Bested Another Time: My Favorite Mechanism
Transcript
Hey, I'm Jamie from Stonemire Games and today I'm going to talk about my favorite mechanism in the game Bested Another Time designed by Taylor Riner and Sai Beu. It looks like this. This is a card shedding game, small box card shedding game with a really neat twist that I had a blast playing around with when I played recently. Um, so you get this big hand of cards. I don't know the exact number, but it's a big hand of cards and your goal is to get rid of all of those cards. You get points based on how many cards are left in the opponent's hands when you get rid of all those cards. And you get rid of those cards by playing them onto the table uh based on what the previous player has played. So if uh if a player leads off with a pair of twos, then the next player uh needs to play uh a higher pair. They have to stick with a pair and they need to pay play a higher pair. And uh the game does a clever thing where it can reset if in that pair situation if I play a pair of uh of zeros it resets down to the bottom number. Um and you can only do that I believe when you when someone else has played 15s. So little little nuances there. My favorite mechanism though is the way that uh what you get when you pass. So oftent times in these games when you pass it is when you're unable to play a card for example or you don't want to um in this pair situation if there's a pair of 14s and I don't have a pair of 15s to play I have to pass. Um or even lower down on that pair of twos I might decide okay well I have four of a kind. I'm going to save that rather than playing that as uh as a as a pair of fives. Say um you can pass.
And usually in this type of game when you pass, it's just a bad thing. You pass even though it was essentially down to the luck of the cards that you were given. This game gives you a great decision and a little bonus, a little almost a a temporary level up when you pass. And that is in these cards down here. So when you pass, you are out for for that not the entire hand, but that that phase of the game because eventually probably within this hand, all players will have to pass. they're not going to be able to play cards and and you'll then uh go back in and and start to play some more cards. Um when you pass, you get to choose one of these pass cards. So, for example, when I pass, I could say I could claim this lead next card. So, I could say that means when when everyone has passed out of this this uh this round, then I get to lead next. Or I could choose this wild. This is a wild card. It could be whatever I want. So, I can turn that five of that four of a kind into a five of a kind if I want. Um, this is a pass or bet card. So, there is a betting mechanism in the game where you can bet on other players to go out first, which I think is a neat addition. Um, and these are dual cards. This is a bet or a wild. This is a pass card or a bet. So, you can pass a card to another player.
You can add a card. You can get rid of a card from your hand and give it to another another player. I love these cards. These are so much fun. Uh, they add just that extra. They they make they make passing fun in a circumstance where normally you don't feel good about passing in a shedding game. They make it fun because you are deciding how how you're going to what you're going to do. Oftentimes in the next round, there's even one that happens right away. Uh I think this is really really clever in a in a card shedding game. And uh yeah, I I just really really enjoyed this mechanism. If you can think of a similar me mechanism to this and another shedding game or another or another game that takes something that is usually bad and makes it good. I guess a slight comparison would be to worker placement games where you have to use turns to retrieve your workers or they actually make that fun where they do something fun with that retrieve phase. Uh that would be another example but you might have other examples to mention in the comments where game takes something that is normally not fun and makes it a great decision and even a great timing decision in the case of uh bested another time. Yeah. So, let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks.