Coup (Board game) Strategy

Coup is a board game that I learned how to play this past year. It’s a game that successfully combines strategy and bluffing, kind of like poker. Before we can discuss strategy for Coup, however, we need to know the game works.

Play revolves around a deck of 15 cards, in which there are 5 unique cards, meaning there are 3 identical copies of each unique card. The cards are called the captain, duke, ambassador, assassin, and contessa. At the beginning of the game, each player is randomly dealt two cards from the deck. The goal of the game is to be the last player alive — meaning everyone else’s cards are dead, and at least one of your cards is still alive. The currency in this game are coins, or “influence” as the game calls it. You use coins to kill other people’s cards, and some of the 5 unique cards have abilities that let you gain/lose coins. For more a detailed explanation of the rules, check out this page.

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The most entertaining part of the game is that your opponents don’t know what cards you have, so you can pretend to have any card and use that card’s special ability. Of course, if your opponent suspects you are bluffing, they can call you out on it, and if you actually are bluffing you pay the steep cost of one of your cards dying.