Back to Games
Copycat box art

Base game

Copycat

Replay index

—

 

Published
2012
Players
2–4
Play time
95 min
Reach
Niche
Evaluations
0
Themes:
Card GamePolitical
Mechanics:
Auction & biddingDeck / bag buildingHand managementWorker placement

How it plays

Gain the most influence to become president. Each round, draw five cards, use one to set turn order, then place workers and play cards to gain money, influence, actions, and new cards for your deck. After the final round, total your influence points; the highest score wins.

Main mechanics explained

  • Auction & bidding: Value is set by what players are willing to pay.
  • Deck / bag building: You shape your own deck or bag of resources as you play.
  • Hand management: Timing which card to spend is the core puzzle.
  • Worker placement: You claim limited action spots before anyone else does.
Full publisher description

Copycat , or as it is known in German, Fremde Federn (which means roughly to adorn oneself with borrowed plumes, or something like strange feathers ), is about borrowing elements from well-known games (Eurogames) and constructing a new game out of them. Copycat is a deck-building, worker-placement, drafting race game. You are a politician who tries to gather enough money and influence to become the next president. Of course, you depend on the work of others to get the needed influence. You start with a set of 10 cards (7 of them are fatherly friends, which give you 1 money each and 3 of them yield 1 influence each (VPs)). Each round you draw 5 cards from your deck and use one card for the turn order to place your workers. The workers go to the different offices in the government building to buy new cards for you, get influence or to carry out other actions. Each round there is one more space in which you can choose to place your workers. On the game board is a row of cards which you can choose to buy and each round the empty places in this row are filled from a deck of cards divided into 4 different Ages. The last cards of the deck are Doctoral degrees which you can buy with your money; these give you 1 VP for each unit of money spent. The game ends when all of the Doctoral degrees are bought or when one player has 95 VPs or more.

What players say

Loading…