Scape Goat Card Game First Impressions

Scape Goat sees goats trying to find the scapegoat.

Maybe it’s you? How will you know?

You’re part of an internationally renowned group of billy goat criminal masterminds, and you’ve just pulled off your greatest caper yet. Stealing the coveted golden hoof right out of the most secure bank vault in Barn City. Someone’s got to take the fall for it, just make sure it’s not you.

Scape Goat Game Play

There are player mats each for the different player counts, everybody gets one.

The location cards are placed in a line in the middle of the table, with the ‘Prepare’ location card on the left and ‘Go to the Cops’ on the right.

Give out a player token for their colour to each player and randomly place one other player token on each location, beginning with the Prepare location card.

Get the evidence cards matching the player count. Shuffle them, deal one face-up next to each
location card, except Go to the Cops. Deal three facedown next to the Stash location. Deal the rest out to the players facedown.

Roll the two decoder dice and check the values against the table printed on the back of the player mat to secretly find out who the scapegoat is.

This board has all the other players on. Everyone will see one player, but one person will see the wrong player. They are the Scape Goat and they need to hopefully figure that out.

Game Play

The game is played over 3 phases movement, action, and evidence swap.

The first thing you do is move your player token to any other location.

Then you perform the action for the location you have moved to. These are the locations:

Spy – Pick one player, they must show you their hand.
Trade – Pick one player at the table. They must exchange one evidence card from their hand with one evidence card from your hand.
Stash – Swap one of the evidence cards at this location with one in your hand.
Prepare – Place a preparation token in front of you. When a player takes the second one, the location card is flipped over to the ‘Frame/Steal’ side.
Frame/Steal – If you have a preparation token, you initiate a Frame Attempt otherwise you steal one from any player that does.
Go to the Cops – This ends the game and causes the scapegoat to win. More on this in a bit.

After you have fully completed the action, you swap an evidence card place it faceup next to the location then pick up a different faceup card that was already there. If you have one with your own colour on it, you must select one of those.

The game can end with a successful Frame Attempt or someone Going to the Cops.

How to Win

If you think you are the Scape Goat, Go to the Cops and win! Of course, if you’re not then you have just handed the game to someone else as the Scape Goat player will win whoever goes to the Cops.

For a Frame Attempt, each player picks a card from their hand and reveals them simultaneously.

If the same colour is present on all but one of the revealed evidence cards, that player is framed. The game immediately ends. If they are the Scape Goat, they lose and everyone else wins. Otherwise, the actual Scape Goat wins on their own.

If there is no predominant colour the game resumes.

Theme

Goats looking for the Scape Goat! Makes sense to me!

Setup

Has the mild fiddley bit of looking for two sets of cards with different player count icons on them. Apart from that it’s just laying stuff out and dealing cards.

Components & Artwork

Standard cards and components. . The art is nice and fun. The preparation tokens are glass beads which is the only downside, I would have liked to have seen something more creative.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

Again, and I say this a lot because I play a lot of these games but it’s tough to teach during a game. The hidden info and delicacy around it mean asking questions can be awkward.

At least a player only has 2 or 3 actions to choose from on their turn and they are explained on the action cards themselves.

Scape Goat Summary

So this has a hint of The Chameleon mixed in with a bit of One Night Ultimate. The Chameleon element is from rolling the dice and finding something secret on a table and the ONU stuff comes from the table-talk. Although table-talk is quite secretive.

It’s also more difficult than you think. I was blue and notice no one was putting blue cards into the middle of the table. So they must have been keeping them back to Frame me? I went to the cops and won.

So it’s not as easy as just holding onto cards, you also have to make the scapegoat feel secure… Of course, cards on the table is a good way to make sure everyone is on the same page… It’s tricky.

It’s a nice, cute, cheap, quick game you can add to your social deduction game rotation.

Jesta ThaRogue