LOOP

LOOP is designed by Takashi Saito, who is from Nagasaki, Japan. I bought this game when I was traveling in Nagasaki. Because of this the game will have a special place in my collection.

This is a climbing card game, like Tichu and Big 2. You play different combinations of cards and your goal is to play all your cards. The most important twist in this game is you don’t play independent rounds. Every second round that you play, you use the exact same hands from the previous round. However every hand will be played by a different player. So if you have friends who like to complain about bad hands, tell them to play this game. If you think I won just because I had a lucky hand, let’s see what you can do with this exact same hand.

Cards come in three suits, and they are numbered 1 to 15. There are only a few combos you can play. You can play single cards, pairs, triplets, and straight flushes of two or more cards. Just like in Big 2, you must follow the combo type played by the lead player. A round doesn’t end when one player goes out. You need to determine the ranking of all players, so you need to play until all but one go out. This way you have the positions of all players. Everyone scores points based on his position. Now this is for the first of two rounds. In the second round scoring works differently. Cards are not reshuffled. You keep all the hands that have been dealt in the first round. Beginning with the last placed player, you pick a different seat to sit in. So you will play with somebody else’s hand in the second round. This means in the second round you know what kind of hands everybody has, and you can plan accordingly. This is an interesting twist to the genre. The scoring in this second round is different too. It is not just based on your ranking. It is based on whether you have improved the ranking of the hand you have, compared to the previous round. If you can make the lowest ranked card take the top spot, you will earn many points. If you are playing the top ranked hand and you are just maintaining the top spot, you don't gain much. If you do worse, you will lose points! 

Another interesting twist is the number 8. In some ways, it is a trump card. If anyone plays a combo that includes an 8, or if he plays a single 8, he wins the run and nobody else can play any more. He becomes the lead player for the next run. 8 is in the middle. If someone has played a 9, you can’t play your 8 to win the run. The 8 is strong, but not always.

The 8 can be used in another way. At the start of a round you must remove two cards from your hand. Usually you remove weak cards. However if you remove an 8, during the round, you may perform a special action by revealing that 8. You flip the strength tile to the other side. From that point onwards, 1 is the strongest, while 15 is the weakest. If you have a hand of low cards, and you have an 8, you can choose to use the 8 this way. Now there is a risk that someone else might also have an 8. He can use his 8 to flip the strength tile back to the original side. 

The game comes with fancy score trackers

LOOP introduces several twists to the climbing game genre, and they work well together. Most people are familiar with climbing games, so this is something you can more easily convince non gamer friends to try. I would say the play experience is still mostly that of a climbing game. If this is not your thing, the game probably won't change your mind. I find it novel that you get to play while knowing almost perfectly everyone's hands in the game (I say almost because there are two cards discarded). I have seen one round when the lead player was able to play in such a way that he went out without anyone else being able to play a single card! Information is power! I have also experienced myself that due to knowing the hands in the game I played my new hand in a different way, allowing me to do much better than the player who had it in the first round. 

The artwork is a little weird. I don't really understand what it is trying to say. Maybe it's trying to say deja vu. What if you get to live your life all over again, while knowing what has happened the first time you lived it. What would you do differently? Even the inside of the box cover has some art, which I also do not understand. But I like it. Maybe I'm just pretending to be sophisticated. 

There is an international edition of LOOP now, from iello, and the rules are a little different. This is good news for gamers outside of Japan. I'm happy I got myself this weird art version. 

Chu Han

Chu Han is a two player shedding game (or climbing game). You play multiple rounds, and you win a round by playing all your cards before your opponent. You score points based on the number of cards remaining in your opponent's hand. There are a few other ways to score points. The game ends when someone exceeds 31 points. 

Cards go from 1 to 9. There are nine 1’s, eight 2’s, seven 3’s and so on up to just one 9. There is also a single 0. There is no suit concept. When you play cards, you play either singles or multiples of the same number. There are no straights or full houses or any other combinations. Smaller numbers might be weaker, but it is easier to make bigger sets with them. For the higher numbers you can’t make bigger sets because there aren’t that many cards in the game. 

So far, nothing too peculiar yet. What makes the game come alive is the special abilities of some of the cards. Every 3 and 6 has a unique ability. The 0 is a joker and can be turned into any other number. If you manage to play six 2’s you immediately score 6 points, which is a lot. The 0 (joker) can help you with this because it can be your sixth 2 when you only have five. 

Every round after cards are dealt, there are still some left in the deck. You will have some idea which cards your opponent might have, but not precisely. This is something you have to be aware of. There are 46 cards in the game, and each player is dealt 15, leaving 16 in the draw deck. If you don’t have a card, there is half a chance that your opponent has it. You can draw two cards on your turn by taking a writ. There are two risks. You may draw bad cards which make it harder instead of easier to go out. Also if your opponent wins the round, he scores extra points based on the writs you have taken. 

The 3’s and 6’s have many different powers. One 6 can be played to specifically defeat the single 9. So your 9 is not necessarily invincible. Another 6 allows you to not respond, forcing your opponent to play the next set to defeat his own set. Using this power sometimes lets you win the hand because your opponent can’t respond. There is a 3 which lets you play a set of different numbers, and they are treated as the smallest number in the set. This can allow you to play many cards at one go, taking your opponent by surprise. It can even help you play a set of six 2’s and score the bonus. There is a card which cancels the power of another card just played. And then there is a card which cancels this cancel power. 

You can examine the discard pile, so the game becomes quite strategic. Based on how your opponent has been playing, you can make decent guesses at which cards he might have left. 

This above was one interesting situation. I played against Han. I had only one card left. He played a 9, the highest card in the game. Normally only one card can beat that, the 6 named Liu Bang. However my last card was Xiang Yu (also a 6). Xiang Yu's ability was to double the victory points for the rest of the hand while passing. Technically I lost this hand, because I passed, but I had played my last card, which meant I won the round. The various interactions of the card powers create interesting situations like this. 

Chu Han certainly offers the shedding game experience. You have to start devising a plan to go out right from the get go. Or if your hand is horrible, maybe you can only plan for minimising losses. The game is not about playing as many cards as possible immediately. You may feel a lot of pressure if your opponent plays many cards early in the round. However your ultimate goal is to go out. You don't necessarily have to rush. It is very much possible to come from behind, if you are able to keep playing sets that your opponent fails to respond to. Based on how your opponent plays, you get hints about what kind of hand he might have. 

The special powers of the cards create the character of this game. It is not just the card distribution and the core mechanism. The game becomes more fun after you get familiar with the characters. You start thinking about counter moves, and how to counter those counter moves. You can better anticipate your opponent's moves. I find Chu Han exciting and clever. 

Chu Han is designed by Tom Lehmann. His Race for the Galaxy is one of my favourite games, a game I have played more than 2200 times. Chu Han is published by Matagot, and so is my game Dancing Queen. It's exciting for me to know that I share this link with the designer of one of my all time favourite games. 

PASS

PASS from Taiwan is a climbing game, i.e. like Tichu, Big 2 and Fight the Landlord. One special aspect about it is the cards have two different halves. Well, actually this is no longer that unique by now. Several other popular games have this, for example SCOUT and Panda Spin. 

Like Panda Spin, in PASS, one end of a card is designated the basic side, and the other is the upgraded side. By default you can only use the basic side. So you hold the cards white side up. 

Most of the game is the same as common climbing games, so this is easy to learn. There is no concept of suits, thus there are no suit related combos like flushes or straight flushes. The game has bombs, i.e. four or five of a kind. Bombs can ignore combos. Normally in climbing games everyone may only play the same combo as the lead player. In PASS, if you play a bomb, you are allowed to break this rule. 

The main difference between PASS and other climbing games is the Pass tokens. When you pass, you get a token. You may not re-enter play and you must sit out the rest of the hand, until someone wins and starts a new hand. Pass tokens can be used in two ways. When you play a combo, if you want to rotate some of your cards to the upgraded side, you have to spend a Pass token. 

Referring to the photo above, if I spend a Pass token, I can turn around my Q and A to create a bomb of five 4's. The other way to use a Pass token is to augment a combo you play. Normally if your combo in hand is the same as the currently strongest combo on the table, you can't play it. You need something stronger. What you can do is attach a Pass token to augment your combo. If the combo on the table already has a Pass token, you can still play yours, by adding two Pass tokens. 

The two sides of the Pass tokens are different, to remind you of the two different functions.

Compared to SCOUT and Panda Spin, PASS is a simpler game and it is closer to common climbing games. This means it is easier for non-gamers to pick up. Gameplay is quicker. I am not specifically a climbing game fan, but I like all three games. SCOUT and Panda Spin are more radically unconventional and innovative, and the gamer in me like that. PASS is more in the comfort zone. It is familiar and soothing while offering a little twist. It's the kind of game you can easily teach your old friends who are not gamers, and you can have a relaxing evening playing and catching up at the same time.