Xylotar Unhinged
- Designer: Chris Wray
- Publisher: Bezier Games
- Players: 2-5
- Age: 14+
- Time: 30 minutes
- Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3UL9wJb
- Played with review copy provided by publisher
Discover the epic conclusion to the tragic tale of 80s musician and polar bear, Bobby McColdsnap, as he resurfaces for one final return rock tour across the North Pole. “His music has been dubbed ‘Arctic Wave’ which stirs up nostalgic memories of an 80s mix tape fed through a Panasonic boombox with its bass turned all the way up to avalanche!”
-J. Howard Jones, UnKut Magazine
Xylotar Unhinged is the expansion to the 2024 trick taking deduction card game, Xylotar. Unhinged introduces two expansions, which can be added separately or combined together for all the epic 80s ballad feels.
Bonus Beats:
Add dynamic flair and a unique style to your playing with bonus beats. Bonus Beats gives each player unique power cards which can be played only once through the game, but can those power chords be enough to push your performance to the top?
Players are dealt two Bonus Beats cards at the start of the game, and they are limited to playing one card at most in any Round. If a player has not played either of their cards at the end of the game, they score one extra point to their final round.
Each of the Bonus Beats cards has a unique action on it as well as a timing cue on the top of the card to remind you of the appropriate time to play said card.
Examples of some of the actions are:
- Score 8 points for a successful bid
- Score for a successful bid, even if you are off by one trick
- Flip the cards of any one suit face up
- Replace your leftmost card with this Yellow 9 trump card
- Regardless of who wins, lead the next trick
- You may lead with your leftmost card
As you can see, most of the actions bend/break the regular rules a bit – and each player will have two different cards at their disposal. Sure, a lot of this is left up to luck of the draw as to which cards you get; but you get to know them at the start of the game, so you can try to shape your gameplay to allow you to benefit as much as possible from your cards.
Some of the cards seem strictly better than others – but it is what it is – just make the most of the cards that you get. If you’re playing with these cards in the first place, you’ve likely already become accustomed/resigned yourself to this amount of variance in the random special card powers. If that sort of thing bothers you, hopefully you’re smart enough to stay away from this type of expansion.
Off-Key Cards:
The core of Arctic Wave is its unhinged style mixing nostalgic melodies with raw & rapid improvisation – an explosive cocktail of rage, angst, longing, and nothing but authentic emotion. Off-Key cards inject fluffy furry fuzziness into the deduction gameplay with half-valued cards keeping musicians on their toes… or paws…
In setup, randomly take out one card of each suit, and then replace it with a card that is one-half value less than the maximal value for the suit. If you end up using this half card for a bid, it is worth only the whole-number value of the card. As a further spanner to the works, each special ½ card that is won in a trick reduces that player’s round score by a full point!
The missing rank in each suit can definitely throw off player’s ability to deduce the numbers of the cards on the table. This type of change is a lot more appealing to me as it makes me really have to watch the cards as they are played to try to determine which number is missing from each suit. The penalty for collecting the special off-key cards also gives players an interesting way for players to hand out penalties to other people.
Both of the modules change up the way that you will play Xylotar – so if you’re looking to spice up your next game, feel free to add one or both of these to the mix.
Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers
- I love it!
- I like it. Dale (offkey)
- Neutral. Dale (bonus beats)
- Not for me…
Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3UL9wJb
