BoardGameGeek News

To submit news, a designer diary, outrageous rumors, or other material, contact us at news@boardgamegeek.com.
Recommend
152 
 Thumb up
24.62
 tip
 Hide

Taking Tricks on Skateboards, Shedding Cards on the River, and Card Games Galore

Candice Harris
United States
Los Angeles
California
flag msg tools
admin
badge
Avatar
Microbadge: Great Western Trail fanMicrobadge: The Great Zimbabwe fanMicrobadge: Battlestar Galactica - I am a CylonMicrobadge: COIN fanMicrobadge: Twilight Imperium (fourth edition) fan
Board Game: Extreme Tricks
After all of the traveling I did in the second half of 2023, it's shocking how excited I was to fly to freezing cold Cincinnati in mid-January 2024. I had the pleasure of attending a small event focused on trick-taking games, hosted by James Nathan, who scouts for CMYK and Allplay. Eric covered this event in 2023 and shared some highlights, so I'm following in his footsteps.

Taylor Reiner joined me on episode 35 of the BGG Podcast to discuss a lot of the games I mention below, along with a handful of other great games we played at the event.




From gallery of candidrum

Masato Uesugi's Extreme Tricks from Japanese publisher I Was Game, ended up being one of my favorite new discoveries at the event. Extreme Tricks is a trick-taking game for 3-4 players, where you bid on how many objectives you think you can achieve in a round, which thematically equates to you predicting how many skateboard tricks you think you can land. What a cool theme for a trick-taking game!

The description on its BGG page nicely summarizes how Extreme Tricks works:
Quote:
Extreme Tricks is a trick-taking game for three to four players where players will be bidding not on how many tricks they'll win, but how many conditions they'll achieve - such as leading to a trick and losing or taking exactly 4 tricks.

The game lasts 4 rounds, each divided into 12 tricks, and those are divided into 3 stages of four tricks each. Six condition cards are dealt out which deal with what card you play, and six condition cards are dealt out which deal with what cards you've taken. New condition cards are revealed for each round.

From gallery of candidrum

After the cards have been dealt, players first bid on how many of the conditions they will achieve this hand. Then, the player takes half of the bits used to make that bid and places them on specific conditions they plan to achieve.

Afterwards, they play a must follow trick-taking game with a randomly determined trump suit.

The player with the most points when the game ends is the winner.
One important detail missing from this description is that you lose points for each cube over or under your bid.

I found Extreme Tricks to be incredibly engaging and fun from the start-of-the-round bidding decisions, through playing the last card of the trick. Every moment felt exciting. Thankfully an English version of Extreme Tricks will be released as Sick Tricks from Allplay in 2025. If the idea of a competitive version of The Crew excites you, I highly recommend checking this out.

Board Game: double side play
• Another interesting trick-taking game to look out for in the future from Allplay is double side play (release date TBD), which is a must-follow trick-taking game for 3-4 players with a few twists. In the game, your goal is to be the first player to hit your bid two times. At the start of each round, you roll a pair of dice, and the values on the dice represent your bid options for how many tricks you're targeting to win. So if I roll a 2 and a 5, I need to win exactly 2 tricks, or exactly 5 tricks to hit my bid. Each card has two numbers, one black and one white, and the two numbers always have a difference of six. The first six tricks are played with the black numbers, and the last six with the white numbers. This makes for some thinky hand management decisions as you try to hit your bid on one of your dice.

From gallery of candidrum

• I also got to try Stich für Stich, which is a trick-taking, deduction game for 3-4 players, from Markus W. Leon and Zoch Verlag. In Stich für Stich, one player knows the perpetrator and the murder weapon for a crime, and the other players are trying to figure it out based on how the tricks are resolved.

From gallery of candidrum

From gallery of candidrum

• I never resist an opportunity to teach and play Robotrick from Domi and The Game Gallery Works, so I was happy to get a few games in. Robotrick is a 3-player must-follow trick-taking game, where you play with a clever (and often punishing) robot as a 4th AI opponent.

From gallery of candidrum

• In addition to Robotrick, I've enjoyed teaching and playing Rebel Princess from Zombi Paella and designers Daniel Byrne, José Gerardo Guerrero, Kevin Peláez, and Tirso Virgós, which I picked up at SPIEL Essen '23. I love how it takes the essence of Hearts and makes it wacky and wild with rules changes each round and special powers. With 11 logged plays, I still have a blast every time I play Rebel Princess.

From gallery of candidrum
Even the game box was being a rebel...

10 Tricks Later is a zombie-themed trick-taking game for 3-4 players from designer Yusuke Sawaguchi and Fudacoma Games, where you're trying to help survivors make it safely inside your barricades, and avoid survivors becoming infected by any zombie cards that come your way.

From gallery of candidrum

• I snapped a photo of a few folks playing Colossal Cat in the Box because it looked so cool on the table. I didn't think I needed it in my life since I already own the Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition, but those big, chunky pieces and the first player cat are tempting me.

From gallery of candidrum

From gallery of candidrum


• For Ashley's birthday, we played a David Bowie double-header, starting with Dan Bullock's print-and-play Bowie, followed by Alessio Cavatore's Jim Henson's Labyrinth: The Card Game.

From gallery of candidrum

From gallery of candidrum

From gallery of candidrum
Bonus Alert: I spotted this awesome Bowie board at a German pub earlier in the day!

• If you listened to any of episodes 32 through 34 of the BGG Podcast, you know I wasn't traveling anywhere without a few KeyForge decks. It was great to a few games in when I wasn't playing trick-taking games.

From gallery of candidrum


• A few of us played a raucous, late-nite game of Paul Schulz's DroPolter, which is a 2023 dexterity release from Oink Games. Each player has a handful of components and you're racing to be first to drop the correct components from your hand that match the current card. It was a fun struggle, especially as you add VP jingle balls to your hand and try to avoid dropping them. Somehow, I managed to tie for first.

From gallery of candidrum

• I'm still not sure that roll-and-writes are my jam, but I was pleasantly surprised by House of Cats from designers William Attia and Kristian Amundsen Østby, and Aporta Games. I really like the variable powers you can activate, and perhaps I have an affinity for drawing little mice and crossing off cheese?

From gallery of candidrum

Baronda is a must-follow trick-taking game for 2-5 players, from Toshiki Arao and Ateam. The simultaneous bidding is pretty neat in Baronda because the scoring changes depending on the sum of all players' bids. Sometimes you will want to win as many tricks as you can, and other times, you're avoiding them.

From gallery of candidrum
Thanks for your hands, Adam!

Board Game: Team Play
• I had a great time playing a 6-player game of Johannes Schmidauer-König's Team Play, which is a 2015 release from Schmidt Spiele that CMYK is targeting to re-release in Q2 2024. In Team Play, you and your teammate are passing cards to each other to complete goal cards, and hopefully score more points than your opponents.

From gallery of candidrum

Ted Alspach and Bézier's Silver series has been around since 2019, and I finally got to play one. I played Silver Fang, which is an upcoming 2024 release that's part of the Silver Collector's Edition crowdfunding campaign (KS link), running through early February 2024. Silver Fang is a light, deduction card game that can be played with teams. As I was trying to synergize my hand and tableau for optimal scoring, I got some Fantasy Realms vibes, since you're often making tough decisions on discarding cards.

From gallery of candidrum

Board Game: FTW?!
• I also got in a quick game of FTW?!, which is a light and unique climbing/shedding game for 2-6 players from Friedemann Friese and 2F-Spiele. FTW?! is played with a deck of cards numbered 1-60, and players are trying to get rid of their cards, and hopefully have a high-value card left for scoring when a player goes out. Your score is your highest value card minus the value of each of your other cards in hand, so there's a lot to think about as you play your cards each round.

From gallery of candidrum


• For another unique climbing/shedding game, Mashikamaru's Sumida River from Mashika was quite a gem. Each time you play a card combo, you have to place it on an empty river space, which creates a very different dynamic from traditional card-shedding games. Plus, you're able to swap your hand of cards and add in some wild cards for even more of a twist.

From gallery of candidrum
Twitter Facebook
34 Comments
Subscribe sub options Fri Jan 19, 2024 1:00 pm
Post Rolls
  • [+] Dice rolls
Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment     View Previous {{limitCount(numprevitems_calculated,commentParams.showcount)}} 1 « Pg. {{commentParams.pageid}} » {{data.config.endpage}}
{{error.message}}
{{comment.error.message}}
    View More Comments {{limitCount(numnextitems_calculated,commentParams.showcount)}} / {{numnextitems_calculated}} 1 « Pg. {{commentParams.pageid}} » {{data.config.endpage}}