Hell of a Deal - Cooperative Poker Board Game Review
Transcript
Hello my friends. Today we're going to be playing poker cooperatively, working together, but not just anywhere. We're actually going to be playing in hell. And we're going to be playing against minions and bosses and even the devil himself. Today we're taking a look at Hell of a Deal. This is from Smirk and Dagger Games. Let me show you how it's played. I'll see you on the other side.
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They look really cool. have some of the pictures of some of the bosses and such that you'll see in a little bit on the cards as well. Now, speaking of the bosses, there's actually 22 standard different boss cards in the deck. Many of them are minions. They they'll come out in the first four rounds or so. This game is about six rounds long, or maybe more if you don't do really well. But there's going to be some different bosses and they're going to have certain abilities. They're also going to have a minimum hand that you're going to need to beat if they don't make a better hand with the normal poker hand that comes out. And towards the end of that deck is always going to be one of the sort of bosses, Nick House. He's really hard to beat, but then the devil himself. And when you're fighting either of those two or playing against them, that's when you could possibly lose the game because you might have to pay them souls that you don't have and the game will be over. But over the course of the game, you're going to get some favors that are going to help you. Like, hey, treating all the spades in your hand as if they're clubs or vice versa. Or you can make straights with four cards this round or even shuffling a card from the flop or turn back into the deck and redilling the card.
But there's going to be times where things don't go right. You're going to get curses and they're going to do different things to you for a certain hand like you can't fold or hearts cards in your hand cannot be used in your scoring hand or you may not use face cards in your scoring hand. So you're going to get curses. Favors are going to help you and you're trying to beat these bosses. Now the game comes with six amazing playmats. It has one for the main, one for the betting and then each player gets their own. So the game again is going to you're going to be playing through uh four different minions and then to the two bosses. Now, at the beginning of each hand, you're going to get three cards in your hand in the hole. Like, you only get two usually in normal poker, but you get three, but you only get to use two of those three throughout the game. Now, the minion will also get two. Sometimes they'll get more than that. Uh, but there's they're hidden, and you're going to be playing against that as well. Now, this specific minion has a minimum hand. They have six, seven, eight, nine, 10. They have a straight. You have to at least beat a straight. Now, they might get something more powerful between this and uh, you know, the the flop, turn, and river, but that's that's the minimum hand you're going to need to be able to beat. And there's also some abilities on some of these like at any time during your turn you can draw an additional card but you choose to sh suffer a temptation which is bad. We'll talk about later. If they don't suffer a temptation uh they get this this mini gets to draw an additional card. Now temptation is something you don't want. You start with zero but as you gain temptation you'll go up and if two or more players ever get to 10 that's one way you lose the game. Now there'll be ways to heal yourself but once you get past the flame you can't kind of go back into that threshold. Now, souls are important because you'll start with a certain amount, two player, two tube for each
player in the sort of community pot. And these are important because the last two bosses, if you cannot pay souls, when any players lose against them, that's one way to lose the game. So, you want to build up souls over the first four rounds, try to have a lot of them for the last two bosses that you face. Now, here's a look at what the player one of the player boards looks like. And on your turn, after you get your two pocket or your three pocket cards, you're going to bet. Here are the different types of bets that you have. You could bet a soul like that. And hey, if you end up winning, well, you'll gain a soul to the community pot. And we already talked about that's important for trying to have currency to not lose at the end of the game. However, if you don't win the hand, you'll end up gaining temptation. We just talked about temptation moving up the board. You can't have more than two or more players have 10 or you lose. So, that's the bad side of this. But the other bets will give you different abilities. And like, for example, if you bet this, you can immediately heal a player's temptation. any player, you can move them back one. However, if you don't win the hand, that's going to cost you two temptation. Then there's something like draw a favorite card. I showed you some of those favorite cards earlier, but if you don't end up winning, you have to draw a curse card, which I'll show you ear showed you earlier. Those go face down and next round they go face up and they hurt you throughout it. The favorite cards, as I showed you earlier, they help you out.
You can reveal two cards. It could be favorite cards and or your poker cards to help show everybody. Gives them more information. But again, if you don't win, you will gain a curse. So, you're getting things now, but if you don't win, you're paying the devil later. Wild could be any of these, but you have to pay a temptation to get it. And if you don't win, you have to take a curse. Now, the last one are these devilish offerings. Now, you can bet one of these. We'll tell you what they do in a minute later, but if you don't win with this one, so you're going to get two temptations. So, you're basically penalized with temptation and or curse cards. the longer you stay in and bet and the the that when you don't win, the harsher the penalty, but you're getting abilities throughout each bet. Now, on your turn, when it's time to bet, you only bet one chip. You can either bet a chip or you'll fold. And we'll talk about folding in a minute, but those devilish ones, there's four of these, and each of these can be used once per hand, if you will. This one will allow you to reveal one of the boss cards. And if you use it, you just, you know, hey, it's used. No one else can use it this round. Uh, you can look at two cards from the top of the pile and keep one.
Put the other one in the discard pile. You could swap a card with a player. Now, you can't communicate what you have in your hands. It's all face down. You can give sort of subtle clues as to what you're going for, but you can't say exactly what you have in your hand in this game. Or you could draw a card from the discard pile. So, that's very powerful as well because once everybody has bet from their pocket cards, then we're going to burn a card. This will go in the discard pile. The discard pile is always sort of visible to everybody. And then you're going to do like the normal flop. So, three cards are going to come out. Oh, look at that. A pair of eights and a four. Then, everyone is going to bet again. So maybe after my pocket cards, I bu bet this. And maybe on this one, I said, "Hey, you know what? I'm going to bet. I'm going to stay in and I'm going to draw a favorite card." So you get that in your hand. You can use it when you want as long as you bet. And you keep going like this. However, if you decide to fold, well, you'll lose the hand, which means at the end of the hand, you're still going to get all the negative ramifications like a curse card and a temptation, but you'll have to roll this dieice where two of the sides you actually gain a favorite card. the other side, you're either going to be getting curses or temptation and then you're basically out for the rest of the hand. After everyone has bet for this, well, you'll burn another card to the discard pile and then you'll do the turn. Everyone will go either bet or fold. You'll burn another card to the discard pile. You will play the river and you'll bet again or fold if you haven't folded yet. And then you're going to take your once everyone's done this, you're going to take your best your best two of three cards in your hand because you only get to use two of them. You are going to compare them with with those two cards or up to those two cards with the other cards here to make
a five card poker hand Texas holdm style. And you'll flip over the bosses and see does this beat his minimum hand of 6 7 8 9 10 a straight. If it doesn't then you have to beat this. If you beat the straight you win that's great. If you don't for every player that did not beat him you lose two souls from the pot. Now again you're fighting four minions and then two bosses. If during fighting any of the minions, you've run out of souls and you can't pay, that's okay. You don't pay. However, the last two bosses, which is the the devil himself and Nick Hos, if you have to pay souls and you can't, you lose. So, you really want to keep souls in there and try to build them up over the game. That's pretty much at a high level how you play the game. Now, again, once you get past the four minions and you start going against Nick Hos, one of the bosses, he has three aces, but you have to pay four souls per person that doesn't beat him. And again, if you run out of souls during this and you can't pay, you lose the game. Also, if you don't beat him, but you still have souls to pay, then you just play him again.
But this is when you play against him, you have to play him until at least one player wins. Nick gets three cards. He may use all three in the scoring hands, and players cannot heal temptation. And if you fold, you roll the bonus die twice. Now, this is the normal difficulty. There's also every minion or boss has this, which is makes it even harder. So, basically, you have to throw three times uh like like that. So, they get harder. And if you get passed in, there's the devil himself. There's actually four devil himself cards for the normal difficulty and four for the difficult side of him. They also have different abilities and stuff. But again, he has three aces gives you four and he has special abilities. So, you're just trying to get through Nickoffs and the devil himself after getting through the four million minions. If you do that, at least one player beats both of these, you win. Otherwise, you fight him again. If you can't pay the souls, you've all lost.
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Amazing production. Wow. this. It's a pretty big box, but it has a nice insert and it has six different neoprene playmats. And then it has lots of poker chips and not just the flimsy thin cheap ones. These are like the nice heavyw weighted ones like the ones like in the first edition of Splender before they tried to like cheapen the manufacturing cost of that game. Nice thick poker poker chips. They feel great. Uh, and there's I love the thematic tie of this game because essentially you're like every time you bet you're sort of pressing your luck like in real poker like hey I'm let's see what happens. I have a pretty good hand. Let's see let's see if I can beat it. And you're you're constantly weighing that press your luck with temptation and curses and which is thematic to this game which you know you're playing against in hell that with with the with the minions and against the devil at some point and it's tempting to hey I get this bonus now but hey if I don't win oo that temptation killed me right and the temptation can end the game or hey that temptation you know that one got me a curse which is going to hurt me for the next round stuff like that just thematically it's just cool and fun in that uh getting the abil getting the abilities right when you bet is just smart because it's like hey you bet now but you pay later and I love that aspect of it because it's like oh I could heal you or oh I need this favorite card or oh you know I could discard a card uh or get one from the discard pile or trade a card with you all these different things and you get these abilities but then you're going to pay for it later if you
don't win. Uh and so it's I I just love that aspect of this game. Uh, I like that the souls themselves are sort of like it is like sort of the currency in the game and because if for every player that doesn't beat whoever you're going against, usually they lose two souls. Sometimes they'll lose four if it's the last two, you know, bosses. But you're trying to build those up. So, you've got some longer term planning where it's like, hey, but they're also just like, hey, if you don't win, you just get one temptation, which isn't the worst thing in the world in this game, right? Like, it's it's fine. You can heal yourself later, but it's kind of like like a safe bet, right? Hey, I'm going to go souls. It's great. If we get it, awesome. I'll add to the pot. If not, well, I take a temptation, right? So, that tends to be what you do if you want like a safe bet, early bet. That's the type of bet you make. You know, when you get your pocket cards, your pocket three cards, and you're trying to decide whether I should stay in or not, and usually it's things like that. I like that the healing bet can only help yourself, but it's a cooperative game, so you can help heal others. Having those two little flame barriers on that track is smart because then it's like, oh, it gives a little bit more tension to certain spots in the game. I love the wild bet. It It costs you a temptation just to do it, but you could basically do another bet that you had already done that round. And if you get in a jam, sometimes you need to use that. I like that they have that sort of safety valve there. Uh the devilish bets. I love that they give you the different options like the taking the discards uh you know and and you know revealing two cards and stuff like that.
All all different all different things. I like that there's lots of million minions tons of cards. I think I said 22 of them in the deck or something like that. I like that there's variability variable difficulty that you could play. Each of the minions come on normal difficulty or hard mode and you could vary it right. You could have, hey, if you beat the game on all easy, then make one or two of the minions hard. See if you can beat it. Hey, if you beat that, do three of the minions hard, then four of the minions hard, then put Nick Haw hard, then take the hard, you know, so you could kind of ratchet up to all different levels of difficulty, and I like that aspect of it. Now, this game is most likely going to be compared to two other games that came out recently uh in in recent years. One of them is called The Gang, which is I've reviewed very favor very favorably in the past. It's a quick sort of, you know, half hour filler game where you're cooperatively trying to gauge who has the best hand without communicating. And that's like a fun little game, a quick game. And then Ace of Spades, which is mainly a solo game. It says you can play it two players, but it's it's really a solo game. If you play two players, it's cooperative, but again, it's pretty much a solo game. Um, and between these two, these are the two more sort of popular ones that are sort of pocus poker based, and both of them are either solo or cooperative. So, it's very close to this, but they are very different from each other. Other than having poker, I would say this one actually feels more like Ace of Spades than the Gang because in Ace of Spades, you're getting hands of cards, you're triggering abilities, you're trying to find the right time to use the right ability to get the right hand and sort of cheat a little bit kind of like this game does. Um, and it has that sort of arc like this does as it gets harder. So, I would say this game
is probably more like Ace of Spades than it is the gang. Even though Ace of Spades is more like a solo game and The Gang is a cooperative game, you'd think this would be more like The Gang. But actually, I think in game play, it's more like Ace of Spades. If you liked either of the games, The Gang or Ace of Spades, you're likely going to like this game. Uh so, let's let's go on to uh things that I think could be improved. Um well, obviously, you know, when you're in this when you after a bet, you're going to burn a card to the discard pile. If you don't play a lot of poker, you could forget to do this. And it's very important because that sees the discard pie, which is open knowledge. You can always see all the discard pod cards. You can get them from them and put them in your hand. It's a very important part of the game. But if you don't play a lot of poker, it's easy to forget to not to to to burn a card. Um there should have been or I wish there was like a little flame icon or something like right under the bet or between the bet icon and where you actually draw the cards. Um or on top of where you draw the first card to remind you that you do it before you do that. I wish that was there because it can be forgotten. Um the penalty. So on each of the bets down there down below where where your playerboard is. Once you've played the game a couple times, you kind of already know what the penalties are for each other. Okay. Yeah, I know this soul is going to get me temptation. I know this is going to give me a curse, such and such. But it would have been nice if they put a little penalty icon next to it somewhere so you could see because otherwise you end up going if I do this. What happens if I don't? Okay, I flip this over. Okay, it's this. Oh, what's this one? I flip it over. Oh, it's this. And the first time through the game, you'll stumble through and try to figure out what's what am I weighing?
What what's going to be bad if I if I don't do if I do this bet? And I really wish they would have just put the icon of what the negative penalty is like in the upper rightand corner. Even if it was really small, I think that would have helped definitely your first experience. Um I would have liked to have had more Nick House cards cuz he's in every game. There's one card normal difficulty and one card hard difficulty. I would have liked to see him have like slightly different abilities um in there because you are seeing him every time. I mean, there's four devils of each, why didn't they make four houses of each? Eh, it's a minor nitpick. Uh, if you don't like the core of poker, this game's probably not for you. Now, if the part you don't like about poker is you don't like the bluffing, you don't like the gambling, you don't like the actually losing real money and stuff like that, if those are the only aspects of poker that you don't like, but you generally like the as the idea of trying to put together the best hand and this and that, then maybe you will like this.
Uh but if you don't like the sort like you know if that's the part you like. So but if you don't like the core aspect of making the hands this game is not gonna be for you. Uh last thing is in this game you really got to decide when to know them and when to fold them right like the old uh the old song there. And in this game sometimes, and I would even say a few times per game, you know, you're going to probably your best option is to fold, but nobody wants to fold because basically if you go through one round each, I mean, you're playing six hands of poker and it's over, right? So, it's like, I don't want to fold because I want to stay in and have fun. I want to push my luck. I don't want to just sit on the sideline and watch people. So, you're going to naturally keep pushing your luck more than you normally would, I think. So, but in this when you do fold, a lot of times folding might be the best thing, but it's not as much fun because like, okay, I'll limit my losses. I I I I bet a soul on my first when I had my whole cards, the flop came out, I still got nothing. I'm just going to fold, right? Okay, great.
You just gained one temptation for that one soul bet. Nothing else happened. you stopped yourself from getting more negative consequences, which is great, but at the same time, I did nothing and I watched everyone else go through bets and and and do things. And it's weird because sometimes folding can be the best thing, but it's not that much fun. Uh, that's the only negative part. Other than that, the game is actually really fun. It's I enjoy it. I think again, if you liked the game and or you liked Ace of Spades, I think you're going to like the game. If you didn't like either of those, I don't think you're going to like this game. This is different. But that should give you a good gauge of whether this game is for you. Hope this you've been able to find out by me breaking this down. This has been the Game Boy Geek breaking down barriers, growing relationships with board games, and helping you on the next one you love.