Butterfly Kingdom

Butterfly Kingdom is a set collection card game from Icerain Games in Taiwan. It features some great art from Wesley Lin depicting species of butterflies that can be found in Taiwan, tho', regrettably, the art on the cards isn't really visible to players fanning a handful of cards.

The deck comprises cards numbered 1-8 in four different colour suits. There are multiple copies of each card. You score by playing sets of cards and these are ranked in priority and value from an identical pair (two cards of the same number and colour, worth 1 point) through to a run of five cards of the same colour in numerical order, worth 8 points).

Players aren't allowed to sort their hands. You must play the hand just as it's been dealt - just like in Scout (Oink Games) but without the hand flipping. Each turn you draw a card and discard a card, and it's the process of drawing and discarding that lets you manipulate the cards in your hand to achieve the adjacency needed to create, play and score sets. And when you play a set, it's discarded so can create another opportunity to form a set.

Apart from the prohibition on sorting your hand, what principally distinguishes Butterfly Kingdom from other gin rummy type games is the way in which discards are treated. In most rummy variants, it's only the next player in turn order who has the option of taking as their card draw the card that tops the discard pile. In Butterfly Kingdom, however, other players can claim the discard if they can make better use of it (ie: make a higher ranking set). And whenever a player makes a set, they immediately score for it.

This all makes for an interesting card game that's intuitively easy to play, once you've resisted the initially overwhelming temptation to reorder your hand. The rules suggest a game is played for the number of rounds equal to the number of players but the Board's Eye View team felt five rounds for a five-player game was overlong so we've tended to play games of just three rounds regardless of the number of players. That works. It's just a pity the gameplay doesn't give us more opportunity to appreciate the butterfly artwork.

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