3 Witches Review - 99 Problems But the Witch Ain't One
Transcript
Oy, okay. Prim and proper, there's a string running down my spine. I pull it and Hey everybody, welcome back to the Dice Tower. My name is Chris Yee.
I'm Mike Delisio.
Today we're taking a look at a small box trick-taking game here called Three Witches. Uh this is designed by Corey Young and the art is done by Sa Beppu, who does all of the All Play tiny box uh line of games here. Now, a thing to know is that All Play is a sponsor of the channel. When we cut to an overview of how the game plays, it's going to be done on an All Play table and everything here. So, uh but we always say that we give our honest and genuine thoughts even when we review All Play games. Uh but want to make you aware of that sponsorship. Mike.
Yes.
You and I review a lot of trick-taking games together.
We do, especially recently.
Yes, it's been Yeah, it's been fun. And so, I'm going to show you this is a very odd one, I would say.
Mhm.
Three players only.
Strictly three-player game.
Uh 18-card deck. Very strange breakdown of cards and everything. So, let me show you how it plays, then we'll give you our thoughts. Here is Three Witches set up on the table exactly for three players. This is a trick-taking card game with the goal of being the first player to collect five points in front of them. Once a player hits five, they'll have won the game. Now, the deck is 18 cards in a very abnormal distribution here. You'll see that the green suit has uh 1 2 4 and 7, whereas the silver suit only has 2 4 5, so on and so forth. And there's also the special doubler card, which I'll explain shortly. Each player is going to be dealt six cards out of the 18 in this deck, so fully dealt out. And then, the player who has the elixir is going to announce the table, "Hey, I have the elixir." The goal of each round is to hit a specific bid to win uh a three or four tricks out of the five that will be played in a round. So, starting with the player to the left, they will look at their hand of cards and they'll determine whether they feel confident enough, if they think they can win it. So, this player might say, "I think I'm going to win three of the tricks." They can take it or they can pass and then it goes to the next player who takes it or passes, so on and so forth. So, uh if this person says, "Yeah, I think I can win three of these." The other players have a chance to one-up them and say, "I think I'm going to win four of them." Uh if they do that, then bidding ends or if everyone else passes and it comes back to this player, they have the chance to up it to four or to keep it at three and then they uh are going to be on a team
by themself. This is a bit of a team game, but the teams will shift every round. These two players who do not have the bid in front of them are on a team together now. This player is a team of themselves. The players who are on a team together are going to get rid of one card from their hand each so that they have uh five cards in hand. This player here has six on purpose. Every trick of the five that are going to be played now, these witches, these players are going to contribute one card in each. Thus, they will spend out the five cards in their hand. This player is going to play two of them out each and then take one back into hand after we count every trick, so they'll have enough cards to play five tricks as well.
This player is going to lead off every single time and they're going to start by playing out a card uh one face up and one face down. So, let's say that this player decides to do this. They have the black six face up and this card down here is a mystery, is unknown to the other players. Now, coming around to this player here, if they have a card of that same color of the face up card, they must play that. So, they're going to play this one here and then the other player on their team is going to choose a card to play. Uh in this case, they're going to do that. At this point, the face-down card is going to get revealed, and we're going to determine which of these is stronger. The way that scoring works, or determining the strength of which of these players is higher, if you play cards that are the same rank as each other, so six and six is going to add up to a rank of 12. This player over here played a three, this one played a two.
You notice they are not the same number. They're also not the same suit as each other. So, if multiple cards of the same color suit were played out together, let's say that this player instead had put out this one, then this combined strength would be eight, because they are the same suit. However, because this was played, you're only going to count up the higher number of the two of them. So, this is a 12 versus three. So, obviously this player wins. The cards that the two team played are going to get discarded, and because the leading witch here on their own team won, they're going to choose which one of these cards they would like to take back into their hand, and which one they're going to discard to the side. So, they have won one of the three tricks that they need, and they're going to start off again. Win or lose, this player is always going to start off with the lead. So, let's say that they choose to play this one, and they're going to play this one secretly face-down, so their combined strength is going to be nine, because these are both green.
When a two is the face-up card, every player still has to play green if they can. However, the cards that they throw in are going to have to be face-down. We then reveal and see that this is a nine strength versus a four. Well, things are not going great for our heroes here. And then, this player over here, since they have no brown, they can play the special elixir card. Now, the elixir is what I mentioned earlier is a doubling card. Since this is paired up with this, it's going to double the five. So, upon reveal, this player here has nine strength. This team down here has 10. So, therefore, the team will win this trick. This player will not collect one of these cards towards their three that they're aiming for. And then the team of players gets to choose which one of these two cards is going back in hand.
And they say, "Well, you can enjoy yourself that nice three right there." It turns out here that the team has successfully prevented the Soul Witch from winning three of the tricks. Therefore, the two members of the team are going to get one point each. If this player over here is able to hit their bid and hit their bid exactly, they will collect both points and then be on their way towards five. You'll shuffle up the cards, deal them again, start with the bidding phase, go back to the card play phase, and the first player to hit five points will win the game.
I think the first thing I want to say is I love Becca Boo as an artist. I think the stuff that she does is great. And I especially like it when she does a style that's very different from her norm.
Yeah, this is not something that I would, you know, quickly recognize as being Size art. Um it's great. You know, I I I tend to like the art that that she does. But yeah, this one is a little bit out of uh the regular wheelhouse she works in.
A little more in that Edward Gorey style.
Sure.
Uh Ghost Lift.
Ghost Lift had a little bit of that. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh I think it has a clear goal be the first to to fight.
points you play several rounds.
You'll have noticed from the overview that this is a strange game. This is a strange one to explain.
I play a lot of trick-taking games. You play a lot of trick-taking games.
This game took me a full game to wrap my head around. And even after I wasn't sure that I had everything quite right. It's really on on uh on some kind of a fringes of what you tend to expect from trick-taking games.
Yes, two cards per trick. One player is always the lead. Splitting into teams through the betting, right? Through the bidding I betting bidding I should say. So yeah, these temporary alliances. It's it's got a lot of strange things to it. It just in general has a lot of rules to it for being what feels like uh not simple. It's it's just got a lot of rules to it I think is my big thing.
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, you see we're jumping right into it. So yes, I have played other games where you have a strictly three-player trick-taking games where you have temporary alliances. You know, I'm thinking of tricky trying tricky time crisis for example. Is that right? That's the right one, isn't it?
Uh that one you can play up to four.
No, no. Which is the one the the superhero. From John.
What So tricky time crisis does do that.
Okay. Oh, but you can play up to four.
Yes, yeah.
So anyway, yeah, I've played games similar to that. Um so that it was not completely unique, but but everything else about it was. It's like you're it's right like feels like a micro game in a sense. You have so few cards. The way that you're handling the manipulation and management of the cards is very odd. If you're the the lead witch and you win a trick, you choose one of the two cards to come back into your hand. Otherwise, the temporary team is choosing which one. And if you're the if you're the not lead witch, you're discarding a card at the beginning. But if you're the lead witch, you keep all your It's a lot of weird little rules and things going on for what feels like it should be a micro game.
Yeah, I agree. And and I and it has a small How do I say this? The decision space is not small. I think the decision space is fairly wide open, which is which is interesting. Uh but I think that this game really depends on a good degree of card counting.
Mhm.
Which one of the things I'll say is I play a lot of trick-taking games, you play a lot. I don't think either of us are particularly card counters, right?
No, I get I usually get a general sense. There might be a particular couple of cards I'm keeping an eye on specifically, but yeah, I'm not like a strict card counter.
It's kind of vibes based with me. Like, I think I've seen a lot of blue.
Yeah, right.
A lot of the trump suit has been played or hasn't been played. That's about That's about my mental faculties for that. I think that this game really rewards a high level of card counting, which just does not speak to my tastes.
Me neither, and it's a small We've We've emphasized it's a very small deck of cards, so I think it's very manageable to really do that if that's what you want to do.
Mhm.
I'm with you in that that's not what I want to do when I'm playing trick-taking games.
Yeah.
Um it is still small enough that I think that it's easier to do here. So, you've got these odd distributions, right? And I do think that that can lead to some potentially interesting decisions you're making. It's like, okay, well, there's only one seven in the game, and I know that that is I may or may not be right. I think it
Yeah, there's seven green sevens only.
And and so, those are all things that kind of contribute to the decisions that you might make throughout the game. But, is it worth it? Is what I keep coming back to in this game. It's like, okay, you've got all of these little things that are kind of unique and different and thought-provoking. Is it fun? Is it fun? That's what That's what I think I've come down to is that I think on the whole, no. I don't have a tremendous amount of fun when I'm playing it. There are times where I remark at the cleverness of some of the things that have been done in the design because it is unique and clever. I don't think it hits the fun factor for me personally. I feel like it's a lot of effort to get through what is essentially a pretty small experience.
I agree with that. I I think that's the thing is card counting, uh trying to read what's if you were in that team, like, "Okay, what can I play that they will have? If I play a four, they're likely to have a four, so we can pair up." Because I think that they're off out of that suit. Um there's a very clever series of decisions, right, where you might choose to uh like, "Okay, I want to win obviously as the team. I want to win three tricks so that the other player doesn't win three of them." But there's also a turning point where we say, "Our hands might be so bad that we want to try to actually lose these. Let's try not to pair up suits uh or number values so that we keep sticking the the lead which with like more of these wins than they wanted." Right.
Right. And I think that's fun, but there's so many other trick taking games that do that quicker for me and with less obfuscation.
Right.
Um the the other thing of a player uh if someone leads with like white suit and you don't have it, you can pass and then see what I play and then play off I that Oh, that's really clever, but it doesn't add to an overall enough sense of fun for me. So I I agree with you there.
Yeah. Um I'll just go to final thoughts. Um so so it's a tricky one because I I do think the design is clever, right? I think it's um not to my taste. And and I do like some esoteric wacky trick taking games, but I just feel like this one has too many rules for what it gives you as a game experience. And I also feel like uh well, first of all, I'm I'm coming with a five. Um which just means that it's just not one that I really want to play again. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to most people that I know that like trick-taking games unless they have very specific taste I think that this would serve. Those tastes are not my own. I feel like you have to have a dedicated group of people, three people that want to play this enough to work out the nuances and start to create some metas. And then when you've gotten to the point where you've done that then I think it would become almost wrote and predictable because it is a small number of cards. So, I just don't know where the sweet spot would be. You have to play it enough to be able to get to the cleverness and get past the the wrangling over the weird little edge things.
But once you've gotten there then I feel like you've almost got the the game kind of like you're going to it's going to be playing itself to an extent. So, that's a problem I have with it amongst the other things.
I'm also giving this one a five. I think that it's not to taste.
[clears throat]
It's very cleverly made, but I just I just don't find the fun in it because of all the things that you said. I could see if you have that group that all gets it, maybe there's enough surprise still in there. But man, I don't know. And and when is someone going to say, you know, maybe bid up to the four? Like that's got to be a That's a big baller move right there. You know, it's it's hard to imagine anyone doing that while they're not still like fully wrinkled out all the ironed out all the wrinkles of the rules like you said. So, it's it's hard. It's hard to come down on it. Not a badly designed game and one that I'd be curious if you enjoy it, please comment below and kind of talk about maybe why it speaks to your tastes cuz it's not quite to ours. So, that's uh there you go. That's our thoughts on Three Witches. Thanks for coming out to this review here on The Dice Tower. My name is Chris Yee.
I'm Mike Delisio.
And you have yourselves a potion brewingly good time.
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Thanks so much for watching. I'm Tom Vassal.
That would be good cheers over here.
Yeah, no kidding.
Oh, wow. Woo.
Nice.
That's not good.
Might need a little update to these chairs here.
You think?
Oh, man. How does Tom do this?
I don't know.
I think he's I think he has the grace and poise of a ballerina.
[clears throat]
I think his center of gravity is in his feet.
Is that a fat joke? Sounds like a fat joke.
It really was not meant to be a fat joke. It was just meant to be like, how would you stay sitting in that chair?
Oy.
Okay.
Prim and proper, there's a string running down my spine, I pull it and ah.
[sighs]