Game review: Saboteur

Saboteur is a quick card game for 3 to 10 players.

Setting

Saboteur is set in a dwarven mine, where the golddiggers are trying to get to some gold nuggets, while the saboteur(s) are trying to stop them. This is done by laying out cards with representing mining tunnel segments. The players do not know each others's roles, and there is a chance that actually no saboteur is present. They can handicap each other by destroying tools or blowing up part of the tunnels. Part of the fun are the random accusations and wrong suspicions until the saboteur(s) reveal(s) themselves by their actions.

Complexity

The rules are easy to grasp, and after at most 2 rounds of "what does this card do?" all players can concentrate solely on the game and finding the saboteurs - or blowing shit up.

Space Requirement

The creation of the mining tunnel maze requires a fair bit of table space while playing, say most of a dinner table or nearly all the area of a 3-man-tent, but since Saboteur is based solely on cards it packs away into a small package about double the size of a poker deck.

Timing

Depending on how familiar all players are with the rules, 3 rounds of Saboteur can be finished within 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Conclusion

Saboteur is a nice quick time-filler. The rounds a short, so there is hardly any pressure if one has to finish by a certain time.