Saboteur 2

Saboteur 2 is an expansion for the base game of Saboteur by designer Fréderic Moyersoen, published by Amigo. It retains all of the mechanisms from the original – featuring hand management, bluffing, network-building and secret roles. Here though comes a variety of new roles and additional action cards that spice up the gameplay and requires players to be even more devious in proving or hiding which team they’re playing for…

In regular Saboteur, players are dwarves in a mine, searching for an elusive golden nugget. Three cards – two with rock, one with gold – are shuffled and placed face-down seven spaces away from the start card, the entrance to the mine.

Everyone is dealt a secret role showing which team they’re part of – either an honest gold-digger, or a saboteur. The gold-diggers win if they can dig a continuous tunnel to discover and reach the gold card. They’ll attempt to do this by playing tunnel cards that align from the start card to the card they suspect is the gold one. The saboteurs win if they can stop this occurring by hindering events – playing rockfalls, damaging equipment, or playing tunnel cards that meander away from the target. The trick is that no one knows who is on which team, so you’ll have to try and be subtle in your moves, or opponents could work you out and then gang up on you, gaining the upper hand!

Saboteur 2 introduces extra roles for players, providing a wider scope of gameplay and social deduction. There’s a green team and a blue team of gold-diggers, who both want the gold, but it’s a straight-up race to get there first. There’s a Boss, who wears both green and blue, but earns less gold regardless of which gold-digging team win. There’s a Geologist, who doesn’t care for the gold card, but is more interested in laying mineral cards in the tunnel.

There are also cards that can trap players (and an ‘unlock’ card, similar to the red break/green fix cards in the original). Some tunnel cards have green or blue doors on them that only the corresponding team can pass through. Some have ladders that allow a teleport action, of sorts (to bypass rockfalls).

If you don’t trust anyone at the table, you can also play cards that allow you to look at another player’s identity. Another card lets you swap your entire hand of six cards with another player. The most extreme is that one card allows you to force a player to swap their identity with one of the unused ones not dealt out this round!

Saboteur 2 is the ideal ‘next-level’ for fans of Saboteur. The marvellous thing about it is that all roles are shuffled and dealt out, so there’s the possibility that no saboteurs could feature in a round! However, the team vs team mechanism means there is a completely different strategy for players to plump for.