Guillotine (2026) (EN)

Welcome to the French Revolution! In Guillotine, you play an ambitious executioner who dreams of becoming the most popular headsman in Paris. Every day, twelve nobles wait in line for the scaffold, and the more prized a noble is, the more points their head is worth once collected. The twist: the line order is never set in stone. Action cards let you push your next target forward, shove a rival's noble back, or flip the entire line upside down right before the blade falls. After three days of beheadings, whoever has amassed the most valuable head collection wins the game. The tone stays wonderfully comic, with goofy noble names and card effects that get a laugh despite the grim subject matter. This 2026 reissue keeps the rules that made it famous fully intact, while giving it refreshed artwork and a cardboard guillotine centerpiece that stands proudly on the table.

You'll probably love Guillotine if you're after a fast-playing card game built on manipulation rather than luck. With games clocking in around 30 minutes, it's a perfect icebreaker or filler between heavier titles, whether you're playing with the family (ages 12 and up) or with friends who enjoy pulling a fast one on each other.

Guillotine isn't new to the spotlight. When it launched in 1998, it won the Origins Award for Best Traditional Card Game, then picked up Germany's Fairplay A la carte award in 2003. Hard to find for years, it returns in 2026 in a brand-new edition that refreshes the artwork and adds a cardboard guillotine display piece, without touching the rules that made it a hit.

The game comes from Paul Peterson, a designer known for his dark sense of humor and his knack for turning a hand-management engine into a full-on game of manipulation, with period-perfect artwork by Quinton Hoover and Mike Raabe.

BOX CONTENTS
51 Noble cards
60 Action cards
1 cardboard guillotine
Game rules

Number of players: 2 to 5
Playtime: 30 minutes
Age: 12+