Coup: How To Play – Simplified

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Mamutt - How To Play

Game Overview

Coup is a fast paced game set in the future by Indie Games. It is a game that can involves lying to, stealing from, taxing, assassinating, oh and of course Coup-ing your fellow gamers among other things. These short 15 min games will have you guessing what your friends are up to and getting you to try a new strategy all the time.

Check out our Review of Coup here!

Rules Overview

Coup is a game of survival. You start with 2 cards/characters (aka influences), and you attempt to kill off your opponents characters in a variety of ways (which I will get into). Last person with cards in their hand is the winner of the round. Expect games to last anywhere from 2 minutes up to 20 minutes max, depending on how aggressive you feel like playing.

The game has only a few components in it:

  • 15 playing cards (3 of each character)
  • Coins
  •  6 action reference cards (1 per person playing)

You simply shuffle up the cards and deal 2 to each player (these are kept secret) and put the rest into a pile in the middle. Give each player 2 coins to start, and away you go!

The starting player then does an action based off the action sheet and the cards in their hand. The fun part here is that you can do the action of one of your cards OR you can bluff and do the action of ANY action on the reference sheet!

Coup Cheat Sheet

This is where the game gets interesting!

Once you have stated your ‘action’ other players then have 3 options:

  1. They can believe you and let you do your action (whether you are lying or not).
  2. They can call “bullshit” on you (more on this in a bit).
  3. They can perform ANY of the ‘counteractions’ on the reference card (whether they have it or not).

Now, you are probably thinking that you aren’t going to get anywhere if things keep getting blocked by counteractions… well…

This is where the game gets even more fun…

Any time someone does an ‘action’ or a ‘counteraction’, ANY player (still in the game of course), can call “bullshit” on it. What happens then is the person has to prove they are in possession of the card that can perform that action… If they don’t have that card (i.e were lying), then they have to lose one of their cards!

That is one of the 3 way people can lose their cards and get eliminated from the game. The other 2 are:

  1. Someone assassinates you (one of the ‘actions’).
  2. Someone does a Coup on you.

We won’t get into the assassination rule and some of its complexities since this is to only to help people understand how to play the game in a general sense.

To coup someone we will cover, you know, since it’s the name of the game and all.

Throughout the game, most actions involve collecting coins for yourself through various means (taxing, stealing, income, foreign aid). Once you have enough coins (7 to be exact), you can then ‘Coup’ someone.

A ‘Coup’ automatically eliminates one of their cards and they can’t block it!

There are a couple other mechanics that keep the game interesting, such as, you are forced to do a ‘Coup’ if you have 10 or more coins, and there is one character that allows you to switch your cards with the pile (ambassador), so your opponents won’t have a clue what you have.

Being consistent with your bluff is the key in the game, so as to strengthen your credibility. Unless you want to fabricate a new lie on every turn and get really aggressive. This is a sure fire way to get someone to call you out, perhaps incorrectly.

If you are looking to get more out of your game of Coup, check out...
Our Alternative Game Play Rules for Coup

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HexaGamers

We are the HexaGamers. Six good friends that love all things game related that gets us together to enjoy each other's company.

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