Movie Tricks

• Designers: Vegard Eliassen Stillerud, Eilif Svensson, Åsmund Svensson 
• Publisher: Chilifox Games
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 20-30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Movie Tricks is a unique trick-taking game:

• Play cards to determine turn order.
• In turn order, grab cards from the market.
• All played cards form the market for the next round.

At the end of the game, score points in different categories, like Best Movie, CGI, Props, Roles, and Soundtrack. If you do not win, you may at least brag about the coolest title!

To start, each player is given a set of four category cards and lays them out in alphabetical order: CGI, Props, Roles, Soundtrack.  The deck is shuffled and each player is dealt a hand of 13 cards.  Each suit in the game corresponds to one of the four movie categories.  Players are aspiring to create the best movie or set of movies in their tableau over the course of the game. 

A set of starter cards is laid out on the table to form the initial market.  A card which shows possible trump suits is placed on the table, but the marker is not placed on the card – thus the game starts with No Trump.  Lay out the Props scoring cards in a row so players can see the values. Finally, a deck of bonus cards is shuffled and the top two cards from this deck are placed face up in the display.

Now, the players will use trick-taking rules to play cards from their hand and set up a ranking order to draw cards from the market.  The start player leads any card from their hand, and then other players play cards in turn.  They must follow suit if able, and if they cannot, they can then play a card of any other suit.  I’d advise players to play the card directly in front of them. 

Once everyone has played, the cards are ranked.

•     Highest card in the trump suit to lowest card
•     Highest card in the lead suit to lowest card
•     Highest card in an off suit to the lowest

The highest ranked play chooses a card from the market, taking it and then placing it in a column in their tableau that corresponds to the suit of the chosen card. In descending rank order, other players make the same decision.  The lowest ranked player does not get a choice in what card to take as there will only be one card left, but then they do get to take one of the two bonus cards.  Some bonus cards (such as the +3 card) are added to your hand and will be used to augment a later play while other cards can be played directly to your tableau; thus essentially getting an extra card played to your area.  Further, the color of the card chosen will change the trump suit to match what was taken.  If you take the striped +3 card, you can choose what color to make trump. 

Each time you place a Props card, you have the option of taking one of the Props scoring cards.  You must have at least the number of unique Props on your played cards in the column as is shown on the scoring card.  You can only take one scoring card per game.

Now, all players take the cards they played in the current round and move them to the center of the table to become the market for the next round.  The winner of the previous trick leads the next and the process continues until the player hands are exhausted.

At that point, the game moves into scoring.  I’d recommend using the scorepad as there are a lot of things to score:

•     Rows – sum up the cards in each row in your tableau and score points for the highest valued row
•     Columns – sum up the cards in each column and then score points for the LEAST valued row
•     CGI – score 2 points for each Bang icon in your column plus the value of your last played card in the column
•     Props – if you acquired a Props scoring card, score the number of points on that card
•     Roles – Based on the chart on your Roles header card, score points based on the total number of icons in the column.  Add 8 more points if the number of heroes exactly equals the number of villains
•     Soundtrack – the player at the table with the most music icons scores 18 points.  The player with the fewest scores 0 points.  All other players score 12 points.

The player with the most points wins.

My thoughts on the game

Well, Movie Tricks is another game from Spiel 2025 which was sold as a trick-taking game, but in my estimation, is not.  It is a tableau building draft game that uses trick taking rules to determine drafting order – very similar to Honshu.  A player’s goal here is not to always try to win each trick but rather manage their position in drafting order to maximize the number of desirable cards they win.  In many cases, it may be more valuable to be last in turn order as this gives you both a bonus card as well as the chance to determine trump for the next trick.

Admittedly, determining trump is not very important in the early goings (as it’s unlikely for people to be void in the first half of the hand), but it can be quite powerful in the final tricks.  As there are six different scoring criteria, it is rare that you will find a card that is perfect for your tableau.  On the flip side, it is also unlikely that a card doesn’t help you in some way either.  Movie Tricks wants you to weigh the benefits of all of your options and then choose one.

The icons are fairly easy to parse, though my eyes did have issues distinguishing between the two different types of role icons in the dim light of the hotel room.  We definitely liked the movie quotes on the bottom of each card, and we did enjoy reading out the quote with each play and seeing who would first recognize the quote and what movie it was from.  This fun will only happen in the first game of Movie Tricks for you as you will play through the whole deck in each game; so you’ll really only be truly tested once.

I personally liked the varied scoring options in the game, and I enjoyed the challenge of optimizing my card array to best score points.  I found that the props column tends to be the hardest one for me to do well in as you not only have to collect enough icons to do well but then you also have to make sure that you place an icon card close enough to the game end to maximize your score.  (As you can only take one Props scoring card, if you take one too early, you’ll waste the value of later gained icons).

As with many similar games, I think your opinion of it will be determined in part by your expectations of it.  If you thought it was going to be a full-on trick taker, I think you might be left unsatisfied.  If you know, like Honshu, that it’s really a drafting game that just uses a trick taking mechanism to determine order, you’ll probably enjoy the game much more.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Alison Brennan: In order of strength of cards played to the trick (best card first, worst last), take one of the cards played to the previous trick and add it to your tableau. You want to collect low valued cards because they have lots of icons (which score in various ways at end of game) but you also want high cards to score face value for rows and columns. Or take middle cards. It doesn’t really seem to matter. It’s pretty random what will be led and what you can play and where you’ll be in the pecking order anyway. Still, it’s one hand and done, it finishes in a reasonable time, and then you can see how it all panned out.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor