Oh My Socks!
- Board's Eye View
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Who hasn't lost socks in the washing machine? If you have accumulated a drawer full of odd socks then this is definitely the game for you. And even if you're lucky enough to still have all your socks in pairs you can still have a lot of fun with this light, pocket-sized, 'take that' set collection card game from Helvetiq. It's designed by Antoine Bauza and Theo Riviere.
Oh My Socks! is played with a deck of 66 sock cards in 11 numbered sets, so there are two 2s, three 3s and so on up to the eleven 11s. There's a 'super sock' card that is wild and can be added to any set. A washing machine card is seeded among the bottom 10 cards of the shuffled deck; when that card is drawn it immediately ends the game.
The 2-5 players are collecting sets of matching socks but at the end of the game you only score the points values (stars on the cards) for cards in sets that have an even number of socks. If you end up with four 7s, all the cards will score but if you have five 7s then none will score.
Each turn, players draw two sock cards. They keep one, adding it to their individual sock tableau so that all the players can see their socks, and they pass the other to the player on their left or right, depending on the direction indicated on the card. Players are therefore drafting cards that help them achieve sets with an even number of sock cards but they are also passing cards to players with the aim of lumbering them with an odd number of socks. There's obviously a strong random luck element over the cards you draw and the direction indicated on the cards but you know how many cards there are in the deck for each set number and you can see from other players' tableaus which cards are still potentially in play.
A small number of cards have a gift box icon on them. If you take to your own tableau a card with the gift icon on it, you gift to a player of your choice the face-down top card of the draw deck. Neither you nor they get to look at that card; it only gets revealed at the end of the game and only then added to that player's tableau. Likewise, if you take to yourself a card with a lifesaver ring icon, you get to take a single sock from another player's tableau, but it can only be a solitary sock, not one that's in a set of two or more.
Oh My Socks! is an easy-to-play family-friendly game that even quite young children can enjoy. They will learn the valuable lesson that it can sometimes be better to give than to receive :-) The game makes for a fast filler; our plays at Board's Eye View have all been around 15-20 minutes regardless of the number of players. Note tho' that if you're playing Oh My Socks! with just two players, the rules suggest they sit side by side rather than opposite each other. Cards with an arrow that doesn't point to the other player are then discarded - tho' left face-up so both the players can take those cards into account when working out which card is best to take and which to pass on...
Warning: this game doesn't offer any solution to the eternal mystery of where all those odd socks disappear to. Someone needs to design a sock-searching mystery deduction game!
