The Resistance

The Resistance is a social role-playing card-based social deduction party game. The game's premise involves a war between government and resistance groups, and players are assigned various roles related to these groups. A King Arthur themed-variant with additional roles is marketed as Avalon. Like other social deduction games, The Resistance and Avalon rely on certain players attempting to disrupt the larger group working together, while the rest of the players work to reveal the spy working against them. Games take upwards of half an hour, and are played with five to ten players. The Resistance was initially playable with a standard 52-card deck of playing cards, but the newest version of the game includes extra cards which cannot be simulated in such a way. The published version of the game includes a board to track progress, role cards, voting cards, mission success and fail cards, tokens, and additional game-modifying plot cards. Thematically, the game shares the same dystopian setting as Coup and Grifters, two other games by Indie Board & Cards. Gameplay At the start of the game, one third of the set of players (rounded up) is randomly and secretly chosen to be government spies infiltrating the rest of the group (the Resistance). One of the players (either a spy or Resistance member) is selected to be the Mission Leader. The government spies are made aware of each other without the Resistance knowing – the only thing the Resistance knows is how many government spies exist, not who they are. This process is conducted by the first Mission Leader, who instructs the group to close their eyes, for the spies to open their eyes and see each other, for the spies to close their eyes again, and then for everyone to open their eyes and begin the game (with long pauses at each stage). Players may never reveal their identity cards to other players (unless the game is being played with "Plot Cards" as discussed below). Rounds During each round of the game, the player to the left of the previous Leader becomes the new Leader. The Leader selects a certain number of players to send out on a mission, starting with Mission 1. The table below shows the required number of players to go out on each mission. All of the players then discuss the Leader's choice and, simultaneous and in public, vote on whether to accept the team make-up or not.