Hold My Beer

I'm the designer here so beware of bias. Hold My Beer packs a good amount of tension into the bidding process while also maintaining a light feel. I think there is slightly more control here with 3p than what is found in the 4p sister game Oopsie. The special powers add just enough spice to everything to work well together. The only thing keeping it from a 10 for me is not finding a clean solution to ties in final scores. A shared victory is possible and I'm not real crazy about that.

Great game, deriving from the landscape of austraian tarock but in its completely own innovative way. For instance the "Birds" (3 lowest trump) here function to give you game pts (if you win someone else's), and an ability to swap a card with the talon (if you win with one). The blind auction for what place you'll be in (1/2/3) works really well too, giving an anti-Mittlere type feel together with each hand being unique, together with information about each other's hands. Nothing felt gimmicky or pasted on, all very smooth. Nice job!

Somewhat of the inverse of Somnia/Mittlere Jass where players are generally trying to finish in the middle of a round with point trick taking. The tension of which tricks to win, which to lose, which cards to play, which cards to keep for later is top tier. This is in my top 5 trick taking games easily.

We found uncontested positions to not be very interesting to play.

DJ's latest trick-taker is my favourite of his I've tried so far. It's played with a tarot deck and you have to predict whether you'll finish with 1st, 2nd or 3rd most points each round. Since those bids are made simultaneously you can end up with fun clashes and you get an extra reward for messing up an opponent's clashing bid.

--Sep2023-- This is quite lovely. Approachable, sensible, clever. Would be happy to play.

This is a fantastic trick taker for three, a confident design that feels like a classic, there is nary a hard edge or awkwardness in the ruleset nor game flow, no small thing when tackling a tarot deck and its clunky history for actual card play. There are a few cards with powers - just a few and their affect is subtle - but these give every hand a tension to the last card and surprise moments when you think you are in control. And three special low-trump cards give a lovely sub-game: if someone wins them from your hand, they score a match point, and if you use them to trump and win a trick you score nothing.... so the sub-game in each hand is trying to pull them from the others hands to score match points (not hand points) as well as how to prevent others from capitalizing on them should you have them in hand.

Nothing feels tacked on, the pointing of certain cards and the few card powers are simple to parse and feel necessary to the excitement of reading your dealt hand and then executing some sort of plan and in-hand adaption to surprises.

Easy to teach & accessible to just getting with the get down. No mind spinning moveable trumps and such, but this is not vanilla by any stretch, with an opening auction & special card powers to consider & silent collusion that arises naturally over the course of the match. This is important to me as I play cards with friends & family, or whilst traveling, and rarely with veteran hardcore gamers (these days never!).

Each hand opens with a simple auction on placing 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. Trick takers for muggles can be overwhelmed by auctions, but this one doesn’t, and gives everyone an angle to pursue any sort of dealt hand - weak or strong - with risks that are just right and make each card play relevant until the final trick. Achieving your bid for first or last gives you one point toward the match scoring, but bidding 2nd gives you 3 points, a Knizian scoring simplicity that makes a brilliant incentive structure of silent collusion to knock others - especially the match leader - out of position and creating a hilarious jockeying and moments of desperate collaboration on the last cards of each hand. Because winning your bid is only one layer of play, you must simultaneously try to manipulate the others placing on the fly.

And an 18 card hand is a lovely thing. So each hand has time to be a full narrative. With 2-6 hands comprising a match.

And with a tarot deck! This is THE game to play with a tarot deck. Period. Without compromising in the least all the trick taking synergies & flow we get from our french deck card play. The designer has utilized the trump suite brilliantly without getting his ideas trapped in any residual cantankerousness of pre-existing tarock informed games.

A brilliant design. Mature, elegant, funny, and capable of surprising swings in the scoring and so keeping everyone invested unto the last card.