Deadfellas is a hobby card game where you are taken back to the zombie-infested years of gangsters and gun molls. You are trying to get the equipment necessary (a vehicle, a weapon, and a disguise) to your mooks so they can whack your opponent’s mooks. Each mook has a number of bullet holes (from one to three) in the upper left corner of the card. That number is the mook’s hit strength and how much it is worth in victory points. If you whack ten points of your opponent’s mooks, you win the game.

Glancing over the design of the game, it offers a slick, simple, and fun look at zombie gangsters, as well as hilarious weapons, vehicles, and disguises. The artwork is a hoot and will appeal to longtime hobby card players and enthusiasts, as well as those new to the game. The card play is also refreshingly simple and elegant. Each mook in your gang needs a vehicle, weapon, and disguise to be able to try to whack an opponent’s mook, preferably with a weaker total hit strength than its own. Each item you add boosts the mook’s strength. If the mook accomplishes a whack, then you need to discard one of the items, making it less powerful and easier to whack. Overall, the art and game design are really strong and easy for folks to get into.

Gameplay starts with each player drawing three mooks from the mook deck and three cards from the mafia deck. Ultimately, the more mooks you have, the more Mafia cards you can hold in your hand — Mafia cards allow players to retrieve items needed to send out your mooks on a whack job. Mafia cards not only include vehicle, weapon, and disguise cards, but also have ‘Fuhgeddaboutit!’ cards that can negate a possible whack action, like Special cards or any Equipment cards. ‘Fugazzi’ cards allow the player to use it as a zero point weapon, disguise, or vehicle. Boost cards allow you to take an opponent’s Equipment card in play and place it in your hand. There are other great special cards in the game, but I want you to experience them for the first time while playing. Needless to say, they’re all great fun.

Once each player has chosen their mooks and Mafia cards, play starts with the player who has the highest Mook hits in front of them. First, a player can draw a Mafia card. Then, the player can play as many Mafia cards as they want from their hand. The player can then take one of the following actions — “Whack,” “Draw a Mafia card,” or “Recruit a Mook.” Finally, if the player has more Mafia cards than Mooks in their hand, they must discard down to their Mook total.

Now, players can play Special cards at any given time, even (and especially) on an opponent’s turn, where halt a whack or steal an item come into play. As you can see, the card play can become fast and furious, particularly if a couple of players have multiple ‘Fehgeddaboutit!’ cards. Also, it’s difficult to play this game and not find yourself talking in a vintage gangster voice [see HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire”]. “It’s curtains for you, Bobby!” “Fehgeddaboutit! There’s no way you are rubbing me out with that heater!” The play is very social and entertaining.

While the game play can be seen as simplistic, this makes Deadfellas endearing. It’s a game you’ll want to play again and again.