Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 30-45 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)
The Components
Fairy Tale comes with a deck of 100 cards and a rule sheet.
Cards: The cards are all printed full-color on medium-weight cardstock. There's a fair amount of information on each card. Suit is shown both by color and an icon. Each card also has: a value, a card type (character, home, or story), and up to two special powers--special valuations which always appear across the bottom and special abilities which always appear to the right.
The art on the cards is all by Yoko Nachigami. It's in a fantasy/anime style that's overall very attractive and high-quality. My only qualm on the artwork is that much of it is drawn with palettes that closely match the card suit colors. This makes the cards easy to distinguish, but causes some loss of detail in the pictures. The black (Shadow) suit is the one that doesn't do this, and the artwork stands out considerably more (and to better effect) than in the other suits.
The general layout of the cards is also quite good.. As noted different types of abilities are segregrated to different parts of the card, and this makes it extremely easy to figure out what a card does. Good use is made of icons, and overall the cards have a high usability.
I have three fairly minor qualms about the otherwise good cards. First, they have a pretty heavy chemical smell. I'm assuming this will go away through use. Second, they're printed on a slightly lighter stock than I would have liked; I can already see wear on the cards after three games. Third, when there's color text (mostly on the chapter cards), it's printed in a white cursive font which can be a bit hard to read, particularly on the yellow suit.
Rules: The rules are a brief, two-sided rulesheet. They helpfully include teamplay variants as well as the main rules.
Box: Fairy Tale comes in just about my favorite box type for a card game: a box just the size of your two stacks of cards, with a lift-off top which makes it easy to put cards in and take them out. The only downside is that it's just barely big enough for the cards. This good box will result in Fairy Tale getting carried around a lot more, and thus played a lot more.
On the whole the cards in Fairy Tale are good quality, beautiful, and easy to use. The price-to-content ratio is also quite good. Overall, Fairy Tale earns a full "5" out of "5" for Style, despite a few minor glitches.
The Gameplay
The object of Fairy Tale is to play mutually beneficial sets of cards, and to keep them face-up.
Starting a Round: The game is played out in four rounds, and each round plays in the same manner. Each player starts the round by being dealt a set of five cards. Then, drafting occurs.
In drafting a player chooses one of the set of five cards to keep, then passes the remaining four to his left. When he gets four from his right-hand neighbor, he again keeps one and passes the remaining three. This continues until each player has a hand of five cards that he kept.
Drafting is the real meat of the game, as you make decisions about what to keep for yourself and what to keep from your opponents.
Playing a Round: Next, the round is actually played. Each player simultaneously chooses one of his five cards, places it face down, then all cards are revealed simultaneously. Afterward, "Hunt", "Unflip", then "Flip" cards are resolved in that order. (Most cards have none of these abilities.)
Hunt cards only appear in the advanced game, and there are only a handful of them. They cause certain other cards played the same round to be immediately flipped face-down, without taking their effect.
Unflip cards come next. They allow the player to flip one of his face-down cards face-up. Some unflips are specific to a certain type of card.
Flip cards are assessed last. They cause the playing player, or else all the players (as specified on the card), to flip certain of their cards face-down.
The object is ultimately to keep your good cards face-up, because that's what gets you points at the end of the game.
Ending a Round: A round ends after each player has played three cards; his remaining two are discarded sight unseen. In future rounds the direction of passing changes from left to right and back again.
Ending the Game: The game ends when four rounds have been played. At this point each player scores all of his cards which are face-up. Many cards have simple vaules, such as "1" or "6". Some cards have values that are based on the number of that cards you have, and some cards have values that are based on the number of cards of a different type you have. In the advanced game, some cards give you points only if you meet their conditions.
Whoever has the most points wins.
The Cards: As you might expect, the game is pretty much in the cards.
The Basic Cards. Three of the suits (green dragons, red fairies, and yellow knights) are laid out entirely symetrically. For example in the yellow "Holy Empire" suit, we have:
- 4x cards ("Staff-Bearing Sage") which are only value 1, but let you unflip a card of the suit.
- 4x cards ("Knight of the Round Table") which are value 3, and which "work with" a card of a different suit, increasing its value.
- 7x cards ("Homesteaders") which have value equal to the number of that card you have (meaning that a set could be worth from 1x1 to 7x7 points).
- 4x cards ("Bard") which have value equal to the number of a specific card from a different suit that you have, times three.
- 4x cards ("Castle") which have a value of 6, but which cause you to flip one of that suit.
The odd suit out is "Shadow", which has less cards than the other suits, and which has lots of cards which force everyone to flip a card of a certain suit, and a few cards which force you to flip something or even unflip a couple of cards.
The Advanced Cards. If you want to play the advanced game it adds 20 cards to the game--5 per suit. These add a bit of complexity and some additional strategy. Again, the three standard suits are laid out identically, with:
- 1x 3-value card ("The Sword King") that Hunts Shadow.
- 1x card which gives you 6 points if you have the most cards of that suit.
- 1x card that gives you 7 points if you have the "1" and "6" value cards for the suit.
- 1x card that gives you 8 points if you have at least two cards of each other suit.
- 1x card that gives you 9 points if you have the unique Hunter card for that suit.
These last four cards are all called "Chapters", and tell the stories of the suits.
Again, Shadow is unique, and this time it has Chapter cards which reward having the most of three categories of cards (peoples, locations, and chapters), a Chapter card which rewards having the most of the Shadow suit, and a special Trickster card which can be used to substitute for any named card.
Team Play:Fairy Tale also has some alternate rules for 4-player teamplay (which I haven't tried out). There are two variants.
In the simpler variant, you sit across from your partner, and at the end of the game you sum up your scores (not your cards). Clearly you'll also want to watch what cards your partner is collecting.
In a second variant, by Richard Garfield, you also get to exchange an in-play card with your partner whenever you play a Shadow card (provided that it doesn't fall to a Hunt beforehand).
Relationships to Other Games
Fairy Tale is a logistical card-drafting and pseudo-set-collection game.
The card drafting is very similar to the drafting used for Magic: The Gathering tournaments, in that you take cards, and then pass the remainder on to your opponent. Other card games with drafting mechanics include King's Breakfast, where you select all of the cards of one type, and pass the rest on to opponents, and Coloretto where each turn you either take a draft of 1-3 cards, or else build up one of the drafts by drawing and placing a card. Card drafting is where most of the strategy in Fairy Tale occurs.
The essence of the gameplay, meanwhile, is pure logistics. You need to earn 3-4 points per card play to win, and this is a constant factor. Playing a Castle (6 points), which flips itself, then a Sage (1 point), which unflips the Castle, isn't bad because it's a 3.5 point average, but playing 7 Homesteaders, worth 7 points each, is even better. As such you could draw similarities to Saint Petersburg, though I think this depth of gameplay is much better suited to the shorter, lighter Fairy Tale.
Finally, some of those logistics are based upon set collection, since some of the cards gain value when paired with specific other cards, usually of the same suit.
The Game Design
Fairy Tale is a fairly simple filler game. The box says 30-60 minutes, and though I could see an agonizing 60 minutes of play if everyone had constant analysis paralysis, the 3-4 player games that I've played have taken jst 20-30 minutes total.
Thus, one of Fairy Tale's first good features is that it has excellent depth of play for its length. The game is pretty basic, mind you, with a singular drive toward collecting points, but there's a lot of meaningful decisions that you can make in just half-an-hour. Part of this is because of excellent simultaneous play. For the most part all of the players are drafting, then all playing simultaneously, with the only downtime being due to slow players.
There are tough decisions in drafting, as you balance your own gain versus what you're giving to the player to your left. In addition, there are minor tactical play decisions, as you figure out which cards to play and in what order, and as you try and second-guess what other players are doing.
The advanced game offers good expansion of the game. The basic game is a little easier to explain, but the advanced game offers some variability; if you pick up a particularly chapter card, it may drive how you play the game, but if you don't ,then you needn't worry about it, which is a nice balance.
There are a few rough corners in the game. It's extremely vulnerable to players of different skill levels. If you're sitting just to the left of a player who doesn't worry about what he's passing, you'll do considerably better in the game (though this is considerably offset by the direction of passing changing). In addition, there's no tiebreaker, which is a bit annoying, because out of three games I've played, there was a first-place tie in one and a second-place in another.
However, any complaints I have about Fairy Tale's mechanics are relatively minor. Overall, it's an excellent filler with a lot of depth of play for its short length. I give it a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
Fairy Tale is a logistical card game centered around the core mechanic of "card drafting". It's well-themed, with beautiful Anime-influenced card art. The game plays in about half-an-hour, and is one of the deeper fillers that I've played at that length, making it overall a great way for 2-5 players to begin or end a gaming session.
