Whether it is coins, keys, clover or rabbit feet, there are many items that, according to ancient superstitions, bring you luck and maybe even protect you from evil. You merely need to wear them around your neck or on a bracelet and their magic becomes active. Collectively, these items are known as Charms by Taiki Shinzawa from New Mill Industries.
Traditional Trick-Taking
If you know me, you know that I love trick-taking games. The genre is one of my favourite types of games. If I had the time, I would play them constantly. There are so many different types of trick-taking games available now, it is really mind-boggling. However, many of the new trick-taking games are based on traditional trick-taking principles.
If you know anything about trick-taking games, you will probably know that they are based on a deck of cards, where each card has a certain suit, or colour, and a numeric or similar value. Many of you will have seen a standard deck of cards, so you will know what I’m talking about.
Players get dealt a certain number of cards and taking turns, everyone plays a single card face up into the centre of the table, often according to specific rules. Once everyone has played their card, the cards in the middle are evaluated to see who played the “highest” card. What that means depends on the specific trick-taking game you play, but what gives these card games their name is that the set of cards in the centre is called a trick. The player who played the highest value card wins the trick and it’s usually them who starts the next round.
You keep playing tricks, usually until all the cards have been played. That’s pretty much it. Most trick-taking games follow this type of approach, but of course, there are variations.
Trick-Taking With a Twist
Charms mixes things up a bit. Instead of a deck of cards where every card has a suit and a value, there are two decks of cards, one of which is just values and another which is just suits. You shuffle both decks together and deal out a number of cards to every player.
Instead of playing cards into the centre of the table, everyone plays cards in front of them. For the very first trick, everyone plays two cards: a suit and a value. The two cards combined define what each player has played. So if I play a key, which is one of the suits in Charms, and a 3, I’ve effectively played a 3 of keys.
In all subsequent tricks, everyone only plays a single card: either a suit card or a value card. So if I play a coin on top of the key, I now have a 3 of coins in front of me. Or instead, I could keep the key and replace the 3 with a 5 and end up with a 5 of keys. So every trick I only change one “half” of what I have in front of me.
That very simple change of the traditional trick-taking approach already makes for a very interesting game all by itself. For people, like myself, who are used to traditional trick-taking games, the idea that your hand of cards is quite fluid takes some time to get used to. If I want to, I can make all my value cards the same suit or I could keep the value card in front of me unchanged and keep changing the suit. The ability to make your hand of cards more malleable is super fascinating and gives people well-versed in traditional trick-taking games a lot to ponder.
Bidding
Like in some traditional trick-taking games, there is also a bidding round in Charms. Before a hand starts, everyone has to decide how many tricks they’re going to score. If you get it spot on, you score zero points, but for every trick you’re above or below your bid, you lose a point. Of course, the player with the most points at the end of a certain number of hands wins. So you want to make sure you lose no or only very few points.
As a traditional trick-taking player, you will have a feeling as to how many tricks your hand will allow you to win. However, your bid is public. So if you bid low and reach the number of tricks you predicted, other players might intentionally let you win more tricks to give you negative points. Similarly, if you bid high, other players will try and stop you from winning that many tricks.
Charms often changes from a completely competitive game into a temporarily cooperative one as players work together to ensure someone else goes above or below their bid by a good margin. However, everyone also needs to ensure they reach their bid and don’t miss it by too many tricks or they will lose points themselves.
Additionally, the temporary team-game nature of Charms means that people who aren’t well-versed trick-takers can join forces with more experienced players, even if it is for only a few tricks.
So that very simple mechanism creates another level of interest and player interaction. Because your hand of cards is quite fluid, you can sometimes switch things around and interfere with another player’s plans while still allowing yourself to reach the goal you need yourself.
Simply Charming
So, yes, Charms is a very charming trick-taking game. It might not be the right game for people who have never played card games of this genre before, but it isn’t actually too hard to explain and learn. What I love about it is that it is a brilliant game to introduce to people who have many years behind them regularly playing traditional trick-taking games.
It didn’t take too long to convince my father and my brother, who I would call experts in a number of traditional German trick-taking games, to play Charms. Even my niece, who has a good understanding of trick-taking games, but isn’t an avid player by any means, got into it really quickly. In fact, she liked it so much that I lent it to her to play with her friends.
I think that’s probably the best recommendation I can give Charms. It’s the perfect game to give experienced trick-taking players a new challenge. It took a few hands for my dad and brother to work out how to approach the game. Some of the strategies they learned over decades of playing traditional German trick-taking games simply didn’t work or at the very least needed adapting.
For me though, I not only loved playing the game, but I enjoyed watching my family deep in thought, laughing out loud and cursing each other as we did our best to win our own bids and stop others from winning theirs. It definitely worked a charm!
Useful Links
Transparency Facts
I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way.
- I bought and paid for the game myself.
- At the time of writing, neither the designers, nor the publisher, nor anyone linked to the game supported me financially or by payment in kind.
Audio Version
Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.
Music: Nu Fornacis by Blue Dot Sessions
Playlist
These are the songs I listened to while I was writing this review:
