DECKO
With the breakout success of The Gang (Kosmos) which created a cooperative game out of Poker, we've all renewed our interest in exploring the extent to which traditional card games can underpin the mechanics of a modern board game. Rebel Princess (Zombi Paella) and Zombie Princess (Bézier) were built on the traditional card games Hearts and Spades but Haakon Hoel Gaarder and publisher GEM Games have turned again to Poker as the engine for DECKO.
DECKO involves its 2–5 players making Poker hands but this is also a deck-building game. Players all start off with identical decks of 14 cards - two copies of each card ranked 2–8 - and 20 chips. The latter function as both currency and victory points. You play your hands as you would in a conventional Poker game, betting chips, raising, calling or folding. Hands are won and all the gambled chips are taken by the player with the best Poker hand but the players who 'lost' get to shop from the market display of cards, adding them to their personal deck. These are all likely to be cards that improve your deck; some because they come with extra special abilities or a dowry of extra chips, and some because they can be used as cards of one of two different values. You can pay to 'burn' a card (remove it from your deck) and you can also buy Jokers which don't ever form part of your hand but which give you a special ability whenever you take the action indicated on the Joker card.
Because it's only those who lose a hand but didn't fold who get to 'shop', there are interesting dynamics at play from the very outset in DECKO. It's always good to win chips but ultimately you need too to develop your deck if you're going to be competitive in this game's later higher-stakes rounds...
Tho' it has obvious similarities to Playstack's solitaire computer and video game Balatro, DECKO stands out because it works so well as a highly interactive multiplayer game. You can play it with just two players but it really shines at higher player counts, especially with a full complement of five players.
Haakon Gaarder is best known for the series of tableau-building games he designed for Sinister Fish – Villagers, Streets, Moon and Yonder – so DECKO is something of a departure for him. His design has been beautifully realised by GEM Games, including gold-edge cards, a neoprene mat and appropriately hefty Poker chips.
Regardless of whether or not you're a Poker player, DECKO is easy to learn but its deck-building mechanics give the game a depth that you'll need a Poker face to dismiss as mere luck of the cards.
And if you get as addicted to DECKO as some of the members of the Board's Eye View team, GEM Games are bringing out an expansion - Pistachio - which provides an alternative (or additional!) market deck and new Jokers. Pistachio launches on Gamefound on 13 October and will be available either separately or with the DECKO core game. Click here to check it out.
