Review: The Perfect Heist

Yet another of the games I've backed on Kickstarter has arrived, this time it's The Perfect Heist.  On the surface, this is a heist movie flavored Munchkin, but after playing it, you'll realize that it's much more than just that.  Players cooperate or compete in various heists to earn Notoriety points.  The game ends when any player has been involved in a certain number of successful heists and at that point, the player with the most Notoriety points wins.  Each heist has a difficulty rating (that also determines how many Notoriety points it's worth).  Players build an Ability deck with a series of traits (Quick Thinking, Pyromaniac, Brute, etc.), weapons (brass knuckles, guns, flamethrowers, etc.), kit items (rope, ladders, high tech cameras, etc.), and a specialty (Driver, Gunman, Technician, etc.) to improve their ability to tackle the more difficult heists.  If a heist is too difficult for a player, they can recruit other players to join them on the heist by offering them a cut of the loot or Notoriety points the heist gives them or cards they already have.  Other players (even ones on the heist) can try to sabotage the heist to make them fail.  If a heist fails, the leader of the crew (the player who started the heist) has a chance to escape (by rolling a die) and if that fails, the player(s) with the least amount of Notoriety get to take some of their cards.

The part that makes The Perfect Heist so much more fun than Munchkin are the History cards.  History cards give you a special advantage targeted at one other player (e.g. your Sabotage cards are more effective against the targeted player), but the fun part is that you start to build a story between you and that other player.  Maybe that other player left you for dead.  Further twist, maybe that player was also your ex!  Further twist, you were family members with another player who was cuckolded by your ex who left you for dead!  As the game goes on and you play more and more of these History card, the story developed by them just gets more and more entertaining.  The game is for 3-6 players and technically you are supposed to only play History cards with the players sitting to your right and left, but if you can manage to keep track of how the various game rules affect you, there's no reason why you can't build an intricate web of ridiculous backstories with all the other players.

This game is easily worth the $35 it costs on their website, even if you don't care about your games building their own story, but for people like me who love it when a ridiculous story develops while you're out-negotiating and out-thinking your friends, this game is fantastic!