Spectral, a good little deduction game that doesn’t take long to play. Apparently (according to the other players), I’m filling in my sheet incorrectly. To be honest, I didn’t really look that much at the rulebook for how to fill out a sheet, I just did my own thing. I don’t think I’ve won, so maybe my method isn’t helping. My brain seems to get confused by the rows A-D on the sheet, because, while you use that section, the actual order will most probably be different.
Cowbell, first play. Apparently this is an easier introduction to a traditional Swedish game called called Vira. This is played with a standard deck of cards. Players will choose which contract they will try to fill, from threee difference types, each one involving the stock cards (which are the remainder of the deck after players take their cards). The types are Take Contract, Dump Contract, and Buy Contract. For Take Contract, you take all the stock cards. If you choose Dump Contract you discard 9 cards from your hand, then add the stock cards. The final option is Buy Contract where you discard from zero to 13 cards from your hand, then add the same number of cards from the stock. In all three types, you discard down to a hand of 13 cards. If you buy a contract, the other players can also discard cards from their hands and draw from the stock.
Within each contract type, you can select how many tricks you will win or lose. So, each player must take a better contract, or pass. Whoever is left is the Declarer, and they can set the trump suit as well as whether an Ace is a low or high card. The other two players are the defenders trying to make the declarer lose. It’s pretty standard trick taking, you must follow suit if you can. I think we were too conservative, the same player was the declarer and then easily won the tricks, we couldn’t stop him. It was good fun, and all you need is a standard deck and a printed form with the score track and the contract types.
Spring Cleaning. first play. Another diy effort, but you could play with two standard decks. You need seven suits with values from 1 thru 9. This is a shedding game, you want to get rid of your cards. You have to play single cards, cards with the same rank, or sequences. But you can’t rearrange any cards in your hand. You also have cards in front of you, called the offer cards, which can be used by any player, including yourself. If you can’t play a higher hand, you take a single card from the deck or from another players offers. The first to play all of their cards receives no trash, while the other players take trash tokens depending on how many cards they had left over. Good fun, players seemed to like this. Being able to use other players cards was pretty cool and gives you options.
Dorfromantik: The Board Game, did ok, a new high score. Things were looking a bit tough early on, but we pulled out the win. Our scores so far have been: 93, 120, 129, 206, 209, 201, 240, 236, and 257.
Hygge, first play. A quick and easy filler game where you gather animals and use them to store provisions for end game scoring. You can take all the cards in a row or column, and then use any one animal to hopefully match the object cards for scoring. Anything left in your tableau is worth negative points at the end, so you don’t want that.