As I have spouted on about many times before, I was brought up with games, more so card games. A traditional pack of cards contains a myriad of possible games and is super compact for taking anywhere, whether it be pontoon, rummy, trumps (whist if you prefer) or chase the ace to name but a few. Then of course there was crash, a game which I can never quite remember the rules of and seems elusive to me now!
With so many possibilities I always fancied myself as a bit of a creative when I was younger and attempted to craft my own card games, they were never any good, turns out I’m a bit thick! Some people who aren’t thick are the good folks at Grandpa Becks games who bring you Toil & Troublez, a set collection, push your luck game that has just a tiny pinch of strategy thrown in.
As I have spouted on about many times before, I was brought up with games, more so card games. A traditional pack of cards contains a myriad of possible games and is super compact for taking anywhere, whether it be pontoon, rummy, trumps (whist if you prefer) or chase the ace to name but a few. Then of course there was crash, a game which I can never quite remember the rules of and seems elusive to me now!
With so many possibilities I always fancied myself as a bit of a creative when I was younger and attempted to craft my own card games, they were never any good, turns out I’m a bit thick! Some people who aren’t thick are the good folks at Grandpa Becks games who bring you Toil & Troublez, a set collection, push your luck game that has just a tiny pinch of strategy thrown in.
Double, double toil and trouble…
If your familiar with Grandpa Becks games, you’ll know they produce family friendly small box card games. Sometimes they’re reminiscent of common card games but with a fantastic twist and sometimes they’re just something else altogether, but they always contain a Grandma Becks recipe card – which have nothing to do with gameplay but certainly feed into my obsessive collective personality!
In Toil & Troublez, a magical woodland themed game, you’ll be trying to fill your personal trove with talismans which are worth one point at game end. In this instance the talismans aren’t ancient, bejewelled pendants but instead cards numbered one to five which contain whimsical woodland features, which in all honesty are much easier to fit in a box! If you successfully collect a set of talismans, you can turn one of them face down and it becomes a magic marker (discarding the rest of the set) which is now not only worth ten points at game end, but also can never been summoned, vanished or poisoned – more on the master magician cards later.
You won’t be-leaf your eyes at this magical woodland
On your turn you’ll be drawing cards from the deck and placing them in the ‘enchanted forest’ usually at the centre of the table where all players can reach, unless you’re a selfish type of course. The deck consists of a mix of cards numbered one to five and ability cards all of which (apart from the cloak card) are spread equally between three different coloured backgrounds. The enchanted forest can have up to three rows of cards but there are strict placement rules for those cards – I mean you won’t be arrested if you get it wrong, but you risk serious side eye form the other players. If you draw a card and you can’t place it your turn ends immediately.
Placement rules are simple
· You may not place two cards the same colour next to each other
· You may not place two cards the same type next to each other
· Numbered cards must be in ascending order, although number may be skipped
· You may not have more than one card type in a row
· You must place cards only on the end of rows (either end)
This is very much where the push your luck element comes in to play as it’s up to you to decide when to stop drawing and placing cards, because when you decide to stop, you get to choose one of those rows to keep in your trove. Should you plump for what’s there, or do you just try to add one more card?
After your turn is finished (whether it ended prematurely or not) your fellow players take it in turns to select a card from the forest to place into their trove. However the card they select must be one of the end cards in a row, so you’re always thinking carefully about what you leave behind!
Witch card should you chose?
What about those ‘master magician’ cards? Well, these are four special action cards some good, one not so much! All apart from the cloak card come into effect when collected, not when placed in the forest and follow all the normal placement rules.
First, the cloak card, this features a young fella with impeccably quaffed hair content in his magical aroma mist. When revealed this card is simply placed on top of any other card already in the forest, meaning the colour and type of the card beneath no longer counts in the row when placing future cards because they are ‘cloaked’.
Next up Vanish, this card shows us a long-haired free-spirited gent attempting to use his magical powers to enchant a slug – each to their own I suppose! When you collect this card from the forest you may call out any number between one and five and every player who has one face up in their trove must discard one.
Summon shows us a young woman living her best life partying with the birds, we’ve all been there, and we all know she’s about half an hour from needing a glass of water and a taxi home. When you collect summon, you can basically steal a face up talisman from another players trove to keep in yours instead.
Finally Poison, this card features a plump, slightly boz eyed lady, who appears to be carrying everything for everyone but is holding a cake that delights her. This character resonates with me. When you collect the poison card you must discard one of the talismans in your trove whether you like it or not, so you’ll find everyone tries to avoid this card. Definitely resonates with me.
Fairy nuff…
With its witchy woodland theme, Toil & Troublez whisks you into a faery wonderland! The gameplay is perhaps not super related to the theme, but it works well enough and it’s not trying to be anything it’s not. At the heart of it you have a push your luck set collection game where not only are you trying to bag the best cards to help you score, but you’re also trying to leave traps for your opponents. Will someone be forced to choose a poison card from the end of a row? Perhaps there’s one hiding under that cloak card, or was that the 5 they needed to complete a set?
Toil & Troublez is a fun little game with great illustrations, easy to understand yet difficult to predict. If I have a gripe, it’s that perhaps sometimes we come unstuck when resolving multiple master magician cards that were taken in an entire row. I think the answer is most probably resolve in any order you want; but it would be nice if the rule was clarified. The length of the game is dependent on the number of players. Quite simply the more players you have the more times you shuffle the discard pile, sometimes I feel this could be reshuffled at lower player numbers too.
One thing I always like to give a shout out to is when symbols are also used to help distinguish colours. Having a colourblind member of the household we sometimes come a cropper, but this game has lovely big easily distinguished symbols to set the colours apart.
Overall Toil & Troublez is a great little push your luck game which you can play tactically or not depending on whether you’re channelling your inner good witch, or mischievous fairy.
