Bayou Boss

• Designer: Simon Weinberg
• Publisher: Thunderbolt Games/R&R Games
• Players: 2-8
• Age: 8+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

 Down in the Big Bayou, you’re just gettin’ started, lookin’ to make a name for yourself.  

Bayou Boss is a sly ol’ trick-takin’ card game, loaded with two BIG honkin’ twists:

1. Y’all don’t wanna be winnin’ them tricks, no sir! The one with the fewest tricks at the end struts out as the champ. Your job’s to bamboozle the rest into haulin’ in more tricks than you.
2. There’ll be cards sittin’ pretty, face-up in the middle o’ the table. When the round’s done, folks take turns reachin’ in to grab what they fancy. Best be plannin’, cher, ‘cause you don’t wanna be left gnawin’ on them sorry scraps.

Outsmart ‘em, outplay ‘em, and claim your crown as the Boss o’ the Bayou!

Bayou Boss is a fun must-follow, must-trump Trick-Taking game in which players compete to take the least tricks possible. During the game players will also compete to take good cards from a central pool, the Swamp – but the only way to ensure you get the good cards is to win tricks…which is precisely what you don’t want to do! Aided and exacerbated by Characters from the Bayou, the game allows players to manipulate the run of the tricks to their advantage – or to fall victim to a Character who may force you to win a trick or may change the trump. The game is highly replayable, including 10 different character cards, not all of whom will appear in each game, and is deliberately designed to scale well from 2-8 players.

To start, you must prepare two decks of cards – the game deck (which has numbered cards in 6 suits) and the Character deck (made up of random characters and a few ravens).   To start a hand, the game deck is shuffled and each player is dealt a hand of 7 cards.  The top card of the deck is flipped up on the table to determine trump.  Then, the character deck is shuffled into the Game deck.  A face-up display, called the Swamp, is made of a number of cards equal to the number of players.

The player to the left of the dealer leads the first trick.  The suit of the first card sets the lead suit for the trick; if it is a Character card, then the first card played to the trick with a suit sets the lead suit.  All other players must follow suit if possible, and then if they cannot, they must play trump if possible.  Otherwise, they can play any card they like.  Character cards can always be played (doesn’t matter if you can follow or not), and their ability immediately takes effect.

The trick is then resolved. First check to see if any Characters have been played that help determine the winner – and if so, follow those rules. If not, the highest trump card played is the winner. If no trump, the highest card of the lead suit wins.  Collect your tricks in a way that all players can see how many tricks you have collected.

If there are cards in the swamp, the trick winner takes a card of their choice from the Swamp and adds it to their hand.  Going clockwise around the table, the other players do the same.  The winner of the trick now leads to start the next trick.

The round ends when all players have played all their cards – scoring one point for each trick taken.  The new dealer is the player with the highest score.  Continue to play for 4 rounds or until the end of a round when any player has 12 or more points.  At that time, the player with the least points wins.

My thoughts on the game

Bayou Boss is an interesting trick taking game because unlike most of them, here you’re trying to NOT win tricks.  There are plenty of special animal abilities that also throw wrenches in the works – though since the designer is European, maybe it’s a spanner?  Or since the designer is a rocket scientist, maybe it’s something else even more specialized?

As each hand progresses, your hand continually evolves.  As long as there is a deck, there will be cards available in the Swamp which are drafted into the player’s hands.  The only consolation for winning a trick is that you at least get to draft first from the swamp and get the “best” card for your hand.  As you might surmise, the worst place to be is to the right of the winner where you are punished with likely the “worst” card for no reason other than being to the right of the winner.   But, it is what it is.

As cards continually go in and out of your hand, and it’s possible that the trump suit can change multiple times in the hand – player’s voided status (and trump possession) is continually changing.  A very astute player might be able to remember all the cards drafted by all the players – but I find that I am unable to do this.  As a result, there are always some surprising plays as opponents show me a card that I had forgotten that they had!   The game forces you to trump when you are void in the lead suit, and this can cause lots of unexpected tricks to be won.  Furthermore, many of the abilities of the animal cards change the rules for the trick.

While we’re talking about the animal cards – you’ll definitely need the double-sided single-folded reference sheet for them.  There are teeny tiny action icons in the bottom corners to remind you what each card does, but they’re teeny tiny.  I could not easily see them from my seat at the table. Also, while the reference has the cards in alphabetical order – the cards DO NOT have the name printed on them!  So, you then have to cross reference the card art with the teeny-tiny thumbnail on the reference itself. 

While you will eventually remember what all the animals do, the art is pretty homogenous, all shades of dark green – so I more often than not had to pick up the card to figure out which animal it was.   I would have much preferred a card in the M:TG or Dominion style with a title at top and half of the card reserved to tell me what the action was.

The game will definitely run in the 45 to 60 minute range as the table must go through the entire deck each hand (As you continue to draw cards from the Swamp as long as you’re able to fill the swamp).  You definitely have to approach it in a different way as you’re trying to lose tricks – though you also have to decide when it’s strategically best to win a trick you feel is inevitable.  Generally, I’ll try to win a trick if there is a card I definitely want from the Swamp.  If you’re in the mood for a somewhat unpredictable trick taking game, check out Bayou Boss.  Congrats to our own Simon W. for getting another game published!

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor