One Percent: The Card Game

With Christmas just behind us I have to share my thoughts on one boardgame that made the last holidays much more enjoyable for me, my friends, my family, my cat and a few random people I stressed about this game in a boardgame cafe. The game is “One Percent” (“1%”) and it is designed by Luke Melia from Iconiq Studios.

Overall, One Percent is a fast card game of strategy and probability that also includes elements of pushing your luck and player misdirection. The concept of the game is pretty simple: in order to win you just need to roll 100 with two 10-sided dice, meaning you need to roll a “0” on both dice. As all RPG players and Math geeks have already thought, this means that each player has only 1% chances to win hence the name of the game. To make things more interesting, players compete in rounds to win both the possibility to roll the above mentioned dice and to score rewards that can increase their chance to win. Intrigued? Let’s see how the game plays!

What’s Inside The Box? Components

One Percent comes in a very compact and portable box. Inside, you will find two decks of cards and two d10 dice together with a few reference cards and a rulebook. The first deck is composed by Reward Cards, each showing one single digit on a d10 dice. There are also 3 special cards that trigger some special effects as you will see in the next session.

The other deck includes 50 “Play Cards” or just “Cards” depicting one of five different suits (Bolts, Stars, Sharks, Comets and Clovers) and a number from one to five. I initially though the five suits were selected just to have some ease in differentiating coloured icons but they were actually picked as they are all associated with lower than 1% chances. As mentioned on the sides of the box for example, “the chance of a comet hitting Earth is 0.00003%” and “the chance of finding a 4-leaf clover is 0.0001%” etc. This is actually a very smart and very thematic choice.

The fun continues in the rulebook that is filled with fun statistical facts and humorous quotes to make this game even more enjoyable. The rulebook itself is very detailed and rules are explained very clearly with the aid of a lot of diagrams and examples that makes learning this game extremely fast and painless.

Overall, the game components are of very high quality and there is a lot of value for your money in this little box. The cards are clearly the main components and they are very sturdy and well designed. Everything is explained on the cards and colours and icons are easily recognizable. I am also pleased that you only need to hold three cards each round, so that even younger players can manage their hand without issues.

Among other things, I was very pleased to find an insert into the box to hold the cards and the dice. I was not expecting any to be fair taking in account the very affordable price of this game although I would have preferred it could hold sleeved cards. It is clearly a personal choice and in this case there is no actual need to sleeve the cards considering they are of very good quality but I would have preferred the insert was designed with this in mind.

How Many Times Do I Roll The Dice? Gameplay

The game setup is pretty quick as you can start right after each player gets three Cards and three random Reward Cards are placed face up in the centre of the table.

All players must then roll 2d10 and sum-up the result as the player with the lower score will go first. Fun fact: if any player rolls 100 (“0” and “0”) they automatically win the game and you can move to play a second game right away! There is no need to re-distribute the cards etc but if you are keeping the score (or you love game stats) that’s one more win for someone. Once the first player determined, the game can start.

One Percent is then played in round each comprising a “Play Phase” and a “Reward Phase”. In the play phase, every player starting with the first player must call a number and one of the five suits that are shown on the cards. This action is called “make a prediction” as players need to try to guess the minimum amount of a certain suit considering the cards hold by all players. For example, the first player may say “10 clovers” if they think there are a total of at least 10 clovers in play.

Players can say whatever number they prefer as far is higher than the number predicted by the previous player. However, they are not bound to use the same suit or a suit they have in hand. Following the previous example, the second player can say “11 Clovers” or “11 Bolts” or “23 Comets” as they are all acceptable options. The key aspect of this phase is that players can both try to make a reasonable and statistically sound prediction or they can try to trick their opponents.

Instead of making a prediction, a player can declare that the previous player prediction is false by “calling” it (i.e. there are not 10 clovers in game). Once a player “calls” the previous player prediction, all other players will have to decide to either agree with the prediction or to side with the player saying that the prediction was false. Once all players have taken a side, they all reveal their hand and sum-up the suit to check the prediction. The players who judged wrongly are eliminated, new cards are distributed and another play phase starts till there is just one player left.

The last player standing will then move to the “Reward Phase” in which they can pick 3 rewards choosing any combination of the 3 Reward cards on the table and the possibility to roll the 2d10. Initially all players can only win by rolling two “0” but as the game progresses, they may also win by rolling any number shown on their reward cards. The more the Reward cards a player owns therefore, the easy is to win. Once a players rolls a winning combination the game is over.

The Game Is Over And We Are All Laughing – Final Thoughts

Overall, I think One Percent is very elegant and enjoyable game. The rules are simple enough to be grasped quickly by everyone, even people who don’t play any board game on the regular, and the components are very well thought and of good quality. Moreover, the game can be played in a many different ways so that each round feels very unique and can offer various type of challenges. Players can decide to strongly push their luck or focus on misleading their opponents or even try to guess the opponent strategy depending on their predictions. I lost count of how many “OHHHH” and “AHHHH” we shared once all cards were revealed after someone called a prediction. In all cases, there is a lot of excitement in finding out if you were right or not and a lot of fun for all players. I noticed that you have fun in witnessing the fierce battle between players for the precious Reward Cards even when you are eliminated and need to sit out for a round or more.

The reward drawing process after the Play Phase is also really cool and it reminds me a bit of an engine building game. In fact, players have to decide if they want to invest in Reward Cards to have more possibility to win in the future of if they just want to roll the dice and take a chance. This is not a trivial dilemma as you still need to win a round in order to get more opportunities to roll the dice and exploit the additional cards you got in previous rounds. Overall, the Reward phase feels a challenge by itself as you need to decide how much you want to push your luck and how confident you are you can win more rounds in the future.

Last but not least, I should mention that the game also plays very quickly making this game a nice filler for your play sessions or giving the possibility to play it a few times even when you don’t have a lot of time. It also does not require complex reasoning or strategic planning making this game enjoyable at any time and in a lot of occasions. Of course, this game is designed to maximize player to player interaction thus it gets better and better at increasing number of players. I found it can be a bit less fun with just 2 players but once you get to three players or more it becomes a great party game.

That concludes our thoughts on One Percent. Do you agree? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames. To buy One Percent today click here!