This is a great, and underrated, new hidden movement game from CMON. The basic idea here is that one player plays the drug lord Pablo Escobar/Patron, while between 1-4 players play each of the Hunter factions trying to find him (DEA, Cartel, etc) before he establishes political dominance or completes two public objectives. It's great fun, as you race to traffic cocaine through airports while the DEA and cartels try to navigate through your controlled towns, set up blockades, and maybe even capture you. Pretty much every Patron action gives the Hunters a clue as to where he is, and the value of the clue is proportional to the benefit Patron is seeking, creating a great tension. Should Patron deploy a high-level Sicario, even though that gives a huge clue about his hideout? Or should he deploy a weaker one, to better hide his movements? COMPARISONS TO OTHER GAMES: -------------- Some of my favorite hidden movement games add something besides the chase for both the hunters and the target player to do -- but also integrate that activity so that both players need to balance the side activity. In Narcos, it's possible that you can get lucky and guess where Patron is. But Patron doesn't lose automatically because of that! He gets one get out of jail free card.BUT -- and this is huge --, Patron's options for escape depend a lot on how he's played up to that point in the strategic side of the game. If you just want a lean, purer chase game, check out Lord of the Ring: The Confrontation and Letters from Whitechapel/Whitehall Mystery, which I think perfected that concept (first sort of introduced decades ago by Scotland Yard.) Probably my all-time favorite 'hidden movement' game for 2 players is Star Wars: Rebellion because both the Empire and Rebellion must balance the search for the rebel base with completing or blocking objectives. Narcos takes only about an hour and a half to play, compared to four-six hours for Rebellion, and feels like a streamlined take on that concept. It is also somewhat similar to Fury of Dracula -- except in Narcos, Pablo only rarely gets to secretly move on the game board. Pablo basically only gets to move ONE TIME for free to anywhere on the board, when he is caught the first time -- and he also gets to move at the end of each season, although when he moves at the end of the season HE MUST OBEY MOVEMENT RESTRICTIONS (he also needs to do this when he's caught the first time and relocates, but he doesn't have to pay money). That means clever hunter placement and blockade placement can cut him off. (However, Pablo can move through spaces held by his own sicarios, so Sicarios may want to clear a path for Patron -- and Hunters have incentive to attack the Sicarios to prevent this). Also, Pablo must pay for his end of season movements -- he can only move a number of spaces equal to the amount he pays! So his economy is important. Narcos is however significantly less rules-heavy/complex than Fury of Dracula or Rebellion, plays great with 2-3 players, and finishes faster. This game is a good intro to hidden movement games, as its cardplay /interactions are far more streamlined than Rebellion and Fury to Dracula -- and the decision space is a bit more restricted. My Narcos games have usually come down to the wire, but they haven't been very brainburny -- usually the Hunters figure Patron is in 2-3 possible spots at the end of the season, and make a tense guess based on their available info, and patron's possible escape routes. IDEAL PLAYER COUNT -------------- Narcos really plays from 2-5 players, but it becomes a cooperative game for the DEA/cartel/policia factions as they work against Patron and his henchman Sicarios, and all the complaints I have about cooperative games come into play there. There's high potential for quarterbacking and I just think 2-3 players is really ideal for this game. When you have 2+ players as Hunters, just be sure you are OK with one Hunter telling the other what the ideal play seems to be. The other problem with playing with more players is downtime. There's simply not enough for each Hunter player to do, and there's tons of time between turns. The turn order for each season is Patron Player--Then 1 Hunter Faction--Then Patron player again--Then The Next Hunter faction. So it works especially great with 2 players, as there is not a lengthy period of time where the Hunter factions all move one after the other, as in some other hidden movement games, like Treasure Island or Letters from Whitechapel (both fantastic games). Note--there are potentially an unlimited number of 'seasons' in the game. The designers previously had it capped at 3 seasons, but this encouraged the Patron player to simply hide, rather than complete objectives. So now, the game only ends if the Hunters catch Patron twice, OR Patron completes 2 objectives OR gets his popularity rating to 20. Patron stops uncovering new possible objectives to complete after season 3, however. IMPORTANT HOUSE RULE -->> There can potentially be a problem in the base game, if the Patron player simply acts very conservatively and hides, maxing out his income. This can sometimes lead to duller games, because by default, Narcos has no 'timer' like Letters from Whitechapel -- the game can go on for infinite rounds until one side fulfills a win condition. So, I like to implement the following two rules, which I first heard about on BGG. First: If Hunters cannot find Patron even one time by the end of Season 3, Patron wins. Second: If Patron cannot fulfill one of their victory conditions and win the game by the end of the 4th season, Patron loses. This is thematic, keeps tension up, and avoids potentially slow and dull games where Patron just hides to max out his lab money. The designers had playtested a similar variant (in which the Hunters simply win if Patron has not won the game by the end of season 3) and rejected it as unthematic, but the real problem is that that makes things a touch too hard on Patron. This new House rule is best, I think, but it is by no means required. UNIQUE MECHANICS, HOW TO WIN, ETC. -------------- The real hook here are the 'investigations' actions that the factions allied against Patron can pursue. They can spend valuable action points on various activities, including attacks against Patron agents, destroying his coke labs, etc., but the most interesting are investigative techniques that help narrow down where Patron is hiding. The most pricey investigation will force Patron to tell you 2 numbers -- one truthfully indicating the shortest distance from your active hunter/DEA agent to Patron, and the other a decoy number he just makes up. Other actions force Patron to tell you if he's on a city or forest, or whether he's in the same region as you -- again, these have analogues in Rebellion, too. There are several innovations. First, you can't win simply by "Stumbling" on Patron on the way to doing something else. Here, Patron can be hiding on a spot with a DEA agent or Hunter. Unless they use an action point(s) specifically to search for Patron there, he remains undetected. This is a distinction in some ways from Rebellion. Second, once you 'catch' Patron once -- say, with a lucky guess - -you don't automatically win! Patron gets one free relocation. This helps a LOT. It's kind of annoying to have a game of Whitechapel or Treasure Island end just because someone makes one lucky guess. Rebellion reduces this risk with base relocation, and so does Narcos -- I love it. Luck is mitigated. And third, you aren't just trying to find Patron. You also have to keep check on his drug empire or he'll be able to complete objectives and win the game by finishing them. For instance, one objective is called Miami and involves shipping out a certain amt of cocaine before the game round (cutely called a "season") ends. These objectives are public knowledge at the beginning of each season, so the hunters are aware of what patron can go for
