Family Business (game)

Last updated
Family Business
Components of 1982 Mayfair Games Family Business.png
Original 1982 edition, Mayfair Games
Players2–6
Setup time5 minutes
Playing time30 minutes
ChanceMedium
Skills Alliances

Family Business is a card game of "mob vengeance" for 2 to 6 players, published by Mayfair Games in 1982, and then again in 1989.

Contents

Components

The 1989 Mayfair edition of the game includes:

Game play

The purpose of the game is to use contract or attack cards to force other players to place their mobsters in the "Up Against the Wall" queue, where they are in danger of being eliminated from the game. [1]

Setup

Each player is given one family of nine mobsters, which are displayed face-up on the table in front of the player. The Up Against the Wall card and Cemetery cards are placed face-up in the centre of the table. The deck of action cards is shuffled and placed facedown on the table. [1]

Play

Mob War

A Mob War automatically starts when the Up Against the Wall queue exceeds five mobsters. (Some attack cards can also start a Mob War even if there are five or less mobsters in queue.) [1]

Once a Mob War has begun, at the start of each player's turn, the mobster first in the Up Against the Wall queue the is permanently removed from play and placed on the Cemetery card. [2]

The Mob War ends when all mobsters on the wall have been eliminated, or when someone plays a rescue card that ends the Mob War. [1]

Near the end of the game, when there are six or fewer surviving mobsters, the Mob War is continuous and cannot be stopped. [2]

Winning the game

The player who is the last to have a surviving mobster is the winner. [3]

Reception

In the March 1989 edition of Games International (Issue #3), Brian Walker was happy this "very good game" had been reissued, since it had previously been "very difficult to obtain in the UK when it was first published by the Illinois based Mayfair Games." Walker pointed out that this was a game of luck, not skill, but concluded by giving the game an above-average rating of 4 out of 5, saying, "Go ahead, make your day. Buy this game." [1]

In the February 1991 edition of Dragon (Issue 166), Jim Bambra called the game "an ideal ending to an evening of role-playing when the adventure is finished but it’s too early to go home... It's fast, fun, and simple enough to pick up quickly." [3]

Reviews

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Walker, Brian (March 1989). "General Games". Games International . No. 3. p. 9.
  2. 1 2 "Family Business". BoardGameGeek. Retrieved 2020-10-06.
  3. 1 2 Bambra, Jim (February 1991). "Roleplaying Reviews". Dragon . TSR, Inc. (166): 77.
  4. "Backstab Magazine (French) Issue 06".
  5. https://archive.org/details/games-99-1989-august/page/n63/mode/2up
  6. https://archive.org/details/jeux-et-strategie-59/page/12/mode/2up