Soothsayers Review: Forsooth, You Say?
Transcript
Hey everybody, I'm Tom Vassel.
And I'm Mike Delisio.
And today we're taking a look at Soothsayers. Uh a game from Play to Z that until we played it, we had never heard of it. This is no idea it existed.
No. Yeah, I had no idea it existed. And and uh yeah, then we sat down to play it and um I'll tell you the cover looks like a much older game than it is in my opinion. It looks like something that that was released a long time ago.
Yeah. And it's funny because the one lady on the cover is holding I think some magical staff, but it actually looks like she's holding that device they made for the PlayStation. with a glowing ball on top.
That's right. It does.
And so this is a game based on tarot theming. You're a powerful mystic and you're trying to capture the different people. Capture death, the empress, the hanged man, these different tarot cards. So, let me show you how it plays. It's a two to five player game and then we'll come back and talk more. In this game, the first person to get a certain number of fate tokens is the winner. And that's based on number of players. So, for example, to four to five players, you need four five fate tokens. In a two-player game, you would need seven. Each person's going to have four level one cards placed in front of them. The earn, trade, draft, ascend, and capture. You'll get a handful of what are called common cards that go from two to six of these various types.
And you're also going to get a tarot card. There are two sets of tarot cards that come with this game. Uh, and each set is split into ones that are weaker and stronger. And the tarot cards, you'll notice the smaller ones go um up to uh 10. Then after that, they're going to go up to 21. So, you're going to shuffle each of those, put the one deck on top of the other, have some tarot cards face up. on a player's turn, they're going to when it's your turn, you're going to take this globe and put it on the action that you want to take. You will take that action and then everyone else can follow the action if they want to. We'll talk about following in a second, but let's talk about the actions. The first one either gives you money, so this one here gives you four coins, or let you buy a fate token.
There are six fate tokens available to buy, and so you can pay seven coins and take one of these fate tokens. The next one lets you draft cards. This one, for example, lets me draft two cards. I to take cards face up from the in the middle row or from the top of the deck, and they're not replenished until the end of my turn. Then, ascend, that makes my actions better. If I have this card in my hand, for example, that says I can ascend two cards. I could place the two on top of the one. If I have a three card in my hand, um I can't put it on top of the one because I need to put the two first, but I can, if I have, pay five coins for each level I skip to go on top of that. That's going to make the action better. See, this one lets me draft three. This one lets me ascend three. And then finally, capture is how you get the tarot cards. The tarot cards, you simply have to pay this much in the top in money. However, you may spend cards shown on here. This lets me spend up to two cards. So, if I have these two cards in my hand, that would cost seven. I could take capture this tarot card. When you capture a tarot card, you are going to place it underneath the proper column. Some of them have more than one column that they can go into, but there can only be one.
If you get a replacement later on, then you will simply place it on top of the card that's already there. These cards give you special abilities. So, for example, the fool says, "In this suit, I can follow for free." What does it mean by following for free? So, when you follow someone, you do the action on the bottom of the card. This one, for example, says, "Earn two bucks, draft two cards, ascend one card, capture a card." But you can only do it if you are the same level or higher than the person who leads the action. If you're lower, you can do it, but you have to pay the money equal to the difference in levels to them to do that action. The fool here just lets me follow for free. The chariot here says double the value of money that you spend when you're capturing. And there's going to be all sorts of cards. Now, when you level up the common cards or get a tarot card, if you are the highest of that number, you'll put a token on here. But these tokens can be lost. If someone else gets to three in green, they can take this from me. Which means when you get to six, the highest number of the first person is six is likely going to keep that forever. Although there are a couple tarot cards that can take that back. The same thing for each tarot card underneath it. If I have the highest number of that type of underneath that one. So here I have seven. If no one else has a number higher than seven, then I'm going to claim that token. So that's one of the main ways. As you can see, you could have eight tokens here.
Of course, you're fighting everybody else. You can buy fate tokens. And the other way is many of the tarot cards later on, like this one, you pay six to rotate this card 180. Then you pay then after you rotate it 360°, you get a token. Instead, when I lead, discard any three cards of the suit I have this underneath to gain a fate token, etc. So, all these final ones, many of them will give you fate tokens. And like I said, there's two completely different sets that you can put in. You can even mix and match them if you want, as long as you have different numbers in there. First person to get a certain number of fate tokens is the winner.
Okay, first of all, it's interesting in the rule book, Mike, talked a little bit about tarot cards and said that when tarot cards first came out in Italy, they were just cards. people played games of them and it wasn't until like 300 years later that it became mystical in nature on the cards and and I mention that because some people have, you know, a tendency to because tarot cards have that very strong vibe with them now. They're mostly used in movies
to uh show that someone's about to die.
Um because I I think the death card is the one that always gets drawn.
But some people are not going to love the tarot theme. I don't love it myself. Not necessarily because of that background. I just think it looks old and hokey. So, that's a slight negative for me in this game. I don't It doesn't affect me that much, but it was just a thing I was like, man on.
Yeah, I'm I'm kind of ambivalent about the theme. Like, I know that there's a there's a whole I talk about trick- taking games a lot, but there's a whole series of trick-taking games that are played with a tarot deck, too. And I don't think they have any of those kinds of uh other implications. Um, so to me the only the way that the tarot kind of plays in is that they did it seems try to be a little bit thematic as far as what the cards do based on what they're named. But you're right, I have seen some really just gorgeous tarot decks. And I wouldn't say this is the most exciting artistically. Uh, it's okay, but it's a little bit drab. Maybe not quite as colorful and and uh you know vibrant as I've seen other tarot decks, but uh yeah, gameplay is is a different story.
Yeah. So, this is this falls in a category of games and I don't really have a good idea of what to put them that I would say remind me almost of cosmic encounter or a lot of games where there's all different things going on and it feels chaotic and you're attacking other people sort of in this game and and taking control um and and things going off, but there's also a very strong structure to the game. On my turn, I do this. Each person may follow. They may have to pay me or not. and you are trying to control the different types of cards and the tarot cards behind them. Sort of katanesque, the longest road having the the most of something, but also you can buy the tokens. And then in your endgame, your cards give you tokens. So, it definitely has wild swings back and forth and it almost as a chic feel on the surface. I think it's less chaotic underneath.
I agree 100%. It's it's a game that has a lot of interaction, direct interaction, and it can often be negative interaction, but it does not hit me like a lot of other games that have that because the whole kind of flow of the game is just shifting power and it's very easy to track because this is essentially a race game, right? um you're racing to get the the the required number of tokens based on player count and and so you can easily see where everyone's at and that's vitally important because these big fate tokens, they're right there in people's tableau and so you can tell and you could think one person is clearly in the power position and two rounds later that could be completely different.
You could swing from having four tokens to having one.
Right. Absolutely. And so it doesn't feel like necessarily like I'm picking on you. It's just like I need to get fake tokens and I'm going to be obviously going after the people that have them, but it's not like a personal attack. It's more like, okay, I only have one way to get a fate token this round. It happens to be because I'm playing a card that's better than yours, so I'm going to be taking it from you. It It's not quite as directed. It's more like you're constantly looking at where are the pressure points, where are the places where I can feasibly get one or two or even three fate tokens on a turn. Um, you know, and and so it's it doesn't kind of hit me the same way that a lot of negative interaction games do.
Yeah. It's and it's not even necessarily negative interaction. I'm just grabbing the ball you happen to have.
Right. Right. That's a better way to put it. And and yes, if I have a choice, I'm always going to pick the person who is winning the most. But as we saw, that doesn't that doesn't really mean anything, unless they're about to win on their next turn,
right?
Someone else is probably going to steal something from them, too. And it it's mean, but doesn't feel mean. What feels fighty in this game is
the the the actions and having to pay someone as a higher action than you. And so, the game has some really interesting concepts. The high cards are always useful to take because one, they're good to spend to get tarot cards. Two, if you get the high card in one of those, even if you're paying money to skip levels, you and you can only skip one level when you jump a card. But you when when you do get those out, then you can always do that action. You can always follow and it just makes the action better, which is it always feels good to do an upgraded action. But three, sometimes you take a high card just so someone else doesn't have it. And then the tarot cards themselves. And I and I really like that there's two sets in here. It's citadelsesque where you don't get so used to the same cards all the time. They're different and you can switch them in and out. And I think there's a lot of replayability because of that.
Yeah. And I think it's also vitally important that they kind of um tiered those cards so you've got kind of the first half of the game with very distinct colored backs. So, you know, because the game wouldn't really work well otherwise. If you just had a full random deck and the 21 card is coming out in the second round, it wouldn't make any real sense. So, I think it's good that they did it that way. But, you also can't guarantee within that stack. You just know that um you know, you've got kind of the first half in the first deck and the second half in the second deck, but they could come out and the order that they come they come out could be very impactful. Um, yeah, it's just it's one of those games that um surprised me with once I got the structure of how it worked and it's not terribly complex. You immediately start to see the cleverness in there and how things to me felt very balanced. Like every one of those tarot cards could be potentially very powerful depending upon what potential strategies you're going for. and and and so, you know, it was this thing where you always wanted every tarot card out there. You wanted every tarot card that somebody else had.
Everybody wanted the tarot cards that you had. All of these powers feel impactful and fun to pull off when you can when you can really make them work to your advantage.
Yeah, it almost reminds me again I mentioned cosmic encounter, but all the powers feel imbalanced or at least the ones you don't have. If I have it, it's perfectly fair and legit,
but it also kind of balances the game out. I will say I've not tried this with two, but I it's also the kind of game I would prefer to play with three or more just to have that fun back and forth between everybody.
Yeah, I agree. I think I think that's I didn't play it at two, so I can't speak to it, but but it does feel like the kind of game that's going to do better at at least three or more.
What would you give it, Mike?
So, this one is is tough. I'm gonna give it an eight. I'm I'm really really right on the edge of of taking it up to an 8.5, but I'm gonna I'm gonna put it at an eight. Um, but it's super clever. Uh, it's a game that really I think might fly under the radar and I kind of hope it doesn't. Look, you know, it's out there, folks. If this looks interesting to you, you really should try it out because I think that it does feel unique. It it has some things that feel like classic card games with powers, but it also has something that's fresh. Um, I like the the fact that you've got kind of this follow thing in there, but that can potentially uh, you know, it's like I really want to follow, but I got to pay the person. Really neat pressure points and decisions throughout the game. And it plays, I think, at a very reasonable amount of time for what's happening as well. So, an eight for me, but right on the edge.
Yeah, I'm also actually that's the exact same rating for me, an eight. And my knocking it down is just the fact that this theme doesn't do anything for me.
Soothsayers. I I get the I get there the theme of hey, I'm attacking these tarot cards. That's kind of cool. It just looks okay on the table. But I will say graphic designwise. I thought it worked. Yeah.
Easy to do the the the symbols, understand them,
and it also doesn't overstay its welcome. And it really ramps up at the beginning. You're like, "Oh, I'm just getting to do some small action, so I'm going to increase this action. Look how great that action is. Oh, your action got better, too. Okay." And then the tarot cards again that gives you that power no one else has. Feels pretty good. you're like, well, I can pay less money to upgrade my cards or I can follow any suit. Haha. So, a lot of fun things in it. So, definitely worth checking out. That is Soothsayers Captured the Tarot by Jeff Grienweight. Um, I'm Tom Vassel.
I'm Mike Leio.
And we want to do a quick shout out to some of our game found backers. Thank you to Victoria Julian and Cisco Olivera, Patricio Smart, a South African archaeologist, and Joe Biz and Marlene Basil. Thank you guys for supporting our game found and thank you all for watching.
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