Get the MacGuffin
Was it stolen from the museum? Or did the spy leave it on the luggage rack of the westbound train? The black market is full of them! Get the money and call the “Garbage Collector!”
Looney Labs is at it again with their new game, Get the MacGuffin.
After spending all morning searching for our copy of Get the MacGuffin—which could have been a film all in and of itself—we played this fast passed, take-that game of plot device stealing fun!
Like the majority of Looney Labs games, Get the MacGuffin is a quick card game for 2-11 players where play pivots at every moment. The ultimate goal is to be the last person standing, and obtaining and keeping the MacGuffin is the surest way to do so. Look out though, because spies, tomb robbers, and assassins are everywhere, and they will use every tool at their disposal to eliminate you.
Each turn, a player performs one action by playing a card from their hand or activating a card on the field. Most of your cards will affect the game state by removing, stealing, or trading cards in some form or fashion. On your turn, if you have no actions to take, you are out! The MacGuffin gives you unlimited actions, but only for as long as you can hold onto it.
During our game, it quickly became a competition between the holder of the MacGuffin and the wearer of the Crown. On the first turn the Crown was revealed, only to be assassinated shortly after. The Garbage Collector went searching for it but was thwarted when the MacGuffin hit the table. The game then became a grab for power as the Thief, Merchant, and holder of the Money each stole the MacGuffin out from under the previous owner.
Overall, the game is a solid experience as both a filler game and a party game and plays well both at 4 players and 11.
We would like to thank Looney Labs for this great donation and being a returning sponsor of International Games Week!
Guest reviewer: Jeremy Kincaid. Jeremy has degrees in Game Design and English and is currently working on his Master’s degree in Library Science at UNT. As the Programming and Outreach Assistant at the UNT Media Library, Jeremy uses his knowledge, skills, and connections within the gaming community to create engaging, creative, and educational events for students in the UNT community.
Guess I’m the weird one here because I love to play this. I played it about 20 times on the DiceTower Cruise. It is silly but also amusing. However, once you have some idea about the cards (which doesn’t take long since there are only 23), you do have some thinking to do about what others might have. And since some cards are out of play with smaller player counts, each game can be quite different in terms of what might happen.