Between Ticket and Agricola, we played a game of PARANOIA: The Mandatory Card Game. Now, I have played this in the past, but that was during the playtest primarily, when I wanted to spend the time reading everything to check for inconsistencies and errors. Playing with a couple of newbies, and another couple of players who had played before but have incredibly poor recollection, I found the game entertaining, but slow. I never really considered it before, but the cards are too busy – and that can slow the game to a standstill. Standard PARANOIA attempts to be light, with simple, re-usable mechanics and a leaning to keep the rules right out of the way (within the purview of the GM rather than everyone). The Mandatory Card Game demands that the players take the time to familiarise themselves with a hand of 6+ cards with a lot of game text, as well as the odd pretty picture or flavour snippet. It meant that even after the sixth mission kicked in, people were having to sit and read through their hand before the game got start – and the whole pace suffered as a result. In the end, one of the players got bored and started to shoot himself, rendering him a traitor and therefore a very easy and entirely legal target.

I’m not sure what the solution is for this, but I’m sure there is one… Chances are, however, that solving the problem more than likely means replacing all the cards, which really makes it a case of reassessing the concept and starting from square one. It’ll be like going through the same year all over again, trying to iron out the problems and undo all the mistakes. Who’d want to do that?!

Addendum: On the up side, I did add Puppeteer to the deck, and it saw action twice during the course of play… handy to be able to pull out Anytime and redirect an inconvenient stack of tokens from one place to another. On the second occasion, someone played a card that placed Treason tokens on the Team Leader, he countered with a card that sent them back at the person playing the card, and a third player Puppeteered the lot back on the Team Leader. That’s solid PARANOIA team work for you!

I found an odd little quirk of the PARANOIA Mandatory Bonus Fun Card Game that doesn’t quite justify a whole article (just yet!). Treason lies at the heart of the game – as it affects the status of each Troubleshooter. You can shoot a Traitor with impunity, but attacking Loyal citizens is bad. One mission – Go ‘Outdoors’ – requires you to sustain damage to benefit, in this case gaining a Security Clearance. The mission, as a result, tends to become bloodless, each player suddenly losing interest in just shooting you, traitor or not.

Now, the rules clearly state that damaging Computer property – like loyal clones – is bad… however, it then clearly states that you receive 2 Treason tokens for damaging another Troubleshooter. Apparently, your personal value to The Computer doesn’t matter quite so much. So, you can Wound yourself without sustaining Treason damage and look forward to the prospect of a promotion at the end of the mission. Ideally, thin your hand of any cards you can’t Play Anytime, retaining a weapon and as many Cancel cards as you can – like New Improved Treasonous Activity List and Bribe (don’t use something like Better Idea, because you’ll end up with an extra card by default, which you want to avoid). Play the weapon to Wound yourself, then cancel any responses from the rest of the team that might try to stop you. If no one stops you, use the Play Anytime cancel cards as rapidly as possible on the next Troubleshooter’s turn to empty your hand and end the mission.

You might consider trying an alternate approach to this by using Puppeteer. If another player tries to hurt himself using the method already outlined above, bide your time until other team members have played all their Cancel cards… then, assuming the Wound remains, Puppeteer it onto your own Troubleshooter. Then Cancel off any attempts to stop the play. Voila… a Security Clearance increase without all the treason nonsense normally associated with damaging Computer property.