I’ve spoken with our manufacturer and distributor and have been able to figure out international shipping options for Broker, so now you can cheat all over the world!
Now, while that’s exciting, let’s talk about how the game actually plays a little bit!
You start by shuffling up and dealing out the deck. You draw a starting hand of four cards, and then play one each turn, drawing back up to four at the end of your turn. First player to get rid of their hand and deck wins. There’s a little bit more detail to the rules, and of course, there is the whole cheating thing, but other than that, it’s a very straightforward game. If you do get caught cheating (within a limited time frame) the cheat is undone, and each other player gives you a card, which helps them get closer to their goal of, well, beating you.
As I harped upon in the project, Broker is a game that creates stories through unique play patterns, and I wanted to take this opportunity to share some of the fun things that have happened during our playtests with all of you.
The first time we ever played Broker, back when it was just a bunch of note cards with shoddily written instructions, our first game ended in about ten seconds, when a player swiped his deck under the table and threw down the two cards he left in his hand.
This has become a classic moderate-risk, high-reward strategy. If you can pull it off, it’s clearly amazing, because you win the game, but if you get caught (which is likely) the cards you get can be easily cheated away later in the game, and since you just started, you’re likely going to have the time to take advantage of some opportunities down the road.
In another game, before anybody had taken a turn, every single player in the game cheated, and got caught, at least once. I’m not sure how many times everybody cheated, but I know that I got away with a second cheat!
Finally, in a third playtest, one player kept on shoving cards down the back of his shirt. We didn’t catch it in the first game, but when he stood up at the end of the round, and shook out his shirt, we figured it out. But then, at the end of the next round, he did the same thing. And the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. Somehow, with all of us aware, and trying to catch him, he was able to casually just scratch his back, and drop his cards down his shirt.
Fat Elf Games 