In Front of the Elevators

EvEvanstar4,6

This is a very cute filler card game. Each player gets a hand of 2 cards. The board has three elevator lines, each with one starting card behind it. On your turn you play one of your cards to one of the lines. Each card has a picture on it showing the type of card it is, and the type of card it cuts in front of in line. Additionally, if ever three cards of the same picture are placed in a line, all three get removed and are worth 1vp to the player that took them at the end of the round. At the end of the game, the lines get cropped at an amount determined by the elevator card at the front of the line. Then VP is awarded to the players with the largest amount going to whoever is in the back of the line (since thematically they'll be the one to get off the elevator first). To make things even more tense, each elevator also as two types of cards that are worth double their value. One of the most interesting things about this game is that the cards matching all the player's colors are shuffled, so often everyone has everyone else's cards in their hand. I would not want to play this game with someone expert at card counting. You go through the whole deck each round, so in theory during that last round you would be able to see the color of each card in your opponent's hands, and know exactly what cards they have remaining. We didn't play with card counters in our game, so the last plays each round were still delightfully uncertain. I'd love to get the chance to play this some more. I'm very impressed at the magic that was created here with the simple idea of suites of cards that tr*mp each other. My only minor complaint about the game is that early round plays wind up being largely irrelevant. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ★ Multiple plays stay interesting ★ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★★☆☆☆ Raw enjoyment