Tricky Twist
- Board's Eye View
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
Sit Down!'s Tricky Twist is a trick-taking game with a twist - geddit? It's tricky too because the rules include a few twists and turns that make the gameplay in this card game a little less intuitive than you might have hoped for in a small-box game. Tricky Twist is designed by Taylor Reiner for three or four players, and you play the number of rounds equal to the number of players. It's apparently a reworking of Taylor Reiner's design for Short Zoot Suit (Gotcha Gotcha Games), tho' that game was also playable as a two-hander.
The main deck comprises 48 cards numbered 1-12 in four suits. All the cards are dealt out to the players, and, having looked at their hands, each of the players chooses five cards to put aside as their 'reserve'. This seems to be a bit of a misnomer because you don't subsequently draw on or make use of those cards; it's a way tho' of giving players some control over the hands with which they will play. It might give you, for example, the opportunity to denude your hand of a particular suit.
The actual trick-taking follows standard rules, in that you must follow suit if you can. The player winning the trick takes all the cards of the lead suit but any cards that did not follow suit go back to the player that played them and are placed face up in front of them. Cards returning to players in this way are referred to as 'false tricks'.
A round ends when a player has no cards left in their hand, and at the end of each round you score 1 point for each trick you win but you score 3 points for each pair you can make of trick and false trick. This rises to 5 points per pair if you end up with an equal number of tricks and false tricks.
There's more. For each round, a scoring card is displayed that shows additional points to be awarded for the cards in your false tricks pile. There are nine different scoring cards and the way in which the false tricks score varies with each; including points for cards making a numerical sequence and cards in matching suits. And the trickery doesn't end there: when you take a #7 card either in a trick or false trick, you get to choose a bonus card from the display. These variously allow a player to manipulate the cards in the tricks and false tricks that they have taken; for example, switching a trick or false trick so that it counts as the other, which could potentially be very valuable in equalising your tally of tricks and false tricks. Other bonus cards can be used to count as false tricks for the purpose, for example, of creating scoring runs.
There's been a recent Renaissance in trick-taking games and it's always interesting to try a game that does things differently, tho' a complaint from some of our team in our plays at Board's Eye View was that Tricky Twist was overly fiddly. The balancing of tricks with false tricks is certainly interesting, sometimes incentivising a player to lose rather than win tricks just like in Origin Story (Stonemaier Games), and we liked the opportunity for manipulation provided by the bonus cards. We were less convinced by the lucky 7 way in which bonus cards could be claimed. The different scoring cards can alter the dynamics of a round so you'll want to have an eye to its likely affect in your choice of which cards to strip out from your hand to your 'reserve'.
Sit Down! haven't skimped in the production of the Tricky Twist cards. They are thick and with shiny foil printing on both front and back. It's also good to see that the values are printed in all four corners, so your hand of cards can be fanned in either direction - a big plus for left-handed players. Cards printed in dark ink bled to the edge can be prone to show nicks so we usually recommend sleeving. That's not a ready option for Tricky Twist, however: even if you can find the right size sleeves, the comparatively flimsy box isn't big enough to accommodate sleeved cards.
