hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2159.txt

Episode: 2159
Title: HPR2159: Coup Tabletop Game
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2159/hpr2159.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 15:04:19

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This is HPR episode 2,159 entitled Coupe Tabletop Game.
It is hosted by Klaatu and in about 16 minutes long, the summary is Klaatu reigns about the
Tabletop Game Coupe.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
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This is an amazing game. It's probably the perfect game.
I was amazed when I got introduced to this by my friends.
In terms of game mechanics, the game completely broke through all my preconceptions.
There are things in this game that I hadn't even known were possible.
This is a card game that defies pretty much every possible rule that you could imagine.
It's a game where you're only dealt about three cards, possibly only two.
I don't exactly remember. I think we might have played with three.
You're dealt three cards from a deck of maybe 15 total.
So you only have like 15 cards in the stack.
Each player gets two or three.
It's a game where you're encouraged to lie to your opponents about the cards in your hand.
I know you do that every game.
That's why you cover up your hand, but this one does it a little bit differently.
The bulk of the game play itself is pretty much a mechanic where you collect cardboard money.
It just doesn't seem to be enough there to make a game, but it's one of the most amazing games that I've ever played.
Looking at the rule book, the game plays on a technical side pretty simple.
On your turn, you can either take one coin from the bank, two coins from another player,
or launch an attack against another player, as long as you have seven coins to give to the bank in order to do so.
An attack ends in one of two ways.
Either your opponent loses one of their cards or your opponent has some kind of card that's more powerful or resistant to your card,
and you therefore lose your card.
The twist is that you never have to reveal what cards you hold unless an opponent accuses you of bluffing.
Otherwise, practically the entire game, you pretty much never have to reveal what cards you actually have.
You can claim to have a duke card.
A duke gives you the right to take three coins from the bank instead of just one.
It's to your benefit to claim that you have a duke card.
Unless if no one calls you out on that claim, you can play the entire game without ever actually having a duke card.
You can just claim that you've got one and act like you've got one.
If someone challenges you on the claim, then a battle is going to be waged.
And if you cannot or you do not, because it's strategically advantageous not to reveal the card that you did claim to have, then you lose a card.
But if you do have the card, you claim to have, then your challenger loses a card.
So that's the beauty of the game.
It's never to anyone's advantage to accuse their opponents of bluffing until there are simply no other options.
Then it's sometimes better to just accept the consequence rather than call a bluff and risk losing what you have left.
I could be a little fuzzy on some of the exact rules.
I forget when people lose cards under what circumstances, but the essential mechanic is there that it's to the player's advantage to sort of believe the lies.
That other players are telling because it's sometimes just too dangerous to call someone out on it and be wrong.
The way coup relies upon the lack of knowledge runs pretty deep.
I've literally played an entire game of coup for player game without ever looking up my cards.
I just drew the cards and immediately placed them in my pocket.
And I had no idea what cards I actually held, but I just knew from the gameplay so that we had done so far that no one would risk asking me what I did have or not asking, demanding to see, you know, one of the cards that I was claiming to have.
So this is a card game that you can literally play without even knowing what cards you have in your hand.
I've never played a game like that before in my life.
Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe it's a way to play more games to be honest.
If you believe your own lie, then who knows what you're capable of.
But it was certainly a unique thing that coup not only allowed, but really encouraged.
So, I mean, in many ways, this isn't really a card game. It's a mind game, pitting you against your opponents.
And it just becomes a question of how much you want to lie, how much you want to believe, how much it's worth believing, and how much you can get away with.
Then again, there's a frightfully low number of cards in the deck, so if you've been claiming that you hold a, let's say, a captain card.
And it comes to light that all three captain cards are known and accounted for, you know, like if there's one in the discard pile and someone has two captain cards in their hand, then they know that there are no captain cards left.
So your bluff becomes a lot less convincing, at least to that person.
The problem is how do you know when it becomes obvious to that person, because you don't know what that person is holding in their hand.
They may be claiming that they've got a captain card, but they could be lying.
So in other words, even though everyone knows that there are only three types of any given card,
all four players at the table could be claiming to have that card, but no one knows who the liar is.
And someone might reveal that they actually have a captain card, but what if another player has the other two, or the other two are distributed across each?
There's no real way of knowing who does or doesn't have what they have, what they claim to have.
Now there is more to the game than just bluffing in order to do anything meaningful.
You do need to collect seven coins.
And in fact, at seven coins, you're forced by the game to do something.
You have to attack if you have seven coins.
You have to attack someone that kind of encourages the pacing of the game.
The rate at which you collect coins depends on what card you claim to hold.
So if you're not claiming to have anything super fancy and special like a Duke or a captain,
then you're probably collecting coins pretty slowly.
Personally, myself, I'm not above changing my lie halfway through the game.
I'll claim to have a Duke so that I can get three coins from the bank at a time,
and then proudly announce that I've been lying and that I actually have an assassin and then move in for the kill or whatever.
So if you do attack someone with an assassin, if that player holds a contesta,
that can block the assassination attempt.
And then you have to sort of battle it out to see who's telling the truth and who's telling a lie.
Because again, if you don't reveal the cards, then you can just choose to trust people.
So if you've gotten assassin and you choose to attack someone and they say, oh, I have a contesta,
neither of you actually has to show the cards.
You don't normally in card games and battle type card games.
The next logical step, like in Magic the Gathering or something, you put the cards on the table.
You put them on the battlefield, whatever.
In this game, you don't necessarily have to do that.
You just take the person at the word, at their word, and then the outcome is exactly as it would be,
even if they were lying.
It's an amazing, amazing game.
Like I say, it's largely a mind game.
So it's essentially a perfect game.
This is probably my favorite card game I've ever encountered so far.
It's just absolutely amazing.
So the art of coup itself, like the game, because one of the things that I love about tabletop games,
or video games, or whatever, is the art.
It's kind of, I said in one of my earlier tabletop gaming episodes,
that I'm largely in gaming, not for the mechanics.
And then I proceeded to make a bunch of episodes where I really talk about game mechanics a lot.
But I'm typically not in the game scene for the mechanics.
I'm not one of those people who loves to just experience different rulesets.
Well, maybe I am.
But anyway, the other thing I like about games are the art.
It's the art.
It's the fantasy of going to a different world for a little while.
Whether it's in the form of a book, in the form of a movie, in the form of a video game,
or in the form of a tabletop game.
So the art of coup is really gorgeous.
And it's kind of this retro future style that makes me not even retro.
Retro makes you think of like sort of that 1950s feel, or whatever, or 80s feel,
depending on what your term retro is based upon.
But I mean, like, sort of classic, classic, classic is classicism.
I don't know.
Some fancy word, meaning old timey days, plus the future.
So it's kind of like very elegant, but the future, that sort of thing.
What it makes me think of is Dune, although I know that Dune is a book.
So you don't really have that much to go on, what that means.
But when I saw the cards, I literally thought it was like, I thought that it was referencing Dune.
Because it's kind of like, it was clearly sort of the future.
But we're using these terms like Contessa and, you know, the Duke and the captain.
And some other cards that I don't remember right now.
But yeah, it's got sort of that sort of high class, but future feeling to it.
Apparently, I've learned on the internet that that's quote unquote the dystopian universe.
I have no idea what that means.
Like, is that like a, I mean, I know what dystopian universe means.
I know dystopian.
I know universe.
I don't know why it's like the dystopian universe.
I don't know what that means.
Is that a brand name?
Is it, is it a setting that I'm supposed to be aware of?
I honestly don't know.
So I don't know what that means.
Whatever we call it, the art is very mysterious.
It's inspiring.
It's very nicely done.
It's like, it's not cartoonish at all.
It's quite realistic.
It's sort of like just grounded enough to evoke real world politics.
You know, you can really identify with what's going on.
But it's just science fictiony enough to kind of abstract it away from, you know,
super mundane things like trading deals and foreign aid and stuff like that,
which are all things that you do in this game.
Well, you don't have trading deals, but I imagine that you would replay ability of
Q is is extremely high.
I guess I should preface that by saying I don't actually own the game yet.
I'm getting it, but I don't have it on my bookshelf.
But I believe that it is quite high and I've certainly played it very frequently.
Like the first time I played it, I couldn't stop.
I just it would just went on and on.
And it's fairly quick gameplay too.
That's the interesting thing.
It's like I said, you only have either two or three cards in your in your hand.
It's, you know, it's not like the typical five, seven, whatever cards.
It's like, yeah, it's three two cards, whatever.
And it's pretty fast gameplay.
But as I have described to you, it is not really a card game.
There are some predictability that eventually emerges in terms of individual strategy,
you know, if you're playing against someone that you know well.
And they're claiming to have one thing.
And you strongly suggest that they're lying, then, you know,
and you kind of know their style of play, you know, how often they lie, how well they lie.
That sort of thing.
You can kind of get a feel for strategies, but then again, maybe they're mixing it up
because they know that you know that they usually do it this way.
So it's highly replayable.
It is a lot of fun.
It's a simple game.
It's a beautiful game.
And it's an extremely clever game.
It's a psychological game.
It barely uses the assets that it has physically.
It's all in the mind.
It's amazing.
You should own it.
You should play it.
And you will love it.
Cool.
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