New Mill Industries Trick Taking Sweep

The trump track and different cards of Six of VIII.

The results of the Tricky Biscuits Trick Taking game rankings for 2024 are in. I realize I just talked about 2023 the other week but the group has been busy and we managed to play another 19 new games this year and put them through their paces!

The Ultimate top spot is actually a tie between Schadenfreude which I talked about before and Inflation! The latter of which, in addition to being the only one on the list with an exclamation point, underscores a more interesting trend that I would like to dive into more here. One publisher New Mill Industries occupies 5 of the top 10 rankings and 4 of the top 4 (ties make this weird…). In other words, one publisher’s games consistently wowed the group. A tiny independent publisher out of Brooklyn (essentially a one man operation) this company knows how to pick and publish great games. Part of this is in bringing over already proven designs from Japan that had small print runs, but New Mill has also published brand new games by local designers. The other key is really in just executing each game with great graphic design and clean rules for a reasonable price. I’d like to highlight several of these designs today. Also in honor of the spooky month of October New Mill is also taking preorders for some scary trick taking games due later this year.

Inflation cards and buttons. This played has currently played 58709 as their “card” this trick.

Inflation! Is actually a reprint of Zimbabwe Trick by Taiki Shinzawa, a truly prolific trick taking game designer who has more than 20 games under his belt. With Shinzawa there is usually one major twist on the standard trick taking formula that is explored to the limit. Because of this his games alwayst sound strange from the get go. In Inflation! The twist is that you do not clear the  played cards after each trick, but instead they stay there in front of who played them and become part of an ever increasing number. True to its theme, the numbers just keep going up. Also there are no suits, just numbers, however, the numbers themselves act as suits, so if someone leads with a 9 you must follow with a 9 of your own. The highest  cumulative number wins. In addition to this strangeness the deck is what is called a triangular deck. This means there are the same number of cards as each number. So there is 1 one card, 2 two cards and so on all the way up to 10 ten cards. A round of people playing 2, 5, 7, 8 and 9 can have cards added to make the next round 92, 55, 78, 96. What’s odd about this is that even though the numbers keep going up, it’s really your left most digit that is doing the heavy lifting for each round. Except for 10s. 10 is exactly as powerful as it sounds, but comes with a downside as your next card then covers the 1, leaving only the 0 digit as part of your ever increasing number. In other words, while you have a pretty good chance of winning with a ten, you likely won’t win the next trick.

Charms similarly has players not remove cards, but plays with the suits and numbers being separate cards

Ok, so far, so strange, but how do you score in this game? That is actually my favorite part. In a cute bit of minimalism the game comes with a set of medium black buttons, and small white buttons. At the beginning of the round players look at their hand and bid how many tricks they are going to take by taking the equivalent number of black buttons. As the tricks play out players take a white button every time they win a trick and fit it inside their black buttons taken at the beginning. Tricks are worth one point each, but if you manage to hit your bid exactly each trick is worth 2 points. So there is a virtue to precision. Ducking tricks when you’ve already hit your bid, but making sure to win enough to make your bid. A lot of Shinzawa’s game’s have bidding in them, and while I am not great at it, each time I play one of his designs I improve and enjoy more of this type of scoring. Another Shinzawa game, Charms, was also in our top ten, and uses this same “don’t clear your cards” mechanism, but instead of increasing numbers players can either play a new number or a new suit as they are on separate cards. It’s neat to see the designer iterate on this same twist and take it in a different direction.

Icarus club has an extra 11 card hand that is public information. It dictates what the lead suit is for the 11 tricks of the game

New Mill often bundles games with a similar mechanism or theme together. The number two and three spots on our list emphasize this. They are  Icarus Club by Hugame and Seven Prophecies by Hinata Origuchi. Each of these games uses a lane of cards that determine the lead suit, instead of the usual method of players choosing a lead suit based on their hand, It is a simple twist which again produces a lot of depth and nuance. In both games it feels more like you are riding out your hand as best as possible given the suits determined by the lane. You get a lot of information about the future and can plan more, but are also restricted from changing this lane much, if at all. Icarus Club is themed after a casino with each of the suits representing a different game (Craps, Roulette, Blackjack, Poker or Slots). While the trick lane dictates what cards can be played, when you win a trick you are allowed to take one of your won cards and change another suit further down the lane, increasing the number of cards and points that trick is worth. So winning let’s players wrest back some agency from the game. However, players have to be careful to not take too many tricks or they’ll get kicked out of the Casino. This detail is similar to Schadenfreude in that you often want to be second, just barely vs being first. It’s a bit more indirect than Schadenfreude, but you can stack up a lot of points in a particular trick as a sort of trap for them to score too high.

Seven prophecies is a bit of a table hog with each trick left face up to score the predictions. Note the suit lane along the top.

Seven Prophecies uses this same trick lane, but you can’t modify it in any way. Instead, like the game’s namesake, you must predict how many times you will place for each trick. In other words how many times you’ll be first, second, third or fourth place. If I thought bidding was hard, this seems impossible. However the actual trick taking is simple enough that you have a chance if you look at your cards and what suits will win each round. There is no trump suit to upend things and there are only 10 tricks total. Again, less control but a sort of “ride the circumstances game” with some flexibility in your predictions (if you accidentally place 3rd in one trick maybe you can throw off and place 4th in the next). It’s a wonderful conceit and is executed perfectly. One area where we’re still sorting a bit is how to score this game. While the scoring in the rulebook is functional it’s pretty rigid and doesn’t fully lean into the strengths of the game, so we may try a variant in the future.

The final game of the New Mill Quintet is perhaps the most unique of all of them. In Six of VIII players are playing a trick taking game based on the Six wives of Henry the VIII. Yes, really! In a similar fashion to Seven Prophecies and Icarus Club there is a trick lane, however here it determines the trump suit, not what suit must be led. The suits themselves represent each of the wives and the order of the lane is not random but corresponds to the reign of each queen. Both the number of trump rounds and the number of cards in the deck itse;f is determined by the length of the reign, with the more unfortunate and short lived queens in the middle only having a trick or two at trump and with only the top range of the cards. From here players play a partnership trick taking game where each team of two players tries to take as many tricks as possible with some cards worth extra points on top of this. With all the nuance in the setup, it’s a relief that the scoring is pretty straight forward. However, there are a few more variant twists with two cards that are high in one suit and low in the other (spies), a King card that beats all, and of course, what would this game be without a Church of England card that can nullify a won trick. It’s perfectly thematic and absolutely zany. 

New Mill Industries dominated the top half of our picks this season

All five games were definitely a hit. But it’s worth noting that the graphic design on these games is also great. Cards are clear, simple and easy to read. None of them will win the most beautiful trick taking game of the year, but in these games, usability and clarity is king. And in a nod to October, New Mill Industries is taking preorders on four spooky trick taking games. I don’t know a lot about these, but here are the elevator pitches for each. In Idle Hands by Fukutarou players play a mission card that determines the suit, and wins cards if they play the highest of that suit, but since this is a trick avoidance game like hearts that’s not a good thing. In Man Eating House players play a single trick horror movie with a flow chart like resolution as to how the cards interact. There are all the Japanese horror tropes, and the makeup of cards played will determine whether the kids escape or are devoured by the demons. In Somnia by Kazuma Suzuki, players walk through a dreamscape where the trump suit and rank and points of the cards change dynamically in the middle of the hand. And in Reapers by the publisher himself, Daniel Newman, players draft their hands and then make a wager as to how they will do. All four games look truly strange both in art and gameplay and with the track record of the publisher I am excited to try them out. The best news is all of these games are readily available, no jumping through hoops or importing required. Happy Trick taking and happy trick or treat season.

Board Games and Memory

Nusfjord in Nusfjord

Some games are haunted. Maybe not literally. Jumanji is not a documentary after all. But like your favorite music, games seem to contain some resonance of all the times you’ve played them. They are not quite as ever present, always in the background like music can be, the literal soundtrack of your life. But they are certainly present in a different way than media that transports you from your current situation, like books or movies. When you play games, you are very much with the people you play with, interacting, telling stories or jokes between turns. It is social. It is also very much located somewhere, the play space matters to some degree. The where and the who is baked into the experience and consequently they sort of rub off on the game itself. So this week is less of a story about a game per se and more of a story of where and who. It is a story of the joy and grief tied up inside a cardboard box.

In 2019, inspired by a desktop background, my brother Matt and I planned a trip to Norway. He needed a travel partner and the picture was just breathtaking enough to inspire a whole trip. It was our first and only vacation that we have taken as adults; a small feat in and of itself. Like most brothers we had our challenges and butted heads when we were younger, but the stars aligned just right for this journey. We booked a flight North of Oslo, to Lofoten, the island where the picture came from, and where one of our ancestors emigrated from over a century ago. In my research I discovered there was a game named after one of the scenic locations in Lofoten, Nusfjord, a historic fishing village. It was designed by the creator of Agricola and looked intriguing so I hatched the plan to play Nusfjord, in Nusfjord. My brother was on board with the plan but there was one problem; learning the game. My brother is not as into games as I am and so I endeavored to learn the game from top to bottom so there’s less of a chance for it to fall apart the day of. 

One of the elder cards looks a bit like my grandpa

Two years before this trip in 2017, I took a writing class. I was at a peak of loneliness, very much out of the board game hobby, and honestly looking for social connection as much as writing practice. The universe provided, and I met five friends in that class that were some of my closest in those next few years, and still friends to this day.While not everyone in that group was into board games, one of the group, Fatima, was a perfect accomplice. She loved a complex game and had mastered Agricola as a distraction from a particularly unfulfilling romantic relationship. When I asked her to help me learn Nusfjord she was enthusiastically on board.

Nusfjord in Play

What we discovered together was a strange game indeed. In Nusfjord, each player builds a fishing village, using three worker pieces a turn to claim the resources and actions they need to build the buildings and the ships of the town. So far, pretty straight forward, standard worker placement game like any of dozens of others in the hobby. However there are a couple of twists. First, there’s a fishing phase where your ever increasing fleet of boats catches more and more fish, a sort of passive income that you can work on each turn. But these fish don’t just go straight to your inventory, there are the village elders to feed, and shares of your fishing company to pay back… fish interest on? Meanwhile you also actively manage the forests on your board by cutting down or planting whole jungles of woods around your village Speaking of those elders, one of them has an odd resemblance to my grandfather. In another nod to the community of the village there is a banquet table that you can sell fish to that keeps the whole operation humming. It was, to be honest, a tough game to learn but once Fatima and I peeled back its layers we found something truly unique. We also, more importantly, got to spend some time together, just the two of us versus the larger friend group of six. We laid the foundation of a deepening friendship that would get us both through some pretty hard times. 

Living the dream

So I was ready to teach and ready for the trip. Playing the game in the actual place exceeded all expectations. The sun was shining, we were there, above the arctic circle but in t-shirts sitting on the dock, drinking beers and playing a game together. A ship like one in the game was docked nearby, the iconic red buildings in the distance, and some yellow ones that the game did not capture. It was a perfect day, and it didn’t matter who won. Later that same week, rain had washed out our plans. So in the hotel lobby we played Nusfjord back to back, three times. It was the only game we had, and so it was what we played. Even on the tiny hotel desks at our next step along the journey. We passed the time, and dove deeper each time. I got to show my brother the depths of the hobby that I love.

Years later, after the strangeness, loss, and alienation of covid, and the upheaval of the protests that summer, Fatima and I had grown apart. I recognized where she was, feeling both helpless and frustrated. She was in the midst of an undoing, a phase we all have in one way or another, where life has to get torn apart before we know what it is again. Out of the blue, she reached out. She had gotten covid a second time, and was calling in the return of a favor after dropping off groceries when I had covid a few months before. She asked me to pick up a scone and a latte from our favorite coffee shop. I was happy to oblige. I left the gifts on her stoop, and looked up to see her in the window. She smiled and waved and we had a brief distanced conversation. It felt good to see her, to catch up after it had been too long. Months later the six of us of the original writing friend group finally got together again for the first time in two years. We were at karaoke night for one of the group member’s birthday, dressed in Halloween costumes. Fatima seemed subdued and tired, but there was a genuine high in all being together again like old times.

The writing friends together at a board game cafe, Fatima to my left.

Three weeks later I got a call while driving home. Fatima had passed away suddenly after a battle with long Covid. She was 29 years old. Life became a blur of strangeness and grief, and confusion among the friend group. We bonded together as we went through the strange finality of the funeral. We leaned on each other, finally arriving at a meal later that day, finding ourselves starving and exhausted. After I said goodbye to those who helped me through that day, I was kind of lost with what to do with myself next. I went, almost out of habit, to the post Thanksgiving game day. I brought the games I played with her. One of them was Nusfjord, a totem of a dear friend who was now gone.

Grief is strange. It’s been nearly two years since Fatimas passed away. And yet, I still expect to receive a text or call from her, to have a chat or play a game. Just this month, a new version of the Nusfjord was released. A big box version with all the expansions. I bought it at the local shop, opened it, and took out only what was new. I packed these into my well loved and beat up copy. It is complete, and it is the one that has traveled with me these past years. Perhaps  it was a strange and superstitious thing to do vs just replacing it with the newest version. But the game has resonance, I cannot simply replace it. When it came time to pack for the convention this past weekend, I packed Nusfjord, excited to show it to new people. I put up a “Looking for Players” sign and met some friendly strangers. I played it twice last weekend, and relished in teaching its strange mechanisms, how you feed the elders, build the village, and bring in your haul of fish. I showed pictures of my trip, and explained how the real place differs from the board game. One of the players at the table had never played this kind of game before, and was struck by how unique the theme is. We all told stories of our villages, his was a village that was very bad at fishing but surrounded by tons of beautiful woods and a majestic theater. He asked me where he can get a copy and I mentioned I had a spare, the remainder of the big box copy. Who knows what  new memories that copy will make.

Tricky Biscuits Best Trick Takers Season 1

Somewhere along the line of playing new trick taking games with my regular group I realized we needed a ranking system of some kind. I asked folks to rank things on a scale of 1-10, and immediately ran into a bit of a wall. That was a bit too fine a grade on things. So we moved to a more simple scale. Is a game Bad, Ok, Good, or Great. And then, is it in your top 3 of the current “season.” This seemed to land a bit better, especially when I brought a score sheet along one week with all the games printed on them to review. 

There was only one problem. Most of these games we had only played once, and we were now reviewing them weeks or months later. So I brought along the whole catalog of what we had played and held up each game to remind folks of how it worked. If they didn’t remember it too well, how good could it have been? And so the Tricky Biscuits season 1 ranking was born. We ranked a total of 18 games, and today I want to review a few of our top picks. It has been a few months since we ranked these and we are nearly complete with ranking our season 2, but given I wasn’t blogging then, and I recently shared my addiction to trick takers I wanted to make sure to share a few of my favorites.

Cat in the Box turns trick taking on its head with suit less cards

Our favorite game of the season, and one which sort of launched the group itself was Cat in the Box. I wrote about this briefly in my last post but want to cover it here in more depth. The charm and originality of this one is hard to deny. Unlike a normal trick-taking game,  all of the cards in Cat in the Box have no suit. They are all black and white, and can be played as ANY suit with a few restrictions. Instead, players are keeping track of what was played on a central board, and each time a suit color is declared for that card, the player places their token on the corresponding space on the board. Then, players must follow suit, like any other game, or they can declare themselves out of a suit and play something different, including the trump suit, red.

This is immediately strange. Instead of the cards in your hand dictating what you can play, players are more or less making up what is happening as they go along, with the only tangible thing being the numbers on the cards, and what is already marked of on the board. For example, if I play a card and declare it the Yellow 6, that spot is now marked off, no one else can play a six and declare it is yellow. The next player can play any other card besides the six and declare it yellow, as long as that space hasn’t been declared as well. Just like a normal trick taking game, the numbers in a suit begin to disappear after a few hands lead of that color. But just like the game’s name, this is all theoretical. If I want to stop playing yellow early, I could say I don’t have any yellow and play my 7 as a red 7. But the game remembers this, I have to declare myself out of yellow on my player board, and just like a normal trick taking game, I can now no longer play yellow.

This would all be well and good if we were just telling each other what we were playing and following the rules based on the theoretical cards we say we have. But there’s a problem true to the theme of the game. There are more cards in play than there are spaces to claim. There could be 5 or 6 7s in the deck, but only four different suits, four different possible 7s to play. Players discard some cards out of their hand at the start of the round, and don’t play their last card, so there’s some wiggle room despite the excess cards. But if any player is forced to play a card that CANNOT exist according to the games system, e.g. that 5th 7 when all the other sevens are played, a paradox is declared and the round ends immediately. That player scores no points and may have goofed up the other players math by accidentally ending the round early. And so a delightful tension develops, where players are trying to score points, and take control of the hand, but never get so greedy as to flip the game over and cause a paradox.

Seas of Strife has eight suits and goes all the way to 74

A second recent release I want to discuss is much more of a party style trick taker. Seas of Strife is actually a new release of another game called Texas Showdown which was originally called… Strife. The lineage gets a bit confusing. Even more confusing, due to a translation error there are two different ways to play the game. But first the set up. This is the only trick taking game I have played where there are no repeat numbers. The ranks keep going up from 0 all the way to 74. There are 8 suits that each a a decreasing number of cards in them from the largest suit of 0-10 to the shortest suit from 71-74. Already, this deck is very strange. The goal in the game is to AVOID taking any tricks. In a round each player plays a card and others follow if they can. Highest card takes the trick. However because of the odd suit structure, if a player is out of a suit they can play any card. The next player can follow EITHER suit. This continues and there can be 2-3 suits in play. The highest card of the suit that was played the most wins the trick. So even if I played the highest card in the game, the 74, if there were more of that low suit, say a 0, a 1, and a 4, the 4 would take the trick because that is the most common suit.

Every trick is a negative point, and so it is really about measuring when to get rid of your high cards in a suit so that you’re not stuck with a trick when that suit is played. The twist in the original variant is that playing the Highest card of each suit nulls that suit from winning the trick. So if in the example above the 0, the 1 and the 10 had been played, the 10 is the highest of that suit, and my 74 would end up winning the trick as the highest car remaining. Seas of Strife thrives at higher player counts, and is fantastic at six players, with the most chaos and most suit shenanigans possible. The printed rules in the box instead have it so that whoever plas and wins with the highest suit can decide who starts the next trick. Definitely less exciting but also a lot less chaotic. Given the high player count I think it’s best to lean into the chaos here.I am thrilled Rio Grande brought it back into print and it’s a very affordable box unlike some of the more niche games in the space.

Joraku Cards

Finally a personal favorite of mine and one that I played all the way back at Essen 2015 before playing again as part of season 1. Joraku combines trick taking and area majority. The setting is feudal Japan, and each player has a Daimyo, or warlord that they use to try to control one of the 6 regions on the board. Players play a pretty straight forward trick taking game with three suits of cards 1-6 and one ninja in each suit. Players must follow suit, but if they can’t they can play any card. The highest card wins regardless of suit, but 6s are defeated by Ninjas. So far, pretty standard.

The twist is that in addition to winning or losing a trick each card you play can be used to put out samurai in the corresponding region 1-6, or as action points equal to the card number for moving your tokens around or attacking other players. So in essence you are playing two games at once via the trick taking. This is important for two reasons. One at the end of each round the regions score for who has the most presence. But second, when you win a trick you simply do a smaller version of this area majority scoring wherever your warlord is. So while the trick taking is important it only ever scores you points if you are winning your local battle, and it may be better to lose a trick just to shore up a position on the map.

The Joraku board, where battles take place for an area majority scoring.

It is amazing to see a trick taking game capture the feel of a small tactical war game, while still ultimately being driven by classic trick taker mechanics. You must follow suit so you can’t always do exactly what you want on the map, but that makes it all the more important to win tricks in order to take control of the card play. The ninja beating high cards gives the card game heart just enough spice too as you don’t want to play your 6 early only to be defeated by a lowly ninja. There is a recent and very pretty deluxe edition which really leans into the theme, but I am happy with my small portable copy as well. Very much worth tracking down.

Look forward to a review of the best trick takers from season 2 in the coming months, and I hope these recommendations are a hit if you have the chance to try them out.

Memory Two Ways

Two great memory games

Memory is one of my least favorite mechanisms in gaming. Right behind Roll & Move, which was what defined most board games since Monopoly. But two recent games have taken memory and put it front and center in the game design to hilarious results. And what’s interesting is that each game uses memory to prove the opposite point. So today I would like to review these recent hits: That’s Not a Hat, and Wilmot’s Warehouse.

That’s Not a Hat proposes that our memory is not as good as we think it is. It asks players to hold 4-8 things in their mind, and proves how quickly we can fail at that once the cards are flipped face down in a sort of memory party shell game. In brief, each player is dealt a face up card with a simple drawing. For example, a guitar, a piece of Pizza, headphones and a skateboard. The start player then adds one card face up in front of them, and then flips the card face down and passes it to the player in the direction the card back points to. That next player must say “Thank you for the X” or question it by saying “That’s not an X.” If they accept it, they pass whatever card they have on to the next person, also flipping the card face down. 

Early on, this is easy. You follow the cards around on their journey around the table and try to keep track of what you were just handed, even when it is already face down when it arrives. But at some point, the shell game works and you forget something. Do you trust that you were just handed that piece of Pizza, or do you call the other player out. If you question any card, the card is flipped face up and whoever was wrong takes it as a penalty point in front of them. The penalized player then adds a new card to the set which is merciful as they add a card that’s face up from the central pile and don’t have to remember anything else, just yet. The first player to get three penalty points loses, and that’s the game.

The delight of That’s Not a Hat is the hilarity in how quickly we fail at this task. Early on players will receive a card and immediately forget the card that they had in front of them. Even this pause to think is pretty funny because it immediately makes the next player doubt whatever you tell them. So there’s a that can cover a lack of memory which is bluffing and turning the challenge over to someone else’s memory. Unlike a game of poker, this bluffing can be innocent, that you genuinely believe you are passing what you say you are, or just an educated guess. And at some point, once a lie has entered the system however innocently it can be even harder to keep track of the truth.

Black and white letting and the set direction of the cards can give you a clue.

The card backs use white lettering or black and the cards always go in the same direction around the table, so there are SOME facts about the cards even once they are face down that might help you keep track, but everyone I’ve played the game with is shocked at how hard this simple task is after a few rounds. It is especially funny when players state that they are passing something from a previous round of the game. Once the cards are face down, who truly knows what’s out there.

Wilmot’s Warehouse. I show tiles face up here, normally they are face down and players have a story as to what they mean

On the other end of the spectrum is Wilmot’s Warehouse. This game proposes a memory task that sounds impossible and then helps you prove that it was easier than you thought. Here’s the setup. You and up to 6 players fill a grid with 35 tiles each of which you look at once and then place face down. You are then tasked with a separate deck of cards that contain those 35 and more to match cards to their corresponding tile. You must do it in 5 minutes or less. Sounds pretty tricky right?

Each of these tiles has some abstract art on it. Players go around the table each drawing a tile of the stack, arranged into five stacks of seven tiles, one stack for each day of the week. When a player draws a tile they show it to the other players and discuss where it should go in the grid. The starting tile goes in the center and each future tile must be orthogonally adjacent to a previous tile. But here’s the critical part. Players are encouraged to identify the tile, in spite of its abstract nature, and then fit it onto the board thematically, starting or continuing a story as to how it relates to the previous tiles and why it belongs specifically in that spot. Essentially players are building what is classically known as a Mind Palace about the tiles which then helps the group remember exactly where everything is. The center tile could look a bit like an egg sandwich, which is then above the next tile that looks a bit like a grill, and below a twirling ribbon that represents flipping the egg while it cooks.

One of the challenge cards

The magic trick is that this actually works. And it works better and better the more in depth and internally consistent your story is. But the telling of the story is in itself hilarious. The connections your fellow players make and how everyone can then generally agree to and adhere to the logic that you build together is really something. For a twist, each day of the week besides Monday also has an “ideas from management” card that presents unique challenges for each day. These throw enough of a wrinkle in to keep each game fresh and challenging, and you may be surprised to hear that there are harder versions of these cards in addition to upping the tile count from 35 to 40 if you truly want a challenge. But every time I have played this game it has actually taken the group less than 2 minutes to match every item in the warehouse. Clearly what sounded impossible was actually a bit easy after all.

The bag full of tiles has the smiles at you

It has been over a week since I last played and I still remember pretty distinctly where some of those tiles were. But more than that, I remember the overall story and how we briefly became obsessed with egg sandwiches and who was making them, and the rules we made up about making them. That same tile we started with looked very much like a Tie-Fighter to me, and if we had started there I am sure the entire story would have been entirely different and equally wonderful. Wilmot’s Warehouse is not a game for everyone. One player in a recent game gritted their teeth and attempted to remember every tile themselves, not necessarily fun with that kind of pressure. But if you lean into the storytelling and treat it as a group activity it can be truly hilarious and utterly unique.

The two games combined provide opposite takes on memory, but both have been some of my favorites from this year and prove that the mechanism still has some life after all.

A Review of Spectral

This week I want to talk about one of my favorite new games from this year, but one that flew under the radar when it was released in May. Since the pumpkin spice latte is out in the wild and everyone is preparing for Spooky season a little early, let’s talk about Spectral by Ryan Courtney, where we go gem hunting in a haunted mansion. Spectral bills itself as a deduction game, and that’s true, but it has a unique blend of mechanisms in addition to deduction that I think put some people off who typically like that genre. By deduction game I mean something like Clue,  a game where players use deductive logic to find out a specific answer. Spectral has some of that for sure, but answers aren’t always as specific, and there is some luck involved which is often not what deduction fans are looking for.

A game in play, some cards flipped over and curses and gems places to show how the cards work.

But first let me describe how the game works in a bit more detail. In Spectral players place out investigators in the spaces between 16 cards arrayed in a 4 x 4 grid face down. When placing investigators between a card you are doing two things at once. 1.) you are claiming that spot, and if you are next to any gems at the end of the game you get a portion of those findings for being next to the card, and 2.) you get to look at one of the two cards you are in between and learn some information about somewhere else in the grid where a curse or gem is. Critically, cards that you see never tell you about that card. Players quickly scrawl this information in a charming investigation booklet so they can puzzle out their next move between other players’ turns. Gems are how you score points, but curses are the most spicy part of the design. Any investigators next to a curse are destroyed, and can’t claim any gems that are adjacent to them. You may think you are next to the same lucrative space as another player, but because of a curse that is adjacent to you, but not them, your bid is lost.

Early on, when the grid is a complete mystery players are only doing this to gain information. But as they learn more they may want to claim specifically juicy spots next to multiple gems, and therefore the claiming becomes more important than the information. When players place a piece it is essentially a bid, like in an auction game. Players can place out any number of their 18 investigator pieces. In order to beat another player’s bid and claim the same spot opponents must play double the number of investigators that are already there. Early on players are placing out single investigators, but as they learn information players may be willing to throw more and more investigators to firm up a claim or kick someone out of a key location. And you can always pass to wait and see where other players go but if all players pass sequentially the game ends.

The four types of clue. Top left describes a gem two away clockwise, top right describes a curse two away diagonally, bottom left a reflected gem across the horizontal axis and bottom right a gem one away diagonally in the same quadrant.

So what kind of information are players learning? There are four different kinds of cards and each row has three cards that are about where gems are, and one that is about where curses are. The first clue describes where a curse or gem is two away diagonally in the grid. This points to a specific spot as only one location can fit that description. The second clue states that a curse/gem is two away clockwise, either in the inner circle of 4 cards, or the outer circle of 12. The third clue points to a card diagonal from it within that quadrant of four cards. And the 4th clue points to a card that is on the other side of it across the horizontal axis, as if you were folding over the board and it matches its mirror image.

Most critically with these clues is that each row of cards is internally consistent. It is not a setup of 16 cards randomly placed among the 4 x 4 grid. Rows A, B, C and D are each the same four card every time. So if you know even one card in a row you can start making guesses about what the other cards are and what that implies in terms of where things are in the grid. That’s the puzzle in terms of the cards themselves, but the second layer is the social deduction of why players are bidding high in certain places and maybe not treading anywhere near others. Even if you don’t know where a curse is by the middle of the game you might be able to tell by an absence of bids near a card.

Players secretly keep track of this information to inform future bids.

The game is great, but I can see why it hasn’t resonated with traditional deduction game fans. It is less deterministic than Clue. In Clue the process of elimination is perfect information. If the candlestick is in one room, it can’t be in another. In Spectral there can be three gems and a curse on the same card. Knowing where a gem is does not tell you that a curse ISN’T there. You are rewarded for the deduction part, but there’s luck involved in what you see vs what other players see before the game ends. I personally think this trade-off of luck vs perfect information is worth it for a few reasons. For one, the game clocks under 30 minutes, and I am generally ok with quite a bit of luck in shorter games in general. For another I think the unique blend of mechanisms set this game apart from other deduction games, and makes it quite a bit more light and interactive. Bidding based on a growing confidence in the information you’ve gathered, combined with paying attention to what other players are doing gives the game a different feel vs other deduction games that are very much heads down puzzles.

On top of all that it plays to 5 players seamlessly and comes in a very small box. Bitewing games has a winner on their hands with this one, and hopefully this review can help more folks discover this unique gem.

The Legacy of Legacy Games

The Latest Legacy game

Eight years ago I wrote about the exciting prospect of legacy games. Pandemic Legacy was the newest one on the scene and it revolutionized storytelling in games after Risk Legacy paved the way in creating a whole genre of games that changed permanently and evolved as you played. Eight years later, with seven full legacy games completed, and roughly as many failed part way through, I want to talk this week about the lasting legacy of these games with some perspective, and where I stand on them these days.

Part of these thoughts have to do with recently finishing Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West, the most recent output from the most prolific legacy designer Rob Daviau. I will touch on TTR Legacy briefly throughout this blog but will try not to spoil anything as the sense of discovery is half of what legacy games are about. But It’s an important context so I will bring in a few thoughts about it.

 

Groups and Games

First, the successes and the failures. I think in games that I’ve tried I am running at about a 60% completion rate. A lot of this has to do with the group. I have one Legacy group with whom I have completed 6 games. Every summer we would start a campaign around April or May and endeavor to finish it by September before our October schedule got much more busy. We have a Sunday AM time carved out and once we commit to a game we see it through. This works, and is a delightful way to spend Sunday AMs during the summer but speaks to the level of scheduling involved. With this group I have finished all three Pandemic Legacy games, Charterstone, Betrayal Legacy and Ticket to Ride Legacy. The key to completing a legacy game is this sort of consistency. Try to plan out as many sessions in advance as you can or stick to a regular schedule. But the success of this group ALSO has to do with the games. The Pandemic Legacy series continues to be the best in the genre. We completed these games because they remained compelling throughout our sessions which made it worth the time commitment.

With a different group I have failed to finish, well, every campaign we have started. Some of this is the group. I will own that having a break-up in the middle of the Risk Legacy campaign really didn’t help get that one over the finish line. Some of this is the game, as Seafall, Rob Daviau’s much anticipated follow up to his previous legacy games, didn’t actually succeed as a game one would want to play. Werewolf Legacy was a TERRIBLE idea as that game requires an even bigger group to get together on a regular basis. And the new Risk: Shadow Forces game I simply did not want to play after a few sessions.  But oftentimes the scheduling just didn’t work out and consistently getting 4 adults together on any sort of regular basis just proved to be too difficult.

 

Industry Trends

Legacy games proved to be too difficult for every other publisher to jump on the bandwagon. They are certainly more out there since Pandemic Legacy’s success, but they are not as prolific as I would have thought they would be eight years ago. Instead one legacy that these games left is a trend towards campaign games, or having campaign modes in otherwise stand-alone games. So many games these days seem to promise some sort of small or large arc where players unlock new content. And so, many games on Kickstarter these days promise some sort of campaign. Maybe this was chasing the Gloomhaven buzz just as much as the Legacy hype but campaign style games are truly everywhere. This is an exhausting side effect of these early games’ success. Outside of the one group I play with each Summer, I don’t have a lot of interest in trying to schedule multiple sessions to get the most out of any game. Campaigns in other games are mostly just a side effect of the infinite game phenomenon I talked about previously. However I will give a nod to some light touch unlock elements in games like Meadow and Dorf Romantik. These don’t feel like campaigns as much as little drips of endorphins when you hit certain accomplishments or milestones. It is neat to have a game that “evolves” but I feel like the board game industry has taken mixed lessons from eight years ago and the fatigue towards this trend is starting to set in.

The starting map of Ticket to Ride Legacy has only a small part of the map.

With all that being said, I do still like the genre in small doses. Ticket to Ride Legacy was a lot of fun this summer. It has a lot of the elements that are a recipe for success in Legacy games. For one thing, it is built on the solid foundation of Ticket to Ride, which is a great game to start with. For another, it is all about discovery. Each new map section has a new little mini game that sticks around for the next 2-3 games. They are very clever in that you are never keeping too many rules in your head at one time, but there’s also always something new to keep things fresh. Where the game was less successful than its predecessor is mostly the story. There was an overarching plot for Ticket to Ride Legacy but I cannot recount any major beats of it for you. The Pandemic Legacy games, especially the first one, are really much better focused on the narrative, and I did miss that with this campaign. The novelty of discovery is still the most fun and consistent draw of Legacy titles to this day. I will happily sign up for one of these each summer, but ultimately the novelty of your first Legacy game is usually going to outshine future iterations. It’s kind of a first love sort of thing, I suppose.

Oath goes for a different kind of legacy.

There are exciting things happening in terms of stories in games outside of Legacy and campaign games, however. In some ways I seek out games that create stories more than those that tell you a story. Cole Wherle’s Oath created a game where the end of one game always impacted the setup,  goal, landscape and even cards of the next game. It has an expansion coming next year that will make changes even more intentional, but it serves more as a sandbox where players create their own history versus going through a prescribed story from the designer. His other recent release Arcs boils this down even further with a three game campaign with branching paths to tell mini Space Opera stories. Here the cast and goals are created by the game but the stories are created by the players. Expect more writing about Arcs in the future as I work to explore that game more in depth. And finally,

Eathborne Rangers promises an open world experience.

Earthborne Rangers is an enormous card game that presents itself as “open world.” This again steps away from the railroaded story of legacy games, and aims to create something that players explore more organically and discover the narrative for themselves. Here it is not necessarily player created stories but instead an impressive keyword system that makes narrative emerge through play. In an incredible nod against the inherent wastefulness of legacy games, Earthborne Rangers promises to be a game made in such a way that the whole endeavor is suited for the compost bin, and won’t outlast its owners as trash down the road.

So while Legacy games haven’t gone in the direction I thought they would eight years ago their impact on the hobby is undeniable.  For other writing on these types of games check out my review of My City, which has a sequel out now called My Island. Reiner Knizia focuses mostly on the evolving mechanisms style of Legacy Game so certainly don’t go to either of those games looking for a popcorn worthy thriller.

Train games continued: Exploring the 18XX genre with Shikoku 1889

Finally a pretty 18XX cover that tells you where it takes place!

Last week I wrote about how I fell in love with trains and train games, including a tabletop version of Railroad Tycoon that I ran into early in my hobby. This week I am talking about 18XX games, which it took me until this year to try, after 13 years of playing other games. Why did it take so long? Looking back, I have played much more intimidating games than 18XX. Heck one is literally based on rocket science! There are several answers to this question. For one thing these games are not at all visually appealing. With a color palette of Red, Green, Yellow Brown and Black 18XX games are pretty ugly. They are similar in this way to the early austere cube rail games I wrote about last time. The second reason is just how mathy they appear. There are not one but two excel sheet looking boards in every 18XX game. As much as I have grown to like math and excel, neither have much sex appeal when it comes to selling a game. And thirdly I always heard how intimidatingly long these games were. People would talk about a game taking 6-8 hours, and while I do play longer games I couldn’t figure out how such a huge time investment could be worth it; especially when I was newer to games. So it took until 2024 to try an 18XX game, and to be honest I wish I had done it sooner. In this blog I hope to explain what the appeal is of these games in case you are the most train-curious type of player.

18XX Games have never been lookers

But before I get too much further, what is this 18XX thing I keep mentioning? Well, these are huge train, stock and business simulation board games that started with 1829 by Francis Tresham back in 1974! The game made waves at the time for being a long, involved strategic game that didn’t involve war as was more common of the games at the time. When it came time for a sequel, the designer kept the same naming convention and made 1830: Railways and Robber Barons. It was useful in terms of clueing in existing players that this was another game in the series they had enjoyed previously, but gosh is it confusing from a marketing perspective. And now, every 18XX game as the genre is now called starts with the number 18 and some sort of year. Fans talk about their favorites such as 1862 or 1846 and if you are not in the know you wouldn’t even know what country these things are set in much less what makes one unique compared to another. Needless to say, the name of the game doesn’t really sell it as something I would want to try.

Fast forward to 2021 and I backed a kickstarter for Shikoku 1889. I am still not 100% sure why I did it. Perhaps it was some Omicron Covid lockdown fueled retail therapy, or just the dream of more board games in general during that time. But I will say, part of the reason is because this was finally a good looking 18XX game, at least relatively speaking. I had heard it was beginner friendly, and when you combine Japan and trains, two of my favorite things I figured I’d give it a shot. In 2024 I finally had a group willing to give it a shot and from the word go I knew it was something special.

Shikoku 1889 in play. Poker chips, tile trays, and charts! This is later in the game with all three track types out on the map.

18XX games take the stock and track aspects of cube rails games and dials them up to 11. Players alternate between stock rounds, focused entirely on buying and selling stocks, and operating rounds where tracks are laid, trains are bought and routes are run, e.g. the actual business behind these stocks. As I mentioned above, stock rounds have a living breathing stock market where the company value can go up or down based on buying, selling, and company performance, just like real life, if quite a bit simplified. There are hostile take-overs, dumping stock of a company that doesn’t have great prospects, or starting up a rival train company to jam up the effectiveness of one that is surging ahead. The important thing to emphasize here is that the company and the players are entirely separate, right down to having different pools of money they are working with. There’s a reason these games are often played with poker chips as money is flying left and right and there is indeed quite a bit of accounting going on. But if you want to be a stock shark without the dangers of investing in GameStop there might be something here for you.

Operating rounds, however, are my favorite part. This is where the money is made as company presidents (whoever owns the most stock of a company) build tracks and buy trains to run rail lines out on the map. Unlike in cube rail games, track is limited, so if you need a simple curved track later in the game you may be out of luck. And secondly the tracks progress in different eras corresponding to the trains that are operating. Simple yellow track with one entrance and exit is available early on, which then evolves into green tracks that have multiple exits and finally brown tracks that are congested with many different exits. This is both compelling strategically as more complicated tracks allow longer and more profitable routes but also captures a bit of the sweep of history and the evolution of trains.

Speaking of those trains, these are also more complex. Trains must be bought in order so only 2 distance trains are available at the start, good for a route that connects two towns. These get longer with 3 distance trains, 4 distance trains etc until finally there are modern diesel trains that can run circles around the whole map. But in another strategic and historic nod, modern trains render older ones obsolete. So when anyone buys the first 4 distance train for example, all 2 distance trains “rust” and are out of the game. This means the little mom and pop railroad that was doing decent for itself with small local routes could be in a lot of trouble as they are suddenly trainless and maybe out of cash as well.

All of this makes for a very compelling, cutthroat game. Having played it I can see where the length of the game doesn’t matter to fans of the genre. As long as there’s not somewhere else you need to be, there is a wonderful arc to these 4-6 hour games. There are cunning moves on the stock market, interesting decisions and evolutions on the track and operating side and some interesting shared incentives between players who are both invested in the same company. While I will not be collecting these like I do trick taking games, I am very happy to have Shikoku 1889 in my collection. I also recently picked up another more beginner friendly title that broke the 18XX naming curse called Railways of the Lost Atlas. The hook in that one is that players build the map before each game, allowing for games that have a different map each time. It also boasts being 2-3 hours which seems much more palatable to most people. I am curious to get this one to the table and will certainly report back with a review when I do. 

If you’re looking to learn more about 18XX there is a great history located here. Check out the chart of all the different variants and their family tree. There’s also a way to play online at 18XX.games. I hope you’ve enjoyed exploring the wide world of train games these past two weeks and who knows, maybe you’re more train-curious than you think!

Are you train curious?

The joy of a train set

Let me tell you a story. It’s Christmas morning when I am ten years old, and I unwrap a Lionel Train set under the tree. I proceed to spend the rest of the day fascinated by the giant metal train engine model and the fake smoke it puffs out as it runs endless circles around the track. The passenger car lights up as well and these little touches of realism make each loop around the track feel real. For years the train would come out every Christmas time to circle the tree, and it started a love of trains that lives on to this day.

Let me tell you a story. Years ago I was a preteen in an EB Games perusing the clearance section of their PC games. I found a CD version of Sid Meir’s Railroad Tycoon for MS DOS for $4.00. A perfect price for someone operating on an allowance and lawn mowing. I snatch it up and manage to get it running in spite of the hells of MS DOS, and I’m transfixed. Truth be told, I don’t know a lot of what’s going on. There’s something about shares that sounds like math or grown up talk. But the fundamental drive of the game is to connect cities with rails, add trains to those rails and build routes that make the cities grow, year over year. I play it on easy, and I play it for hours with afternoons melting away in visions of an enormous rail network. I play and anticipate each of the sequels as crumby DOS art becomes clean 2d art becomes true 3d rotatable landscapes, and trains you can zoom in on while they chug away.

The evolution of Railroad Tycoon. From left to right Railroad Tycoon 1, 2, and 3.

Let me tell you a story. Years later I am at a friend’s house and there is a Railroad Tycoon board game. Having recently gotten into the hobby, I was intrigued and had to give it a try. The gameplay lived up to the memories I had of the video game. There we were, building rail networks into the open countryside, delivering goods to the towns that demanded them and watching them grow into cities. I never dreamed that such a complex game could translate to the table so well, but the game proved to be up to the task.

So today, I ask, are you train curious? Do you too want to build tracks, buy shares and prove you are worthy of the title of Rail Baron? If so, there are many options, and I want to highlight a few of my favorites and make a likely vain attempt at defining what IS a train game anyways.

First, and foremost, the elephant in the room. I am not talking about Ticket to Ride. I have early memories of that one too. Our family got it back in 2005 when I didn’t even know what a Spiel des Jahres game was. It somehow cracked out of the hobby games space that was brewing at the time and into our living room and is still sitting on the shelf there now waiting to be played again. I introduced my niece to it with Ticket to Ride First Journey, and she recently graduated to her own full copy of regular Ticket to Ride even at a relatively young age. The game is great, and it is also not, to my mind, a train game. It is, at its heart, a lovely version of rummy with a complex map you use for scoring. Players collect cards in order to fill tracks with their colored trains and complete routes. But the routes are pre-printed vs players playing track tiles. There is no sense of cargo being delivered or the map changing through play. There are certainly no stocks, bankruptcies or money of any kind for that matter. So while Ticket to Ride is great, it is not what I am talking about here.

Instead, let’s revisit that Railroad Tycoon board game. It is sadly out of print, but is actually a licensed version of a game that is very much still around called Railways of the World. Railways and its cousin game Age of Steam are where I truly cut my teeth on these types of games, and they still hold up today. (Small aside, there are three different version of this same system and in the hobby world it is very much a Coke vs Pepsi type of debate as to which is better. That could be a whole separate blog post in and of itself. I personally have the RC Cola version of this system…). In the game players each own their own rail network, and the aim of the game is to build tracks between different cities that are colored to represent what type of goods they want from elsewhere on the board. Mirroring the arc of history, networks start small and engines start slow so players can only maybe deliver a good here or there, one city away. But as players expand, and their engines get faster it is a race of sorts to keep connecting longer and longer routes to deliver goods further and further away. All while managing your income and loans so that you can afford to build those tracks and maintain that engine. 

Steam: Rails to Riches in play

The version that I have Steam: Rails to Riches also has a turn order consideration as there are 7 special powers in the game. These powers can be simple like being able to build one more track or having the right to deliver first. Or they are more involved things like adding a new city tile to the map or turbo-charging your engine technology to get ahead of the pack. Each turn in player order players pick powers, but the power that they pick determines player order for the next round, with the most powerful action meaning you’re likely in the back of the line for the next pick. It makes for some delightful tempo considerations in addition to the core fundamentals of track building and delivery. I still have this one in my collection for its focus on these two fundamentals, but there are other games that focus more on stocks vs the sort of pick up and deliver feel of Steam.

Original cube rails games were… minimalistic

The simpler of these stock games are collectively called Cube Rail games. This is because the company that produced many of them Winsome Games was maybe a bit … sparse on components. Just some colored cubes, some stock cards and a map. In these games the different colored cubes represent different companies vs different players. This is true of many stock games and takes a moment of adjustment as no one company is you, the player, but rather they are tools to get ahead. Games usually start with an auction where players bid on stocks of each different company, and whoever has the most stocks gets to make the actual track building decisions of that company. Further auctions may see players investing in each other’s companies to share in some of the profits or even as a hostile takeover. Unlike the focus on delivering goods, cube rails games focus on connecting rail networks to more and more cities to increase the dividends they pay to their shareholders. I realize as I describe this, some of you may be falling asleep, or wondering how this talk about your 401k made it into your board games, but it is genuinely a great time, I promise. Cube rails games are often very short and play out wildly differently each time despite featuring the same core pieces because it’s all about player interaction. Who owns a company, and how other companies interact on the map can allow for very expressive plays in under an hour. 

Irish Gauge in play

My current favorite is Irish Gauge, which adds a unique element where dividends are paid out depending on cube pulls from a bag and how they tie to those same cubes on the map. This adds a lot of uncertainty, but players are also using these same cubes to build up cities and increase their profits so there’s a balancing act where the more of that color cube that’s out on the map, the less likely it is to be pulled for dividends. The rules for the game are literally one sheet of paper double sided, so it’s very approachable but I want to give fair warning, this game is MEAN. You will cut people off, you will auction shares to make sure someone is left out of a company and you will pull dividends when it benefits you and no one else. Consider this fair warning if it ever hits your table.

Next week I’ll be talking about the enormous genre of 18XX games. Yes, that’s seriously what they’re called, and no, they’ve never been known for their marketing. These games are 4+ hour beasts and can be rather intimidating but have a lot to offer if you find yourself curious to explore more train games. So come on ride the train.

Game of the Week: Pictures

Pictures is a game that has had some rotten luck. The party game launched in late 2019 and relies on players using unique physical objects to represent different pictures from a central grid. It was nominated for Spiel De Jahres 2020, and then… the world shut down with the Covid 19 Pandemic. As a game that relies entirely on physical pieces, it did not translate to zoom. By the time folks were emerging from their covid bubbles to play games in person again years later, its moment had passed.

I recently had a chance to pick this one up, and I think it has potential as a sleeper hit. My favorite thing is that it emphasizes the physical nature of board games. In Pictures each player has one of five different sets of tools with which to represent a picture the 4 x 4 grid in the middle of the table. The tools make for a strange unboxing as they are all purposely not the best way to accomplish this task. You get some sanded sticks and actual rocks for one tool, some building blocks that wouldn’t look out of place in a kindergarten classroom, two shoelaces, a set of icon cards, and a picture frame with a bunch of colored cubes.

The tools of the trade. One pictures is represented by each of these five tools

The tools themselves are a hint at what makes this game great. They are purposely terrible. When was the last time you had to convey the concept of a car to someone with two shoelaces? Players have to be creative, but the tools level the playing field vs other party games that involve drawing or other traditionally creative skills. Each player is secretly given a coordinate token that corresponds to the picture they are trying to represent, and there are 3 of each coordinate so multiple players could be trying to represent the same thing. After players have constructed their own piece of art they vote on what picture they think other players’ masterpieces represent. Once everyone is finished everyone discusses what they guessed for each player and the owning player confirms which picture they had. Players get points for guesses they get right and also for every correct vote for their own creation. 

Can you find the picture depicted in the grid above?

This discussion of the guesses is both amusing and insightful. From the high five moment when everyone guesses correctly to the befuddled look on everyone’s faces when no one does, to the quiet joy that at least ONE other player understood your vision. This is complemented by the  ahas of understanding or groans of incredulity at the reveal. Given how crude the tools are, the game provides some pretty fascinating insight into how other players think. In several of my games there has been a player or two who were on a completely different wavelength in terms of how they represented their picture. Unlike a game of pictionary where raw talent can unbalance the teams a bit, there is no talent basis for any of these besides maybe an understanding of abstract art. The game is also inherently funny without asking players to be funny on command, as the task and the tools themselves are silly.

Pictures is a game that revels in being preposterous in what it’s asking the players to do. It definitely came out at the wrong time, and has a VERY generic name, but it’s well worth looking into. As a bonus it makes for a fun spectator sport as anyone not in the game can sort of play along and guess based on the art on the table. I am currently looking into the expansions that bring even more ridiculous tools for representing the pictures. Can you capture a picture with some clothespins and pieces of felt? 

Help! I’m Addicted to Trick-takers

Hello my name is Jeremy and I am addicted to Trick-taking games.

“What the heck is a trick taking game?” you might say. Chances are you have already played one. Although which game may depend on where you grew up. Popular games in the U.S. are Spades, Hearts, Pitch, Pinochle, and Euchre. Essentially a trick taking game is any card game where all players play one card each “trick” and the highest or best card wins. Players must usually follow the color of the first card played limiting what they can play from their hand unless they are out of that color. The winner then  “takes”  the cards and leads the next round, hence “trick taker.” Oddly enough I did not play many of these games growing up but came to be fascinated by them much more recently.

The Crew: Quest for Planet Nine offers a excellent way to learn trick taking in a cooperative setting

The fascination started simply enough. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine was a game of year winning co-op trick taking game that I got into with my regular game group. In the game players draft what cards they are going to try to take throughout the hand and then cooperate with limited communication to accomplish these goals. So for example maybe I want to take the blue 5 and someone else wants to take the yellow 7. Each of us has to figure out how to get those cards into the right trick, and if anyone ever fails a mission the round is immediately over and players have lost. The cooperative nature of the game reinforced the fundamentals of trick taking as you are trying to coordinate with the other players to accomplish things you usually attempt alone in competitive trick takers. Things like: Becoming void on certain suits (e.g. none of a certain color in your hand so you don’t have to follow what was lead), tempo control when to take or pass the lead. We quickly devoured the 50 different scenarios in that game and then moved on to its sequel The Crew Mission Deep Sea that introduced more complex goals for each hand and endless variety compared to the simple goals in the first game. And so I got a bit of class in a genre of games I did not grow up playing.

Cat in the Box turns trick taking on its head with suit less cards

Sometime later a favorite podcast talked about an odd trick taking game from Japan, Cat in the Box where, similar to the Schrödinger experiment cards have numbers but can be any suit as long as that number and suit combination haven’t been “observed” so far this hand. The game made its way over to the US for English release, and I began to explore what other strange examples of the genre were out there. The dangerous answer is… there are hundreds; and new ones each year. I found some like-minded souls who were eager to explore these games and we’ve been digging through them and assessing our findings for a little over a year and a half. There are 13 games in the queue and more on the way as the releases show no signs of slowing down.

To be fair, there are worse habits, but this one can be a bit expensive. I turned a bit green when I realized these unassuming little card games had made up one third of my board game budget last year, sometimes costing 30-40 dollars for a simple card game. The cost to component ratio, especially with smaller import games is certainly a bit out of whack. But I couldn’t be happier to be exploring a few of these each month and I wanted to try to summarize the appeal and maybe one of my recent favorites to illustrate why this part of the hobby is flourishing.

The best place to start is that common language that The Crew taught me. All trick taking games are a variation on a central set of mechanisms, and core strategies tied to those mechanisms. Each time the Tricky Biscuits™ and I sit down there’s a set of questions that tune folks into the game. Is it a Must-Follow game e.g. when do you have to follow with the same suit. How many suits are there and what is the make-up of the deck. Is there a trump suit that beats other cards, and how and when can you play it? And finally the most important question: How do you score points?

From this description the games might sound like they would get kind of samey. In a way that’s the appeal, and in other ways it’s amazing how inventive things can get within such a consistent genre. On the “samey” side, the advantage is that you are not reinventing the wheel each time you play a new game. How to play well is a different story, but after one hand of cards in any of these games you are well on your way to at least some level of competence. They are also often short, most are over in 30-45 minutes, so even if you have some rotten luck or bad early hands while getting the rules sorted out you’re not in for a multi-hour affair. And unlike its bigger board game cousin’s the game is usually easy to learn right from 2-4 pages of rules, vs the 20-30 page manuals some modern games demand. Samey is a virtue in this regard, in the same way pizza is still the greatest meal when it’s what you crave. Simple but pure.

But the inventiveness of each game is really impressive as well. Here are a few of the more wild elevator pitches of recent games: Trick taking with a mini mancala system to determine the strength of the suits. Trick taking to play an area control game on a central map. Trick taking with train companies and stock values determined by the different tricks. Trick taking where you can’t see your hand of cards other than knowing the suits printed on the card backs and that they are arranged in order. Trick taking where everyone must play different suited “heroes” to defeat an evil villain. Asymetric trick taking where everyone has a different goal each hand and special powers to accomplish this goal.

These are some of the more outlandish pitches, but given the small number of rules in any trick taking game even the slightest rules change from the well known patterns makes a big difference. What if second place won the trick? What if there were no suits and each card was just another digit in an increasing number? What if you could change the numbers on your cards like a digital clock by adding segments to turn that 5 into a 6?

Given how much of my last gaming year and foreseeable gaming future is contained in these types of games, I’ll be writing about them a lot in the coming months in addition to regular blogs about other games. For now I will just cover my most recent favorite: Schadenfreude.

Schadenfreude is a game that true to it’s name is about enjoying others misfortune. It is a deck made up of four suits, with no trump suit. Cards range from -3(!) to 9 with a wild 0 and 10 that will match any suit that was led. So far, so standard, other than those odd negative numbers. There’s a central score board and one rule above all others. Second place wins. This means both second place in individual tricks and overall in the game. The scoreboard goes to 40, and the moment someone goes over 40, whoever is closest to 40 wins. What this means in practice is that you laugh as you stick a friend with enough points to launch over 40 and try not to be launched over the threshold as well!. When you win a trick, you take the card that you won it with as well as any off-suit cards and they go in front of you as your score pile. At the end of the round you score the face value of all the cards in your score pile.

So you want to score points, right? Points are how you win, after all, you won’t be anywhere near 40 if you don’t score any points. The answer is, it depends. You really want to score points until you really don’t. There is a bit of a release valve built into the design in that if you ever take a card with a number that you already have in your score pile both cards are discarded. This can be both really funny when you slip an 8 into a trick knowing that it will blow up the 8 your friend just took last turn, but it also means you can Houdini yourself out of some points that you really don’t want to take by carefully playing your cards into a cancel.

Schadenfreude is a raucous good time filled with laughter and groans in equal measure. It’s a game that almost anyone can play but has some depth hidden underneath the chaos. Unfortunately it is one of those imports I mentioned earlier and is not widely available in the US. There are some import shops that have it in stock as of my writing this and there’s also the option to import it directly from Japan but the sticker shock and hoops to jump through make it less accessible than I’d like. I promise to also cover some more widely available titles, and as this genre gains more popularity many of these coveted import games eventually make their way over through US publishers big and small. There is also usually a way to play any of the games I cover in these articles using a standard deck of cards or two, with a little bit of elbow grease and a permanent marker.