I’ve often said that my biggest gap in my gaming experience is that I’ve still never played a single TTRPG. I’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons, or any of the many other role playing games that keep coming across my attention (mostly thanks to Mark over at the Omnigamers Club Podcast). I’ve even barely touched games based on the D&D system like Neverwinter Nights or Baulders Gate, it’s just a complete blindspot in my gaming history. So when Roll Player, designed by Keith Matejka and published by Thunderworks Games in 2016 is pitched as a whole board game based around the experience of creating a character for a TTRPG, it doesn’t exactly excite me. What does excite me is that in the (nearly) decade since Roll Player came out, it’s spawned its own universe that many of Thunderworks Games have been set in ever since (Cartographers and Stonespire Architects are the ones that come to mind).
In Roll Player, players are crafting a character. The whole experience starts with each player taking a character board, dictating their race, giving them a +2 bonuses in one stat, and a -2 in another. Then, you’re dealt a class, which includes some attribute goals to work towards, a background which gives you a loose blueprint on where certain colours of dice should go in your attribute rows, and an alignment goal. None of these you really get to choose, you just get to play with the cards that life dealt you. A quick seed round in which all players pull handfuls of dice to roll and place, then the game can properly begin.
Each round, the start player rolls dice, one more than the number of players at the table, and arranges them on initiative cards, from lowest to highest. Then, the first player drafts a die, taking the initiate card into their control. They place the die into one of their attribute rows, and takes the corresponding attribute action, which generally will let you modify a die. Either flipping it, swapping it with another one, or bumping the pip value up or down once.
The rest of the table follows suit, drafting a die and an initiative card, then, in initiative card order, each player can buy one card from the market. The market cards include traits, skills, weapons, and armour that will give you special abilities, end game scoring objectives, or even just straight points. Once the market phase is over, you clean up, pass the dice bag to the left, and do it again, until all the empty slots on your player board are full. Highest score is the winner.
I strangely remember Roll Player being quite popular when it came out. Some people proclaiming that creating a character is the best part of a D&D campaign, and how awesome it is that a dice game captures that feeling. I always thought that was more of a scathing indictment of D&D as a game than a compliment for Roll Player, but then again, I am an RPG luddite, so what do I know?
Roll Player feels fairly devoid of agency. You’ll roll the dice, pick the best option, and hope for the best. There’s about 5 different places to earn points from, each one pulling you in a different direction. Sometimes you’ll be holding out for a blue 4 to put into a specific spot, but if it never comes up, there are ways to manipulate your tableau of dice to make things work. As the game comes to a close, your options close up as well. Placing a 3rd die into any attribute row locks it up, shutting you out from that attribute action for the rest of the game. In the last few rounds, it’s not uncommon to only have one or two rows that have empty spaces, making the choices available to you dramatically smaller than what you were presented with at the start of the game.
You’ll buy cards almost every round, provided you have the coins to do so. They’ll give you a small action or ability, but nothing so earth-shattering that it’ll really affect your round. There also isn’t really a great sense of progression or growth, the first round largely feels the same as the last round, except often worse, because in the last round you’re totally hemmed in, stuck with the consequences of all your decisions up to that point.
The only interaction in Roll Player is hate drafting. Each armour sets offers a single bonus point to two different class colours, so if an opponent is playing one of those colours, you’ll compete for the armour set and that’s about it. If you happen to need the same colour or number as another player and take it before they do, it’s just happenstance. There’s no thrill to Roll Player, no excitement. Sometimes you’ll feel a spark of delight when you manage to get one of your attribute rows to the perfect number, but that’s about the extent of it.
Speaking of the attribute goals, they’re pretty mundane goals to strive towards, but they slant the value of dice to needing higher numbers fairly dramatically. The lowest attribute goal is 14, and with only 3 dice to hit that, you’ll need to be placing a lot of 6’s to reach all your goals. Of course, you’re not going to achieve every goal, you’ll need to have a dump stat. But beyond hitting those attribute goals, a few other cards will reward you for having under 8 in a stat, or having all the same number in a row. If you don’t grab those cards though, any number less than a 4 is pretty pointless.
The entire time I was playing Roll Player, I was wishing I was playing Sagrada. At first glance, Sagrada should have a lot of the same complaints as Roll Player. Featuring a shrinking decision space and the only interaction being hate drafting, but Sagrada is a joy to play. The number and colour restrictions are fun to work around, and Sagrada finishes much faster than Roll Player does. Not to mention the beautiful translucent dice and stained glass artwork is so much prettier than the muddy, generic fantasy artwork featured in Roll Player.
Honestly, it’s weird for a game to fall so flatly for me. I’m usually a pretty good judge of what I’ll like, and if a game doesn’t appeal to me, it doesn’t get played (and therefore, doesn’t get reviewed). I’ve played Roll Player a few times now, and I’m not seeing the spark that makes anyone love it. Perhaps an expansion really improves the experience, but Roll Player won’t be sticking around my collection for me to find out. From now on, any game in the “Roll Player universe” is going to be from the “Cartographers Universe” instead.
A copy of Wingspan: Oceania was provided by Stonemaier Games for review purposes.
Wingspan has become a titan in the board game world. It’s by far Stonemaier Games’ most well-known and widely played title, earning recognition even from people outside the hobby, though many still refer to just as “that bird game.”
The base game of Wingspan focused on birds from North America, but the expansions have gradually introduced avian species from other corners of the globe. Wingspan: Oceania brings us the birds of Australia and New Zealand, with nearly 100 new bird cards, fresh player boards, new dice, and most impactfully, introducing a brand-new resource: nectar.
Nectar is the biggest change in Oceania, and it fundamentally changes how you play. Acting as a wild resource, nectar gives players far more flexibility in paying for bird cards and activating abilities. It’s incredibly useful. So useful, in fact, that it comes with a small catch: nectar spoils between rounds if unused. That said, it’s rarely a hindrance. Most players quickly learn to burn nectar before any other resource. Its wild versatility more than makes up for the spoilage.
What’s more, many of the bird powers in Oceania are designed to share the love. Many abilities now provide resources or cards or some other benefit to all players, with the acting player getting slightly more of the reward. This small shift encourages more positive player interaction, a rising tide lifts all ships kind of situation, perfectly in keeping with Wingspan’s gentle and inclusive tone.
The new player boards offer subtle but impactful improvements. In the forest row, you can now spend a resource to reroll the birdfeeder. In the wetlands, you can spend a resource to refresh the bird tray. These changes directly address my long-standing complaints about stagnation in the base game, especially when unhelpful cards or dice sit unused for entire rounds. These tweaks breathe new life into familiar systems.
I reviewed Wingspan over three years ago. While I admired its beauty and accessibility, I also noted some personal gripes: a very slow opening round, a hefty dose of luck, and minimal player interaction that sometimes made it hard to stay engaged when it wasn’t my turn. But here’s the thing: even with those reservations, Wingspan kept returning to our table. It’s one of my partner’s all-time favorite games, and whenever we have friends over, especially people new to the hobby, it’s the game that gets suggested. Again and again. And the fact that it continues to hit the table, speaks volumes to its quality.
As a reviewer, I rarely revisit games after I’ve covered them. The constant influx of new titles pulls my attention elsewhere. But Wingspan: Oceania brought me back. And more than that, it made Wingspan feel fresh again.
Wingspan: Oceania is an expansion that doesn’t just add more, it adds better. The new bird cards are lively and fun, their powers promote inclusive interaction, the nectar system smooths out some early-game struggles, and the updated player boards address longstanding pain points. It enhances the base game in every meaningful way.
In fact, I doubt I’ll ever play Wingspan without it again.
An essential expansion that transforms a good game into a great one. If you own Wingspan, Oceania is a must.
I’ve talked about a couple different word games on this blog. Mostly in the context Paperback and Paperback Adventures. Word games hold a special place in my heart, as my wife and I played a lot of Scrabble online when we were in a long distance relationship. My partner adores other word games, like Wordle and Crosswords, so it should come as no surprise that when we visited a board game café together, and she saw A Little Wordy on the “Staff Picks” shelf, it was the first game she grabbed.
A Little Wordy was designed by Ian Clayman and Matthew Inman, and published by Exploding Kittens in 2021. This is a two player, or two team game, where each player is given 4 vowels and 7 constants to create a secret word, then players go back and forth using clues to help them guess the word their opponent picked.
The clue cards vary in ability and cost, the cost being berries that you have to give your opponent when you use them, as well as give more berries when you make an unsuccessful guess at your opponent’s secret word. Once both players have correctly guessed the word, whichever player has the most berries is the winner.
The clue cards offer you a myriad of ways to help you deduce what your opponent’s word actually is. From eliminating letters to confirming the first letter, to deducing the length of the word, each clue card is a tool in your arsenal to help you in your quest to figuring out your opponent’s word.
A Little Wordy is a bit of a race, in the sense that the longer you take to guess your opponent’s word, the more berries you’ll be forking over to them. Some of the most powerful clue cards have you handing over 4 or 5 berries at a time, which is the equivalent of 2 incorrect guesses. With 11 letters to pick from, is it more valuable to just guess willy-nilly, or do you use those powerful clues in the hopes that you’ll only need one guess to pin your opponent’s word to the wall?
I imagine the real answer is somewhere in the middle, but A Little Wordy does offer some fun tension that you don’t usually find in word games. Where most word games feel like a vocabulary test, A Little Wordy makes you feel more like a detective. As you use the clue cards and cut down the list of possibilities, you get a feeling like you’re circling your prey. At the same time, you can feel your opponent getting closer and closer. You need to weigh the benefit of using a powerful clue card against just guessing a word and hoping for the best.
There is some significant luck involved with the initial tile draw. Sometimes you’ll pull a Q with no U, effectively just giving you fewer letters to use. Another challenge is that dreaded S, which exponentially increases the number of potential words by pluralizing everything. In that case, hopefully there’s a clue card that will help you pin down where in the word that S is sitting.
A Little Wordy does manage to be exciting and interactive, which is more than most word games can boast. Yes, having a good vocabulary is going to be a boon, and the luck of the letter draw can tilt the scales one way or the other. But it’s exciting when you start to see the shape of the word you’re chasing start to take shape. When your opponent is idly sliding tiles around and getting closer to your word before moving the letters around again. I felt genuine excitement when I got the word right, and it’s even clever in that just because I guessed the word right first, doesn’t mean that victory is surely mine. If I overspent in berries, my opponent has the chance to keep playing and if they guess my word before the berry supply is tilted in my favour, they can steal the victory from my grasp.
If you like Boggle or Bananagrams, A Little Wordy offers a more interactive experience than either of those two games. It’s less competitive than Scrabble, and is adorned with the characterful art that adorns all the Exploding Kittens games. A Little Wordy doesn’t really work as a party game, though, you’ll want to stick to So Clover and Codenames for that situation. But if you do have a single partner who really enjoys word games and puzzles, the deduction element of A Little Wordy fills a little niche that I didn’t even know I wanted until I played it.
Disclaimer: A copy of Re;Act: The Arts of War was provided by publisher BrotherMing Games for the purposes of review
I didn’t have a lot of friends, growing up. I lived in a village with ~500 people, and with such a scant population, the amount of people my age who were interested in the same nerdy things that I was into were diminishingly rare. to compound the issue, even just getting the nerdy products was a challenge.
But, a determined nerd can surmount all problems. We had a teacher come to my town for a year when I was 10, and while he was there, he taught me how to play Magic: The Gathering. It wasn’t long after that, that Pokémon cards found their way into my home. Shortly after that, I had enough terrible cards to make a couple Yu-Gi-Oh decks. I spent a lot of time playing duels on my own, two-handed. I tried to teach my mom, but she immediately dismissed it as too confusing. Eventually, I convinced two of my friends to get on the cardboard bandwagon, and we immediately started pouring what little money we could earn raking leaves and shovelling snow to augment our meagre collections.
So why am I telling you all this? Because the reaction chain in Yu-Gi-Oh has heavily influenced the core of Re;Act: The Arts of War by designers Chris Lin, MingYang Lu, and Eric Zeringue, and published by Brother Ming Games in 2024 after a successful crowdfunding campaign, but they’ve added a grid based movement and asymmetric characters to spice up the game.
Brother Ming games sent me the deluxe version of Re;Act. This is a bigger box that includes two neoprene mats instead of a board, and acrylic standees in place of the cardboard ones. The acrylic standees are big, colourful, and bold, creating a really eye-catching game. The incredibly stylish anime-esqe artwork is equally attractive, if you’re into the style (spoiler: I am). The deluxe edition also comes with an art book, including some background on the characters and commentary on how the developers worked on each of the characters. It’s a fantastic looking product.
Re;Act is a 1 on 1 grid combat game, managed almost entirely by cards. Each player controls an artist and is aiming to take down their rival. Re;Act comes with 8 vastly asymmetric characters to choose from, with each one lending their own flavour and flare to the combat. Understanding the core of the game is simple. Players start with a hand of cards, drawing one more on each turn (even on your opponents turns), then the active player plays one of their intent cards. The opportunity to play then passes to your opponent, who can play a reaction card. Opportunity passes back and forth with players either playing reactions or passing until both players pass in succession, then the reaction chain resolves, starting with the most recent played card, and working toward the oldest.
The intentions and reaction cards control everything in the game. If you aren’t holding a card that says you can move, you cannot move. Some characters have incredible movement, like the Tagger or Dancer, who hop all over the board, ducking and diving into and out of harms way. Other characters, like the Calligrapher have terrible movement, but instead they can control and influence every other unit’s movements. That dancer who had planned to step in, attack, then duck out of range, may suddenly find himself pulled in, overcommitted, and surrounded by the Calligrapher’s minions. Card management is critically important, and may be what catches you off guard in your first few games. That said, it’s not terribly difficult to learn a character. Each character’s deck only has 4 or 5 different cards to learn and remember, plus a few extra persistent abilities that you can use round after round. The first time you play, you’ll quickly find the boundaries of a character, then within those boundaries you’ll be able to play and stretch what they can really do.
Re;Act is a high-stakes duel. No action itself is difficult or complex, but the ramifications of each action is consequential. The duel ends when one of the two artists take just 3 hits. Being one square too far in any direction can make or break all of your plans, and when you’re trying to plan your turn 4 reactions in advance, suddenly the simple system becomes a complex web of decisions.
Duels should be, and could be, short. 20 to 30 minutes per encounter, with most of my games only really lasting 4 rounds. But Re;Act is a tough game to get into. First, both players need to understand the core game. Then, each player needs to understand the nuance of the character they’re playing. And finally, to do well, both players need to understand the limits of what the opposing character can do. Re;Act is a game that demands mastery from its players. It’s not the kind of game that instantly shines from the first play. Re;Act wants you to pick a character and really get to know their abilities and tricks. It wants you to pick a ‘main’, and develop tactics and strategies for each of the opposing matchups. In some of our first games, turns were excruciatingly long, mainly because any action had long reaching consequences that needed to be well-thought-out before committing to them, and the trying to understand the risk of the reaction chain was a bit hard to wrap our minds around.
I’ve long held the opinion that duel games are at their best when you have a partner to play with who is equally enthusiastic and invested as you are. Re;Act falls into that same camp, if you can find a group or community who wants to dive into this system with you, I have no doubt that you’ll have a ball. The more you play, the more you’ll understand the strengths and shortcomings of each character, which in turn should make the game move faster.
Most of my battles consisted of players trying to manoeuvre themselves into a favourable position, and waiting until your opponent couldn’t react before striking. Not quite the build up of tension and sudden bombastic explosion of consequences all at once that you’ll find in some other games, such as Neuroshima Hex. Re;Act can often see players chip away at each other, a tit-for-tat battle until one person manages a skilful riposte. As I said before, it’s a game that rewards mastery.
One of the benefits of a simple system, at the core, is that the asymmetric characters matchups create a new experience each time you play. And looking into the future, plugging in new characters is a fast and easy way to increase the variability of Re;Act, and looking at the community on BrotherMing Games discord channel, if you’re willing and wanting to go deep, there’s a community ready to welcome you with open arms. They even have templates for creating custom characters if that strikes your fancy. I suspect there will be a season 2 soon, which, another half dozen characters, would just send Re;Act‘s replayability to the moon.
I don’t often get the chance to play head-to-head duel games anymore, but Re;Act: The Arts of War reminded me of why I love them. It’s got that same spark that first hooked me into Magic, Pokémon, and Yu-Gi-Oh. Tight turns, tactical tension, and the exhilaration of a well-timed counter.
Re;Act isn’t for everyone. It asks a lot from its players. Time, patience, and a willingness to dig deep into asymmetry and matchup knowledge. But if you’ve got a sparring partner and a shared desire to master a system, this game delivers a unique and rewarding battlefield experience. It doesn’t ask you to spend hundreds on booster packs. Instead, it asks you for something much more. It asks you to learn, adapt, and grow.
For those looking to fill a Magic-shaped hole on their shelf, or for a anime-flavoured combat game with teeth, Re;Act is absolutely worth the dive. Beautifully produced, deceptively simple, and rich with potential, it’s a modern dueling gem.
First, let me tell you how I played this game wrong. The first time I played Forest Shuffle, I thought animals had to be put on trees matching the tag in their corner. This lead me to be frustrated for the entire game that I couldn’t find the right trees to match my animals and really soured my experience. Thankfully, I was wrong.
In Forest Shuffle, designed by Kosch, with art by Toni Llobet and Judit Piella, and published by Lookout Games in 2023, players are competing to gather the most valuable trees and attract the best fauna to those trees, creating a mutually beneficial point generating engine.
On a turn, players can either draw two cards, or, play a card from their hand. Each card is either a beautifully illustrated tree, or, the card will be split down the middle, representing a pair of animals. The trees get placed in front of you, while the animals need to be attached to one of the four sides of the tree card, covering up one of the two animals on the card. Each of these cards have a cost, and many of the cards boast a bonus that you earn if you pay for that card with cards of the same suit. After you’ve taken your turn, the next player goes, and around and around the game plays until 3 winter cards that are shuffled into the bottom third of the deck are drawn, and trigger the end game.
Perhaps you can see why my rules gaff would create such an unnecessary restriction, and would make me sour on the game. After all, it’s the restrictions that make me dislike many other tableau building games such as Ark Nova and Terraforming Mars. Instead, Forest Shuffle is a pretty forgiving game. Sure, there’s 8 tree varieties, sometimes getting two of the correct ones into your hand to trigger a bonus can be a challenge, but it’s rarely a real issue. Instead, the challenge in Forest Shuffle comes in the form of the animals, and the ways they score off each other. Bats score 5 points if you have 3 of them, foxes score 2 points per rabbit, the rabbits score 1 point per rabbit you have in your habitat. Some trees give points based on how many creatures are attached to that tree, while others give points based on having the most of that variety in your forest. With a thick deck of cards, there’s a ton of variety in the scoring, and almost anything you do will earn you points in the end. But will they earn you enough? That’s the real question.
Now, I love multi-use cards. Not only does each animal card have two different animals on it, but much like other card based tableau builders (Race for the Galaxy and San Juan come to mind), the cards in your hand are also the resource you need to discard to play other cards. Unlike those other two games, however, the cards are discarded face up to a central board, where other players can freely draw them into their hand. In a 2 player game, when you can keep tabs on what your opponent is building towards, this does create some delicious tension. If they’re obviously building towards a massive hedgehog dynasty, the last thing you want to do is, just, hand them more hedgehogs. But if neither of the animals on that card are useful to you, now it’s just a dead card in your hand. Can’t be used to build something else, it just sits there.
Outside of hate drafting cards away from your opponent, there is a single other point of interaction. One of the trees gives you points if you have the most trees of that variety in your forest. Beyond that, Forest Shuffle is truely solitare. Not a bad thing if you and your partners like to build your own little happy forests and not need to worry about some psycho chopping down all your hard work. But if you’re looking for a dynamic and exciting game, Forest Shuffle is going to leave you disappointed.
On one hand, I want to say Forest Shuffle is a great game to draw players into board game hobby. With easy to understand turns and delightfully cute artwork, it’s certainly an attractive option. But because every card has 2 options, the decision paralysis of what cards to play from your hand, and which cards to take from the centre can grind this game to a halt if players struggle to keep 20 different card effects in their head. It can be jarring when players sit down to a cozy game with cute animals, and get hit over the head with point optimizations and information overload.
There is a lot of luck in Forest Shuffle, mostly in that you manage to draw the cards that work with your strategy. Many of the cards reference other, specific cards. Such as foxes that give points on how many rabbits you have, or the boars that give points only if you find one of the three squeakers in the game. When you can build a engine that really works, like the deer and wolves, or the ferns that give 6 points per lizard, it feels great. Beyond that, Forest Shuffle feels like you’re shuffling through a pile of trash, hoping to stumble upon the golden nuggets before your opponents do.
The real downside, is that Forest Shuffle sits in a crowded genre. For tableau building games, I’ve already mentioned Race for the Galaxy, and San Juan. There’s also Innovation, Mottainai, and Res Arcana to consider. If you really want a forest or nature theme, Arboretum, Ark Nova, and Earth are all strong contenders, not even to mention Wingspan. Although perhaps I’m being a little unfair with some of these recommendations. Forest Shuffle is not an engine building game, so to compare it to engine building games is like trying to race a bicycle against a motorcycle. One just has an innate excitement, while the other, is great for a sunday ride, but it isn’t going to turn any heads.
I don’t know if it’s still true, but Otter has said that cooperative games are his favourite games to play. He loves the collaboration, and especially, the discussion that most cooperative games feature. Creating a plan together, and seeing it all come together, is very satisfying. It makes sense with his personality, he’s a very kind and inclusive fellow. Gross, right?
The Gang, designed by John Cooper and Kory Heath, art by German design studio Fiore GmbH, and published by KOSMOS in 2024, is cooperative poker. Much like how Balatro is roguelike Poker, The Game uses the familiar mechanisms of creating 5 card poker hands in a unique and interesting way. Or, it would be familiar if your experience with Poker was more than randomly clicking buttons while playing Vegas Stakes when you were 7 years old. And besides, Vegas Stakes Poker game was 7 card stud, not Texas hold ’em
Now, because I don’t live under a rock, I’ve been tangentially aware of what Texas hold ’em is, because it’s always on the many screens in pubs over the years, as well as being featured in Casino Royale. I’ve seen it around, but I’ve never really played the game. For some people, it can be hard to imagine that people out there are largely unfamiliar with how Poker plays, yet, before Balatro hit earlier this year, I was an utter novice at anything Poker.
So, here’s a rundown for the uninitiated. In Texas hold ’em, each player is dealt two cards, face down. Then everyone has a chance to bid or fold. Once bidding is complete, three cards are turned face up from the deck into the centre of the table, creating a pool of community cards. Then another chance to bid or fold is presented to all players. Then a fourth card is turned face up, and again, all players have the chance to bid or fold. Then a 5th card is added to the community pool, and all players have a final chance to big or fold. The goal of the game is, to create the best 5 card poker hand between the 5 community cards and the two cards that were dealt with you at the beginning of the round. A pair or two pair is having one or two sets of cards, a full house is when you have 3 of the same card and a pair, a straight is when you have a run of sequential cards, and a flush is when you have 5 cards of the same colour.
The Gang, uses the core mechanisms of card distribution and hand value, but strips out all the bidding. Instead, after each phase in which players are given information, each player must take one of the poker chips on the table. There’s one chip for each player, starting with a value of one, and increasing for every player at the table. The ultimate goal here is that on the final round, players will take the value of chip that corresponds to the order of strength of their hand. And of course, much like The Crew or The Mind, there is no communication allowed during game play. All you can do is take the chip that you think tells the story of your cards.
It’s worth mentioning that we played The Gang a bit wrong at first. We were getting frustrated when players would jump to grab the low chips before someone who was a bit less experienced with Poker (me) had a chance to evaluate their cards and consider what they wanted to grab. Then we realized that when you take a chip, you can take it from the supply, or, from another player. It was hilarious when two players just took the same chip back and forth from one another, and the accusations and mud that were slung when the hands were revealed and one of those players was the misstep our gang took, were something to behold.
In Poker, if you’re not first, you’re last. It doesn’t matter if you have a pair of kings if someone else is rocking a flush. But in The Gang, correctly assessing where you stand in the order of hands is paramount. sure, you might have a pair of 7’s with a queen kicker. But does anyone else also have a 7 with a king kicker? Is your hand the worst, or the second worst? Maybe you started the round with an Ace and King of the same suit, you have strong potential here, it could literally be the best hand in the game. Do you take the 5 to demonstrate the potential your cards hold, or do you take a middle of the pack chip, to hopefully communicate to your teammates that you don’t have anything solid, but not nothing.
Communication is important in all aspects of life, but the joy in The Gang lies in what you can communicate with those bidding chips. Kind of like Brandon Sanderson’s second law, which reads “Limitations are more important than abilities“. When all players get into the flow, make the correct reads, and actually succeed at the heist, oh the feeling of jubilation is something to behold. If you enjoyed The Mind, I can strongly recommend The Gang. That said, if you found The Mind a boring exercise of sorting cards, then The Gang isn’t going to change your mind.
I also need to caveat that none of the players at my table are poker players. None of us are able to tell you why an Ace Jack suited is actually a better hand than a King Queen suited. None of us knew the odds of the river holding the card we needed, or how to really value a good hand from a bad. We all played based on vibes and our guts, and we had an absolute blast. It’s also worth mentioning that, especially when playing with inexperienced Poker players, The Gang is exponentially more difficult to succeed at when you have more players at the table. The odds of two players having nearly identical is higher, and really, it’s just luck at the end of the day if those players manage to get their chips in the right order.
The Gang was one of the most engaging games we’ve played in a long time. During each round, we were silent and tense, weighing the potential our hands held with the scant information that we could glean from the chips others took. Each revealed card swaying the balance, one person dropping their bid from a 4 star to a 1 star. After the 5th card is revealed, and we slowly reveal our hands from the weakest to strongest, we’d usually groan in defeat, but then launch into a frenetic conversation about what we all meant when we took the chips that we did. Yelling at our friends for taking the chip we wanted, or commiserating that we had a really unlucky deal. Inevitably, we’d shuffle up, deal again, and another tense hush would fall over the table. There’s no greater endorsement than when a player says, “I know I need to go, but let’s just do one more round”. And The Gang demands several more rounds.
