1224: The Clue is ‘Tits’

I’m away on an (almost) full weekend of board gaming fun as I write this. Today we were particularly pleased that we actually managed to finish a complete game of Mage Knight — albeit the “quick” scenario, which still took from 10am until 6pm. (Granted, we did go out to the pub and have lunch halfway through, but still.)

What I really wanted to talk about today, though, was an interesting little game I picked up having heard it was good, but not really knowing a great deal about it. That game is Dixit, and I can see now why it’s so highly-regarded by many gaming groups.

Here’s the gist. You’re dealt a hand of six oversized cards, each of which depicts some gorgeous storybook-style imagery that doesn’t necessarily tie in with a specific concept — instead, they’re all deliberately ambiguous. The reason for this is that it’s up to the players to come up with descriptions for them.

Each turn, the player assigned as the “storyteller” must secretly pick a card from their hand, then lay it face-down on the table. They must then describe it using a word, sentence, phrase or even guttural noise, at which point the other players at the table pick the card from their hands that they think most closely fits the storyteller’s description. The submitted cards are then jumbled up and revealed, and everyone except the storyteller has to secretly vote on which one they think was the original card. If either everyone or no-one gets it right (indicating that the storyteller was either too obvious/specific or too vague respectively) then the storyteller scores no points, while everyone else scores two points plus another one per vote that was on their card. If at least one person got the storyteller’s card right, both they and the storyteller get three points each, and the other players still get one point per vote on their card.

Play then proceeds until you’ve exhausted the deck, at which point whoever has the highest score wins.

It’s a really interesting game. The mechanics are super-simple and for some groups it might be kind of a hard sell, because it sounds like fluffy filler with no real substance. And perhaps in some respects it is. But on the other hand, it’s also an extremely clever game about bluffing, misdirection and understanding the people who are sitting at the table with you. As storyteller, your ideal approach to your turn is to play a card and make an appropriate reference that only one other person at the table — preferably the person in last place — will get. Too obvious and you’ll score nothing; not obvious enough and, again, you’ll score nothing. It’s a fine line.

Where the strategy of the game, such as it is, comes in is in the combination of playing appropriate cards and giving appropriate clues while simultaneously getting your head around how the other players are playing. Do they tend to make literal references? Do they try and be deliberately obtuse? Are they obviously trying to pander to someone else’s sensibilities? In short, can you figure out how they think?

It may sound like a somewhat flimsy premise for a game, but we played two full games this evening and it became clear very quickly that you could spot patterns in people’s behaviour and adjust your own play style accordingly — while the mechanics are simple, the real complexity of Dixit comes in reading your fellow players and determining what they’re likely to do next. Knowing the people at the table obviously helps, as this enables you to describe a card using carefully-selected words or phrases that will mean something to some, but not all of the people you’re playing against.

I was very pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable the game was, and I’m looking forward to playing it again sometime — its simple nature means that it’s particularly well-suited to both those who are unfamiliar with more complex board games as well as established gaming groups who are looking for something a little “lighter” between bouts of Power Grid or Agricola.