The basic rules of The Score tell you to set up the cards like this: 4/3/3/2/2. That means Act One, when the crew are on track with their early assault, has four cards in it. Then Act Two, when there’s a terrible hitch in the plan has three. But maybe it’s all okay in Act Three, when another three cards fall. Or is it? Things are hanging in the balance! Two cards come out in Act Four when things go awry and then finally it all comes to a head with the last two cards in Act 5.
In early drafts of the game, we actually had the Act cards placed semi-randomly. First we shuffled them into the quarters of the deck, then we just tried slotting them in randomly. Honestly it can be really fun when you have no idea how long an act can be. But we figured out through hundreds of tests that it was better to tightly control the first experience of the game, especially for people who were a bit shy or confused. The 4/3/3/2/2 builds tempo, so that just as the players get familiar with the rules, the game can start increasing the beat. They are having more fun going with the flow right when things start swinging the most back and forth.
The rules say to use the standard set up, for your first few games, and then go random. But then we got to thinking – what if we made a list of other possible structures? You COULD just do it random, but you could also set up a structure however you want. Here’s another 20 options you can try, and what kind of heists they might produce!
- 4/2/4/2/2- Long Plans, Short Trouble
This option keeps the two set-ups nice and long, so people can slowly maneouvre things into place, and the hiccups looks nice and intentional because they’re very short. This is a great way to play for players who like it to be mostly smooth. - 3/3/3/3/2 – Keep it Smooth
This is the most uniform way to lay things out. This gives the thing a nice feeling of symmetry. - 3/2/3/3/3 – Smooth with a Longer End
A close friend of the above, and it helps people get back on track quicker after a small blip downwards. Keeping Act Two short can be vital to appearing competent. And when Act Four hits hard, you have more time to turn it around and look good. - 3/3/2/3/3 – Short Recovery
You can make the whole middle section seem like a torrent of disasters with only small relief if you shrink down your Act 3. This changes the feel from experts with a perfect plan to desperate action heroes taking lots of hits and adapting on the fly – and gives them enough time to bring it back home at the end. - 4/2/3/2/3 – Shorter Trouble
You can fix the feeling of being under the hammer by making sure your two trouble Acts are nice and short! - 4/2/3/3/2 – Drama At the Turn
This one puts more emphasis on the late second act (act with a lower case a here), with the film having much of its highs and lows in the build towards the climax. - 4/2/2/3/3 – Drama After the Turn
If the climax is what matters, put more weight there. This is often how Hollywood structures things – a big opening piece with cool dudes and exposition, then a little back and forth, and then the set pieces. - 4/3/2/2/3 – Drama Before And After the Turn
This is where you want big set up, and a big punch at the end, and just a little bit in between, but you can go one step further and get to… - 4/2/2/2/4 – Swift Reversals In the Middle
They say that what really makes a movie good are the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes, so put the punch all there! - 4/4/2/2/2 Swift Reversals At the End
This sets up the crew as bad-assess, throws them off the deep end hard, and then uses rapid fire to bring it home. The long Act 2 makes them seem in a lot of trouble, but the short Act 4 means they come out firing. - 2/2/2/4/4 – Swift Reversals At the Start
This has a really nice tempo where the early scenes are trading blows back and forth and everything is going well. Then the long dark night of the soul sets in when everything appears to be going wrong, just before the heroes get back up and fight back. Short early acts can be hard for new players who like to build slowly, but boy it can pay off. - 3/3/4/2/2 – The Fatter Middle
This lets us see the crew somewhat then do a bigger heist plan and attack in the middle. The risk of the fatter middle though is the cards you don’t have make less sense in Act 3 sometimes, as it’s not usually the part in the movie where they explain what they can’t do. Instead you’ll want to talk about how this was easier that one time in Katmandu when we had a Forger. Where is Eve now anyway? - 3/2/4/2/3 – Fat Middle, Short Trouble
Much like its friend above, but things don’t go nearly so bad. - 2/3/4/3/2 – Fat Middle, Long Trouble (aka the William Shakespeare)
Your classic Shakespeare play puts all the the key action right smack bang in the centre. This means your denouement can be tricky though, because you have only two cards to get out of three bad ones. But you know – it could be a tragedy, as well as a heist. - 3/4/3/2/2 – Everything Went Wrong
Again a long Act 2 puts them on the back foot against a tough enemy much like the 4/4/2/2/2 but now they have 7 with 5 good ones cards to kick ass and get revenge instead of 6 with 4. - 2/4/3/2/3 – It Was a Trap
Just like above but things go wrong so fast because it was a trap. - 2/2/4/3/3 – Reverse Fat Middle
It was a trap, but we KNEW it was a trap, and we were ready. - 2/2/3/3/4 – Rising Action
The classic form of the novel and often the streaming TV series is for the stakes to rise and rise and rise to an explosive finale. It can take some skill to handle a long Act 5, because heists often are like a magic trick with an effortless “prestige” moment that happens two quickly to think about it. If you can handle it though, this tends to produce big fun and a big body count as Act 5 plays for keeps. - 3/2/3/2/4 – Rising Action, Short Trouble
Same basic structure with a Fat Act 5, but less bad stuff. - 2/3/2/3/4 – Rising Action, Long Trouble
That sounds like an amazing title for a Hong Kong Action Movie. Or maybe for the two characters in said movie. She’s Rising Action. He’s Long Trouble! They fight crime!
Note that none of these have Acts as short as 1 card or as long as 5. These 20 are just from playing around with the 2s 3s and 4s. Once you open up even shorter or longer options, your heists can be anything you want (especially when you also start changing the total card count!). One early playtest had a seven cart Act 4 that left us falling off a building into oncoming traffic and waking up handcuffed in hospital, beaten and bloody. But then the last card was an Act 5 Deep Cover: it was all an act so our friend who was infiltrating the security team of the bad guy could prove he could catch even the most dedicated heist crew. And now he had proven that, our real heist could begin…
D-Constructions 