Take Time review (review copy provided)

Hey everybody, this is Mike with the OneStop Co-op Shop and today I'm reviewing Take Time, the one to four player cooperative deduction game. And disclaimer that I got a review copy of this one. In Take Time, you progress through a series of increasingly challenging envelopes of tests. Each test being a little clock that has six spaces going around.

And the players take 12 cards out of a 24 card deck, dividing it between themselves, and they take turns playing cards around the clock, trying to match several rules that are unique to each clock, as well as having the numbers increase as they go around, but the majority of the cards are played face down to make that challenge extra fun.

So, let's discuss five key things to know about take time. Starting with my number five point, which is the least important to know, but still important I wouldn't mention. is the discussion phase. And this is a mix for my tastes. So before you play each test and before you look at the cards that are actually in your hand, the players get to have a discussion of what they plan to do.

Things like if you have a card of this value, you should play first or we should try to put cards of these values in these spots and these values in these spots. It helps to give some reference points as the cards are laid out so you can better coordinate your efforts. And if you lose a test and try it again, you can reflect upon what went wrong and try to avoid the disasters.

But at the same time, as I'll discuss later, sometimes your discussions won't actually apply to the real situation because you don't know the values you're going to be dealt. And at least in my experience, some players just won't know what to say. So, it's uh still nice to have it as an option, but not always effective to actually help the groups be successful.

My number four point, though, is a full-on pro, and that is the replay value in the game. because first of all, they have just a ton of tests, but even within a given test, the card draw luck is enough of a randomizing factor that you can play them over and over without uh having things play out the exact same way.

And then without spoiling anything specific, they have an envelope at the end after you played everything that gives all the previous envelopes even more challenge and replay value. So, there's just a lot of deductive cooperative goodness in here if you keep on playing. My number three point focuses on the face up plays you get during each hand, and this is a pro for my taste.

So based on player count, you'll have two, three, or four face up cards you can play. So as the players are taking turns putting out their cards, players can choose to put one of them face up. And this is a great little strategy addition because you have to ask yourself, when is it important for me to play a card face up?

How am I going to help the other players? Am I asking for help? Am I trying to set a base value that everyone else has to follow or match? And this is the main difficulty modifier because whenever you fail a test, you can play it again, but with an extra face up card play added in, which in my experience, because we're not great at the game, has not always been enough to beat some of the tests.

But it is a nice strategic layer to the play, and it does certainly make things easier if you're really struggling against one particular level. But my number two point is a big con for the game. Almost ruins it for me, and it might ruin it for you as well. And that's the luck of the draw for the numbers coming from the deck.

Now, I want to be clear, we're not great at the game. Maybe this is group think. I've played this with several different groups and none of them have done very well, but maybe we just suck. But there is a ton of card draw luck in which 12 out of the 24 cards are in the player's hands cuz these cards go all the way from one to 12 in each color.

And we've had many hands where we ended up with almost all values on the higher range of things in the 11 tens and twelves or on the lower end of things, ones, twos, and threes. And that drastically changes how your cards need to play out to keep them ascending and match the test's requirement. But you don't know that.

All you get to see are the four or fewer cards in your hand. So you have no idea if it's a really low value thing for everybody or if you're just the one who happen to get a bunch of low values in your hand. And yes, sometimes the face up cards can help with that. You can kind of glean what somebody's hand might look like.

But this is the main point of frustration we had with the game because we would keep on losing because we were using strategies for low cards and we had high cards. We're using strategies for high cards, we had low cards. To explain this in another way with a game that's also very popular and has a lot of similar feels to this one, it's kind of like if you were playing Bomb Busters, but you didn't know which values 1 through 12 were actually in the game with the wires.

Like you're trying to pair up with sixes and no sixes exist. It can be a little bit frustrating. But I am going to end on a positive note with my number one, the most important thing to know, and that is the variety in the test and the envelopes because they go to really wild places with these. And this is just on your first playthrough without adding in the extra stuff.

The first two envelopes are sort of tutorializing and giving you the basic rules, but then the later envelopes each add in some main mechanic that drastically changes how you have to approach the test, how you have to approach your play. They are not by any means easy, and we have been dominated by a lot and has had to skip many of them.

Like I said, I'm not great at the game, but that doesn't mean that we didn't appreciate how varied and wild and fun these strategic puzzles became. So, overall, you might want to try Take Time if you like cooperative limited communication deduction games. Things like Hannabi and Bomb Busters. Those are probably the closest comparisons.

But on the other hand, if your game group is anything like mine, you might want to avoid this one if you're going to get frustrated with bad luck tanking your plays or if you don't want to try the same test over and over again because that's often required to advance. Thanks for watching everybody.