Dead Man’s Cabal is a 2019 action selection game by Daniel Newman. This medium weight 2-4 player strategy game published by Pandasaurus Games has players making active and passive movement decisions during different phases of play in the hopes of scoring the most points for their resurrected party guests. The box claims it should take about 60 minutes to play.

How to Play

A game of Dead Man’s Cabal starts by setting up each of the rooms in a layout similar to a house floor plan or dungeon. Each room in the dungeon corresponds to different colored skulls and each type of skull will give the players different actions to perform during their respective turns. During a player’s turn, if they are the active player, they will pull a random skull out of the bag and select a row of skulls in the Ossuary to place it. The Ossuary is going to serve as the primary location to determine player actions. Like a conveyer belt, the new skull, which is always placed at the bottom of a row, pushes the row forward displacing the top skull in that row. The player adds this skull to their personal supply.

The active player then chooses any skull in their supply to return to the skull bag and performs the action associated with that skull. After that action has been performed, all players starting with the active player would then be able to take a passive action determined by the majority color of the skulls in the middle column of the Ossuary. The Ossuary tracker, cow skull, would then move to cover the color skull of the passive action, making it unavailable as a passive action for the next round. If there is no clear majority of skulls in the center column, the active player would select the action from the available actions. After all players have performed their passive actions or passed, the active player passes the skull bag to the next player to be the active player.

What are the colored rooms and their available actions, you say? There are four different colored rooms that work together to allow the players to gain points or acquire and use bones which are used as currency to take improved or alternate actions in each of the rooms.

The Athenaeum, gold skull room, allows the players to add ritual cards to their hand. Each player has a hand limit of five cards and the gold action would allow them to draw no cards and take three bones, draw a face up or face down card and take a bone, or spend a bone to refill their hand with face up or face down cards up to the hand limit of five.

The Sepulchre, red skull room, allows the players to acquire skulls arranged in the room. A player can take a skull and gain a bone, spend a bone to take two skulls, or spend two bones to gain three skulls.

The Scriptorium, white skull room, allows players to gain glyphs which are important to obtain for the next room. A player can replace one of their cubes with a rune and gain one bone or spend a bone to replace two of their cubes and gain two runes. Players also have the option to spend additional bones to acquire black runes from the rightmost column of runes.

That leads us to the most important room in the game, the Sanctum or black skull room. A player has the option to place a skull from their supply and gain a bone or place two skulls from their supply by paying a bone. After players have placed their skulls, each player with the Sanctum action available can see if they have fulfilled the requirements of a ritual card in order to perform a summon or can spend two bones to perform an additional summon if they have completed another ritual card. A ritual card’s cost is indicated in the upper lefthand part of the card. The Sanctum would need to have those colored skulls in an unbroken, continuous line on the board in any order. Then each player in turn who completed a summon removes a skull that was used in the summon as specified on the card with the arrow pointing to a skull color. After a ritual card has been completed, if the player has any runes in their supply that match the completed ritual card, the player may place the runes on the card to gain access to the room without a color, the Oracle.

The Oracle is the way for players to acquire bonus points at the end of the game. For each rune attached to a summon, the player places one of their cubes in any of the seven available locations in the Oracle. The spots in the Oracle correspond to certain end game conditions, such as, largest orthogonal grouping in the Scriptorium, the colored skulls used for summons, the skulls remaining in a player’s supply at the end of the game, or a flat amount of points.

Play continues with each player performing the active and passive actions until a player has completed seven ritual cards or a player has run out of cubes in their color. Once that round has completed, the players count the points from their ritual cards, upper righthand corner of the card, and gains bonus points from the Oracle if the player has the most cubes in a location or the second most cubes in a location. The most cubes in the star location gains twenty points, second place gains ten. For the Oracle locations concerning skulls used in summons, the player with the most cubes gains five points for each colored skull used and second most cubes gains three points for each colored skull used in summons. For example, if one player used eight black skulls in summons and had the most cubes in the black skull location, they would gain forty points. A second place player in that location with ten black skulls used would gain thirty points. The remaining two Oracle locations, runes and remaining skulls in the player’s supply, score in a similar way but with four points each for first place and two points each for second place. In case of a tie, each player gains the lower bonus point value. A tie for first would result in the tied players receiving the second place rewards and a tie for second results in no bonus points. The player with the most points is the winner.

Joe’s Review

I’m going to start with what I like about the game. The Gorillaz/Tank Girl style artwork is fantastic and the bones and skulls are very detailed and well constructed pieces. The aesthetics of the game make it very unique and it has a table presence unlike other games released this year. I did enjoy the economy with the bones and the skulls that gave the game a frantic spending rhythm where I wasn’t accumulating currency for the sake of it. I was constantly gaining currency in order to just spend it immediately. I also thought that the rulebook was very easy to understand. It was well worded, well arranged, and provided the reader with many diagrams.

One of Cabal’s gameplay mechanisms with the cascading active and passive actions was something I liked at two players but loathed at higher player counts. At two players, I felt like I had more player autonomy and I wasn’t taking actions that aren’t very beneficial to me or passing my turn and getting nothing. At two players, it isn’t a big deal to take a less than optimal action but at four players it definitely made the game overstay its welcome. In one four player game, the board was starved for gold skulls and two players didn’t have any cards in their hand. The game just dragged as a result and nearly doubled the playing time that was listed on the box. I can see this sort of thing happening if other skulls were in short supply on the board since each colored skull works with a certain room and each room’s purpose coordinates with the other rooms.

My primary issue with Cabal is the scoring. The Oracle room is completely out of hand and the point tracking room is undersized. The point tracking room counts to a hundred.

If players know what they are doing, scores can reach or surpass two hundred. There are points on the ritual cards but they don’t really matter. The points from the Oracle make or break the game and create huge swings in points. It is easy to score more points from one space on the Oracle than all of your completed ritual cards. Every game, win or lose, felt like a blowout. I don’t find it fun to pummel my opponents and I don’t like to get completely buried. There is no tension in the scoring and it really hurts my enjoyment in the game.

Heather’s Review

Pandasuarus Games has been on fire the last few years, releasing unique games such as Nyctophobia and Wasteland Express Delivery Service. Their games all have interesting themes, such as Dinosaur Island, and quickly sell out. Dead Man’s Cabal is no exception in this way. The theme of resurrecting guests for your afterlife style party with well crafted skull and bone tokens is like no other game I have seen.

The component quality is for the most part stellar. The cards have neat Mindless Self Indulgence style artwork and recognizable figures such as David Bowie, a roleplaying party, Greedo, etc. The skulls and bones are well crafted and very detailed. Although you don’t have to set up the hallways for the board, it gives the game more depth and makes you think you are really running around a creepy old dungeon collecting bones and spirits.The one flaw I found component wise were the gold skulls. On the box they are a vibrant gold, but they look more tarnished and antique in reality. This would be fine, if it did not make it almost impossible to distinguish them from the black skulls.

As Joe stated, collecting bones did not seem pointless and our two player game flowed pretty well. Everyone had access to skulls, ample actions on their turn, and I never felt blocked. To me, two player is optimal for this game, but this could change when I get a three player game in. Much of the time I spent trying to block Joe from gaining too many points in the Oracle, and it is important for players to understand that is where the bulk of their victory will come from. Summons are important but the Oracle is vital. Our game was pretty balanced but there are a few promo cards (such as the Oracle tie breaker) that easily could have caused a wide gap in points. If players do not pay attention to the Oracle area or not focus on getting runes, they are already out of the running. I liked the flow of the game but wish the Oracle did not feel imbalanced at times.

I enjoyed the active and passive actions, but wish there was another option rather than just take the passive action or pass. Passing seems a waste but sometimes the actions did not align with anything beneficial (such as placing the only skull in my supply in the Scriptorium). It did not happen often in the two player game, but I did witness it in larger player counts. Overall, this game would not be my first choice at a game night but it is something I am willing to play again in the future.

Joe’s Summary
3/5 paws

• Great aesthetics, well organized rulebook made the game easy to grasp, enjoyable dual economy system
• Too swingy, can overstay its welcome

Heather’s Summary
3/5 paws

• Interesting theme, quality components, two player accessible
• Difficult to distinguish skulls, possibility for runaway scoring