New-to-me games played recently include …
EAST INDIA COMPANIES (2023): Rank 2700, Rating 7.4
A buy goods for low, sell for high game, most money wins after 5 rounds. The highest revenue players each round will have their company’s stock price move up and you can invest in these as well. The main decisions are whether to invest in ships that sell first at the best price but can’t hold many goods vs ships that sell later at a lower price but can hold more. Determine each round which goods will allow you to maximise revenue based on your ship capabilities vs what other players are likely going for and their ship capabilities. And semi-guess which player is going to do well this round and buy their shares. It all worked fine and the decisions each round on how best to allocate your 3 actions were nice, but it’s yet another buy-low sell-high game with a semi-random market pricing mechanism and this may be the 300th of such I’ve played.
Rating: 6
FARM HAND (2025): Rank 7073, Rating 7.5
A quirky form of Oh Hell, 6 rounds, starting with 1 card each, heading up to 5 or 6 cards per hand. Quirk #1 is the deck with each of the 6 suits having a varying number of cards and varying card values. Short suiting is rife. Quirk #2 has two cards of the same value cancel each other out making for surprise trick winners. You can (mostly) work out the likely play because the backs of the cards show their suit, so you’ll know who’ll be forced to follow, who’s got tricks they need to make/lose and what’s the likelihood of a deliberate cancel to muck things up. Quirk #3 is the harsh scoring system, where missing your bid in the final round(s) is a death knell regardless of what’s happened in the early tricks. Still, it’s short, it’s fun, it’s quirky, happy to play.
Rating: 7
FIBONACHOS (2023): Rank 14357, Rating 6.3
Trick-taker with three suits. You must follow suit if you can, the twist being that the second Fibonacci number played to a trick turns all the Fibonacci cards into trumps. Meaning hand management, short-suiting and counting cards becomes pretty meaningless because there’s no way to know if this will be a trumped trick or not. The number of points for winning a trick (0-5) is revealed at the start of the trick, adding to the randomness. There’s a big reward for going misere but it’s easy to be forced to win a trick you weren’t expecting, leading you to be thankful it only goes 3 rounds.
Rating: 5
RA AND WRITE (2025): Rank 7805, Rating 7.1 – Knizia
The deck is similar in make-up to the Ra bag as you’d expect – gods, rivers, pharaohs, civilisations, and monuments, plus 9 Ra cards – with appropriate mark-off areas for each type on the sheets. The active players draws 3 cards, chooses one for themselves and marks off their sheet. The other players choose from the remainder and mark off theirs. The sheets are simple (too simple really), providing bonuses for filling out sections and the normal rewards/penalties for being first/last in various things. Scoring happens when the 3rd, 6th and 9th Ra cards appear, and this matches the normal Ra tension of how long will it be. But it’s an insipid copy – you just keep marking things off, whatever you get. Given it plays in a similar timeframe, I’d prefer the original.
Rating: 6
POWER VACUUM (2024): Rank 4525, Rating 6.8
Trick-taker where the best card wins a point and the lowest card gets to move end-of-hand points around a central board, from one player to another, aiming to meet personal end-of-hand score conditions (ie who has most and least end-of-hand points) which are big but can be really swingy. It makes managing your hand interesting. I also liked the “trump suit that trumps the trump suit” which makes for a nice level of uncertainty and extra tracking. Most hands provide a balance but a hand of middling cards leaves you hoping for better next round. It came in at a nice timeframe though given the swings and roundabouts so I’d be happy to play again.
Rating: 7
SCHADENFREUDE (2020): Rank 1948, Rating 7.6
Neat trick-taker where the trick winner is the second highest of the led suit. They win the point values of the card played and all off-suit cards. The twist is if you win 2+ cards of the same value, they cancel each other. Also, if you break the game points limit, you can’t win the game – you want to be lying in second then as well. The whole ‘second’ thing means there’s a bunch of avoidance plays and stick ‘em with stuff they don’t want plays, making it a beautifully titled game. It’s a level down from the directed nastiness of Sticheln though as there’s significant randomness in the card spread and the lead, especially towards the end of a hand. Still, it’s interesting to navigate, fun to play with some nice groan/cheer, and has scope for learnings. Happy to explore further.
Rating: 7
TICKET TO RIDE: AMSTERDAM (2020): Rank 2626, Rating 6.9
Speed TtR. Identical rules but 16 trains instead of 45, longest route is 4 trains, all over in 15 mins. I don’t see a lot of point to it. The map is tight and you don’t have enough turns to recover from someone stealing a key route, nor to recover if the card colours you need don’t appear. You also only have time to complete 1 to 3 tickets so you’re toast if your starting two aren’t complementary, or if the game ends too quickly because even one missed ticket is a death knell given the swing in scores. The TtR system is always playable, so you may have a place for this, but I’d rather be doing other.
Rating: 6
ZHANGUO (2014): Rank 903, Rating 7.5
Solid mid-weight Euro which feels old-school but is embellished with a card driven upbeat. Each round you receive 6 cards, play one each turn. First option is to your board where it will boost a future action type with bonus effects. Second option is to play it for an action to get resources or to spend them on building walls, palaces and governors to the central board for various ways of earning points. Playing to your board comes with penalties that you need to manage, and choosing what bonus effect engine to build (and for what specific actions) vs actually doing actions is much of the game. There’s not a lot of inter-game variety as the points goals are variations of the same thing, and the cards are abstract action effects, but it is enjoyable making plans for what you get and carrying them through.
Rating: 7
Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:
Larry: Schadenfreude is a blast! It’s a trick-taker where the second highest card of the suit led wins the trick, but that’s not the end of the weirdness. When you win a trick, you take the card you played, along with any off-suit cards that opponents played to the trick. You keep these face up and their sum is your score for the hand. The game ends when someone’s total score exceeds 40 and the player who is closest to 40 without topping it wins. But the real “schadenfreudy” rule is that if you ever win two cards of the same value, they’re both discarded! So your score can bounce around like a pinball, thanks to the machinations of your loving opponents! The game starts slow, but as scores approach 40, it really shines, as each player’s status rapidly goes from safe, to winning, to the brink of elimination. And despite all that chaos, there really is a lot of scope for skillful play. It has a unique feel and every game I’ve played in has included much gloating, much cursing, and a great deal of laughter. Definitely a game to check out if you enjoy innovative trick-takers!
Fraser: I haven’t played the production copy of Farm Hand yet, but played the prototype which was dinosaurs a few times. A nice variant of Oh Hell
