Illusion

Plays: 2Px1, 3Px2, 4Px1.

The Game

Illusion is yet another game from Wolfgang Warsch which I tried recently. He designed The Quacks of Quedlinburg, The Mind and Fiji. He has been on a roll. Most of his games have some interesting twist. When Jeff recommended I check out Illusion, I was happy to give it a go.

The kind of judgement you need to make in a game of Illusion is how big the area is of a particular colour in a particular drawing, compared to that of another drawing. When setting up a new round, two cards are placed at the centre of the table, a score card and a drawing card. The score card determines the colour to be compared this round. The first drawing will be the start of a series. When you take your turn, you have only two options. The first is to add a drawing to the series. The series needs to be in ascending order of area of the particular colour for the round. In the photo above, the series (from left to right) should have an increasing area of yellow from every drawing to the next. On your turn you can see the next drawing, and you may decide to insert it somewhere in the series which you judge to be the correct position. You don't change the order of the other existing drawings.

The other option when you take your turn is to issue a challenge. If you think the series is wrong, you raise an objection. If you are right, you will claim the score card and thus score one point. If you are wrong, the previous player claims the score card instead. Either way, the round ends, the drawings are discarded, and you start a new round with a new score card and a new drawing.

When a challenge is issued, all drawings are turned over like this. The back of a card tells you the percentage of each of the four colours in that drawing. This round is a yellow round, so the percentages for yellow need to be in ascending order. It is not the case here, since the second drawing is 8%, and the third is 6%. The person issuing the challenge claims the score card. The game ends when a player claims his third score card. He wins.

The structure of the game reminds me of Liar's Dice / Bluff / a drinking game often played at pubs. The stakes keep increasing, and the showdown of a round is always between two adjacent players - the player issuing the challenge, and the player before him. So there's some rivalry between adjacent players. Illusion can be turned into a drinking game if you so desire.

This was a game I played with Michelle. The colour for this round was blue. She was now painstakingly counting all the blue triangles. I am not sure whether that would be helpful. The drawings were designed to be misleading and to create optical illusions. Some make you underestimate the area, some make you overestimate. You can't really trust your eyes.

Let do a simple exercise. The colour for this round is red. Do you think the series is correct? Spend some time to examine these drawings and decide whether they are in the correct order, before you look at the answer in the next photo.

The series above is incorrect. The order of the second and third drawings is wrong. It's not exactly easy to tell, is it?

The Play

12 May 2019. I played with Shee Yun and Chen Rui. Illusion is very easy to teach and to learn.

The colour was blue now. How would you insert this new drawing?

It was eventually inserted at the second position, but unfortunately I don't remember whether it turned out to be correct.

As more and more drawings are added to the series, it becomes more and more likely that an error has creeped in. It is not always the most recently added drawing that's wrong. Sometimes it turns out to be right, but another drawing is wrong instead. It is just that when that wrong drawing was added, the subsequent player did not dare to, or want to issue a challenge. If you see the series getting big, it might not be a bad idea to challenge.

Chen Rui wanted to take a very close look before deciding.

The Thoughts

Illusion is a simple filler. It is a mostly visual game, which makes it a rare one. We don't often see such games. The game comes with many drawings, and since each one has four colours, even if you play the game heavily, you likely won't remember the percentages, even if the drawings start to look familiar.

I read an article in Spielbox which suggested a variant. One drawback of the game is when a challenge happens, only the challenger and the previous player are involved. The others have no control and are left out of the opportunity to score a point. The suggested variant is instead of scoring points, you take a penalty. So if the challenger is correct, the previous player takes a penalty. If the challenger is wrong, he takes the penalty. Take three penalties, and you are eliminated. The rest continue to play until there is one last man standing. This feels a little fairer to me. There is player elimination though. Maybe that's why the scoring was not designed this way.