Soothsayers - Tableau Building with Interaction!
Transcript
Hello my friends. Today it's all about the tarot cards because we're going to be some soothsayers. So we're going to be doing all sorts of different things to try to get the best tarot cards that have the most fate. Today we're taking a look at a game called Soothsayers. This is from Play to Z Games. This is sort of a tableau builder engine builder following game. Let me show you how it's played. I'll see you on the other side.
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And again, but if someone else hits a higher number under this suit, they'll take it away from you. Another way to gain fate is to spend money. You'll be able to spend money and and after someone spends seven and gets this, the next person has to spend 12 and so on and so forth. These fate are good because by default they can't get taken away from you. Now, as I mentioned, one of the things you're trying to do is go up on these suits. Not only because it will can possibly gain you fate, which is the name of the game, but also it's going to give you more powerful abilities. For example, for each suit, you start with a one, but you're going to be trying to go up one number at a time, and they go all the way up to six. And there's only like two sixes in the entire deck for each suit. So, the higher the number, the harder they are to come by. But you're also trying to capture those tarot cards, and they're going to range from zero all the way up to 20. But the deck is seated with the lower numbers in like the top half of the deck. And then the second half of the game, you'll get to the more powerful ones. These ones have all sorts of powerful abilities. Some of them actually also allow you to gain fate, which again is the name of the game.
Turns very simple. You're going to select one of the four suits and you're going to do that action. Like, hey, just earn $6 or spend money to get fate as I showed you earlier. Or you're going to be drafting cards. In this case, you get to draft two cards. But if later on, you're able to upgrade all the way to a level five. When you draft, you're going to take four cards. And there'll be a pool of cards that you can select from. And the size of this depends on the amount of players. However, this game is a follow mechanism. So, let's say this is what I looked like and I drafted and I drafted two cards. Everyone else in clockwise order gets to possibly follow and they look at the bottom of theirs. In this case, if someone else drafted, I could draft one instead of two if it was my turn. However, if their level is higher, so for example, let's say I drafted four because I had a level five card here, but somebody else had a level one and they draft one. However, if they're at a one and I'm at a five, they have to pay me the difference. So, four, they have to pay me four in coins just to be able to draft one. So, you're not only fighting for the the highest number in each suit to gain the fate, you're also doing it so that following isn't expensive. But you can always just take $2 when you fall. The ascend action is what allows you to play other cards on here. So, for ascend action, I could do it twice. I could play a one to a two.
It has to be the very next number. I could play a two to a three. However, I could jump from a one to a three, skipping a number by paying five coins. So, you can skip there. And then, hey, if I have the highest number in this suit, I get to take it from whoever has it. or if no one has it, I take it from the supply. And capturing. Capturing allows you to get a tarot card. You can discard cards from your hand. So, you're gathering all these cards in your hand from from the draft. This equals five. I could discard these two, a three and a two for a value of five because that's what they add up to. And I can spend money for the difference. And that's to gain these different tarot cards that are out there. And there's a certain amount out there depending on the amount of players. So, if I discarded seven, this one would still be $10 because it's a 17 and so forth. So you grab those, you put it under the the suit that it has or any one of those and again if you have the highest number below that suit you gain a fate but you're going to get a very powerful ability like the sun allows you to double the money you earn when you lead when you take money or uh you can discard three twos of any suit to gain a fate token. So all sorts of ways to kind of get your ways to win at a high level. That's how you play.
Whoever gets to the right amount of fate depending on amount of player count first wins immediately. Before I get to the moment you've been waiting for, I wanted to let you know that Game Toppers is giving 15% off premium game mats and accessories specifically to my US and Canada audience using code game boygeeek 15 off for a limited time only. Hear more about this at the end of my final thoughts. Well, I was interested in this because it's from the same designer as uh Positano, which was my family game of the year in 2025 and um Out Fox the Fox, which was in my top five party games of the year. So, uh, new designer in the scene, and I liked his first two designs that I played, and so tried this one out. Spoiler, it's really good. Let me tell you what I liked about the game. First, this is sort of a simple tableau builder, but it has tons of depth. There's only four different actions you can really do on your turn.
Uh, but with that, there's a lot of things to think about. Um, there is tons of player interaction. Uh, cuz I mean, everything you do, someone else is going to be able to follow or you're going to be able to follow somebody else. And essentially, you're trying to be you're racing to be ahead in the different suits uh and the tarot uh the tarot cards. And so, you know, those tarot abilities, they're going to they're going to trigger off of sometimes what the opponents do. Uh like, for example, match an opponent's money, uh you know, when you earn. So, there there's there's all different things and different abilities that trigger off of what other people do. But then there's also, you know, you're constantly going back and forth. You're right in your face. It has tons of interaction. a little bit of take that where you're taking things from other people, but it's all spread around. So, it's not like one person ever gets like sort of picked on more than others. Um, or maybe sometimes you're gonna be like spending money to to skip a card when ascending. So, there's lots of different things you can do in the game. You're basically trying to build a tableau. Get your suits up as high as you can because that's going to give you better actions, but it's also going to give you those fate tokens as I showed you. You're getting those by having the highest number in any suit and the highest number of any of the tarot cards below any suit. So, I like that when you're playing the cards, when you ascend, you have to play them in order, but you can spend that money to skip a card. Helps you get there faster because money is a tight commodity in the game, and it's one of the ways that you get fate. In fact, it's the best way to get fate a lot of times because those fate tokens can't be taken from you where any of the other ones, most of the other ones really can't. Uh, I like the the flexibility of discarding the cards
and the money to capture the tarot cards. The tarot cards are part of the name of the game because they're going to give you these huge powerful abilities that all seem a little bit broken, but that's okay because they're all like that. They're all awesome. And you're discarding a certain amount of cards depending on how strong your action is. And you can add up those cards. If I throw away a four and a three, that's seven. Oh, this one cost nine. It's got to come up with two extra dollars. And so, I like the flexibility of using the cards that you're gathering because maybe you're like low on this one suit. You know, you're not going to win it. you know, you're not going to be getting the fate token, but you can take a a highv value card from that anyways, knowing I'm not going to play it down. I'm going to use that to then go capture a card. And it's cool. Gives you a lot of flexibility, a lot of agency in the game to get different things done. And I like that. Um, I like that the, you know, as the game goes on, you can be trading cash for those fake cards. You know, you can be building this engine of cash, spending seven, then 10, then 13, and so on so forth to try to get this these fake cards because, again, that's like the best way to get them. Now, the game is very tense at the end. Um, and so, you know, you want to make sure that you don't hand the game to someone else because everyone else has these different abilities going on, and you don't want to allow them or open up a spot where they can use that ability to exploit and be able to get, you know, a a their last fate because it's a race.
As soon as someone gets the the right amount of fate, they're going to win the game. Uh, so, I mean, overall, the game is fantastic. It's like, hey, you're either taking money or you're drafting cards or you're uh, you know, ascending. You're you're you're building up your suits, getting your action stronger, possibly taking the fate tokens from other people or you're gathering those those cards. But within that structure, the zero downtime because you can follow what other people do, and it's really cool that when you follow, if someone takes an action and you're following them, but they're at a higher level of that action, you've got to pay them a coin for each number of the difference. So, if they're like a five in red and they're they're they're capturing a tarot card and you're at a three in red, you got to pay them two coins in order to follow that action. Very it's a really cool way to sort of balance things out, have you focus on things and give you tough choices during the game.
Again, the game is pretty simple mechanically, but man, this game has tons of depth. Uh, and it's it's an absolutely excellent game. Now, are there anything I didn't like about the game? Sure. Let's talk about some of the things. For me personally, this is a personal thing. the look and the theme. I'm not really into tarot cards and such and the look looks like the game's kind of from like the early 90s. That's obviously the look they were going for. Not necessarily what I want, but that's completely subjective. Um, when you play with lots of players, there tends to be many abilities to keep track of because not all of them will will affect you, but some of them might and some of them are very important. Again, if you screw something up and open something up for someone else, that's going to allow them to get their last fade. So, sometimes with a lot of players, it can be tough to kind of keep track of all the abilities that everyone has. Um, some tarot cards need a little bit more text. Like the number 20 judgment card says, you know, lead lead if tied uh with foe for highest level in any suit. Um, you know, take a fake card. Well, it doesn't say instead of your normal action. So, I actually contacted the the designer about this and they're like, "Oh, the rules were wrong, but the card was right. The rules are the copy and paste error." So, there's some little errors there as well. There also was a pretty big rules omission or something that came in late. Uh in my five player game, we came to a point where like the game was just going to go on forever. It just came out to the point where everyone was just kind of stealing things. There was no cards left there, you know, everything was kind of like at a standstill. And so there was a new rules omission. If you're playing with four or five players, there's a there's a rule that if you go through the deck of cards, the smaller
cards, uh, the ascend cards and the common cards, if you go through the deck once, you shuffle it up. If you go through the deck a second time, the game ends, and whoever has the most fate wins. And this is huge because you can't get to a point in a five-player game like we did where you just keep going in a circle and a circle and it's never going to end. Uh, and that rules is not in the rule book. And in fact, the rule came out right after or during we were playing because I checked the rules on BGD that earlier that day. it wasn't there. We're in this weird thing. We checked BG and like a a few hours before the designer said, "Hey, there's a new rule." Uh, you know, and it's weird cuz we got hit with that right away, like right when they were putting that new rule up. So, if you're playing five players, if you shuffle the main common deck twice, end the game and you won't get caught up in that that loop. I also thought there should be a way to sort of either wipe the tarot market or have more come out because sometimes the lower numbers might stay and sit stagnant because they might be in spots where other people have already gotten powerful ones. So, nobody kind of wants to go get them because they're not going to give them a fate token. Even though they're cheap, they might want to be saving their money for something else.
Sometimes the tarot market can get a little stagnant. Um, and so I would like a way to either have one card come off at the end of a round or ways of when somebody leads as a as a as a capture mechanism or action that a certain amount of cards come out. Uh, that makes it so that it doesn't get stale because it can happen sometimes. happened in one of my games where it got very stale and the play was a little strange but um that probably not gonna happen all the time. The most of the players that were playing that game was had not played it before so a little inexperienced there. Um also the cards the common cards could run out. Uh and again they run out with five players it can run out a little bit if players are hoarding cards because they want to save up to be able to wait for that right tarot card to come up. Again a side effect if there's too many smaller cards down there and everyone's kind of waiting for the bigger one to come out once someone buys one. they're going to be storing cards waiting for that. So, there could be players with lots of cards in their hand be in in plays like this. So, there should either be like sort of a hand limit of cards or maybe there's not enough cards when you play with five players because you can get to the point where the deck's like empty.
In our game, when we when we reshuffle the deck, there was only like three more cards that came out because they were all in people's hands or in their tableau. Uh, but those are all minor quibbles. The game itself, uh, well, the new rule is not a minor quibble. it. I guess it doesn't happen very often and it didn't happen in development, but the whole if if you have to shuffle the deck twice, end the game. Other than that, all of them are sort of minor quibbles. Make sure you play with that other rule. With all that being said, this is a fantastic game. It's if you're looking for an engine building, sort of tableau building, little bit lots of player interaction with simple mechanisms, pretty easy to teach, but tons of depth. Sousayers is excellent. It's been a game boy geek breaking down barriers growing list through pork you love. Game Toppers upgrades every game you play, being the one table to rule them all with Game Toppers, leg kits, dining covers, premium game mats, and more. And for a limited time only, my US and Canadian audience can get 15% off their premium game mats and accessories using the promo code gameboygeek 15 off. Also, go to gamettopperslc.com to check out all the options or for worldwide late pledges of their recent 5.0 Kickstarter.