Silver Bullet and Silver Dagger – Werewolves Coming to Town

Buckle up, friends, this is going to be a long one. In this review, we’re taking on not one but two new editions of the popular Silver card game series from accomplished publisher Bezier Games. These editions are quality installments in an already well-liked “werewolf hunting” game series. This time you have a Silver Bullet and a Silver Dagger in your repertoire.

In the Silver game series, you play the mayor of a small village of townsfolk. Unfortunately your village is infested with werewolves! You can reduce the werewolf population by using your residents’ special abilities, but you don’t know them all yet. It’ll take some time to find out who they are; they begin the game in hiding (facedown cards). Once you reveal them (cards that are faceup) you can call them to your aid. You can even receive help from travelers (cards drawn from the deck). This will enable you to put the powerful Silver Bullet or Silver Dagger to effective use. Many options lie before you, and you need some clever play to utilize your character abilities well and race the other players to victory. The mayor with the fewest werewolves in their village at the end of the game wins!

Silver is designed by Ted Alspach, plays in about 45 minutes, and accommodates 2-4 players. Like other character-driven card games like Love Letter, it’s played over several rounds to determine the ultimate victor. It’s a light and engaging card game with nearly endless replayability. Each edition comes with a set of villagers (numbered 0 to 13) that can be mixed and matched with any other editions. This truly makes a unique gaming experience each time you play. As of this writing there are four editions to choose from.

Enough chatter, let’s take a closer look.

Setup

I’ll describe play using the Silver Bullet edition. Silver Dagger is very similar, with new characters to choose from and a new silver object to try out.

Shuffle the deck and deal five cards each into four separate piles. If playing with less than four players, simply remove unused piles from the game. This is a quick way to draft a unique draw deck every game. This counteracts those crazy people who are good at counting cards. Of course, if all four players are at the table, you’ll know what’s in play.

Next, each player lays out their cards facedown in a horizontal row in front of them without looking at them. This forms their village. Give each player a reference card if you wish, which is a helpful reminder of game actions. Place the draw deck in the center of the table. Flip the top card face up to form a discard pile.

Choose a start player at random. Place the Silver Bullet on the side nearest them, next to the draw deck.

Finally, each player secretly looks at exactly two cards from their horizontal row. Players should memorize the numbers on these cards. They’ll need to remember who is in their village as the game progresses.

Gameplay

Cards in Silver have two functions. Each card has a number, which represents how many werewolves have followed this resident to your village. The more powerful the resident, the more werewolves they attract! Second, each card displays a character with a special ability. Sometimes these abilities are activated when you draw the villager from the deck. Other and other times you activate these abilities if the character is face-up in your village. The cards have symbols on the bottom to remind you when you’re able to use the ability.

It’s up to you to figure out who is in your village. Make sure to remove the residents that attract the most werewolves!

On Your Turn

Beginning with the start player, take turns clockwise, doing one of three actions:

• Take a card from the deck
• Take a card from the discard pile
• Call for a vote.

Take a Card From the Deck

If you take the top card from the deck, you have several options.

If it has a “flip” icon on it, you can use its ability and then discard it face-up. A lot of the higher numbered cards have powerful abilities and are attractive to use this way.

You could decide instead to add the card to your village, face-down, and exchange it with a card you’d like to get rid of. Remember, you’re trying to reduce the sum total of the numbers in your village. Anytime you make an exchange like this, you have the option to hand in sets of the same numbered card.

For example, if you draw a Cow (number 5) and want to keep it, you could exchange it for two or more Counts (number 10) for a nice trade.

Lastly, if you don’t like anything about the card you just drew, you can simply discard it without effect, face-up.

Take a Card From the Discard

If you decide to take a card from the discard pile, you don’t use its ability, you simply make an exchange (same rules as above). As a general rule, anytime you draw a face-down card it remains face-down in your village. If you draw a face-up card—such as anything in the discard pile—it remains face-up in your village. When exchanging cards, you always place discarded cards face-up.

Call for a Vote

If you have four or fewer cards, you may call for a vote. Your turn immediately ends and you can use neither card abilities nor the Silver Bullet. Each other player gets one more turn and then the round ends.

You may have noticed that you start the game with five cards, but you can only call a vote once you get down to four cards. You’ll need to exchange sets of cards to reduce your number of villagers so you can call the vote.

Character Abilities

As mentioned above, characters with a “flip” icon are activated when you draw them from the deck and decide to play them. Sometimes you can activate this ability at other times (such as using a Mortician or Marksman).

Characters with a “row” icon may be activated during your turn, if they are face-up in your village (such as a Priest or Goth Girl).

Some characters have an end of round ability (such as a Hunter). These tend to be the lowest number cards in the game and are very helpful when calculating your score.

Round End and Scoring

The round ends once a player calls for a vote and every other player takes one more turn, or the draw deck runs out. Your score for the round is the sum of your remaining cards.

If you called for a vote and you have the lowest sum, you score 0 points. Nice job! If you called the vote and don’t have the lowest sum, you score the sum of your cards plus 10. Ouch! I learned this lesson the hard way many times, so think twice before you call for that vote.

If you successfully called for a vote and have the lowest total, you also get to take the Silver Bullet. The Silver Bullet allows you to “eliminate” one of your cards every round. This effectively knocks it out of the game and not counting it for scoring that round. This gives you quite the tidy head start as you try to achieve the lowest number possible.

Write down each player’s score for that round and add it to the sum of the previous rounds. The game comes with a handy score pad you can use if you like. Then, start a new round using the same setup as before and get back to it.

If you’ve just completed the fourth round, count up everyone’s sum total. Drum roll please, the player with the fewest werewolves (lowest total points) is the winner!

Impressions

Congratulations, if you’ve made it this far and you’re still hanging with me, I applaud you! For such a small and quick card game, I will admit there are a lot of rules to get through. My first couple plays felt a bit clunky as I tried to remember all the nuances. Add the digesting of the card abilities and you have a learning curve, here.

However, this game is a gem! It’s worth the initial strenuous mental climb to get to the top of the mountain. Once you’re there, the view is incredible. And, it’s not just for older kids—my 10-year-old loves the game despite the publisher’s recommendation for ages 14+.

My family plays a lot of Love Letter. Until now it has been one of the most requested games my kids ask for. Silver has totally captured their imagination in similar fashion. They’ve asked to play it nearly every night the past few weeks. It’s just so fun to play once you get the rules down. Plus, the various card combinations you can create from multiple editions keep it fresh every time. We know luck plays a part of the outcome (like any card game) so no one is too sour about losing.

Between the two editions I probably enjoy Silver Bullet a little more. The Bullet itself is a really nice bonus if you can get it, and makes the competition for it even more fierce. The villager abilities in Silver Dagger are a bit more chaotic and even slightly annoying—I’m looking at you, Zombie. Either game is really good, though, and you should probably just buy them both.

Bezier Games does so many things right in these games. The box insert holds all the components (sleeved cards or not). There’s even a handy Draw and Discard board when you have the Cow in play. (Play the game and find out what the Cow does, I won’t get into it here). But, make sure you notice the little pasture and fence on her board, what a fun detail.

I have some card sleeves shipping my way as I write this, because I can tell we are going to play this game so much we’ll beat the cards to shreds. I regret not sleeving other card games my family loves, and this one is going to hit my table more than others, no doubt.

Bottom line, embrace the werewolves and consider getting this game!

You can buy the Silver series direct from Bezier Games, on Amazon, or at your friendly local game store.

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Bezier Games provided The Family Gamers with complimentary copies of Silver Bullet and Silver Dagger for this review.

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