Scarface 1920

Redzen went for a production that conventional publishing would struggle to approve, and crowdfunding gave it room to exist. The deluxe edition is generous and beautifully made, with component quality that can stand beside Mindclash; shame about the cube-shaped box, which will not accommodate the small expansion and the KS exclusives without a degree in game packing. Big box, small foresight. Still, the setting does its work: Prohibition spreads across the table and asks you to be a boss, not an accountant in a hat.

Under the faux-Euro skin of worker placement, area control and engine building sits a proper gangster sandbox. You hire assistants, develop the angle supported by your boss, and try to turn boss powers and associates into something useful; ignore your boss's very strong ability and the game is quite happy to make you regret it. There are plenty of rules, but once the first game is behind you, the systems click together and the rulebook becomes much less of a frequent visitor.

The player aids, unfortunately, look like a restaurant menu and omit things you genuinely need to remember, such as taking the signet ring when hiring an assistant. Rulebook grade: decent, but the aids lose it marks. News cards can wreck your plan or drag you back into contention, while associate combinations wait to start handing out cannoli. It is meaner than it looks, but less punchy than its card-fuelled chaos suggests: many groups may see very little direct conflict, perhaps none at all. Then the game simply stops. Rather quickly, often after someone is first to upgrade hand size. Make of that what you will.

At three players, with the associate draft from the variants, Scarface 1920 shows its best side; I would also shuffle in two extra “Prohibition Ends” cards, so the ending is less of a kingmaking exercise. It is not a contender for a permanent place in the rotation, and its short running time leaves me wanting more substance. But when nobody arrives already beaten by life, it is a distinctive, generous gangster sandbox with a very good time in it.