Fuego

• Designers: Jason Hager and Darren Reckner
• Publisher: Keymaster
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30-45 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4hr0kny
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Fuego is a trick-taking game, played over a series of rounds. Each round consists of playing tricks. Clever card play and well-timed strikes will win you a trick and let you take Flame Tokens from your opponents. Extinguish your opponent by taking all of their Flame Tokens or have the most Flame Tokens at the end of the round to win.  The first player or team to win two wounds wins the game!

The Fuego deck is 37 cards: 1-8 in four colors and 5 Wildfire cards numbered 1-5.  Each player is given three Flame tokens (one of them being the White Flame token marking the initial start player).  The Strike tokens are mixed up and each player gets one at random, placed face up on the table in front of them.  If you need them, there are four little chits used to make a fireline (places to play cards in your trick)

The players then break up into two teams (1v1 in 2p, 2v1 in 3p, 2v2 in 4p). Each player is dealt a hand and then each player on a 1p team gets a seven card Torch dealt to the table near them, with the bottom card being face up. 3 Flame tokens and a Strike token are placed on the uppermost cards.  (If you play a 3p game, one of the members of the two-person team starts with the Heat token).

If you choose to play with the Caliente cards, draw one at random to play for a round or for the entire game. Each of these 10 cards adds a unique rule that changes the way the round will play out.

The lead player chooses a card from their hand and leads it. Play goes clockwise around the table, and teams will alternate playing cards to the trick.  In a 3p game, the player with the Heat token plays first for the 2-player team, and the solo player will play twice.  Any player who has a Torch can use any face up cards in their Torch as if they were in their hand.  Once a card is played, any newly freed cards are revealed.  If there were Flame or Strike tokens on those cards, they are gained as well.

Fuego is a mostly-must-follow game; that is, if you have a card matching the Lead card’s color, you must play it.   Wildfire cards are always considered to follow the lead suit (i.e. they are wild), but you are never obligated to play a Wildfire card.  If you do not have a card of the lead suit, you are free to play any card.  

If there are two consecutive cards with the same numerical value in a trick, someone has “struck a MATCH”.  The matching cards are flipped facedown and are no longer part of the trick.  The player who played the match gets a random Strike token from the supply – these tokens will allow you to modify a card played later (either increasing the value or changing the color).  Of note, you can only ever have a single Strike token, so if you already have one when you get another, you must discard one.  If the first card of a trick is flipped face down, then the next earliest card face up becomes the lead card for the trick.

When 4 cards are played to the trick, the player who played the highest card of the Lead suit wins the trick.  They take Flame Tokens from their left hand opponent equal to the number of Flame icons on the card they played.  (In a 3p game, the solo player would take from the teammate with the Heat token).  Each Wildfire card visible in a trick increases the number of Flame Tokens taken by the winner by one.

The winner of the previous trick leads the next one.  The round continues until either all players have played all the cards in their hand and their Torch.  At this point, the player with the most Flame Tokens wins the round.  Ties broken in favor of the team that has possession of the White Flame token.  The round can also end immediately if a player runs out of Flame Tokens; that player’s team automatically loses.

The first team to win two rounds wins the game.

My thoughts on the game

Fuego is a trick taking game that adds a few interesting twists.  There is a fair amount of unpredictability in the tricks with the whole Raj-like cancelling of matching cards.  Later in the hand, players can often be void in the lead suit which leads to plenty of possible matching shenanigans.  Additionally, the Wildfire cards also allow for lots of possible matches in the ranks 1-5.

I also like the sudden-death ending possibility – if one teammate has an especially good hand, they can try to win multiple tricks and run an opponent out of flames.  Of course, you need to win with lower valued cards in order to take those flames, as the highest valued cards do not have any flames on them.  With especially clever play, you can even win a round with a single trick!  There are three flames on all the “1′ cards, so if you’re able to win a trick with a 1, you’ll take all the starting Flames from your left hand opponent!  Obviously, this will be a hard thing to orchestrate, but it’s definitely a possibility…

This game seems to scale a little better than some trick-taking games due to the Torch used for solo players.  Having this additional portion of your hand leads to some interesting strategies.  First, it can change a player’s void colors as new cards will be exposed as you play through the Torch.  Second, some players like to play through their Torch as quickly as possible to get the Strike token and the three extra flames (and keep the identity of the cards in their hand hidden for as long as possible).  I’d not seen a mechanism like this in the past, and I like the way it works here.

The Caliente cards add a bit of spice – they definitely change the rules in a round – but at least the rule is known from the start so that players can plan accordingly. I think that some gamers will not like the big swings or changes that come from the cards, but they’re not a surprise and they affect all players equally; so it at least changes how you might need to approach a hand based on the rule drawn.  For some, the unpredictability will be a negative. 

The artwork and graphic design is exceptional (I think I say this about all the Keymaster Games though) – the box is made to look like an old-fashioned match box, and it’s great.  The cards have a great design on them, though I’ll admit that my weak eyes have a little issue seeing the text/number on the yellow cards as it kinda blends into the white background.

I thought that the Fireline tokens were un-necessary at first – I mean, everyone in my group plays trick taking games, we shouldn’t need those…. But, they definitely came in helpful when we were playing the 3p game because the solo player plays twice in each trick, and it helps keep track of which card was played when.

Fuego is a trick taking game that has modes for player counts from 2-4, and each player count plays a bit differently – to the point it’s almost like getting three related but different games in the box. There are a lot of neat ideas (the Torch, making Matches and the Strike tokens), and if you like the genre, while I’m not sure it’s a game that will light the world on fire, it is probably worth a look at.

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4hr0kny

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor