Secret Hitler vs The Resistance: Avalon

Players are secretly assigned as Liberals or Fascists. The Fascists know each other. The Liberals don't know who anyone is. One Fascist is secretly Hitler. Each round, a President is nominated and they pick a Chancellor. Everyone votes on the government. If it passes, the President draws three policy tiles, discards one, and passes two to the Chancellor, who enacts one. Policies go on either the Liberal or Fascist track. Liberals win by passing five Liberal policies. Fascists win by passing six Fascist policies or by electing Hitler as Chancellor after three Fascist policies are already on the board. The policy deck has more Fascist tiles than Liberal ones, so even legitimate governments sometimes have to pass Fascist policies. This is where the game gets interesting. When a Fascist policy is enacted, the President and Chancellor both claim they had no choice. "I drew three Fascist tiles." "Did you? Or did you discard the Liberal one?" The table erupts. As the Fascist track fills up, the President gains executive powers — investigating, executing, or peek at tiles. These powers create hard information that smart players can use to corner liars. It's mechanically tighter than most social deduction games. The policy deck creates a shared data trail that the table can analyse. This means experienced players have more tools than just gut feelings. Plays 5-10. Sweet spot is 7-8 where the Fascist team is big enough to coordinate but small enough to be hard to find. Games run 30-45 minutes. The theme is attention-grabbing and intentionally provocative — check that your group's comfortable with it first.

Hidden-role deduction set in Arthurian legend. At the start, everyone secretly finds out if they're loyal to Arthur or a Minion of Mordred. Then you play five missions. Each round, a team leader proposes a group to go on the mission. Everyone votes to approve or reject the team. If approved, the team secretly plays success or fail cards. The loyal players always play success. The Minions can play fail to sabotage missions. Three successful missions and the good side wins. Three failed missions and evil wins. The meat of the game is the team selection and the voting. Who proposed whom, who approved what team, who was on the mission that failed — every decision is information, and the table is constantly arguing about it. Avalon adds special roles on top of the base Resistance: Merlin knows who the evil players are but has to be subtle about sharing that information. Because if the good team wins, the Minions get one final shot — they can assassinate Merlin and steal the victory. Percival knows who Merlin is and tries to protect them. Morgana pretends to be Merlin to confuse Percival. This extra layer makes Avalon feel much sharper than the basic Resistance. The endgame assassination attempt means the good team can't just follow Merlin's lead blindly — doing so paints a target. Plays 5-10. The 5-player game is tight and logical. The 7-8 player game is louder and more chaotic. Both are good. Rounds take 30 minutes and almost always result in someone demanding a rematch.