Fishing

Fishing is a deck-building trick-taking game from mad scientist designer Friedemann Friese. The game is played over eight rounds. Every round you score points based on the cards you win. These cards are shuffled, and they go to the bottom of your personal draw deck. In the next round, you draw cards from your personal draw deck. Your draw deck starts empty. In the first round, if you don’t even win enough cards to add to your draw deck, you will get some help. This is where things start getting interesting. When your draw deck runs out, it means you need help, and the game will help you by letting you draw powerful cards from reserve decks. There are several reserve decks, each containing cards more powerful than the previous. How many of these decks will be used in a game depends very much on how the game goes. Due to how more and more powerful cards get into circulation, the landscape of the game changes as you play.

It is probably not accurate to describe this as a deck-building game since you don’t have much control on what cards get added to your deck. You just know the cards which get added becomes stronger and stronger. 

Cards come in four suits. The reserve cards will introduce a trump suit. In the reserve decks there are also cards with higher numbers than the starting cards, and also some cards with special powers. One special power in the game allows you to steal one card from the current trick, even if you don’t win it. Another power lets you become the start player for the next trick.

The game has an interesting ebb and flow. If you do poorly, you will get to draw new powerful cards, and they can help you greatly in the next round. It might not be a good idea to intentionally lose all the time. It is still important to score points. The special power card which can steal someone else’s card is important. This is one way you can improve your deck without needing to lose too much or taking too many weak cards. 

Whenever you win a trick, you place the cards in the pile on the left, so that you can keep track of how many cards you have won in the current round. When the round ends, you shuffle these cards and add them to the bottom of your draw deck, on the right. 

These are some of the the reserve cards from the strongest reserve deck (5 stars). 

For 4 players, these are the hand sizes for each of the 8 rounds.

You can do a fair bit of card counting. By observing which cards your opponents have won, you know what cards they have in their decks so you can somewhat anticipate them. This is a strategic element in the game. 

Fishing is a fun twist to the trick-taking genre. I like it!