So 1st up is Resistance 2nd Edition.
Next is Avalon.
Both games work the same. Everyone is dealt a card which will tell you if you are loyal or a spy, you keep this secret. Then everyone closes their eyes and once everyone has the spies open theirs so they know who the other spies are, they then shut there eyes again and everyone opens their eyes (and normally looks suspiciously at each other). There are rules for different numbers of players so more players you have the more spies there will be. The spies win if 3 of the 5 missions fail, everyone else wins if 3 of the 5 missions succeed.
Next you look at the board it will have 5 missions with different numbers in each mission, this is the number of people that are sent on that mission. The Leader picks that number of people to go on the mission. Once picked everyone votes on if they want the mission to go ahead, if the vote fails the Leader token moves to the next person and they get to pick the team for the mission (and so on until a vote passes). If the vote passes the players on that mission are given two cards, one fail, one succeed. A loyal player will always play the suceed card however a spy can play either. The cards are played face down and shuffled so you don't know who played which and then are turned over, if any card is a fail the whole mission fails and is a point for the spies. This carries on until all 5 missions have been played or either side has reached 3 points. Simple.
So first time I played this we used Resistance 2nd edition in the pub with 5 of us. This is a really easy game to play in a pub because it is compact, has very little set up and is quick and easy. With 5 players the missions have either 2 or 3 players per mission (two 2 player and three 3 player missions). With only 2 people on a mission the 1st problem for a spy is that if you fail the mission then the other person knows for sure you are a spy, you can try and convince everyone else that they are the one that failed the mission but I have found most people will just distrust the pair of you. So with 5 players its better to let the 2 player missions succeed and fail the 3 player missions.
This was my 1st time playing this game and I really enjoyed it, we played it almost a dozen times in one night and had real fun. I was given a spy card in all but one game but almost every time managed to convince people I was innocent, people just kept assuming I couldn't of drawn a spy card again so must be loyal this time. I think the best bit was in the end of the 1st game we had managed to convince the Leader for that mission (3 players) that the loyal players were herself, me and the other spy. Since in order to win the loyal players all had to be on the mission it was great watching the two loyal players that weren't picked trying to get the mission vote to fail because they knew they were loyal and if they aren't on the mission a spy must be. It was also great watching the mission leaders face when two fail cards were turned over and she realised that the two people she had been convinced all game were loyal were both spies. We decided to stop playing after the game I was loyal in. In a 3 person mission I was on 2 fail cards were played so I knew both other players were spies, however we lost the game because it turned out one of them was loyal and played the wrong card so when I picked a 3 player mission to decide the game I put the other spy on the mission because I was convinced a loyal player was a spy.
Recently we played Avalon with 8 players, I think the game suits more players because you have more spies (3 in this case) and more players going on missions (3 players in the 1st, 4 players in the 2nd and 3rd and 5 players in the 4th and 5th missions). Again we played a few round in a fairly short amount of time, which is why I think this is a great game to have since it can be used for a filler between games or just for multiple quick games with a larger number of players. For our 1st game I was a spy again, this time me and another spy kept getting put on missions together, it is a bit of a problem because you want suspicion on as few of you as possible. We had ended up with a little code that surprising we came up with on the fly and no-one else seemed to crack. We kept saying things like "Be careful, only one person needs to fail" or "well I'm definitely putting down a succeed card" and assuming that who ever said it was going to play the card they mentioned. We also both succeeded the last 4 player mission, this meant the mission leader believed we were both loyal so put us both on the 5 player mission and when that failed assumed it was the new person that wasn't on the 4 player mission with us that was a spy and the team decided to take them off the last mission and replace them with someone else, who happened to be the 3rd spy, so win for us.
Overall they are both great games and your choice really comes down to the setting you prefer. There are addition cards that give players extra special actions they can use to make the game more interesting, like Merlin for example, that knows who all the spies are but will loss the game if the spies work out who he is. It's a quick game to play so you can play multiple rounds with different spies giving everyone a chance to play different roles. The game mechanics are simple and easy to teach, after a few rounds most people I have played with all seem to have a good grasp of the rules and are also starting to think tactically as to which missions to succeed or fail and which way to vote. The deception aspect of the game is one of the best parts, more fun than the actual game play is trying to convince people you are loyal and trying to make people believe you when you are trying to explain who you think the spies are. Definitely a game with plenty of replay value and one that I look forward to playing again. It's also reasonably priced so you get a lot of game for your buck.
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