Dead Drop is a deduction game played with a VERY small deck of cards.

Choose your own artwork.

As secret agents working for different organizations, players scour the globe seeking information that will help them find the location of a hidden explosive device. Agents must trade information and sell secrets in order to learn the location of the device and grab it before it falls into the hands of another agency!

So that blurb is a BIT overhyped… Reread that again after I tell you the game is very easy to play and plays similar to Love Letter and you’ll see what I mean.

The game is a 13-card deck of cards of different quantities from zero to five. You lay one face down, this is the ‘Drop’. Next to the drop is one card per player called the ‘Cache’.

The rest of the cards in the game are dealt out so 2 in a 4-player game and 3 in a 3-player game.

A Turn

On your turn, you can do one of 3 things…

Share Info – This involves you putting a card face down in front of another player, before they look at it they give you one of their cards.

Hack the Cache – Trade a card from the Cache face up with a card from your hand.

Sell Secrets – Pass 2 cards in your hand to another player. If the total of those two cards is equal to the value of one of that player’s cards, they say Yes. Otherwise, they say No.

Once you have done this you can Grab the Drop by placing two cards from your hand face up on the table and secretly looking at the Drop card.

If the total of the two cards matches the value of the drop, you win and you get a point, if not you put it back face down and you’re out.

Also, if everyone else knocks themselves out by getting it wrong you get a point.

First to 3 points wins.

Dead Drop Summary

Like I said, VERY easy… I also said it was like Love Letter but it’s closer to Lost Legacy really. You have this one card you’re trying to find although you can’t knock people out the round. But they do eliminate themselves! 🙂

You know 6 of the 13 cards straight away, if your first move is to ‘Share Info’ you know 7. If someone shares with you and you share with someone else, 8 cards on the first turn. Just 5 more to go!

But they’re not easy to get 🙂 As cards move from hand to hand you can’t keep track and with 4 ‘0’ value cards, are you seeing the same one or multiple copies?

It’s a fun quick game, a very good alternative to the other micro deduction games.

BTW, I mentioned art. You get the game 3 times with 3 styles of art in the main box… (Spies (pictured) Monsters and Kids). I also managed to pick up the Kickstarter edition so I have Vikings, Outlaws, Birds, Rogues and Robots too.

I  SHOULD play with the Rogue set but I like Dead Drop with the original Spy feel.

Jesta ThaRogue