Your Call!

We've drawn attention in the past to games that owe more to psychology experiments than conventional boardgaming - games like Stroop (Grand Gamers Guild), It's a Match (Cranio Creations) and One of Us (Kosmos). Andrew Williams' Your Call! could likewise justify a spot in a psychology student's thesis but it works just as well as a push-your-luck game. The card game is published by Sporting Chance.

In Your Call!, the 2–6 players each have an identical deck of 16 cards plus 4 'strike' cards. Players place their strike cards face down in front of them; one card is flipped whenever they are caught out in a strike; and if all four strikes are flipped, you're eliminated from the game. If you're eliminated you no longer score any points but you keep the points scored prior to elimination, so there's still a chance you could win.

At the start of each of three rounds, players choose the eight cards they will play. The cards show a value or action in the vertical position and a value or action in the horizontal position; cards with high values have an X (strike) indicator in their alternate position. Each turn, you play one of your eight cards face down and the player to your left calls 'up' (vertical) or 'side' (horizontal). The card is flipped and the player scores or takes the action for the position that was called.

That's the entirety of this lively filler-length game. Players make a push-your-luck choice each round over which eight cards to play with, and for each card there's a 50/50 chance of of giving them their preferred outcome. Cards with actions don't individually score anything, and they mostly have a zero points value in their alternative position, but they can be worth a punt because they can affect the orientation of other cards played and/or screw with the cards or choices of the player making the calls for you. You can play safe and eschew cards with a X strike option but in doing so you're also foregoing your Sporting Chance of scoring big points...

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