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Family Business
Year
1982
Players
2–6
Play time
30min
Min age
8+
Weight
1.32
BGG rating
6.08
BGG rank
#4447
Best with
5, 6

Owned by

Michael Redlich

Local copies

Rating: ★ 7.0

Board game

Family Business

Chicago Gangster

Designed by David B. Bromley

Family Business takes mob warfare to a new level of backstabbing, revenge, and general bloodthirstiness, which is what makes it such a blast to play. Every player controls a 'family' and plays various cards to off other players' family members. In a game with this little structure, it's possible for everyone to gang up on one unlucky soul, or for the damage to be fairly evenly spread. Either way, the last family standing is victorious. Each player starts with a gang of nine characters. To try to get rid of other gangsters, contracts are played on them. If these contracts are not blocked by anyone, the targeted gangster is placed on the hitlist. As soon as six gangsters are on the hitlist a mobwar is started. This means that, at the start of every turn, the first character on this list is eliminated. This goes on until the list is empty. Mobwars can also be triggered by cards being played. When no more than the last six or fewer characters are in play a constant mobwar is going on, until only one player has characters left. In general players take turns clockwise, however, the turn goes to any player who plays a response card and then clockwise mode is resumed with the player next to him/her. Lots of interaction as players play cards to put gangsters on the list, save them, have them replaced, start a Mob War, or stop it...

Categories

Card GameMafia

Mechanics

Hand ManagementTake ThatPlayer Elimination

Best with how many players

1
Not rec.
2
Not rec.
3
Recommended
4
Recommended
5
Best
6
Best
6+
Not rec.

Community votes from BoardGameGeek

Language dependence

Some necessary text - easily memorized(17 of 20 votes)

Sub-rankings

  • Family Game Rank#1637
  • Thematic Rank#1056

Learn to play

More videos

External data

No Wikidata data is stored for this game yet. If the scheduled enrichment has run recently, Wikidata probably has no BGG mapping for it.

Latest Wikidata run: ok · 06/20/2026.

Links