Burgle Bros. Blackjack

• What's Eric Playing?
A colorful box for the card game 'Burgle Bros: Blackjack' featuring cartoon characters on the front, including a woman with a gun, a man in a suit, and others in various poses.

Base price: $21.
1 – 4 players.
Play time: 20 – 30 minutes.
BGG Link
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Logged plays: 3 

Full disclosure: A review copy of Burgle Bros. Blackjack was provided by Fowers Games.

A rare treat; I actually finished up my work pretty early this week. On the writing aspect, at least; I’m almost done with these photos, too, but I tried to get the writing done because my friend very much wanted to watch the finale of Fruits Basket and I figured, why not. I’m jazzed enough that Dragon Ball Super is coming back that I figure everyone should be able to live their anime dreams. But, on the subject of something entirely different, let’s check out Burgle Bros. Blackjack!

In Burgle Bros. Blackjack, the crew is back and there’s more heist to do! You’ll have to master blackjack this time around if you want to avoid guards. The thing is, there’s no house this time around and you’re not competing, so you’ll have to work together to make it through! This one’s certainly tricky, but as long as you know when to hit, when to bail, and when to swap tools with your crew to make the big bust! Can you complete the heist before it’s too late?

Contents

Setup

Each player is going to get assigned a character, first off:

A colorful deck of playing cards featuring cartoonish illustrations of various characters and motifs, including jokers, kings, queens, and thematic designs.

Then, give them the corresponding ability card, and set your Stealth to 2 (cover the bottom one with the character). You can match abilities to characters based on symbols.

A collection of game cards featuring various instructions and actions associated with a game, including titles and descriptions like 'Jury Rig' and 'Overhead'.

Give each player a random guard (Jack):

Four playing cards featuring illustrated characters in police and spy attire, showcasing various poses and expressions against a black background.

Give them a player card corresponding to that guard as well.

Four game cards with instructions and actions for gameplay, including rules for drawing, trading, and checking totals.

Then, shuffle the remaining cards and deal each player ten. Shuffle your personal deck with your guard to make your full deck. You can set the tools nearby.

A layout of game cards featuring items like a stethoscope, makeup kit, and smoke bomb, each with illustrations and descriptions, arranged in a neat grid on a black background.

You should be ready to start!

A tabletop view of a card game featuring various cards with illustrations and written instructions laid out on a black surface.

Gameplay

A layout of playing cards featuring colorful illustrations and game instructions. The cards include character designs and unique actions alongside standard playing card backs and values.

It’s Burgle Bros.; it’s blackjack. It’s Burgle Bros. Blackjack! Your goal is simple: crack all four safes before you run out of stealth!

The game is played over a series of rounds. In each round, you reveal cards until you go inactive. Let’s dig in.

To start, reveal a card. That’s pretty easy. That card is your current card; it’ll be the card that you can potentially trade. Each player can trade their current card with any other player, provided it’s not a guard (Jack).

At this point, you should tally up your total. If it’s 5 / 10 / 15 / 20, you can Peek! Reveal the top card of the deck and discard it or don’t. If it’s 21, you get a bonus! Any player can discard a Guard from their display (inactive or not) or every player can take a bonus Peek action. After this, you go inactive. You’re out for the rest of the round.

If you have five cards of the same suit as your guard / player aid card in your display, you’ve cracked your safe! You draw a Tool and switch your character to the Targeted side. More on that later. Now your new goal is just to survive!

A collection of playing cards featuring colorful illustrations, including characters and game instructions. The cards display terms like 'Dynamite' and 'Crowbar', along with descriptions of game mechanics against a black background.

If your total is over 21, you trigger an alarm. Discard the top two cards of your deck and remove one of them from the game. You can’t remove a Guard, unfortunately. If you discard a Guard, you lose a Stealth. Either way, you’re now inactive.

Otherwise, you can decide if you want to stay in or Bail. If you Bail, you become inactive (and if you’re Targeted, you trigger an alarm if your total is 16 or less).

Once all players have become inactive, the round ends! If any player has their Guard in their display, they lose a Stealth. All players then discard their display, become active again, and a new round starts!

A tabletop scene showing a variety of playing cards placed in a strategic layout on a black background, featuring colorful graphics and illustrations.

Play continues until every player has unlocked their safe or until any player loses a Stealth when they have 0 remaining. In the former case, you win! In the latter case, everyone loses!

Player Count Differences

A close-up view of a tabletop card game featuring multiple illustrated playing cards with characters and game instructions, set against a black surface.

The general idea stays the same regardless of player count. With one or two, you’ll play four- or two-handed. Simple enough! The actual gameplay remains the same, you just control four players or two players. At three players, you have The Man in the Van! He doesn’t really play, per se; he just draws a card every turn. If it’s a Jack, any player can discard a Guard (Jack) in their display. You can trade with his current card, as well, but otherwise he discards it every turn. It mostly compensates for having an extra player who could get 21s. There’s not a huge difference, otherwise. I’ve played it a lot at two, and enjoyed it.

Strategy

A layout of playing cards on a black surface, featuring illustrated characters and game instructions. The cards include designs with symbols and colors, showcasing various actions and rules involved in a card game.
  • 21 is a pretty critical thing to hit. That lets you get rid of a Guard, which is clutch, or potentially get rid of more Guards by letting everyone Peek at once. Both are great options, but later in the game it’s going to be critical to discard those Guards to avoid losing Stealth.
  • Clearing out Guards is also pretty critical. Like I said, clear out the Guards or lose them in any other variety of ways so that they don’t end up stuck in your display.
  • Peeking is also important! Discard high cards and guards. If you can Peek and discard a Guard, that’s pretty much the best outcome. You usually have a, like, 10% chance or better of that happening just based on your deck size.
  • If you already have a Guard in your discard, busting and trigging an alarm isn’t a bad move. You certainly won’t lose a Stealth if your Guard is already discarded. You can also use the opportunity to remove a high-value card from the game or remove a card that’s no longer useful if you’ve cracked your safe.
  • Your character ability is also pretty useful. I particularly like the Hacker ability that lets you trade either your current or previous card, but that’s down to preferences. Either way, use your ability as often as you can!
  • Bailing isn’t a bad thing, especially if you have a Guard in the discard or you haven’t seen them yet. Sometimes you need to pause the progression of things so that you don’t accidentally draw a Guard or reshuffle your deck. Getting through a round without losing stealth is always a good thing. It’s the only way you’ll get more shots at organizing everyone’s deck.
  • Aces are great. 1? 11? It’s both! You can use them to hit a 10 or a 20 pretty easily, or you can draw straight into a 21 if you’re lucky. It’s genuinely useful and you should try to get your ace as quickly as possible.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

A collection of playing cards displayed on a black surface, featuring various illustrations and text, including characters like 'The Raven' and 'Vitus'.

Pros

  • Always nice to have a new Burgle Bros.-style game! It remains an all-time favorite for me, so more games in the series are always a good way to engage me. I’m also excited to see when Future Flip comes around, though I imagine that’s more of a Gen Con thing? Not sure.
  • I like the adaptation of blackjack to the Burgle Bros. system. There’s some fun aspects of blackjack here like knowing when to hit and when to stay, but I really like trying to organize your deck to try and get a bunch of low-value cards to unlock the safe. It’s fun and interesting, though part of that is because I’m genuinely terrible at blackjack. I got told once by a professional card dealer to never go to Vegas. I carry that with me every day.
  • Some limited new art is nice; I like the guards. It’s always nice to see them; I like the flat and colorful art style of the series.
  • Each turn is quick. You basically just flip a card and then potentially hit again.
  • Trading makes the game interesting! There’s a lot you can do moving cards around and trying to organize the deck while still playin blackjack.
  • Very portable. It counters my distaste for tuckboxes, I suppose.

Mehs

  • I loathe a tuckbox, but for a small game, I get it. This is helped a bit by having the rules be smaller than the cards, so they create a gap that makes the box easier to close. Not all tuckboxes do this, and so there’s a whole thing about trying to get the lip of the lid inside of the box around the cards. This is what we in the business call an extremely specific complaint, but that’s a luxury I enjoy due to playing too many board games.
  • The core player reference cards are missing some steps; use the updated version. The thing missing that’s most critical is that rule that at the end of a round, you lose a stealth if the Guard is in your display. We definitely goofed that a few times early on, and that makes the game a lot easier. That said, if you need to play the game on Easy Mode, that’s a good way to do it!

Cons

  • I think the flow of the game takes some getting used to, but once you get it down, I think it’s worth it. The challenge is that with fewer players, you do have to play multi-handed, and that can be confusing for some. It may help to simulate your way through a round just to show players how things work? That’s usually what I do.

Overall: 8.25 / 10

A tabletop scene featuring a variety of colorful playing cards arranged on a black surface, including character illustrations and gameplay instructions.

Overall, I really enjoyed Burgle Bros. Blackjack! I’m terrible at blackjack, like, gratuitously. I once pulled somewhere in the neighborhood of seven consecutive 22s? Having something to structure around it has drawn me back in, similar to how I don’t love poker but really enjoyed Balatro or any other set of games on top of games. It’s nice! I think it helps that I’ve always enjoyed the Burgle Bros. formula and adapting that to a different core game has been largely a success, in my opinion, but I’m also an intense fan. The major thing that pops up when I’m trying the game out is that it’s hard for new players to really get the core flow of the game down, and that certainly takes a while. Sometimes as long as a couple rounds, sometimes as long as a full game. If you’re undeterred by that, I do think that it’s worth the learning curve. There’s some fun, quick, and snappy gameplay, fun abilities, and some nice challenge and complexity inside of a little tuckbox. I’m perplexed by the English / German split on most of the cards, but that’s certainly my America-centric brain talking. It’s not really the time to be so unworldly. But otherwise, it’s a simplified heist game spread across the core of blackjack, and that’s interesting! You hit to try and get 21 and to try and crack a safe. Two of my favorite things. I’ll even forgive the tuckbox, though I would prefer a Fowers Games Weird Box that’s most of their brand. It makes me look forward to Burgle Bros. 3, and I’m excited to see what that brings. If you can’t get enough heists, you’re a huge fan of the Burgle Bros. line, or you just like blackjack-adjacent games, Burgle Bros. Blackjack might be right up your alley! It’s been a cool experience.

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