I’ve only played 3 or 4 games so far so I’m just beginning to figure out some of the strategies and best ways to play. The speed and ease of play are appreciated as well. The special card powers add some strategy and tactics to the game without being hugely powerful. It does a very good job of balancing everything out to make the game random enough to keep it interesting, but not so random that strategy is totally tossed out. So how does it all work? Does this game meet the goal of making an interesting 2-player trick-taking game? Early returns say yes it does. Another interesting way to change things up. 1 – “Swan” – If you play a poor lonely 1 and lose the trick you get to lead to the next trick.This one is very tricky it can change the game but having to remove a card from your hand makes it sometimes awkward to use. And yes that means you can change the trump suit this way. 3 – “Fox” – When you play this you can exchange the up card (the one that determines trump) for any card in your hand.Can get you something good occasionally but usually it’s not a big deal. 5 – “Woodcutter” – When you play him you get to draw one card from the deck then put any card from your hand on the bottom of the deck.This is the only other way to score besides the trick count at the end, so fighting for the 7’s is vital. 7 – “Treasure” – Anytime you win a 7 in a trick you immediately get a point.If only one 9 is played to a trick it counts as trump, meaning you can play your off-suit 9 and have it win the trick. 9 – “Witch” – This is an interesting one.This is a nice way of bringing some strategy to the trick-taking, since you have a chance to take out your opponent’s highest card. 11 – “Monarch” – Not only is 11 the highest card, when you lead it the opponent has to either play the 1 or the highest card they have of that suit.The powers of the odd-numbered cards are as follows: But there are 13 tricks every round and someone has to win them, so plan accordingly… Game is to 21 points, so going from 6 points to none is a big deal. But in an interesting twist, winning too many is actually bad! Here are the trick bonus points: There are 13 tricks each round, and points are awarded at the end according to how many tricks you win.They’re not necessarily game-changers, but they add enough variety to the mix to make it much more interesting than “I win, you win, I win, you win…” The odd-numbered cards have special abilities that activate whenever you play them.It’s a good balance because now a few cards are out of play so you’re still guessing, but it’s not so many that you can’t ever try to plan. Each player gets dealt 13, leaving 7 in the middle with one of the middle cards being flipped up to determine the trump suit. It uses a special deck, only 3 suits with 11 cards each for a total of 33 cards.So what does TFITF do to try to overcome these challenges? The artwork is really cool, if you’re into that sort of thing in your games With 3 or 4 players you can clean out a suit much more easily, making it easier to formulate a plan when you play. Simplified trick taking – With only one other player, whenever you lead a trick you only suck out one other card.Not a lot of variety in play – Because you’re stripping out cards you often have to strip out other elements at the same time from games, like bidding or melding, making it a very rudimentary game, where all you’re trying to do is take tricks.If there are more players they have a better chance of keeping someone from running the table but if it’s 1 on 1 and you don’t have any good cards there’s not much to be done about it. Very static games – If one player has a much better hand there isn’t a lot the other player can do.The problem with that approach is now 1/3 of the cards are out of play, which makes strategic planning difficult or impossible. The usual way to mitigate this is to deal an extra “dummy” hand so that if a player doesn’t have a card he doesn’t know if it’s in the dummy or in his opponent’s hand. Knowing the location of the cards – Clearly if you deal all the cards out to the 2 players everyone knows where every card is.They present a specific set of problems that TFITF sets out to overcome.įirst let’s talk about some of the challenges a 2-player trick taking game presents: If you’ve played and enjoyed trick-taking games like pinochle, spades, hearts, bridge, etc., you know that 2-player versions of those types of games are rarely any fun. The Fox in the Forest is a card game that tries to be something that’s always been very elusive: a good, interesting 2-player trick-taking game.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |