Billionaires & Guillotines
A board game for 2-5 aspiring plutocrats... or their class enemies
by Max Haiven
Finally, it’s the billionaire simulator you and your friends have been waiting for!
In the board game Billionaires & Guillotines, 2-5 players will take on the roles of rival plutocrats, competing to accumulate the wealth of the world before their actions trigger a revolution and they all lose… a lot more than their assets.
Will you play the media baron or the property speculator? The aristocrat or the tech overlord? Whoever you play, the aim is to acquire five extravagant assets prized by the super-rich (a mega yacht, a celebrity spouse, art masterpieces and more!) and prevent your opponents from achieving their dreams.
But watch out! As you gobble up ever more resources, crises cascade out of control: wildfires and floods, pandemics and doomsday cults… Will you collaborate to put down the rebellions, or escape into your luxury bunker?
Played in under 90-minutes, the game is fun for all sorts of players, even those who usually don’t like board games. Why not make it a gift for the game-lover or billionaire-loather in your life?
And why not buy it alongside the first expansion, Reform or Revolution?, available now.
Billionaires & Guillotines is designed by Max Haiven with art by Amanda Priebe and published by London’s Pluto Press.
Preorder available very soon! In stores in January!
Billionaires & Guillotines is currently shipping to our distribution hubs!
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Do you need a demo version of the game?
If you’re a journalist, a reviewer, a retailer or someone else who needs a copy of the game, please get in touch.
Events
Designer Max Haiven is on tour in the UK and EU in February and March 2026. Reach out if you’re interested in a game session, a public or academic talk, or a game-making workshop.
Billionaires & Guillotines game night
22 December 2025
The People's Letters (LONDON)
How is it played?
Billionaires & Guillotines is designed to be fun for lots of different kinds of players.
It starts with a simple set of rules that you can learn in 15 minutes. When you’re ready, you can move up a level and add more complexity.
At it’s easiest, Billionaires & Guillotines can even be played with inbred aristocrats! At it’s most advanced, the game will satisfy even the most pedantic and tiresome board games fanatic.
The game advances in five levels!
In the first level, select your billionaire (aristocrat, media baron, property speculatory, tech overlord, or war profiteer).
Each billionaire needs to collect five assets to win, so head to the market using cards you draw to your hand to try and buy the treasures you cherish (eg. a private zoo, a mega yacht, a tabloid empire and more!).
Sprint for victory, but if the odds aren’t in your favour why get the tax authorities to audit your more successful opponents*, run a scam or game the markets?
* the only unrealistic part of the game. We all know billionaires never pay taxes!
The second level is where things really get challenging. As the billionaire’s competition heats up, their greed begins to have its consequences: political and ecological crises start to randomly cascade out of control, including floods, collapsing infrastructure and doomsday cults.
With each crisis rebellions break out and if they grow too large a revolution will end the game for everyone.
On the brink of disaster, you’ll have one chance only to put aside your differences and cooperate to undermine the revolution, and then may the best (or worst) billionaire win!
Can’t I just run away to my disaster bunker? Yes, the third level of Billionaires & Guillotines, of course you can!
Additionally, each billionaire will get a special secret role that offers special powers. Maybe you’ll be the banker who gets to cheat, the gangster who gets to steal, or the celebrity who is so popular they win when all their competitors succumb to the revolution.
Wait, why not simply pay the government to put down the rebellions, favour your investments, or sabotage your opponents? We’ve heard you!
In level four you’ll be stuffing envelopes full of cash to ensure the democratic process goes your way.
With the Reform or Revolution? expansion pack, players can add two new elements to the game, and add a sixth player, too.
With the included Space Program add-on, the billionaires can collectively contribute to the glorious enterprise of sending humanity to the stars... the richest 0.00001% of humanity to be precise. But there are dire risks, and not enough luxury suites on the rocket for everyone...
With the Troublemakers add-on, one player will put aside their quest for wealth and power and, instead, throw in their lot with the people. But are they, as they claim, a well-meaning reformist whose goal is to fix the crises the billionaires are creating? Or are they secretly a nefarious revolutionary trying to bring down the tyranny of the super-rich? Only they know!
Read the Manual
Watch a tutorial
This tutorial is slightly out of date. We’re working on a new one.
Submit to Capitalism!
Assuage your alienation by fetishizing these delightful commodities, with worldwide shipping and some sort of ethical green consumerism etc, etc.
More information
The Designer: Max Haiven
Dr. Max Haiven is a writer, game designer, and educator and the Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University, where he directs RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.
His board game Billionaires & Guillotines is published by Pluto Press and his next book, The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to 21st Century Fascism will be published by MIT.
He has written many books and articles and created podcasts on themes including art, finance, imagination, globalization, conspiracies, fascism, and grassroots activism.
He is the editor of the VAGABONDS series of short, provocative books and, as part of Sense & Solidarity he offers workshops on strategy and communication for social movements.
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