The Gang Card Game Review

The Gang

WBG Score: 9

Player Count: 3-6

You’ll like this if you like: Poker, The Mind

Published by: KOSMOS

Designed by: John Cooper, Kory Heath

This is the reviewer’s copy. See our review policy here

By Steve Godfrey

“So I’ve got this poker game”

“Sorry mate I don’t gamble and I’ve got no money”

“It’s ok, it’s cooperative”

“Oh, right, that’s weird but ok, at least that means we can have a chat while playing”

“Nope, we’re not allowed to communicate”

“Wait, really?”

“And it’s about staging a heist”

“Are... are you ok mate?”

How to plan a heist

Set out the three Vault cards and the three Alarm cards. If you’re using them, also set out the challenge and specialist cards next to each of them as well. For each of the colored chips, take all of the numbers up to your player count. Place the white chips on the table, then shuffle and deal out two cards to each player and give them a reference card that shows the different types of poker hands.

Now, everyone looks at the two cards in their hand and decides how good they think their hand of cards is at the moment. Players then have to convey this information by simultaneously taking a numbered chip to reflect this. So taking the one chip, for example, will say that your hand isn’t great. This is the only form of communication you can give. You are allowed to take chips off another player if someone has, say, taken the five chip and you know your current hand is really that good. This will go until everyone is relatively happy with their chips. Then, the yellow chips are brought out and three cards are laid out to create the start of the river. The same happens again, but now you have three more cards to consider, and at this point, your hand could have gotten better or worse. When those chips have been taken, bring out the orange chips and put another card in the river. When that round is over, bring out the red chips and one last card. This will play out the same as the other rounds. These red chips are the important ones. The previous rounds have just been information gathering, but this is the big one because now, when the chips have been locked in, players will reveal their hands of cards from the lowest chip to the highest. If you manage to have gotten the hands in the right order from worst to best, you flip over a vault card. If you get any of them wrong, then you flip an alarm card. If you flip all three vault cards, then you win as a team. If you flip all alarm cards before that happens, then you lose. If you're playing with the challenge and specialists, when you flip a vault card, you then reveal the top card of the challenge deck and put it into play for the next round. This will make the next round a bit harder. If you flip an alarm, then you draw a specialist to help you in the next round and will make the round a bit easier. These cards get discarded at the end of the round. 

So, it’s cooperative poker?

Cooperative poker; it’s a weird concept, right? It’s taking something that we’ve all grown up knowing is a competitive game and turning it into something that we now play WITH each other. It almost seems sacrilegious! What next, are we going to make motor racing cooperative by tying the cars together and having them tow each other to the finish line?! It all sounds bizarre, but yet it works... the poker thing, not the motor racing. That’s maybe a bit too out there... but I am gonna pitch it just in case. 

I was taught this by Jim, and this was the last game we’d played after an epic game day. We’d played loads of great games, big and small, and most of them either made my wish list or made me want another play. I’m telling you all this because I want you to know that even after a game day full of great games, The Gang managed to stand out above all of them for me. So much so that I went and bought a copy within a couple of days and immediately introduced it to my game groups. There were mixed reactions across both, and I’ll get more into who and why a bit later, but it generally leaned more positive, unanimously so with one group. This was a massive relief because there’s nothing worse than finding a game you love and no one else gets on with it.

You can’t read my poker face, so we’ll use these chips instead.

The Gang is a game that I liken to getting a band together, although it’s easier to get rehearsals in and it’s a lot quieter, for a while anyway. Whenever you play with any number of new players of any skill level, it’s going to take a few goes before you find a rhythm between you. Sure, there are going to be a few mistakes, but when it comes to this game, even the mistakes are part of the fun. What I love about it, though, is the amount of tension and second-guessing (yourself and others) and most of all the amount of back and forth you get from it. You read that right, a game that has no communication can have great back and forth, and it’s funny! That moment where you watch someone take a chip, only to have someone else immediately shoot them a look and snatch it off them is hilarious. There are great moments, like a pretty slow first couple of rounds as people aren’t sure which chip to take, only to have the next card be “the one they were waiting for” and all of a sudden three people almost dive across the table to grab the five chip. It’s a thing of pure joy, and if you told me I was only allowed to watch this being played, I’d absolutely sit and watch it. 

As I said earlier, there’s almost a synchronicity you get when you play enough with the same people. You start to know how they think in terms of how they prioritize hands of cards and how good they are at deducing others' hands. That doesn't make the game an easy ride, though, because there are still those close calls. I can’t tell you how many times two people have fought over the bottom two chips because they both only have high cards, but their high cards end up being like a 7 and an 8. Both are valid in wanting to go low, and they both kinda know that all they’ve got is a high card, but it’s just a case of which is worse/better. It’s those kinds of reveals that bring the sighs of relief or the cries of “ah no,” and it’s brilliant. 

If you find the game is getting a bit easy, don’t worry because there are ways to change that up. First is a change of players. That’s not me saying to ditch your mates for new ones, but even adding one new player will be enough to change the dynamic. Changing player count will also increase the difficulty. I mean, we’re gamers; we all know how difficult it is to organize people for a game night/day. The same principle exists here. Getting three players to coordinate isn't always easy, but six? That’s definitely going to add to it. The game, though, has one more ace up its sleeve: Challenge and Specialist cards. Each of these gives a subtle but interesting twist to the game. One challenge card, for example, says that on round two, if any of the cards drawn aren’t a court card, then the player who had the 1 chip from the previous round discards their cards and draws two new ones. Another has you skipping the first round of chips completely. The specialist cards, on the other hand, have effects like everyone saying how many court cards they have in their hand, or one player showing another one of their cards. Out of context, they may not sound like much, but they definitely have an effect. There are a couple of other modes in the book as well to keep you on your toes if you need the extra difficulty. We haven’t had a call to play them yet, so I can’t really talk about them.

Heisting for newbies

The Gang has a familiarity and an accessibility that helps it easily draw more people in than a lot of other hobby board games would. The simple pitch of “it’s poker but we're just working together” instantly intrigues people and makes them feel a bit easier about it because at least it's a game they’ve heard of and possibly even played. It might not draw everyone in, though. The idea of poker may put people off, and while you may be able to draw them in with the lack of gambling and the co-op nature of it, it still may not be everyone's glass of whisky (that’s what you drink when playing poker, right? Or have movies failed me again?) Alternatively, you may get some odd looks from the die-hard poker players of the group as they look at you like you’ve just torn up their favorite deck of cards because you’ve used the words “co-op” and “poker” in the same sentence. Oftentimes, in both of these cases, a quick couple of goes is enough to get people on board, but not everyone. For example, in one of the groups I spoke about earlier, there were a couple of people that didn’t really know how to play poker and struggled a bit with learning how the hands worked and getting the flow of the game and how to evaluate their hand. It didn’t help that we were playing with six players as well, so the wins weren’t exactly forthcoming. That's not to say that you can’t learn poker through this game and still have a great time with it because, being that it’s co-op, it’s easy enough to play a couple of dummy rounds and coach people through it.

One thing I do want to address, and it’s only because it’s been said to me many times, is the statement: “Well, you could play this with a normal deck of cards and stand in for the chips,” and yes, yes you could. Personally, I love the production on this. The theme is neither here nor there, but everything else looks the part, and it is all tied to the theme. The cards, the chips, and the addition of the challenge cards add to the overall package for me and for a decent price. I paid around £15 for mine, and you get some good quality chips and a good quality deck of playing cards, which can be almost a tenner just on their own. Plus, it feels nicer to bring this box to the table, even if it was notoriously difficult to photograph for this review.

I made this game my number one game of 2024, and it was my most played game of 2024. Mainly because I wanted to take this everywhere and play it at any opportunity I could. But another factor is that you can’t just play this game once, especially if you lose. Someone around the table will more than likely say, “One more?” and if you haven’t guessed by now, I’m always up for one more. 

The game for me has all the addictive qualities of regular poker but without the potential for crippling debt (well, in my case anyway).

Right, I’m off to see if I can rob a bank by forming a gang and playing poker in front of the safe! Huh, maybe the theme has made an impact after all.