Work your way up from petty crime to being an internationally known criminal capable of performing the Perfect Heist.
Designer(s): Karl Tiedemann
Artist(s): Josh Alves, Kendrick Tu
Publisher: Everwerks
After playing an espionage agency in “Invisible, Inc.”, I was reminded of an old favorite board game that had been buried deep in the collection: Perfect Heist. This is a game of crime (in the most abstract sense) where you raise your notoriety by committing heists. What is being stolen? Well, there are a variety of options from the money in the Banana Stand to a T25 Magno Spaceplane.
While you can build your own kit and increase your power, there are limitations. You can only use so many tools because you only have so many hands. Having expertise can modify these limits, but you won’t be able to get rid of them. So, as you continue your heist career, the more difficult challenges might become harder to solo.
Which leads to the weird cooperation aspect of this game. Some precarious alliances are being made to score loot from bigger targets. Why do any of these for something difficult? Well, the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. Heists give loot to help propel you forward and notoriety to establish your criminal record.
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Gameplay Overview
This is a general overview to provide context for the review, not an in-depth how-to play. Some rules may be glossed over or missing.
Perfect Heist can be played with a variety of players from 2 to 6. More players does give more options on who you can cooperate with, but it also means more competition.
Game Flow
There are no established rounds, per say, in Perfect Heist. A player takes a turn and then it is passed to the next player. And so on until the game ends. While you are going around in rounds, there is no established start player or end player. The game will end when it ends without care for who has or hasn’t gotten a turn in the round.
Setup
Cards are the main component of Perfect Heist. Three different decks make up the game: the main deck, the loot deck, and the pro deck. The cards are black, white, and red, respectively. All three decks start on (or near) the central board. Each player will also choose a color to represent them on the reputation track.
Each player will get 8 cards for their opening hand – four from the main deck and four from the loot deck. The player tableau (or ability deck) is where players can reveal cards to give their characters more strength. Cards can be played from their opening hand to the player’s tableau before the game begins.
Player Turns
There are five steps to each player’s turn. The first step is to draw two cards from the main deck, which will give you heists to perform or an identity to assume (e.g., driver, mastermind, gunman). The second step handles events. Some cards will say ‘play immediately’ or ‘play instantly,’ so follow those instructions when they appear.
The third step of the round includes trading with other players or with the central deck. Trading in cards allows you to cycle through your hand if you don’t have anything useful for your character. Players can also trade cards in their hands. This is the core time to adjust your tableau. Cards can be added or discarded as desired.
The fourth step of the round is the most important and will probably take the longest: perform a perfect heist. Okay, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but that felt too good to pass up. The active player will choose a heist from their hand to perform to gain notoriety and loot points.
Because you are drawing cards throughout the turn, extra cards need to be discarded or traded until the hand limit is reached. And then the next player goes. While there are quite a few components in a player’s turn, they go relatively quickly and often involve the other players, making Perfect Heist have a more dynamic table vibe.
End Game
Starting off as a petty criminal is just motivation to become something more. After a successful heist is performed, the involved members will move up the track. And the only thing the track cares about is if you’re successful, not the difficulty of the heist. When a player reaches the finish line, the game is over. If two people are on a heist together and cross the finish line together, well… cool. The game is over.
Concept:
The heist card has three crucial components: the heist difficulty, specialty needs, and loot rewards. Players need to meet the heist difficulty by the total points in their tableau. Well, they need to do that for any chance of success. How much ability a loot card gives is in the top left of the loot card, to match the difficulty being in the top left of the heist cards.
The top right of the heist card will tell you what specialties are needed to accomplish the heist. Some require a gunman, others require drivers, others require technicians, others require masterminds, and others might need all of them. But just because you don’t have a specialist doesn’t mean you can’t go on the heist. It just causes the heist to be a little more difficult, even though it does not increase the notoriety gained. Players can be in or out of the heist up until the moment the die of fate is rolled.
Rolling the die just adds some randomness to the heist. A good roll increases the overall ability. Rolling in the middle will have no effect. And rolling low will decrease your team’s overall ability (and potentially cause you to fail the heist). There are also windows for other players to sabotage the heist. While it is a game of propelling yourself to the top, causing others to trip up can be beneficial. Especially if they didn’t bring you along.
If the heist goes well, the players get the loot and notoriety split among them as agreed on before the heist.
Who Will Like it?
Perfect Heist is a great game for people who want their games to have a bit of social diplomacy/coercion, addition, and managing resources. There are a lot of joint incentives when it comes to going on heists because it can build up your character or give you what are effectively Victory points. The bargains struck can also be interesting, as one person might walk away with all the loot while the other takes all the notoriety. Victory Points are public informatio,n so be prepared for people to hold that against you.
What I Think
What did I like?
First, I love the theme of Perfect Heist. Having players be specialists whose tableau changes depending on their roll is very fun. Some loot cards can only be used by a certain specialist, which adds another layer to negotiations. The negotiations are also quite amusing for me because players make such interesting choices.
I have seen someone go on a heist for nothing (except the bonus they received from one of the cards in their hand). The split of notoriety and loot can end up going in drastically different ways depending on a player’s needs. If someone feels underpowered, they might give up the notoriety for more loot. Others might want the opposite. While splitting evenly among players is reasonable, some players do hold more sway in negotiations, especially when considering role.
What didn’t I like?
Okay, one of my major gripes with Perfect Heist has nothing to do with the game itself so much as the verbiage in the rulebook. The player tableau is called the “ability deck,” which makes no sense to me. How can it be a deck when it’s not a pile of cards but a spread? This verbiage really causes some confusion among the earlier plays.
The other difficulty of the game is the randomness. Sometimes you just don’t get items that are good for your character (or lack thereof). One card that cannot be traded is the specialty cards. So, if one person drew three identities, they get the value of choice, but limiting other people doesn’t feel great. And you can’t even use it as leverage in a trade!
My Take
This game is fun, light, and a bit silly. The game is mostly won through negotiation ability rather than engine building. I have seen people who have a small tableau take the game by biding their time. I have seen someone be strong in all aspects and bull their way across the finish line. Since the players can have such a major impact on the game’s mechanics, the way each game plays can be vastly different.
Breakdown
Rulebook/Learning the Game
The rulebook has its pros and cons. The rules are broken into sensible sections and give good explanations for the basics. Some of the more nuanced interactions are not as obviously explained or are written as asides that can be easily missed. What can be traded among players and when they can be traded is a bit confusing. You can trade away notoriety that will be gained from a heist, but not the earned points. And due to the excitement of the heists, there are some rules (like trading-in) that can be accidentally looked over. I do think this game would benefit from a turn reference card.
First Play
The first play of this game was a bit confusing and a lot of fun. We definitely broke some rules, but we remained consistent in our wrongness. We did have a player whose luck was absolutely horrendous, and they did not draw a specialty card the entire game. This made the later section, where specialties are part of negotiations, a lot more frustrating for them.
Subsequent Plays
As the rules and the nuances became a bit clearer, the game felt more streamlined but still had a fun social aspect. The choices to help make yourself stronger were easier to remember, what should not be traded under any circumstances was more obvious, and what should be traded felt established. Although that last point was only true of games with the same players.
Rating
5/10
I love the idea of this game, and I think it carries itself perfectly well for what it is trying to do. But Perfect Heist does have a bit too high social interaction for me in a way that I just don’t prefer. I can easily see this game being a fun one for the table, especially if lighter games are preferred, but I can also see how frustrated players can be when playing Perfect Heist. This doesn’t feel like a universal game; it can cause some polarization among different types of people.
*See my rating scale Here
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