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Fishing

Friedemann Friese's Fishing is a small-box trick-taking game for 3-5 players. It's played over eight rounds and the twist in this game is that it's also a bit of a deck builder...



When you win a trick, the cards go into your 'fishing net'. At the end of each round, you get a point for each card in your net but the cards then transfer to your 'fishing boat' where they will form your hand for the next round. There's an 'ocean' draw deck of cards with special effects or with higher values than in the basic deck, and you take cards from the ocean deck to make up any shortfall if you won fewer tricks than needed to fully fill your next hand. The game features art from Maren Rache and it's published by 2F-Spiele.


Like many of Friedemann Friese's designs, this is a card game that eases you in. The first round is intuitively easy to play: it follows rules that are standard in most trick-taking card games, in that you have to follow suit if you can and there are no trumps. The cards in the special draw deck are mostly stronger than the starting cards, so Fishing is a game with an in-built catch-up mechanism: do badly in a round and you'll pick up more of the stronger cards for the next round. Those cards include the introduction of a trump suit as well as cards with higher values. There are value 0 cards that can't win a trick but which lets the player take into their net one of the other cards from the trick. Other special effects cards showing bouys can be played regardless of suit, tho' several only take effect in the next trick played, so you won't get any benefit if you don't use them till the last trick.



You can expect an eight-round game to take around 45 minutes. Tho' Fishing is easy to play, there's ocean depth to a game where the tricks you win become your next hand. Sure it's great to get back the high-value card with which you won the trick but your next hand will also be lumbered with the cards that other players discarded to your trick... Fishing is a lot of fun so this game is quite a catch.


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