Venture on if you are looking for games like Citadels and are curious about what similar games to play next. Citadels is a secret role game about completing your kingdom. You take on new roles each round amongst the characters you need to hire in order to help you acquire gold and build buildings. It is a mix of knowing who is what role when and how to best use your resources to maximize points.
To determine this list we broke down Citadels to what it is. There is a secret role assigning round where your attentions are not necessarily known and then there is an economic component. If you are looking for something similar, you have come to the right place. We took all this into consideration and came up with this list of the 5 board games like Citadels.
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#05 | Sheriff of Nottingham
Sheriff of Nottingham just makes the list of games like Citadels because it seems like a social deduction game but is actually a strategy game. Sure that is a stretch but it oddly in that same communication meets strategy niche as Citadels In the game surrounding the iconic Robin Hood character, players take turns playing the Sheriff.
Other players are traders who need to get their goods into Nottingham. To make a little money those traders need to sneak in Contraband and maybe lie about what they are bringing in. It is up to the players to successfully lie and up to the Sheriff to catch them. Playing off other players is key in both games. Sheriff is for 3 – 5 players (6 with expansion) and will last about 1 hour.
FOR MORE: Sheriff of Nottingham Page | How To Play Sheriff of Nottingham | Sheriff of Nottingham Review | Games Like Sheriff of Nottingham | Buy Sheriff of Nottingham on Amazon
#04 | Saboteur
Saboteur is another role driven strategy title on the list of games like Citadels. You take on the role of dwarves. You are a miner hunting for gold when Suddenly, a pick axe swings down and shatters the mine lamp. The saboteur has made their move. Dwarf cards secretly reveal if you are on the miner or saboteur team. The Dwarf’s goal is to move through the cave towards the treasure.
The goal of the saboteur is to place obstacles and stop the Dwarfs from achieving their goal. Flipping over cards, you are forming paths round after round to get to treasure or stop it. This is a game like Citadels because of the secret roles mixed with strategic actions based on what you think is going on. For 3 – 10 players, games last about 30 minutes.
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#03 | Witch’s Brew
Witch’s Brew (Not Witches’ Brew) is very much like Citadels. A large group of players take on a variety of roles and that feeds into the strategic round of making things, in this case it is making potions. Each role has a main full action and a less valuable “favor” action. If you are the first player with that role you announce that you are that character.
If you follow after but choose that same role card you can take the favor action instead, or declare that you are that character in hopes that you can command the full action. You risk having it taken from you by a later player, though. These two are pretty much the same games but with a different theme and actions happen simultaneously instead of one at a time. For 3 – 5 players, games run about 45 minutes.
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#02 | Mission: Red Planet
This is that same type of secret role into build up game like Citadels. Mission: Red Planet just happens to be in space and have much more going on. The year is 1888, and Steampunk technology has advanced at a prodigious rate! Probes have been sent to Mars, and soon astronauts will be manning rockets in order to mine the planet for newly discovered resources.
There are many more strategic buildings an exploring than just the simple building of Citadels. You are sending around ships and trying to control territories. The core game is there, but Mission: Red Planet has some additional options and paths that might be of interest to you. For 3 – 5 players, games last about 1 hour.
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#01 | Meuterer
This game is basically the predecessor to Citadels, it is hard to get more similar than that. In the top spot on the list of games like Citadels comes Meuterer, a 2000 title about pirates. The game is a role selection card game in which you take the role of a crewmember aboard a merchant ship. Each round, you reveal goods from your hand to sell.
You can only sell certain things in certain ports and your location is decided by the captain. The different roles play important parts in how things turn out. This is another dead ringer for Citadels. You have key roles that are secretive and then there is a strategic economy element. This is the same thing, just with pirates. The game is for 3 – 4 players and goes for about 1 hour.
