Soda Smugglers Review

The first iteration of the Criminal Capers Collection, Soda Smugglers has players attempting to bribe the border guard with bottle caps so they can safely enter with all of their soda they're trying to bring in. With any Knizia title, the game plays quickly and the ruleset is minimal. Every round, one player will be the border guard and the rest will be travelers. The travelers will play 3 cards facedown and all will flip one. This is their bribe. From here, it's up to the border guard to determine who can enter safely and who will be arrested. If you are allowed safe entry, you'll flip your other two cards and collect caps for the amount of bottles. The border guard can also search, meaning they can flip over a card. They also have the option to arrest. If they arrest and there is 1 or fewer caps in the suitcases, the guard must give them 2 caps for their troubles. However, if there's 2 or more bottles, they're sent to jail and the guard gets all of the caps for themselves. After this, the round ends and the next player is the border guard. Play continues like this until everyone has been the guard twice. Whoever has the most caps will win.

The Good: This is a really interesting game. On the surface, it's a quick deduction game but when you get into it, you'll find yourself really wanting to make the right arrests and when you let too much through, it's a game changer. This is a tense game for as quick as it plays. You don't want to make it too obvious that you've got a lot of bottles in your luggage but you also don't want to have empty bags either.

The Not So Good: The minimum player count is 3 but you'll want to have more players. At 3, it plays too quickly and its just not as intense of a game. It plays just fine still but you can potentially be done in 10 minutes if you're fast. You'll probably want to be closer to 5 to get the most out of the game but it can play up to 8.

Final Thoughts: The Criminal Capers Collection comes out swinging with the first of the series. It's a unique deduction game that plays quickly and is easy to teach. This is the perfect filler game or starter game for game night before you move into something more intense.

Thanks to Bitewing Games for providing me with a review copy.