Disco Heist Laundry Preview — The second taste hooks you

Last year at Gen Con, I got a brief look at Disco Heist Laundry and you can read that preview here. A year later and the loose screws are tighter and the music is pumping.

Nothing about the core gameplay has changed; you still want to bring goons into the city, pull off heists to gather loot, and turn that loot into sweet sweet cash. What has changed is the balance. The various kingpins feel much more equal, even with their small asymmetries. Laird, the kingpin I played previously, no longer has an overwhelming advantage. Some numbers have been tweaked to be more reasonable, especially on the laundering points side of the table. The art on the cards and the city make them feel alive and much more like the style of the 80s. And personally, the biggest change is that I’ve gotten my hands on a few play sessions instead of a couple rounds.

In its entirety, Disco Heist Laundry is all about optimization of your turns as a way to maximize profits in the long run. Even in the long game, you only get twelve turns to spread into the city, shake it down, pull off a few heists, and escape with the money. In a nine-turn normal length game, anything that gives you extra cards played or more goons on the board gives you a leg up on your opponents. That puts you at risk for being high on your wanted level or short on useful resources, neither of which is a winning strategy. Getting to where you need to go is actually one of the best things to do, but once you get into level two on the wanted level track, cops will arrest you and your goons if they are nearby, when previously you would have been safe as long as you didn’t let them touch you. Once you get cornered by the police, your crew of thugs turns into a crowd of cowering rats waiting for the end.

Since everything on the player side is all about optimization, I really like where the game allows for changes between play sessions. The board is a four by five grid of twenty locations which get randomized not only by order, but also by orientation. The random orientation allows for entrances between buildings to not line up favorably or logically - we played a round with the only entrance to a building pointing at the outer ring of the city. Some buildings work really well together, but they might not be anywhere close to each other. The randomization also comes up in the police targeting, as their destinations are determined by dice roll. This does mean that sometimes you might get targeted or cornered by pure happenstance, but sometimes you just have to roll with the punches (or beating and arrest). There are a few fixed pieces of gameplay, like that each location only has one heist card, so you know what won’t be an option once it passes by.

As a game where minor changes in play make large changes on the outcome, it’s not very friendly to first time players. But that exact same aspect means that you’ll get a lot of life out of this, and I’m excited to see how expertise will get rewarded as you learn the ins and outs of this city. Some of the rules are a bit hard to grasp or easy to miss, but I’m hoping that they get polished as part of the finalization of the game. I’m not sure if the artwork is finalized, but what we have so far is something vibrant and pops off of the page. Disco Heist Laundry comes to Kickstarter this Tuesday, September 16th, 2025. You can find more about Rock Manor Games at their website.