Shall We Dance

Published by Saashi & Saashi, Shall We Dance is a set collection card game designed by Saashi, with art by Takako Takarai. It was one of the games we brought back from this year's Spiel Essen.

The game has a setting that is suggestive of Edwardian England. The cards represent elegant ladies and well-dressed gentlemen attending a high society ball. There are matching male and female cards in each of seven colours, tho' there is a different number of cards in each colour - ranging from yellow (4 pairs) to purple (10 pairs). Players are dealt a hand of eight cards and they draw back to eight cards at the end of their turn by taking cards from a 'foyer' rondel made up of six piles of cards; alternately face up and face down. When you draw cards you must take them from adjacent piles; so drawing three cards would give you a choice of taking either two face-down and one face-up card or two face-up and one face-down.

On your turn, you play any number of cards of any one colour or up to three colours of cards already in your individual tableau. The cards have to be the same gender (ie: you cannot play ladies and gentlemen on the same turn). When you play a card of a particular colour you must first check to see if there is a matching partner already in your tableau. If so, you create a pair. If not, you check to see if a pair can be formed by taking a single card from another player's tableau. If you take another player's card in this way, they are compensated with a popularity token from the supply; worth 1 point in end-game scoring.

The game ends when a certain number of rondel stacks are depleted. Players then score for each pair in their tableau and for having the most and second-most in each colour. You don't ever pair gentlemen and ladies with different colour backgrounds, and - in keeping with the mores of the historical period - you don't get to form any same-sex couples; tho' we expect that diversity rule variants are bound to appear in due course.

Tho' Shall We Dance is a light genteel filler-length game, there's strategy and a definite push-your-luck element over your choice of what cards to play and when. Tho' other players are compensated for ceding their cards to you, you will usually prefer to invite other players' ladies or gentlemen to dance rather than having your singletons invited to dance by an opponent because creating pairs in your tableau potentially contributes to the end-game majority scoring.

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