I approached Telephone in a dark, isolated room, far from where prying eyes might see us and ears might hear us.

“Telephone, I’m going to make you deal.”

He didn’t say anything. I knew he wouldn’t. Telephone had survived in proximity to the Supreme Socket by being a good listener. I took a drag from my cigarette, its red light dimly reflecting off the gold accents on the walls.

“Neither of us are replacing the Supreme Appliance. You know it and I know it. We don’t have to like it, but we have to face the facts. You’ve turned too many people off, and I...”

“You’ve burned too many people.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

A long pause. Not even a dial tone. He really knew how to draw you out.

“We both like Toaster,” I ventured.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“We both know how to handle Toaster.”

“Sure. I know how to keep my bread from getting burnt.”

“Blender and Radio are disorganized and at one another’s throats. Let them waste their energy. If we work together to back Toaster…”

“It works out better for both of us.”

“Exactly.”

“I see your point. You have a deal.”

For now, at least. So it goes. A temporary truce is better than a permanent war. I turned to leave.

…

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Five Families doesn’t quite work. Let’s get that out of the way at the start. Friedemann Friese’s latest big box game had a lot of promise. It mixes together a strange and confrontational auction system with area control scoring, it has wonderfully straightforward rules, and it has cute li’l mobster meeples, but none of these admirable traits can save it. Its joys are undercut by its runaway leader problem, the impact of the capriciousness of the card draw, and, worst of all, monotony.

Still, at least Five Families respects its audience enough to be one of the more interesting letdowns I’ve experienced in a while. I don’t think it’s a good game in the commercial sense, but I wish every game that didn’t work could manage to fail like this. It is something equally or possibly even more valuable than “good”: Five Families is worthwhile.

Married to the Mob

The Five Families are the five principal branches of the Mafia as it operates in the United States. If you’ve seen The Godfather, you know who these guys are. While the idea of the Five Families feels irrevocably tied to mid–20th century America—probably, come to think of it, because of The Godfather—the…

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