WBG Score: 8/10
Player Count: 2-4
You’ll like this if you like: Trick taking games with a twist
Published by: Dragon Dawn Productions
Designed by: Thomas Klausner, Ren Multamäki
This is a free review copy. See our review policy here.
White Hat refers to hacking, but the good kind. Apparently, there are people who try to hack into websites and accounts to test vulnerabilities to protect the business from real attacks. Who knew? Well, this game is based - loosely - on that. (and the previous game, Black Hat, which was largely the same, but with no one player variant). The theme doesn't really come through, but it's a trick-taker, what did you expect? But what does come through is a game that is very well thought out and this hits you very quickly. In game one I would wager most playing this game would be slapped in the face with a big fat "ooh, this is interesting" vibe. It does two interesting things, both slimming down the usual trick-taking rules while adding a board. So, let's get it to the table and see how it plays.
How To Set Up White Hat
Place the board onto the table. One is for the standard game, the other for more experienced players with a few more rules. Likewise, there are additional tiles you can add to the board for more variation. I would suggest you stick with the main board for game one. The extra tiles add a few new rules that may be a bit much for game one, but we will get to later and you can make your own mind up. Then each player chooses a colour and places their round score marker onto space zero, and their two hats onto the Internet Café and Public Server starting spaces. This is the only time you can have more than one hat on the same space. Next, shuffle the cards together and draw the top one. Then pick one of the three White Hat cards to play with, the differences are purely aesthetic. Give the White Hat card to the player who is sat the same number of spaces, clockwise to the dealer, as the card just drawn from the top of the main pile. Then deal cards out to each player so everyone has ten cards. So, nine to the player with the White Hat, ten to the rest. You are now ready to play.
How To Play White Hat
The player sitting to the right of the one with the White Hat is the lead. They must now play a card or cards. You can play as many as you like, and any card you like, there are no suits; so long as the cards all have the same rank (number). The following players must now play card(s) in turn order, following if they want, the same number of cards played. So, if the lead player played two fours, then all other players can either play two of anything, or a single card if they choose not to play a double, or cannot. If you do not follow the same quantity of cards played then you cannot win the trick. The person who played the highest value card that followed the lead quantity wins.
All cards played in the trick are then discarded, and the player who won can move one of their two hats on the main board. They must move following the arrows on the board. you can only move one space, but if another hat is in front of you, you must jump that other hat to move forward an extra space until you land on the next free unoccupied space.
They can also chose to move forward another players hat if anyone else currently resides on one of the negative one spaces. If this is not possible, to move any hat, then the winner draws an extra card to their hand from the draw pile. That is very rare though.
There are joker cards in the deck which alone are worth fourteen, but with any other card, they replicate that card's rank. The White hat does the same, acting as a Joker. The only differences are that it is double-sided, so everyone knows who holds the White Hat, and also, when the White hat is played, the rules switch to the lowest cards win. Also, the winning player must draw the White hat card back into their hand and also pick up all other cards played, or the same number as were led that round, apart from jokers.
If you want to play the White Hat, and you did not lead this round, you must match the lead quantity of cards. you cannot play it alone for example, if the lead was two cards. The White hat is also worth the most points, five. And in this game, points are bad!
The round ends when one player is out of cards. All players then score based on the cards in their hand and the position of their two hats on the main board. The points are tallied up, and the score markers are moved accordingly. The White Hat and new cards are distributed just as before, and a new round begins.
The game ends when one player moves their hat to the final space on the board, or no hats can move. Finish that final round, then score the last round and declare the winner based on the player with the fewest points.
There are a few special spaces on the board with actions, more so when you flip the board, or add tiles during set up. In the main game, only the Honey pot exist, and the tracer, if you chose to include it.
The Tracer is a space on the board indicated by the FBI Server. When a hat reaches it, that hat is stuck there for the rest of the game. Take the Tracer card (there are two of these cards for variable speed) and place the ring onto the first space. Then, when the player with the hat on this FBI Server wins a trick in later rounds, the ring on the Tracer card moves forward one space. When it reaches the final space, move it to the Public Server on the main board. It can then move to any adjacent space, even occupied ones. It does not have to follow arrows like the hats. It cannot get blocked like the hats, and when it lands on a space with another hat, that hat is moved to Tracer jail where you will score five points at the end of the game. The ring moves every time the player in control wins a trick, as well as their hat. When a ring is in front of a hat on the board, the player behind can choose to jump it, just like a hat, but of course, this is risky.
The honey pot works similar to this, in that a hat gets stuck in this space. But that is it. There are no following rules or events.
The Critical Asset space is the final space on the board, and when a hat enters this space, the game ends. There are six variants for the final Critical Asset tiles that you can add at the start of the game. Place it face down with the question mark showing. Then when a player lands on this space, flip it over to reveal the new rule. This could force the player landing there to now exchange their hand with any other player, reduce the penalty in the Tracer jail from five to one, force you to give one of your cards to another player, or other such interesting end game twists. A must-have addition for me.
The Exploit space lets the player entering it increase or reduce the value of any other space by one. There are additional exploit markers that you can use to show this.
The randomizer space allows the player entering it to draw a random game board tile and add it to the board, changing the face of the board set up mid-game! Any hats in the spaces that change are placed onto the new corresponding space, and any effects on their new space immediately come into effect.
The Denial of Service space allows players who enter it to move any other player back to the Internet Café or Public Server starting space. This spot also locks any player that enters it.
The Backflip spaces let the player entering it move another player's hat backwards one legal space.
There is also an interesting variant where you can change the aim of the game for each player. Shuffle the Celebrity status cards and deal one out during setup. This card has values from 18 to 42 and shows each player their own target score. At the end of the game, the player who is closest to their target score wins. It's a very clever variant that makes the setup for each trick completely different. Sometimes players want to lose. Sometimes, they want to gain points. It is a very interesting way to play the game.
Is It Fun? White Hat Card Game Review
I love Trick-Taking games, but like most genres, it has been somewhat played out over the last few years with the saturation of the market. So, new games in this area, just like any other, need to add something more. A twist. This game does that so well. You think at the start of the game the twist is that this trick-taker has a board. And as much as that is a nice little addition, it really is just a nice visual way to move along some tracks that have a lot of easy ways to vary the setup. But the real twist here comes in other forms. Such as, no suits. No suits mean no trumps. And this opens up the card play in a whole new way. Players follow the quantity, not suit. And you win simply with the highest card. Unless The White Hat comes out, which reverses this. This has been seen in other trick-taking games, but the implementation of this reversal in a game where the card that instigates it is recycled back into that round is genius.
Let's say we are near the end of a round. All players have around one to four cards left. Because, of course, a lovely wrinkle in this game's fabric is that players do not always hold the same quantity of cards as you can play more than one card when you have matching ranks, and not all players will be able to choose to do this. Anyway, when only a few cards are left, you will think the round is close to ending. And it is, but you never know exactly how many rounds that will be. Say someone plays The White Hat alone to lead. This is now a 14 and cannot win that trick. Now, say another player with only one card in their hand plays their final card, and it is a three and the lowest card played that round. They will now win that track, and be forced to pick up the White Hat card plus one other. They now have gone from one card, hoping to go to zero and end the round, to two and another round at least left. Maybe two.
The White Hat is a handy card to have in the early stages of the game. It gives you a lot of control to get more cards into your hand, potentially build the number of matching cards in your hand, increase your chances of winning tricks, and move your hats. However, winning it near the end can be bad as you do not have the time left to get rid of it, and it gives you five points you probably do not want.
There is a lot of opportunity for very clever card play in this game, coupled with some interesting options with the main board. Especially when you add all the variants in. I suggest you do not start with them all; instead, let players get used to the card play for a game or two. But then, when you add them in, this game feels rich and layered in ways other trick-takers simply do not.
But it still comes in a small box, with simple rules, minimal set up, and quick gameplay. Games typically last around 30-40 minutes, and the game is very easily explained to anyone familiar with trick-taking as a concept. However, at first, they may find the concept of no suits confusing, especially as the cards are coloured differently. This is just to show more clearly their trace points. But it does throw you off a little, in a similar way to Hanabi, as players are so accustomed to seeing cards in a specific way. However, you will quickly get used to this and find the game to be highly rewarding for minimal effort.
The only thing I do not love is the theme and art style. Others I have played with really liked it, so this is obviously subjective, but it just felt a bit 90's and harsh to me. It is hard to make a theme really come through in a trick-taking game, or any card game for that matter. The board here helps, but ultimately I find themes in card games to be very much secondary, so why not pick something that is a little more aesthetically pleasing? The art in this game is all low-bit numbers, computer hardware, and creepy-looking IT people. Not for me.
But the game is excellent. I love playing this game, and have found the variations to be a wonderful addition to what is already a very solid experience. Especially the six end game variants that do not reveal themselves until the very end. I would like for this to be a little more game-breaking, but I understand that for balance and fairness, this is not the case. But in a game where sometimes you want to win, other times you want to lose, sometimes it's the highest card, other times it is the lowest, why not have one or two crazy end game twists as well? I felt that would have been a really fun way to play when you so choose.
I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys trick-takers, is looking for something that feels a little different, but still offers a very smooth and sympathetic entry into games. This would be easily taught to anyone not familiar with modern games but has played a few classic trick-taking games like Whist, for example, and I would wager they would quickly get the hang of the overall game and perhaps get hooked on the modern board game world. This publisher has made a fair few game in this genre, and I plan to cover some more soon, so stay tuned!
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