Chaos & Confetti

In The Gang, players take on the role of professional thieves attempting a series of heists.  Success depends on feats of cooperative coordination and perfection.  In this Texas hold em style game, players need to signal the strength of their hands with limited communication.  

Using their private pocket cards and a growing pool of community cards, players will need to not only evaluate their strongest possible hands but determine the likelihood of what others might be holding as well.

There may be no bluffing in The Gang, but players will still be testing how well they can read the room around them.

Player Count: 3 – 6

Ages: 10+

Playtime: 20 minutes

GAME PLAY:

After the deck of playing cards is shuffled, two cards are dealt to each player. Every player may look at their own cards, but these two “pocket cards” should be kept private from all other players.  

The Gang comes with four different color sets of chips.  Keep out the chips with one star through the number of stars equal to the number of players.  All other chips should be returned to the box.  The remaining chips should be placed in the center of the table.

The goal of the game is to eventually order all players by the strength of their strongest poker-style hand.  The game comes with a handy guide of hand evaluation that goes from a single high card up to a royal flush.  As more cards are revealed players will continue to evaluate their hands and express their opinion of their own hand through the game’s limited communication format.    

During the first round of the game, players will judge the strength of their two pocket cards.  Each player will then take a white chip from the center of the table to share what they think of their cards.  The higher star-ed chip they grab, the stronger they believe their hand to be.  Players can take chips from the center of the table or each other, but they can’t give chips to other players.

At no time can players share what is in their hand or indirectly give clues to their cards, outside of the chip they are taking.

Once the distribution of the chips is decided, the next round begins.  Three cards are revealed from the top of the deck.  Players will again judge the strength of their strongest possible hand, based on the combination of their pocket cards and the revealed cards at the center of the table.  This time, players will take the set of yellow chips.  Again, this is how they will communicate their opinions on their hand strength.  It would be wise to play attention to how perceived hand strength may have changed due to the revealed cards.

The fourth round will reveal another card off the top of the deck.  Players will judge the strength of their strongest possible hand based on any combination of five cards from either the center table or their hand.  The orange chips will be used to communicate hand strength.  

Finally, one more card will be revealed for a total of five cards in the center of the table.  For the last time, players will assess the strength of their hand and its potential ranking amongst others at the table.  Players will take the red chips and this chips will represent their final answer in terms of strength order.

After the red chips are all claimed and settled, hands will be revealed from lowest star value to highest.  If the best possible hand of each player is correctly ranked from lowest to highest, the players successfully complete their heist.  If anyone is out of order, the mission is a fail and an alarm is set off.  

The game ends when there are either three successful heists or three triggered alarms.  If neither criteria is met yet, another hand of cards will be dealt and played.

Another interesting mechanic is the challenge and accomplice cards.  If players succeed on a heist, they will be dealt a challenge card that makes their next hand of cards harder.  If they set off an alarm, they will gain an accomplice card that may make their next hand of cards easier. 

Players will need to carefully communicate and coordinate if they hope to pull off the perfect series of heists.

OUR THOUGHTS:

The Gang is a great cooperative experience that is set up to be a crowd pleaser.  Since the game is based off of poker, most players will immediately understand the rules, but even those without a poker background should be able to pick up the rules quickly.  Since the game mostly consists of a deck of cards and some chips, set up and clean up is fast.  The Gang can hit the playing table quickly.

We had a lot of fun playing The Gang, and it’s actually a game that improves with more plays.  Groups learn to read each other better, and the strength of potential hands becomes easier to estimate, though like regular poker, you can never know anything for sure.  

The challenge and accomplice cards provide some variety which is great for keeping the game fresh despite its simpler overall system. 

Overall, The Gang feels most balanced at a smaller player-count, but it still works at the max size as well.  Larger groups just mean the difficulty will be higher.

We are big fans of The Gang and can see it becoming a regular fixture of our game nights. 

FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS:
The Gang is a fantastic twist on poker.  Easy rules and set up make it accessible, but the actual objective provides plenty of challenge.  The game feels most balanced at a lower player count, but as long as a larger group is willing to accept more difficulty toward success, they should be good as well.  The Gang is a wonderful cooperative experience that will have players loving their abilities when they win and playfully yelling at one another when they fail to read one another correctly. 

Disclaimer: we were provided with a free copy of The Gang, but with no expectation/requirements of a review. All thoughts and opinions are our own.