Mob City: The Card Game Review

Publishers: UNI vs. Games

Designer: Jen Duncan

Number of Players: 2 – 8

Age: 12+

Time: 30-60 minutes

Mob City lets you becoming a Mob leader, as you attempt to become the leading Mob in, well, the City. It is a relatively straightforward game to play and pick up (although set up is a pain) and is also a ton of fun as you immerse yourself in the world that Jen Duncan and UNI vs Games take you on.

If you have played Dominion before, then picking up Mob City and learning the rules will not take you very long at all. Mob City, is currently on Kickstarter and for $45 CAD you can pledge for the base game. To check out the rest of the Kickstarter click here.

What you get in the box

A lot of cards!

Well to be precise:-

100 Act Cards

28 Payroll Cards

88 Large cards (that’s money, the cards are the same size as the rest)

36 Juice Cards

70 Hit Tokens

and 1 die.

Cards may appear Larger than they really are

The Rules

The aim of the game, is to either become the first player to get 25 Juice Points, or to kill your opponents and be the last wo/man standing. As I mentioned before it is fairly similar to Dominion, however in Mob City you deal out all the Action Cards (Act Cards). Each player gets dealt a hand of Five cards to start (4 Large and 1 Gambler (Payroll) card) and also 8 Hit Tokens, the aim then is to start buying Act Cards which will be used to attack your opponents, and also when you have enough you can start buying Juice Cards, which act as Victory Cards. You can also buy Payroll Cards, which when used will give you free Large cards, so free Money, who doesn’t want that!

You can do a couple of things each turn:

Either, Use a Payroll Card and get your free money.

Buy as many Act Cards as you can afford with the Large that you have in your hand

Attack a player, or players with as many Attack Cards as you have got (however, you can only attack one player on any one turn)

After you have done one of those, you then discard your cards into your personal discard pile and deal another five cards to form your hand.

So how do you kill someone, or whack to keep it with the Mob theme. Well you use your attack cards of course, however players can defend these attacks if they are lucky to have the right Act card in their hand at the right time of the attack. You can also Bribe your opponent, which is a fun little thing to do and can also keep you in the game if you haven’t been buying Act cards wisely.

Once the first player to buy Juice Cards which equal 25 they have one. Pretty simple.

Some Act Cards

Final Thoughts

We played this game with two people, and although the rules say that that is fine it really wasn’t. First off playing with just two players, makes the game play super quick and games can be done and dusted within twenty minutes. You also do not have nearly enough time to get 25 Juice Points with two players, once certain Act cards like Tommy Gun have been bought as your opponent is likely to have killed you off within moments.

Having not played the game yet with more than two, I do think that what I wrote above is harsh. As this game is clearly not a two player game. With more than two there is a lot more interaction, the game will also last a lot longer and the race to 25 Juice points will become hotly contested.

That being said, the game was a lot of fun to play and with a few house rules added this could really become a great game and one to add to games night.

Overall this game was fun, and once you get into it you can really start messing around with the cards and the way some of them are written really gets you into the spirit of being an Italian Mob Boss. Although advertised as a two player, I would recommend getting some more people round for game night ‘cos this really could end up being a winner.