Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage right here —and let us know what you think.

"Aaron, just tell me the truth. I’ll believe you. Are you a spy?”

Of course I was a spy. I’m always a spy. We had already played several rounds of The Resistance that night, and I had drawn one of the spy cards every game. Our last mission had failed because of a betrayer, and my mom was in charge of assembling the team for our next mission. I needed to be on that team so I could tank the mission and secure the win for the bad guys.

I looked up from the table and met my mother’s eyes.

“Mom, I promise you. I’m not a spy.”

In modern board games parlance, “bluffing” is a nice word for “games where you lie through your teeth to the people who trust you most.” And the “lying games” business is booming. As it turns out, people love lying to each other. Today, Ars Cardboard sifts through the scores of bluffing and social deduction party games to bring you a look at four games that define the genre.

These games are perfect for holiday gatherings because they’re quick and easy to teach, generally short, and entirely based on social interaction. You want to make sure that no one is going to get their feelings hurt too badly by being lied to, but you might be surprised by just how ruthlessly cunning your 90-year-old grandparents can be when they’re trying to hide something. Pick one of these titles up for your New Year's Eve extravaganza.











Coup (2012)

Game details Designer: Rikki Tahta

Publisher: Indie Boards and Cards

Players: 2-6

Age: 9+

Playing time: 15 minutes

Price: $14.99 ( Rikki TahtaIndie Boards and Cards2-69+15 minutes: $14.99 ( $12.50 on Amazon

With a total component count of 15 cards, a handful of money tokens, and a few player aids, Coup is the simplest game on our list today. It’s also cheap, quick to play, easy to teach, and an absolute blast with almost any group.

In Coup, players take on the role of high-level government officials jostling for power in a cyber-punky dystopia, where they must bluff, steal, and kill to become top dog. At the beginning of the game, players are dealt two face-down character cards, which represent members of the court they hold influence over. Knock out the other players’ characters by flipping up their cards to win.

On your turn, you can also use the special powers of your characters. The Duke, for instance, lets you take three coins from the bank. The Captain can steal two coins from another player. The Ambassador lets you exchange your cards with cards from the central draw deck. The Assassin can flip another player’s card up for the cost of three coins, and the Contessa can block assassination attempts. Each player can also do basic actions, like getting one coin for free or performing an unblockable coup against another player, which costs seven coins and forces your target to flip up one of their cards.

But say you want to use the Duke’s ability and you don’t have a Duke card. Why let a little thing like the truth stop you? Just put on your best poker face, declare that you have a Duke anyway, and reach for your three coins. If other players don’t believe you, they can call you on it. If you’re caught in a lie, you have to flip up one of your cards. If someone falsely accuses you of lying, though, he or she has to flip up one of theirs.

In many ways, Coup is essentially a better version of the old card game Bullshit (or I Doubt It, if you learned it from my Mennonite grandmother). Tell the truth or lie; see if others believe you. As the game goes on, more cards are turned face up on the table, so the space for broad, reckless bluffing narrows.

Coup takes 15 minutes or less to play, and the rules can be explained in a fraction of that time. The excellent Reformation expansion adds team play, a new role, and enough cards to boost the game’s maximum player count to 10. If you’re new to bluffing games, Coup is the perfect place to start.













Sheriff of Nottingham (2014)

Game details Designer: Sergio Halaban, Andre Zatz, and Bryan Pope

Publisher: Arcane Wonders

Players: 3-5

Age: 13+

Playing Time: 60 minutes

Price: $34.99 ( Designer: Sergio Halaban, Andre Zatz, and Bryan PopePublisher: Arcane WondersPlayers: 3-5Age: 13+Playing Time: 60 minutesPrice: $34.99 ( $23 on Amazon

It’s rough out here for a poor merchant. You’re just trying to get into Nottingham to make an honest living selling some apples, but there’s a holdup at the gate. The sheriff has set up a checkpoint, and he’s forcing everyone to declare what they’re bringing in. OK, fine, you might also have an illegal firearm or two in the back, and you might be bringing in a small pouch of contraband spices, but that’s none of the sheriff’s business! Maybe he’ll wave you on through without a fuss if you toss him a few coppers…

Sheriff of Nottingham is essentially “Customs: The Game” (an earlier incarnation of the game, Hart an der Grenze, actually had a border-crossing theme). Players begin with 50 gold and six cards representing various goods, and the goal is to amass the most money (i.e. points) by the end of the game. Each round starts with players discarding any cards they don’t want and drawing new cards from either the draw deck or two central discard piles. The goods can be legal (apples, cheese, bread, or chickens) or contraband (crossbows, silk, pepper, or mead). Legal goods are worth a modest amount of points, and you’ll want to collect large sets of them to get bonus points at the end of the game. But the contraband is where the real money’s at.

Players load their cards into small velvet merchant pouches, toss each pouch over to the sheriff—a role that rotates each round—and declare what’s inside. The only rules are simple: you must declare one legal good, and you have to tell the truth about how many cards are in your pouch. Anything else is between you and your conscience. Want load up your bag with illegal mead and tell the sheriff it’s a bag of chickens? Go for it.

After everyone has made a declaration, the sheriff gets to decide who’s telling the truth. Roleplaying is highly encouraged.

So I’m the sheriff and Rebekah tosses me her bag, telling me there’s naught but four lovely loaves of bread inside. “I swears it, m’lord!” she says in her worst cockney accent. I pick up the bag, raise it to my nose, and inhale deeply. “Four loaves of bread, eh?” I say, squinting. “I don’t believe you. But I suppose I could be convinced...”

Did I mention you can bribe the sheriff? You can—and you can bribe to get almost anything you want.

“I’ll give you five coins to let me through.”

“I’ll give you three coins to check Amanda’s bag.”

“I’ll give you four coins to check my own bag. DO IT, YOU PANSY.”

The sky really is the limit here, and the bribing system opens up some truly creative avenues for bluffing and counter-bluffing. But in the end, the sheriff has to decide whether or not to let each player through. If he does, he tosses the player’s bag back and the player adds the cards to her board (legal goods face-up, contraband face-down). If he decides to check a pouch, he snaps it open and takes a look. If the player was lying, she has to pay a fee to the sheriff for each card she was lying about. If she was telling the truth, the sheriff must pay her a fee for every card in her bag. False accusations can be costly, but you can’t let that sniveling merchant smuggle in a wagon full of lucrative contraband, can you?

Most bluffing games exist somewhere on a continuum of “pure logical deduction” to “pure social reading.” There is some light logical deduction to be found in Sheriff of Nottingham, but the bulk of the game is in trying to read your opponents. I’ve seen players win by being truthful the entire game, but there’s always the danger of a perennial honest Abe dropping a big bag of contraband onto his board when you least expect it.

Sheriff of Nottingham is fairly group-dependent; if players joylessly trudge through the motions, the game will fall flat. Get into your role, though, and you’ll be treated to a very social, hugely fun bluffing game.