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Family Business is a reprint of a classic American card game by Mayfair Games.
Players: 2-6
Time: 30-60 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
The Components
Family Business comes with 112 cards and a rulesheet.
The Cards: The cards include 54 mobster cards and 58 action cards. They're printed full-color on medium-weight, glossy cardstock.
The 54 mobster cards are divided into 6 families of 9 mobsters each. Each of the cards distinguishes the family with a color and a graphical name. The individual mobster is acknowledged by his name and picture. At first I was really pleased to see that there were individual pictures of each mobster, something missing from the previous, 1989 edition of the game. However looking closer I was pretty disappointed. The pictures are black and white and many of them are quite pixelated. Combining this with the monochromatic background, the mobster cards come out quite plain.
The 58 action cards represent thing you can do in game. There are three broad classes: red attack cards, blue counter cards, and green rescue cards. The different colors help clarify and simplify the card use. Each card also features artwork which is cartoony but of good quality.
Unfortunately the cards are poor for usability. Each card features the name of the card with absolutely no explanation of what it does, other than the general card category. When you've played for a few minutes, you'll start remembering the most standard cards ("Contract", "Finger", and "Take it on the Lam"). However, through the end of the game, our mostly first-time Family Business players were still confusing "Family Influence" and "Mob Power", and whenever a special card came up the rules had to be passed around. This was my experience playing with the previous edition of the game too, and I was very disappointed that it hasn't been corrected this time around.
Another minor usability problem emerges in the "Contract" cards. Besides normal Contracts there are also "Priority" contracts, "No Mob Influence" contracts and "No Family Influence" contracts. These special attributes are put down in the art on the card and are very easy to miss as a result; I missed them a few times.
Overall I wasn't that happy with the cards in Family Business, between the hard-to-use action cards and the unattractive mobster cards.
Rulesheet: A folded-up rulesheet printed in black & white. It taught the rules well, and the backside had all the references that were (constantly) needed for the cards during the game.
On the whole, the cards in Family Business are of average quality, low to average beauty, and have notable utility problems because of the lack of explanatory text. It thus earns "2" out of "5" for Style, though long-time players will do better once they learn how every card works.
The Gameplay
The object of Family Business is to eliminate all the other player mobs.
Setup: Each player is given a family of nine mobsters and an initial hand of 5 action cards.
Playing Your Turn: The normal order of play in Family Business is "draw a card, play a card". When you play a card, there are two common action types.
Most frequently you put a Contract on another player's mobster, which puts that mobster on the "Hit List", a sequential line of mobsters starting at The Wall (the gamebox) and going down from there. There are some special Contracts including ones that don't allow counters (more on those momentarily) and Priority Contracts, which put the mobster at the head of the Hit List.
The other frequent action is Take It on the Lam, a rescue card which lets you pull someone off the Hit List.
Beyond these there are about a dozen special cards each of which only appear one or two times in the deck.
These include the following attacks:
- St. Valentine's Day Massacre: Kills everyone on the Hit List.
- Double Cross: Puts one mobster from each opponent on Hit List.
- Mob War: Starts a Mob War.
- Ambush: Starts a double-strength Mob War.
- Vendetta: Puts two mobsters from each opponent on Hit List and starts a double-strength Mob War.
- Turncoat: Removes a mobster from the player with the most and gives a mobster to the player with the least.
And the following rescues:
- Police Protection: Removes a mobster from the Hit List.
- Substitution: Replaces a mobster on the Hit List with someone else's.
- Intrigue: Rearranges the Hit List.
- Truce: Stops a Mob War.
- Pay Off: Removes all of one player's mobsters from the Hit List.
- Federal Crackdown: Removes all mobsters from the Hit List.
(It's all these specials not having text on the cards that causes the problems noted above, in The Components.)
Counters. Some actions can be countered.
A Family Influence or a Mob Power may be used to counter a Contract. Family Influence nullifies it, while Mob Power causes a mobster from the attacker to go on the Hit List.
Finger counters Take It on the Lam.
Safe House counters Vendetta for that one player only.
If a player counters a card, it's now his turn. He draws to replace his counter then takes his normal turn. (This tends to create one of the general rules of Family Business: "attack right". Because if you do, and the opponent counters, it'll be your turn again soon.)
Mob War!: Whenever there are six or more mobsters on the Hit List this initiates a Mob War. At this point the mobster at the start of the Hit List dies at the start of each player's turn.If there's a double-strength Mob War, two people are killed each turn. This continues until there is no one left on the Hit List.
Mob War can also be started by a few special cards, and stopped by Truce, as noted above.
Winning the Game: You're eliminated from the game if your entire mob is killed. You win the game if you're the last gang standing.
Relationships to Other Games
Family Business is a classic Mayfair Games game. It was designed by David B. Bromley, who's only other game design work was a contribution to Mayfair's Sanctuary. This is the third edition of Family Business, with previous editions published in 1982 and 1989.
Family Business is a pretty standard American beer & pretzels game. It's got direct confrontation, "take that" gameplay, and player elimination, and is really all about taking out the leader. It reminds me of Guillotine, a later game which featured a similar cards-queueing-up-to-die mechanism, as well as most recent fight games like Kung Fu Fighting.
Family Business is also one of many American mob card games, with others being Reiner Knizia's Razzia, Bruno Faidutti's Corruption, and Mike Fitzgerald's Mystery Rummy: Al Capone and the Chicago Underworld (as well as the upcoming Bonnie & Clyde. There are quite a few others too, though this was clearly one of the earliest.
The Game Design
Family Business is a very simple game. There's a bare minimum of different types of cards, even including all of the specials, and they have a pretty proscribed, small set of possible actions. By this measure, it's very simple to play. It also has a very high luck factor (based on card draws), and not much in the way of strategy.
There are two notable game design elements:
First is the Hit List, which queues up cards which are going to be killed. It was definitely an innovative mechanism in 1982. I think Guillotine used the mechanism better in 1998. In Family Businessthere's just not enough opportunity to really move the queue around (and thus not as much opportunity for the strategy it allows), while in Guillotine that's half the game. However, Family Business did it first, and remains one of the few games to use this mechanism.
Second is the fluid turn order, where you get to take a turn if you interrupt with a Counter. Honestly, I'm not sure this is a good mechanic. In the last game I played we had five players, and play started just to my left. it was 10-15 turns before I actually got a turn because I kept getting jumped past, and that can be frustrating. On the other hand, the fluid turns allow another degree of strategy in an otherwise relatively simple game, because you can decide whether to attack a player who you think can't counter, or whether to attack a player that's more likely to give you another turn. Last game I tried to purposefully use this mechanism to exclude the player to my left, who was also the most likely to attack me (per the above, attack-to-the-right philosphy). It sorta worked.
Overall, Family Business is by no means a deep game, and thus I've only given it a "2" out of "5" for Substance. However, as with a few similar, luck-driven fight games that I've played that's not necessarily a knock against it. If you want a luck-based, American game, this is a fine & classic example.
Conclusion
Family Business is a classic American beer & pretzels game. It's luck-based and it doesn't have a lot of depth, but it's well-themed and it can be fun if you're looking for this sort of entertainment. I'd hoped that Mayfair would fix some card usability problems with this new edition, but alas they're still there, and you'll have to look up what cards do until you've played several times.
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