Guillotine is a card game created by Wizards of the Coast. It's a quick-played, easy to learn game. The goal is to collect the heads of nobles, and thus getting points.

The game has two decks of cards. These are "Noble" cards, which are the ones you collect and get points from, and the "Action" cards, which allow you to do numerous things to affect the game.

The gameplay is divided into three rounds, called days. Each day, twelve noble cards are lined up in a row to be executed. A turn consists of three things:

1. Play an Action card.
2. Get the Noble card at the front of the line.
3. Draw an Action card from the deck.

The nobles are divided into 5 categories, each with its own color background. These are Church (blue), Military (red), Royal (purple), Negative (grey), and Civic (green). Grey nobles are worth negative points, so you don't want to get them. Each noble is worth the amount of points shown on the bottom-right corner of the card, with the exception of the Palace Guard and the Tragic Figure. The Palace Guard is worth the number of Palace Guards you currently have in your score pile, and the Tragic Figure is worth -1 point for each grey noble you have in your score pile. Some nobles have special abilities. For example, when you collect the Fast Noble from the front of the line, you also get the second noble in line, and when you collect the Clown, worth -2 points, you get to put him in another player's score pile, which depletes their points.

Action cards are what really moves the game along. There are three subcategories of Action cards: Ones that rearrange the execution line, ones that affect the other players, and ones that stay in front of a player for the remainder of the game. Rearrangement cards vary from moving a noble forward or backward a certain number of spaces to discarding all of the nobles in the line and dealing out new ones to just removing one all together. The ones that affect other players are such cards that make you switch hands, choose another player's Action card and discard it, make a player lose a noble from his score pile, or many other things. The last subcategorie are Action cards that stay in front of you, and either give or take away a set number of points, give or take away points depending on which nobles you have in your score pile, or draw an extra Action card at the end of your turn when you pick up a certain color noble from the end of the line.

Guillotine is a game that takes less than half an hour and is great for 2-5 players whenever you need a great game that doesn't take too long.