Perudo (Liar’s Dice) First Impressions
Perudo, or Liar’s dice as you may know it better is a tricksy dice-rolling bluff game.
How would my dislike of dice balance against my love of bluffing?
Perudo is a dice game where each player is given five dice and cup to roll and hide them with. Players make successively higher declarations regarding the results of all the dice remaining in the game, e.g. “there are ten sixes”. However, someone can always contest the bid. When that happens, all the dice are revealed and either the bidder or the caller loses dice, depending on who was correct. The last player with dice is the winner.
HISTORY ALERT!
It is believed the Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro brought the original game to Spain from South America in the 16th century, and that it might have originated with the Incas.
So I played this with 6 players and it was fun.
The first player guesses how many of a certain number is under all the cups, with ‘1’ being a wild card. So they’ll say “4 3’s”, with 4 being the bid and 3 the number on the dice for example. The next player can either…
- Increase the bid and keep the same number
- Increase the number but keep the same bid
- Half the bid (rounded up) but change the number to ‘1’
- If the number is ‘1’ you can double the bid and add 1 to increase the number
- Contest the previous bid
If the bid is contested and there isn’t enough of that number around the table the bidding player loses a dice. If there is, the player that contested loses a dice.
This continues until one player is left with dice.
For tips and a list of the best social deduction games, visit my hub page
Perudo Summary
(Quick update, I much Coyote to Perudo.)
There are other rules like if you have one dice left, you take the first bid and the number can’t be changed at all.
Also, you can interrupt from around the table if you think someone’s bid EXACTLY matches the dice around the table. If it doesn’t you lose a dice, if it does, you get dice back.
It’s fun… The dice rolling portion HELPS as it is ‘fixed’ randomness. No one knows what you have so you have to make people think you have a lot of a certain number.
It’s very clever, yet simple, especially for such an old game. If this was made in 2013 it would be popular, and would probably be a Spiel Des Jahres nominee.
It makes a good gateway game too. The group I played with are mostly new to hobby games but has played a little Heroquest and some other stuff so I’m hoping their love of Perudo with its dice/bluffing will allow me to infiltrate the group with other games. I’m thinking Avalon, Coup and Kill the Overlord for starters…
Jesta ThaRogue
