Olenon

The Game

Over the three days at the Asian Board Games Festival in Penang, I tried many games, but I only bought two. Coco Boom from Taiwan was one, and the other was Olenon from Japan. I found Olenon simply amazing. This is a game strictly for four players, and it is a partnership game. Your partner sits across the table from you. It is a climbing / shedding card game, which means you try to rid of your hand of cards. You just need one person on the team to do that. Your team then wins the round. You need to win two rounds to win the game. The game has only 32 cards, and it plays quite quick, almost a microgame. 

At the start of a round, everyone is dealt seven cards. The leftover four stay unseen and are not used this round. Players take turns playing cards. You can play singles, pairs, triplets or four of a kind. There are no straights or full houses. The lead player can play any combo type, the rest must follow the type. You can only play if you can beat the current combo. Now an interesting twist in the game is you can steal a combo by adding cards to it. If the current combo is a pair of 5's, instead of beating it with a pair of 6's, you can add a single 5 to it, making it a triplet of 5's. Another twist is that 6's can be beaten by 0's. The mouse beats the elephant. 

When you can't or won't play, you have to pass and exit the current hand. You must take a card from the current combo and place it before you, indicating that you have passed for this hand. When the hand ends, you take this card into your hand. One important impact of someone passing is that the current combo is weakened, which makes it easier for the next player to beat. 

A hand is played until both players on a team have passed. The hand is won by the other team, and the winning team leads the next hand. Another way a hand ends is when a four of a kind is played. This is like the bomb in other climbing games, but in Olenon the hand ends immediately. You can't play a bigger bomb to beat a bomb. 

Anyone who plays his last card ends the round and scores a point for his team. Your team needs two points to win the game. 

The Play

The game takes some effort to get used to at first, because it does a few things in unconventional ways. Since you can steal combos, those odd single cards can turn out to be quite powerful. If your opponent plays three 6's and you have only one, you can add it to his combo to win the hand. On the other hand, if you have a pair or a triplet, you have to worry about whether your opponents have cards of the same value and will steal your combo. 

It helps to card count. Communicating with your partner helps too, but you have to be careful not to reveal too much information to your opponents. Deciding to pass is not as simple as it seems. You don't necessarily pass only when you are forced to. Sometimes a pass can be a tactical move. Maybe you do want to take one card. Maybe you want to weaken the current combo. 

The Thoughts

I greatly admire the game design. I don't often have exactly four players, but this is simply amazing and I cannot not get a copy for myself. I had the opportunity to buy the game straight from the designer Hiro himself and I asked for his autograph. Olenon is very much a game in the style of the modern Japanese game design. Simple but clever. Short but requires some thinking. The art looks like there is no art, but don't let that deter you from trying the game. If you like Japanese style games, this is a must try.