In anticipation of
Piña Pirata, I took a look at the other two games that IELLO has already released in the same "collection":
The Dwarf King by Bruno Faidutti and
Ghooost! by Richard Garfield. The theme of the collection is starting with a fairly well-known existing game or mechanic and adding twists. Ghooost!, a reimplementation of
Shithead, looks really dull to me. But The Dwarf King, a variant of
Barbu, interested me immediately. I have never played Barbu, but it is apparently a
trick-taking game where you play with seven different "contracts"—or victory conditions—four times each, for a total of 28 hands. The Dwarf King takes that concept and adds some more variety to it in the form of special cards and a greater array of victory conditions.
I enjoy most trick-taking games that I've played (
500,
Spades,
Pinochle, not so much
Hearts), and I love games with variety, so this sounded like it should be right up my alley. After buying it and playing it, it turns out it is!
I'll assume you know how a trick-taking game works and get right into the details. There are 3 suits of 13 cards each: 2 through 10, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace, with Aces being high. The three suits are Dwarves (green), Knights (blue), and Goblins (red). There is no trump suit, no bidding, and no partnerships. The game is played over 7 hands, with extra hands in the case of a tie. Each turn, a single special card is added to these 39 basic cards, comprising a deck of 40 cards total to be divided among the players. The game is for 3 to 5 players, so there are 8 tricks in a 5-player game, 10 in a 4-player game, and 13 in a 3-player game (the 2 of Dwarves is removed to make a 39-card deck). Each hand, you may gain or lose points depending on that hand's Quest (victory condition).
The fact that you only use one special card per hand might seem lame, but in practice it's fantastic because it keeps the comprehension complexity level low, prevents rules conflicts between special cards, and helps add more variety between hands. There are 14 special cards in total, so you'll see half of them in any given 7-hand game (barring tiebreaker hands). Five of them are suit-less "Magic" cards that act as copies of another card, always win a particular trick, or allow you to reuse another card. Each of the 8 other special cards is in one of the three suits, either as a "1" or an "11" of that suit (10 < 11 < Jack). For instance, the Goblin Shaman (11) gives –3 points to whoever takes it in a trick. The Dwarf Druid (1) allows the player who plays it to swap hands with another player after that trick. Lots of fun stuff.
Further adding variety, there are 20 Quest tiles that contain victory conditions. A different tile is used each hand, but that's not all! Each tile actually has 2 different Quests on it. The player who was dealt the 5 of Knights gets to decide which of the two Quests will apply after viewing his hand. Usually the Quests are complementary. The simplest tile has "+1 point for each trick taken VS. –1 point for each trick taken". But then you have stuff like "+5 points if you take exactly 4 tricks VS. +5 points if you take exactly 2 tricks" and "–1 point per Knight you take VS. –1 point per Goblin you take". Even very exotic stuff like "+1 point per trick taken by the player on your right VS. +1 point per trick taken by the player on your left".
If all that sounds a little crazy, it is. There's definitely more luck in The Dwarf King than in your standard trick-taking fare. But it's still full of strategic play and meaningful decisions. It struck a good balance for the group I play 500 with.
Long story short, if you like games with variety (which you probably do if you're here) and you like trick-taking games, you'll probably really enjoy The Dwarf King. If you haven't played a trick-taking game before, I'm not sure I'd recommend starting with this one, but probably it would be fine and it certainly has a high fun factor even when you're losing or playing badly.
