Hell of a Deal: Discussion
Transcript
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Hey everyone, welcome back to Board Games Unlocked and today I'm doing a discussion over Hell of a Deal. This game uh is the newest in the genre of poker style board games which seems to be kind of a uh the big resurgence nowadays. it. I mean, in in all in the in the grand scheme of things, it probably isn't actually that many. It just feels that there's since the release of Bellatro that a lot of these uh you know, board games are kind of being made, which completely makes sense of taking poker, a very probably wellrespected game, and trying to do some interesting stuff with it. And you know, I have been since the since the release of Bellatro, I've been intrigued to see if any kind of board game could either replicate it or do something else that's interesting with poker.
And another game that I've done a review on, Ace of Spades, didn't quite do do that for me. So, whenever I saw Hell of a Deal uh go on crowdfunding, obviously with the the Cuphead style artwork and theming of of poker, you know, well, in in Cuphead, I think it's you face off against King Dice and it's kind of a dice system. It it seemed to be a really awesome blend of taking poker and that rubber band or rubber hose uh artwork and merge them together with the concept of cheating throughout the entire time. And Hell of a Deal [ __ ] nails it. They they got the whole aesthetic correct in my opinion.
And you know, for a little bit, uh, a small part of me was kind of skeptical. One, I think this was actually early. You could pick it up early at Gen Con, which I didn't go to, and I was thinking, man, people already have their copies, and I backed it, and I don't have mine yet. Uh, now I understand there's usually a separate section of games that get released if especially if they're going to be around Gen Con time that you could go pick it up early, uh, or they're going to have early copies. But this company, well, Smirk and Dagger is a a kind of well-known company, but these designers, um, what is it? Cameron Reed. And Cameron Reed, the artist, is is Liam Lim, and he he does a fantastic job. Um, Cameron [clears throat] Reed, I don't recognize. I really should do all of this in uh real time or beforehand, but hell of a deal. Um, so Cameron Reed, this is his only game and he did a fantastic job. He has completely taken the idea of Texas Holde and made it an absolute blast to play of doing kind of essentially a boss battler. Um, probably more of a boss rush than a boss battler. But normally for this style game, I wouldn't tend to enjoy it. But he has made it work extremely well cooperatively by having an element of randomness, but controlled
randomness that te Texas Holdem just has in its straight in its straight uh design, but also create a deeper level of strategy that other poker games, board games have just not been able to do. Um, so what's really awesome about this game is a it's cooperative and it also everything that this game does that I don't really like in a lot of other games I tend I find actually kind of fascinating here. Um, so it's cooperative Texas Holdem and it's a boss rush which boss rushes for me are fine in video games. I don't really tend to do them, but uh sometimes they can be kind of fun. And here he's done the boss rush to be just super quick because at this game's core, it there's a bug. Uh at this game's core, it is Texas Holdem.
There's no wonky cards or anything weird that is going to be going on in Texas Holdem. It is a straight deck of cards. If you wear the game wear these cards to shreds by playing this game a lot or you just you're really bad at at bridge shuffling and you know you end up [ __ ] them up, get a separate deck of cards because it literally does nothing unique about these. Um, and what's also cool to compare it to Ace of Spades, these are very easy to shuffle. So, uh, but you're only again shuffling at the end of a a boss fight. But with the boss rush, he also does it to where you fight a specific number before you get to the devil himself. And the cool part is the devil has different versions. So, you're never quite sure what ability you're going to get. Um, but when you're fighting the regular bosses, you will move on regardless if you win or lose.
you want to win obviously because then you're not penalized for the bets that you've done. Um, but essentially if you lose then you move on to the next one. You can try and recoup, but it's going to make you weaker for the final fight. And uh, in this game we just played, you know, we actually ended up winning, but it was literally one person cuz I did a two-player game. One person was two temptation away from 10 and another was three, but we also only had one soul chip left. So the the Texas Holdem nature of this, yeah, there's still an element of of randomness, but you have a lot of ways to try and cheat as much as possible, which to manage a system like that is very fascinating uh to me because normally if you're designing a game around cheating, you're thinking it's going to be a kind of a party game or a whimsical game that who really cares what happens. um some beer and pretzel style game. But this one, it feels like even I' and I've played this multiple times where it, you know, I've tried to cheat as much as possible and I it just still does not come my way. [snorts] But it doesn't feel as bad because a you can kind of fold at any time. Not any time, you can fold. You have multiple chances to fold.
So there's an order of operations on the way that you're going to cheat. And you will do that to try and think, okay, let me instead of using a devilish offering to draw two cards and keep one, let me see what comes out in the turn. Let's let me see what comes out in the river. Maybe I'll get lucky. And, you know, some cards will get burned and then dropped and those would have been cards I would have drawn anyway. That wouldn't have been helpful to me. So, let me see if those can come out. Um, and you also have that element of playing with another player where you're limited on your communication. That's that fog of war element that I typically hate in cooperative games, but it is kind of fascinating here. Um, so with all the cheating that you can do, it could still not go your way, but you've you've probably known that for a while.
If your opening hand is a four of spades and a seven of clubs, well, and then the the flop has a king of diamonds, a you know, an ace of hearts, and a two of diamonds. Well, that's not really doing anything for you. So, typically, you're going to probably fold right off rip. And even when you fold, there's still a penalty. You have to roll this bone dye, which I am almost convinced is weighted to be in your favor cuz I have rolled this thing multiple times, it has come up on the favor result uh like nine times out of 10. Now, the one time I rolled it, it ended up be a curse. But every time my girlfriend rolled it, okay, curse.
Okay, maybe maybe it was just literal literal luck in our favor. Hey, there's a cuz she was just rolling favors non-stop. Um, but yeah, so I you have to roll the bones die. It's, you know, it's not that bad. It might be a temptation and I like that. I like the fact that every even if you lose a a game against a boss, it's not the worst part. these p these punishments for the the chips that you bet. You know exactly what the punishment is. And there's ways to kind of course correct. Oh, I gained a ton of temptation, but you know, I'll bet I'll bet for this to uh heal me. Someone else will bet to heal me. And so we kind of uh rallied back a little bit because our next game we had a really good opening hand and I felt super solid about betting. Um, so yeah, I I really like the fact that the the games are going to keep moving on. It's not play until you beat a boss. Uh, because if they had done that, then I think this game would actually be miserable to play because it does rely on luck. No matter how much cheating you you have, if you had to beat the boss before you could move on to the next one, I think that would be a bad bad idea. But they didn't do that here.
So, I love the Texas Holdem element. I love the fact that they for your player mats, they have the poker hands in front of you. So, new players who have never played Texas Holdem or poker in general can still see the the order of operations on what the poker hand rankings are. [snorts] Um, yeah. I mean, and honestly, they have these two types of cards. They have favor cards and they have a good stack of favor cards and they have curse cards and you're not riddled with curses. nonstop. Um, [snorts] they could still obviously come your way, but you would have had to bet. So, the reveal two cards and the wild and the draw a favor all give you um a curse. So you have essentially made that decision on your your tempting fate to think, okay, I feel kind of good about my hand, so I'm going to do my wild to do another effect and hope that it works out for me. But even the curses sometimes can kind of be in your favor. Uh the last game we played uh one of the players had a winning play which meant that they could not fold and that ended up being the reason that they won that against the boss. It it was really fast because it's like you're thinking oh would you have folded ahead of time and she was like yeah.
So the curse kind of made them stay in cuz they had to. Uh but they're not brutal. They're detrimental or not they they can be kind of debilitating. They're still not good to have. And the more of them you have, if you end up getting riddled with curses, then you start taking temptation. Temptation has a hard uh you know, if you pass uh four to five, you can't go back. And if you obviously go to 10, you can't heal past that. So, there is a threshold that the higher you tempt use temptation, then uh the worse off you might be. So, the curses are uh not that bad. They're still annoying, but they can be kind of circumstantial and helpful. Um, and the favors are also extremely good.
Most of them cost uh, you know, temptation to use or something. You might have to gain a curse to do something, but they can be extremely powerful. this last game. The only reason that I beat the devil, otherwise we would have lost is um I used the draw a favor bet and I drew into a card that I could use. It cost temptation, but I could use a card that was already previously discarded. Uh a favor that was already previously discarded. And there was a card in there that said uh you could use three cards from your hand this turn. And prior to doing that, I played a favor that let me search through the deck and discard three cards. So, I was able to get a full house out of using all my bets and stuff to get a full house of three kings and two sevens, which beat out the devil, who is at best able to get a straight.
So, the favors can be very, very powerful, but the more you try and use them, the more um the more you're going to have a high temptation. So, I really like the way that they manage the curses and the favors. And again, none of them are insane. None of them are so crazy that it now makes Texas Holdem a, you know, a weird game to play. It's just Texas Holdem. Um, like again, one of the bosses that we were facing up against, we were going to lose, but I drew into a favor that said you can make a flush out of four cards instead of five. And the last card that was added was a club that made me get a a flush of four. Otherwise, we would have lost. So, it it is they're they're so helpful, and I really like just how fun and situational they can be. Um, and the other really cool thing is this game has a good chunk of bosses. Um, so you have six versions of the devil.
Um, so again, that just gets shuffled and it's a random devil each time. But then you have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11. Uh, Nick House is always there. 12 13. So you have 15 unique bosses. Nick House is always in it. He's kind of like the I guess he's the devil before he's the devil. So you have 15 bosses plus Nick House plus six versions of the devil, but you have tons of ways to actually increase the difficulty of this game cuz every boss has a heated up version and that includes Nick House and the the six devils.
So, uh, let's do let's do a good example. Let's say you're facing off against, uh, Misfortune. Sure, she's pretty straightforward. So, she typically wants uh, well, I'll actually explain. So, her ability is if you play a favor, you draw a curse for the next round. Her heated up version is if you play a favor, draw a curse for the next round, then players earn one less soul per curse they have, active or pending, but never less than zero. So the things that you are betting to try and gain souls if you have curses now, um now you're going to actually start losing souls or you're going to earn less souls.
But so you can modify the game if you're finding the game to be easy on just doing random bosses uh and you're always winning. Okay, well then throw in a heated boss. Throw in two heated bosses. Throw in all of them being heated bosses. So I like that level of not making the game have a bunch of extra rules. It still centers around the uh the bosses. Um so that's really really cool. And the other thing that I like about this game is there's still an element of of suspense [snorts] because when you're fighting against the bosses, they have a minimum hand that they are trying to do. And what's nice about that is that gives you kind of a goal. If a boss is trying to do a straight as their minimum hand, that means at the very least if he can make nothing out of what's on the in the, you know, the run, then he will make a straight. So, when you're trying to use your cards, you're trying to do better than that because at the very least, you need to beat a straight.
Uh, but the boss also will get two random cards that will get revealed. at the very minimum he's going to get two random cards and that will you know then he'll try to make something stronger than a straight and if he can't then he uses their their default hand. I really like that element. There's ways to mess with that. There's ways to reveal cards from the boss so you can try and see what he might be able to make. It is uh it's done very well. I like the fact that how it's not oh reveal a boss and this is the hand he's doing. Try and beat that. Um or you know the way Ace of Spades does it where okay well here's just a a health point threshold. You just have to do damage to it and move on. Um yeah it the way that the bosses are managed they're also incredibly varied and depending on how the cards are coming out from the deck some of them might be more powerful than others.
One of the characters is um uh demo demona. If one or more hearts are placed into the flop, they must suffer players must suffer a temptation or fold. And if they don't, then you know then they'll move to the turn, then move to the river. It's so that's only for hearts. And what's really really cool about this is again they didn't do what Ace of Spades did and just have four, you know, four bosses do that same ability for a different suit. You know, she's the only one who can who has that heart ability. And there's not another guy that's demon. And he does that with spades, you know, where it's like, yeah, that's kind of different. But, you know, they're all completely varied. And when we fought her this last game, no hearts came out.
In fact, one of the cards was a heart was burned. And but yeah, you could just get hosed on stuff like that. And I think some people might not like that where the bosses can be swingy. That's just the hand you're dealt when you're playing a uh a poker like game. So I I don't know. I I do enjoy this one kind of quite a bit. And it has that fog of war element which actually weirdly you have to strategize a lot more because you essentially can't talk about anything. You could talk about face up cards and that's it. But there's other ways for you to strategize around that. First of all, there's a bet you can do that lets you reveal your hand. Cool.
Hey, there's my hand. That's uh So now we can talk about that. I can make a two pair. I can make a three pair if I got a king and then someone pull, you know, they play a card or do a favor that lets them search for a card to hand to someone. Okay, cool. You need a king. Boom. I'm going to play this favor. So, there's ways to circumn the fog of war element. Um, there's other things you have to kind of infer. Uh, there's a card that says I mean the the favor card that says search the deck and give someone a card. Well, you if if you just watched them pull something from the discard pile, which is open knowledge, and you saw them pull um a king. Okay. Well, I saw you pull the king. So, I mean, I can kind of see what's out on the table. All right. Well, I'll try and search through the deck and I'll hand you another king or I'll hand you a queen or an ace.
Maybe you're going for a full house. Maybe you're going for a straight, you know, just to give them options. I really like that. It again, normally that kind of cooperation hindrance for me always feels as if the designer just did couldn't design around it. They had to, oh, to make the game difficult, you can't talk to each other. But other games where you can't really talk that I think is fantastic is Sky Team. Sky Team has that element of you have to you literally cannot talk about what is what is what your dice are when you place the dice down. You the other player has to think why would they have done that? And this game has that exact same thing. You could talk about your bets and stuff. You can still strategize around that on hey did you want to use any of these devilish offerings? Um, okay. Uh, can you, you know, can you reveal a card that the boss has? And they, you can't tell them why. You can't say, I have a favor card that lets me mess with the boss cards.
But you could just ask, hey, if you're not sure what to bet, can you uh use a devilish offering to reveal what the boss has? And oh yeah, okay, sure. And then they do it and you're you see and you're like, oh man, that's that's actually a really good card that I could use. Cool. I'm going use my favor. It it it just it just works. 16 times the detail. Yeah. So, and the other thing that I've noticed kind of a trend of at least of the Kickstarters that I've gotten lately, uh, which has been a run of so three Kickstarters I've gotten lately has been Avalon Horror on the Orient Express and this one. All three of these Kickstarter games have killed it with their inserts. So, this game is no exception to those. Everything that they seem to have designed fits in the storage box. The only thing I'm not sure, please let me know in the comments. What is this big big tray for? I really hope I didn't miss something. I got these um these uh foil uh car like decks that I thought would fit in I mean that I thought would fit in here. Maybe it maybe it literally is for that for um just putting in a bunch of decks of cards that you that you could get. Maybe there was two more or something miss. I might have to go back and look at the Kickstarter, but I don't know what goes in there. But the playmats all fit in there. Everything fits in there and it's fantastic. So, I mean, in terms of negatives with the
game, I I really I don't know how well this plays at high high player counts. I have only played this at two. I feel like that might be the sweet spot because I feel like this game might be a little bit too random with But I mean, honestly, I don't know. The game's so quick. Uh, I'd be curious to know what how many people say this is best at four. One guy. Okay, never mind. Uh, man, good to know BGG just takes it does p pull stats from one person. Uh, okay. Well, I think this is really, really good at two. Some guy thinks it's best at four. Uh, I honestly think this is one of those games that could just be best at any player count.
I haven't tried solo. Solo has something to do with these cards. I haven't tried that. But this one is excellent. I would really, really hope. And again, it's just the nature of the beast. Now with board games, you got to bring it up, especially when it with the when it's with a game that you really like. I would love to see this game supported. And it doesn't even have to be that huge. You literally more bosses. It's a boss rush. I know. I just I just praised it for the variety of of bosses. I wouldn't even want to see anything extra. I think that literally a boss pack would be awesome. Maybe maybe just a card pack, more bosses, uh, and more curses and more favors.
You can literally keep everything else and I would be happy. I'm already happy with the with what we got, but I really like the game. And when you really like a game, you you want to see you basically want to have infinite replayability. But this game nails the boss rush poker theme Cuphead cheating style game. And this is a game that could have easily [ __ ] that up. It could have completely not done enough with the cheating. You couldn't have enough control. It could have been brutally difficult to where the cheating doesn't even matter. Uh, they could have made it [ __ ] weird with the Texas Holdem rules, but nope. I guess the only thing that I kind of find a little odd and is that you can't check, unless I missed a rule or something. I'm pretty sure when the betting happens, you have to bet something or fold.
And um obviously in Texas hold you can check that you don't want to add in you're good with what what you got but you're not super good. I mean that's all part of the bidding on Texas Holdem. I know I guess I know why they didn't is because it's cooperative. So you're not checking another player. So it's trying to keep pushing you to really feel good about your hand and have that double-edged sword of okay I guess I'll I got to bet something. Um, but at the same time they have these soul tokens and these almost feel if you don't want to risk using a power or you don't really need to use a power. You can put in a soul. So it it kind of is is a is an empty bet. It's still good to win, but you still have to bet something. That would probably be my only minor thing that I find a little odd, but I I understand why they didn't put it in here. Anyway, um yeah, this one this one's fantastic. I and I love I love the art, love the aesthetic. This game just actually took me by surprise on how much I ended up liking it. And after the very first game of this where we lost almost immediately, uh I was like, "Oh no, this game is going to suck." But then we we pushed through and played it more times after that and it's just been it's been singing. So on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm going to give Hell of a Deal a nine. I I think it's absolutely fantastic and the game has a lot a lot going for it for this kind of game. I think that this is I I mean this
is probably the best poker style board game that they that's that's been made. So that's it everyone. That's my thoughts on Hell of a Deal. Let me know what you think of the game in the comments below. Other than that, like, comment, share, and subscribe. And have a wonderful whatever time of day it is for you.