Blood of the Werewolf Review

A game that I recently heard about was Blood of the Werewolf.  After it was described to me as "a mix between Hanabi and The Resistance," I knew that I wanted to try it!

In Blood of the Werewolf, there are two teams of players - Villagers and Werewolves.  And, each player is dealt a card to indicate which of those two teams he belongs to.  However, you do not get to know which card you have, though everybody else does (you hold your card so that it is facing all the other players)!  Additionally, there will be two cards dealt into the middle of the table that are used for "accusations" and, if there are an odd number of players, there will be another card dealt into the "wilderness" (which can never be seen).  A player's turn consists simply of "accusing" a player - taking one of the "accusation" cards and placing it in front of whichever player they accuse.  As soon as a player gets both accusations in front of him, he dies.  However, if you have an accusation in front of you during your own turn, you may look at that card (thus getting more information as you try to figure out which team you're on).  Play continues in this way until only a certain number of players are remaining (this depends on player count).  At that point, if the players all think that they are on the same team, they can "claim" that - and if they're right, they win, but if they're wrong, then the player making the claim dies immediately.  At which point the game ends.  Officially, you now add up points - with each living player worth one point, and each face down card in the center worth half of a point.  But, in reality, the team that still has living players wins at this point.

One of my favorite parts of Blood of the Werewolf deals with human nature.  Everybody I know "plays the odds" when they are dealt cards.  What I mean is that they look at all of the cards they can see, and then they determine which team they are "probably" on.  For example, if I see four Werewolves and two Villagers, then I will assume that I am on the Villager team.  And, if the Villagers can figure out who they are and take advantage of the fact that the Werewolf players think they're on the Villager team, they can win though the odds appear stacked against them.  In situations like this, it is very common for a Werewolf to accuse a teammate - with both players assuming that the other person is on the opposite team.  However, the Villagers (in this example) can't be too quick to pounce on these opportunities, or else the Werewolves may realize what is happening!

Villagers and Werewolves - I like the art

As a further extension of my first pro, my second pro is that I have come to love games where one side has full knowledge from the beginning.  Especially if there are an odd number of players.  For example, if you are playing a seven player game, then five Villager and five Werewolf cards will be dealt out.  And, if two players are dealt Villager cards and the other five players are dealt Werewolf cards, then the Villager players will immediately know what they are.  However, the Werewolves will never know for certain which team they are on.  Even if they look at all of the accusations, there will be two cards they haven't seen - the Villager card in the "wilderness", and their own (Werewolf) card.  This means that every Werewolf player will have to entertain doubt about which team they are on - and so smart playing by the Villagers can turn the tide of this game.  However, poor play by the Villagers (immediately killing Werewolves without a thought) can give away what they see!  This tension between one team being terribly outnumbered while the other team deals with constant uncertainty can leave you with a brilliant game play experience.

However, with those two pros, there are a number of cons that I have found with Blood of the Werewolf.  First, the game is very fragile.  What I mean is this - there are several things that can occur that can either cause the game to "break" or cause the game play to be unenjoyable.  The first one to address is the game "breaking."  I have played in at least one game in which the game would never officially end.  Here's what happened - we were playing a four player game, and two of the players were killed.  However, the two players that were still alive believed that they were on different teams - and in a four player game, you only end the game once there is one player left alive (or if the last two players claim to be on the same team).  Now, these players would simply accuse each other back and forth until the end of time - or until the game is ended outside of what the rules stipulate.  (This situation could also occur if there are four players left, believing they know which team they are on, and each player is sitting adjacent to people they think are on the opposite team.)  Each player is given a special once-per-game card that can help get you out of these situations, but in all honesty, I believe that those special cards may have actually been what caused the situation in the four-player game.

Example of a special card - note the flavor text

The next con deals with the fragility that causes an unenjoyable game experience.  The more knowledge is shared (especially early), the worse the game is.  The groups I've played with have played a lot of games of Hanabi, and so our natural response was to try to figure out what team we are on.  By asking.  But, you can't get information without giving information, generally, and so we all wound up sharing too much information.  And, though we could have lied, there were far too many people that were interested in calling out those lies - everybody else at the table knows if you lied!  That makes it a hard sell, unless several other players immediately join your lie.  So, the first few games that we played ended up with everybody knowing which team they were on almost immediately.  And, when this happens, the game turns into a simple numerical exercise - whichever team has more players (and/or the better special cards) will win.  And there's nothing you can do about it.  That's not fun at all.  Because of this, we took the approach to not share anything the first few times around the table, and to let people indicate which team they belong to through actions instead of through blatantly telling people what they see.  Reducing the initial talking made the game work much better, but also goes against your natural inclination - and if a single player decides that he's going to play by telling people what he sees, then it breaks down into the numbers game again.

One last thing to note - the current version of Blood of the Werewolf is a multi-lingual edition, and it seems that English was not the author's native language.  So, though the author's English is drastically better than my Mandarin (or any other language - I only know English), it reads very strangely at times.  After reading through the rules, I understood how to play the game (which is the point of a rulebook, after all), but I'm hoping that if the game is picked up for wider distribution, it will also have an editor.

Overall, I give Blood of the Werewolf a 6.5/10.  After my first two games, I thought that it was terrible (we all knew our role too quickly).  Having played more, I have now also had some amazing experiences playing the game.  However, the fragility of the game keeps me from ranking it too highly.  If you have played it and not enjoyed it, I would recommend trying again, but without talking early on - possibly even making a rule that you can't talk at all!

If Blood of the Werewolf sounds interesting, you might also want to check out The Resistance, Battlestar Galactica, and Shadows Over Camelot.

I would like to thank Homosapiens Lab for providing me with a review copy of Blood of the Werewolf.

EDIT: It was pointed out to me after posting this review that I missed a rule in this game.  Specifically, when a player dies, they place the accusation markers in front of other players.  This will prevent the game from breaking in the 4-player game like I had suggested, as when the game gets down to 2 players, both of those players will have an accusation in front of them, and thus the next player has the option of killing his opponent.  (I do believe that the game can still break in a 4-player situation where everyone thinks the people next to them are on the opposite team.  This can happen in an initially 4-player game when everyone plays their "skip a player's turn" special card in succession, or can happen when you get down to 4-players and everyone has played their special cards.  But, I have not yet re-played the game with the corrected rule, so this is speculation based on previous experiences.)

I'm not sure how this affects my overall score for this game, so honestly, I'm going to leave it the same. I've said all along that you should focus more on the text than numbers, anyway!  And, when I started thinking about this change, a friend of mine pointed out that he didn't think it would change the enjoyment of the game - and isn't that the point of playing games?  This just goes to show that no matter how many times you've played a game, there still might be something you weren't aware of.  (I don't generally disclose this, but I had played Blood of the Werewolf roughly 10 times before posting this review, so I thought I had it down!)

One Night Ultimate Werewolf Review

The village has been under silent siege for some time now. Villagers have been found mysteriously dead on mornings that follow a full moon. Many suspect that a werewolf is living among us - but who?

The prolific Ted Alspach is back to his werewolf-y ways with One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Having never played the original games Werewolf or Mafia, but being a huge fan of Coup and Resistance, I was not sure what to expect when I got One Night Ultimate Werewolf in the mail. Of course, most gamers involved enough in the hobby to have an active BGG account have heard of Werewolf - the main reasons I have never played it is because of the player elimination and because it requires a non-player moderator to run the game (and I don't get to go to many conventions). So, after experiencing a couple nights of One Night, what did I end up thinking? Let's find out!

One Night Ultimate Werewolf ships in a small box which contains the few (but very nice) components the game requires. The game takes about 5-10 minutes to both set up, play, and clean up. Each player gets a role card, and 3 role cards are also placed face down in the middle of the table. Discs that match the roles in play are also added to the middle of the table for reference.

The game begins with the night phase. One Night Werewolf does still require a moderator, but the rules allow for the moderator to also be a player. During the night phase, all players will have their eyes closed. The moderator will announce certain roles to "wake up" and perform a special action that is associated with their role. For instance, the first group the moderator asks to "wake up" is the werewolves. Any werewolves playing then open their eyes and see who else is a werewolf (if there is another werewolf). The moderator waits ten seconds, asks the current group to close their eyes again, and announces the next group to "wake up."

After the night phase, the day phase begins - everyone opens their eyes. After a few minutes of discussion, all players vote on one player to be lynched. Whoever gets the most votes dies. If two players tie for the most votes, they both die, but if no player receives more than one vote, then no one dies. After the vote, the game ends.

Villagers win the game if at least one werewolf dies during the lynching. Even if a villager dies in addition to a werewolf dying, the villagers all win. If, however, there are no werewolves in the game (remember the 3 cards in the middle of the table), the villagers only win if no one dies. The werewolves can only win the game if at least one player is a werewolf and no werewolves die.

This, on its own, would be a pretty compelling hidden role game. But the addition of roles to One Night Ultimate Werewolf adds even more wild fun to this already enjoyable base experience. Some of the roles give more information to players, while others add a healthy dose of chaos. The Seer, for instance, wakes up during the night phase and can look at another player's card or at two of the cards in the middle of the table. While the Troublemaker (who wakes up after the Seer) can switch the cards of two other players without looking at them.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf has a few weaknesses. First, I think this type of game has a fairly wide appeal, but people who will not enjoy this type of game will really not like this type of game. The fact that the game still requires a moderator - even a player moderator - is a pretty big con for me. I usually "run" most of the board games I play - learning setup and in game upkeep along with the rules of play - but here being a moderator could take a player out of the game experience, somewhat. This game could also (maybe?) be criticized for not having very much (traditional) strategy. There is a lot of chaos in some of the roles here, and some players will simply be unable to see the subtleties of deception which are inherent to succeeding here. This isn't to say there is no strategy, in fact I'd say my final con of the game is that the strategies of when and how players should lie during the day phase can be hard to figure out.

All that said, One Night Ultimate Werewolf is a stupendously fun game that can be used as a "filler" in many situations, but I would say that gamers should schedule around 45 minutes to play this game - not because it takes that long, but most groups will probably want to play this several times in a row (just like mine did). The best thing about the game are the unique situations, bluffs, and outright lies that it presents with players. Actually, one of the best things about the short playing time of One Night Ultimate Werewolf is that because groups will likely play the game multiple times in a row, a lying meta-game will likely develop, adding a fun inside joke feel to sessions of this - especially when played with groups of close friends.

The final pro for the game - which I have deliberately left out of the review until now, is huge. This may not be feasible for everyone, but for play groups who have at least one iOS or Android device among them, Bezier Games has put out a free companion app for One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Narrated by Mr. Eric Summerer himself, the app completely eliminates the need for a moderator. It is both very useful and very well done. The app looks and sounds fantastic, in addition to making One Night Ultimate Werewolf a lot more fun to play. While the game is certainly playable without the smartphone app, I would never consider doing so without it.



Overall, I would give One Night Ultimate Werewolf an 8.5. I really like the game, and - along with the companion app - I think most other groups will enjoy it as well. The game can be dependent upon groups being comfortable with lying to each other, but hopefully if you're bringing this to your game night, you know how your group will react to having to lie. One Night Ultimate Werewolf packs a lot of game into a small box and low price point. I definitely recommend it.

If this sounds fun, you might also want to check out: The Resistance, Bang! The Dice Game, or Battlestar Galactica.



Jim would like to thank Bezier Games for providing him a review copy of One Night Ultimate Werewolf.