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My guide at TGM, Ken Shoda, had only a few titles on his "must get" list, with one of them being the 2014 release TimeBomb from designer 佐藤 雄介 (Yusuke Sato) and publisher 新ボードゲーム党 (New Board Game Party). Ken's description started with "It's a hidden role party game..." and I almost stopped him right there as those types of games are typically not my bag due to me being a terrible bluffer who can neither keep a straight face nor read people, but Ken is a huge Reiner Knizia fan, as am I, and with him buying five copies of the game — three for himself and two for a friend — I thought I'd trust his judgment and buy one for myself. What's the worst that could happen? (Well, the worst would be our plane crashing on the way home because I acquired too many games at TGM, with the weight of TimeBomb being the straw that broke the 747's back, but more realistically, I would waste whatever this game cost and I can live with that.)
I visited a game group in Tokyo the day following TGM, and Ken taught me the game then, with us playing twice with five players. In TimeBomb, each player is either a terrorist or a member of the SWAT team, and you want to set off a bomb or prevent that bomb from being set off depending on who you are.
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All of the cards in TimeBomb
To set up, you take as many "Success" cards as the number of players, the single "Boom!!" card, and as many "Safe" cards as needed for the deck to equal five times the number of players, e.g., thirty cards total with six players. Each player takes a secret role card at random, with four SWAT cards being in the mix for six players and three SWAT cards for four or five players. After looking at your role card, look at the five cards you were dealt, then shuffle them and lay them out in a line with the backs being face up. Choose a start player at random.
The start player takes the nippers and "cuts" one of the cards in front of another player. This player reveals the card, then uses the nippers to cut someone else's card. This continues until 4-6 cards have been cut, with this number equaling the number of players. You then take all of the face-down cards, shuffle them, then deal four cards to each player, with players once again looking at their cards, then shuffling them and placing them in a face-down row.
This process continues for at most four rounds. If all of the "Success" cards are revealed before the end of the fourth round, the game ends and the SWAT team wins. If this doesn't happen — or if the "Boom!!" card is revealed at any time — the game ends and the terrorists win.
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Ken Shoda (r) is probably lying about something; he lied a lot that day
In case it's not obvious, TimeBomb could be completely dry with people just passing the nippers card back and forth until one side wins or loses, but Ken and the two designers from Saien in the image above (whose name cards I can't find at the moment — sorry!) had played previously, and they started making claims and accusations immediately: "I have only one Success. What about you?" "I have no Success cards, so don't cut any of my cards as you're wasting your time." "You're lying! That's what you always say!" And so forth.
I goofed in the usual way that I do with such bluffing games by volunteering too much information too soon. My best tactic is always to keep my mouth shut so that I don't lie and give myself away, but I didn't do this and was pegged as a terrorist fairly quickly. I never correctly identified my fellow terrorist, but he managed to get someone to keep cutting his cards in the third round and the wire on the bomb was snipped. Boom! Victory for us!
In our second game, I was SWAT and we cruised along decently picking up Success cards until I suddenly found myself holding the nippers and completely unsure of what to do or who was what. Honestly, I'm terrible at these games! Through sheer luck I chose the terrorist who was holding the final Success card (and also the bomb) and cut our way to victory. An accidental win is still a win!
(In the U.S. and Canada, you can call 411 to help you find a person or business, so 411 is sometimes used as a shorthand for information. In "Game 411" posts, I present an overview of a newly released or obscure game to you, the BGG News reader. —WEM)
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