The Brain

• Designer:Peter Juergensen 
• Publisher: Play to Z
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 12+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

The Brain consists of one or more attempts to solve a puzzle, with 1-4 players continuing to try until they give up or succeed. You are not allowed to communicate with each other during play. Will you manage to clear all the cards with logic, deduction, counting, and a little bit of luck? Try it on every level until you succeed!   On your turn, you must place a card from your hand in the middle of the table, perform the corresponding action, then draw a card from the deck. If all cards in your hand have been played and the draw pile is empty, you win — but as soon as there is a predetermined number of cards on the table at the end of a turn, you all lose. If this happens, you can discuss how to do better next time, then try again!

The deck of 36 cards is shuffled and each player is dealt a hand of 5 cards. The remainder of the deck is placed facedown on the table. The players now agree on the level of difficulty for the game – which determines the limit of cards that can be left on the table at the end: 5 cards at the most difficult, and 7 cards at the easiest.  The difficulty can further be modified by changing the number of cards dealt to each player at the start of the game.

Players play the game cooperatively, and they are trying to play all the cards in the deck.  Players are not allowed to communicate with each other – no talking about what cards they have in their hand or what cards they think other players might have.  You can’t even give advice on what another player should do.  Just shut up, wait for your turn, and then take it without anyone helping you.

On a turn, the active player must play a card from their hand or domain to the display in the center of the table.  The Domain is the area on the table in front of a player; any cards that are gained as a result of an action are kept face up on the table in that player’s Domain.   When a card is played, the action icon on the card must be resolved.  If another card is played, the action on that second card is NOT resolved.

There are six colors of cards and six different objects – one of each possible color/object combination in the deck of 36 cards.  The cards also have an action icon on them – and this does not correlate with either the color nor object.  The actions are:

• Cover – place this card on top of another card in the display if possible. The top card is the only one which is referred to for Remove actions, and if it is removed, the entire stack is removed
• Donate – give a card from your hand or domain to another player’s domain
• Extra Card – play an additional card after this one; ignore the action symbol on the second card 
• Take Back – take a different card back from the display and add it to your domain. Note you cannot take back a card that has a take back icon on it
• Remove object – remove all cards from the display with this object on it.  If this object is on the top of a stack, remove the whole stack
• Remove color – remove all cards from the display with this color.  If this color is on the top of a stack, remove the whole stack

Cards that are removed from the display are put in a single discard pile, and you should try to arrange this pile neatly so that you can only see the top card of the discards.

After each turn, check to see if the game is won or lost.  The players have lost if there are more cards/stacks in the display than the limit agreed upon at the start of the game.  The players win if the deck/player hands/player domains are empty AND there are fewer cards in the display than the agreed upon limit.

My thoughts on the game

The Brain is a challenging game where players have to all be paying attention in order for the game to be won.  One card each turn is played to the display, and players have to figure out how to clear them out of the display without ever exceeding the limit during the course of the game.  There is one remove card for each object and one for each color, so you’ll have to time things well in order to be able to remove enough cards with this limited supply.

You have a few tools to help you along.  Making stacks of cards in the display can boost your efficiency of card removal.  Also, near the end of the game, you may need to stack cards to give yourself the ability to remove a card (if you’ve already used both the remove cards corresponding to that one).  You can also try to use the Take Back card action to get back specific actions that you’d like to use again.

I will admit that in general I’m not a fan of these silent cooperative games – much of the fun of these cooperative games (at least for me) is the discussion between players on what to do.  However, in this short game, the non-communication is bearable. The one sort of communication that can legally be made here is via face up cards in the domains as well as cards that players specifically place in the Domains of other players when using the Donate action.

I will say that the format of the rules is … Interesting.  It is a long-format single sheet, with rules on both sides.  But let’s just say I would not have expected panels 1-5 and then 16-19 to be on one side with the remainder on the back.  A very curious organization choice and one that had me re-reading the rules a few times until I noticed the frame numbers at the bottom of each.  I think if maybe the last four frames had been flipped over, it might have made a bit more sense – though in retrospect, it’s still a weird arrangement.

Also, make sure that you go through the cards before you play – especially to show everyone the difference between blue and gray on the card icons.  As you can’t talk during the game, I’d be sure to let everyone know the difference between the colors…

That aside, the game is honestly dead simple to teach. The player aids make it easy to remember the six different actions, and the game plays quite rapidly.  Without conversation to slow things down, turns seriously fly by.  We’ve found that we most enjoy the game by picking a difficulty level, and then if we are victorious, we immediately play again and reduce the starting hand size by one each time until we cannot win – or achieve the ultimate victory of winning with a starting hand of 2 cards each.

For a short and quiet cooperative game, The Brain is a nice challenge which can also be modified to suit the needed level of difficulty.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

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