This is an atmospheric fun game, in the same mould as Family Business and Guillotine. Players represent gangs of mobsters, including the boss, knifemen, gunmen and general hoods. The graphics are good and players looking for typecasts will not be disappointed.

The gangs have agreed to meet up to divide the pile of cash between them and the setting (board) is a giant oval-shaped table. The seating plan has not been determined, but clever gang bosses will note the tableware carefully.

Each player seats their players one at a time until all mobsters have been seated. Players then receive a hand of cards, which determine what they can do on their turn. Since there is only one action per turn, (followed by a movement) speed is of the essence to make the game maintain its pace. It also limits down-time as players are eliminated.

The placement of your gang is important. At each setting there are various items left on the table. Business documents entitle players to take some money at the beginning of their turn, guns allow you to shoot the gang member sitting opposite you, while a knife lets you stab a gang member adjacent to you. It's a brutal game of elimination, but all done in the best possible taste.

Some squares are to be avoided -- settings with a glass of liquid mean players can be drugged to sleep. Each member who is knifed or shot is removed from the room (game). The most dangerous place is at the head of the table because that person is the accountant (hooray!) who doubles the income for the gang occupying this seat. Unfortunately, a gun is placed on the opposite side of the table (boo!). There are also some attractive seats that offer less opportunities to be killed, such as the rounded pieces of the table as there is no equivalent opposite place were gunmen may threaten you. These are quickly occupied by bosses. As part of the set-up, you have to balance the desire to remove opponents against the protection of people who increase your income (bosses and document seats). But if you put three of your men together, they do have a tendency to attract the exploding cakes!

Each turn the first thing you do is determine the cash you can take from the table. You earn money through occupying the seats with documents, having your boss in play and of course occupying the accountant's chair. If you forget, it's too bad.

Then you consider which of your cards to play. These activate a gang member, so the gun allows either your gunman or a person occupying a gun seat to fire (and remove) the gang member sitting opposite your gunman. The knife allows one of your knifemen or a gang member sitting at a place with a knife to stab and remove a gang member who is sitting next to your knifeman. Alternatively, if you play a drug card, you may put to sleep 3 gang members who are sitting at places with a bottle. These gang members may not act until the end of their owner's next turn. Worse still, a second drug will cause them to overdose and be removed from the game.

Perhaps the best card to play is the cake. This is delivered by one of the hostesses who place it in front of a gang member. If it is not detonated by a player earlier (by a special card), it detonates at the beginning of the next round of the player who placed it, killing the person who occupies this space and the two adjoining places either side. To avoid this, players may play a card to move the cake to the next person, which could be several spaces away by the time vacancies have been caused. The other way to be safe from its effects is to move your gang member, using a movement card. This allows players to avoid dangerous places and exploding cakes. In fact, the movement cards are amongst the most useful in the game as you can play a killing card, then move out of a dangerous position or occupy a seat that you have just made vacant.

The game ends when only members of one gang survive, in which case they claim the rest of the money or when all the money has been distributed. The winner is the person with the most money.

This is a light-hearted game with a good flavour and plenty of action. It needs to be played at speed because this increases the frivolity of the game and makes for more light relief. Anyone who does Italian accents normally gets spotted early on, as does anyone who is good at death rattle sounds. My advice is therefore make as many of these as you want: you may not win, but you'll have great fun watching your gang die.