Justice Card Game Review

Justice

WBG Score: 7/10

Player Count: 3-5

You’ll like this if you like: The fusion of trick taking and Deduction.

Published by: Dragon Dawn Productions

Designed by: Tony Cotterill, Ren Multamäki

This is a free review copy. See our review policy here.

Dragon Dawn are a Finish publisher who make a fair few games about Dwarves. And a fair few using trick-taking. This is their latest release, a trick-taking card game set in the same world as a 2021 release Factory 42, an industrial worker placement game about Dwarves. But this time, it's about Gnomes. No, only joking. It's about Dwarves. Of course it's about Dwarves. Machiavellian Dwarves, none-the-less. It's a deeply thematic trick-taker that incorporates deduction, tableau-building, and variable player powers. Intriguing concept isn't it? Well, let's get it to the table and see how it plays.

How To Set Up Justice

Place the main board in the middle of the table and then gather all the cards. There are seven decks in total: the Crime and Crime Definition deck, the Suspect, Identity, and Liability deck, the Reaction card deck, and finally the main deck of four suits made up of red Evidence cards, blue Testimony cards, pink Rosettes cards, and green Witness cards.

For a three-player game, remove the suit and reaction cards with a value of three and below. Then shuffle each deck separately, except for the four suits and reaction cards that you will shuffle together into one deck. Unless you want a simpler game for your first experience, in which case you can leave the reaction cards out.

Deal one Liability card into each of the three Suspect slots on the main board. Deal these face down. These cards either say "Guilty" or "Not Guilty." Next, deal face up one Suspect card on top of each of these face-down Liability cards. Remove the remaining Liability and Suspect cards from the game back into the box.

Next, deal one Crime and Crime Definition card face up into the slots at the bottom of the board. Or top, depending on where you are seated. Read these cards aloud. The Crime card is just flavour text. The Crime Definition card sets the tone for this round.

Finally, give each player two Soulgaze tokens placed on the blank side up along with one Identify card. These cards should be kept secret from the other players and set each player's own unique goals and scoring options for the round. Each player should note their goal for this round.

For the first round, the first player is chosen at random. After the first round, the first player is determined by the player with the lowest points, who can choose whomever they wish, including themselves. You are now ready to play.

How To Play Justice

Deal out twelve cards to each player from the main suit (and Reaction deck, if included). Then, either each player discards two cards to form a hand of ten cards, or players can instead draft their hands. Each player will keep four cards from their initial hand of twelve, then pass the remaining eight to the player to their left. Then choose four more cards from these eight, and pass the remaining four cards. Finally, each player chooses two cards to discard from the final set of four cards, leaving them with ten cards.

The starting player will then play one card from their hand. You cannot lead with a Reaction card. Each other player must then take one of two actions. Either they can play a card from their own hand following the same suit as the first card played, if they have one of course. If you cannot, you can play any card you wish, including a card from the Trump suit for that round, as determined during setup.

Or, if you choose not to play a card from your hand, you can instead play one of your two Soulgaze tokens if you have any remaining. This means you will have more remaining cards and options for later rounds. But also, you can look at the hidden Liability card behind one of the three Suspects. You can pick either one of the three. You must keep this information secret from the other players. You will also score one point when you play your token in this way. Flip your token to the star side to represent this token is spent, and now worth a point.

After a card or Soulgaze token is played, anyone can play one of their Reaction cards, if they are in the game, and if they were dealt or drafted any. Reaction cards can only be played onto another card of the same value. Playing a Reaction card in this way turns the previously played card into a Trump. You cannot play a Reaction card onto a Trump card. Any player can play a Reaction card. You can play one onto the card you played yourself or onto the last card played by another player. This isn't limited to the player sitting next to you. As such, the rules suggest you give a few seconds between playing each card to allow other players to play a Reaction card if they wish. Players would want to do this to either help themselves, or another player win a trick. They would help another player if they felt they could not win themselves, and thought another player had similar aligned goals to them. Although, of course, they can never be sure.

The winner of the Trick (hand of cards played) is then determined by seeing who played the highest card of the lead suit, or the highest Trump, if any Trumps were played. The winning player can now choose to place one blue, red, or green card to the left or right of either of the Suspects. If they place it to the right, this will help the Suspect become acquitted. If they place it to the left, this will make it more likely that they receive a Guilty verdict. This is represented on the board with green or red icons. The card they place will show either a red number on the left or green number on the right that will add to the selected Suspect's verdict. Each card you add may bring new symbols too, which bring to the table interesting multipliers I will explain below.

If they do not want to do this, they can instead place one pink card above or below one of the Suspects. Each Suspect can hold two cards above and below them this way. Each pink card shows various numbers of stars and symbols which will affect that rounds' scoring as detailed below.

Players carry out this process, playing tricks, until a situation arises when one or more players has only Reaction cards in their hand. When this happens, those players call out "Case Closed" one final trick is played by the other players, and the first player to call "Case Closed" gains an Efficiency bonus of one star. This means, one extra point. Stars are points.

Each suspect is then assessed for their relative guilt by looking at the cards played next to them during that round. The red cards played to the left are totalled up, and the green cards played to the right are also tallied. There may be multipliers in effect here, shown by the symbols on the cards. If there are any symbols on the cards on the left or right that match symbols on the suspect itself, or the pink cards played above or below the suspect, then the value of the suit that has this symbol is multiplied by the total number of symbols.

If the total of the cards on the left equal or exceed the cards on the right then the Suspect is found Guilty. Otherwise, they are Not Guilty, and the Suspect card is turned upside down. You will now be left with three Suspects, either seen as Guilty or not, sat on top of cards saying Guilty or Not Guilty. The verdict you arrived to in the game may not match the verdict on the card below. Not all trials are just after all!

Each player will now score based on their own individual scoring bonuses. All players reveal their Identity card and look at the green areas on their circle of justice; they will score each Suspect accordingly. Players will either be looking to get guilty Suspects to receive a Guilty verdict, or vice versa. Or a mismatch of the two, with the Guilty being acquitted, and the not Guilty being found Guilty. It may be that one player wanted both Guilty and Non-Guilty Suspects to be Convicted. Another may want everyone to be sentenced, no matter their Guilt. The Nationalist doesn't care if Suspects are found Guilty or not. They just wanted them to be actually Guilty in the first place!

For each suspect that meets your chosen criteria, you will score the points for all symbols shown on that suspect card and any pink cards next to it, based on the totals shown against each symbol on your identity card. You will then score the stars shown on the pink cards that were added to any suspect with whom you scored this round. The cards on top add points based on the stars shown on the cards there. The cards on the bottom remove points. Finally, check the bottom of your own personal Identity card to see if you have any additional bonus awards. Most do, just the Anarchist does not. Calculate your total score and add it to the score sheet for that round.

You can score negatively for a round, and a negative score can remove points from a previous round, but you cannot ever go below zero for your overall score. The game continues like this round after round until one player scores 42 points or more. If more than one player exceeds 42 points, then the player with the most points wins. If there is a tie, the player with the highest score in one round wins the game.

Is It Fun? Justice Card Game Review

Trick-tackers are rife. There are literally thousands of games that use this mechanic. 2,539 in fact. As of October 2024. As such, if you want to make a game that leads with trick-taking as a core mechanic, you need to do something clever with it. Make it co-op like The Crew. Or maybe give each player bonkers game bending powers such as Tournament at Camelot. Well, with Justice, there is an intriguing element of deduction thrown into the game, a deep theme (well, deep for trick-taking card games anyway!), and a fascinating scoring system that changes for each player every round.

It means each round feels fresh. Each trick is interesting. And you will be constantly monitoring what each player is doing, why they may be doing it, and be on constant alert. Rather than simply playing your highest lead card and moving on with your life. Justice feels like the fusion between a trick-taking game and a game like Shadows Over Camelot. A brilliant, but sadly out-of-print deduction game where you are constantly analysing why each player has done what they just did, and how that may benefit you. As such, you can never relax. Every move could be crucial to piece together the puzzle of your opponents' hidden agendas. It's a lovely feeling!

All this combines to make Justice a fascinating game. If you like deduction and trick-taking, then get this game. End of decision. It delivers fantastically in both these mechanics, and I don't see these two mechanics fused together as well as this very often. If you are unsure about the deduction element, well, you don't actually have to figure out what the other players are doing. You can just play your own game. But understanding what other players are trying to achieve will help you as you won't be able to win every trick, but you may be able to help other players win. And if you help the players with similarly aligned goals, well, your points total will race up. But if you don't like both of these mechanics, you may just find the rounds slip you by and you fall behind.

As such, I would exclusively recommend this game to fans of both lead mechanics. There are plenty of great deduction games out there for those who don't like trick-taking, and vice versa. Plenty of great trick-takers exist without the use of deduction. But if you are a fan of both mechanics, then oh my, you are in for a treat!