Peaky Blinders: Faster than Truth

Board Game Geek Reviews

1. 5 out of 10

   USSAwesome

   I was a fan of Peaky Blinders, as was everyone else on my side of the family. Personally, I avoid intellectual property-themed games on principal. They don’t interest me for myriad reasons. But my sister gifted this to our dad, and as the Board Game Guy in our family I was tasked with learning and teaching the thing. It’s a one-note affair, but not entirely dull. Players compete to acquire five or more of the same resource. As they collect resource cards, each is displayed on the table as public information. For various reasons, some cards can be temporarily kept face down. On each turn, the active player employs two “Intrigue” cards in one of two ways: the “safe” route guarantees that the action will be performed, while the “gamble” option will yield greater spoils…if you can get away with it. When you play your card face down and announce its title, other players are tasked with deciding whether or not they think you are gambling, and whether or not they want to call you on it. If they catch you out, they can steal one of your resources. If they make a false accusation, they must surrender one to you. That’s the long and short of it. The tug of war goes around the table until someone is able to begin their turn with five of a kind. Bluffing games are not my thing, so this one left me a bit cold. It functioned well and made for some good laughs, especially when I ended up with zero cards after two rounds due to bad guessing and sloppy gambling, but I never felt particularly engaged. Perhaps this is because Faster than Truth is geared to improve with multiple plays. The title on each card (e.g. Protection Racket, Unfolding Schemes, Fresh Blood, Union Backers) usually doesn’t give any indication of what the card will accomplish, so familiarizing oneself with the deck through multiple plays is the only sure way to get a handle on the strategy; but this hinges on the same group of people executing those multiple plays. Someone on BGG put together nice player aids detailing every card, and these should be printed and stuffed in your box without question. The game’s overall graphic design is boring but pretty good, except for the fact that they opted for screen captures instead of original art: a big no-no. To make matters worse, there are only 32 Intrigue cards divided into 12 different types, and the same images are recycled across each duplicate. There’s about as much visual variety here as a standard deck of playing cards. Yawn. To a Peaky Blinders fan, even the images themselves are poor representations since they seem mostly to come from the late seasons and feature several fringe characters while omitting fan favorites such as those played by Helen McCrory and Tom Hardy. For an item intended to be purchased on a whim or as a lack-of-options last minute gift for a fan of the franchise, Faster than Truth provides a surprisingly decent experience. It is smooth and functional, with an easily digestible rule book and low barrier to entry. On the other hand, it’s dry and uninspired. There’s nothing here to hold my attention, and I feel a little goofy slapping a card down and saying, “Untrustworthy Thugs!”