Succession is like that. Your Move Games is a pretty small publisher – they have three games so far, and one of them they were just giving away at GenCon. Though Battleground is starting to turn a few heads, my personal favorite Your Move game is Succession. If you played this game and nobody told you otherwise, it would not be hard to believe it came out of Fantasy Flight.

Succession is a funny game, as in it will make you laugh the whole time you play it, except when you're groaning. Even the premise is amusing – the king is choosing a successor, one of five people. Those five people are his foremost knight, his son, his daughter, the archbishop, and a wealthy merchant. The problem is, none of those people is you. So instead of trying to get yourself a crown, you're hoping to be the brain trust, the right hand man, the power behind the throne. To accomplish this, you ingratiate yourself with the candidates, trying to make them think that you're responsible for their rise to power, even if you're not.

Each player takes on the role of the squire, the ambassador, the taxman, the wizard or the royalist. Each character has different abilities – the wizard can buy extra cards, while the squire has just a little more voice at court than everyone else. The royalist is great at making people love her, while the ambassador is great at making people not hate him (there's a difference, you know). The taxman, appropriately, is good at getting money.

The goal of the game, in practical terms, is to have the highest standing with the candidate who is chosen for the throne. Each candidate has standing with the king, and each player has standing with each of the candidates. The main board tracks the rise and fall of the candidates, while the individual player boards track each player's progress with the candidates.

The game has three kinds of cards. The first is the influence card. These cards are extremely straight-forward – they simply present a number between 4 and 9. These cards can be used during voting rounds, along with cash, to improve a character's odds of swaying the results. While everyone can see how much money is in front of you, influence cards are hidden, and can be a nasty surprise for your opponents.

The second kind of card is the event card. These tricky little cards have all sorts of purposes – some help you earn money, some help you cost other people money, and some improve your standing with various candidates. Some cards can ruin a critical vote for another player, and some can protect you from those who would hurt you.

The third kind of card is the most important – the intrigue. These cards are the primary way that candidates gain or lose standing with the king. When one is played, the card will say whether a successful result damages or improves particular candidates standing with the king. Then the players vote to either pass or fail, by committing their money and influence cards to sway the resolution one way or the other.

The intrigues are really the central point of the game, because they not only determine whether candidates rise or fall, but they can be responsible for the rise or fall of players with candidates. After an intrigue passes or fails, the player who committed the most voting power (and probably ran through most of his money) gets to control the spin. This crucial aspect is often far more important than whether a particular candidate rises or falls.

Whenever an intrigue targets a candidate, that candidate will have someone to thank or blame for the attempt. The trick to Succession is making sure that candidates believe you were responsible for their rise, and the other players get blamed for the fall. It really does not matter who was actually responsible for the intrigue, only who the candidates think was responsible, and the player controlling the spin gets to decide who takes credit, and who takes the blame.

The game continues until one candidate gains the throne. At that point, the player with the highest standing with the chosen candidate becomes his or her most trusted advisor, and wins the game.

This quick summary of the rules does not come close to doing this game justice. At any time, players can exchange money and influence cards. If one player has the opportunity to damage one other player, he can force the others into a bidding war, with the lowest bidder taking the hit. If a player has a chance to improve the lot of the others, he can actively solicit bribes. Even after an intrigue is over, a player might accept money to place blame or credit. Since money is so important in controlling the game, these negotiations become a whole separate game, with players yelling across the table and pushing even more money to improve their situations or avoid disastrous results.

It is difficult to convey in a written review how fun it is to play Succession. The backstabbing and scheming make the game no fun for the soft-hearted, but for those with a killer streak, Succession is intense and hilarious fun. Every time one player thinks he's got the win in his pocket, another player might drop a spoiler in his lap, denying him a vote or forcing him to spend too much money, and the entire game can spin on a dime. Only quick thinking, slick back-stabbing and tricky deal-making can win this game.

To add to the enjoyment of Succession, Your Move Games hired Phil Foglio to do the art. The characters are pure Foglio hilarity, and the art in Succession is great cartoony fun.

Unfortunately, there are a few small elements that point to a fledgling publisher. While the rules are intriguing and the art is brilliant, a few pieces in the game suffer from obvious budget constraints. The counters are all single-sided, relatively low-quality cardboard. The art side looks great; the back side is paper-bag brown. Not only does this hurt the image of the game, but it makes it difficult to pick the right coins out of a stack. It is a shame – the game makes amazing strides with fantastic rules and great art, and then falls just short with the components.

Even with the cheaper cardboard counters, however, Succession is a great game. The Foglio art cannot be mentioned enough, and the writing throughout the short rulebook will have you laughing out loud. Game play is so much fun that you will hardly notice the passing of time. All things considered, Succession exceeds expectations for a small-press game and delivers a thoroughly enjoyable experience – as long as you don't mind a little cutthroat.

Style: 4 – The art is great, the writing in the rules will keep you in stitches, but a few cheap components keep this out of a 5.

Substance: 5 – For players who can enjoy wheeling, dealing and back-stabbing, Succession is a fantastic game.

In consulting DTRPG we've come up with a number of products which we think might be related, but some might be inaccurate because the name, Succession, is so short. Nonetheless, take a look, as purchasing through the RPGnet Store helps to support RPGnet.