Veneficus
- Board's Eye View
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Subtitled The Secret Game of Psychics, Veneficus is a light party game where the 3-12 players take on the role of clairvoyants guessing which of two alternative 'readings' best represents the 'truth' of that round's 'sitter'. Veneficus is designed by Jared Kaplan and Chris Kincaid, with art by Liz Pavlovic. It's published by Lonely Hero Games.
All the players have a sun and moon tile. A 'Card of Truth' is revealed that shows two alternative responses; one labelled sun and one moon. Each player secretly selects the response they think the sitter has chosen. The sitter tho' is chosen through the randomly dealt order cards, so until there is just one player left who hasn't yet had a turn as sitter, nobody else knows who the sitter is. Therefore this isn't a game where you're trying to get into the same wavelength of another known player. Rather, this is a pitching game...
After everyone has placed out their face-down sun or moon tile, the player with that round's order card reveals themselves as the sitter and flips their sun/moon tile. At this point other players try to persuade the sitter of the accuracy of their reading. After hearing the pitches, the sitter chooses a psychic and they and all other players reveal their sun/moon tile.
If the sitter chose a psychic whose reading was correct (ie: same sun or moon tile as the sitter), the sitter and all other players who made the same choice takes a face-down clairvoyance card from the stacks. Depending on the card drawn, it'll be worth either 2 or 3 points at the end of the game. If the psychic chosen by the sitter has an incorrect reading (ie: their sun/moon tile doesn't match that of the sitter), they and all other incorrect players draw clairvoyance cards. The psychic who deceived the sitter also takes the Veneficus token. This is worth an additional 3-5 points (it starts off worth 3 points but advances on a track to 4 and then 5 points) but it is always nabbed by the last player to 'deceive' the sitter; so it only benefits the player who holds it when the game ends.
Players are incentivised to make convincing pitches to the round's sitter because the player that's chosen scores a clairvoyance card regardless of whether or not their 'reading' was correct. Players always know how many rounds are remaining, so in the last couple of rounds, players will have an increasingly narrow choice of sitter and will have a particularly strong incentive to get the Veneficus token.
This all makes for a light relatively easy-going pitching and bluffing game. The intention is that with 3-4 players, you should play so that everyone gets two or three turns as sitter; play one or two turns as sitter with 5-6 players; and play one turn each with 7-12 players. From our plays at Board's Eye View, Veneficus was at its best at higher player counts.
And unlike many other pitching games there's nothing here that is likely to ring NSFW (Not Safe For Work) alarm bells with your HR Department. The game is attractively produced by Lonely Hero Games. Our only gripe was that the track to increase the value of the Veneficus token seems to be a small but unnecessary faff. Games will run for 5-12 rounds and, more often than not, there will be several rounds where a psychic succeeds in 'deceiving' the sitter, so why not just say at the outset that the Veneficus token adds 5 points to the score of the player holding it at the end of the game?
