FAIRY SEASON
Designer: Gavin Jenkins & Dan Fish | Publisher: Good Games Publishing
It’s harvest time for the goblin kings – and what are we harvesting? Delicious fairies of course. Fairy Season is a tricktaking card game using the four seasons as the rising suits of each turn. Players take a hand of five cards and play a higher number onto the card already on the table. If it’s a spring one card, players can play a spring two or more card on top, or play a summer card, moving the seasons forward. Each season suit comes with its benefits, earlier seasons offer card draw, while later seasons only offer the stashing of cards (the way you get points at the end of the game).
This leads to an interesting curve of play where you can choke out ‘flunks’ from your opponents by moving the current trick towards winter, quicker. These ‘flunks’ are cases where no one can make a move after you play a card, leading you to stash the hand for points.
On top of this there’s a number of trap cards (one of the ways you can grab the trick) which can only be contested by one of the four fairy royalty cards, which trump pretty much everything. Other options include the goblin cards which allow for minor trickery (choosing everyone to pass two cards to their left or right for example) or stashing extra cards.
A quick and light game of trick taking, with some quite nice art – although notably the goblins are more interesting than the fairies. It doesn’t ask anything more from players than to hoover up fairies, and for that, it’s pretty good. Just remember not to clap.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT