Dead Man’s Draw

The blog’s first review is Dead Man’s Draw. It’s a neat little card game with a pirate theme.

The game comes in a small box about two decks of cards wide and twice as high. Inside it you’ll find a rulebook and about 8o standard sized playing cards with a nice textured linen finish.  The box itself has a linen finish as well and is quite solid. It could have been about half the size if it wasn’t for needing to fit the rule book in but it’s still quite compact. The cards have held up well even after around 30 plays and aren’t really showing any wear. They shuffle well and don’t stick together.

The rule book is one of the better ones I’ve seen, with clear setup and play instructions as well as information on all of the possible variant cards. For the price the component quality is quite high and I haven’t noticed any imperfections in my copy.

The majority of the cards are numbered and have one of ten suits on them. These are the ones you’ll use when playing. The aim of the game is to collect as many points as you can by drawing cards one at a time from the face down draw pile and trying to get as many as you can without getting a duplicate.  You can either play it safe and bank the cards you’ve already drawn or keep going in hopes of scoring more points. In the normal game only the highest card in each suit is scored. The impression I got the first time I played it was that it was very much like Blackjack where you keep drawing cards until you go bust, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

Each of the ten suits has a special ability that is activated as soon as it’s drawn and placed into the play area. You can see what they are in the picture below. It can be a little tough to figure out how best to use them when you first start playing but after a few hands you’ll not need the cheat sheet cards and you’ll start to see how you can use them most effectively. For example, if you get a sword, you can take the top card from another players banked cards and activate it. You could use it to bring an anchor into play to secure the cards already drawn, or an oracle so you can see if you should continue to draw cards or stop.

The base game by itself is a lot of fun. Watching your hard won cards get taken or blown up by the other players is annoying but amusing at the same time. The winner is generally determined by luck more than skill but the way you use the abilities does matter. We’ve found it generally takes around 10-15 minutes per game making it great if you only have a little time. It only takes a few minutes to teach as well though the more you play the easier it becomes, I think we’d played about 5 games before we stopped needing the guide cards.

If you want a little more though there’s two options for adding to the game already in the box – traits and variants. The traits deck is a set of cards that change how each ability works, but only for the player who has that card. Each player draws two of these at the start of the game and chooses one to keep face up, discarding the other. It really changes up the base game as you have to rethink your strategy based on not only what you have but what the other player has.

The other option is to use the variant cards. You randomly draw one at the start of the game and it changes the rules of the base game. You can use these either by themselves or with the Trait cards to add even more depth to the game. We haven’t actually felt the need to use these yet as there’s enough with just the traits to keep the game interesting but it’s nice to have them as an option.

Example Playthrough

Step 1 : On your turn, flip a card over from the draw deck. There’s also a discard deck (not pictured) that contains all of the cards with a value of 2 to start with, that will increase any time you go bust and be used when certain suits are drawn.

This turn you got the anchor. It’s not actually any use to you coming out first as it can only protect cards to the right of it.

Step 2 : You decide to draw another card. it’s a chest. If you continue to draw and find a key you are able to take both the cards you have drawn plus the same number from the discard pile so you decide to press your luck a bit. If you decided to bank the cards instead you’d get to move these two into your bank area instead.

Step 3 : because you decided to continue, you take another card. You draw a kraken. This forces you to draw two more cards regardless of if you wanted to or not

Step 4 : You draw another anchor and because you already have one you go bust. You don’t get to bank any cards and they all get added to the discard pile. If you’d not had that first anchor though both the kraken and the chest would now be protected and you’d have been able to bank them no matter when you went bust. Play now moves onto the next player. When the draw pile is empty the game ends and you total up the highest card of each suit from your bank. The highest total wins.

Summary 

We’ve played it a lot with two players and once with three players. It’s fantastic at two player but scaled to three with no issues and I’m sure it can go higher as well.  It’s around $25AU and I highly recommend it.