Sometimes you just gotta fly high in life and today we are going to look at a new card game that will allow you to do just that! So let’s all pile in the hot air balloons, lose everything holding us down and sail to victory!
Sandbag is the newest game from Bezier Games designed by Ted Alspach and art by Greg Bartlett. The game plays 3-6 players in approximately 30 mins.
Overview:
Sandbag is a trick taking game with a twist-you want to avoid taking tricks as much as possible and the end goal is to be the player with the fewest points.
Gameplay:
In Sandbag players will take all of the cards based on the amount of players and shuffle them together and then deal out the whole deck evenly to each player. Each player passes a card to the left sided neighbor and then each player puts exactly three cards face down in front of them. The front two are turned face up simultaneously and then the game begins!
The player with the highest trump color starts and plays one card to the center. They can take one from their hand, their face down sandbags or they may play a face up card from a basket in front of another player. Next player must follow suit or may play something else if they don’t have that color. Facedown sandbag cards are kept face down and never win a trick. Rockets are minus points so they are ones you want!
The trump color is the color on the most face-up cards in player’s baskets at the end of the trick. So this can shift and change based on what is played during the turn. If there is a tie, the highest sum of the tied cards is trump. If there is still a tie, all tied colors are now trump. If all cards are face down there is no trump color.
On any player’s turn they may play a card from in front of another player with one from their hand. That new card is played immediately. However a player may not swap for a balloon card that is not the led color if they have more than one card of the led color in their hand. You must always play a card of the led color if they have it unless they are swapping for a rocket card or a balloon card of the same color.
After each player has played a card the player who played the highest number of the lead color wins the trick. If any trump cards are played the highest number will win. Players will take the book and put it in a face-down pile. These represent unwanted sandbag points. A round ends when all players have played all cards. At the end of the round players take one point for each face-down balloon card and score negative points based on any rocket cards they have.
Points are totaled and players play an addition 2 rounds getting a benefit based on every 10 points they have scored. The game ends after three rounds and the player with the lowest score wins!
Impressions:
I also really liked the movement of trump suite and cards in general in this game. You really need to pay attention as to where things are going and how people are moving their cards around. It’s a game you definitely will see all players keeping engagement throughout and for some of us that is a very important factor.
One thing to keep in mind is with all of the switching of trump and movement of cards the state of the game changes a lot and it is something you really need to keep tabs on so for some younger players or those who don’t track everything well this might be a harder part of the game for them. So keep that in mind based on your players around the table.
Overall this is a game we have seen at a few different player counts and have enjoyed the new approach it takes to trick taking. Colorful and well-designed, Sandbag is going to find a home on my shelf of card games for quite some time. I would recommend you check the game one out this summer when we see it at Origins Game Fair!
I admire how you tackle complex issues with such clarity.