It may be fun to watch James Bond shoot baddies and seduce ladies and quip and all that, but to actually spend time with him would be intolerable. All that quipping, shooting and seducing is fine viewed from a distance, but all that alpha-male posing would become tiresome pretty quickly. It’s fitting, then, that Bond’s game is poker. Poker has great moments of drama punctuated by much longer moments of dull tedium. Wouldn’t it be great to have a game that distilled those moments of dramatic tension, to have you peer at your opponent and ask, “is he bluffing?” without losing stacks of your money or long hours of your day? Coup is that game.

In Coup, you play as the head of a big-cheese family in a corrupt Italian city state. You have some influence in the court, and this is represented in the two cards face down in front of you. Lose those cards and you’re out of the game. The last person left with influence takes over the city state, and wins. On your turn you can take one of several actions. The most basic action is to take a coin from the bank - this can’t be blocked or challenged. If you have seven of these coins you can launch a coup - one of your opponents loses one of their influence cards immediately, and this also cannot be stopped. The rest of the possible actions depend on the cards.

When you take these actions, or counter-actions, your card isn’t revealed. You simply claim who you are: “Using the Captain, I’m going to nick two coins from you.” It’s up to other players to challenge anyone they think may be lying. Anyone challenged and found to be fibbing loses a card, and it’s flipped over for all to see. An incorrect challenger similarly loses a card.

The other ‘basic’ action, apart from claiming income or performing a coup, is to claim Foreign Aid - two coins - but this can be stopped by the Duke. The Duke can ‘tax’ the bank for three coins. The Captain can steal two coins from another player, though the Ambassador or another Captain can stop him. The Ambassador allows a player to choose new cards. The Assassin can pay three coins for another player to lose an influence card, but this is blocked by the Contessa.

With each player only having two cards, they can only make two mistakes. Games tend to be fast and brutal - every bluff is risky, but as every challenge has a consequence, players quickly learn not to challenge everything. It can be tempting to let claims to be the Duke go unchallenged, for instance, but with enough money they can knock someone out of the game pretty easily. Assassinations can be especially bloody - if you find yourself incorrectly challenging your murderer, you can lose both of your influence cards at once, one to the Assassin, the other to the incorrect challenge.

The choosing of roles is reminiscent of Citadels, with a little bit of the bluffing of Kakerlaken Poker - it contains a bit more ‘game’ than the latter, but moves at a far brisker pace than the former. Indeed, Coup’s short playing time will mean some will dismiss it as ‘filler’, but I’ve found that I’ve been more than happy playing several times in a row. A game is usually over in less than fifteen minutes, and its high level of interactivity means it remains entertaining even for eliminated players.

Coup was one of the surprise hits of Essen 2012. That’s partly because it’s a great game, but also because it takes five minutes to explain and fifteen to play, and its small box was lighter and cheaper than many of the other games available. Word of mouth traveled quickly. At the time of writing it can be a little tricky to find, but I’m sure it will be picked up by a bigger publisher soon.