Review – Claim

Two-player trick-taking games are odd ducks.

I mean, not Cobra Chicken odd ducks.

Nothing compares to them.

But they are odd in their own way.

They always have to have some kind of neat twist because otherwise it’s just two players laying down cards for no apparent reason.

Who loves doing things for no apparent reason?

(Points two thumbs at myself)

This guy.

But not when I’m playing a game.

Sometimes it’s certain cards having unique abilities, or maybe even some interesting win condition, like The Fox in the Forest, where you only want to win a certain number of tricks and if you take too many, you will lose.

Claim is another one of those odd ducks, and it is really great for what it is.

Designed by Scott Almes, with artwork by Scott and Mihajlo Dimitrievski, the game was published by White Goblin Games and Deep Water Games (and many others!) in 2017.

And oh my god, looking at both of those web sites, there are so many expansions out for this game!

What’s a trick-taking game?

I actually explain this in my Friday Night Shots post about trick-taking games, so you can go there to see.

How does Claim work as a trick-taking game?

Let’s take a look.

So what’s the twist?

There are five “suits” in the game…but they’re not all equal or score the same way.

That’s not much of a twist, though.

The big twist is that there are two rounds in the game.

In the first round, you both are playing a trick to win the card that’s face-up on the table.

So in the picture above, the 5 Undead card is up for grabs. The 4 Undead was led but the other player couldn’t follow suit, so the 0 Goblin was played.

4 Undead wins!

They take the 5 Undead and set it aside.

This card will contribute to their second round hand.

The loser of the trick draws a card and that card will contribute to their second round hand.

Yes, the first round is played just to create your hand for the second round!

Then the second round is played, and you’re just trying to collect cards to your score pile by playing cards and winning tricks the same way.

Of course, this is a modern day trick-taking game, so you know there’s more to it than that, right?

Four of the five suits have some kind of special effect or power. Only the lowly goblins don’t, and isn’t that just like goblins anyway?

Take the Undead.

Please.

(Sorry, very old joke)

In the first round, you aren’t taking cards to your score pile. The played cards just get discarded.

Except the Undead.

They go to the score pile immediately, so you have to be careful when playing them in that round.

You don’t want to give your opponent extra points by sloughing off an Undead card when you can’t follow suit.

The Dwarves’ ability happens in the second round, and it’s not really an ability but an effect.

Dwarves always go to the losing player’s score pile in the second round.

Thus, they make great sloughing material in that round.

(Wait, that didn’t sound right).

The winner of the trick still leads the next one, but they don’t get the Dwarves.

Knights will always beat a Goblin, no matter the value, so it’s a way for winning a trick even if you can’t follow suit.

If a Goblin was led, anyway.

Doppelgangers (the ones on the bottom of the left column in the pic above) are always the same suit as what was led, so another way you can win a trick if you can’t follow suit.

At the end of the game, each player totals how many of each faction in their score pile. Whoever has the majority in the most factions wins!

The artwork on these cards is amazing, which is why I’m posting a ton of pictures of them.

It’s also very portable, coming in a very small box. There’s nothing preventing you from putting them in a card tuck box, except that it probably wouldn’t save you much space.

The game itself is a lot of fun. It’s quick and easy, taking something like 10 minutes to play most of the time.

Yes, it’s a card game, and like all trick-taking games, it’s very luck-dependent and depends on the cards you draw.

But there are definitely decisions to be made, especially when deciding what to lead and what to slough off.

Did you really want to short suit yourself on one of the factions?

That means you most likely won’t win that faction! Unless you somehow get the lead and get dominant on a faction your opponent doesn’t have a lot of.

If you don’t like luck in your games, you won’t like this one at all.

But it’s only 10 minutes, a great way to spend a little down time in between other games while you are waiting for others to finish, or maybe whiling away some time in between game demo sessions, which is where I learned it (and played a ton of it) with my friend Sean from Thing 12 Games.

If you’re looking for a game with a lot of substance and depth, this isn’t it.

But if you’re looking for an enjoyable time between two players, with some laughter and some groaning because you got stuck playing your high dwarf to win a trick and thus losing both dwarves to your opponent, this is your game!

Claim is a real winner in my book.

Now to see if I can track down the sold out everywhere expansions.

(This review was written after 5 plays)