La Cuenta

• Designer: Litus Carreras
• Publisher: 2 Tomatoes
• Players: 3-8
• Age: 7+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

 In La Cuenta (“The Bill”) you go tapas bar hopping with your little group.  At each bar someone will have to pay the bill – try not to be you! Inevitably, someone will run out of money. When that happens, whoever has the most money left wins.

The deck is made up of Tapas cards (3 types), wine cards, and then special action cards.  Players are dealt a hand of 5 cards to start the game.  Each player also gets a starting amount of savings (based on player count) – track this on paper or with counters you supply yourself. 

Each bar you visit is represented by a round, and each round consists of an indeterminate number of turns (orders you place in the kitchen). In each turn, the player in turn must play 1 card from their hand.  Each of the three types of tapas will have its own column. You can play a card to these columns if they are of equal or higher value than the previously played card.  Wine cards can always be played.   Some special cards can also be played on your turn

If you cannot play a card in your turn (or you choose to play a card), you ask for the bill.  Many of the special cards will be played at this time as they cause shenanigans with the bill playing.  The primary player who paid the bill can then discard any or all cards from their hand as well as getting a hand increase token, increasing their hand size for the rest of the game.   Whomever has paid the bill starts the next round. If you start a round and cannot play any cards, discard your entire hand, re-draw your maximum cards and start again.

The game is over when someone runs out of savings. Immediately the winner is the one with the most savings. In case of a tie, whoever has the most actual money on them wins.

My thoughts on the game

La Cuenta is a clever little card game that appeals to me in part because I’ve been to Spain in each of the last two years, and this game brings fond memories of great tapas meals on those trips.  Here, while you do get to see the different food items on offer, the focus is on paying (well, actually not paying) the bill.

There is a surprising bit of hand management here – as only the player who pays for the bill in a round gets to discard cards from their hand – players have to figure out how to best play the cards that they have.  There are certainly times in the game when it may be beneficial to capitulate and pay a small bill in order to get the discarding ability.   Alternatively, if you have a bathroom pass in hand, you have a lot more flexibility on strategy as you can simply avoid the check in the loo if the current meal is getting too rich for your britches.

Rules are short and sweet.  I’ll mention that I’m not a fan of the format of putting important rules in colored boxes with weird fonts.  I’d much prefer these to be in the regular text, perhaps bolded.  I missed a few important rules the first read through as my brain processed them as anything other than rules text.  Also, having a player aid to remind everyone of the special cards could be useful.  After a few games, people should remember them – but there was a lot of looking at the rulebook in the first few games as players had to remind themselves of what their special action cards did.

La Cuenta is a clever little card game of strategic card playing as well as a bit of push-your-luck.  For me, as it reminds me of some great trips to Spain, this will remain part of the game collection for a nice filler.   Like most tapas, it’s a small thing and definitely worth a try to see if you like it or not!

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

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