Fishing

Designed by Friedemann Friese and published by 2F Spiele in 2024

Played four times during development and eight times in published form on a review copy provided by 2F Spiele.

The Game

Seemingly since cards were invented, there have been a plethora of trick taking games, both traditional and more recently with unique decks.  But it still feels like the number of trick taking games has increased significantly of late.  Even given that, Fishing feels unique.

The first round of Fishing is played with a fairly standard deck consisting of 1-10 in four different suits (some cards removed with fewer than 5 players).  Players play tricks, collecting the cards from the tricks they win, and the winner of each trick leads to the next trick.  At the end of the hand, each player scores one point for every card taken.

It’s here, however, that things move away from the well-known.  Each player shuffles the cards they took, and draws cards for the next hand.  If they took enough cards, that’s what they get.  If they did not, they instead get to fill their hand to the current count by fishing – drawing from the ocean deck, which consists of cards that are better than those the game started with.  These include higher numbers (up to 18), a fifth, trump suit (green, or course, given that it’s a 2F game), zeros (which take any other card from the trick as a prize before it’s collected) and more.  The ocean deck is stacked so that cards get better and better the deeper you go.  To not overly reward not taking tricks, the player who needs the most cards draws first, potentially giving better cards to a player only needing one or two.

The next round then proceeds, and players count their cards taken again scoring a point each.  These cards are then shuffled and placed under any remaining cards from before, and new hands are drawn.  The game continues until eight rounds are complete or until the ocean deck is exhausted, at which point the player with the most points wins.

Reactions

While Fishing is at heart a trick-taking game, the ocean adds something of a random deck-building element to the game.  This helps the game to feel unique, and even for someone like myself who is not a fan of deck-building, it doesn’t detract from the trick taking.  There is, on early plays, a sense of exploration as you go through the ocean deck, and on later plays some probabilistic expectations as to what players have likely drawn.

Trick taking games often involve playing the odds, but here the uncertainty about the cards in play – both what will have been drawn from the ocean and what players will have drawn from their piles – is likely to delight those bothered by card counting and bother those who delight in card counting.  There are some knowns, but much will only become clear as the hand is played.

There is also the possibility of a runaway leader.  Because of the ocean, the game constantly pushes trailing players forward – but if a player can build enough of a lead, the few tricks they’re likely to take by chance in the later rounds can sew up a win.  I’ve only seen this twice, and it’s entirely possible this is the result of bad play, but it’s something to watch for.

As one would expect from 2F Spiele (and their English partner, Rio Grande Games), the production is good, and the price is reasonable, retailing for just under $20.  The theme of the game is thin, but honestly there are few highly themed trick taking games.  The rules are clear, and have been posted to BoardGameGeek for those who like to read rules as part of their purchase decisions.

Summary

While I hadn’t expected it, Fishing seems to be a rather polarizing game.  I thoroughly enjoy it; I’m not convinced it will reach my top tier of trick taking favorites, but it seems likely to stick around in my outer circle of favorites at worst.  But some I game with have found the randomness and unknown nature of what cards come from the ocean to be an issue, and others are bothered by the uncertainty of what cards players will manage to draw into their hands.  If such things sound like an issue, I’d likely avoid Fishing, but for both casual trick taking fans and those who aren’t bothered by these random elements the game is well worth giving a try.

Matt C:  I’ve only played two games but both times I felt the game played me, and not enjoyably. I was in the swing of bad cards to start, so good cards the next round, then I picked up enough bad cards (in the next couple hands of my”good cards”) to last me through to the end of the game. I may have been able to come back a bit if there were another round, but just couldn’t get past my mid-game slump far enough to qualify for better cards. I’m willing to give it another go if necessary. I’ve heard rumblings about it being a nice low-key game to socialize around, I could probably get behind that.

Larry (1 play):  I did enjoy my one play, but I also had some concerns.  Would the first couple of plays be the best ones, since you’re discovering all these cool new cards?  It sounds like folks are having fun with repeat plays, so that seems to be answered.  But the big question was if you could time when you got those more powerful cards and actually work that into your strategy.  Or would it just be a game where we played for an hour, someone won, we’re not exactly sure how, but we all had a good time?  Nothing wrong with that, but if it’s going to be a game I’d ask to play repeatedly, I’d want something where your plays actually determine your fate, instead of, “Well, stuff happened”.

Based on what Joe, James Nathan, Dale, and some others are reporting, it seems as if Fishing can be mastered and that your strategy does indeed matter.  This makes me happy, since that first play was a lot of fun.  I now look forward to exploring this quite a bit more.

James Nathan (2 published plays; 5ish prototype plays): It’s brilliant! I’m someone who plays a lot of trick-taking games, but loves and likes very few. I appreciate trick-taking as a high level archetype of a system, and exploring the different ways it can be implemented. In Fishing, Friedemann pulls off two of the harder things for me to enjoy in trick-taking – special cards and a lot of undealt cards. 

I’ve been a fan recently of not over-indexing on what “special cards” do in any game. Depending upon the context in which they’ll be introduced to the game, let’s not worry ourselves with what they do. We can read them when they come up…and be surprised together! 

I treat the higher rank and buoy cards in Fishing that way. I love the excitement of the moment when you think the deck goes to 10 and somebody plays the 11 and half of the table didn’t know 11’s had entered the chat – and then the last player plays a 12 and the 11er gets to partake in the shock.

I don’t have the ability to count cards – not close – and only try in one game. That said, I rarely feel that games with more than a few undealt cards properly match the tone of the game with how the scoring system and the unpredictability of undealt cards intersect. In something like Marshmellow Test or Hii Fuu!! – where the goal is not to win more than a very limited number of tricks – that anxiety and uncertainty of “will anyone be able to follow suit because I want to lose this trick” injects all of the excitement into the game. You accidentally bust by winning a trick with a low card. 

That’s where Fishing shines too. Heck, you can practically just read the same paragraph about why I think the special cards are so wonderful. But there’s a bit more here – as maybe it’s hand 5 or 6 and you’re trying to lose all the tricks – but your blue 4 ends up winning a trick!? How!

And maybe I lost you at “hand 5 or 6”. Geez James Nathan, trick-taking games are supposed to be one round per player maximum. We don’t have all night. But, like, that’s another place the game is so good, but we’re gonna need to backtrack and tie a couple things together. 

If the 7th hand of Fishing was the first hand, my rating would be much different. The immediate influx of special cards and a large amount of undealt cards -in a vacuum – would turn me off. 

But that’s not the game. The seventh hand is the seventh hand. The first hand comes first. Back then, everything seemed sane. Like we’re playing a pedestrian trick-taking game.

It’s the arc. The casual way in which you feel that you can come back – and in fact, may try to – without a design cudgel that simply makes later rounds worth more points. The shallow pool way in which you get to dip your toes into the system before people start stealing the winning card or the lead. The way you are playing an ever newer game – but didn’t have to put one game away, get out another, or learn it.  The spiteful way you can lay that -3 point card on the table because of what John did to you the hand before.

Dale Y  (~15 plays between published version and prototype): Man, I come late to the review, and there’s nothing left to be said.  Umm, I think what James Nathan thinks.  But not as eloquently, and possibly not as effusively.  I do think the game is pure genius.  In a year (2024) that I find that I’m getting burnt out on trick-taking games – similar to how the previous year (2023) was the year that I burnt out on Smurf-and-write games… this one really breathes some fresh air into trick taking.  There are times you want to take tricks, times you don’t want to take tricks, and your position changes nearly every hand. The addition of the ocean cards keeps things unpredictable, and I’ve seen a number of different winning strategies play out in my games.  Each time I finish a game, I look forward to my next one.

Nate Beeler: I’ve only played once, but I found the idea captivating. The implementation, however, did not hook me in the way I’d hoped. The game is obviously about the staged deck of improved cards–specifically, when you get them and how you use them. Because the grey zero cards can be played at any time, you generally make more and more choices as these enter the otherwise must-follow game. The green trump suit’s introduction also allows you to sometimes choose a tasty pile to add to your future arsenal or to slough away crappy cards to some other sap. These are good things, and part of what I enjoyed about Fishing. In my game I badly mistimed my mid-to-late grab for points and ended up passively watching the last two rounds. While that wasn’t a particularly fun experience, it was a choice I’d made that I wouldn’t do the same way next time. That’s on me. Lesson learned, and all that.

However, I do think the game had a couple issues that are just baked in. I don’t love the way that cards are doled out based on the number of cards you’re drawing. I see the argument for doing the game’s way, but the difference between drawing three cards or four may not even be based on a choice a player made. But I especially didn’t like it when there was a tie and one of the tied players just got shafted by turn order instead of doing a more fair split. I realize the game doesn’t want or need little edge case rules, but there are more fair ways to do this that don’t overly reward anyone.

Another problem I had was that drawing green trump cards seemed to be overly powerful. Drawing a merely high numbered card from the deck was deflating, since it usually meant, at best, taking in some lowly cards in that suit, cards which would just as likely soon be a bunch of albatrosses in a deck. By definition winning an all color trick means taking a bit of that color from everyone else’s decks. There would surely be shorts in the next hand, and all but one or two of a color would lack power. Any green card, by comparison, was good immediately and could continue to be good even into the end of the game. Though, of course higher green cards were better still. One of those, if played as a lead, could get you fist full of greens into your deck. That’s the kind of card draw that sets you up to win a lot of points whenever you want to. The disparity between regular color cards and green/grey cards added an extra element of luck just as the rest of the game was adding agency, which felt unfortunate.

As mentioned, I’ve only played one time. It’s likely my concerns are unfounded and that Friedemann had very good reasons for setting the game up in the way he did. I’ll surely play again at least a few more times and see if I ultimately agree with him.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

I love it! Joe H., James Nathan, Craig M., Dale Y, John P

I like it.  Larry, Nate B., Tery N

Neutral. 

Not for me…