Xylotar & Xylotar Unhinged
- Board's Eye View
- 3 minutes ago
- 3 min read
There's a back story and scenario setting for Chris Wray's Xylotar that involves the creation of a synthesizer with xylophone keys that could be played by a polar bear. You needn't let it trouble you, nor lose any sleep over the fact that the story involves the polar bear disappearing rather than face the Canadian justice system. Premise aside, Xylotar is a trick-taking card game from Bézier where the 2-5 players are playing a card to a trick without knowing the precise value of the card they choose to play.
The game is played over three rounds using a deck of 60 cards in eight colours. The reverse of each card shows its colour and the range of numbers for that colour. The pink cards are considered the lowest notes; there are just four pink cards and they are numbered in the range 0-3. At the other end, there are 11 red cards and they are numbered 1-10. In a three-player game you fillet the deck by removing the red and orange (0-9) cards.
All the cards are dealt out evenly to the players and you organise the cards you are dealt so that they are grouped in numerical order, regardless of colour, with the highest note on the left and the lowest note on the right. Where there are two or more identical numbers you can order those cards however you like but still preserving the overall sequence. This isn't your hand, however: it becomes the xylotar for the player on your left. In this way players all have a deck that they can lay out in a row in numerical order without seeing any of the individual card values.
Other than the fact that you don't usually know the precise value of any card until you play it, the card game follows standard trick-taking rules in that you must follow suit if you can and the highest card in the lead suit wins. Red (yellow in a three-player game) is considered trump. If you can't follow suit you don't have to trump but if trumps are played then the highest trump card wins.
The only additional tweaks are that tricks can never be led with the card that's in the highest position on their xylotar and, at any point of their choosing in a round, players can look at any two adjacent cards and pull one back as their prediction of the number of tricks they will win. At the end of each round, players score 1 point for every trick they've won plus a bonus 5 points if their prediction is correct. There are slightly different rules and scoring arrangements in the two-player game because that involves dummy hands.
Xylotar offers an interesting twist on the trick-taking genre because players are making deductions about the cards in each other's hands based on their relative positions in the sequence and their knowledge of the highest number in each suit. Because the colours are all visible, players can see at a glance whether or not others can follow suit, which also makes for an interesting trick-taking mechanic.
Xylotar Unhinged offers two expansions to Xylotar that can be added in either seperately or both together. Bonus Beats is a deck of 20 special effect cards. Two are dealt out to each player at the start of each game and they only affect the round they are played in, so players need to decide the round in which they want to make use of their Bonus Beat cards. The effects vary but include the ability to peek at some cards or to vary the order of play in a trick. Some are really only likely to directly affect a single trick while others are potentially much more powerful; particularly those that give leeway over the prediction of the number of tricks you'll win. The Off-Key cards are eight cards, one in each colour, with half-note values just below the maximum for that colour; so, for example, the red Off-Key card has the value 9.5. To incorporate this expansion you shuffle the Off-Key cards into the deck before removing one card of each colour, which means a removed card could be an Off-Key card. Gameplay is otherwise unaltered, with the half notes beating cards with the same integer (8.5 beats 8) but winning an Off-Key card is a liability because each card you win in a trick reduces your score by 1 point.
Both the expansions in Unhinged offer a fun tweak to the game but in our plays with them at Board's Eye View we had several gripes from players that a couple of the Bonus Beats cards were overpowered relative to others. If Xylotar becomes one of your favourites, however, you'll want to add in Unhinged for some further variation on the theme.
