Saboteur 20th Anniversary Edition Review – Twenty Years Of Spite In One Box

Disclaimer: Saboteur 20th Anniversary Edition was provided for free by VR Distribution, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

When the opportunity to review Saboteur 20th Anniversary Edition came around, I leapt out of my seat. As you may have read in my review of Saboteur 2, I’m a big fan of this card game and it might be one the most played games in my collection.

A big reason for this is that both the original and the sequel make for great lunchtime games. We’d often bring it out to entertain large groups of bored people within the work lunchroom. It always provided a lively moment of fun before everyone returned to their monotonous 9-5.

With Saboteur 20th Anniversary Edition, AMIGO games set out to create the perfect version of their chaotic social deduction game… And you know, I think they’ve done it.

What’s in Saboteur 20th Anniversary Edition?

Inside this collector’s edition, you’ll find everything you need to play the base game Saboteur, the expansion Saboteur 2, and much, much more.

It contains all the promotional and limited-release material from the last two decades of Saboteur. Including:

• The 9 World Championship Cards
• The Tunnel Toll mini-expansion
• The Wardrobe Cavern and Tunnel Party mini-expansions

Additionally, two new mini-expansions were crafted specifically for this collector’s edition. They are:

• New Goals mini-expansion
• Treasure Chests mini-expansion

This article covers each expansion, as well as the gorgeous new box they all come in. So strap yourself in and let’s learn about what’s in Saboteur 20th Anniversary Edition.

World Championship Cards

Did you know that there’s a yearly Saboteur World Championship? I didn’t. At least not until I read about it in this collector’s edition.

Starting in 2016, AMIGO successfully ran the Saboteur World Championships. All participants walked away with a promotional card for that year. A tradition AMIGO games has kept alive every year since.

These cards, and year released, include:

• Selfish Dwarf (2016): A new role used only with the base game and the tournament variation. With this role, you only win if you’re the dwarf to complete the path.
• Map Swap (2017): Shuffle (or not) two face-down goal cards without looking at them.
• Treasure Trove (2018): Take the top five cards from the discard pile and choose one to add to your hand.
• Veto (2019): Undo a player’s turn, removing any path or action card they played.
• Change Order (2020): Reverse the turn order of the game.
• Master Craftsman (2021): Removes a broken tool, of any type, placed in front of you.
• Pathfinder (2022): Play two path cards on your turn.
• Diversion (2023): Change the location of the last played path card.

Except for the Selfish Dwarf in 2016, all of these cards can be added to your draw deck without much issue. Although, they come with plenty of new symbols, so make sure to keep the rule book nearby for referencing.

Tunnel Toll

Something else I learned from reading the rulebook is that board game advent calendars are real and contain expansions for games. In this case, the Frosted Games 2016 advent calendar is the origin of the Tunnel Toll expansion.

When playing with this expansion, instead of playing a path or action card, you can discard it to place a dwarf token at a tunnel opening. From then on, if anyone wants to play a path card to continue that opening, they must pay you one gold.

While talking through these mini-expansions, you’ll notice a general theme. I love any expansion that gives saboteurs more opportunity to be deceitful and not give away their identity.

This is because Saboteur 2, with its added path cards, feels like it’s in favour of the Dwarves.

Expansions like Tunnel Toll, shift the balance again in favour of the saboteurs. As the dwarven toll could be placed by a saboteur, or a greedy dwarf. In fact, if you’re playing with me, it’s guaranteed a greedy dwarf played it.

Wardrobe Cavern & Tunnel Party

These two miniature expansions are easy to group together because they use the same component: a giant, double-sided postcard.

During setup, you place this postcard within the tunnel area with the expansion you want to play with face-up.

If playing with Wardrobe Cavern, the first player to connect the path to the postcard changes their role. Either to the one put aside if playing the base game, or a new one from the leftover roles if playing the sequel.

Flipping the postcard over to the Tunnel Party, when the first player connects the path they collect, shuffle and redistribute everyone’s cards. Causing mass confusion, and guffaws as everyone undergoes a role transformation.

While these are both fun additions, they’re for occasional use only. Having everyone’s role swapped is fun the first time, but it renders the first half of the round pointless.

Wardrobe Cavern, however, allows you to escape a role you know will not win. This can be great, but with only one player changing roles, it’s always difficult to judge if that’s going to be you.

New goals

In the Saboteur we know and love, three goal cards are placed at the end of the tunnel. It’s up to the dwarves to connect the ladder entrance to the goal card hiding the golden nugget.

New Goals, as the name implies, adds eight new goal cards.

As part of setup, you’ll select four of these new cards randomly and combine them with the golden nugget. Shuffling these five cards, you’ll arrange them face-down at the usual spot at the end of the tunnel.

These goal cards feature all sorts of new craziness like giving you extra gold if you connect them to the path. Although, they’re equally likely to take gold away. Thereby making the map cards even more important than before.

However, my favourite New Goals card is the spider.

If any player connects the path to the spider, the game ends in favour of the saboteurs.

As a saboteur, this is wonderful, as you now have another option for deception. Usually, after a couple of games, it can become obvious who’s a saboteur and who’s terrible at playing. The spider lets you (as the saboteur) look like you’re helping the team towards the goal, even though you’re steering them towards eight-legged doom.

Even without the spider, these New Goal cards have players second-guessing whether they should connect path cards to goal cards.

It’s a neat expansion that adds more chaos to Saboteur’s already chaotic gameplay. I wouldn’t want to play with it every game, but I’m so impressed with the spider card that I might add it when playing the base game for some extra spice from now on.

Treasure Chests

The final mini-expansion of Saboteur 20th Anniversary Edition adds Treasure Chests to the mines. These are facedown cards within the tunnels. Whoever connects the path to them receives a reward… or punishment.

There are several different activations, such as:

• Not being able to use maps for the rest of the round.
• Draw an additional card at the end of your turn.
• Push a face-down goal card 1 space further away from the start card.
• Look at someone’s role card.
• …and more!

Like the other mini-expansions, Treasure Chests adds more chaos to the game. Leaning even further into that party-game feel that Saboteur brings to the table.

This is the one expansion I didn’t get to play in time for this review. But I’ve played so many games of Saboteur recently that I can easily tell that like the others, I would only play this sometimes. As there is an element of additional setup, and again, too much iconography for newer players.

I’m just happy that everything fits in the one box

The one thing I miss with this 20th-anniversary version of Saboteur is that they no longer have the 7-card ruler that came in the original and sequel boxes. Although it’s a minor exclusion, it’s the only blemish on an otherwise excellent collector’s edition.

Outside of the near-infinite replayability of the miniature expansions and promotional material, the game box is fantastic. It’s solid to the touch, looks gorgeous and holds all of the content – even when sleeved (although you need to remove the insert).

Finally, if you haven’t had enough Saboteur, and believe me there’s more than enough, then the back of the rulebook also includes two popular variants. The Sabotaged Dwarf variant, where a dwarf with broken tools doesn’t receive any gold, and the Tournament Variant of the game which I’ll leave for you to discover by yourself.

With this new edition of Saboteur, AMIGO has proven you don’t need to go to the mines to find gold. I’m super happy with Saboteur 20th Anniversary Edition as it has everything I wanted as a fan of the series… and, if we’re being honest, a whole lot more.