Service Rat · Players · 6 players

Service Rat with 6 Players

Six players keeps the small-game intimacy of five but gives the Workers an extra body and the lone Saboteur a lot more cover. It's a great size for a relaxed game night where everyone still gets plenty of airtime, a tight social deduction game that doesn't drag.

The role split at 6

Four Workers against a two-person evil team: still just one Saboteur plus the Rat. The Workers now hold a 4:2 majority, the most comfortable ratio in the small bracket, but that lone Saboteur is harder to pin precisely because there are more innocent faces to blend in among.

Does the Rat see an ally?

Yes. Six players is the upper edge of the small-game rule, so the Rat still learns their Saboteur ally at setup. Those two coordinate from the start while four Workers fumble in the dark. The extra Worker means the evil pair has to be more careful, since one obvious slip stands out more against four honest players than against three.

Directive schedule at 6

Six-player games share the 5–6 bracket with five. No Personnel Audit and no Extraordinary Shift; Blueprint Preview is the lone information directive, and Termination plus Veto cap things off.

Walkthroughs for both directives you'll actually see live on the directives hub — Blueprint Preview and Termination.

Term limits at 6

With six players alive, the normal rule applies: both the previous CEO and the previous Chief Engineer are term-limited and can't be nominated as the next Chief Engineer. But that flips the instant the count drops: as soon as a player is terminated and five remain, only the previous Chief Engineer stays locked out. So a six-player game starts under the full restriction, then loosens the moment Termination lands, which subtly hands the late game more flexible nominations.

Strategy for six

The single Saboteur is the whole evil engine here, so Workers should hunt for the one player whose votes and CEO draws don't add up; find them and the Rat is left isolated. For the evil team, six is a hiding game: the Saboteur should rarely be the obvious bad actor, leaning on the larger Worker pool for camouflage, while the Rat plays a flawless Worker impression until the Sabotage track hits three. Because the directive bracket is thin on information, both sides are fighting mostly on votes and card claims rather than confirmed reads.

Want the basics? See the full rules and the role guides, or step down to 5 players or up to 7 players.