![Puppets in High Places [Preview] – What’s Eric Playing?](https://i0.wp.com/whatsericplaying.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/turf-tiles.jpg?resize=1024%2C682&ssl=1 "Puppets in High Places [Preview] – What’s Eric Playing?")
Base price: $XX.
1 – 2 players.
play time: ~30 minutes.
BGG Link
Check it out on Kickstarter!
Logged plays: 1
Full disclosure: A preview copy of Puppets in High Places was provided by Subsurface games. Some art, gameplay, or other aspects of the game may change between this preview and the fulfillment of the Kickstarter, should it fund, as this is a preview of a currently unreleased game.
Powering through reviews! I think I actually got three or four done this week, which is impressive for me. It’s almost like how I used to publish four a week, which, now that I’m reflecting on that, was just … wild. Too many other things on my plate now even a year after the move for that kind of ruckus. But I digress. There’s crowdfunding now and there will be more crowdfunding soon, so let’s dive in to Puppets in High Places!
In Puppets in High Places, players take turns driving around a seedy town run by criminals and violence. The nice thing is, you’re the criminals and the violence, so things are pretty good for you. You can “influence” VIPs to see things your way at the Speakeasies of town, acquire resources, or use your Goons to take care of problems as you see fit. It’s nice to be in charge. However, you and your opponent can’t run the town together, so things have to end tonight. Which of you will run the city come sunrise?
Contents
Setup
There’s some doing here but it’s not too bad. Start with your Starting Neighborhood cards:
The Downtown (with the x2 on both sides) goes in the center, and the other four are shuffled and placed two on each side. Don’t forget to spin them around when shuffling, since the top and bottom will be their own spaces. You can shuffle the other Neighborhoods and set them down below downtown, with the top card face-up on top of the stack.
On the four Starting Neighborhoods, set four of the Back Alley Tiles, and shuffle and place one Turf Token (yellow-side up) on each.
Set the tokens aside, for now: you should have keys, goods, smiles, some Goons, some guns, and the starting car. You can shuffle the two Speakeasy cards and place one on each side of the Starting Neighborhood line; the one with the full moon on it will be where you place the starting car.
Now, set up the Speakeasy. Start with the Speakeasy Board:
Roll the VIP dice and place the two highest dice in each color in the center.
Each player places their Handshake Bar on the last line of the track, and their scoring token on the 0 in the column of their color. Stack the Pushover Tiles from lowest to highest value (lowest on top):
Then reveal two Turf Tokens, gray side up. The lowest numerical value goes next to the top half of the Pushover Tile, and the other goes next to the bottom half. More on that later.
Finish setting up by giving each player a key in their color, a gift in each color, and two Goons. Choose the starting player, and give the other player two extra Goons. You should be ready to begin!
Gameplay
Puppets in High Places is a game of tug-of-war, impressing VIPs, and keeping your Goons where they belong: on the streets causing a ruckus. What’s not to like?
Each round is comprised of two phases: the Street Phase and the Speakeasy Phase.
Street Phase
The street phase is pretty straightforward in concept: to start, you’ll decide if you want to activate one or more Turf Token (by spending Goons previously placed on it) or if you want to use a Key. Using a Key lets you discard the current Neighborhood card (preserving all tokens on it) and place the top card of the deck in any configuration you’d like. So that’s fun.
After that, each turn, you’ll move the car clockwise (treating the Back Alley Tiles as dividing the Neighborhood card into two separate sections) 1 – 2 spaces. You can spend Goons to move the car one additional space per Goon. If you land on the Speakeasy, you go straight into the Speakeasy Phase and take a turn. Otherwise, you can Prepare the Turf (except on the Downtown Tile in the center). When you do, you can either place a Goon on the Turf Token or take a Goon from the Supply. Then, activate the Location. Each Location has different effects. Some give you Goods, some move VIPs closer to you or your opponent, some give you Goons; variety of outcomes. Downtown is a bit special in that you can choose any of the pictured effects twice, but not the same two effects.
play continues until one player activates the Speakeasy Phase.
Speakeasy Phase
Once the Speakeasy Phase begins, players take turns choosing a VIP to influence. This is done by playing goods of the matching color to move the VIP one space closer to you. You can also play a Smile to move them one space closer (and increase their value by 1) or a Gun to move them two spaces closer (and decrease their value by 1; nobody likes being threatened). If it moves past a Handshake Bar, score points equal to its modified value. Otherwise, if the VIP would go below 1, it’s removed, and if it would go above 6, an additional VIP die of the same color is placed next to it (equal to the difference between the modified value and 6). If there are no dice of the same color, use a different color die. If there are no remaining dice, well, no new VIP. Tough. If you score a low-value VIP, use the effect on the Turf Token pointing to the value scored on the Pushover Tile.
If you want, you can pass instead of taking an action. This ends the Speakeasy Phase and immediately starts a Street Phase with your opponent taking the first turn. As a consolation, you can move your Handshake Bar one line closer to the center (scoring any VIPs you pass over).
When the Speakeasy is getting empty, a Reset happens. This occurs when the total number on the VIP dice is less than the number on the Pushover Tile. When that occurs, remove the VIPs still in the Speakeasy and reroll the VIP dice, placing the two highest values of each color in the center (like in setup). The first two resets, the player who initiated the reset can add a new Neighborhood card between any two cards on the Street in the configuration of their choice. Place the Turf Token indicated on the Pushover Tile on that new Neighborhood card (yellow-side up) and place a new gray Turf Token in the empty spot. Make sure the lower of the two values is on top. A Reset ends the Speakeasy Phase, so go back to the Streets. If you’re already on the Streets, well, stay on the Streets.
End of game
If, on your turn, you hit 25+ points, the game might end. Your opponent has a chance on their turn to match or beat your score. If they match it, the game continues. If they beat it, now you’ve got one last shot. Either way, you only win if you have 25+ points and your opponent has fewer points than you at the start of your turn!
Player Count Differences
This is mostly a two-player game, so none, really! There’s a solo mode where you have to defend your turf against a bot, but I didn’t get a chance to try the solo mode.
Strategy
- VIPs are often worth fighting over, but you can’t just play prevent defense with your opponent; you have to actively recruit some to your side. If you only try to prevent your opponent from scoring, you’re going to miss out on opportunities to take VIPs for yourself that you might otherwise need or be able to use! Yes, it’s fundamentally zero-sum, but put some of your effort into offense as well as defense.
- I usually use Smile tokens to pull VIPs over my Handshake Bar and Gun tokens to pull them back from my opponent’s side. Guns move them a good bit and make them less valuable; a Smile is just a good way to give yourself an extra point or two when it counts. Or you can use them to cancel out a Gun, just like real life probably.
- Passing can often be useful, since you move your Handshake Bar forward until a reset. Having your Handshake Bar increasingly close to the center can allow you to pull off some pretty impressive moves for high-value (or low-value) VIPs, since you can just sneak them across the line with significantly less effort, now.
- Getting your Goons onto various Turf Token can also be useful; several have powerful effects. Plus, you can activate them at the start of any turn, making it an ideal strategic move to lull your opponent into a false sense of security and then just drop the “oh, by the way, I’m activating these three effects to completely wreck you“. Rude, but effective.
- Going Downtown might not let you place on a Turf Token, but it does let you take a few useful effects. You can use that to play a bit more tactically; what do you need right now? What would be useful to have? The flexibility might often be worth not placing on a Turf Token.
- Everyone starts with a Key, so you might as well mix up the rondel at least once. Sometimes it’s just nice to modify the space where you’re thinking about landing because it’s not appealing to you as much, or you can use it on your turn to deny your opponent a space that they would otherwise have wanted. Just think flexibily.
- Keep in mind where your opponent will likely want to go on their next turn. You can probably force them to spend some Goons if you’re careful. If you move a bit too much or a bit too little, you can throw off their plans pretty considerably.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- Thematically, the game is super fun! I really like the high-noir elements of it all. It’s all got the right feeling to it.
- A very satisfying strategic game. There are a lot of different levers you can use towards your preferred strategy, which is great. I think players who want to try a variety of different things can find a lot of hooks within the game proper to hop on to and use towards their own ends.
- I actually found the tug-of-war aspect to be more interesting than usual, since you can mess with position and number on the dice. A lot of tug-of-war experiences I’ve had are just the threat of “if you lose this you lose the game”, whereas this is more a constant back-and-forth of prioritization, offense, and defense. You need to figure out where you can have the most impact with limited moves, or if you should save up so you can just drop guaranteed points. Plus, you can influence the Speakeasy outside of the Speakeasy Phase, which makes it doubly interesting.
- Rondels are fun! I enjoy that players can configure the rondel to their liking with keys. I do want to see more configurable rondels in games; it’s been a while for me, so I need to go find more rondel games to play.
- Goons is a fun word, and acquiring goons is just generally enjoyable. It just … adds to the ambiance. You can just drop your Goons where you need, and they’re appropriately Goon-y just hanging out and doing Goon stuff. I don’t know, but it’s effective.
- A surprisingly quick game, given the complexity. You really would clock this game at an hour apropos of nothing, but it’s a pretty tight 30 once you get going.
- Being able to set up Turf Tokens and fire them off when you need them is an interesting delayed action to take on your turn. There’s a lot of interesting strategy to when and how you actually activate them. Do you set up a bunch of dominoes and knock them all down to your opponent’s detriment, or do you use them more tactically to provide just-in-time offense or defense?
- I like the deuce effect where you can only win if you are at 25+ points and you’re still beating your opponent on your next turn. Keeps things tight and interesting. Sometimes winning alone isn’t enough; you need to hit the point threshold and beat your opponent. I enjoy it! It makes close games even more tense.
Mehs
- For a relatively tight two-player game, resource theft can be kind of annoying, though it didn’t come up when I played. I just don’t love it as an action; it’s a bit too take-that for me since the game is so tight and challenging already.
- Who’s driving the car? Are you enemy factions in the same car? Are you taking turns? It doesn’t really matter to me, but my friend asked enough questions when we played that I owe it to her to at least float this.
Cons
- For a relatively short game, it can feel pretty high complexity, but the game does run smoothly once you get the hang of it. There’s definitely a lot going on, but all the game systems are elegantly designed and interesting, so I think it largely pays off? It has the same feel, to some degree, as some of the heavier roll-and-write games. There’s just a lot to think about, plan, and manage, and a lot of configurability for how you go about doing that. If that’s your thing, you’re gonna love it, though you might stress out a friend who’s mostly into lighter games without some prior warning.
Overall: 8 / 10
Overall, I think Puppets in High Places is great! Normally with heavier games you run the risk of some clunky elements or places that could use some streamlining, but honestly, I didn’t see any when I played! It was a smooth experience, albeit and tense and strategic one, that’s great for folks who want to have a high-drama game in a short time. Thematically, it’s a fun one, but I’ve enjoyed this theme before in With a Smile & A Gun, so it’s nice to see more games inside of the connected universe. I do love those kinds of things. Plus, you can get as immersed as you want, bothering your opponent about Goons and keys and guns and what have you. There’s a lot of opportunity for thematic play that still ends up deeply strategic, and that’s a good blend to have (and, frankly, a tough spot to hit). Amanda’s done solid work here on the design, and I’ll be interested to see how the final product turns out. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a deep and interesting two-player game, you want to test out your luck on the mean streets of a dark noir town, or you just like saying Goons, you’ll probably enjoy Puppets in High Places! I certainly have.
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