Let me get this out of the way first: there’s not a huge amount to distinguish one lightweight card-shedding, trick-taking game from another. Sorry, but it’s true. While there are little twiddles to make things more interesting, the basic gameplay is a variation on: the first player makes a leading play with 1 or more cards from their hand; successive players try to lay down cards that beat the previous play on some criteria; and repeat until no one can do any better. So, why should Moon Gate Design’s Panda Spin be any different?
For a start, it’s absolutely gorgeous! The card art, inspired by the Chinese zodiac, by CMYM is stunning (and Wenjue Zhang’s box illustrations aren’t to be sniffed at either).
The deck consists of 5 suits (fire, metal, water, earth and wood) of 14 cards, and a game is played with as many suits as there are players (with the exception that 3 suits are used with 2 players). The cards are an element card and 13 animal cards, numbered 3–10, J, Q, K, A and 二 (the Chinese symbol for 2).
The animal cards have two halves: the white starting side (this represents the physical nature of the animal) and the blue ‘spun’ side (representing the animal’s spiritual nature). The blue side is more powerful—different and/or multiple numeric values, often coupled with one of various special symbols I’ll describe later.
Playing Panda Spin
All the selected animal and element cards are shuffled together, and a round starts with each player being dealt 12 cards.
As with this type of game, the aim is to get rid of all your cards by winning tricks. The first player lays down 1 or more cards in 1 of the following combinations (suits don’t count here, just values):
- a single card;
- a set of 2 or more of the same value;
- a run of 2 to 5 consecutive animal cards, excluding the 二;
- a set of runs (termed a formation); and
- a ‘bomb’ of 4 identical values—a bomb can beat anything other than a higher value bomb.
The next player has to lay down cards in the same pattern but with higher values, and here’s where things start to get a bit more interesting…
I mentioned earlier that some cards, when blue side is up, have multiple values on them; when considering sets and bombs, it’s the number of values that counts, not the number of cards. Additionally, cards of the water suit include a droplet symbol when blue side up, which acts as an optional wildcard value (but not in bombs).
Before describing the other blue side powers, I’ll explain how cards get spun.
If a player can’t (or doesn’t want to) beat the current combination of cards, they have to pass and will play no more part in the current round. If they had only played white side up cards, they take all their played cards back into their hand, but spun blue side up. If they’d played at least 1 blue side up card, they discard all their played cards. Either way, losing a trick can actually be beneficial at times.
When only 1 player has cards left in their hand, they win the trick and discard all their played cards. (All the other players will have dealt with their played cards already, as a result of passing.) If someone ends up with no cards in their hand at the end of a trick, known as showing out, the round finishes.
I haven’t mentioned points yet: the whole game is over when someone acquires 15 points. When someone shows out, everyone else counts the number cards in their hand, and the player (or players) who showed out gains the highest number of cards in points (up to a maximum of 7).
Let’s get back to the blue side symbols I mentioned earlier. Besides the water symbol wildcards, bamboo symbols give you a point each time you play one. Fire symbols let you discard a card from your hand for each played. Panda symbols (appearing on both white and blue sides) have one of two effects, depending on the state of the panda mood card: either spin a card in your hand or steal a point from the previous player. Incidentally, the rulebook does state that you can ignore all symbols and play a simpler game.
There is one more way to win a trick—an element card can beat anything apart from a bomb. However, you can only play them if the condition marked on the card is fulfilled: the water element can be played only if the current bid has at least 3 values; metal only if someone has played both white and blue cards; wood only if someone has played A or 二; earth if a panda symbol has been played; and fire if you have no more than 7 cards in your hand. Additionally, if you play an element card, you must take 2 cards from the draw pile into your hand. Finally, at the start of your hand, you can discard any element cards unused.
An intriguing expansion, Mandate of Heaven, exists, offering a random ‘mandate’ for the duration of each round, adding more variety to the game. A mandate can, for example, directly give you points or let you discard cards from your hand. To use the expansion, shuffle all 12 mandate cards, placing them in a face down pile; at the start of each round, turn the next one face up, making its power available to all players on any of their turns during the round. A player can use the mandate as long as they can pay for it, either by playing cards white side up featuring the animal on the mandate or by drawing a card into their hand and discarding a white side up card showing the animal. Some of the mandates can be used only in the play starting a round or in a subsequent one, and some both.
Verdict
As I said at the beginning, there’s not a lot to distinguish between examples of this game genre. For example, Panda Spin’s basic gameplay seems quite a lot like Haggis, except that Haggis places more emphasis on suits and includes betting as an element of play. However, Panda Spin is by far the prettier game, and the card spin notion is a neat twist.
Should you buy this game? If you’ve already got similar games, probably not, but if you’re dipping a toe in the genre, I thoroughly recommend this game.
I would say, though, that the appeal of games like this can wane after a while, at least for me as I find that there’s not a huge amount of variety across games. However, the Mandate of Heaven expansion could change that, and I’m impatiently waiting for it to reach the UK.
Finally, if you want to check Panda Spin out before buying, you can find it on BoardGameArena, along with an interactive tutorial.
About the author
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
