LogFAQs > #932100094

132. Good Cop, Bad Cop (2014)

Category: Team vs Team
Genres: Social deduction, hidden roles, player elimination
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 25-45 minutes
Experience: 10+ plays with 5-8 players, 2016-2018
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 78/80 (2018)

Summary - You're dealt three allegiance cards that say good or bad on them. Whichever card you have more of is your team. Your goal is to kill the leader of the opposite team, which will be the player dealt the Agent or Kingpin card, depending on team. Play proceeds turn-based, where you can check peoples allegiance, take/fire guns, and play cards to give you special abilities.

Experience - As with most party games, it's not impossible to find fun experiences in GCBC - I've laughed a few times during it. But overall, playing it has been a bore. It typically keeps very little of my attention and is solely played on other people's behalf.

Design -.I will say that GCBC is very accessible, and that the principle of allegiance cards is very cool. But it suffers from two major flaws. First, being turn-based is a major issue with higher player counts - you simply do not want to wait 7 turns for it to be yours again, and making it worse, there are cards that can reverse turn order, making it possible for you to wait 13 turns before you play again. This is tied intimately with the second issue, which is that the game is far too swingy and random for one that takes this long. Given that it can last over 40 minutes (admittedly, perhaps this is due to annoyingly slow players) and has player elimination, it really sucks that players can severely lack agency - you're at the whim of some very "take that"-ish cards; there can often be nothing you can do to prevent getting shot; the act of shooting someone takes 2 whole turns, which as we know, can mean sitting around for 20ish player-turns before you get to fire the gun. (And of course, there are all the swingy cards that remove the gun from your hand, further depriving you of agency.) It's just poor design, most of which could be ameliorated with shortening the game or making it play simultaneously - which we will see in many other games later.

Future - There is a copy in my group, but I have seen that member rather less frequently, so it's likely it won't come out again in a long time - and I'm very happy for that.

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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness