Not true. Otherwise their would be more parties and the liberals would be communist. Liberals vs. Fasict? Seriously?

I was gonna say. 2 very big differences

True, I hope that this guys doesn't review anymore. Not only he didn't get the point of the game, but the pace and clarity with which he explains the rules makes you press ctrl+w and read the rules instead. Not The Dice Tower standards.

yes, yes it is

lol

And at the end he said that he gives it an awesomeness rating of 9, which is a pun if you remember that no in German is nein, which sounds like nine in English!

Exactly!

Exactly!

SuperWolfkin yeah this is why I don’t like these types of social deduction games like “patriots and redcoats”. There’s some randomness that’s out of your control that Avalon doesn’t have.

The Resistance has more concrete information than Secret Hitler? Really? I mean I like The Resistance, but it's basically all social reads. Not much better than regular Mafia in terms of actual deduction. The only concrete information you actually have are the missions, which if players are playing right barely gives anything solid. At least if you play Avalon it's a big improvement, but I would still say Secret Hitler has way more deduction and concrete info.

@@Xandawesome EASILY. In secret hitler when a mission fails. It's because a bad buy was in the lineup or because the cards sucked. Which means failure tells you nothing. You just have to guess whether or not it failed on purpose before you can even assess which one might or might not be responsible. The resistance is a lot of reading people yes but when a mission fails you know someone in that mission is a bad guy without equivocation. Very clear, very distinct. Someone IS not someone might be. The rest of the games are basically the same. Voting is a guessing game, passing is a guessing game. But the core element is when the missing files and with The Resistance that's the only concrete information you have and that's muddied in Secret Hitler. I wouldn't say there's a lot of concrete information in The Resistance and for some people even that scant little bit of information is too small to be fun (I myself prefer Shadowhunters). My only points that it's more discrete. A mission *never* failed with good guys.

​@@SuperWolfkin Wow, I kinda didn't expect you to reply back so quickly considering your original comment was years old, but cool. I can understand where you're coming from, and I even agree to an extent about The Resistance not having too much information, but at least it's concrete, while in Secret Hitler you never know for sure. However, I do disagree quite a bit. First of all, I wouldn't say failure tells you nothing in Secret Hitler. Sure, the information can be muddy sometimes; If the president claims RRR on a fascist policy, it's impossible to know for sure whether they're fascist or just an unlucky liberal. Well, kinda impossible. In fact, there are many ways to try and figure this out, which is where I think the game really shines. For example, if you go through the first 15 cards before the reshuffle and there have only been 3 out of the 6 liberal cards claimed, you know that someone at the table dropped a liberal policy. (Even if the two remaining cards are both liberal, one liberal still must have been discarded by a player.) This immediately tells you that one of the RRR claims are almost certainly lying, creating something reminiscent of a n-player mission between those presidents. This is just one of the many scenarios that card counting can give information in this game. Another example is if multiple players claim RRR in a row, one of them can be deduced to be likely lying as that is highly unlikely, especially when there are fewer liberal policies seen when the deck is reshuffled. And if two players conflict via card claims (RRB vs. RR), which isn't unlikely to happen in higher level games of SH, well, there's your concrete information right there. It's a conflict that works functionally the same as a two player mission in The Resistance. Except for this time the fascists may get themselves into a situation where they're forced into it, unlike Resistance where basically nobody fails two player missions ever. (Okay, it can happen, depending on the group's meta it can more common or uncommon, but in my experience it's extremely rare and objectively it's just worse for evil anyways, so...) And the cards aren't even the only information one can have during the game. The fascist powers provide another layer of tools to help liberals figure it out. To name a few, the investigate ability can help two players back each other up, or launch two players into conflict giving the same concrete information I mentioned before. There's also the deck peek, which allows players to get information on the next deck that can tell them if the next government is lying. As you can see, there is actually quite a bit of solid information one can find in Secret Hitler. And while the information gathered each round in may be incomplete (And RRR claims are really the only times this is a big deal, excluding underclaiming and overclaiming blues), you get a whole lot more of it. In The Resistance, as I mentioned before the only concrete information anyone has are the missions, and not even all of them. Successful missions can say something depending on the type of meta you have, but doesn't give anything concrete. Only failed missions give solid information where you know there must be a bad guy in it, and how many of those are you going to get before the last round comes where everything has to be figured out? Two. Two small pieces of concrete information before the whole game is over. Compare that to the amount of elections in your average game of Secret Hitler and it doesn't even come close. Sure, the info may not be quite as discrete (although it certainly can be, via conflicts and card counting), but I feel that's a very small price to pay for the banquet of total information you get out of it. You know, maybe I would like The Resistance more if the missions gave a little more information. Not only are there max two missions that will give actual solid info, but those two missions barely give much at all. Say you're playing a 5 player game (This problem only gets worse the more players there are.) There are four other players, two of which are evil. Because the good players will have to end up figuring out the exact correct players by the end of the game in order to win, it is better for the purposes of this analysis to think of the evil players not as individuals, but as combinations of evils. With the other players A, B, C, and D, there are 6 combinations of evil from your perspective (AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, CD.) If you are in a two player mission and it is failed, it actually gives quite a bit of information. It eliminates 3 other combinations of bad guys, putting you down to 3 left. That's actually not bad. Which is exactly why two player missions are seldom failed. What about the three player missions? If you are in a 3p mission, there are only two other players outside so it only eliminates... 1 combination. Well, that's not nearly as good. And if you are outside the failed 3p, good luck, as concretely that gives you literally zero information. You know one of those three players must be evil, but you already knew that anyways. So, if the spies play optimally and first and third missions are successful and the second and fourth missions are failed, and assuming you are lucky enough to even be in both missions, you will have eliminated a whopping 2 combinations, and will be going into the final mission with 4 potential combinations left. And you have to get it exactly right in order to win. Good luck! Again, this problem is only exasperated with more players. Of course, this is where you would have to rely on social reads and other things like the threat of doubly failed missions (If your group hasn't already developed a meta as to which spy in a given mission will throw down the fail, which you almost certainly have) to whittle down the remaining combinations until you think you've figured it out. But for the missions being The Resistance's *only* method of concrete information, I wish it gave a little more. In fact, that's probably my biggest problem with the Resistance, is that the only distinguishing factor between a good and evil player is that evil players can fail while good players can't. That's it. In other social deduction games there's usually a bunch of distinguishing characteristics. In ONUW, werewolves lack the information gained from actually performing a night action, and must come up with something fake, risking butting heads with the other players that actually performed them. Their role may even be identified, forcing them to bluff their way out of it. To use the example of Secret Hitler, fascist players cannot just play as a liberal the whole time. Unless the liberals get uncharacteristically unlucky, fascists are going to have to drop blues and force fascist policies eventually, casting suspicion on themselves. The fascist powerups may also reveal them in this way. But in The Resistance, an experienced evil player can literally just act as good the entire game, and there is nothing mechanically that will allow anyone to figure out otherwise, or to even make it hard for them to do so. Missions are supposed to serve this purpose, but they are so lackluster in the information gained that they barely help. Voting history is supposed to be used, but once players figure out to never accept anything they aren't in and to reject missions that have players they are supposed to think are evil, that kinda goes out of the window. The only thing really left is social reads. It's fine if you like that, it's in every social deduction game at its core, but that ends up being all The Resistance boils down to in my experience. Ultimately, I believe Secret Hitler's information can end up being a lot more concrete than first meets the eye. Even with the information that's more muddy, there's so much more of it that it more than makes up for it imo, and there are still ways to deduce this muddy info further beyond just social reads. While The Resistance's info is technically "more concrete", it's such a tiny amount of info that it's practically inconsequential. Because of the Resistance's lack of significant information, between players who know what they're doing, the game will always be forced into a position where the good guys just have to guess who the evil players are with nothing more than social reads. Whereas, I've had games of Secret Hitler where I've been able to deduce the exact combination of fascists with a very high probability just by pure deduction alone, with hardly any social reads even necessary (And now I just have to convince the others to actually believe me). To me, Secret Hitler feels like a puzzle that has to be put together. You may not have all the pieces, and some of those pieces may not be so clear, but there's so much info flying around that you're almost always able to deduce a lot of the game if you know what you're doing. On the other hand, The Resistance feels so much more like a guessing game. Sure, you get a couple pieces that are crystal clear, but they're so small when compared to the full scope of the puzzle that the rest of the missing pieces that you can't have feel so much more apparent. Okay wow, that ended up way longer than I initially intended. I could go on but I'll just leave this here for now.

I know this is three years ago, but this kind of misses the point and the pedantry riled me a little. They're descriptive terms, not the literal names of the parties. The Nazi's were fascists. I find it odd that you'd dispute that. While there were several 'liberal' parties throughout Hitler's rise to power. Starting to carve out all the different parties throughout the period and putting them into the game would make it so inaccessible.

Not sure where the file was (if it even exists) but someone did a custom re-theme of this using Harry Potter.

There is also a Hamilton/US Government print and play retheme on boardgamegeek that might be perfect for school.

Fortunately they also released it as CC copyright , so you can make your own, for your own use. I've seen a really cool Secret Sith version in BGG

yeah ive played it as one of my friends got it - on BGG in the files section there are a few re-skins. I find the theme not only a little distasteful but not very effective. The hogwarts theme works better in every way. I think Secret Hitler is shallower than Avalon but it is more accessible and streamlined.

Secret Palpatine, give it a star wars theme.

Hmm, I think I read a similar comment on Reddit a year or so ago. Most probably it was yours.

It wouldn't have been me on Reddit - I don't have an account there. But I've said similar things. I think that "The Resistance" has some serious problems with it, as a game, and I think "Secret Hitler" largely fixes them. To be fair, a lot of people like "The Resistance" a lot more than I do (although I think there are plenty of other people who share my opinions too).

Well, hearing from different people the same opinions and flaws regarding The Resistance it seems to be fair to say that this game has real problems you can't overcome with GID GUD. ;) I feel like with Secret Hitler there is always an uncertainty factor at all times, except when the Fascists are really bad players. And also Secret Hitler plays better with 7 or more people, where 8 players is considered to be the sweet spot. But it doesn't mean that this game is boring with other player counts.

wow that is super interesting to read because I disagree entirely. I think Secret Hitler breaks what little firmness there is in The Resistance. I also obviously disagree with your categorization of The Resistance as a one trick pony. It's a game that's all about the meta. There's no way to optimally play it because it's a game that's almost entirely meta. I guess that just makes you the target audience. Have you read the designer's medium.com diaries on the game? I violently disagreed with them but you might find them interesting.

Your comment about the "meta" is interesting, because this is a game I played largely with the same group of friends until we got bored of it - some more quickly than others. While I think there was "a" meta, I don't know if we ever experienced "the" meta, in terms of how people at large play the game. I should also say that "The Resistance" was a game that I really wanted to like. I love the genre that it's in, some of the mechanics are ones that I enjoy, etc. The game as a whole has just never come together for me - there's just not enough there. I think SH improves on it by adding just enough complexity to make each game feel fresh and different, but not enough that it becomes confusing (eg the "fifty different roles" variants of games like Mafia and Werewolf).

I think the character cards are just random illustrations to make it at least a little distant from it's original theme. This game has it's roots in the German history of the last years leading up to Hitler's election to chancellor in 1933. If this game wanted to be close to history then who should be portrayed are important figures from that time including Franz von Papen, Kurt von Schleicher, Paul von Hindenburg, Heinrich Brüning, and Hitler himself of course. But nobody really wants to have a picture of Hitler in their hand :)

Im quite confident they're representing real historic figures kind of like easter eggs. Seriously though at least who are the rest of the liberals?

i never even noticed that.. but that's a cool easter egg. still hate the graphic design is certainly nice.

There's also Winston Churchill coz I see I didn't mention him. Ughhhh why is this so difficult