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Hello Everyone!
Today, I will be reviewing another card game, known as Love Letter, which was introduced to me by my father-in-law (he actually introduces us to a lot of new games).
To begin with, this game actually has a little bit of a backstory, which I will try to briefly sum up for you:
The princess' mother has been accused of high treason and sentenced to death. In an attempt to ease the sorrow of the mourning princess, various suitors are coming forward to profess their love. One in particular, a composer by the name of Bartolemew Kaiss, has passed along a love letter, disguised as rolled-up music sheets, to a trusted handmaid of the princess. Will she be able to get the letter to the princess, or will she be stopped by the guards, the princes, the priest, or even the king himself? Find out next time in - Love Letter.
The game comes in a small box, as shown below. However, I have also seen it packaged in a small velvet bag. Either way, there is no difference regarding the contents of the game.
Within the box, you will find 16 cards, 1 rule book, and a small plastic bag containing 13 red cubes, as seen below:
Now you may be asking, "How in the world does this even constitute a game?!"
Oh wait, you aren't asking that? Ok, fine, maybe that was just me, but still, it seems like a pretty wimpy amount of materials for a full-fledged game. This was one of the first elements that intrigued me about Love Letter. However, after briefly going through the rules, we played a couple of rounds, thoroughly sating curiosity and replacing it with fun and amusement.
The goal of the game is to either be the person to hold the Princess card at the end of the game, or to knock all of the other players out. Either one of these will result in winning the round and obtaining one of those little red cubes, or tokens. Depending on how many people are playing, the number of tokens required to win will vary:
- For 2 Players - 7 tokens
- For 3 Players - 5 tokens
- For 4 Players - 4 tokens
To play the game, the cards are first shuffled and 1 card is set off to the side, face down (if you are playing with 2 people, then take an additional 3 cards off the top of the deck and place them off to the side face up. They will not be used in this round). Each player is then dealt 1 card face down. The rest of the cards are then placed in a face-down stack in the middle of the table/seat/floor/whatever you are playing on, and used as a draw pile.
Each player is allowed to look at their hand at any point in time.
Once it is decided who will go first (according to the instructions, it is supposed to be the person who most recently went on a date), all the players take turns drawing a card and playing a card.
From here, the rules of the game are extraordinarily simple:
Just follow the text on the cards themselves!
All the different varieties of cards can be seen below:
On the left side of each card, you can see between 1 and 5 stars. These represent how many of each card there are in the deck. For example, the Guard has 5 stars, meaning there are 5 Guard cards in the deck. The Princess on the other hand only has 1 star, meaning there is only 1 Princess in the deck.
The game also comes with some handy reminder cards for every player to hold onto. These give a brief review of the game rules, as well as a brief explanation of what each card does.
As mentioned before, to play, each player takes turns drawing a card and playing a card. One should always have exactly 1 card in their hand at the end of each turn.
If a player is knocked out due to a card's effect, they are out for that round and have to wait until the next one (don't worry, the rounds are short).
If a player discards the Princess for any reason whatsoever, they are out of the round.
If the round makes it to the end where there are no cards left, then the person holding the Princess card wins. If no one has the Princess card (for example, it is the face down card dealt off to the side at the beginning), then the person holding the card with the highest point value wins.
The point value can be seen in the upper left of each card.
Assuming a card such as the Prince (makes another player discard their hand and draw a card) is played on the last turn when there are no more cards in the deck, then the person who had the card played against them will draw the face-down card set aside at the beginning.
You keep playing until someone has the required number of tokens to win.
While this game largely deals with luck, it still requires a good bit of strategy.
Discarding the Countess when you have something other than the Prince, Princess, or King in your hand can often throw off your opponents.
When using a guard, try to pick cards there are more than one of. Keeping track of which cards have been played certainly comes in handy.
If you are going first, and you have a guard, it is always fun to pick someone and say they have a Handmaid. They likely will not have one, but if they do, it is kind of like adding insult to injury since you knocked them out before they could even protect themselves with their card.
Be careful if you get 2 Baron cards. You will be forced to compare hands with someone else, but since the Baron is relatively weak, you will often lose.
Overall, while this game is pretty simple, it is a lot of fun. It is easy to learn and quick to play, which makes it great for many occasions, especially ones where you have people new to the game or you don't have a whole lot of time.
In addition, the small size of the packaging makes it highly mobile and an excellent choice to take with you to a friend's place, an event where you know you'll have to wait, or a visit to a local brewery.
Overall, I highly recommend this game and give Love Letter an 8 out of 10.
Summary:
Genre: Card Game
Number of Players: 2-4
Difficulty: Easy
Score: 8 / 10
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Photos taken by me.
Awesome to find someone doing great boardgame reviews, can't wait for your next one!
Thanks! I'm not sure when it will be, but it should be soon! I saw your post on my last review. I actually just played Bears vs Babies for the first time last night and will probably review that one next.
What did you think of it? I finally got a chance to play it this past weekend and I was little disappointed. It felt like it was missing something.
I would have to agree. I enjoyed the overall premise and the strategy involved, but felt there just were not enough "heads" and "bodies" to build your monsters. It felt a bit stifled due to that, in my opinion. I think it would benefit from an expansion that just adds additional cards to the mix, with an emphasis on more monster cards, specifically heads and bodies. Did you see my review of the game? I went into a bit more detail on my feelings there. What did you think it was missing?
I agree, that would help a lot. I haven't seen your review yet, I'll have to check it out!
Great review. I never heard of this game before!
Thank you, it's a good one! If you have a chance to pick it up and enjoy games, I would highly recommend it.
Very comprehensive game review. Congrats on being picked by Curie, well deserved!
Thank you very much on all accounts! I am glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for viewing and giving some feedback. I'm hoping to continue doing these for the foreseeable future.
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This is a great review, really well formatted and clearly written. I honestly can't say that I wish you had done anything differently here, really well done!
Much love - Carl
By the way, I also wanted to say that I'm a big fan of your work. It is an honor to have been noticed by you and I greatly appreciate the advice.
Thank you very much! I am very glad to hear that. While I'm trying to improve and tweak these reviews as I go, comments like yours help me feel like I'm on the right track and encourage me to keep on going. Thanks again for reading!
Hey one tip is actually related to the tags you use. I found your post because I use SQL query / SteemSQL database to turn up new posts, so I am not searching by specific tags. The average Steem user however does search for new posts by tag. "gaming" is a popular tag with 3,315 posts, nearly as much as "games" (1,793) and "game" (1,895) combined. Using the most popular relevant tags to your post will get more eyes on your work :)
Visit here to see the full list of tags - you can click to order by posts, payout, etc.
https://steemit.com/tags
Thank you for the tip. I was actually debating on the tags myself. Figured I would do a little research and change them up appropriately for the next one. It's good to have a second voice confirming my own thoughts. I will probably end up changing "games" to "gaming" and maybe even making it the first tag. I'll just have to see what I can come up with.
Thanks for the link by the way. I always forget there are sooooo many more out there than what show up by default.
It is well worth it to edit your tags still at this point IMO - swapping out "games" for "gaming". You will likely be on the trending page of either but better to be on the more active trending page :)
Makes sense, will do! Thanks again!
very good @tj5553
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it!
So amazing..... Can't wait to see more and am following you right a way
Thanks! I hope to have the next one out soon.
cool and awesome boardgames.
Indeed! Thanks for reading!
Damn son look at you skyrocket and become a super star.
Thanks bud!