Caper

Recruit thieves and equip them with gear to commit robberies in Europe’s biggest cities!

2 players (3-4 player variants included), ages 12+
Playing time: 30 minutes
Designer: Unai Rubio
Artist: Josh Emrich

Publisher: Jumbo
https://www.jumbo.eu/en/

A game of Caper is played over the course of 6 rounds, in which players will be alternating between drafting thief cards and gear cards.

The goal is to gain control over the 3 different locations, as only the player with the most capers at each location will score its reward, next to the points received directly from sets of stolen goods and thief and gear cards played.

Players can play at most 3 thief cards at each location, and a thief cannot be equipped with more than 3 gear cards. You’ll also receive a bonus caper for each thief with 3 gear cards.

Each of the cards you’ll play shows a benefit: sometimes you’ll receive coins or be able to flip a card of your opponent, but most cards relate to the end of the game, and score you points for specific colours of cards played at the same location, additional capers or stolen goods. Some of the gear can only be played after paying the cost shown on them.

After reading the rules, I got the impression that some things were explained in an unnecessarily complicated way, and the many different icons didn’t make it any easier. Luckily the game comes with a player aid that summarizes everything as the iconography took some time to get used to, but after a few rounds the game played nice and smoothly.

We feel Caper is an excellent little drafting game for 2 players, gameplay feels very tactical and sometimes, with the flipping of others players cards, also a bit mean. The variable setup makes every game different enough to keep things interesting, as you can choose from the different locations Paris, Rome and London to play in.

The game also comes with a 3-player variant in which one player takes the role of a snitch, and a team play variant for 4 players.