Moustache

• Designers: Alexandre Aguilar and Jules Messaud 
• Publisher: Pandasaurus
• Players: 3-6
• Age: 10+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://link.amazon/B02bHl4le
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

A trick-taking game where teams change every round and new rules are added as you go! Moustache blends strategy, surprises, and twists in a joyfully competitive atmosphere.  Moustache is a twist-filled trick-taking game for 3 to 6 players.  In each round, teams are randomly reshuffled, and a new rule shakes things up: reversed color hierarchies, wild jokers, card effects… nothing stays the same for long!  Thanks to an evolving rules system and Team cards, every game is unique and demands constant adaptation. It brings the immediate fun of trick-taking, spiced up with a touch of controlled chaos. Easy to learn, fun to play — perfect for livening up a night with family or friends.

To start, shuffle the rule cards and draw 2 white rules (rounds 1-2) and 2 black rules (rounds 3-4) for the game. Place the matching trophy tokens near each rule card.  Give each player a player aid card.  Get out the team cards for the player count of your game.

To start a round, flip over the rule card for the round; this rule will remain active for the rest of the game.  Shuffle the team cards and give each player one card.  Then, deal out the animal cards as delineated on the player aid.  If there is an odd number of players, the players on the smaller team are dealt a random joker card instead of their final animal card.

A must-follow trick taking game is now played. Instead of a trump suit, the four colors are in a fixed order:  green<pink<orange<blue.  The trick is won by the highest numbered card of the strongest suit – unless modified by one of the jokers.  The winner of the trick collects the cards and then leads the next trick.

The three jokers are:

• Pigeon: at the end of the trick, discard all the cards (i.e. no one collects them)
• Unicorn: always wins the trick
• Monkey: at the end of the trick, the player who played the Monkey steals one card from the trick and puts it in his team’s stack

At the end of the round, the teams total up the number of stars on their collected cards, and the team with the most stars wins the round.  Each player on the winning team now draws a trophy token at random for the round, ranging from 1 to 3 points in the first round and steadily increasing to 4 to 6 points in the final round.   Repeat this four times.  The player with the most points from trophy tokens wins the game.

My thoughts on the game

My game groups have played more than their fair share of trick taking games in recent years, and this trend shows no sign of abating. This game pairs a fairly standard must follow game with a random selection of cumulative rules that add excitement and challenge to the game.   Each round, you’ll be randomly assigned to a team – and this can cause some weird ordering during the trick taking play if it’s something like A-A-A-B-B around the table.

If you play with an odd number of players, you will get to use the joker cards which are an interesting way to balance out the odds for the smaller team.  Each has a different ability, and each can be quite powerful at the right moment.  Interestingly, the teammates on the smaller team aren’t allowed to communicate which joker they have, so it’s not always clear to them what the best strategy is to use their jokers. Once the round is over, there is a random draw for the trophy tokens – which is definitely in line with much else in the game.

The rule cards certainly add interesting twists to the play – and I do like having to play differently each round.  Each suit has a slightly different pattern of stars on the cards, and you’ll also have to plan accordingly.  The fixed order of suits makes play a little bit more pre-determined; there is less room for clever sloughing given this order.  Sure, the order can change, but then it’ll just be fixed in the opposite direction.

The animal cards are a blingy reflective metallic sort – which looks quite cool, but at times are impossible to read, especially the joker cards  (it’s really hard for a still picture to communicate this).  While I definitely appreciate the attempt to have the cards stand out; I’ll stand by my usual feeling that anything that hampers the actual playing of the game is a huge negative.

Moustache has its moments, but this feels more like an experience game to me given the succession of random things that happen along the way.  That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy playing it; but I definitely don’t necessarily feel that my skill (or lack thereof) in trick taking games has much effect on whether I win or not.  

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor