Off With Their Heads!

Like Madcala, Off With Their Heads! is set in Druid City Games' Wonderlands War universe and with more of Manny Trembley's distinctive Alice in Wonderland artwork. And like Madcala, Off With Their Heads! is an entirely standalone game. It's a flip & write game - akin to the various roll & write games except that it uses cards rather than dice.

The game uses a deck of standard playing cards, so you could play with any deck, but the deck that comes in the box is very distinctive - with unique designs and layouts on every one of the 52 cards. It's just a pity that the suit and values are only printed at the top left/bottom right: perfect for right-handed players but a bind for left-handers trying to fan their hand of cards.

In each of three rounds, players are dealt a hand of nine cards, and each turn (or 'bout' as its called in the rules) you'll play a card from your hand to determine whether you'll mark that card's value at the top, bottom or middle of your sheet. A round comprises seven 'bouts' so you end each round with two cards in hand, and these you put aside till the end of the game where players' six set aside cards score as Poker hands.

Most roll & write and flip & write games feel like multi-player solitaire. Not so in Off With Their Heads! The design by JB Howell and Michael Mihealsick ensures a relatively high level of interaction because the section of your sheet where you get to record your card is determined by how your card ranks in comparison with those played by other players. There's a central board with a rondel around which a Red Queen standee progresses. The Red Queen's position on the rondel determines the rank order of each suit, so these vary each bout - and you can work out what the relative ranks will be in all subsequent bouts. If the Red Queen is on Clubs, then all Clubs, regardless of rank, will beat all Diamonds, which will beat all Spades, which will beat all Hearts. To be able to record on your sheet in the top ('Meadow') section, the card you play must rank highest in the bout; to record in the bottom ('Keep') section, you need to have played the bout's lowest ranking card. All other cards are considered middle-ranking and must be recorded in the middle ('Woods') section of your sheet. The wrinkle here tho' is that all cards for a bout are revealed simultaneously: you may be aiming to play the lowest card so you can write to your 'Keep' but another player may have played a lower ranking card.

The bouts then play out rather like tricks where the suit that the Red Queen is standing is treated as trump. As you might guess, the scoring requirements differ in each section of your recording sheet. The sheets are busy, which can be initially off-putting but in our plays at Board'e Eye View we found players quickly grokked how each section worked.

The device of setting aside two cards from your hand to contribute to an end-game Poker hand adds to players' choices. If you are dealt a pair in your nine-card hand then it can make sense to consider the option of setting it aside at the start of the round in the hope of building at least two pairs or a full house over the three rounds.

Off With Their Heads! takes 2-4 players. It's at its best as a four-player game but it requires only minor modification to play with fewer players. In a three-player game, a dummy plays a card face up each bout so the other players get to see that card before deciding what card they will play. With just two players, the dummy plays two cards: one face up and one face down. Because card play and sheet recording are simultaneous, player count doesn't materially affect playing time, which is around 10 minutes per round; 30 minutes for the full game.

We've really enjoyed our plays of Off With Their Heads! We've especially appreciated the process of guessing whether other players are likely to go low or high. And it's refreshing to play a roll & write/flip & write game with so much player interaction.

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