Review: Are You the Traitor?

Are you the Traitor?  That is the question posed by Looney Labs, creators of Fluxx and Back to the Future: the Card Game.  If you have ever played the social game, Mafia (also known as Werewolf, which apparently Looney Labs also sells as a card game), then you will have a good basic understanding of this game.

Everyone has a role that is kept secret.  Depending on the number of players, some roles are revealed.  Everyone has a particular role they are looking for.  Players have "unstructured conversation" to try to figure out who is what to help their side win.

In Mafia, the roles you have are for the entirety of the game, so as the game progresses, you can start to track the actions and accusations of players and use that against them.  So, the first round is always somewhat random since no one has any real solid information (except for maybe the Sheriff).  In Are You the Traitor, these roles are redistributed every round, so there is no real continuity unless certain players can't hide being the Traitor as well.  This causes most rounds to start off the same way, "We know these two players are Wizards, we know one of us unknowns is the Keyholder, one is the Traitor, and the rest are Guards.  So are you a Guard?  Are you a Guard?  Are you a Guard?"  Since the conversation is unstructured and both the Keyholder and Traitor don't want to be found out by particular people, everyone of course says they are Guards.  So figuring out who is what seemed very arbitrary (or maybe that was just me).  Once someone feels they know who their intended target is, they point at them and say, "Stop!"  If they are right, everyone on their team draws a treasure card.  Otherwise, everyone on the other team draws a treasure card.  For example, the Guards are trying to find the Traitor in their midst, so if one of them points at someone and says stop than that second player reveals their card.  If they are a Traitor, the Guards, Good Wizard, and Keyholder players draw treasure cards.  If they aren't a Traitor, the Traitor and Evil Wizard draw treasure cards.

I will admit that there was a lot of laughing by my group and it was amusing, so in that respect, this game achieves the goal of a game.  But as far as any strategy, tactics, or gameplay, I could not find any.  I know I'm not fantastic at reading people, so that certainly didn't help, but the actual gameplay aspect of it felt severely lacking to me.  I much prefer Mafia where you have some chain of thought/strategy to try to follow, "This person accused you last round and now they're dead, so you're probably Mafia, but someone may be trying to put the blame on you, so who would do that..."  I might try this game again in the future, but I won't be buying it anytime soon and so could not recommend it to others.