Smuggle and Bribe Your Way Through Prohis

Smuggle legal and illegal goods alike into your warehouse to score lots of money at the end of the game, while inspecting other players’ convoys to stop them from doing the same — or perhaps consider accepting an enticing bribe to look the other way.

Published by Blue Orange Games, Prohis is a light bluffing, bribery game for 3-6 players. Similar to titles such as Sherriff of Nottingham, it’s lighter on rules and much more compact.

Gameplay

Each player is given a captain card and a major card. These, along with the lieutenants that are in the main deck, are the prohis cards (prohibition era law enforcement). The deck is shuffled and each player is dealt four cards. Cards are either lieutenants, legal goods, or illegal goods. You then set the deck on the table and draw four cards to form the display, face-up.

Players take turns. On your turn, you can do one of two things: draw or create a convoy. When you draw you may either choose two cards from the display, take one card from the display and draw the top face-down card from the deck, take one card from the display, or take the top face-down card from the deck. As soon as a card is taken from the display, it is immediately replaced with a new card.

When you create a convoy, you choose 2-4 cards from your hand and place them face-down in front of yourself. All other players must then decide whether or not to play one of their prohis cards to inspect your convoy. If more than one player plays a prohis card, then the higher ranking prohis wins the right to inspection. The rankings go in order from lowest to highest: lieutenant, captain, major. If more than one person played the same top ranking prohis card, whoever played it first wins the right to inspection. All other players return their prohis cards to their hands.

If no one plays a prohis card, all the cards in your convoy are added to your warehouse face-down. If prohis cards are played, you deal with the player who won the right to inspection. Before the player inspects the convoy, you may attempt to offer him a bribe with cards from your hand. If the inspector takes the bribe, the cards you give him are added face-down to his warehouse. If you do not offer a bribe at all, the inspector may choose to skip the inspection and return the prohis card he used to his hand. Otherwise, the inspector may turn over 1-3 cards in your convoy, depending on the rank of the prohis card he played.

If the inspector finds an illegal good, then the inspection immediately ends and all the cards in the convoy are added face-down to the inspector’s warehouse. If the inspector only finds legal goods, then all the cards are added to your warehouse face-down and you add the opponent’s prohis card to your hand. If there was a prohis card in your convoy and the inspector turns it over, then the inspection immediately ends, all cards in the convoy go face-down in your warehouse, and your opponent’s prohis card goes to your hand.

The game ends once there are fewer than four cards in the display and all players have one final turn (you may pass and remove yourself from the rest of the game if you no longer wish to take new cards or send convoys). Once the game ends, everyone reveals the cards in their warehouses. Legal goods are worth one thousand dollars, illegal goods are worth four thousand, lieutenants are three thousand, captains four thousand, and majors five thousand. Any illegal good cards still in your hand are worth negative four thousand. The player with the most money at the end of the game wins.

Review

Prohis shares certain elements in common with other bluffing games, but distills it down to something simple, accessible, and fast. Goods are either legal or illegal, and there are no sets to collect or complicated scoring at the end. It’s all about how well you can bluff through your convoys, the bribes you offer, and when you choose to investigate other players’ shipments.

The different draw options are interesting since you have to balance collecting more cards against other players knowing what’s in your hand, as well as potentially losing points if you’re holding any illegal goods at the end of the game — even though these are worth more points than legal goods when in your warehouse.

We did have to check a couple of times how the prohis cards resolve during investigations, when they go back into hands and when they go into a player’s warehouse. This was the only slightly complicated bit of the rules, however, and you quickly get a hang of it. As a minor nitpick, the title of the game, Prohis, is not a commonly known word — we had to do a bit of research to figure out its meaning and proper pronunciation ("pro-heez").

If you enjoy bluffing games, this is a really nicely put-together, light entry into the genre. There are certainly bigger, fancier ones out there that might appeal more to other players, but if you’re looking for short-but-sweet, Prohis is quite enjoyable.

Pros: Simple and easy to learn, straight forward scoring, lots of player interaction

Cons: There are other similar games out there, title is rather obscure

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.