Rio Grande Games: Fishing - Trick Taking Card Game, Ocean Theme, Card Drafting & Point Collection, Ages 14+, 3-5 Players, 30-60 Mins

Great little design! This is a Friedeman Friese design (hence the "F" name and the green box) that is a clever twist on standard trick-takers.Gameplay Overview:In this easy-to-learn game, there are suits with cards 1-10 and you have to play following the suit that was led, just like other trick takers; highest card in suit wins. However, your points are the number of cards you win. So over the 8 rounds, you will try and win as many of the cards as you can. The twist is two-fold: First, the cards you win will become your deck for future rounds. So if you won a lot of small/weak cards, you may have earned points, but you'll "pay" for that in later rounds when your cards are weaker. The Second twist is that new cards will be introduced for the players who don't have enough (IE the ones who lost cards). These new cards are more powerful than the ones on the board. These may introduce larger numbers (11-18), trump suit, and action cards that either take effect immediately or will apply to next round, like negative values, lowest card wins, take a card from the trick before the winner collects the trick, etc.This is a wonderful little game that plays much bigger than its card-sized box would indicate (and cost) and could be a variant for anyone who enjoys trick taking games but wants something to just mix it up a bit. I expect to teach this to my euchre-playing family.

I enjoy the constant interaction with trick-taking games. There's really no down time, as you are alert to all other cards played because any other player's card could derail your strategy for the trick or the hand. My family and friends love the bidding/scoring aspect of Wizard and Skull King, and this game will definitely take its turn when we are interested in the new twist to trick-taking that this game offers. Fishing's unique strategic dynamic is that you get to improve your deck more the worse you do (given you do have control over how you play your stronger or weaker cards. But, if you do too poorly, you will find it difficult to catch up, no matter how buff your deck gets. This dynamic keeps the game close, and we found our scores converging in the middle rounds, but the last couple of rounds revealed a clear winner. We're all interested in playing again to test out how we'd tweak our strategies.