The year is 1925. Nut prohibition is in full swing, but that’s not going to stop you from smuggling in your illegal nut cargo. But beware of custom officers and thieves trying to take your hard earned *cough* stolen *cough* nuts.
Nutty Business is a small game, for small animals smuggling even smaller nuts. You each start with a symmetrical hand of cards and once they are gone it’s the squirrel with the most nuts that wins. But within that simple premise is a lot of complex strategy, so let’s dive in.
Gameplay
Playing the game is simple. To start, each player takes one of the symmetrical 8 card decks. These have different colours and icons on the back to tell them apart. Then, apart from the first turn where all players pick a card and reveal it at the same time, when it comes to your turn you pick a card from your hand and put it on one of your piles. If you only have one pile you can create a second, but no more. Then the effects on all your face up cards trigger are activated (others might affect other players on their turn, like the Customs Officer). Once you finish all the effects, it’s the next player’s turn.
So what kind of effect do these cards have? Well, you’re trying to get nuts, and there are several ways to go about that, but the most straightforward is the contraband cards. These get you X amount of nuts while they are face up on your turn (X being a number printed on the cards). But beware, cards like the Customs Officer and the Thief that other players have in play can take nuts off you. So you keep your nuts safe with a bank card. All sorted right? Wrong. Someone just played a Police Raid card and covered up your bank with the opposing pile, gaining them money and removing your safety net. You have an ace up your sleeve though, other rather, a Hideout. That big stack of cards they created, you pick it right up so you can start again and get more contraband out there.
Once a player has played the final card from their hand, everyone else gets one more turn and then the game is over. Count up your nuts, whoever has the most is the winner.
Strategy
As you can see, this game is all about those card effects and playing the right combination at the right time. It’s tempting sure to dive in with high cost contraband cards, and most will, but if you’re the one player out of four that has put a Customs Officer down and the rest put a ‘5’ contraband card down. You are gaining two nuts from each player. Of course, everyone might think the same, in which case nobody gets anything.
The Bank is great for safety, but it takes up one of your two active slots, and you have to play a card each turn, so you’ll ideally be replacing a contraband card with another for the 3 turns you have them. Is that worth it or should you risk not having the bank?
The Thief is a great card to have around, especially when everyone is focusing on contraband, as you’re getting a lot of passive income. In that situation combining it with the Custom Officer is the ideal combo, but again that will only last one turn before you’re going to have to swap out one or the other.
The Police Raid is super useful for removing annoying opponents cards, but beware holding out for that extra nut for covering up a bank, it might be more worth removing that ‘5’ contraband if it’s bringing them in a lot of nuts.
Which leads into The Hideout. A card which almost lets you start again and get more of those great cards out that you already played. Even better if it’s after a raid and you’re picking up most of your hand again. Amazing right? Well consider this. You might have used your Hideout to pick up your whole hand again, but others might not have. They have to use it at some point, but they might have a really small pile they can use it on. Why? Because the game ends when ANY player empties their hand. So if someone is currently ahead, it’s in their best interest to end the game. All those cards in your hand might not be able to do anything, so best consider the most efficient way to continue to get nuts, while also pulling some useful options back into your hand.
As you can see, for a simple game it has a lot of depth. Sadly, while this game is 2-5 players, it doesn’t work particularly well at 2. You end up simply reacting directly to what the other player has played and there ends up not being a lot of twists and exciting moments. Everything in this game scales up with player count, including how fun it is. More people means more cards in play, and that means more combinations, more countering, more nuts. A Customs Officer is way more fun when you are taxing the income on potentially 8 other contraband cards before it gets back round to your own turn, rather than just 2.
That’s not to say you can’t mix things up a bit yourself though. We tried a few methods such as playing cards blind and only choosing which piles to put them on. Or my favourite, playing cards together like in the first turn, but throughout the game. It takes a pinch of creating thinking with what order to activate effects in, but spices things up as you are not reacting, you are trying to predict what your opponent will play, and visa-versa.
Artwork and components
I don’t have a single bad word to say about the artwork or components. The theme of 1920’s prohibition, but with squirrels and nuts, is hilarious and yet still dark and moody. The art has a lovely colour palette and some era appropriate squirrels woven in. This is both on the nice extra long cards, and the box which has a handy slide out tray. It looks great on the shelf. Many games cheap out on the tokens and you end up with flimsy cardboard that is hard to pick up and starts to fray after a few games.
Not so here, the cardboard is a good thickness to pick up and gives me confidence it’s going to last.
Time to count the nuts
Nutty Business has a great theme, is easy to both learn and pick up and play as it has no setup beyond a pile of nuts. Any of your gaming or non-gaming friends would be fine playing it, and after the first game or two I feel confident would start to appreciate its tactical depth. As mentioned, the more people you have playing the better, but if you are only two and you find it becoming a little stale, try one of the ways we mixed it up, or invent your own.
In any case, good luck my fellow squirrel nut smugglers. Happy hunting.
