Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 60-90 minutes

The Components

Gangster comes with a gameboard, several sets of cards, and various cardboard and wooden components.

Game Board: A large four-panel board. This and the other components are all done in a set of dark pastel colors, doubtless intended to give everything a noir feel.

They're consistent, but also a bit dull.

The gameboard is divided into 10 districts, plus the gold coast. Each of the districts is mainly a space to place a district tile, but there are also drawings of buildings and other such nuances which give everything a feel of the real Chicago. I thought the board had too little contrast, which made it hard for some first-time players to suss out what was important, but that's a relatively minor complaint.

The district tiles are linen-textured cardboard tiles each of which shows specific information on a district, including scores and the number of spaces available for gangsters. There are 15 district tiles total, of which 10 are randomly placed each game, which is a various nice element because it means that the board layout is notably different from one game to another, adding varaiability and replayability to the game.

Cardboard Bits: The other cardboard bits are all linen-textured as well. Each player gets a small cardboard mat which shows their player color and also has a unique pictures of their gangster and their car. The mat is also where you place your available gangsters and your car upgrades. It's overall a nice piece that makes the game easier to play.

There are also: 30 car upgrade markers which are small cardboard squares, each showing a car improvement; 3 player information cards which remind you what those car improvements do; and 8 doubler tokens which are placed in districts over the course of a round.

Cards: These are all two-color linen textured cards. Each player gets three color-coded movement cards. There are also 6 casino cards for determining special district scores and 13 scoring cards. They all have simple but period-appropriate black and white artwork.

Wooden Bits: Each player gets 20 wooden cubes, 1 wooden car, and 1 scoring disc. The disc is printed with a picture of that color's gangster. These are painted in the player colors of yellow, blue, gray, brown, and green.

Overall, the components in Gangster are good quality and of purely average beauty. However a lot of work has been done on artistic nuances--such as the individual pictures on player mats and scoring markers--and on improved usability--such as providing the players mats and information cards at all. A lot of this is above and beyond what most games would do in.

So, despite my objections that the overall color scheme is a bit more dull than I'd like, I've let Gangster eke in a "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

Gangster is a gangster majority-control game where the object is to control the best positions in the most districts over three rounds of play.

Setup: The board is laid out and ten random districts tiles are placed in the ten districts. In addition three random car upgrades are placed in the Gold Coast.

Each player is given the player mat, gangsters, car, and scoring marker of their color. They place a random car upgrade in their car, as well as nine gangsters. They then randomly place their car and one gangster in one district and another gangster in another district, leaving them with seven gangsters for the first round of play.

A doubling marker is randomly placed on one of the ten districts.

Order of Play: Turns are simple and quick in Gangster. A player chooses to do one (and just one!) of the following:

• Move His Car; or
• Load a gangster; or
• Unload a gangster

Move His Car: A player moves his card by expending one of his movement cards, which are numbered 1, 2, and 3. He must then move exactly that number of districts without going to any district more than once.

If you used up your last movement card, you then draw the next scoring card, which either shows a policeman (meaning nothing happens) or a district (in which case you put a doubler marker on it). If this was the eighth and last doubler marker, the round ends and scoring occurs, as described below.

Load A Gangster: A player may load one gangster into his car. If this is one of his own gangsters he's placed upfront, but if this is an enemy gangster, he's placed in the trunk--but each player only has space for one gangster in his trunk.

Unload A Gangster: A play may unload one gangster from his car. This is usually his own gangster, but the player could dump an enemy gangster for various reasons.

Gangsters are placed on the district tile. This tile has a limited number of spaces (typically 8-16) and also records the order in which gangsters were placed, because the last gangster placed is a tie-breaker (more or less).

Ending in the Gold Coast: The Gold Coast, an area located on the Lake, is a special location and the only place where you get to do something as soon as you arrive.

First, you must upgrade your car. There's space for up to two upgrades in your car; if this is your third, then your first is removed. The various upgrades (one of which you started with) give you various special powers.

• Bodyguard: Prevents your gangsters from being thrown in the trunk for the district that your car is in.
• Trunk: Provides a second trunk space.
• Engine: Lets you move up to one more district than the movement card played.
• Bumper: Lets you bump a car from the district you end your car's movement in to an adjacent district.
• Tommygun: Lets you load a gangster into your trunk from an adjacent district.
• Door: Lets you unload two of your own gangsters on the same turn.

Second, you may dump one or more gangster in your trunk into the Lake.

Ending a Round: As noted above, a round of play ends when 8 of the 10 districts have doubler markers placed on them. You now score.

Each district tile has scoring values listed on them. However, they're unusual for two reasons. First, though many of the scores decrease from first to last place, not all do. Some have higher scores for second place and some have lower scores in the middle, meaning that it's not always best to be biggest. Second, some scores are marked with a "?", meaning that they're randomly determined; each scoring round you pull one of the six Casino cards, giving a value from 1-6 for all the "?"s that round.

So a few typical district tiles read: "5/4/1", "6/4/3/1", "5/?/2/4", "3/4/1", and "4/6/?/2".

Scoring is based on simple majorities in the district, with the latest piece placed breaking ties between players. Note that eight of the districts get their scores doubled and two do not.

After the scoring is over, all the doubler markers are removed, the scoring deck is reshuffled, and then one is randomly placed to get things started.

Then each player gets more mobster in his car: 6 or 5 depending on the round.

Ending the Game: The game ends after the third scoring round. The player with the highest score wins.

Relationships to Other GameS

Gangster is a pretty pure majority-control game, a genre which includes notables such as El Grande, China, and Mission Red Planet--my favorites of the type.

Gangster differentiates itself from the pack in two ways. First, players have a lot more control, because they can somewhat determine where their pieces go and can even move pieces around. Second, the scoring, as already discussed, has some unique nuances.

The Game Design

Generally, Gangster is the best new majority-control game that I've played in about a year. The ways in which it changes the genre are both fresh and interesting. The ability to really decide where your pieces go is a nice piece of strategy that I feel is missing from many majority-control games. From El Grande to Mission Red Planet most other games of this sort place pretty tight controls on where you place pieces and also severely limit your ability to move them later. The ability to actually think ahead about where things were going to be placed in Gangster thus offered long-term strategy not present elsewhere.

Contrariwise, the uneven levels of scoring introduced neat tactics to the game, as you could place or remove pieces in such a way as to try and hit a "sweet spot" in the scoring. Some players found this to be too much to keep track of, but if you're interested in this higher level of attention, it really pays off.

There are two other notable standouts in the game.

The first is its theming. I particularly love the ability to take enemy pieces by stuffing them in your trunk--then dumping them into the Lake.

The second is the attention paid to replayability, particularly through those changing district cards.

There is some randomness in the game in the casino cards, and there can be some chaotic events resulting from players constantly working against each other, thus if you want a totally controllabe game, this still isn't it. However, Gangster offers some great strategy and tactics and some great innovations for the majority-control genre, and thus I've unreservedly given it a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Gangster is a great majority-control game that combines innovation, strategy, and tactics, producing a game that's both enjoyable and replayable.