Lucre

Design: John Clowdus

Art: Aaron Nakahara

Publisher: Small Box Games

Players: 4

Time: 30 minutes

Played: 4 times

Berries

Design: John Clowdus

Art: Liz Lahner 

Publisher: Small Box Games

Players: 3-4
Time: 20-30 minutes

Played 3 times

Review copies provided by the publisher

Reviewed by Jonathan Franklin

Lucre

Lucre is a clever trick-taking game for exactly four players. 

Trick-taking is a style of card game like Spades, Hearts, or Euchre where each player sequentially plays a card and the player who played the winning card wins’ the trick.

Lucre has several twists that make it worth your attention.

First, the cards are not dealt. Each player takes an identical deck of 1-13 in one suit with the same number of coins on each card of that number, so everyone’s 9 has one coin on it and everyone’s 12 has three coins on it.

Second, you don’t start with all your cards in hand.

To play the game, remove two random cards from each player’s 13-card deck, shuffle them face down, and place them in the center of the table, called the Purse. Shuffle the 8-card purse face down. Because the player has not seen all their cards, they don’t know which two of their cards are in the Purse.

Next, each player draws three cards from their deck to make up their hand. You may mulligan by placing 0, 1, or 2 cards on the bottom of your deck and draw as many as you discarded, so everyone has a three-card hand.

Turn over the top card of the purse. The coins on that card are the points that the winner of the trick will get. The suit of the card determines the leader, so each player will get to lead twice during the 8-trick game.

The third twist is that before you lead, the player who leads gets to take a card from their hand and score a card from their hand by placing it into their scoring pile face down. They then play a card to lead the trick.

Each subsequent player can play a card face up or face down. A face-up card can be any number not already played or on the purse card. Or you can play a card face down and the back of every card shows one coin. The trick is resolved with the highest numbered card taking the purse card AND their winning played card and placing them both face-up in their scoring pile, called their Wealth. The player who played the lowest card scores the card they played face up. All other players turn over the card they played and score that one coin. 

After all eight tricks, the player adds their remaining card into their wealth face up, so remember this when discarding from your hand at the start of the game.

The player with the most coins in their wealth after eight tricks and their final card wins the game.

I have greatly enjoyed all my plays of Lucre and strongly suggest playing it if you have a chance. It does not feel like any other card game because you cannot count cards and you are not even sure which cards are in your deck until you have seen both of your purse cards. Your high cards have fewer coins on them, so if you play a high card (or a very low card), you’ll only get one coin from your face-up, but you might win a sweet purse. Another fun aspect of the game is the flip of the next card in the purse, as that determines the lead player, 

This is a keeper for me for two reasons, it is unlike any other trick taker and it is also fun and easy to explain, as the only relevance of the suits is to determine lead, so there are no suits or trump.

Berries

Berries is a casual game of dessert-making with a variable set of ending conditions. 

Set out 7 Scones, 6 Pies, and 5 Wine in the center. Each of those 18 cards has Jam on the backside.  The remaining 35 berry cards are placed in a deck and two are dealt to each player. Five cards from the deck are placed face up in the center and called the Patch. There are seven copies of each of five berries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, and strawberries. Each berry card has a recipe on it (two wine, two pie, and three scones on each berry type) below the image of the berry itself.

The play of the game is streamlined. After drawing a card from the deck, the active player may either Pick or Make. Picking berries means taking two cards from the Patch. Each other player may then take one berry from the patch, The patch is only replenished after everyone has taken their cards.

‘Make’ is the exciting action because you use the recipe on one of your berry cards to make a dessert using other berry cards of that type. For example, a blueberry pie requires a blueberry card with a pie recipe on it as well as two additional blueberries.  Wine uses up 3 berries (so four cards of that berry, 1 recipe plus 3 berries), Pie uses 2 berries, and Scones 1. Jam requires any two different berry cards + one additional different berry for each jam you have already made, If you make jam, you may take a card from any of the three stacks and flip it over. This is a tactical choice, as we will soon see.

Each of the four types of goods has a different winning condition on it. If you meet the condition when you make that good, you instantly win the game! The victory condition is only relevant on the turn you make it, not on subsequent turns.

If after you make a wine any stack is empty, you win.

If you make a third pie, you win.

If you have at least one of each of the four goods after making a scone, you win.

If you have made any five goods after making jam, you win.

Play continues with pick and making until someone wins.

After the pick or make action, each player discards down to five cards, the patch is replenished, and play continues clockwise.

We enjoyed Berries as a family game, because it felt like a filler with twists. Baking is a great theme and the game is clever, in that as the game goes on, some win conditions feel easier as others get harder. For example, if two people are trying to win with pies and there are only six in the game the other two players baking a pie likely cuts off that path to victory, At the same time, making jam gets harder and harder as you need more and more different berries to keep going that way. Wine is extremely hard to make because it requires four of the same kind of berry and there are only seven of each type of berry in the game. If you are looking for a fun game for a summer’s afternoon, Berries is a delicious pick.