Review by Jonathan Franklin

Designer: Nick Federico

Publisher: Brain Games

Players: 2-4

Time: 20 minutes

 5 plays at various player counts

 Played with review copy provided by Brain Games

Deductio is a competitive deduction card game with a clever twist. 

There are two decks, one deck has one copy of each of the numbers 1 – 20. The other has a set of conditions, such as ‘between 5 and 9’, ‘not 9 or 19’, and ‘even number’. Some of the condition cards have special powers discussed later.

Each player starts with a secret card from the deck of numbers.

Three cards from the condition deck are set face up in the center of the table.

On your turn, you may either guess another player’s secret number or you may take one of the cards from the center that is true about your number.

If you guess and are right, you get a point, with the winning score being a certain number of points (3 in 2p, 2 in 3p & 4p). If you are wrong, you have to take two condition cards!

If you choose to take a condition card, you take one of those from the center of the table and put it in front of you.

The twist is that if none of the three are true, you must take all three cards and place them horizontally to show that they are all not true. This counts as one action, so if you guessed wrong, you might have to take those three and another true one or three more!

When your number is correctly guessed, you discard all condition cards and draw a new number card. The player who correctly guessed the number gets the old number card as a point.

Some of the condition cards have special powers, such as getting to look at the other numbers in the number deck to rule out possibilities and a few give you a free guess of someone else’s number. People did want to note the cards they saw.

There are also some cards shuffled into the condition deck that lead you to show everyone the next card in the number deck. As more of the deck is revealed, you can often tell what someone else has after two or three clues. If they have an odd number between 1 and 5, and you have the 3 as your secret card and the 5 is revealed from the number deck, you know that person has the 1.  

The game works especially well at 2p because with more players there is a bit of game theory. If I have a 50/50 guess on the next player’s card, I might want to take it because otherwise the two players will try the same thing and I’ll get left out. It does depend if you feel you can safely take two cards from the center or whether you will have to take all three which might hurt you more.

Some condition cards are far better than others (and this is an intentional part of the design). I would rather tell you my card is not 9 or 19 than to tell you it is not odd. This means if you have the odd condition card and the not 9 or 19 card in the center row you take the odd condition card, doesn’t that imply you have the 9 or 19??? If so, the next person might guess 9 or 19. So do you take the condition card that gives more information to fake them out?

Can you figure out the hidden number?

Deductio is an enjoyable thinky filler that plays quickly and has some groupthink and meta-risk assessment. If you guess wrong, you set up the next player except in 2p, but come into it knowing that that is part of the game.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Jonathan F.
• Neutral.
• Not for me…