Up or Down?

• Designer: Wolfgang Kramer & Michael Kiesling
• Publisher: AbacusSpiele
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Up or Down?, you build ascending and descending rows of cards, trying to place as many cards of the same color in a row as possible. Card rows with many cards of the same color score lots of points.

To set up, shuffle the deck, deal each player a hand of three cards, reveal six cards and place them in a ring from low to high, then split the deck in half and place these piles in the center of the ring, one face up and the other face down. The deck contains cards numbered 1-126, although you adjust the deck based on the number of players.

On a turn, place a card from your hand between the surrounding numbers in the ring, e.g., 37 between 34 and 52, then you take one of the cards surrounding your just-placed card and add it to your display, either starting a new row or adding to an existing row. (If your card is lower than the lowest number or higher than the highest, place it between the lowest and highest card, then add one of those cards to your display.)

You can have up to three rows in your display. When you place a second card in a row, you must decide whether the cards in that row will be placed in ascending order or descending, and you stack the cards accordingly. If you cannot or do not want to place a card in a row — following the ascending or descending order you set up — take all the cards in a row of your choice, flip them face down into a personal discard pile, then start a new row with your current card.

To end your turn, draw a card from either pile inside the ring. Once all the cards in the game have been played, score your rows. For each row, multiply the number of cards in that row by the number of cards in the most common color in that row. For each card in your discard pile, score 1 point. Whoever has the most points wins.

In true Kramer fashion, there is also a list of Variants – not included in the box, but you can download them online – that provide you with NINE different variants to play the game.

https://abacusspiele.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/UpOrDown_variants_EN.pdf

My thoughts on the game

This is one of those games that is proof that sometimes you need to play a game multiple times before making up your mind on it.  My first game of this was played on the Wednesday of Spiel in the hotel lobby, and man, we aborted the game about halfway through – it didn’t feel like there was a game here to be played, and everyone wanted to quit.

I packed the box up, brought it home, and pulled it out again a few weeks later.  I re-read the rules to make sure that we weren’t playing with bad rules the first time – and it felt like we had not. However, on this second play, I could see some strategies forming. It was an interesting challenge to build your three columns up in the best way to score.  Do you simply concentrate on making them as long as possible; or do you make large jumps in order to get a card of the most prevalent color to increase your multiplier?  With some clever plays from your hand, you can try to set yourself up to pick up a card on a later turn that you have yourself played into the circle.

One change was player count – the game definitely feels like it plays better with a lower player count; I’m almost tempted to say the 2 or 3 is the sweet spot for me.  At counts higher than that, it’s hard to develop any plan of picking up your own cards; there are simply too many turns that happen in-between.  Maybe your card is picked up. Maybe the numbers on either side change too much and you no longer can play in an anticipated gap.  In any event, the game definitely feels too random for me at higher player counts.

The game also feels a bit long for what you get – even though you do modify the deck to suit the player count.  Most people I have played with agree and feel like the game is about a third too long.  I think it would be hard to shorten the game by removing some of the cards – first because some people might be counting the cards for the endgame, and also because the “tension” at the end of needing to be able to play to a column would be lost without enough chances to screw it up.  I guess what I’m saying is – the length of the game works internally; it’s just overall longer than I want to play this sort of game.

As far as the variants go – it’s a bit surprising that these weren’t included in the box – but I haven’t tried any of them, and I don’t think I ever will..  As with most Kramer games, I end up ignoring the multiple different ways to play.  I strongly dislike this habit of providing the gamer with multiple variants and letting us choose what we want – in whatever combination we want.  I want to play the best version of the game, not invent it myself.  As such, I assume that the basic rules represent the “best version” and stick to it when learning the game.

Up or Down has its moments, and as I have noted, probably best at a lower player count.  The game definitely has its fans around here, so I suspect that I will still play it over the winter.  And who knows, perhaps further secrets will be revealed to me with further plays – and my rating might change, possibly up or down?

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.  Melissa, Craig M, Ben B
• Neutral. Dale, Joe H
• Not for me… John P, Ryan P