The cliche goes that size isn't everything, and that's especially true in games. Sometimes the tiniest boxes contain the biggest challenges, and in No Thanks! you'll be left wondering precisely why you've got all those big games on your shelves when there's so much thought and rage in this little package...
If you've read a few of these reviews, you'll hopefully have worked out that I don't really care what size a game is - its just got to be good and entertaining. Whether you're looking at something along the lines of Twilight Imperium III (which I will get around to reviewing one day - its behemoth nature terrifies even the best of writers, and I'm not the best of writers...) or Love Letter and its microgame cousins, I'll bastardise a little Shakespeare to back up my point - The Game's The Thing.
So, this week I've mainly been playing small titles, one of which I played years ago but have only recently managed to get my own copy of. No Thanks!, from Z-Man games, comprises of only thirty-three cards and a bunch of red plastic chips, but in this tiny package beats the heart of a game where only the most conniving will win out. Pretty impressive for such a tiny box that you can pick up for a tenner.
No Thanks! is abstract in the extreme, with players having only one concern - to score as few points as possible. The cards are numbered from 3 to 35, and the is deck shuffled up at the start of play. The top nine cards are removed and placed back in the box, never to be seen for the rest of the game, then each player is given eleven chips that are to be kept hidden away. Once everyone is sorted out, the top card of the deck is flipped and you're ready to go. There's no story, no crucial tinkering with stats... this one is about the numbers, pure and simple.
In turn, each player has a simple choice to make - either take the card, putting it in front of them face up and scoring that amount of points, or take one of your chips and put it on the card. This passes the call onto the next player who gets to make the same decisions - take or pass. Should you choose to take the card, you also get the chips that have been added to the pile, but why would you want them? Well, of course it allows you more opportunities for passing should some higher numbered cards, but at the end of the game - when that final card has been taken - each chip in your possession takes a point off your final score. Collecting a whole bunch of them could easily mean the difference between winning and defeat...
Now, it's not just about getting as few cards in front of you as possible. You can keep your score low by putting together sequences of cards; for example, should you have 15, 16, and 17 on the table, only the lowest card will contribute to your final total. There's something particularly satisfying when you manage to link up a couple of high value cards, doubly so if you pull off a decent run of five or six cards in one go. This means that you can easily go from languishing in last place to being a contender in the space of a couple of turns, but there's always the looming danger that the cards you need have been taken out of the deck before the game even begins.
No Thanks! is never going to be the go to game in anyone's collection, and you'll never build your game night around the thing - after all, it's a gloriously quick and disposable little affair. However, you'll soon find that it becomes a regular visitor to your table when there's a ten minute gap that needs filling or you just fancy screwing with your fellow gamers without the need to set up something larger. Stick it in your gaming grab bag and you'll not regret it.
What tiny games have you played and loved? And do you regard them as equal to the larger ones in your collection? Let us know in the comments below!
If you've read a few of these reviews, you'll hopefully have worked out that I don't really care what size a game is - its just got to be good and entertaining. Whether you're looking at something along the lines of Twilight Imperium III (which I will get around to reviewing one day - its behemoth nature terrifies even the best of writers, and I'm not the best of writers...) or Love Letter and its microgame cousins, I'll bastardise a little Shakespeare to back up my point - The Game's The Thing.
So, this week I've mainly been playing small titles, one of which I played years ago but have only recently managed to get my own copy of. No Thanks!, from Z-Man games, comprises of only thirty-three cards and a bunch of red plastic chips, but in this tiny package beats the heart of a game where only the most conniving will win out. Pretty impressive for such a tiny box that you can pick up for a tenner.
No Thanks! is abstract in the extreme, with players having only one concern - to score as few points as possible. The cards are numbered from 3 to 35, and the is deck shuffled up at the start of play. The top nine cards are removed and placed back in the box, never to be seen for the rest of the game, then each player is given eleven chips that are to be kept hidden away. Once everyone is sorted out, the top card of the deck is flipped and you're ready to go. There's no story, no crucial tinkering with stats... this one is about the numbers, pure and simple.
In turn, each player has a simple choice to make - either take the card, putting it in front of them face up and scoring that amount of points, or take one of your chips and put it on the card. This passes the call onto the next player who gets to make the same decisions - take or pass. Should you choose to take the card, you also get the chips that have been added to the pile, but why would you want them? Well, of course it allows you more opportunities for passing should some higher numbered cards, but at the end of the game - when that final card has been taken - each chip in your possession takes a point off your final score. Collecting a whole bunch of them could easily mean the difference between winning and defeat...
Now, it's not just about getting as few cards in front of you as possible. You can keep your score low by putting together sequences of cards; for example, should you have 15, 16, and 17 on the table, only the lowest card will contribute to your final total. There's something particularly satisfying when you manage to link up a couple of high value cards, doubly so if you pull off a decent run of five or six cards in one go. This means that you can easily go from languishing in last place to being a contender in the space of a couple of turns, but there's always the looming danger that the cards you need have been taken out of the deck before the game even begins.
No Thanks! is never going to be the go to game in anyone's collection, and you'll never build your game night around the thing - after all, it's a gloriously quick and disposable little affair. However, you'll soon find that it becomes a regular visitor to your table when there's a ten minute gap that needs filling or you just fancy screwing with your fellow gamers without the need to set up something larger. Stick it in your gaming grab bag and you'll not regret it.
What tiny games have you played and loved? And do you regard them as equal to the larger ones in your collection? Let us know in the comments below!
