and published in 2004, sees players take on the role of dwarves mining for gold (got to love those stereotypes!). Except that some of the players might really be saboteurs, trying to prevent the other players from reaching the gold. These roles, digger and saboteur, are allocated secretly by dealing role cards to players at the beginning of each of three rounds.
In each round, play revolves around playing path cards to bridge the empty space between the starting card and three face-down goal cards (two dummies and one marking the location of the real treasure). The main deck of cards is made up of 44 path cards and 27 action cards. Each player is dealt a hand of 4-6 cards (depending on the number of players). Players take turns in clockwise order to:
- Play one card (either a path card or an action card) or else pass by discarding one card face-down
- Draw one card from the deck
Path cards must be played adjacent to the start card or another previously played path card, so that any paths that extend to the edge of one card are continued on the adjacent card. Action cards come in 4 flavors:
- Broken tools (blocking cards), to be played in front of another player to prevent him from playing path cards
- Repair (unblocking cards), to cancel the effect of broken tools (for oneself or another player)
- Rockfall, to remove a path card already played
- Map, to peek at one of the goal cards (thus determined whether it is the real treasure or a bluff)
The round ends when a path to the real treasure has been dug, or when all players have run out of cards to play. Players who achieved their goal (as diggers or saboteurs) will take some gold nugget cards. After three rounds, the player with the most gold nuggets is the winner!
Prediction
This was (yet another) impulse purchase, the temptation of which I had managed to resist on several earlier occasions. I had, however, heard essentially positive things about this game as a light filler. After reading the rules, I thought that my 6 year old son would find this game very challenging, not only to keep his role hidden from other players, but also to work out the motives of his opponents. However, I also thought that this would be a good game to introduce to him simply because it is very different from other games he had played previously.
Final Word
I tried this for the first time at the local gaming group, with 6 players, including my son and another boy age (I think) 9 years. One of the adults had played the game once before, and everyone else was new to the game. The flow of play was easily learned, such that we were familiar with the rules after one round of play.
Saboteur Card Game Instructions
In this game, the right path card in the right location can be a great benefit or a terrible obstacle. This makes the rockfall card (of which there are two in the deck) especially powerful and the game overall is prone to considerable luck. In theory, bluffing is an advantage; in practice, each round plays so fast that players cannot keep their intentions hidden for long, thus the game lacks the tension that builds in other “hidden traitor” games such as Shadows Over Camelot or Battlestar Galactica.
Although my son enjoyed playing, he did not really grasp the cooperative/competitive dimension of the game and therefore missed out on a large part of the experience. In particular, I did not witness any attempt to interpret his opponents’ choices or body language, and I admit that I would have been quite surprised if I had. He did not receive a saboteur card all game, but I am sure that it would have been interesting to see how he coped with playing a saboteur. My distinct impression is that while the rules can be mastered by a 5 year old child, the spirit of the game is better appreciated by more mature children, and perhaps even little geeks as old as 8 years old might be slightly too young.
Finally, this does seem to be a game that is better with a larger number of players (5 or more), although quick play is essential to ensure that the game does not “overstay its welcome”. I would be happy to try this again, but it is not at the top of my list of games to play next.
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The Saboteur Game
Saboteur is a fun-filled family and party game that need 3 to 10 players to play this game. In this game each player are known as dwarf and all the players need to work together to find the gold by “building” paths. What they didn’t know is that among the dwarfs there are some people known as “saboteur” who will prevent the other dwarfs to find the gold by building dead end, destroy paths as well as putting “power cards” to stop other dwarf from building paths during their turn.
Amigo Saboteur Card Game
Saboteur components (boardgamereviewsbyjosh.com)
This card game seems easy to play but it inspires me in 3 different aspects:
1. It brings out the fact that not all people can be 100% trusted even for close friends because sometimes they might be backstabbing you from behind when you are not around. For example in the workplace where your colleagues cannot be fully trusted because who knows they will backfire you the next day by talking bad things about you to the other people and they are still acting close to you without even notice. You must have some reserved of your trust to other people instead of giving 100% of them.
2. There will be obstacles in life. Sometimes in our life there will be bad things happen to us and we need face it eventually even though we tried to run away. The saboteur in this game represents the obstacles in our life. When we face a dead end or difficulty, we musn’t run away from it. Instead, we need to think of another way to overcome the obstacles. Remember, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.
3. Set a goal in your life. It is important so that you won’t be going blindly throughout your life without a goal and by having a goal you yourself will know whether you are going to the right track or otherwise. It’s like what happens in this game. When you are a good dwarf, your goal is to build your path to look for the the gold and when you are the saboteur, your goal is to sabotage the good dwarf. Even though their goals are different, but at least they have a goal to accomplish. They will be doing their task blindly if there aren’t any goal for both of them.
Click the video below if you want to know more about Saboteur:
(From Polaris, Youtube)