Fool Review

This is another card game by one of my favourites, Friedmann Friese. We find it handy to have a stack of card games to teach the wider members of our family so that we are not destined to repeat the joys of Uno again and again. Some people may be aware that this is a remake of the card game Foppen, released in 1995. This new addition allows for additional players (up to eight).

Gameplay

This game is fun – who wouldn’t want an excuse to legitimately call a member of their family a fool. The aim is to get rid of all of your cards. Each deal is called a trick, you don’t need to win the trick, but you do want to get rid of a card and not be the fool. The fool is the one with the lowest card in the trick. It means that they sit out the next round – and lose the opportunity to play a card.

The set up and cards dealt depends on the number of players. The cards are broken into five colours – blue, yellow, orange, green and white cards.  There are varying amounts of cards for each colour.

Whoever leads the trick plays a card– and this becomes the lead card. Going clockwise each person then plays a card, preferably of the same colour – you want to be the highest card to lead the next trick or not the lowest to be a fool and sit out a trick. If you don’t have a card of the same colour you can play a white card. This immediately becomes a “1” of the lead colour. You can also play a card of another colour (shedding a colour) – hoping someone has lower number than you of a colour other than the lead colour.

You may think that is a clear as mud but actually game play is quite straight forward and there are some examples in the instructions so you can get the hang of determining the worst card.

The first person to have played all their cards wins the round. There is then a scoring system to follow so you must still establish who the fool of that trick is.

If you have cards in your hand you score the sum of the face value of your cards in negative points. For each “1” you get five negative points. If you have emptied your hand you get 10 plus points. However, if you have emptied your hand but have ended up the fool you get zero points for that round.

Of course you can determine how many rounds you play but officially the game ends when someone has reached -80 points, or when the score of 10 positive points has been reached six times or more by any or all players.

The person with the most points ultimately wins.

Component quality

These are adequate, we spent a while looking for the set up card for three players until we realised that this is on the instruction sheet. There are cards for any other number of players.

The pictures on the cards remind me of the game Beetle Drive if anyone else is also old enough to remember it!

Replay-ability

Fun, fast and furious it’s a good group game that is suitable for non-game players.

Player interaction

Lots of shouting. Lots of attempts to actually get the lowest amount of points and declare yourself the winner or the losers. It is definitely one that gets communication going of all kinds.

Engagement

It is fairly interactive as you need to watch the actions of the group in each trick. As the cards get laid you can see how the hand is going and adjust accordingly. If you get to lead the next trick you can essentially drain people of the colour cards of your choice.