Review: Lemming Mafia

Lemming Mafia is a quirky little race betting game from Mayfair Games, the makers of the Settlers of Catan series of games.  I think the best way to think about it is that the players are all betting on a horse race, only instead of horses it's lemmings and instead of racing to a finish line, they are racing to jump off a pier into the water to their death.

Every turn, players roll two lemming dice to determine which lemmings they are allowed to move.  They then move their chosen lemming into the next section with a vacant spot and choose which space to place the lemming on (if there is more than one vacant spot in the section).

The different types of spaces are:

• Blank spots - Nothing happens
• Wet cement - The lemming gets a cement token put on his piece.  If he already has two tokens, he gets cemented out and placed in the lowest place at the end of the board
• Jackhammer - Remove a cement token from the lemming
• Getaway vehicle - Roll a 6-sided die to see how far forward he moves, if that spot is occupied, the lemming does not move and instead gets a cement token put on him
• Bidding - Players can bid on who they think will come in first (i.e. jump off the pier or be the last one cemented out)
• Mafia boss - Players can get rid of one mission card (more on these in a sec)

The game ends when a lemming jumps off the pier or 5 of the 6 lemmings get cemented out.  In the former case, all remaining lemmings are placed in second to last place based on their distance to the pier.  The winner of the game is the player with the most points.  You can get points with two things: Mission cards and bidding.

At the start of the game you get three mission cards.  You may discard them during play if someone lands on the Mafia boss spot, but you may never draw more.  At the end of the game, fulfilled missions are worth positive points, unfulfilled missions are worth -2 points.

The bidding is a little too complicated to explain here without accompanying imagery, but it can get you anywhere from 0-6 points.

This is a strange, but fun short little game with amazing art and figures (the 6 lemming figures are awesome).  There is a lot of strategy and predicting what other players will do involved in winning and it's very possible to go from a perfect score to the absolute lowest score possible between your turns (I know from experience).  My only complaint is that the bidding system feels way complicated (or at least is hard to explain even if you have the cards and can show people), but once everyone understands it, it's an interesting risk/reward system.  And ultimately, that's what the whole game is about, risk and reward.  How much are you betting on your ability to manipulate fate and get your lucky lemming to jump off the pier?  How much would you lose if everyone else wants that lemming to get cemented out and sleep with the fishes?