Fairy

• Designer: ましう (Mashiu)
• Publisher: Allplay
• Players: 2-10
• Age: 6+
• Time: 10 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4nf8PUR
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Every round, reveal a new card. Simultaneously, all players choose a hand gesture to guess how the card relates to the previous one ( for higher value, for lower value, for same suit, or   guess a fairy).

Guess the correct value relation and get two points. Guess same suit correctly and get four points. Call one of the three fairies in the deck? That’s seven points!  Any wrong guess loses you a point. 

To start, each player gets a score card, and they hold it in one of their hands.  Their thumb should be over their current score, starting on zero to begin.  The deck of cards, numbered 1-21 (yellow 1-7, green 8-14, blue 15-21), is shuffled and the top card is flipped up.

Now, all players determine what they want to do, and on the count of 3, all players make a hand gesture with their non-score-card-holding-hand.

• Point up – next card will be higher (+2 pts if right, -1 pt if wrong)
• Point down – next card will be lower (+2 pts if right, -1 pt if wrong)
• Flat Hand – next card will be same suit (+4 pts if right, -1 pt if wrong)
• Claw hand – next card will be a fairy (#4, 11, or 18) – (+7 pts if right, -1 pt if wrong)

Once all the votes are in, someone flips up the top card from the deck to see what happened and each player adjusts their scorecard appropriately.

The game ends whenever the third fairy card is revealed.  At that time, the player who has the highest point total wins the game.  Alternatively, if a player gets to the end of their score track (24 pts), they automatically win the game.

My thoughts on the game

So when Fairy was first explained to me, I thought to myself – “this sounds dumb, there’s no game here!”.  Umm, I was wrong.  Fairy is a delightful little filler that is super easy to teach.  The score card gimmick is really neat, and it helps that the single card also has a player aid on it that tells you everything that you need to know.

At first, it seems like the easiest way to play is to simply just play the odds and choose higher or lower based on the previous card.  However, the payoff for that bet is the smallest, and if someone can get out to a lead, then the other players will have no choice but to consider taking the higher risk bets in an attempt to catch up.

Is there a huge game here?  Well, no.  It’s as simple as you probably think it is.  But, the amount of laughter and fun that you can generate out of just a few cards keeps this one coming back to the table over and over.  It only takes one heroic correct Fairy bet to turn the game on its head and have everyone eagerly anticipating the next card flip.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, Steph
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4nf8PUR